We can look back on the 20th century as the 'Century of Revolutions'. From the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the anti-colonial struggles of the 1960s, May '68 in Europe and elsewhere, to the 1989 collapse of Sovietism and the late 90s: Chiapas, Seattle, London, Prague, Davos, Quebec ... Kuala Lumpur?

All these dates represent the struggles of people worldwide to emerge from under something intolerable, pushed beyond reason in outrage and sudden rupture. But a certain idea of revolution has died in the last century. Violent armed-struggle is not supported, nor deemed necessary, by many of us.

The examples from the 90s with the exception of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, were all based on non-violence. When violence occurred it was by or at the instigation of police forces.

Even the Zapatistas dropped their weapons after the first few months, opting for a virtual 'war' of popular opinion that has largely worked. War was a way to get one's extinction noticed.

Humankind is collectively struggling to set aside the negative aspects of our nature. Away from violence, away from tyranny. We work instead, when we can, for peaceful 'revolutions'. Or really, we work for freedom and that often involves a revolution of some sort whether in our families or society.

What does, or could revolution mean in the 21st century?

The question ultimately is not one of the future of revolution, insofar as that question serves to block out the daily revolutions enacted by people everywhere.

Similarly, 'activism' as a specialist occupation, serves to deter a broader engagement in politics of the personal.

Activists who work on the assumption that people aren't doing anything to improve their lives, and so they must do it for them, are really operating on a similar level to those politicians who believe that 'the people' must be represented because they cannot speak for themselves. Really, social struggle is happening all the time.

For a long time there has been a lack of a popular critical voice in Malaysia. This is changing now, but why was it missing for so long in most of the population?

Some point to the neo-feudal culture, the Universities and University Colleges Act, but there is also the issue of rising material conditions and a culture that tolerates the ventriloquism of politicians on our behalf.

Escaping poverty, deprivation or simply the 'stigma' of a lower social class, those of us who can, opt for better jobs or education than our parents. But is this a flight from one trap to another?

Imperceptible chains

Imperceptible chains fall upon us as we adopt new work and new identities. Material benefits may accrue, but something goes missing in all that. The voluntary surrender of power in exchange for what that power can give to you. It is only when you try to move that you feel the chains.

May '68 in Europe and Seattle '99 were pure reality breaking through, as were our own post-Asian crisis demonstrations. All three were a-historical detonations. I say 'a'-historical because they were not following the pre-laid path. They were the opposite of destiny.

Like Malaysia of late, May '68 and Seattle were the product of rising material conditions and largely composed of students. However, critical mass is gained when students unite with workers, environmentalists, feminists, gays and lesbians, indigenous peoples and others.

The question our government has struggled with, as have other governments, is: How could they betray us after all we have given them?

Sorry. We made this world. It was time to take it back.

Democracy unrealised

Democracy is unrealised, not unfinished. Our forebears went through anti-colonial struggles, although since the British seemed rather pleased with the settlement of Merdeka, we must question the quality of that struggle. Was it really independence, or were imperceptible chains being laid around us?

Colonialism passed its chains onto a neo-feudal democracy, which in turn handed them to the present state of local and global capitalist exploitation. Sure, its changed, and some democracy is better than no democracy. But to what extent is it a 'changing same'?

Revolutionary struggle was largely muted in Malaysia with the exception of the Malayan Communist Party against Japanese occupiers and the returning British colonialists. Apart from that we have no revolutionary history.

Perhaps that has now changed. Nonetheless, looking back we can see that the great promise of national liberation has largely failed. Colonial powers were driven off only to suck us back into the new force-field of G8-led globalisation.

Were we anything but pawns in the Cold War struggles? A shock absorber for spreading financial risk?

Marxist revolution, insofar as it was based on the revolutionary privilege of a proletariat, is dead. Some have said that now the proletarian is everyone, not just the factory worker. It is all who work and slave under capitalism in its numerous guises (information economy, plantation state, semiconductor manufacturing, export-substitution).

There is some truth to this, but it nevertheless excludes many who do not formally labour under wages, and yet are still subject to the displacement and exploitation produced by 'development'.

'How can you live...?'

For the same question that was pointed out to the colonial powers - 'How can you live on the backs of other peoples' labour?' - can now be applied to all of us. How much of our own wealth is drawn from the torturous exploitation of others?

This is the question recently addressed by sweatshop campaigns against Nike, Disney and Reebok, and the growing recognition that slavery is far from extinct as we move into the 21st century.

People are more numerous than ever, by 2050 it is expected that 50 percent of the world's population will reside in cities. Human labour is so abundant that it has become disposable.

Disposable people for disposable economies. The world is becoming a city, and as we all know, cities are the great centres of incredible inequality, where shanty-towns sit side by side with mega malls.

Poverty and affluence feed the great motor of our cities. Economic power is centralised within multinational corporations, through political patronage. Jobs may be provided, but where does power lie? Who determines the conditions of work?

Certainly, it is sometimes the unions, they have enjoyed their successes too. And it is here that some hope may be drawn. Demands from those who labour, for better pay, better working conditions, better terms of contract have produced results. Capitalism is rolled back. But, before we get our hopes up, it reformulates its mechanisms of control just as quickly.

More breaks are given, office conditions lightened by feng shui , parties, internal councils, paint-balling, and even (as is emerging in the UK) Mediterranean-style working conditions (olive oil supplements, dancing, after-lunch drinks, siestas).

In this state of heightened control, discipline and punishment do not work like they used to, but how much better off are we? How far can we move before we feel the weight of chains once again?

The same applies to social norms. Sexuality, identity, religion, culture.... . The irony is that the individualisation produced under capitalist development and modernisation, so derided by 'Asian Values' stalwarts, are forming the very basis of quite revolutionary demands. Demands that our desires are realised.

What's your desire?

Governments flounder with this. Their task and habit is to govern. They do this based on a broad set of norms. They legislate and discriminate from the wide-end of the scale of political being. Whereas, each of us is engaged in our own struggles of identity, of being, on the narrow-end of politics.

How can we ever hope to have effective government in a situation such as this, when our desires are often so remote and imperceptible to our 'representatives'?

Should we accept that 'they know best', or do we really know better? This is not to say that all personal demands are reasonable, ethical or even fair (especially to others).

But we are all embedded in communities and this is where we should look for challenges, criticism and debate. It is this that is the basis for a democracy, not a mere cross and ballot box every few years.

Our infinite desires should not bend to the demands of party politics and a limited idea of democracy, for that turns something for the many into something for the few.

Rather it is democratic structures and parties that should turn the other way. Away from the project of capturing the state, to serving people.

Before 'democratic nation-states' existed, some peoples led their lives without executive leaders and huge apparatuses of state. Anthropologists have studied how, in 'primitive' tribes, the function of war was to ward off the formation of a state, such is their attachment to freedom.

Leadership did not possess any power in and of itself, it was granted by mandate for the needs of the collective and just as quickly revoked if it was felt that too much self-interest was operating. This is not a call for going back to the past, we must start where we are now. But the 'now' is merely a middle.

It is true nonetheless that some modern peoples are trying to live like this now, engaging in free self-organisation without the need of coercion or war. There is a discernible historical tendency of humankind towards a radical self-organisation.

It is a long process, but the emergence of democracy from monarchy speaks of promise. It may not be realised in our lifetimes, but how we live our lives now will surely affect the outcome.

Within empire

Many empires abounded in the past and often engaged in conflict with peoples outside of the State. Empires rest on a bounded space, they rule over it and they fear for it. They fear the outside and inside. Nomadic barbarians and rival empires from outside, riotous discontents from within.

Now we are in a global order that encompasses all known space on this planet. There is, to all effects, no more outside. Thus, there are no more barbarians, there are only 'riotous discontents' within.

Every war is a civil war: Kosovo, Iraq, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tiananmen, Sometimes battles in the 'slums' are left be for the 'local council' to settle: Rwanda, Congo, Sierra Leone, Kashmir.

There may be no more barbarians, they have been replaced by nomadic global capital, which moves freely in electronic herds, except for the occasional trouble-spot of capital controls. It is always on the offensive.

Migrants proliferate, great masses of people travel the globe in search of work, a better life, sustenance, peace and a promise of freedom.

We see them in Malaysia in the form of Bangladeshis, Indonesians, and Filipinos (to name a few). We also see them in the out-migration of our 'own' people to other countries (usually in the more affluent West).

Every migrant takes what (better) chances are afforded. But they are met by racism, derision, near-slavery or perhaps better work, and certainly homesickness.

Out of place, just like us on the narrow-end of politics. Global citizenship, the free movement of peoples is a distant blip on the possible horizon. If you had to move, wouldn't you want to be free to do so? Who was checking visas when the human race moved out of Africa (if we assume they did so)?

Migrant nation

And after all, isn't Malaysia made up of migrants? 'Chinese' from China, 'Indians' from India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Bangladesh, and 'Malays' too from the Malay archipelago and beyond, even our 'indigenous' tribes have been far from static. Haven't we all made and found a place despite our 'out-of-place-ness'?

What makes a modern-day Bangladeshi, Indonesian or Filipino substantially different? What really precludes citizenship?

Did we fight so hard for our freedoms only to declare them exclusive and unavailable to others? What glorious Independence did we really achieve then?

Did we invert things such that a small group occupied the wide-end of politics, while we many settled for the narrow-end? Or was this really how things had been going all along, and - call it what you will: democracy, monarchy, colonialism, Merdeka, liberation, victory, freedom - how much substantially different were things? Who were we labouring for? Ourselves?

If so, then when did we get stolen from under our very own noses?

I ask these questions because, after a long 20th century, we are more aware of the dangers that await all revolutions and revolutionary becomings. It is an ethical and practical task that falls to anyone who wishes to make life better for both themselves and others.

There is hope however, street demonstrations and political alternatives, not just those under the Reformasi banner, were illegal or unimaginable several years ago. Now they are only illegal.

Tiananmen 1989, Chiapas 1994, Kuala Lumpur 1997-8, Seattle 1999, Quebec 2001. All of them revolutions in the becoming. All 'illegal', but defying imagination.

Now, with the Anti-ISA campaigns in Malaysia and UK we are defying illegality once again with our imaginations.

Uncertain games

I end with a quote from a favourite philosopher of mine, Gilles Deleuze. On politics and freedom he said in 1977:

"For, once again, the world and its States are no more masters of their plan than revolutionaries are condemned to the deformation of theirs. Everything is played in uncertain games."

Coming out of the past, his words ask us to perceive the lines of an imperceptible revolution that has already begun. For wherever we are in the world, we are within a global order, an Empire, all of us face an enemy of some sort whether it is local or global.

Sometimes the enemy is political. Sometimes it is capital. But it is by no means easy to draw clear lines any longer. Sometimes the enemy is us. The enemy is always intimate. Its lines are becoming more perceptible. It remains for us to ask the questions that make it clear, and finally, make it vanish. We do not ask: What is the future of revolution? or, What is the future of the ISA?

Instead, we ask all 'enemies' and oppressive laws: "How could you bear to live under yourself, if you were me?"

We await the answer.

YIN SHAO LOONG is presently studying a masters in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, London. "Dispatches from the Empire" is an occasional series of articles examining contemporary debates on power, freedom, history and globalisation in the new world order.