Autonomous Marxist in Practice - Jack Jeffrey

Revolutionary action has always been a major part of human history. When oppressed, it is only natural for those affected to push back against their oppressors. However just recently we have seen an immense shift in how these campaigns have been carried out. The use of social media to bring about the democratic interests of those being oppressed by a centralized, totalitarian state of power is a new idea that has been relatively successful. An example of what Lincoln Dahlberg calls Autonomous Marxist can be seen in the still ongoing Arab Spring. 

  According to Dahlberg, "this position (Autonomous Marxist) sees digital communication networks enabling a radically democratic politics in the sense of self-organized and inclusive participation in common productive activities that bypass centralized state and capitalist systems, which are understood to be necessarily anti-democratic." We see exactly this throughout North Africa and parts of the Middle East when the Arab Spring began in Tunisia in 2010. The use of Twitter and Facebook greatly encouraged the protesters to collaborate, network, and share their ideas and displeasure with the centralized governments around them. 

It is suggested that after this crisis began, social media use more than doubled in the Arab communities affected. The success of these democratic protests relied heavily on their ability to effectively network through digital and social media.