All that is Solid Melts into Airwaves

Wark begins his reformat of The Communist Manifesto by suggesting that “a double spooks the world, the double of abstraction (1).” Unlike the specter of communism, which powerful forces aligned against to destroy, the double of abstraction is both feared and revered by those in charge (1). It is the hacker, a class that isn’t a class so much as an abstraction (6), at the heart of the conflict. However, the class conflict involving the hacker will not be the product of collective action as understood in the past. Instead, mass politics will become a “politics of multiplicity” where “all the productive classes can express their virtuality.” (43) If this sounds a bit, well, abstract, that is because A Hacker Manifesto reads like a Baudrillardian simulation of Marx. Wark’s manifesto, a manifesto of abstraction, virtuality, and third nature, melts into the (virtual) air.

The Hacker Manifesto is a trip – intellectually and conceptually. The book is organized by paragraph, not by page number and is fractal in its organization – non-linear often spiraling back to points made earlier where meaning can be derived not only from the text as a whole, but from each paragraph and each sentence. This is a much-needed book that recognizes the importance of intellectual property to contemporary capitalism and situates it within the ongoing tension created by the productive class of the information age (the hacker class) and the controlling class (the vectoral class).

A Hacker Manifesto enlighteningly describes class struggle in the information age more than it states principles; the primary focus is to make manifest the dimensions of class struggle in the globalized information age. Wark takes the concept of the hacker far beyond computer programming and applies it (writ large) to any individual working in the economy of information and creating under the rubric of modern capitalism. The hacker class is the new productive class (36).

It is difficult to know what course of action would work for a ‘class’ that coalesces under the banner of “workers of the world untied (6),” or what a manifesto would say to this ‘class.’ Wark doesn’t seem concerned with providing answers. “Even this manifesto, which invokes a collective name, does so without claiming or seeking authorization, and offers for agreement only the gift of its own possibility (213).” Wark’s gift is to hack the present and open the possibilities for a future where domination and exploitation can be resisted, not, necessarily, to show us the way to that future.

While the book is a trip, this review only offers a dull guide – I can tell the story of the book, outline its argument and provide an assessment; however, I cannot capture the essence and poetry of the writing. The book does not set out to make a linear point but instead introduces you to a new world – a world whirling with the concepts necessary to find meaning in the flows that make up the current global political economy. While Marxists may criticize Wark for postmodernizing Marx and postmodernists may criticize him for recovering categories such as class, and while it is not entirely clear that walking the line between the two always works, reading this book is a trip worth taking, even if you don’t like the destination.

Here is at least part of the story told by Wark: History is a series of class struggles with each struggle focusing on an increasingly abstract form of property. The most recent permutation of the struggle over property is between the hacker and the vectoral class who seeks to control flows and vectors of information (100–110). With each further abstraction of property – from land to information – ownership needs to rely even more deeply upon the law to enforce what is clearly a ‘legal fiction (108).’ When the vectoral class controls the economy, culture itself is colonized and sold back to the workers as a commodity (110). Intellectual property becomes the key to a vectoral economy and hackers play a crucial role in the construction...