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A review by levi_masuli
A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark
2.0
Needs to rereads this if time permits, but will rate anyway: Hacker Manifesto suggests an update of the Marxist theory of class by adding two classes, the vectoralist class and the hacker class. While Wark displays a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of Marxist ideas, there are problems with his use of the concepts of Marxist economics. For instance, the act of 'hacking', although one of the most important concepts in the manifesto, was simply defined as “to produce or apply the abstract to information and express the possibility of new worlds.” In fact, majority of the arguments tend towards abstraction, perhaps as a way to put together its theme of the increasing abstraction of history and historical processes. Wark has always made it a point to analogize the struggle between the vectoralist class and the hacker class to the 'çlassic' class contradictions between landlord vs peasant, capitalist vs worker, etc., framed within the abstract realm of information and ‘vectors of information.
My biggest problem with the book perhaps lies uncritical prioritization of the contradiction between the vectoralists and the hackers. Is the struggle for the vectors really the primary contradiction today? Where does the material basis of these vectors lie within this ‘abstract’ framework? How can the hacker possibly transform society through “an explosion of abstract innovations”, which Wark claims, would create “a society finally set free from necessity?” What is the material basis, the precise historical crisis which pits the vectoralists against the hackers? Is it proper to treat both of them as classes, given that the so-called vectoralists are often the multinational corporations and even state agencies who have exploited that potential of information to be commoditized, while the hackers and hacking are just historical implications of the creation of a digital dimensions, by no means independent from actual material property which actualizes it.
I sense in The Hacker Manifesto the same hype in virtuality made by Baudrillard’s work, along with the same theoretical blind spots. Nonetheless, it is necessary to address its significance in formulating the conflict for the autonomy of information from the increasingly tightening constraints of commodifying forces, using information for profit, surveillance, and pacification of any utopian vision of information.
My biggest problem with the book perhaps lies uncritical prioritization of the contradiction between the vectoralists and the hackers. Is the struggle for the vectors really the primary contradiction today? Where does the material basis of these vectors lie within this ‘abstract’ framework? How can the hacker possibly transform society through “an explosion of abstract innovations”, which Wark claims, would create “a society finally set free from necessity?” What is the material basis, the precise historical crisis which pits the vectoralists against the hackers? Is it proper to treat both of them as classes, given that the so-called vectoralists are often the multinational corporations and even state agencies who have exploited that potential of information to be commoditized, while the hackers and hacking are just historical implications of the creation of a digital dimensions, by no means independent from actual material property which actualizes it.
I sense in The Hacker Manifesto the same hype in virtuality made by Baudrillard’s work, along with the same theoretical blind spots. Nonetheless, it is necessary to address its significance in formulating the conflict for the autonomy of information from the increasingly tightening constraints of commodifying forces, using information for profit, surveillance, and pacification of any utopian vision of information.