Slashdot Mirror
Dot-Communism Is Already Here
thanosk sends in a story at Wired Magazine about how online culture is, in many ways, trending toward communal behavior. Sharing and collaboration have become staples of active participation on the Internet, while not necessarily incorporating a particular ideology or involving a government.
"Most people in the West, including myself, were indoctrinated with the notion that extending the power of individuals necessarily diminishes the power of the state, and vice versa. In practice, though, most polities socialize some resources and individualize others. Most free-market economies have socialized education, and even extremely socialized societies allow some private property.
Rather than viewing technological socialism as one side of a zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority, it can be seen as a cultural OS that elevates both the individual and the group at once. The largely unarticulated but intuitively understood goal of communitarian technology is this: to maximize both individual autonomy and the power of people working together. Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates."
Once I had a friend from China who really liked to talk about politics. He told me about the Chinese government, and how they are mostly becoming capitalist, even though they keep the name of Communism.
Once he heard about open source, and so I explained it to him, finishing off with, "so in reality America is more communist than the Chinese." He got this shocked look that quickly turned into a bitter vengeful sort of look, and said nothing.
Qxe4
It's not only that.
When I choose to help, it's efficient.
When forced to help, there is an inefficiency; and usually someone making a parasitic living off of doing the forcing.
Your post is only true if you pretend subjective opinions are objective truths.
Who is being compelled against their will to contribute? While each individual may contribute to their ability, it is on a voluntary basis. "Each according to their need" is ONLY being met as market demands and individuals consider it in their best interest to meet that demand.
You're defining communism as requiring forced contribution, while overlooking the fact that people are forced to contribute in capitalism. The difference isn't compulsion per se, it's the nature of the compulsion.
In a capitalist society, you have to contribute, starve, or rely on the charity of others. Under communism it's exactly the same. The main difference is you generally have more choice under capitalism because more of the economic decisions are distributed, while the economic decisions are more centralized under communism.
But in neither system can you generally expect to skate by without contributing.
Just because the exchange can not be measured in per unit monetary compensation does not make the contribution "selfless".
Only if you define away "selfless" to meaninglessness. By your definition, it's essentially impossible to be selfless. Take the most selfless person you can think of--a parent, a teacher, a soldier, a nun, a disaster recovery volunteer, whatever you want, and every single one of these people derives some benefit from their sacrifice.
Selfless, is more about voluntarily giving up some good or service at a loss without concern about making up those losses down the road. For example, MS giving away Windows to schools isn't selfless, it's self-serving. On the other hand, someone not set to benefit from MS Windows adoption anonymously giving away the same number of Windows licenses to the same schools is selfless, even if they get warm-fuzzies in return.
Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.
You're thinking of Stalin and Lenin.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both said that with no natural right to real property ownership, there is no imaginable justification for natural rights over an idea (Jefferson Letters). Does that make THEM Communists?
No one is cut from whole cloth. The most capitalist person in the world has some communism in them, and vice versa.
Further, just because everyone wins does not make it collectivism. Collectivism asks for self sacrifice, that you as an individual is not as important as the many. Really? That is why people develop software? Hackers don't have really huge egos when it comes to their accomplishments? Gee, guess I had it all wrong.
Capitalism asks for self-sacrifice. Or is somehow the classes I've had to take to learn subjects I'm not interested in to spend time working in a place I'd rather not be doing things I'd rather not do not self-sacrifice, while taking classes to learn about people around me I don't generally care about and paying taxes or volunteering to help homeless people I don't know is self-sacrifice?
Both collectivism and capitalism demand self-sacrifice. But as mentioned above, it's more a difference in style and choice than anything else.