Cybercommunism and the Gift Culture

A number of readers alerted us to the latest Andrew Leonard piece over at Salon. He's covering the latest Richard Barbrook book "Cybercommunism". One of the salient points of Barbrook's latest arguement is that all of this free-software/open-source is "superseding capitalism". For those who remember, Barbrook was the author of The California Ideology, a 1996 screed.

Comments

Open Source is about Freedom

[el_ted]

Open Source is about Freedom and capitalism is not. So Open Source is anti-capitalist.
And I like to think that it is a lot anarchistic (in the sense of lack of power and lack of authority, not chaos), mainly because of it's principles of liberty, equality and solidarity. ). It is not communism because communism is autoritharian, and Open Source projects seens to be very descentralized (except for Linux where Linus Torvalds seens to be a mini-dictator). Everyone can participate, everything is free and people work on it for joy and solidarity.

Sorry but I don't speak english very well, I would talk about it a lot better in my own language (Portuguese).

I would like to note that thery is a very very very interesting article about this topic on this site, please read it even if you do not agree with anarchism or open source, it is worthy: http://old.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

And for more reference about anarchism, you can get the package "anarchism" in the debian distro, or read a online faq at: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/

Re:It is communism

[PsychoSpunk]

Not to rain on parades here, but freedom of information is nearly an ideal of communism. Albeit a roundabout way, no one really "owns" information if it is in the general public. Communism (True communism I should say) does not allow anyone to own property, thus the root word commune, or communal.

Take this a step further and if we (at least our govt.) says people can own ideas (IP Law...) then in a communistic sense, no one can claim ownership of ideas, thus if ideas are in the general public, they are free.

The problem with Americans (in general, cause I am an American and I have learned what communism is about) is that they look at the great socialist experiment that took place in the former Soviet Union (United Soviet Socialist Republic, anyone see that???) and mislabel it since generally Lenin was a Communist reformer. Unfortunately, Stalin wasn't, and we all see where that led Trotsky (a red fellow of Lenin's).

Now, furthermore, I have never found a communist dictator in history.

To share my own opinion about the article, personally I have to agree with the previously stated post that this community works more in the nepotistic sense (check that previous post for full details). We take in those who can, pardon the expression, hack it and generally exclude those who choose not to. How many articles have we read where the focus is usability, not cool gizmos, being the key to domination? How many "But can my mom use it...?" articles?

The sheer truth is that even though we may pride ourselves (and why Barbrook picks up the term???) as a gift community, we actually work to comprise strict division lines like "Oh, you use Windows..." and look down upon them. My fellow CS majors think I'm crazy (since our school is primarily on an NT network) cause I don't have a single box that does windows. They even dual boot. So obviously, there is some line that is drawn between us, even though I don't recall being an OS bigot and putting it there.

So, in all honesty, it's a big in-joke. We get it, people like Barbrook try to get it (and sometimes Katz can fall in that category), and then there's the people who don't even try. They don't care.

Plain and simple, it's not communist because the community is not truly inclusive of the whole population, not even the whole population of computer users.

Irony

[Aaron M. Renn]

The ironic thing about that piece I thought was that he was describing the hacker "gift culture" at the same time his own paper is limited to "non-commerical" use only. In other words, it's not DFSG compliant!

I don't agree that the hacker culture is a "communist" one. Voluntary associations and donations are very much a feature of such anti-communist systems as anarcho-capitalism as well as anarchy/communism. However, I did love the way he compared the current proprietary software industry to Stalinism.

Did I get enough -ism's in there?

I just don't get it.

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I know this is going to kill my karma, but I'm past caring.

How can someone who uses the words "salient" and "screed" ALSO misspell "argument" and "supercede"?


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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

Re:It is communism

[kyanite]

I don't think so. Free sofware is about freedom. Many companies make a good bit of money off of free software in a totally democractic way. Free Software just makes sure that others have the freedom to do what they want with it. It is also the freedom of information that is sought by free software. If it wasn't for open source software, what would young computer scientists look to for real world examples. Freedom of information and freedom to customize what you own doesn't sound like a communistic ideal. In fact, the last I checked, freedom of information was something communism tried to suffocate. Plus, it is voluntary. When was the last time a communist dictator politely asked the people if he could volunteer to run their lives?


_________________________
Words of Wisdom:

"Gift Culture" is NOT Communism

[Doc Hopper]

Boy, one would think this guy knew his Marx and Lenin better...
AFAIK, Communism is rooted in the idea that the working man would rise up and overthrow the ruling class, distributing the fruits of labor equally to fellow proletariat. This man thinks the free software culture is communism?
Bah! Humbug!
The Internet is STILL a tiny club of culturally-elite, rich (compared to the rest of the world) burgoise representing everything despised by Marx. Despite our burgeoning population, we represent a tiny fraction of priveleged humanity trodding upon the backs of the repressed masses. We distribute our gifts to other members of this elite class of intellectuals.
The Free Software culture is far from Communism. It more resembles Nepotism, with the talented, rich few giving away to the less-talented rich few -- yet all members of the same, elite club. Maybe if we could bring the Internet to the huddled masses with no concept of computers...
But we can't even feed most of them.
I must agree with the comments noted in the review from others: The idea that the "gift culture" is communism is hogwash.

Anarchist theory and businesses.

[iserlohn]

Yes, I concur. Statist communism is bad. Libertarian socialism (anarchism) is good. It advocates decentralized decision making and puts freedom at the forefront of its agenda. Futhermore, individualist anarchism revolve around *free market* principles, but with workers selling their own "fruits of labor", insteal of corporation profiting from them.

If you look at the most modern management theory on worker empowerment, decentralised decision making, team building and the such, it bases itself on one common theme - The people who meet the customers and actually do the grunt work are the peopole who are most qualified and knowledgable about their work. In essence, type Y/Z management theory which trust people to actually like to work has many similarities to anarchist ideals.

This contrasts to the original capitalist assumptions that people are in fact lazy and the only motivational factor for them to work is monetary profit (ie. greed). This assumption has turned many of the world's larget companies into bloated bureaucracies such as GM (with it's 15 levels of management to supervise everyone and managment knowing jack about making cars haha). Look what cars GM made in the 80's and you will understand why capitalism, as it was originally intended, has failed.

Capitalism in its truest form exploits both employees and customers for profit. However, we do not live in a strictly capitalist world. We are heavily influenced by capitalism, and for proof, look at how the world is obsessed with intellectual property. Intellectual property is the natural way of extending capitalist control to ideas, literature, music, movies and software.

However, does capitalist property controls belong in the realms of ideas and intellectual (as opposed to physical) works. The argument GNU makes is *no*; property should be physical; ideas should be free (as in speech).

That is the reason why RMS stands so firmly on the issue why FS should not be called OSS. The political and ideological implications for free software is that is ensures the ultimate preservation for freedom of ideas; not just resulting in better software, but a better system for the world.

Futhermore, capitalism and free-market are not synonyms. They should not be used as such. It is possible to have a free-market without predominant capitalist ideals. However, many business and political elites would like us to think otherwise.

Free software, on the other hand, is one step in the right direction. It is relieving monopoly control over the intellectual ideas that they should never of had control over in the first place. They do no behave like physical property and they should not be treated as such.

McCarthy Stumbles From His Grave

[Mr. Mikey]

It's 1999, and some of us are STILL trying to use the term "Communism" as some sort of epiphet.

Bah, I say! My parents were driven out of Cuba because Fidel Castro, a self-styled Communist, managed to take power. You won't find a more anti-communist environment than South Florida (were many of the older generation still refer to themselves as "in exile"). Whether what goes on in Cuba would be what Marx called Communism is another matter.I spent the first 27 years of my life hearing about the evils of Communism, and seeing its effects on those who made it here. I certainly am no friend of Communism as it has been implemented in the real world. You'd think I'd automatically end up a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-communist. Guess what...

Let's get this straight once and for all: Communism is a political ideology. It is NOT synonymous with "evil" or "baby killer" or whatever the hell else people want to label it as so as to better hitch their ideological little red wagons to.

You disagree with someone's politics? Fine. Just don't be so lazy as to throw the term "communism" around as a substitute for rational thought. The only "Evil Empire" we face today is Darth Vader's. Rational people of good conscience should be able to discuss politics (even as heretical a concept as "capitalism has flaws") in a civilized manner. We shouldn't settle for less.

Remember Cryptonomicon?

[Frank Sullivan]

Does this article not remind you of the gadfly ivory tower pinhead debate scene in _Cryptonomicon_?

Communism is no more applicable to Internet culture of free information than capitalism is. Both of those socio-economic models are outdated crap based on Malthus' original fallacy of scarcity - the idea that there is only so much stuff to go around, so we must all fight each other for our share. Rather than looting the threadbare intellectual corpses of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, they should try reading something *relevant*, like R. Buckminster Fuller's _The Critical Path_.

Ivory tower leftists declaring victory on the 'net is as irrelevant and silly as Wall Street capitalists declaring victory. Neither side won - WE won. They just don't know it yet.
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Re:These arguments don't compute...

[Tackhead]

> If I have a barrel of oil and I give it away, I've lost something
> (the use of the oil). Therefore there has to be some system for
> determining who gets what.

Precisely.

Marx: "To each according to his need, from each according to his ability."

Marx lived in an age in which all economics were based on the economics of scarcity. The second half of the little equation implied the use of force.

In a Gift Culture economy, the second half ceases to be an issue; from each according to his whim might be more like it. Given a sufficiently useful thing - say, a SCSI driver - there's bound to be someone willing to get off his duff and code it up, and from that point on, the advantages of OSS which we all know and love, take over. It's in the developer's best interest to see that the code is distributed widely. At that point, anyone who happens to need a SCSI driver can simply download it.

But to call this "communism" - when it requires economic products (software) that were not only nonexistent, but inconceivable within the socioeconomic framework in which communism was invented - smacks of intellectual dishonesty of the highest order.

We'll take it as axiomatic that communism is coercive and bad under the economics of scarcity - you have to coerce people who don't buy into the system to "give" up their material posessions, or you have to coerce them into buying into the system. Whether you deprive them of their stuff or try to reprogram their minds, it's coercive, and leads to the disasters we've seen in the 20th century whenever an attempt is made to implement it on a large scale.

So much for superseding capitalism in any economic activity involving atoms instead of bits. Been there, done that, it didn't work. So let's try it with software:

Under "cyber-communism" - who writes the code for the payroll systems? The point-of-sale terminals? The inventory software for McDonalds? All the other "boring" stuff that isn't "fun"? Or does "from each according to his ability" simply mean that instead of taking your grain or your barrels of oil, the Central Committee will simply take your time and force you to work on some mind-numbingly dull project becase, after all, you're able to code payroll?

So much for superseding capitalism for all the grunt work.

What's left is what we already know to be true - for certain types of software...

> giving away my software is the greedy thing to do.
> Schemes intended to facilitate distribution of other kinds of wealth just aren't needed.

...which says it better than I could have. Amen to that.

Back to the cybercommunism article, however - exactly how this very limited subset of economic activity (i.e. the development of cool software of broad-based application) can "supersede capitalism" is utterly beyond me. Furthermore, what this has to do with communism - a philosophical system invented in an age where a Gift Culture was inconceivable - is equally beyond me. But saying that "Giving cool and useful software away is fun" doesn't quite sell as many books as using buzzword-compliant postmodernisms such as "cybercommunism" or the "California Ideology", does it?

I concur with Ami. The arguments offered by the author just don't compute.

Open Source != Communism

[El Volio]

Sorry, but I'm going to have to take issue with this. An information "gift economy" does not supersede capitalism; that's ridiculous.

Look at it: An information gift economy (the focus of the Salon piece) essentially allows information to be free (as in speech, not beer, according to the hallowed cliche). Does that mean that the info has no value? No, it means that information's value increases as it spreads. Essentially, it's the distribution of information that becomes important. Linuxcare and RedHat are good examples of this. Linuxcare offers support services, right? The information they provide is essentially already available if you know where to look and how to interpret it. But by providing it in a different format to people who don't know where to look or how to interpret the information themselves, there is value. And I daresay that the founders of Linuxcare were motivated (at least in part) by profit, the foundation of capitalism. RedHat is perhaps a better example, since they freely give away the OS via the Net, and allow you to redistribute copies of what you do buy. Again, the value comes from providing support information and services.

To take it a step further, yes, I can find all the information I want about, say, firewals on the Net. But I still own the O'Reilly book Building Internet Firewalls because there is so much information condensed that having it in book format is valuable. And as Tim O'Reilly has pointed out recently :) profit is among his motivations. Fine, that's the way the world works.

Taking a look away from the information economy (which is still far smaller than the rest of the economy), capitalism is in no real danger. Think GM's going to start giving away cars and trucks to just anybody? How about DeBeers opening up that warehouse?

C'mon folks, let's not get carried away. Information should be free, but that doesn't mean that people aren't going to try to get ahead in life. That's the profit motive, and that's human nature.

Re:It is communism

[Bombcar]

Communism is simple, perfect, and not doable in the real world. The theory is great, but people's greed never allows it to work. It will work for awhile, and then crumble. (Cross reference USSR, communes, etc.) But in software, where it costs noone any money to duplicate software, it can work. But people don't want to call GNU, *BSD, Linux, etc "Software Communism," because of the connotations of the word "communism." But think: It is the efforts of all going to help all, ie, Alan Cox makes a SCSI driver. Now every one has access to that SCSI driver; it has gone into the collective pool. Now in physical communism, the pool grows and shrinks, depending on how many people add work, food, money, etc, and how many people take these things out. But in software, the pool can only grow. So when I download a SCSI driver, it doesn't prevent anyone else from downloading the same driver.

http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.

Communism is dead. Here's why.

[Evan Vetere]

Many people admit that Communism is dead, but they often say they'd like it if it weren't tied to that totalitarian government it always seems bundled with.

But Communism can't come without that totalitarian government, much as Exploder can't come without Windows. The system does not work without a state to enforce it (much as Exploder wouldn't own the browser market if it weren't bundled with Windows; pardon the stretched analogy).

Communism requires people to work for the good of each other, not for themselves. Capitalism requires people to work for themselves to survive. This is the simple, straightforward difference between the two systems, but many people have a hard time grasping it.

Would you trust other people to harvest the raw materials that'll put food on your table? Or would you rather do it yourself?

Most people, including myself, answer "Give me the plowshare!" to the above. Once I'm done feeding myself, I've got no problem helping my neighbor harvest his crop, but only after I've got a full stomach. So, in Communist nations, the Government sticks a gun to your back while you harvest your neighbor's crop.

Linux wasn't created like this. People wrote software for themselves - whether they were just creating utilities for their own use, or they got a "natural high" from helping other people, they had their own interests at heart. And they hate central authority.

We're anarcho-libertarians. The exact opposite of Communists.

These arguments don't compute...

[Ami Ganguli]

The ideas of capitalism and communism are rooted in the problem of how to best divvy up scarce resources. There's only so much food, land, oil, etc. to go around. If I have a barrel of oil and I give it away, I've lost something (the use of the oil). Therefore there has to be some system for determining who gets what.

Software works in the opposite way. If I give away a piece of software I write and other people use it, I haven't lost anything (I can still use the software myself). In fact, the software I have actually becomes more valuable if more people use it: 1/I'll be able to exchange files with other people (this is why MS Office is so 'valuable'), 2/I'll get bug fixes and improvements from other people.

In other words, giving away my software is the greedy thing to do. Schemes intended to facilitate distribution of other kinds of wealth just aren't needed.

Internet is not bourgeois

[Kaa]

I completely agree that Marx and communism have nothing to do with "gift culture" and open source in general. However...

The Internet is STILL a tiny club of culturally-elite, rich (compared to the rest of the world) burgoise representing everything despised by Marx

That's not true. Culturally elite, maybe (although Marx didn't care much about that), bourgeois -- no. What is bourgeoisie, at least in Marx's times? They are the people who own the means of production and thus do not work, but rather live on the profits from their property. I doubt very much that the majority, hell, even 10%, of the Internet population fits this description. A programmer, and an IT worker in general, is often quite close to the idea of proletariat (cf. Dilbert) -- the fact that he works with this brain rather than his muscles doesn't change much.

we represent a tiny fraction of priveleged humanity trodding upon the backs of the repressed masses

Priviledged humanity, yes (although that still doesn't make us bourgeoisie), but what are those repressed masses? Especially in the rapidly gaining information economy? Hey, aren't they those programmers in the cubicles around, hunched over their keyboard, working overtime, rarely seeing the light of day...

Of course you may be talking about the North vs. South split, but then it's hard to make an argument that the West gets its wealth by robbing the poor masses of the Third World.

We distribute our gifts to other members of this elite class of intellectuals

I guess it must be nice to feel oneself a member of the elite class of intellectuals. Unfortunately, I don't think Internet fills the bill. First, intellectual elite tends to mass in arts, literature, humanities, and not around such technical things as computers. Second, go to AOL and look around. 3leet, aren't they?

It more resembles Nepotism, with the talented, rich few giving away to the less-talented rich few -- yet all members of the same, elite club

Nepotism is actually giving out perks (like highly paid do-nothing jobs in a bureacracy) to relatives. It has nothing to do with elite clubs or gift culture. And no, I don't think that the free software culture resembles an elite club. Anyone can join -- the economic price of entry is quite low (in the West, at least). There is an intellectual price of entry which is significant -- it takes good brains in order to play -- but that is something that Marx and others cannot help with...


Kaa