[lbo-talk] Wisconsin recall results

Dennis Redmond metalslorg at gmail.com
Sat Aug 13 14:45:18 PDT 2011


On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Bryan Atinsky <bryan at alt-info.org> wrote:


> I can understand why you call it a transnational struggle. But what
> does that mean beyond conceptualizing it as a local/transnational
> struggle. What does it mean that "folks [...] should organize
> transnationally" on a practical level?

It probably means a lot of different things, depending on the specific struggle in question, but my best guess is the following:

(1) It's not a question of elite transnational theorists setting the agenda from afar, but of large numbers of ordinary citizens thinking, communicating and acting in transnational ways. The Arab Spring has been a stupendous example of this, and the BDS struggle is another good example.

(2) Nation-states aren't going away and local, regional and national struggles still matter, it's just that all of these things are now connected to each other, all across the planet. Sometimes the links are obvious, sometimes they're not -- but the links are there.

(3) Only 2 billion people are online right now, split evenly between the wealthy countries and the industrializing world. In five years, another 2 to 3 billion will be joining the digital commons, all from the industrializing world. I don't know what effects that will have on politics, but I suspect it will be seismic.

-- DRR



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list