Re: Next successful Free Product? (was: Re: [ox-en] New economic model for free t
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:56:19 +0200
in list-en oekonux.org, Stefan Merten
wrote on Tue, 04. Oktober 2005 um 18:39 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]:
In your thinking is mutual support mandatory during a transformation
phase? Mutual support cycles would mean that Free Projects fit
together so well they can cover a whole area. Do you think this is a
necessary condition? If so: Why?
I said it is not a necessary condition but it would be rather the next
step after grounding Free Projects on the resources of Hobbyists and
leisure time developers. I do not believe that is a good ground for
serious development and there is argument about this reverberating all
over.
Frankly to me this looks like a kill argument because mutual support
is even harder to get than island projects.
Here you are completely right. It is hard to get, but I think with the
expansion of Free Modes into other areas of production we will see
productivity effects and feedback cycles growing. Imagine our breads not
coming from the shop but from food cooperatives that sponsor Free Mode
developers and designers.
On the other hand in the area of Free Software there is lot of
(implicit) mutual support. May be this is can be used as a criteria:
That in a given area of human activity is mutual support of Free
Projects better for the projects and all of society than competition
capitalist style.
I think there might be large agreement. We are talking about a veritable
"gift economy" here, although the gifts might be based simply on
agreements.
Also if mutual support is taken seriously to start it you need to
support Free Software creators first. Since they need not much
specific support for their work beyond that they give themselves to
each other it would mean to give them good live conditions. Hard to
imagine beyond the money scheme.
As I said: its hard to imagine, but maybe easy to conceive. When Free
Software developers are working on mundane things like CNC Designs that
can be performed by semi-automated cutters, plotters, fabbers there is a
natural incentive to support their work by providing housing, food and
other support.
In earlier ages, society had no problems to support totally "unproductive"
classes like monks and priests because their work was considered valuable
for society. Imagine a lot of small enterprises working with Open Source
software and hardware in a region and the way they could consider the work
of developers a direct support of their economic life.
We are getting political and polit-economical here, and although - as you
mentioned in the other posting - I support the general findings of Krisis
about the running short of accumulation in the world system (and I think
Asia is not a bad example of how the final cycles happen much faster and
more brusque) I think there is lots of regional degrees of freedom to
refuge into mutual support systems.
where increasingly free products
fill the void created by lack of money.
Well, Free Software was not created to fill in a lack of money. Free
Software was created for the fun of it. Why do you think that for
furthering the GPL society it would be most useful to fill the niches
which capitalism leaves because valorization of labor is no longer
possible there?
Well you did not get me here: I refer to buying power of people, not to
the strategies of enterprises.
In the contrary I'd say that the niches capitalism leaves because
labor can no longer be valorized there are those areas which are
especially hard to fill with Free Projects based on Selbstentfaltung.
I think Frithjof Bergmann is right: what you call "Selbstentfaltung" and
what he calls the "Calling" or the "things we really, really want" has to
pair with "Self-Providing". If we can build a "sandwich" of these two
entirely different layers of our expanded work universe, we gain real
freedom.
After all capitalism has filled the niches because it was able to
structurally force people to do painful work. What has changed in the
work necessary in these niches so that capitalism does not want to
structurally force people any longer but a Free Project can base on?
Anything is interesting for the market as long as people have buing power.
And nothing is interesting for the market if this buing power vanishes.
"The ultimate reason for all capitalist crisis is the waning of the
consumption power of the masses" (Marx, Capital Volume 3)
This seems largely a problem of
good design
Yeah, design and organization of work are important. But again:
Capitalism has seemingly not been able to do this design and
organization in the niches you are talking about. Why do you think
that Free Projects may be more successful here?
Because they are based on the replacement of monetary buing power by
direct cooperation of producers. We are told that there is an end of work
and an eternity of capital. We are told that work is useless until capital
employs it. But nowadays, autonomous labour can directly relate to each
other and coordinate cycles of support and empowerment without
interference of capital. We simply do not need capital to aggregate work.
Work can aggregate itself, that is the big historical lesson of the Free
Software Movement. But we are just at the beginning of this aggregation
process, and it will only be a joke unless it does not meet production
itself.
I see a curious parallel. Also Adam Smith was pointing at his time to the
"seed form" of his epoch. And the seed form was built outside the core of
material production. The seed form was exchange and commercial capital -
in Belgium/Flandres and in Upper Italy (Genova). So the seed form had to
find its way ito the core of production (manufacturing) and that was its
maturing. the analogy is compelling. Free Software is direct aggregation
of labour, but still outside material production. How can it find a way
into the core of production, the material process?
I think you underestimate this question by claiming production is getting
increasingly immaterial. That is only half of the truth.
In the software business we see even in proprietary software
production elements which are common in Free Software like giving the
creators a lot more freedom than other employees. In domains which are
well suited to be covered by Free Projects I'd expect similar
developments *in* capitalism. Can you see this?
I do not object this. Its not an "either - or" situation. We need people
from the top of the productivity segment to switch into alliance with
people left outside. The "sexyness" of the whole thing is that everybody
needs to find out a way to enter such voluntary alliances with others. Do
what you really want and you will see it is already social in its very
nature.
and conviction.
I think if conviction is a necessary precondition you should
immediately stop the Free Project. Conviction is on what all the
alternative projects throughout the last 40 years run and if we can
learn one thing from them then it is that conviction does not lead to
a new society.
Well conviction can translate into "knowing on which path you are". I do
not think this is a bad idea. Of course you can be totally based on false
convictions, and I think one false conviction was the idea that the
political and the state is the sphere of liberation.
Free products must soon include basic human
needs (the "bread")
During bourgeoise revolution the commoners started with things like
textiles. They did not start with what was the basis of the old
society was but with products they were best in, where the spearhead
of the development of the means of production made most sense to
expand. If you look at this on a global scale even today there are
parts of the world where this is not fully controlled by capitalism.
And thats what I said before. I would even say more and more spheres and
areas are sliding out of control and in the middle there is a strong
"space of flows" between the centers getting faster and faster.
At the same time the potential of technology is omnipresent.
Why do you think this is to be reversed in this change or eras?
Well one point is that it is a shameful waste of the planet. For example,
in one year mankind looses soil of double the size of Austria by
desertification and other forms of degradation. All that cannot be taken
care of by the capitalist mode of production any more. It calls for
NeoSubsistence and global networks that organize it.
and that is in the long run the strongest base and
tool that we have:
1) have a material base of raw materials and energy --- best is
self-reproducing / biomass based production, thats why I favor rural
areas
as birthplace of seed forms of Free Life
Ok, self-reproducing / biomass based production is certainly better
suited to be distributed into small projects than big centralized
ways of production.
One important point, however, is that with self-reproducing / biomass
production you can produce only a small share of the raw material
needed for many, many products - at least if you are to compete with
capitalist products. Doesn't sound like a sustainable way to me.
Wait and see. we are doing research on that in the global villages
movement and we are getting increasingly clear that there is almost 90% of
all advanced human material needs fulfillable with derivates of biomass
and green chemistry. even mainstream enterprises are discovering that:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/7929/7929greenchemistry.html
If you go to websites like Amory Lovins "Natural Capitalism"
(www.natcap.org) or to some comments on Braungart/McDonoughs "Cradle to
Cradle" principles (look here:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001387.html) you might give a second
thought on your statement.
We are taking this one step beyond and designing around the cradle to
cradle principle a new metabolism of rich villages in costant abundant
intercourse with nature.
2) make the output of each process "feed" another process, so you are
glad
something is using your "waste" --- that is a question of systems
design
Yeah but isn't capitalism already good in this? Where is the
capitalist who would not be willing to sell his/her wastes? Why should
Free Projects do better here?
Because I suppose capitalist cant make a sustainable agreement together.
Or can someone prove me wrong on this? We might have to look through
scenarios....
3) integrate processes by agreement, not by market --- market is not a
good coordinator if you want to achieve goals 1 and 2
Agreement would mean a lot of interaction between otherwise
unconnected projects. In Free Software we see a lot of synergies
between projects without explicit agreement. It would be an
interesting study to find out where this agreement comes from.
Wouldn't it be more useful to find areas where common doing needs
little public agreement to be useful on a societal level?
We will need public agreement at last about the way we live; and the best
is when it comes as natural as the rules of traffic. The GPL is a good
agreement for a limited domain, and it needed a lot of thoughtwork to
carve it.
Well, a lot of questions and they are probably not easy to answer. As
I said this is not to discard your ideas but to critical question them
to see what substance they contain and if too little where we need
think again. I'd hope you try hard to find anwers. Or may be others
have ideas, also?
I hope so. Thanks for expanding on these important issues.
Franz
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