Interesting thesis, excerpted from Aaron Peters in OpenDemocracy:

“I would add that the movement is not just born solely from an ethical concern with the current system but rather, after several decades of recognising neo-liberalism’s ability to commodify every day life and desecrate the environment, those in the developed world are now beginning to understand the genuine threat to their own standards of living posed by it as an economic system whose negative implications far outweigh any positive ones. Furthermore it is being increasingly recognised as undermining norms of national sovereignty and basic democratic accountability in countries as politically and economically diverse as Puerto Rico, Greece, Egypt and the UK. One particularly pertinent point is that the movement(s) we are seeing, particularly in Southern Europe and the UK, are in opposition to the logics of unaccountable transnational bodies such as credit ratings agencies, international finance institutions such as the IMF and global banking oligopolies such as Goldman Sachs.

What Kahn-Harris fails to identify is that the existential crisis of ‘affluenza’ and the absence of any notion of the ‘good society’ within the developed market economies is now conjoined with structural economic changes which mean that many of these same economies will witness a decline in standards of living over the course of the next decade. The ideological vacuity of late twentieth century capitalism, which never satisfied the ethical demands of equality and human flourishing, is now accompanied by the fact that people’s material economic conditions – whether they are blue or white collar workers – are worsening, be it with an increasingly precarious labour market or their (in)ability to afford education, healthcare and housing.

Subsequently moral disagreement with a rapacious economic system that was previously displaced onto ‘sympathising’ with the developing world is replaced by the understanding that this same system is presently attacking our own quality of life here in the ‘developed’ West. As a consequence we will increasingly see emergent subjectivities born in opposition to neo-liberalism that will not just be expressed by those in the developing nations, but increasingly among the growing numbers of the marginalised in the developed world. Given the dynamics that affect all are those of a globalising economy, it is natural that resistance to such dynamics – increasingly conscious of the broader global context in which national policy is constrained – will assume both national and transnational critiques and identities. Hence such resistance inevitably becomes a movement of movements.

The Practical and Productive norms of the ‘Movement’ have been Informed by the Developing Periphery:

One major contention I do have with Kahn-Harris’ piece is the assumption within this question:

“How far is the movement confined to a particular section of the western middle classes? How can it spread to non-western contexts and to what used to be called the working class?”
Simply put the ‘movement’ is primarily informed by practices that originate from the global periphery, the developing world and the poorest communities from within the developed West. Kahn-Harris speaks about Brian Eno and Cory Doctorow as examples of “…artists, musicians and writers that strive to find new modes of production and consumption”. The truth is that the great examples of the ‘free culture movement’ (as in a culture that is not subject to rigid notions of intellectual property rights and is easily disseminable) originate from poorer communities in both the developed and developing world rather than the Western middle-classes.

Examples include the genesis of Hip Hop in the United States in the 1970’s, the ‘free party’ scene in the UK in the early 1990’s and more recently the rise of ‘Tecno Brega’ a dance music genre originating in the poor North West of Brasil. All three genres, 70’s Hip Hop, 90’s rave and contemporary Tecno Brega embody the ‘remix’ rationale that is opposed to IP rights and enforced scarcity. Along with the music of GirlTalk and Dangermouse’s seminal ‘remix’ Grey Album of 2004, it is Tecno Brega and the music from the economic periphery whose production values reside at the very core of the new culture.

Elsewhere the tactics of direct action increasingly witnessed in OECD countries with the rise of Climate Camp, UKUncut (this being the most media friendly of many such groups) and Southern Europe’s Indignados have been favoured by the alter-globalisation movement for the best part of a decade. Indeed the tactics now being increasingly favoured in wealthy European countries have proved most fertile in Latin America and the transnational Via Campesina movement during the last several decades. It is these movements, be it the Landless Workers Movement of Brasil or the Piqueteros of Argentina from a decade ago, who favoured direct action, networked communication and non-hierarchical organisation long before anti-austerity protesters in the OECD. Indeed the practical vocabulary of networked and leaderless political movements has been percolating in the developing world since the mid-1990’s and the rise of the Zapatistas in Mexico – it is these movements which inform many of the norms, tactics and subjectivities that mark the new movement(s) that we are seeing in the developed world. Given that these countries endured structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) a decade or more before developed countries did, it is of little surprise that their historical experiences of resistance will come to inform that of similar and more contemporary anti-austerity movements in the developed world.”