By JOSÉ RAIMUNDO TRINDADE*
Considerations on the political potential of new network technologies
This text makes a first analysis of the process of holding the Congress of the Socialism and Freedom Party, which took place in September and ended last weekend. The said Congress was, for the first time in the political and party history of a radical socialist association, held virtually through a network platform, succeeding the process of direct election of delegates. This text is more about analyzing the process, rather than the decisions and deliberations that were taken, being more concerned with socializing what we consider key for the near future treatment of collective actions involving broad social groups and the use of new network technologies .
The novelty and some difficulties generated interesting criticism and certain nonconformity in a large part of the participants. Daring to oppose the rhythms and dominate technologies, knowing that technique is only one of the components of the social dispute, where social relations are the fundamental stimuli, enable PSOL to place itself in favorable conditions for taking positions in a situation as adverse as the current. Analyzing this process, procedure and use of network technologies is something necessary, because, as a thesis, this technology as a social use is something that is here to stay and not a momentary conditionality, let's analyze it.
the conjunctural moment
The PSOL Party Congress was one of the central moments in the current process of dispute and political interaction between groups of the democratic left in this period of Brazilian life. A very difficult moment in which the situation presents many losses for our people, but the correct decision to hold the Party Congress must be emphasized.
Even with the difficulty of the current health scenario, PSOL decided to mobilize its militancy in a debate process, even if limited, via platforms and social networks and, fundamentally, elections in a PED (Direct Election Process) that made it possible to bring the different groups to the debate , to deal with many issues of the current conjuncture and face the partisan dispute, with the logic that the debated and criticized disagreement is worth more with a view to building the quality that thinks and organizes the future, than the conformism of nothing to be done. Internal mobilization strengthened party construction, the set of collective positions and trends, establishing in the current framework a rich moment of resumption of internal life with the participation of a significant number of militants (five thousand militants participated in the virtual plenaries and fifty thousand participated in the electoral process direct).
The conjuncture debate and established positions enable a broad internal movement that places the PSOL at the center of social mobilization against the neo-fascist government and collectively positions it as a political force in the construction of a unitary left front to combat the neoliberal agenda of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.
The organization of the process must be taken as a central positive point, even if it is difficult in view of sanitary conditions and the difficulty of using new technologies. Thus, in our view, party building was greatly benefited by the organizational capacity built at the current moment, which puts PSOL in privileged conditions to face the risky and uncertain situation, but possible to build another future for Brazil and the world we live in .
Technologies and political action
Current technologies were developed from two central forces: (i) the capitalist accumulation logic of producing relative and extraordinary surplus value and; (ii) from the social struggle and the workers that we seek to establish the human condition in which creativity and life constitute the essence of humanity. Social networking technologies express this contradiction.
The limit of use of data transmission technologies is something that we are just beginning to explore. Seven conditions seem to us to be part of the future interaction of these technologies and their relationship with a project of radical rupture with capitalism, something so necessary to be learned and apprehended by the broad sectors that defend an alternative project of society:
(i) there will be increasing individual and collective contact through these forms of communication; (ii) the social control of these technologies is part of the power logic of capitalism; (iii) outsiders in the system, whether against controllers or forms of rebellion against the total logic of the system, will always be limited or controlled by algorithms generated by Capital's controllers, to the point of generating anti-algorithms or complete social control of technologies; (iv) socialized learning as a political form, that is, a dispute over ideas and political power, will always be limited and blocked; (v) the conquest of rebels and minds that build another significance in social networks will be and will have to be one of the fundamental instruments for the new revolutionary and socialist left; (vi) social learning in the use and formulation of technologies will be central to the anti-capitalist revolution; (vii) the overcoming of the capitalist mode of production will be part of a gigantic information shock. I will develop some points to illustrate the interaction between the PSOL Informational Congress and the revolutionary struggle.
First, we must reinforce the perception that technology develops as a way beyond the controllers of the current system, this is historically valid, not only in the current mode of production as in the previous ones, technology is the result and product of human interaction, however much controlled by the ruling classes. This understanding gives us the perception that the current flow of information technology is produced and will be reproduced at a speed greater than that defined by economic controllers. On the other hand, it should be noted that no technology is neutral, system controllers impose social control technologies. So we have a permanent dispute around technological control and just as the dispute takes place in several fields, also in the domain and learning of the political use of these technologies so that they serve anti-capitalism is imperative.
Second, the wide dissemination of these current technologies is a fundamental first point. The ability to master technologies of this type is linked both to the exercise of use and to basic knowledge and not high academic training, we are here in a world of technological interaction of potential socialization, the problem is in the capitalist social relations maintained, defended and representing classes dominant. Finally, the mastery of these technologies and their dispute in the near future is something central for us anti-capitalists, the congress via the PSOL platform allowed us an exercise that is not momentary, but a structural learning and that will facilitate the break with capitalism in this part of our planet.
Vivere, mori et pugnare.
PS: The author participated as a delegate in the aforementioned Congress.
*Jose Raimundo Trinidad He is a professor at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at UFPA. Author, among other books, of Criticism of the Political Economy of the Public Debt and the Capitalist Credit System: a Marxist approach (CRV).