“You cannot bring about a
change through the internet because it is a bourgeois medium that only reaches
the elite.” This standard argument seems to have clouded the judgment of so many
well-meaning activists that they have failed to dedicate sufficient time and
resources to making their presence felt in any significant way on the internet.
Instead, they cling dogmatically to the politics of the study circle and print
publications. This dogma is one of the main impediments to the inability of the
contemporary left to reach the young generation of radicals.
It is virtually free. If you subtract the cost of the production of the material that one wishes to circulate (video or print), the remaining actual cost of any internet publication is absolutely free. For movements of the oppressed that are always inevitably strapped for cash, this should be a no brainer.
It reaches billions. Today, there are nearly two billion internet users; 22 percent of the world’s population has access to the internet. There are one billion Google searches every day and 300 million people read blogs. Two billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube. In Pakistan there are over 30 million internet users (1.7 million of them are using broadband internet). Of these, there are six million Pakistanis on facebook.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,
All this should make it amply clear that the internet is the most advanced form of communication available to the world today. It has cheapened the transfer of information to a point that it has destroyed CD sales and print journals. As far as access and universalisation of knowledge is concerned, the internet is without parallel in the world today.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.
People who say that seem to be living under a rock. In Pakistan, there are 30 million users in an adult population of 116 million (about 35.5 percent of the total population of 180 million is under the age of 14). That is 25 percent of the adult population. Granted this is the top 25 percent of the population, but please do not fool yourself into believing that anything but the top 25 percent of Pakistan reads newspapers or journals. By contrast, the total readership of all print newspapers, journals, magazines, combined is 7.8 million. That is 6.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.7 percent of the adult population. Let me put those statistics together: Internet reaches 25 percent of the population. All print publications reach seven percent of the population.
And for those who might be scratching their heads to figure out how internet connections might exceed the readership, the answer is simple. Everyone who is able to read also uses the internet. But the internet is used by millions who simply do not read (at least not on a regular basis). This is the bonus 18 percent of the population that watches videos, chats for hours on end, shares pictures on facebook, listens to songs and just surfs the net for fun things. You decide what is more elitist, the top seven percent or the top 25 percent.
“But it is still the top quarter that uses the internet. What about the bottom quarter?” The fact is that every single new technological innovation has always begun by first being utilised by the elite. That is the way it has been for every new invention one can think of in all of history.
The wheel was first used by the elite for their chariots. Metal swords were a prized possession of the landed classes alone for a long period of history. Books were available only to an infinitesimally tiny educated elite. When newspapers first came out in the 17th century,Black gemstone beads is one of the most gorgeous treasures in the world. People are fascinated by its varied colors as well as impressed by its natural and simple quality and tones. Black gemstone, as mysterious as it is, continues being favored and pursued by many people. only a few thousand of the elite read them and as late as the 19th century, newspaper circulation rarely went above 100,000. Automobiles, radios, airplanes, television sets, cell phones, computers, and so on, every single invention of the last period of modernity was at first only enjoyed by the elite. As mass production cheapens that commodity (and this happens very quickly under capitalist production) the same commodities become available to everyone.
When I was growing up a mobile phone was a small suitcase and only two people in Lahore had it. Today, even indentured bonded labourers have cell phones. When I was growing up only my richest relatives had a VCR that we used to borrow once a month to watch movies on. Today, no one would touch a VCR because everyone knows it is a piece of junk. Every factory worker has a cheap Chinese DVD player with a small monitor on which he watches Indian movies. Villages may have nothing else, but they always have a khokha with a small TV-DVD showing Indian songs.
The point is that capitalism has made new technologies available to the people on a mass scale, thereby making it extremely easy for anti-capitalists to communicate with working people. Socialists are already in possession of the most powerful medium ever created to change the world.
But aren’t revolutions only made through physical confrontation with the opposition? Indeed, they are mostly made in that way. But such confrontation is only the pinnacle of an ideological process challenging hegemonic ideas. And with the exception of a few countries, most of the world’s working class movement is not standing on the precipice of taking power, but standing at a stage of struggle where they need to gain ideological hegemony.
Imagine if Marx and Engels had the internet; their ‘blogs’ would have been read all over the world. Lenin would have been communicating directly with communist parties in every corner of the globe. Socialist literature would not be shipped in crates but would be receiving millions of hits on the internet. Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary would have been a podcast that billions followed. Debates on the Prison Diaries of Gramsci would have been occurring in real time from the forests of Vietnam to the far corners of Africa. All of this is the future of mankind, provided we realise the immense socialisation of communication that our generation is already benefiting from.
To conclude, if it were not for the Guttenburn printing press, the fate of the Reformation would have been no different from earlier movements that met their end in the Inquisition. The printing press in the hands of the rebels changed the balance of power forever. In the same way, the internet has the potential to disseminate leftist ideas on a hitherto unimaginable scale and overturn the intellectual hegemony of capitalist ideology over the world.
On the streets of Johannesburg’s gritty inner-city Hillbrow neighborhood, 33-year-old businesswoman Sharon Zinhle said she is worried about the former leader’s health. She says he brought many positive changes to her life and to the country, and said that since he left office governance has deteriorated.
“It’s really bad, it’s really bad. Because if we lose him, hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen to this country, really. During the times of Madiba there was no corruption, I think so, there was no corruption But with this new, ah, the corruption, is too much.”
Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 after spending 27 years in prison for leading the fight against apartheid. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with former President F.W. De Klerk for engineering an end to apartheid.
Mandela served only one term as president and retired from public life in 2004,A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet, telling the next generation, “it’s in your hands.” He has since carefully tried to avoid cultivating a cult of personality - with little success. Last month, the government put his face on its bank notes.
It is clear South Africans are not ready to let go of their icon. Many feel they have not had enough time with him. After all, Mandela spent much of his adult life in prison, denied access to the world and with few visits even from his family.
It is virtually free. If you subtract the cost of the production of the material that one wishes to circulate (video or print), the remaining actual cost of any internet publication is absolutely free. For movements of the oppressed that are always inevitably strapped for cash, this should be a no brainer.
It reaches billions. Today, there are nearly two billion internet users; 22 percent of the world’s population has access to the internet. There are one billion Google searches every day and 300 million people read blogs. Two billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube. In Pakistan there are over 30 million internet users (1.7 million of them are using broadband internet). Of these, there are six million Pakistanis on facebook.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,
All this should make it amply clear that the internet is the most advanced form of communication available to the world today. It has cheapened the transfer of information to a point that it has destroyed CD sales and print journals. As far as access and universalisation of knowledge is concerned, the internet is without parallel in the world today.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.
People who say that seem to be living under a rock. In Pakistan, there are 30 million users in an adult population of 116 million (about 35.5 percent of the total population of 180 million is under the age of 14). That is 25 percent of the adult population. Granted this is the top 25 percent of the population, but please do not fool yourself into believing that anything but the top 25 percent of Pakistan reads newspapers or journals. By contrast, the total readership of all print newspapers, journals, magazines, combined is 7.8 million. That is 6.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products.7 percent of the adult population. Let me put those statistics together: Internet reaches 25 percent of the population. All print publications reach seven percent of the population.
And for those who might be scratching their heads to figure out how internet connections might exceed the readership, the answer is simple. Everyone who is able to read also uses the internet. But the internet is used by millions who simply do not read (at least not on a regular basis). This is the bonus 18 percent of the population that watches videos, chats for hours on end, shares pictures on facebook, listens to songs and just surfs the net for fun things. You decide what is more elitist, the top seven percent or the top 25 percent.
“But it is still the top quarter that uses the internet. What about the bottom quarter?” The fact is that every single new technological innovation has always begun by first being utilised by the elite. That is the way it has been for every new invention one can think of in all of history.
The wheel was first used by the elite for their chariots. Metal swords were a prized possession of the landed classes alone for a long period of history. Books were available only to an infinitesimally tiny educated elite. When newspapers first came out in the 17th century,Black gemstone beads is one of the most gorgeous treasures in the world. People are fascinated by its varied colors as well as impressed by its natural and simple quality and tones. Black gemstone, as mysterious as it is, continues being favored and pursued by many people. only a few thousand of the elite read them and as late as the 19th century, newspaper circulation rarely went above 100,000. Automobiles, radios, airplanes, television sets, cell phones, computers, and so on, every single invention of the last period of modernity was at first only enjoyed by the elite. As mass production cheapens that commodity (and this happens very quickly under capitalist production) the same commodities become available to everyone.
When I was growing up a mobile phone was a small suitcase and only two people in Lahore had it. Today, even indentured bonded labourers have cell phones. When I was growing up only my richest relatives had a VCR that we used to borrow once a month to watch movies on. Today, no one would touch a VCR because everyone knows it is a piece of junk. Every factory worker has a cheap Chinese DVD player with a small monitor on which he watches Indian movies. Villages may have nothing else, but they always have a khokha with a small TV-DVD showing Indian songs.
The point is that capitalism has made new technologies available to the people on a mass scale, thereby making it extremely easy for anti-capitalists to communicate with working people. Socialists are already in possession of the most powerful medium ever created to change the world.
But aren’t revolutions only made through physical confrontation with the opposition? Indeed, they are mostly made in that way. But such confrontation is only the pinnacle of an ideological process challenging hegemonic ideas. And with the exception of a few countries, most of the world’s working class movement is not standing on the precipice of taking power, but standing at a stage of struggle where they need to gain ideological hegemony.
Imagine if Marx and Engels had the internet; their ‘blogs’ would have been read all over the world. Lenin would have been communicating directly with communist parties in every corner of the globe. Socialist literature would not be shipped in crates but would be receiving millions of hits on the internet. Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary would have been a podcast that billions followed. Debates on the Prison Diaries of Gramsci would have been occurring in real time from the forests of Vietnam to the far corners of Africa. All of this is the future of mankind, provided we realise the immense socialisation of communication that our generation is already benefiting from.
To conclude, if it were not for the Guttenburn printing press, the fate of the Reformation would have been no different from earlier movements that met their end in the Inquisition. The printing press in the hands of the rebels changed the balance of power forever. In the same way, the internet has the potential to disseminate leftist ideas on a hitherto unimaginable scale and overturn the intellectual hegemony of capitalist ideology over the world.
On the streets of Johannesburg’s gritty inner-city Hillbrow neighborhood, 33-year-old businesswoman Sharon Zinhle said she is worried about the former leader’s health. She says he brought many positive changes to her life and to the country, and said that since he left office governance has deteriorated.
“It’s really bad, it’s really bad. Because if we lose him, hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen to this country, really. During the times of Madiba there was no corruption, I think so, there was no corruption But with this new, ah, the corruption, is too much.”
Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 after spending 27 years in prison for leading the fight against apartheid. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with former President F.W. De Klerk for engineering an end to apartheid.
Mandela served only one term as president and retired from public life in 2004,A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet, telling the next generation, “it’s in your hands.” He has since carefully tried to avoid cultivating a cult of personality - with little success. Last month, the government put his face on its bank notes.
It is clear South Africans are not ready to let go of their icon. Many feel they have not had enough time with him. After all, Mandela spent much of his adult life in prison, denied access to the world and with few visits even from his family.
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