Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

the essence of my argument remains unchanged. We're in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in

the essence of my argument remains unchanged. We're in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in human consciousness about what freedom means. An economic crisis is making the powerful look powerless, while the powerless are forced to adopt tactics that were once the preserve of niche protest groups.

The ability to deploy, without expert knowledge, a whole suite of information tools has allowed protesters across the world to outwit the police, to beam their message into the newsrooms of global media, and above all to assert a cool, cutting-edge identity in the face of what Auden once called 'the elderly rubbish dictators talk'. It has given today's protest movements a massive psychological advantage, one that no revolt has enjoyed since 1968.

Taking power implies taking it away from its holders, not by occupying their posts but by making it permanently impossible for them to keep their machinery of domination running. Revolution is first and
foremost the irreversible destruction of this machinery. It implies a form of collective practice capable of bypassing and superseding it through the development of an alternative network of relations.

Technology-through the web browser, the cellphone, the GPS device, the iPod, the instant messaging service, the digital camera and above all the smartphone, which contains each of these things-has accelerated what the contraceptive pill and divorce laws started: it has expanded the power and space of the individual.

At the same time, it has allowed the creation of virtual 'societies' just as real as the cramped analog social networks we created for ourselves in the pre-digital era.

The new technology underpins our ability to be at the same time more individualistic and more collective; it shapes our consciousness and magnifies the crucial driver of all revolutions-the perceived difference between what could be and what is.

In turn, the networked protest has a better chance of achieving its basic goals because it is congruent with the economic and technological conditions of modern society-it mirrors social life, financial structures and production patterns. It speaks to the mental conceptions that flow from the networked life we live. And to an extent, as we will see, it is satisfied with the conquest of space within the system rather than seeking to smash the system.

With hindsight, late 2011 was the moment the sheen on horizontalism faded. In Egypt, the atmosphere of networked tolerance that had prevailed during the initial Tahrir Square occupation dulled as real, hierarchical forces emerged. In Spain, the leading voices within the indignado movement became frustrated as the obsession with 'process', the tyranny of consensus and the refusal to advocate political demands sucked away its momentum. With Occupy Wall Street, critics point to an emergent self-obsession

It's an easy step from such manifest negativity to the conclusion that 2011, the year it all kicked off, was a flash in the pan. But to conclude that would be totally wrong.

The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement-with their echoes as far afield as Santiago and Quebec-have unleashed something real and important, and it has not yet gone away. I am confident enough now to call it a revolution. Some of its processes conform to the templates laid down in 1848, but many do not. Above all the relationship between the physical and the mental, the political and the cultural, seem inverted.

There is a change in consciousness, the intuition that something big is possible; that a great change in the world's priorities is within people's grasp. The essence of it is, as Manuel Castells has written, the collapse of trust in the old regime, combined with the inability to go on living the pre-crisis lifestyle: 'The perceived incapacity of the political elite to solve their problems destroyed trust in the institutions in charge of managing the crisis.'