The roots and the nets of the global revolts

This is a book not just to read but to engage with. Reading it is like finding yourself in the same café as Paul Mason, seeking respite during an uprising. With teargas in your eyes, you are both thinking 'that's me for the day', yet there is so much to clarify and comprehend, and the friendly, curious Newsnight reporter is not lecturing you, more sharing his observations, making useful historical comparisons, offering insights and - like you - trying to make sense of what's going on.

It is timely to be engaging with this book just as protesters are facing the police in Gezi Park and Taksim Square. Most of the distinctive features that Paul identifies in his list of 20 reasons for what kicked off in 2011 have once again been decisive: 'the significance of the new sociological type: the graduate with no future'; the 'access to social media making it possible for activists to express themselves in a variety of situations'; the fact that 'truth moves faster than lies and propaganda becomes flammable'; and that the movements 'are not prone to traditional or endemic ideologies; in fact all hermetic ideologies are rejected'.

In Turkey, the assertion of personal liberation against oppressive state diktats is combined with a fierce resistance to modernity as commodification - as squares and other public places are turned into shopping malls and car parks. This combination - of an assertion of genuine personal freedom, the defence of a commons against the capitalist market and the claim for 'real democracy' against the ruling political class -is becoming ever clearer in the everyday evolution of what Paul calls the beginnings of 'revolutions'. (I'm less sure about the use of such an ambitious concept for such uncertain, though undoubtedly transformative - and in the case of Egypt and Tunisia regime-changing - processes.)

It's too early to understand fully the process in Turkey, so just now I find myself engaging with Paul over the usefulness of his arguments about why it kicked off for helping us understand what is evolving now - including the ways in which activists are continuing their struggles for genuine democracy, often on issues of everyday life like housing, food, education and health. To what extent are they continuing to influence the wider society? How are they engaging with political power? And how are they seeking to counter the rise of fascism (e.g. in Greece) and the continued strength of fundamentalist Islam (e.g. in Egypt)?

What is impressive in Paul's revisiting of his explanations in this updated edition of the original 'why it's kicking off' is his frankness about where the analysis needs to be amended.

He says he did not anticipate quite how strongly (some of) the old ideologies would reassert themselves, especially in the case of Islam in Egypt and Tunisia. And he also says that he did not anticipate the amount of leverage social media activists could have over the mainstream media through their ability to produce an immediate narrative from within the uprising. He acknowledges too that he may have underestimated the capacities of organised labour in some contexts to partially overcome its weaknesses to become an effective and on occasion innovative actor and ally - witness Wisconsin, the strikes in Egypt that forced the renationalisation of enterprises sold off by Mubarak and his cronies, and the rolling strike in Walmart USA that made the company's treatment of workers a matter of public concern. However, as he rightly insists, this kind of radical trade unionism 'still represents a small minority of workers and can easily become immersed in debilitating internal disputes'.

The break of knowledge from authority

But I'd also want to push him to recognise a greater complexity in the cultural roots of the new social media and the ways it is shaping a new political imaginary. These roots lie in the similarly global revolts of 1968, even after the defeats and strange appropriations of the neoliberal counter-revolution. And this is not simply a question of...