Resistance...

.:Resistance:.

Any system, when overridden with numerous flaws, will almost always meet resistance. This is true for technology, this is most certainly true for politics and governance. The ability of a government to stem these insurgencies is almost always commensurate to what kind of resistance the government is meeting. Over the course of history, there have been three forms of resistance in general, and for the most part, each of them have been a product of their times.

When one talks about a people's army, it's inevitable to conjure thoughts of the CPP-NPA if you happen to be Filipino, if only for the "PA" part of "NPA". That being said, a people's army is easily characterized by its organization, similar to a conventional army, albeit obviously often lower in numbers, and government fiat. The people's army was historically formed as a reaction to a civil dispute, such as against a tyrannical king (p.68) or sovereign, and as such, had its own hierarchy mimicking that of a conventional army. At this point, a people's army is almost cut off at the knees the moment its leaders are subdued, as was the case of the steady decline of the New People's Army since the self-imposed exile of Jose Maria Sison.

The people's army is characteristic of a reaction to a ruling paradigm, be it a civil despot, or a colonizer, and is effective insofar as its support base is concerned. Unlike guerilla warfare or network struggles, however, the success of a people's army is almost exclusively a number's game, whereas guerilla warfare has the element of surprise in its favor, and network struggles focus on coordination about as much as its numbers. The worry for the people's army is once "victory" is achieved. In being a centralized power, they are looked upon as the de facto substitute for the status quo, and this is where whatever flaws of the people's army come to the fore, oftentimes proving themselves no better than the status quo they replaced (p.72).

Guerilla warfare is similar to a people's army in that it is generally confined to one particular country, but unlike a people's army, despite a possibly large organization in total, guerilla warfare's advantage is in its numerous factions, thus all but negating the potential of an organization's collapse if its "leaders" were subdued. This is because guerilla warfare as a form of resistance is characterized by its being splintered and relatively disorganized. Almost operating as individuals, guerillas, though they may all be part of a particular organization, are certainly operating towards a goal with no attempt to fully supersede the status quo, knowing they are incapable of doing this. This is why their resistance is more disruptive or even destructive, than reconstructive, as is the case with a people's army.

A network struggle is, in contrast, one that takes place on the biopolitical terrain: it directly produces new subjectivities and new forms of life (p. 83). In place of the emphasis on numbers or the element of surprise, networks rely on "creativity, communication, and self-organized cooperation" (p. 83). This results in an overarching system of resistance that is more organized than a people's army, yet more persistent than guerilla warfare. In being an evolution of the two earlier forms of resistance we see a form of resistance greater than the sum of its parts: in its ability to coordinate and communicate, the network manages to strengthen and perpetuate itself.

Time can only tell if this form of resistance, that which seems to be the resistance in the era of the multitude, will succeed where its predecessors have failed.

How Has War Changed?

.:Multitude Has The Answer:.

While the word “war” connotes a very specific image of many different countries fighting over territory by using military force, “Multitude” by Hardt and Negri conjures a very different picture: we instead see these wars, or these state of wars, as it were, as a constant “general global state of war” that happens all over the world, not as a matter of conflict between two or more sovereign powers, but more along the lines of a civil war within only one sovereign territory, as Hardt and Negri put it.

If one were to refer to the discussion of “Empire”, it was made clear that globalization is slowly turning the entire world into one superstructure instead of a conglomeration of different structures, i.e. countries. This in turn would mean that any conflict within the world is a conflict within the workings of said superstructure, thus resulting in what could only be called “civil war”. This is especially clear when we realize that only rarely do we now have wars in order to expand territory, albeit the most high-profile war we are currently involved in, USA's “war on terror”, is, for all intents and purposes, a sliding back into the old kind of war.

Outside of this sliding back, the wars of today are radically different in purpose, and are mostly for policing purposes, instead of for expansion of territory. For an erring country to fall in line with the standard, a powerful country would declare war on it not to conquer the country, but to make it conform to a particular standard or intention, as we have clearly seen in the way the threat of war dissuades countries like North Korea and Cuba from fully exerting their will. No longer can we assume a “unilateral” or a “multilateral” approach, because any attempt by a country like the United States to muscle another country into falling in line has to intrinsically be in accordance with the desires of the rest of the superstructure. America, as Hardt and Negri put it, “cannot go it alone”. This is why the nature of war in this day and age has changed from one of a battle of political wills to an attempt at hegemony and conformity, albeit not in the strictest or most obvious sense. War has become a tool of perpetuating this so-called Empire of which countries like the United States are merely a part of, and not the be-all and end-all of.