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Free Software And Its Revolutionary Social Implications
Jizzbug writes: "OpenFlows has an interesting interview with Stefan Merten (of Oekonux in Germany) on the implications of Free Software in regards to social change (for the better). It'd be interesting to see what kind of famous Slashdot flamewar will erupt in response to the ideas set forth in this interview. Those in the audience that are freethinking and not jingoistic should find this a very enlightening and entertaining read."
Contrast this interview with For The Love Of Open Source, which says that Open Source is perfectly rational in a capitalistic society. I think that is more convincing.
I've read it before in lotss free software essays of varying quality, but there's still no explanation offered on how this is going to put food on my table (not in the way of making money, but in the way of literally producing the stuff and shipping it to the store around the corner), or build a computer, for that matter. I agree that the community can whip up a microprocessor design, but I'm not sure about the billion-dollar semiconductor plant to produce it...
How would that be handled, by waiting for people who think it's a cool idea? They'd have to wait for people who think it's a cool idea to build all those manufacturing tools and so on... In short, I don't think this can work.
Here's the thing I don't get: (and since I don't get it, I must be a closed-minded jingoist...sheesh)
This vision, this 'rethought Marxism', doesn't have any real meat to it. Now, I'd love to join the mailing list and see if anyone has come up with any substance to back these ideas. The thing is, I don't believe there can be any substance to them.
The idea of a "GPL Society", where everyone takes what they need and contributes what they want, is fundamentally flawed. It's possible, perhaps, to get some distance towards this within a capitalist system because of the ability to convert quite a lot of labor into information transfer while also adding value. The thing is, Free software is a poor example... it exists because those people who are contributing to it do not rely on their creation for survival. Modelling an overall social system, where objects and services often cannot be translated into a digital form, on a system which ONLY exists as perfectly reproducible digital information, is a mistake of the highest order; this is where the "GPL Society" falls over. There are three big reasons why...
First, you cannot expect a 'self-unfolding' project to provide food for you, or heat for your house, or schooling for your kids. You can only dedicate time to these projects when your basic needs have been met... not only has Free Software grown up inside a capitalist system, it is completely dependant on that system to sustain the creators of Free Software. Only succesful capitalists have time to create things which do not contribute to their survival. The only way for the GPL society to work is to ensure that every person has, for free, everything they could need, in a manner that doesn't involve labor on the part of some other individual.
Second, even if we could completely automate every layer of food production (and every other industry and commodity) it still wouldn't work because of this sort of scenario: I want my kids to go to a good school, so I check out all the local freely offered schooling (because I live in the GPL Society, all the schooling is provided by people who want to do that sort of thing as a self-unfolding project that makes them feel good, and they get to do this because they don't need anything at all) and I decide that nobody around me can provide what I think is a brilliant education. So, I go out and find a teacher who's REALLY REALLY good... the thing is, this teacher also has 6000 other parents clamoring for her time, so she gets to choose who she picks. The only way I can have a better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher; I have to figure out how I can give her something she WANTS (she's already got everything she needs). Guess what... we're right back to capitalism. Maybe she wants a bigger house and a bunch of handcarved art-nuveau accent work, and the only way I can give it to her is to get a bunch of house-building hand-carving type guys together to build it for her... but some of those guys want some incentive to drop their own architectural self-unfolding projects and come help me instead... how can I compensate these guys for their time? What if I don't have anything they want? Well, I guess I need to give them something they can use to trade for things they want... like money. Until we invent replicators, it's impossible to give everyone all the things they WANT; capitalism, and the market economy, is the only way to deal with this VERY common scenario. It's so common, most people don't even think about it anymore. It's second nature for a reason, folks, and not because you've been trained by capitalist bugaboos to think like that.
Third, there will always bee a huge horde of people who ONLY take, or who exploit the desires of others for their own gain. When exclusively taking becomes not just possible, but easy and socially acceptable, then even more people won't contribute anything back. If all needs are provided for, luxuries become paramount and exploitation is EASIER, not harder. Greed automatically breaks the "GPL Society" and any other idea that follows the same path.
Like Marx, this is a nice idea when it's kicked around by a bunch of homogenous thinkers on a mailing list, but when you try to apply it to the rest of the non-intelligencia it abruptly falls to bits.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Why contrast? The interview first goes into depts to explain the differences between Open and Free. Then it continues to debate the benefits and revolutionary properties (?) of Free Software. The article you mention is explicitly about Open Source Software.
Since both articles are about different issues I find contrasting them a little bit difficult at best, and pointless at worst.
Although the article has some strong points, especially the artificially created shortage of goods by protecting them with IP laws, a comparison of Free Software with Marxism is quite far stretched IMHO.
But it is still a very appealing model for me.
No, actually that is one point that was very correct in the article. Human labor as pointed out in the traditional sense as defined in the -communist manifesto- is actually drastically decreasing.
;) ).
The amount of human labor require to "build" anything is much less than 100 years ago. People are starting to do "jobs" that amuse them. Open Source while it could be defined as labor is actual amusement. Humans need to do something and that something is just building things to amuse them.
Actually here a reference to Star Trek would be very applicable. Star Trek Next Generation could be a GPL type society. Sure people "work", but they do it for amusement to expand one's horizon. There is no money (unless they are dealing with Ferengi's
The point is that humans do things to amuse themselves. Me, I am a consultant, speaker, book author. I "add" nothing to the value chain, but yet people still give me money to talk about my ideas. It is the same in the music, film, etc industries. People pay to have other people "amuse" them. And this amusement is only increasing. This is good because people are not forced anymore to do things they do not want to...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Pretty much every answer that has criticised the article seems to hold the view that we are now at the pinnacle of development, at least economically. While change just for the sake of change might not alway be a good thing, nobody can argue that we don't live in a society full of change. Some of our "fundamentals truths" about human nature, for instance, may be rocked. Just be carefull about the words "never" and "always".
Also, please don't make the error of confusing "socialists" simply as believers of marx. Socialism existed before marx and has developed long after marx. The only thing that "socialism" basically implies is that the ownership of the means of production are not private. Everything else can be negotiated, some branches even think a money-based economy is a good thing.
Which article is first and second here?! And where the heck do you get this "second coming of Socialism" nonsense?
The article on firstmonday.org not once suggested that Free Software would undermine Capitalism, in fact showed why the existence of Free Software was essentially a product of traditional capitalist theory-- and sought to criticize works like ESRs C&B insomuch as C&B promoted the notion that Free Software was the result of some radical shift in culture specific to hackers.
The article at govtech.com clearly discusses why several world governments are looking at Free Software, and their primary reasons are national pride and national security-- with an emphasis on the latter. They don't want to be beholden to an American corpooration, especially when that company might either purposefully (with backdoors) or accidentally (by hiding mistakes until too late) compromise national security in those nations.
Neither of these articles puts any weight behind a single economic or political system or another. Simply because China is nominally Communist, this reflects nothing about their reasons for adopting Linux. Germany and France are both in the Linux-leaning camp and they are both solid democracies and capitalist economies.
I do not have a signature
1. Free Software is both inside and outside capitalism. On the one hand, the social basis for Free Software clearly would not exist without a flourishing capitalism. Only a flourishing capitalism can provide the opportunity to develop something that is not for exchange. On the other hand, Free Software is outside of capitalism for the reasons I mentioned above: absence of scarcity and self-unfolding instead of the alienation of labor in a command economy.
2. It seems you're talking about the difference between use value - the use of goods or labor - and exchange value - reflected in the price of the commodities that goods or labor are transformed into by being sold on the market.
3. In Free Software because the product can be taken with only marginal cost and, more importantly, is not created for being exchanged, the exchange value of the product is zero. Free Software is worthless in the dominant sense of exchange. 4. The more production is done by machines the less human labor is needed in the production process. 5. A GPL Society would not be based on exchange, there would be no need for money anymore