The Leaderless Revolution

good evening everybody good evening my name is Charlie Beckett I'm director of policy media and society think-tank here at the LSE I'm really pleased to introduce our speaker tonight Connor Ross is a shining example I think to any LSE student thinking of going into the Diplomatic Service he was a highly successful member of the British Foreign Office who amongst other very important and tricky jobs played a key role in Her Majesty's government's policy in the build-up to the war in Iraq but his evidence cause to the butler review of that policy was distinctly at odds with the official version and not surprisingly of course he left the Foreign Office and he now heads the not-for-profit independent diplomat consultancy he's moved if you like from being a cocktail sipping power broker to a kind of anarchic intellectual activist the latter sounds far more exciting he'll be signing his book by the way his new book a leaderless revolution after tonight's event so if you want a copy you go out and buy one and then come back in it is really a terrific read and highly provocative I'm personally very interested in this subject from the media and politics perspective you know very much at the forefront of my mind has been you know what for example to the revolutions in the Middle East represent you know catalyzed in part by social media do they suggest that a new kind of politics is emerging will these kind of diffuse almost anarchic movements replace old fashioned political organizations you know can government's respond to the complex crises that the world faces or will if you like the citizen journalists and the citizen activists actually drive change well these are all obviously very very topical and very big questions that can Ross is now going to answer for us Carlos please Thank You charlie for that introduction I'm slightly intimidated by the challenge I have to meet now and now I've dropped my cards I was preparing the talk this afternoon my beloved cousins where I'm staying cuz I don't live in London anymore and she said how are you calm how you doing I said I'm a bit nervous to be honest she said don't worry can't I've heard lots of bad talks of the Yellow Sea I want to draw your attention to this picture it's by an Italian Renaissance painter called Piero della Francesca though there's some dispute over whether or not he in fact is that the painter today he he was as well as a painter he was a rationalist a philosopher and a mathematician and I think you'll agree it's a nice picture it's geometric it is ordered it is called the view of an ideal city and one thing we'll a strict structure struck you about this picture which is the in the ideal city there are no people I want you to imagine what would be the components of your ideal city what would your vision of a good society look like and I suspect my ideas about that will be similar to yours I suspect we all share certain elements of what we think would be an ideal Society it would include things like it would be peaceful it would be crime free there would be a sense of community there would be commitments to each other and to the place the city where we lived it would be of course ecologically sensitive it would be uncorrupt and perhaps it would be a gala terian it wouldn't be like say Mumbai where a multi-billionaire has built a house of twenty seven storeys overlooking the dorami slum where a million people live in it would be cosmopolitan we're all people of all backgrounds cultures race religion would live in harmony before we all break out into we are the world or we think this is entirely ridiculous and indeed it's I'll stop that list indeed it's a little bit telling about our political culture that it seems a bit ridiculous to declare these aspirations for a society compare this ideal the perfect City the perfect society with the reality that we had today it's not equal in fact there is rising inequality in every region more or less everywhere in India more than 50% of children under five are malnourished in New York City where I live an astonishing one in five families reliance relies on food stamps for their survival in this country the poorest 10% have over the last decade become poorer in absolute as well as relative terms in the environment the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere continues to rise inexorably despite international UN process to deal with climate change that involves hundreds of meetings thousands of delegates there is no concrete agreement on meaningful measures to limit carbon emissions this tallies with the growing evidence that governments and international institutions at the national and international level are less and less capable to arbitrate problems of a globalized borderless nature things like climate change economic volatility terrorism perhaps I used to write these claims that governments know what they're doing that they're on top of these problems I wrote speeches about everything from the Middle East peace process to global trade to the future of Africa I was for a while speechwriter to the foreign secretary as I wrote these claims I believe them I no longer do and I suspect that many of us are more and more skeptical of these claims that governments make about their potency to address these problems I suspect that amongst those skeptical other people even writing those speeches today today as a result of these problems these outputs of the current system there is increasing disenchantment with politics with our political system in America today for instance no politician can even start a political campaign for office without declaring their disenchantment with politicians with the political system it is now a political necessity to say that you hate the political system that you hate quote unquote politicians but along with this disenchantment sorry along with this disenchantment oh dear I have to put them somewhere else such a prima donna along with this disenchantment with politics is one census and one can't put ones finger on this or necessarily measure it an increasing alienation not only from politics but perhaps from each other and perhaps even an increasing alienation from ourselves or rather what we wish is what we wish our our true selves are authentic purposeful meaningful selves modernity doesn't seem to satisfy our need for that sense of purpose and meaning we seem detached we seem perhaps detached from each other but we are certainly detached from the decisions that most concern us politically we have lost that crucial component of an essential and that essential component of life which is agency we've lost it and we need to take it back around the world problems seem to be mounting out of control the answer is we need to take back control into our own hands we have given away that control we weren't asked that we have given it away and we need to take it back how do we get from today's rather unsatisfactory reality to the ideal city to the place we aspire to be in there are four key ideas in the book the leaderless revolution the first is that in an increasingly interconnected system which is today's globalized world change can be transmitted from one part of that system from an individual to a small group to the whole system very quickly a classic example of this the network there is you network theories use a lot is the Mexican wave which we're all familiar with from the sports stadium an example I use in the book is rather grimmer which is the spread of suicide bombing which began in Sri Lanka used by the Tamil Tigers was also used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against the Israeli army and eventually succeeded in ending the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon but has since spread in a very short few years to the whole of the Middle East to the subcontinent to Asia to North Africa it's now even spreading into sub-saharan Africa and of course it's spread to Europe and the United States change happens quicker today than it's ever happened before we're not living on a chessboard as conventional theories of international relations and politics would have us we're not a series of discrete separated players where the moves are predictable within a certain order this is isn't the kind of order we're familiar with in fact it's probably not an order at all what we live in is something that much more resembles a Jackson Pollock painting but even that doesn't convey is extraordinary complexity billions of actors interacting with each other constantly in real time this is a new dispensation for us and our politics are not suited to it this new dispensation is not order but neither is is it chaos it is something in between this is complexity the second idea in the book excuse me is again again but is it pass rather banal to state but it is because it is so incredibly obvious it is action that convinces people to change not words the British government did a study into how to convince people to behave more in a more environmentally conscious way and they found that people were very resistant to the prognostications and laws of government they thought they didn't trust government they thought the government was using environmental measures to extract more taxes from them they were more susceptible to the influence of expert scientists but the people who had the most influence the biggest capacity to change their behavior was not experts was not government's but their next-door neighbor the actions of those people right beside you are the most influential upon you this seems kind of really obvious to any theater director it's a kind of classic cliché of good theater show don't tell somewhere along the way however we seem to have forgotten that causing political change is about action in the 1930s thirty thousand international volunteers went to Spain to fight fascism and Franco's armies ten thousand of them never came back today perhaps a million people perhaps five million I don't really know have signed petitions demanding an end to genocide in Darfur that killing continues today not only in Darfur but also in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states where Khartoum is busy killing people with impunity the contrast is an obvious one somewhere in the late 20th century we have slipped from a discourse from our commitment and understanding that it is action that changes things we have shifted from action to inaction or to put it bluntly in action campaigning the fourth idea is about responsibility and to illustrate this idea I'll try to tell you a story about my time in Kosovo where I was appointed as a grandly titled strategy coordinator to the UN mission in Kosovo this was in 2000 for in those days Kosovo was not an independent state his status was undetermined because the international community could not agree on the status of Kosovo after the NATO intervention in 99 there was an international process to consider Kosovo's future it consisted of six countries in a thing called the contact group a tiny tiny group of officials diplomats in a holy untransparent process when I lived in Kosovo you could sense the political tension on the street you could sense the frustration of people who felt they didn't have a part in their future that frustration boiled over into violence in March 2004 now I'm not claiming that there was a single cause for this violence there were many causes for this violence including the the familiar causes of ethnic tension and hatred but certainly one of the causes was about the political disenfranchisement of the Kosovo people from decisions about their future we had a meeting in the UN we invited in the Prime Minister and the cabinet of the government and indeed all the political leaders of the main political parties and my boss the special representative of the United Nations who in fact has sovereign power over the whole country he was the ultimate power he was like the Viceroy of Kosovo he wagged his finger at these political leaders and he looked over his spectacles and demanded that the violence end demanded that they call a halt to this horrible violence which was engulfing the whole country it was a terrifying spectacle 18 people were killed the peacekeepers NATO peacekeepers and UN police completely lost control they were rioting mobs in every city it was a very frightening thing to be part of he looked over his spectacles and remonstrate it with these political leaders and they sat there and looked very uncomfortable and muttered excuses and much sort of commitments yes we'll go tell people to stop fighting and bla bla bla it was a very very awkward scene and I thought to myself long afterwards why was it so awkward what was it about that scene that was so embarrassing and I realized that it reminded me nothing more of a teacher speaking to his pupils remonstrating with them for smoking behind the bike sheds or something it was the dynamics of the scene but the culture of it if you like were exactly were identical to that scene of a teacher remonstrating with a child it seems extraordinary to compare prime minister of kosovo well the president of kosovo with children but that was how they seemed to behave I don't mean that in a patronizing way I'm trying to capture the sense of what happened there in that room because it became clear to me when I was thinking about that anarchy that I experienced in Kosovo the one very clear lesson became clear to me which was that if you don't give people responsibility for their affairs you cannot expect them to behave responsibly conversely if you give responsibility to people you can't expect them to pay more responsibly this was a very painful lesson for Kosovo it was an education for me but it forms one of the crucial ideas of the leaderless revolution and it's of obvious relevance to our societies today I'm not claiming that we're on the brink of anarchy and violence in our cities but I am claiming that if the disenfranchisement of people from decisions about their future the sense of disconnection that everybody seems to feel about politics about decision-making structures that seem entirely disembodied certainly unsusceptible to our voice to our influence if this condition continues then we might expect something like what happened on streets of Kosovo if you put these four ideas together you actually construct a completely different form of politics than the ones we have today which is a representative democracy what these four ideas together suggest is a method of politics it's not a declaration of a utopia it's not saying this is the society that will result it is about a politics that is better than our current form of politics and I believe intrinsic in that method of politics are outcomes which are desirable and better than the outcomes of the current system what is that method well the first one is is very easy to declare and I've already said it really it is about action we need to take action on the political concerns that most most concern us we need to locate those concerns those convictions of course first of all Gandhi talked about a method of small steps the change the world needs is of course overwhelming and intimidating but actually there are small steps available on almost every issue which are available to us small steps together become something extraordinary the second element of this method is collaboration identify a group of people who share your concern learn about the issue educate yourself collaborate with that group to produce the actual change that you aspire to not to demand others to make that change but actually to do it yourself and of course intrinsic in that is a necessity of negotiation with those most affected this was really the most powerful lesson I had from my time on the UN Security Council where I spent four and a half years on the British delegation one of the oddities about working there you're dealing with extraordinary dramas Wars genocide extraordinary human suffering and triumph and yet strangely it is quite a boring place to work it is quite stuffy the exchanges are quite dry and turgid and I thought about why this might be and the reason is of course because the people who are most affected are invariably not actually in that room that is not a recipe for good decision-making you cannot expect your decisions to endure if you do not include the people most affected in that in that process of decision-making and all in all this I do think it's time we probably rejected this hoary old cliche much beloved called the golden rule this maxim that declares we should treat others as we would be treated this seems to me fundamentally flawed in that it refers only to ourselves it is ultimately solipsistic it says that we are the arbiter of what they should experience and in its most extreme form it leads to the arrogance of the neocons who declared that other people were prepared to pay the cost in lives to be delivered from dictatorship into democracy instead the maxim that we might follow is simple it's ask other people what they want ask them their voices are now more available than ever before thanks to the internet Twitter social media outside of North Korea you can hear what people want very very clearly those opinions are very easy to access in a way that they haven't been before so I suggest that that maxim is is one we should always try to follow the third element of this method is about collective decision-making excuse me one second you also want to make sure I talked about a really good example I think I may have forgotten oh yeah here it is yeah I slipped a card I missed a card sorry it's a really important idea actually I can't believe I missed it but it's about participation it's actually the core of the whole thesis and it's not only an idea and observation about the world but it's also a suggestion of a key element of the method of politics that we might follow from now it is that mass participation in decision-making leads to better outcomes than the current system of elite decision-making of representatives elected by us to make decisions on our behalf this seems extraordinary it seems really odd to us to suggest that we should have literally thousands or hundreds of people debating what should be done in their cities in their localities perhaps even in their countries but the results are actually clear there are examples of this working today and there have been a lot of social studies empirical study which suggests that it works because when you have people all in the room together taking decisions about things that really matter to them and I hasten to add it is about real decision-making not about sharing opinions is not about debating is not about being on the internet and telling people what you think it is about making a real decision and theirs it must mean there's nobody else who can make that decision you in that room have the entire responsibility for the decision if that condition applies the outcomes from that decision-making process are extraordinary they include more respect for each other's views people take each other more seriously when they know the decision really matters they respect science and fact more they seemed important when there are still some who want to ignore the science of climate to climate change there's a professor at Stanford University called James Fishkin who's done a lot of work on this so-called deliberative or participatory democracy I recommend his works to you they show these outcomes very clearly but one interesting outcome which we don't seem very familiar with is that the outcome of this kind of mass participation is more equality more egalitarian outcomes in 1989 a city called porto alegre in brazil was one of the most unequal cities in the continent it had an extremely rich center surrounded by slums where government services were intermittent sparse if not to say non non existent they instituted a system of mass participatory decision making over the budget of that city and that systems is still going on today literally 50,000 people in the city every year take part in debates and decision making about what the government the local government budget should be spent on notably nobody is paid to do this people volunteer to participate what has happened in porto alegre and this has been shown in a World Bank survey is that porto alegre has become a more equal city services schools sanitation education are now much more equally distributed around the city and that's because everybody took place took part in the decision-making whereas before of course a small elite was much more susceptible to the influence of the powerful and another outcome of mass participation in decision-making is again very obvious if you include people in decision-making they're likely to show far more commitment to the outcome after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans there was unsurprisingly extraordinary disillusion disillusionment with the or government with local politicians people simply didn't trust these politicians who had totally failed to protect the city moreover the citizens of New Orleans had spread all over the United States there were refugees from their own City most of them were no longer in New Orleans itself how on earth would you address that politically how on earth would you get consent to a plan to reconstruct the city in their circumstances in that circumstance they tried a couple of exercises they tried to do online consultation on a new reconstruction plan and they found that although you know a certain number of people participated it didn't include a representative sample of the city of course the poor and minority groups african-americans in particular were excluded the so-called internet deficit I think is cool anyway but they're familiar problem with the internet and participation thereon instead what they did was they organized mass meetings all around America to consult the citizens on the reconstruction plan and as a result they got a plan that enjoyed eighty percent support amongst the population this is not a familiar outcome for our from our politics it would be difficult to name a political decision that enjoyed that kind of support which was a gala terian where people respected each other where everybody felt consulted and included facts were respected blah blah blah these are not outcomes we're used to the ideas in the leaderless revolution also suggests a different form of organization of our economic life of above all of the workplace the business base it starts at the microcosmic the current model of private ownership or share owned company has become in itself a problem it has driven a short termism companies that are publicly traded are required to show either short-term profits or pretty strong prospects prophets soon this obviously is not good for building long-term sustainable companies or considering values that are perhaps equally important to profit like the welfare of workers or consideration about the environment many workplaces are hierarchical we all know this from our own experience and in certainly my experience it is as demeaning to be told what to do to tell people what to do both the teller the boss and the told the worker are somehow humiliated in that exchange I think we sense that this is true but nonetheless the hierarchical model of the firm endures another aspect of the of why hierarchy isn't an appropriate or is a less appropriate model for the 21st century takes us back to complexity I was bought the Harvard Business Review for my flight from New York because the cover of it said understanding complexity how firms can succeed in an increasingly complex world the first three articles of the magazine all said the same thing you need to empower your agents the the base of your company it needs to be empowered to take decisions the instinct that we have in complex systems in what feels like chaos sometimes is to gather in to draw information in to try to control information to pull it all in one place so we can make sense of it but in fact that instinct is entirely wrong a more effective way to organize a company and indeed our politics is to empower the agents the atomic parts the individual pieces of the complex system of course these these ideas suggest something like a cooperative model of the company we're all familiar with John Lewis company which was given to its workers by his owner over a hundred years ago and is still extraordinary is extraordinarily successful and profitable in the most ferocious of competitive markets and where its workers not only enjoy extraordinarily long holidays and company facilities hotels sailing clubs all that kind of stuff they're not called workers by the way they're called partners they also enjoy something that most of us in the company in the private sector and perhaps even in government too don't enjoy which is agency they are consulted on the decisions of the company John Lewis is organized through local chapters regional chapters which consider both the local circumstances of the store and the overall strategic direction of the company the board the leadership of the company is elected you see where all of this is coming together it's a number of fairly simple ideas which together suggest something rather radical this kind of politics this method of politics I am talking about could fit under the generic roof of the word anarchism but I want to hasten to add in saying anarchism that I'm not talking about anything violent I'm not talking about the violent overthrow of the current dispensation I'm talking about a very gentle and gradual process of building alternative forms of political cooperation and above all political action piece by piece having been involved in several Wars I have a deep hatred of violence I feel profoundly that we need to develop a much broader menu of non-violent tools both the states and non-state actors alike I worry more deeply that the state's legitimization of violence of course Max Weber talked about the defining characteristic of the state being its monopoly on violence that is what states are that's how you identify States they have them violence but what they also have is the only legitimate they are the owners of the only legitimate means of using violence only State or those appointed by States are allowed to use violence but it seems absurd to believe that any legitimization of violence doesn't have a greater effect I sometimes worry profoundly that in States being the legitimate uses of violence somehow violence has been legitimized for everybody it seems very odd that the current dispensation the system we have today at no point are you asked whether you want it or not you are signed on to it when a baby is born in this country it is a legal requirement punishable by a large fine if you don't do it that you have to register your child at the local registry office that is your contracting in obviously enough you're not really over free will an agency to decide whether or not us you want to contract in at that point and of course the only way to contract out of the system is to die it's back perhaps because of this extraordinary an undecided unchosen lifetime contract that we have with the current dispensation the we encourage to believe that this way representative democracy the market as we have it today the current economic system is unchangeable immutable in its fundamentals and certainly although we may tinker with it affect it in its basic elements it is incapable of improvement it seems extraordinary to me that in our political culture today we seem to have lost the aspiration for a better society we have moved to a managerial and technical attic model of politics where the true political choices available to the voter are in fact extraordinarily narrow this year we saw an extraordinary and moving explosion of political change in the Middle East the Arab Spring when I was observing the Arab Spring and talking to people who were part of it and watching it there were two very old things about it one was a young man from who'd been in Tahrir Square for most of the Egyptian revolution he came to the u.s. for a discussion about democracy in the group I was in he was asked by an American so I assume you want our our democracy you want our system of democracy he said well actually I don't I don't want your system of democracy I want one that is actually better I've looked at your system and I don't like what I see very much the other extraordinary and rather odd reaction certainly that I had and perhaps others had when watching the Arab Spring was one of mV I thought wouldn't it be nice if we could have a revolution here where we actually change the current dispensation and replace it with something better I'm not proposing that we all go out on the streets and demand the David Cameron leave of the straight way I'm proposing something actually there's much more straightforward and peaceable and smooth there is a nasty truth underneath all of this which is whether we like it or not governments are losing power to arbitrate and affect solutions to the things that most concern us governments are realizing this it was leaked from the briefing notes for ban ki-moon when he took office as secretary-general senior American officials now openly admitted governments are less powerful than they were what this means is actually we have no choice but to take control to do things more for ourselves there's no alternative but to burden ourselves with the things we used to allow government to take on for us our ideal City won't I think look like this it won't be geometric it won't be tidy it won't be an order that we're necessarily familiar with it will be untidy it will be messy it won't be built without extraordinary difficulty but it will at least include and be populated by us the greatest obstacle to this kind of political change is not the extraordinary difficulty of doing it I don't underestimate the difficulty of setting up projects to actually affect change in extraordinarily complex problems most problems are very complicated it is odious and misleading that often these problems are presented to us as essentially simple that they can be solved with one vote or one click of a button on an online petition most common as we all know these problems are far more complicated than that building movements together acting ourselves to solve them is not easy nor do I underestimate the inherent rigidities of the established institutions that today embodied the current dispensation they will not welcome this change it will be difficult to change them I'm not arguing that we destroy them or undermine them but simply that we start to do things differently but perhaps the biggest obstacle in all of this is ourselves if a fear that we have of change of course it's a fear of ridicule being seen seeming to be absurd ridiculous absurd to imagine that we could have a city a society that had all of those things I mentioned at the beginning it seems almost ridiculous but above all the fear that we have is of our own power to do all this to transcend the limits of the current models political and economic of what human beings are capable of it seems to me extraordinary that we have accepted that what we are is defined by economists or defined by our political institutions which have essentially said to us that we should not have the power to decide things or do things for ourselves that we should only be consulted once every five years that we do not need to be educated about these problems we can leave it essentially to others because the fear that I think most holds us back is the fear of our own power to do something which is actually extraordinary let me leave you with that it's very much gone that was excellent in a second I would like to go to the audience and get your questions when you do so make sure you wait for one of the microphones and then please let us know who you are for those of you I forgot to mention the beginning who may be using Twitter just to remind you that the hashtag for tonight is LSE Ross or one word but before we zoom out to a more participatory deliberation I turn it quickly as he can to comment on and this is something that you would have to raise slightly delicately the LSE but let's talk about Libya which I just wanted to get your take on on what's happened there because in some ways it kind of backs your case about the sort of people power leading this revolution apparently and yet in the other hand it's a classic example of a state violence of an old-fashioned Organization NATO United Nations it's all terribly well doesn't it I mean yes it's an interesting example I thought about Libya long ago that we ought to be isolating and boycotting that regime because it is is it was rather an odious regime and that to me is the the answer to the question it should not have been necessary to get to a point where military intervention was was necessary I supported it when it happened because the people in Benghazi who I whose views I think should be paramount in these things said they wanted it very clearly they said we will be overrun we will be tortured in our thousands if you don't have a no-fly zone have intervention to protect civilians but long before that we should have been practicing both governments and ourselves non-government actors nonviolent techniques to undermine the Gaddafi regime we should not have been collaborating with his family we should have been isolating at every opportunity we should have been boycotting and the companies that did business with the regime and ultimately we should also and I think this is called for in cases of extreme repression we should have been trying to sabotage them these are the three broad headings of non-violent action obviously there's a lot of detailed beneath them and I'm working quite hard to develop that menu of non-violent options that should be available in these cases I'd make a broader comment about British Middle East policy which of course I was responsible for a bit in the UN it seems to me that the Arab Spring and Libya have demonstrated that our policy towards the Middle East has been precisely wrong both before 9/11 and afterwards we should not be collaborating with authoritarian regimes to create order this doesn't create order the best way to fight terrorism is for these countries to be democratized by their own people that is not done at the barrel of a gun as it was in Iraq and o3 it is done by ordinary people those should be the people we should be supporting in all circumstances they represent our values they are us our hearts lift when we see them on the streets I have no idea why we think well I do have an idea but it seems to me extraordinary that even today after this lesson has been demonstrated so clearly particularly for instance that the democratic activists have so clearly rejected the rhetoric of the sama bin Laden and Islamic terrorism this lesson has been so clear and yet today we are still in such relationships with Saudi Arabia Bahrain and others which are authoritarian repressive al Qaeda let us remember began in Saudi Arabia the suicide note of Muhammad utter the lead hijacker talked only about Saudi Arabia and the effects of his action on our relationship with Saudi Arabia so sorry a rather discursive answer great so thank you hi I'm Debra Mason as just an ordinary citizen without power and influence what is the first action that you would recommend I take in order to affect the smooth revolution well the first action is your own you'd have to decide what it is you're most cared about that's what I recommend in the book that's what I did I think it's sometimes rather a struggle to do that because we're so unused to it what is actually the thing that we're passionate about changing what is their thing and I you know this is why the book is not a prescription it's merely a guide to a method of politics it doesn't say what that output should be so that would be the first step and then I would suggest talking about him it's become unfashionable actually to talk about our political concerns one's natural disgust at poverty and inequality and the tedium and alienation of the content contemporary workplace we just sort of taught to shrug our shoulders and accept it I say don't accept it talk about it talk to others who may share your concern talk about what you need to do to address that problem and then there are further steps which are elaborated this is perhaps of somewhat fatalistic question but I'd like to ask how you avoid in this model a superficial change so in the example of Egypt arguably you know those people in the streets but what has truly changed there the military was and arguably still is in power and and or you know more broadly how do you kind of ensure that the type of Anarchy is not what you're advocating but rather can the traditional way that's coupled with violence and rather than assuming that all want democracy maybe warring factions and and not that everyone actually wants this the Democratic end the only time anarchism has really been tried in practice in recent times it was peaceful that was in the Spanish Republic the so-called Spanish revolution that was quelled by a combined action of mas de communists in Moscow who didn't want that kind of revolution people operating themselves ending their own business is without centralized authority it was largely peaceful so talking associating anarchy always with violence or the practice of anarchism always with violence is I think a false Association but it's a fair question to answer your first question first Egypt how do you prevent that becoming you know just a different iteration of an unequal power the military taking over which seems a real risk at the moment a lot of activists in in Egypt are very concerned about that I fundamentally think something rather extraordinary given that I used to work in government I actually think that any hierarchy where power is concentrated like a pyramid to the base below any power place where power is concentrated in a few hands is fundamentally susceptible to corruption of one kind or other it is almost impossible to prevent and it doesn't need to be actual corruption or bribing officials to do what you want it is a much more subtle corruption in the u.s. it is clearer what that corruption consists of is paying politicians to pay paying for their campaigns in return for political favor every American knows that that happens they accept it as part of their democracy but it is a form of corruption in this country we all know how influence is practiced how companies big companies media barons have access to our politicians which is denied us so I think all systems which centralized power are corruptible and I think that the only system that is ultimately resistant to that corruption to actually auntie being not a democracy too anti-democratic forces is one where power is much more evenly distributed amongst the base there is no centralized authority that is the best system where ordinary people feel empowered to take decisions are are empowered to take decisions about their circumstances perhaps meeting locally there isn't a question about this about how do we deal with global eyes forces I think that will certainly come up so perhaps I'll address it later how do you prevent it being violent and anarchic and you know what people think of when they think of Anarchy you know who did people throwing firebombs I think it's something about the norms and values and morals that the people who start it Express I have great faith in normative values and more faith than frankly than I do in laws I think that people are deeply persuaded by what other people do that if certain principles are elaborated and declared and stuck to then that is very powerful in creating a culture which is peaceful and collaborative it doesn't automatically follow that the type of politics I'm talking about which should be violent on the contrary I think the current system is fermenting disorder I think government's attempt to create order are actually doing the opposite the gray yeah thank you sorry I'm Eugenie I come from Spain I'm living in South Tottenham okay first I said a definition of anarchy like at the beginning of your talk to I know name of chaos and control yes but I feel I feel I think there is the markets who are getting the power no citizens then you got the Spanish revolution the government cannot follow people how the markets and this and probably people like me 1 million people demonstrating ok ok so you just take the question yeah first of all the definition this is somewhat false definition distinction I'm making between anarchism and Anarchy is partly to escape this association of violence and disorder the the word Anarchy tends to bring up four people and I prefer to talk about anarchism as a method and the method is allows in the book and I briefly described it today yes you're quite right governments may be losing power and they may be losing them to other agents and those agents and not us those other agents are markets they are big business they are in some cases mafia criminal criminal networks these are not easy things to compete with but I think on every front on every issue there are tactics available to us we have choices as consumers we've been taught to believe that we can only we should only choose the lowest price that we should you know act according to our Selfridge consumer preferences and that cultural choice is repeatedly endorsed but in fact you can make a political choice to put your money in a cooperative bank there are forms of organization of international finance which are much more robust which are more equitable which above all transparent I've written quite a lot about banking reform because it's so central even though it's somewhat esoteric I don't think banking reform will work by governments even if it is imposed which it's not going to be Cameron has already said he will not impose the Vickers Commission report in full and he won't do it for a long time anyway and the report isn't even out yet in any case even if new regulations are imposed market forces will drive banks to go around the regulation to innovate new kinds of financial products which will arguably create recreate the instability we've just experienced to me it's the same answers you go back to the atomic level you create organizations which are intrinsically resistant to those problems which are intrinsically designed to avoid those problems I talk about it in some depth at the book and it's in the book and it's somewhat complicated but it's basically about mutualization of loans a guy called Laurence Kotlikoff has elaborated these ideas how should people educate themselves well I don't think it's our job to decide how people should be educated I thoroughly reject the model of you know people are ignorant and need to be told what to think either by a government or by a liberal elite that decides what it should be I think that if people care and about issues they will educate themselves and and if you you know when that happens you do see people educating themselves and people are discriminating I don't think it's true that we don't know what to believe I know what to believe I'm pretty discriminating about where I go on the web where I get my information from it's not some ghastly cacophony of of you know disagreeing sources there are actually sources which use good journalistic methods you can find them they are more reliable you know I don't go to chat rooms why if for my information I'm not saying you do but I'm just saying I think your depiction of the problem is is more dramatically is dramatically worse than it actually is and I think you know it's very funny when I come out with this thesis a lot of people particularly you know people like me if you used to being in government you know telling people what to do they say well people are so ignorant they're so ignorant how can they possibly give them a decision-making power over things you know they don't know anything and I actually just don't believe that anymore I really really strongly believe that when you're given a problem you've really got to solve how should we run our school how are we going to solve global poll t-that people educate themselves about it that might be a few steps along from the first and second steps you mentioned yeah deciding which might have been talking about it yeah how would you implement that type of model if you went into a city of eight million people or some kind of coordination of ideas and execution why does any centralization that would be my first question why does it need that I mean there are some things that need to be collectively decided you know roads you know how we organize things that are common to us but actually those things can be collectively collectively decided as well it is not implausible Porto Alegre has shown how you can actually have mass participation fifty thousand people take participating in budgetary decisions how you do it how it starts there is no government on earth that's going to institute this there will be no politician that will actually decree this there may be maybe some politician will actually get this because they will see what's happening and there will be try to be the one to capture the populist wave and say actually I'm going to be the one to devolve power I'm going to get rid of centralized government but I don't think we should hold our breath for that to happen the way it should happen is that we need to set up these systems ourselves it can be very local our street and gather and our Street to talk about what concerns us our school our Hospital we gather and we talk by participating we give these forms of organization legitimacy legitimacy frankly that many of our democratic systems currently do not have because we do not participate in them and many of us are very skeptical of them once they gain that ledge intimacy people politicians governments will have to pay he to them no politician will be able to ignore a group of local organization in his or her constituency because if they ignored them they would not be elected these things are potentially enormous ly powerful I think the germs of the the embryos of them are all around us there is a new tide of volunteerism of activism I think it is occurring to a lot of people that the act of voting once every five years is entirely inadequate to deal with the problems that we have so that it was got the microphones don't rush up there again but I'm gonna take another one the top there just shout out this in reference to Kent don't tell me you study philosophy yes good questions and I think people are able to engage when they have different moral systems we do all the time I mean nobody very few people are in complete moral agreement with one another but I think the thing that is substantially lacking today is that engagement it is all very well to believe to say we believe in multicultural societies heterogeneity cosmopolitanism but it won't happen on its own stability and engagement doesn't happen on its own you bet you've got to do it you've actually got to engage and talk to people perhaps that might produce some universal moral norms particularly about talking about the necessity of talking that might be one of them I can't predict what they would be but I can predict that they would be better through the discussion with others as for your second point I actually have come to believe that the condition of leaderless Ternes is actually an essential condition of stability this actual heroic model of leadership that we've got is part of the problem we attribute to these people qualities that they simply do not have and no human can have the ability to interpret this extraordinary complicated world and make rational good decisions about it government claims over and over again that it is capable of that I have been in government is is not capable of that no no centralizing authority no individual is capable of that understanding the best people to understand our circumstances are those who are living them that means us so I don't really believe in the model of leadership and I think actually it's a way of kidding ourselves and aneisa ties in ourselves and we give these people I don't dislike them I have some who are friends I have some who are friends but we give them the authority to do extraordinary and sometimes awful things I think nobody should be given the authority to commit violence on our behalf there's something horrible about that there is something horrible about the detachment of those who make those decisions from the reality of violence that is a terrible thing and we have decided to give them that right well I never decided to give them how they've got it well I talked about what would work better in Libya and I think the same thing applies in an absolute prescription on your part or are you saying well I think in the current dispensation we've confronted with choices that are not ideal I mean ultimately we move towards a system which those choices were were less dark but I still believe in most political circumstances the nonviolent revolt is a far more powerful technique than the use of violence and in many circumstances has actually not been tried in Palestine for instance nonviolent resistance is only just beginning as a technique and the PLO the leadership seems somewhat uncomfortable with it partly because it undermines their own authority as the leaders as the ultimate spokesman for the Palestinian people nonviolent protests and mass action gives political institutions and leaders a lot of problems and it won't start with them telling us it's giving us permission to do it I think in Zimbabwe that kind of option is available it's also available for us to do things to help the Mounted people of Zimbabwe including boycott I don't think we should leave sanctions to governments I think we should consider it ourselves it's now possible to find out information about the provenance of almost everything we buy I was reading today about in the Financial Times which is the most subversive of newspapers truly truly if you want to understand how it works read the FT that you know Apple is now facing problems because of the conditions in some of the factories where iPads are made you know people have committed suicide but I papal is actually not telling people where some of its components are produced are being produced and there is a now a great pressure on Apple to to expose what it's doing transparently there's a clear model of this in all circumstances of trace the chain back to where it's from and use that chain to exert pressure warden Taylor can I give an example of how people power actually did work I set up an organization called a West London residence association in 2003 to fight the western extension of London congestion charges because studies showed that we didn't have a level of congestion in West London the warrant had it it was going to cause about quarter of a million two hundred and fifty million pounds worth of damage to our local economy and a loss of six thousand jobs which it did over the eight years that was in operation and we set up just about five of us and we grew into an organisation over the whole of West London of about 14,000 and we worked at it for eight years until Boris Johnson actually got rid of it and West London breathed a sigh of relief so it does show that people power can work it leads me on to the second thing you indicated that leadership perhaps wasn't required to do this but leadership is required to get any action completed there is the difference between the hierarchical leadership that you mentioned and what Field Marshal slims would say leadership from within the group and I think that that's possibly the way forward to achieve the things that you're after in other words you must have leadership but it will be within the group and supported by the group members so if consented to and shared and originating in a truly egalitarian discussion yes individuals can emerge you have our ideas that inspire the others but what I would suggest is there's very rarely one person who always knows what the right thing to do is often the knowledge is is evenly distributed and actually it will be different individuals who know about how to deal with different circumstances it's the individualizing and the institutionalization of leadership that I'm opposed to as your first point it is a good example but I would suggest that actually we're moving from a politics of collective protest to one of collective action your movement to stop the congestion charge was one a protest that is familiar if effective and sometimes effective form of of political action addressed basically to a centralized Authority if you actually had control over your part of central of West London you wouldn't have had the problem in the first place you would actually talked about the problem of congestion do you need to apply measures to stop it you know you wouldn't have been forced to what I'm sure was a very tiring and time-consuming exercise of trying to get a distant bureaucracy to listen to your concerns it's another thing to thank Boris Geneva's Makai the now largely forgotten American anarchist Paul Goodman when that question used to be put to him he reply psychologists tell us that on average one every six people is a leader that's enough but my question to you is Nick Jackson's recent book on the use of Beaufort to his tax havens the extent to which the most that the richest states in the world are engaging systematically and increasingly along with multinational corporations in what amounts to sovereign criminality motorizing wars death on a staggering increasing scale means seemed to me that but but in the worst sense of the word the anarchistic consequences way out we're anything to a stratospheric degree that any so-called black any multiplicity of so-called black box could ever achieve way way that they're exceeded and is a increasingly by whiter the Great Depression yep Mike my question is you as somebody who was a state bureaucrat operating at a high level when exactly and why were you prompted to go to the other end of the spectrum and start examining the tradition of anti-authoritarian anti hierarchical anti status theory and why the whole Iraq war thing was a very very difficult and painful experience for me I saw my colleagues do something that I need to be dishonest participating something that they knew to be dishonest but I above all I went on sabbatical from the the FCO for a bit i sat in a library in New York for a year I read a lot there I was very depressed David Kelly died the following summer that event had an extraordinary effect on me David was my colleague it profoundly shocked me to the core that a man who was essentially loyal too deeply loyal to the state could be treated that way by a government to which he had shown nothing but loyalty except when it had diverged from honesty I was appalled by it and the people who better be careful what I say who responds were for it I don't think you know I don't think he was murdered but I think he was humiliated to death which is almost worse the people responsible for that humiliation have not been held accountable I told I suspect some of them has spoken on this stage since then so there was a deep emotional rapture for me which my very tolerant wife will testify it was a very hard thing it was ugly I floundered around I was very angry I didn't know what to do I didn't actually resign from the Foreign Office until 2004 so it was hardly a heroic protest like an Elizabeth Wilms her state she resigned when she saw that her legal advice have been ignored so I can't put myself in that category it was a much more drawn out thing but when I when it I that process started for me was an examination of what had done as a diplomat I sat there and I thought well what is it you've actually done what have you become it was a very introverted process of course but it was also analytical and that I wanted to look at the results of the policies that I had been part of and the picture I saw was not a pretty one particularly sanctions on caused immense civilian suffering damage to the Iraqi economy I was directly responsible for for that I was directly the British diplomat he negotiated with one or two colleagues we negotiated those resolutions which modified an engineered sanctions on Iraq we knew there were suffering we were told there was yet we still did it and we did it because we were detached from that reality we were given permission to do it by our state we were effectively demoralized demoralized by our state we were given pannier permission to be amoral this our security our right to demand that Iraq disarm of this WMD was greater than the Iraqi people's right to economic development it's a really complicated story and I won't go into it but anyway that that was the moment and that examination self-examination led me to think about a broader analysis of what is wrong with our political system wide are people so disenchanted what are the outputs of this system I personally feel very concerned about the way things are going you know climate change scares the hell out of me the the way economic volatility is working is extremely concerning I'm disgusted by the inequality of our society the fact that we can tolerate such suffering among so many people is appalling to me and what do we do about it I had been lobbied as a diplomat by NGOs I had seen demonstrations of people far below on First Avenue 34 stories below me waving placards demanding and inter sanctions I knew that the conventional methods of political pressure did not work I was never confronted with those protests I was never held accountable by my Parliament not one MP ever questioned me for about what I did until after I resigned no press could keep up with us we were far better informed we could easily outmaneuver them they were in any case you know driven by an agenda which was not finding out the truth about what was going on going on in Iraq it was some other sensationalist agenda about you know this government Minister has been tripped up in Parliament or whatever it was never a deep analysis in other words the three pillars of our democracy the courts Parliament the press were not working poppers theory of the civil society was not working they were not holding the government to account normal forms of political protest my friends who protested against the Iraq war I kind of put my head in my hands don't you know what a waste of time that is do you know how little attention people inside the system pay to that it is zero zero Barney Frank pretty very well when he was condemning in a demonstration in front of the White House he said those people are putting more pressure on the what the grass outside the White House than there on anything inside it so what would be a better system and that was the intellectual journey that I took and that led me to my great surprise to anarchism I had always believed in governments that they when populated by decent clever people like me they would do good that they would order the world they would create good outcomes I realized in my own work that I had not done good the outcomes I had helped create were bad that was actually shameful but what would be a better system and that led me to this place you know took ten years really to get there and it's pretty extraordinary that it's got me there but actually the more I thought about it I suppose this is a natural consequence of human psychology the more convinced I became just a quick straw poll how many people in this room tonight would use the word your anarchy your anarchist to describe if only in large measure their political beliefs how many people use the word 'anarchist Iran Turkey all right gosh converse is that's good okay thanks very much it's just just interesting can we just get so you can keep your questions very very brief hi my name is fedora and I'm from Kosovo I started here in LSE question well you see you talked about the situation in Kosovo and the problems there and that we have a government but that does not take our does not talk on behalf of the people so and we have the American Embassy the Ambassador who decides about people's way who even elects our president but what I would like to ask you about is the self-determination movement they are using different actions different ways to bring to give power to people to say that we are the people and we have to decide for ourselves if they if you ask the self-determination movement of how they describe the people in Kosovo they say that we are being treated as patients in hospital because the doctor is the one who decides for our condition when we ask them how we feel we feel they say you are stable but still tense so our situation is like that in Kosovo so what do you think about self-determination movement are they going in the right direction is their way of the actions that they are taking is it a good way of giving power to people of request this is Albin kurti thing yes thank you well I think it's a very narrow answer to a much broader problem and I think album kirti's methods are not ones i admire you know just saying Kosovo needs to throw off the shackles of the international community tell Serbia to go to hell and basically declare a kind of real sovereignty over its own affairs that's not the answer it's perhaps part of the answer but it's certainly not the whole answer and I'm very hostile to single-issue campaigns to elevate one thing over other things when we all know that problems are complicated Kosovo's problem is a corrupt government that is endorsed by and supported by the international community as you've said Kosovo people need to start organizing themselves locally there are powerful systems of organization it is a cultures you know better than me that already has a strong sense of common values that book of values is written in the code Canon I'm not saying that should be your guy but I'm just saying the habit of local cooperation is actually very strong civil society is very strong in Kosovo because of what you suffered under communism civil society was where the all the intellectuals went unfortunately governments look to governments to create order they don't look to non governments they don't look to other things that are actually better at creating order so when the Americans or the Brits look at Kosovo they think are we've got to perfect the government we've got to use the tools we've got the EU to make the leadership of Kosovo left less corrupt you know we'll tell them they should be less corrupt and Russian Thatcher will not is the prime minister of course of Kosovo he will nod lugubrious Lee as he always does and will do precisely nothing to change the corruption of Kosovo because the behavior of governments to keep talking to him is actually legit amazing him and this man these men love nothing more than going to London or Washington and being having their hand shakin it's the same thing I was talking about Libya actually we outside should be helping you not necessarily in the self-determination movement but the extraordinary and educated and brilliant young people at Kosovo to create a different kind of political structure there I'd gladly help in that effort we dive in to the sensor there's one just there hi I'm Jamie I'm just the citizen and I live in London not Libya and my questions about violence and maybe there's a wonderful is maybe a bit of a disconnect between the more positive romantic idea you might have of violence going on over there and the kind of violence that maybe can happen over here and at the heart of that is perhaps a focus on obvious subjective direct acts of violence you know throwing Molotov cocktails whatever is and the fact that she behind that is a system of objective systemic violence which is our economic order which commits all kinds of violence is upon subject citizens and on the one hand you've got the kind of alienation that you were talking about that we suffer and on the other a much more kind of direct kinds of suffering and I suppose they're in a system where we using the government - losing a bit of ground but they probably using it - citizens as to corporations to lobbies and in that circumstance and we're all those elites show themselves to want to keep supporting that economic order I wonder how much empowerment we can have without directly tackling the deeps the deep structures of our economic social companies found them join them run them support them by for them to do it differently that's what I'm saying take it on it is fundamentals I'm not saying leave the fundamentals and addressed and I don't have a romantic view of violence I think you know all violence is horrible and should be prohibited morally and not necessarily by law that doesn't seem to work does it I think economic violence is a form of violence yes I committed it on the Iraqi people I know all about that okay we're gonna have to stop it there you can continue the conversation Khan Ross is on Twitter it's been a very very rich like evening with lots of big ideas and I think some kind of answers as well in there as well for us to work out I want to thank our very very much but what's been a really interesting evening

Channel: LSE

Views: 9,692

Rating: 4.8688526 out of 5

Keywords: LSE, London, School, of, Economics, London_School_of_Economics, University, College, Public, Lecture, Event, Seminar, Talk, Speech, socialscience, Carne, Ross, Carne_Ross, Charlie, Beckett, The, Leaderless, Revolution, How, ordinary, people, will, take, power, and, change, politics, in, the, 21st, century, diplomat, diplomatic, democracy, democratic, government, personal, liberation, environment, terrorism, political, action, anarchism, anarchy, cosmopolitan, cosmopolitanism, crisis, conflict

Id: rMbGSx32rAg

Length: 83min 55sec (5035 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/zethien]

I wish this one had more views and upvotes.

So I must come out, so to speak, hopefully everyone knows I participate alot in the /r/lectures community and believe alot in the power of people. This exact lecture is essentially my wheelhouse. I've been working on for the past 3 years on a tech solution to the idea of decentralized distributed organization of social involvement. While we still aren't yet launched, it would mean alot if anyone interested could visit us at https://zeall.us/ and subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on facebook and twitter

Sorry for the blatant self promotion.