Property, scarcity, selbstentfaltung (was: Re: [ox-en] Book project)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 11:56:51 +0100
Hi Russell, MJ, list!
Last week (12 days ago) MJ Ray wrote:
Graham Seaman <graham seul.org> wrote:
I'm still confused... :-(
I think the comments about common languages are pertinent. From now on, I
will refer to what I had called "capitalism" as "Smith-capitalism" (after
Adam Smith) because it appears that others (including Marx and some
dictionaries) later defined it to be other things.
It is always useful to clarify what is meant by a word. It is really
pointless to quarrel about something when only the same word is used
for different concepts. However, sometimes it is hard to get to the
point getting aware of this different use of words.
On this ground: Could you give a short definition or say its main
characeristics of "Smith-capitalism" so others have a chance to know
what you mean? I for one won't nail you down on this but want to have
an idea so we can explore it together.
[...]
But the fact that there is a restricted supply of programmers means that
they (inevitably?) fit in a capitalist model. Now I'm not sure what you
mean by 'capitalist model', whether you're talking about the real world,
or economic theories, or both, or what?
Probably more theoretical than anything. As I think we are all painfully
aware, making such analyses of what happens in the world is messy because of
obstructions and complications due to imperfect implementations.
Sometimes what seems to be an imperfect implementation is the only
implementation possible in reality. In such situations it is rather
pointless to hold up a nice and clean ideal when reality permanently
refuses to comply to the ideal. IMHO the theory / ideal should be
changed then to comply to reality or otherwise it should be called an
ideology so it is at least clear that it does not claim to explain the
world but is pursuing a goal external to the theory.
And I'm not even sure if it's true that there are a finite number of
programmers. [...] I'm sure there are more programmers now than there
would have been without free software, especially in the so-called '3rd
world'.
Well, it is bounded above by the finite population of the world, so it is
finite. Even generalising to some unknown infinite universe will still
leave more computers than programmers (won't it?), so we still have the
programmers as the scarcer supply. The only question is at what point
demand becomes so low as to make this all non-viable, but even that isn't
the same as zero-price.
These are typical thoughts when looking at the world through glasses
labeled with concepts like scarcity, exchange and structural force. I
think that there are other ways to look at the world. I'll expand on
that below.
Last week (11 days ago) Russell McOrmond wrote:
Industrial-era economics (Or whatever the label is we want to use here)
is based on the economics of scarcity -- something has value when it is
restricted. Free Software fundamentally changes this, not only because
the software itself has 'use value' that is independent of any claimed
'sale value', but that programs and programmers are no longer made
artificially scarce.
Russell points at a very relevant point: Artifical scarcity. *That*
actually is what capitalism keeps going.
This is true for every (material and information) product and in
capitalist societies it has the form of property rights. Among other
things property rights give you some exclusive rights to keep others
away from the good which you claim to be your property. If this would
not be the case you can't prevent others from simply using it (i.e.
extracting some use value from the good).
Only the existence of property rights makes way for seeing a good as a
commodity. Only property rights make way to create artificial
scarcity. Today we can see that very well in the fights around the
property rights on (digitizable) information goods. All this fight is
about enforcing some property rights. On this scale this has not been
necessary before the invention of digital copy. Digital copy with its
features challenges the concepts on property rights on information
goods fundamentally. I'll come back to this below.
A commodity on the other hand carries not only the use value but also
the sale / exchange value expressed in (but not being) a price tagged
onto the product. This is why property rights make sense in a
capitalist society. Property rights on some good allow you to exchange
it for something else. If you would not have the option to make the
good artificially scarce by using property rights to exclude others
these others would have no reason to give you something in exchange
for the good you are willing to transfer the property rights of.
Only this way it is possible to bind something like exchange value to
a good which is actually an alienated concept regarding the use value
of the product. This alienation has a lot of (negative regarding the
use value) consequences I'm not going to talk about in this mail.
On the German list there seems to be an agreement to understand by
scarcity exactly that: the artificial scarcity which is created by
societal factors. Scarcity is distinguished from limitations which are
there for a number of reasons. Limitations are distinguished from
deposits ("Vorkommen") of natural goods. Currently there are some
thoughts missing which include products in this picture. I think it
would be interesting to do that.
In this sense deposits are the absolute limitation of some raw
material say on this planet. This absolute limitation may even be
unknown to mankind.
Limitations are always based on the access to the deposits (and this
is where products are missing) which is currently available to
mankind. This is bounded by technological as well as political and
other factors. Limitations as such are a constant factor in human
history. Every society has to deal with the limitations which are
relevant to this particular society. Though limitations are no law of
nature - because they can be changed by humans - they are similar to
that: You don't need a policemen to enforce them. Your technical
inability suffices to "enforce" them. (This is not true for political
factors :-( . The concept has to be rethought a bit I guess...)
Scarcity is seen as a purely societal concept which may or may not sit
on top of limitations. In this sense scarcity is always created by
some formal definition like property rights. Scarcity is not a natural
law because it always needs a policeman to be enforced.
This is where digital copy comes in again. Digital copy removes the
factual limitations set by the material substrate of the copy. It was
easy to maintain the notion of property rights on information goods as
long as these information goods were actually bound to material goods.
The limited existence of the material good made it understandable that
there is a property right on information goods. Actually, historically
the notion of intellectual property rights came into being when it was
possible to sell material goods carrying information goods (in
particular books and music media).
Digital copy changed that by removing the limitations. Today the music
industry makes a big fuss about their claims on property rights.
However, the audience as well as a good part of the musicians - which
the lion share of are not listed in any charts - does not care much
about the claims of the music industry. I'd say a good part of the
reason for that is that the limitations are removed by digital copy.
Free Software uses this feature of digital copy but goes one step
further - and IMHO the crucial one. Especially the GPL fundamentally
gives up the property rights on an information product. A GPLed piece
of information is basically the property of anyone - which makes the
term useless regarding the option of excluding anyone. This giving up
of property rights embedded in the GPL and other Free licenses is the
deepest reason why Free Software can not be made scarce (i.e.
artificially scarce). Because of this in general it makes no sense
tagging a prize on a piece of Free Software. Because of this the
product itself is gratis.
Labour is vested into software, but the value of the software is based
on what it can do, not based on its existence (or its sale value). If
the carpenter analogy doesn't work for you as you then have a physical
'bookcase' you can sell, then think more of a carpenter that *teaches* you
how to make the bookcase. You can re-use that non-rivalrous education,
and the value of knowledge in an educational context increases as it is
shared.
Do teachers get paid? Is education 'gratis'? Whether or not it is
'libre' or not is the critical question - whether you can find educators
willing to teach people without any compensation is an entirely different
question.
And this is where another ideological claim comes into play: People
are doing something *only* because they get something in exchange for
that. Actually this ideology has no idea of humans I might say.
Throughout history humans had a hell lot of reasons for doing
something. I'd say the very most of these reasons has nothing to do
with the sort of exchange the bourgeoise economic theory is talking
about. Instead people had their own reasons for doing things. On the
German list we call that selbstentfaltung. [I tried to use the term
"self-unfolding" for English but "selbstentfaltung" (with a lower case
"s" ;-) ) seems to be used more often.]
I'm not saying people don't have some result / satisfaction from what
they are doing. But if we look at our every day lives I'd say the
result / satisfaction is usually embedded in what we are doing rather
than in something external like money we get in exchange for that.
Even when working for money people often try to find an internal
motivation for what they are doing - which is easier for jobs in which
you act in a creative way like writing software.
Again seeing things this way is useful in a capitalist society. Giving
something in exchange for another thing (commodity or wage labor) is
an easy way to bribe somebody to give the thing away. In a society
based on this sort of bribe exchange becomes a structural force
forcing you to do things you'd otherwise would not do. On the level
the productive forces reached in capitalism until now this structural
force has been "necessary" to get the people working. On the
technological branch of the productive forces you can see that in the
machines nobody with a clear mind would be working on if s/he would
not have been bribed by money to do so.
Free Software is only a very visible example for a system without
structural force but being productive on a societal level. People
develop Free Software for a number of reasons. However, in general all
of these reasons are their own. Nobody needs to bribe a Free Software
developer for doing what s/he does. And the Free Software developer
doesn't look for a compensation because when developing Free Software
s/he looses nothing which needs to be compensated. In the contrary
developing Free Software is an expression of his/her life itself.
Commercial Free Software is a case on the borderline. People are
bribed by money to develop some Free Software which in general they
would not develop if not bribed by money. This is where IMHO the
quality aspect comes into play. A lot of people on Oekonux share the
idea that Free Software is successful exactly *because* it is mainly
developed on non-alienated grounds / without bribing. So the general
absence of money is not only a warm and morally aspect but the basic
reason for the success. This has to do with the development of the
productive forces which tend to go beyond the current means of
productions. I won't expand on that in this mail. However, one of the
central ideas of Oekonux is that because of this it should be not only
possible but useful to mankind to spread the principles of the
production of Free Software at least to other fields of human life
dealing with information goods.
Phew! I'll stop here. This should have been a short mail but now I
explained some basics again (and - as often - added a few new
questions ;-) ).
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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