BROADCASTS.com

b'

They say \\u201cdon\\u2019t judge a book by its cover\\u201d. So in case you were withholding judgment: yes, this bright red book covered with left-wing slogans is, in fact, communist.\\xa0Inventing The Future\\xa0isn\\u2019t technically Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams\\u2019 manifesto \\u2013 that would be the equally-striking-looking\\xa0Accelerate Manifesto. But it\\u2019s a manifesto-ish description of their plan for achieving a postcapitalist world.

S&W start with a critique of what they call \\u201cfolk politics\\u201d, eg every stereotype you have of lazy left-wing activists. Protesters who march out and wave signs and then go home with no follow-up plan. Groups that avoid having any internal organization, because organization implies hierarchy and hierarchy is bad. The People\\u2019s Front of Judaea wasting all their energy warring with the Judaean People\\u2019s Front. An emphasis on spectacle and performance over results. We\\u2019ve probably all heard stories like this, but some of S&W\\u2019s are especially good, like one from an activist at a trade summit:

On April 20, the first day of the demonstrations, we marched in our thousands toward the fence, behind which 34 heads of state had gathered to hammer out a hemispheric trade deal. Under a hail of catapult-launched teddy bears, activists dressed in black quickly removed the fence\\u2019s support with bolt cutters and pulled it down with grapples as onlookers cheered them on. For a brief moment, nothing stood between us and the convention centre. We scrambled atop the toppled fence, but for the most part we went no further, as if our intention all along had been simply to replace the state\\u2019s chain-link and concrete barrier with a human one of our own making.

S&W comment:

We see here the symbolic and ritualistic nature of the actions, combined with the thrill of having done something \\u2013 but with a deep uncertainty that appears at the first break with the expected narrative. The role of dutiful protester had given these activists no indication of what to do when the barriers fell. Spectacular political confrontations like the Stop the War marches, the now familiar melees against G20 or World Trade Organization and the rousing scenes of democracy in Occupy Wall Street all give the appearance of being highly significant, as if something were genuinely at stake. Yet nothing has changed, and long-term victories were traded for a simple registration of discontent.

To outside observers, it is often not even clear what the movements want, beyond expressing a generalized discontent with the world\\u2026in more recent struggles, the very idea of making demands has been questioned. The Occupy movement infamously struggled to articulate meaningful goals, worried that anything too substantial would be divisive. And a broad range of student occupations across the Western world has taken up the mantra of \\u201cno demands\\u201d under the misguided belief that demanding nothing is a radical act.