From Code to Revolution
58/
I didn’t know enough to build a post-capitalist civilization. The people around me didn’t know enough either. This realization gave me pause about tearing down this one.
I didn’t know much about the operations of the political right. But I could see that whatever they were doing was more effective than marching in the streets and holding signs. They weren’t filing complaints about capitalism.
They were changing it.
I couldn’t see how our activities were going to lead to any kind of change. If anything, we were contributing to the changes that the right wanted to make by acting the part of threatening troublemakers. I wasn’t interested in martyrdom. I wanted to win.
Everyone said they wanted to create a better world, but they seemed to be delaying stating exactly what that meant until after the revolution. The underlying assumption was that after we get the bad people out of power then it would be left to the good people (us) who will naturally make better decisions.
They wanted to put new people in power. But I wanted to put new systems in place. That created a lot of space between me and my fellow activists. To them, buzz-phrases like “direct action” and “dismantling heirarchy” were all we needed.
The whole concept of dismantling heirarchy was a joke. Our meetings oozed with passive-aggression as various parties sought influence over the group while trying not to appear like leaders, because heirarchy. I wanted to experiment with more formal decision-making protocols but they all seemed too much like capitalism, or at least traditional bureaucracy.
Not to mention a lot of work.
My early forays into Computer Science were coloring my political views. CS was all about trees and heirarchies of information. The goal wasn’t to eliminate heirarchies, but to create elegant, well-balanced ones, and simple procedures to establish them.
Bottom line, I thought they were being irresponsible.
They thought I was being a shill and a sell-out.
I was beginning to perceive that capitalism had a certain underlying logic to it. One that went deeper than the “good people and bad people” narrative I was learning from my friends on the left.
I decided that I would go into the computer and not come out until I had a solution. I don’t know why I thought I could do more damage to capitalism as a programmer than as a protestor. There was no clear line from code to revolution, just like there never was any clear line from controlling my dreams to curing my disease. It just seemed like something that could be true if I wanted it enough.
I wondered if I could calculate a cure for the whole world’s disease.
