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."
I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount. In our popular culture, we have always derived our strength from the individual and his willingness to help others.
A perfect example of this is our super-heros. Developed during a time of great uncertainty and world wars, our culture developed personas who were both empowered and selfless. Whether it be an accident of birth (Superman), a millionare who puts his own life and fortune on the line (Batman), or a scientist dealt a bum hand by fate (Hulk), they all are shown to make the most of their unique abilities in service to others.
Such thought processes have traditionally permeated our culture to the point where every child strives to be that hero. To save the world as it were. The results can be seen in everything from local government (simply amazing small towns built out of nothing) to the larger scale of US resolve during WWII and the later Space Race. Thus the communal aspects of working together have always been a strength for us.
The idea of a Big Brother culture is a relatively new one imported from more socialist countries. As if the population needs protection from itself. And for all intents and purposes, it's been causing more harm than good. The government has frustrated more airline passengers than they've prevented terrorists, all while trying to convince the populace to roll over when someone takes over a plane. (THAT is never going to happen again.) They've seized money from countless honest businesses and individuals in an attempt to stop drug trafficing. (Which has been more or less ineffective.) And they've generally created a situation where the populace is either looking for their next handout (excuse me, "bailout") or their trying to cheat their way out of paying their taxes.
Our system hasn't completely fallen yet, but I think the communal internet is a great wake up call for the system. It allows individuals to aspire, self-organize, and express their individuality in a helpful way. So in that respect, I agree with the article. I just don't think it's anything new or anything to do with Communism as a system. ;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Adding an -ism to the end of a word completely changes the concept. Doing something communally and sharing is not the same as being forced to share by the government.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Socialism is state control. What we have on the web is anarchy. Fun, friendly anarchy.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Change the world. Let other people put labels. You'll be called a liberal, a communist, a nazi, a heathen, a bigot anyway...
Open Source (I think that is what it's about) is not communism, it is open source. Putting labels or trying to over-simplify things hinders correct thinking.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"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"
What? Western culture has been about empowering the individual, about heroes. Conversely, communist nations such as Russia and China are less about individuals, and more about "the good of many outweighs the good of the few".
Additionally, the "free" software you see isn't an affront to free market principles, in fact it is an application of "when a product has an infinitely increasing returns to scale, cost tends towards distribution costs", and since distribution costs are free, well, hello open source.
Open source is very much a product of western, capitalist countries that PROMOTE the power of the individual.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
Did anyone else get a flash of Alan Sokal's genius upon reading the quote from the summary? So many words, so little content.
... is that the word no longer means communism. Now it means oppressive government, ala Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam. But these places show no sign of following the idealist philosophy people like Karl Marx set forth.
The concept of owning resources in common isn't anti-individualistic - having neighborhood parks or sharing roads and pipes and cables is just smart resource usage. Probably few people want absolutely everything to be publicly owned and managed, but most slashdotters probably like software and the internet that way.
How about torrents?
Torrents are after all based on share to get. If you upload you get to download.
Communism at it's best.
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
The "power of working together" comes from shared individual resources and individual insights. There is no collective consciousness, no collective ideas. Voluntary collaboration is capitalistic and leads to progress. Communism/socialism, on the other hand, demands forced collaboration.
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
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Quote from one of the biggest Communists: Thomas Jefferson
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
1. "...To each according to his needs." ignores luxury items, which no one needs, but people want. The existence of them makes people happy, and encourages work.
2. It discourages individuals from working hard, as you gain nothing by doing so. Only those with a huge altruistic streak, or similar need for approval have incentive to work.
3. "From each according to his capability". One of the major problems people have always had is to determine who is actually capable, as opposed to simply satisfactory. Capitalism, by offering HUGE incentives, tends to accurately discover who has capacity beyond minimal, while communism does not, resuolting in mediocre people being thought capable, thereby giving them authority.
When you look at the web as opposed to meat-world, certain realities appear.
First, everything on the web is at heart a luxury item. So what is going on is not "to each according to his needs", but instead "To each according to his desires."
Second, The work at heart is realtively easier and ENJOYABLE to some. Anyone that has spent an hour digging a hole and an hour writing code will tell you that. So you don't need to actually encourage people to work hard.
Third, capability on the web is easier to detect. More of it is one-person projects, and those are often signed. Software can be measured for speed, GUI can be easily be examined for ease of use.
Fourthly, most of what is offered on the web is relatively low value, not high value. Honestly, we use socialism a lot in the Meat world - for low value things. People don't pay money for a better subway seat. We use socialism to assign movie theater seats - people in wheel chairs get the wheel chair seats for free, they are not forced to pay more for them - even if they are in prime spots.
The web is not the meat-world. What works in one place will not work in the other.
That said, I find that capitalism still tends to triump over socialism even in the web for most areas where money, the requirement for capitalism, exists. No socialist effort is going to make a web site that beats Google, Apple's itune Store, or Amazon.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I wonder how North Korean Slashdot readers would respond to that.
Oh, wait..
Communism doesn't fail, people who had power failed communism...
Every political ideology is right.... the people who have power, uses that power until they overuse it to their own profit so much that the majority of the people use their personal power ot overthrow them...
The only good thing that democracy has right now is: it's not crooked enough to have the population revolt against it.
I'm sure there will be one day that the people will wake up and know that their system is so corrupt, that the elected officials are only idiots who are popular and that the majority of the electorate refuse to vote because they know that no choice they can make will the right one, when every choice is a bad one...
from the no-in-soviet-russia-jokes-i-swear-to-god dept.
In soviet Russia, god swears to you?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
"Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates."
No it doesn't. Why? Because on the one hand you're talking forms of government and on the other you're talking digital collaboration. Try comparing apples to apples and your analogy rings truer. What may work for pooling resources within a piece of technology may not fair well in societies at large. The main reason being that there are very real political differences not only between groups of individuals but individuals themselves. At the risk of being as guilty as the author, you see the same things within collaborative technologies as forking is prominent. Furthermore, even within companies there is such collaboration so "collaboration" need not equal "communism."
Just add "on the Internet" to the key sentences and it all makes more sense.
... on the Internet
... on the Internet.
... on the Internet.
I wonder if these shocking cultural changes aren't as big of a deal as the Wired article makes it out to be, in that they're scoped only to the online world. The offline world may barely change in response. Then again, if everybody is more and more conducting most of their activities on the Internet, that's a different story.
Philosophistry
Adding an -ism to the end of a word completely changes the concept. Doing something communally and sharing is not the same as being forced to share by the government.
This is a common misconception. A Communist society does not have a government.
Being forced to share by a government is Socialism, not Communism. Communism is a society where everybody pitches in together so that nobody is in need and private ownership not only does not exist, but is not needed. It's a nice idea, and actually works very well in small groups where all members can police each other, but breaks down on any type of larger scale.
Unfortunately many people still think that the USSR was a Communist country, even though the name itself says "Socialist" not "Communist", and it's to the point where the term is horribly misused. Kind of along the same lines as most people thinking the USA is a Democracy when in fact it is a Republic (or a "representational Democracy" if you prefer more politically 'correct' terminology).
Indeed, few people recognize that one of Anarchism's greatest proponents was a leader in the International Workingmen's Association, along with Marx. Their political (but not economic) differences eventually led to a split in the International. And Bakunin predicted quite early that Marx's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" would simply be a dictatorship. He best summed this up by saying, "Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality".
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount.
I think you answered your own question. He got that idea from the US and, as is unfortunately rather stereotypical, forgot that there are more countries than the US in "the west". In most of those countries there is far more of a balance between the individual and the state. In fact even in the US this seems to be rapidly becoming the case because power is held increasingly by corporations and while US laws seem to regard these as individuals of some description they are in fact communal groups with rigid heirarchies.
> ...It allows individuals to aspire, self-organize, and express their individuality in a helpful way. So in that respect, I agree with the article. I just don't think it's anything new or anything to do with Communism as a system...
So why do we move back to a stupid argument between the absolutes of Capitalism vs Communism when the correct solution is somewhere to be found in the middle?
The key is that the Internet is Infrastructure. The tools we develop on it to organize ourselves are just Infrastructure. Open Source software, OSes and libraries are Infrastructure. It makes sense that individuals will sometimes collaborate in their own self interest to build common infrastructure, because ultimately it results in more benefit to individuals in the form of increased economic activity. If you're going to call the Internet Communist, you might as well also tar roads, bridges, water systems, sewage...
Many think it should all be privatized, but this is a fringe view and the view of the majority is that some infrastructure is best implemented as some kind of collective endeavor, and that this is fine and normal. Communism is just a scare-word to make you think that this is somehow not good and normal.
The Open Source community exemplifies this.
Despite its many flaws, capitalism is the quickest breeding ground for altruistic communal endeavours. When computer communication became efficient, an Open Source community was inevitable.
More correct to say, it has historically broken down at different scales in different times and places, and has never successfully been implemented on a national scale.
Technology has changed the size and structure of informal, voluntary communities and made them stronger and more productive. Based on that observation alone, I don't think you can definitively say there are ideas for society that are universally bad or universally good - ideas depend on their implementation and their suitability for the (changing) situation.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I hesitate to break it to you, but *the* distinguishing characteristic of Marxism is the advocacy of the *violent* overthrow of the bourgoisie. Marx would be a footnote in history if he did not advocate that course of action and have half the world take him up on it.
When I read the Manifesto, my takeaway was that Marx was really railing against Corporatism instead of Capitalism. My opinion of him was that he wasn't mad at Capitalism per say, he was mad at the social structures people created when they participated in corporate activities that demeaned and abused the workers. Why didn't he just say Corporatism instead of Capitalism? My guess is that he didn't know how else to describe the enemy he was writing about. Michael Crichton writes in The Great Train Robbery that the Victorians were the first 'modern' civilization and they were the first to grapple with all the current social issues we have right now with urbanization, capitalism, etc. The very concept of 'Corporatism' probably hadn't been invented yet and Marx had to work with the concepts at hand. When people work for a corporation, they tend to be subsumed within an amoral entity that reflects the sum total of its individual components. Thus being in the corporate environment tends to decrease our empathy for our fellow humans and in Marx's time, would lead to the abuses he saw.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
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. Just because the exchange can not be measured in per unit monetary compensation does not make the contribution "selfless". People contribute for recognition, or hell, maybe because they actually gain value from their own work and can not loose any value by sharing it. Also, major contributions give you an advantage of time to market. Red Hat, for example, greatly gains from its contributions because while the information is free to share (even if they are not assisting directly to the free exchange) they have built the reputation of quality products and can be the first to teach people how to use it.
I think what people are finally realizing is that censorship isn't greedy, but irrational. Copyright was intended to be very limited, but people like Jack Valenti made a living as a con artist convincing people otherwise. Copyright is government attempting to put a control on something that doesn't need to be controlled, and as people are escaping the abuse of government regulation by way of free and voluntary exchange of information as was MEANT to be protected in the US Constitution, of course we are seeing tremendous growth.
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.
Centralized, communistic control over what people develop and how is the way of Microsoft, if not even more so by Apple. Government does give them big contracts too, and many government (public) schools mandate their use.
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?
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.
I think the Internet is Communistic about as much as I think Al Gore invented it. If I haven't made my point yet, I don't know what else I can say that will.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
The author has kind of missed the point. Communism is an economic system. It is not about communal behaviour at all. Communism is an alternative to Capitalism or Socialism. It is not an alternative to democracy.
Most of the systems the author speaks about are new social systems that operate within a Capitalist framework. They could not exist in a communist framework, unless sanctioned by the politburo, because in a communist everything is owned by the state.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Whoever wrote that doesn't know what Communism is, at all. What they are describing is entirely free-market anarchism.
Voluntary associations are a natural consequence of limited central authorities. Tocqueville's Democracy in America describes in great detail the amount of voluntary associations that sprang up in the country's early history.
They fill the voids that government and corporations simply can't fill. Sharing and the building of like-minded communities and organizations are not Communistic or Socialistic in nature, unless they are forced.
I hope the internet can stay like this but it'll be a hard, continuous fight. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
"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"
What? Western culture has been about empowering the individual, about heroes. Conversely, communist nations such as Russia and China are less about individuals, and more about "the good of many outweighs the good of the few".
The internet works because in many cases empowered individuals will choose the good of the many because it aligns so nicely with the good of the few/themselves. Some of these cases happen naturally, and some are the result of government setting a proper framework for interaction (so, extending the power of individuals by extending the power of government).
There is no "conversely" here.
"I'm not quite sure where the author got that idea. The US has always been based on the idea that the individual is paramount. In our popular culture, we have always derived our strength from the individual and his willingness to help others."
Those ideas are being smothered and weeded out of society today. Seat belt laws came about because big brother (primarily insurance companies) knows better than the individual. The "proper" use of Personal Protection Equipment isn't an individual choice (either for the individual worker, or the individual company) instead being mandated by both law and insurance policies. Individual choice is being assaulted when it comes to health/life insurance in general - laws are being authored that REQUIRE an individual to have insurance, along with minimum requirements for that insurance. An individual cannot decide to save a few dollars on an automobile purchase by dropping the 6 airbags, shock absorbers in the bumpers, shatterproof glass, and all the other innovations designed to save lives.
Individual choice in education is limited in this day and age - the government mandates the curriculum to a large extent, and local schoolboards have little choice in the matter.
I AM an individualist, and I am keenly aware of the restrictions placed on me by society. Any time I do the "unexpected", thus standing out from the crowd, there is a policeman nearby to question me.
No, the US is definitely moving toward collectivism, there is no denying that. The law of the land is "Conform, or be rehabilitated."
No longer do people take pride in local culture - instead, one homogenous people from sea to shining sea watches the same drivel that Hollywood calls "entertainment", eats the same pablum pushed by McDonald's and other corporate food chains, and puts themselves in debt trying to keep up with role models held out by Corporate America.
Need an example of the loss of individualism? Go down to any street corner in the cities. Watch the white boys who are trying to look/sound black. Watch the black and the latin ladies who are trying to look/sound white.
Individuals are looking at extinction in the not-so-distant future. It ain't cool to be black, or white, or Mexican. It ain't cool to be Southern, Northern, or Mid-Western. It certainly ain't cool to be proud of your German ancestry, your Polish ancestry, or whichever land our grandparents came from. It is very UNCOOL to proclaim your religious background with your dress, actions, or words - you will be accused of some kind of intolerance.
"It takes a village to raise an idiot" is the wisdom today....... and they aren't far from wrong.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
This isn't communism in the sense that a government would implement communism (ie all property's held in common), it's more like communism in the way that it's communism to help your neighbor move out. It's holding things in common that have no intrinsic worth (eg the polarity on the hard disk's platter doesn't have any value in and of itself, but when you put it together with the other bits they become an mp3) and then giving labor for free that would normally be charged for (just like helping your neighbor move).
It's more like communitism (yeah, I made that up), where people help each other just to help each other out. It's a great thing, but communism it's not.
It boggles my mind that most of these comments ignore the very explicit political and philosophical goals of the FSF and GNU. So many are quick to "push politics aside" while reaping the benefits of battles won through hard, serious activism. How about actually reading RMS's writing (RTFRMS?), for a start?
/. summary doesn't provide any context that could make this a good forum for discussing the very important cultural shift we're all experiencing. This link in particular seems appropriate, since the term "Dot-Communism" is thrown around.
The Wired article is pretty bad, which I expect, but the
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Where are you getting this idea that socialism means "Force"? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it doesn't fit anything I've ever heard or read on the subject. I would say you're confusing socialism and authoritarian communism, except that you seemed to make a clear distinction between the two.
No, that's community.
Whether you work for a small startup or a megacorp there's always an emphasis on the importance of teamwork, cooperation and selflessness -- but only within the organization. Those attitudes seem to be great as long as they serve one business, but somehow they become evil when they aren't helping one business compete against another. The business world's combination of cooperation and competition has produced great things, but it doesn't always. For example, competition is paramount even in the face of a superior product. Better products often disappear because of bad marketing, lack of advertising money, or because of short-term price pressure introduced artificially by competitors with deeper pockets who want to keep their own inferior products on the market. The competitive spirit of capitalism can certainly show a lot of gumption and drive, but there's a peeing-in-the-pool aspect to it that just doesn't appeal to me. I think the reason it usually wins over cooperation is that it dangles the carrot of fabulous wealth in front of people's faces, like a Golden Ticket, and more people are drawn to that particular carrot than the wouldn't-this-be-cool carrot.
Middle ground? There is no middle ground. What DOES exist is different questions, but not middle ground. If one tends towards a better society, than a mix of both is certain to be a failure.
The problem I see is that people (of certain political tendencies) give government certain god-like qualities, most common believing government has perfect knowledge, or that anything the government does is "free". Government is simply a business that "we" have authorized a virtually unlimited use of force. Beyond that they have no special super powers. Government can help organize a military to protect against foreign invaders, police that can neutrally handle disputes over violations of social contract, courts to handle issues of contract law and establish statutes regarding the interpretation of contract language to help encourage mutually beneficial voluntary exchange of goods and service.
To say "we need the government to blah blah blah..." is to say that violence is a necessary means to an end. To paraphrase Jonathan Gullible, the penalty for all crimes against government is death / loss of life. This is the difference between taxes and charitable donation or voluntary exchange; people will be most compelled to be charitable with a gun to their head, how could we ever expect to get so much from people on a voluntary basis? If it is a one time thing, I would be inclined to agree, but can you really argue maximum net production through such means? This implies that a robber could keep robbing the same home repeatedly and that their gain will be proportional to the number of times they rob the house. Does knowing which houses are the richest change much?
To paraphrase Richard Saldman
Let me suggest an experiment. ... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products. ... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
The "problem" with the government trying to regulate the Internet is where do you point the gun, the governments only tool? The government does not do work, it only consumes, with the intent and strength to intimidate by threat do do what it desires... but it is ok because it is the will of (51% of) the people, right?
And just because it was brought it up, got to mention something. I am really getting tired of this "finding a middle ground" / "moderate" position. Moderation is a tool of negotiation, not a principle unto itself. Take for example an accused killer. The courts have the authorization to take this persons life if convicted of the crime, so there is a burden of the court to justify both its use of force, and their authority to do so. In this particular case, it is found that the police in their enthusiasm fabricated evidence in order to make the case go faster. Unfortunately for the police as a matter of checks and balances, their fabrication of evidence and getting caught in doing so means that the accused man must be let go, because an objective measure of evidence, according to the law, is now impossible. One one side, (a type of classical conservative) people claim that unfortunately the man must be let go, and shame of the police for tainting their revered leg
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Very well said, thank you. While I think that the only just purpose of government is infrastructure, the only point I would clarify is that the only thing that makes government special is that they are the one company whose actions can not ever be accused of being criminal, from taking in the form of taxes, to the use of force to compel people to do things. Smith and many other Free Market supporters speak of the invisible hand of the economy. Government is often an invisible gun. In any argument that begins with "The government needs to..." should simply be replaced with "The use of violence is necessary because...". I think this would make many debates go much more smoothly, and also much more honest about what we expect the "government" to do.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Whoever wrote that doesn't know what Communism is, at all.
Nope, it's you who do not know what the original communism is, at all. Hint: Karl Marx wouldn't call either USSR, China, Cuba, or North Korea communist. In fact, he would probably be revolted with Marxism-Leninism, from which every single pseudo-Communist state in existence took its inspiration.
Sharing and the building of like-minded communities and organizations are not Communistic or Socialistic in nature, unless they are forced.
Have you ever heard the term "anarcho-socialism" or "anarcho-communism"?
In fact, the word "anarchism" without any qualifiers, by default, is generally taken to mean "anarcho-socialism", precisely because socialist anarchists were the first to flesh out a coherent ideology and philosophy. Anarcho-capitalism as a distinct ideology is a more recent invention.
This is what I was thinking.
Individuals banding together, each contributing and receiving value in return is what the free market is all about - there are no conflicts of interest amongst rational actors.
The problems start when people decide that they know better than the individual, and want to force - or "incentivize" - their compliance.
The real battle in society is not capitalism vs. socialism, but statism vs. individualism.
Learn about Photography Basics.
It's a testament to the state of our political discourse that we think of those terms in an either/or manner. There's a reason those two words have the same root, and were both used long before Karl Marx took pen to paper.
The maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is precisely what's going on when you're helping your neighbor move out without charging him a fee or putting a similar condition on your act. Up until comparatively recently, market behavior was understood to be the precise opposite of "community," and was not welcome in it.
The Fight for Student Power on Campus: www.forstudentpower.org.
I think it's a mistake to characterise it as "free-market". It misses the point and obscures the thing which is actually the most interesting about "dot-communism".
A market is a place where you go to exchange goods and services for other things of equal value (="commodity exchange"). What makes it "free" is that you are free to exchange or not. No-one forces you to buy or sell.
But a market is only one possible exchange mechanism. For instance, my girlfriend brought me coffee in bed this morning. On the weekend I'll make breakfast while she sleeps in. This is an exchange of valued goods and services, but it is not a market. I did not pay for that coffee. When you cook dinner for your family, you don't typically expect them to pay you for it. Sometimes kids do get paid for doing chores around the house, and to that extent they are working in a market (though not a free market!). But usually domestic production is carried on outside of market mechanisms, using a form of "gift exchange". Note that gift exchange predates the market, historically. Our distant ancestors did not have money, but they have always had exchange.
Similarly, market transactions are unlike the transactions that take place in a "dot-communist" system. e.g. if I download a piece of free software, and I contribute a patch to that same software, I have clearly made an exchange, but this is not a market transaction. I don't buy the software and sell my patch. I don't swap the software for my patch. I freely (as in gratuitously) obtain the software and am under no obligation to submit my patch, which I submit entirely voluntarily. I could just as easily (more easily) not submit a patch at all. It is this non-market nature which is the unusual thing about "dot-communism".
What's new here (and politically significant), is that non-market exchange is hitting the big-time, outside of the domestic sphere, as part of large-scale, socialised, economic production (e.g. Linux).