Session 2: Smash the System
Course outline Session Session Session Session Session Session 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: Introduction to Complex Systems Smash the System creating and harnessing chaos Erode the System building the new world in the shell of the old Escape the System affect and surviving oppression Tame the System reforms without reformism Bringing it All Together a trajectory for revolution
Recap Complex Living Systems Multiple diverse parts non-linear Emergence Throughput of energy Maintains boundary and internal organisation Internal processes Networks Nodes and links Embeddedness Diffusion
Recap Complex Living Systems Multiple diverse parts non-linear Emergence Throughput of energy Maintains boundary and internal organisation Internal processes Networks Nodes and links Embeddedness Diffusion Themes to discuss Global warming / climate change Housing industry (developers, landlords etc.) Gentrification (change in local demography, available services, activities etc.)
Smashing the System
Chaos
velocity position
Trajectory PHASE PORTRAIT State space / Phase space Attractor
Basin of attraction
February Revolution 1917
Tsar Nicholas II Revolutionaries Provisional government Soviets
Bifurcation point 'points in the system's evolution where a fork suddenly appears and the system branches off in a new direction' Symmetry breaking - small fluctuations determine which branch of a bifurcation is taken.
Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein "At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the War on Terror to the Halliburton and Blackwater corporations. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts... New Orleans s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened These events are examples of the shock doctrine : using the public s disorientation following massive collective shocks wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. In one of his most influential essays, Friedman articulated contemporary capitalism's core tactical nostrum. He observed that "only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change". When that crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicago professor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo".
Feedback Loops
"Capra a feedback loop is a circular arrangement of causally connected elements, in which an initial cause propagates around the links of the loop, so that each element has an effect on the next, until the last one 'feeds back' the effect into the first element of the cycle
PROCESSES INPUT OUTPUT Energy Resources Information Functions Products Waste Maintain boundary and inner organisation
Audio feedback Thermostat POSITIVE (self-amplifying) NEGATIVE (self-regulating)
Rebel Cities David Harvey quote I...there is a seamless connection between those who mine the iron ore that goes into the steel that goes into the construction of the bridges across which the trucks carrying commodities travel to their final destinations of factories and homes for consumption And if maintenance, repairs, and replacements are also part of this stream, then the vast army of workers involved in these activities in our cities is also contributing. In New York City thousands of workers are engaged in erecting scaffolding and taking it down again. If, furthermore, we consider the flow of commodities from place of origin to final destination, then we also have to consider the workers who are employed on the food chain that links rural producers to urban consumers.
Mine ore Make steel Construct bridges Go to work Workers Workers Commodities arrive at factories / homes Receive payment Workers Wife cleans, cooks, looks after children, provides emotional support Trucks transport commodities Workers Workers Household utilities, appliances, food etc
Rebel Cities David Harvey quote II...Thousands of delivery trucks clog the streets of New York City every day. Organized, those workers would have the power to strangle the metabolism of the city. Strikes of transport workers (as, for example, in France over the last twenty years, and now in Shanghai) are extremely effective political weapons. The Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles, and the organization of taxi drivers in New York and LA, are examples of organizing across these dimensions. When the rebellious population of El Alto [in Bolivia] cut the main supply lines into La Paz, forcing the bourgeoisie to live on scraps, they soon gained their political objective. It is in fact in the cities that the wealthy classes are most vulnerable, not necessarily as persons but in terms of the value of the assets they control. It is for this reason that the capitalist state is gearing up for militarized urban struggles as the front line of class struggle in years to come.
Network failure
Regular Complex Random
Scale-free network US highway system US airport system
Small-world network
Resilient to random failure Vulnerable to intentional attacks Vulnerable to epidemics / virality Cascading failure
Summary Chaos State space Attractors Bifurcation Feedback Positive (self-amplifying) Negative (self-regulating) Network Failure Scale-free Small-world