Message 03304 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT03153 Message: 2/4 L1 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

Re: [ox-en] Free Software and Anarchism



Dear Sandro and all!

3 months (109 days) ago Sandro Gaycken wrote:
Dear All

Find attached and pasted a minimally revised version of my text
regarding Free Software and anarchism. The pasted text somewhat lacks
the footnotes, the pdf has it all.

I'm looking forward to any criticism and remarks!

Sorry for the delay but I wanted to have enough time to think. Because
of the long delay I'll full quote. I'll also comment in detail and
ramble around a bit.

I'm not sure whether all of the text is your opinion or you are just
describing a general anarchist's perspective. For the sake of
simplicity I assume that it is your position.

Ahm - sorry for the length. I thought about breaking it up but it
seemed better to keep it complete. May be replies to this can pick up
single points.

----------------------------------

Free Software and Anarchism
- does this compute?

Abstract: The mode of production in free software development is often
being described as anarchical. Despite this attribution seems not
initially intended in any fundamental political sense, this sense starts
to transfuse the discussions. This invites to a closer look at the
reference: what it is, what it's not and what it could be. And once
viewed from general anarchist theory and the anarchist theory of
technology, a political relation seems to vanish. But despite this first
stance, a demonstrative value can still be obtained as soon as some
critical remarks are acknowledged and some developmental frames would be
changed.

Anarchical elements in free software development
Technologies (before marketing) have a tendency to take on functional
names, indicating their specific technical character. So does free
software. It is free software. "Free" here means the entailment of a few
degrees of freedom for its users. Its specific claims have been outlined
most clearly along the lines of Richard Stallman, the inventor of GNU,
more than twenty years ago, as a reaction to some restrictive tendencies
in software research and development.

You could also say that this was a reaction to the starting
commodification of software. Before this software was more seen as
some integral part of the computer it ran on. At this time software
started to become independent from the hardware in a practical sense.

They are as follows: a user of
software should be free to use a program for any purpose, to study its
functions and fit it to own purposes, to make copies and propagate them
to help others, to alter and develop the program and freely publish the
results to promote the community and - resulting logically - he should
be able to access the source code of the program. Thus, free software
can be developed by anyone who aquires the program which mostly (but not
necessarily) includes that the program is freely downloadable somewhere.

Indeed. It can not be emphasized often enough that (the very most)
Free Software licenses don't require any publication of modifications
or enhancements. The copyleft variants only require that third parties
receiving such modifications or enhancements must receive the source
code also.

Since this mode of software production has been introduced, it has had
its own history. It took long years to actually develop and establish
the first free operating system, GNU/ Linux, but ever since that has
been achieved, free software has been flourishing. By now, free
browsers, office and media applications and many other useful to funny
free programs made their way onto ever more harddrives, much to the
annoyment of their main commercial opponent: Bill Gates with his
(sometimes) operating system Microsoft Windows.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Really gave me a good laugh :-) .

But now what is the connection between anarchism and free software? This
association actually does not seem to appear with the initial
programmers. Stallman and Torvalds for instance were mainly interested
in securing free and open research conditions and in the technical task
at hand.

Well, Stallman certainly has a political background. During the hippie
period in the US there were one current with an explicit connection to
technology. I think Stallman could be seen there. Also I think
Stallman's political ambitions do exist. Torvalds on the other hand
seems to me really not very interested in any more political things.

This was political in a rather detailed way, but apart from
that, any far reaching political or even revolutionary implications
directly referring to anarchism cannot be found. The association seems
to mainly have been established by opponents and commentators from the
press in their usual daily warmongering. They used the term "anarchy" in
its rather undefined colloquial meaning to describe the specificly new
phenomena of free programming. In this colloquial meaning, anarchy
broadly describes a state in which no property exists, nor do rules or
authorities and which thus has no stratified order in any (common) sense
(which in addition is generally thought to result in nothing but sex and
violence and the end of humankind within a couple of (sexy and violent)
days).

Absolutely. The funny thing is that in this colloquial meaning
anarchism is confused with chaos which IMO is one of the worst
confusions ever.

Free software development now is associable with this state when it is
seen as a kind of technological development and thus compared with the
standard industrialized pattern for that. The industrialized pattern is
normally strictly hierarchical, guided rigidly by corporate interest,
controlled and organized and accompanied by all sorts of regulations
such as licenses and laws. This is of course owed to the huge amounts of
money involved in any kind of industrial development and this also
includes that it is largely a secret thing - neither the source code nor
any intermediary steps are to be published or even discussed among
developers.

I think this is a bit short an explanation. If it would only be
corporate interest then why it was in the field of software that a
practical alternative evolved in another mode of production?
Throughout history there would have been zillions of fields where this
could have happened - but it didn't.

I think it has to do with the activity of developing software itself.
This type of activity can not be organized well with these
hierarchical - or may be more precise: anti-individual - ways of
producing useful goods. Well, it can be organized but the results are
sub-optimal. The mode of production seen in Free Software can deliver
better results and IMHO this is the fundamental reason why Free
Software is as successful as it is nowadays. BTW: I know what I'm
talking about because for some time now I'm subject to this process
:-( .

Thinking about this once again I remember StefanMz' characterization
of the next society as a society where the human as such is in the
center (and no longer the mean as in capitalism or the ground as in
feudalism). Free Software demonstrates what this means on a very
practical basis. It is the type of activity itself which requires the
complete person - which can not be fully accomplished in an alienated
system like capitalism.

Of course this applies to other areas also. May be in those areas
where creativity and freedom to follow own goals is pre-condition for
success. Science is certainly such an area.

On the other hand I'd say that for classical industrial production
patterns - like assembly belts - the capitalist way of production *is*
the most effective. This type of activity expressly does *not* want
the complete person but only a very small fraction of it - exactly
what the machine can not do (yet).

Ah - below you are saying similar things :-) .

Compared to this rigid framing of standardized industrial development,
the developmental method of free software seems well described as:
anarchical.
Of course this association initially also entailed some rhetorics. It
also intended to draw on the sex and violence and end of anything image
of anarchy. Gates for instance still tries to hold that free software
development actually hinders a safe and high-quality development due to
its lack of financial interest and directive order, thus posing a lethal
threat to "good" development in general.
What followed this first phase of rather rhetorical uses of the term was
a phase of politicisation of the whole topic of Free Software. Its
developmental pattern seemed to radiate consequences to some of the
implict foundations of our capitalist-monopolistic society, making it
appear a strikingly contrastive alternative. And suddenly, the
association with anarchism took on a real, substantial and rather
positive political value. This was also accompanied and enhanced by two
other factors, First, there was the rising success of Free Software. At
least after Linus Torvalds' breakthrough with Linux, free software and
its anarchical method turned from an exotic dream into a groundbreaking
idea. Its development was fast compared to its dinosaur industrial
rivals - and almost entirely without costs. Second, many developers
actually liked and embraced the political and the anarchist image. Quite
a few of them already were anarchists of course, especially the hackers,
and did not feel uncomfortable with the term after all. But also the
politically less exited gladly adopted the term to express a principle
opposition to industrial methods: commercial programming and, as
Stallman did, the propagating rule of ever more secret, "everyone for
himself"-development. Both of these evils, now stretching out the
dimensions of the dark side of the force in programming, have their rich
and reckless emperor in the figure of Bill Gates and not at last due to
his active engagement against free software, defining oneself as a
(somewhat techno-)political activist whithin the whole issue soon
started to be a personal thing as well.

I'd not overestimate this personal thing. There are a lot of persons
in the Free Software scene which can co-exist with M$. For instance
there is the Mono project which is an implementation of M$'s .NET.

Thus, radiating from the rather rhetorical reference to the free
software production method as anarchical, we now find the establishment
of an overarching general political attitude towards free programming as
political action in a more general sense than merely within the
copyright-debate, in turn placing the latter into its larger social
context with capitalism. Projects like the diverse Open-X-initiatives or
Oekonux speak vividly of this change.
A crucial point however about this identification is that the rhetorical
use of the term "anarchy" draws on the rather unfounded, preconceptive
and largely false public image of anarchism which was briefly mentioned
above. This being the case and ever since neither in its first phase nor
now, any substantial discussions about the connotation between Free
Software and anarchism from within the theory of anarchism have been
undertaken, the question arises just how Free Software actually compares
to anarchism as it is outlined by its own theories.
This is what shall be investigated in the remainder of this article.

The anarchist theory of technology
Since software is a technology and "Free Software" describes a
technological developmental method, the above question appears to be
best approachable from within the anarchist theory of technology which
will be outlined briefly now.

If you see Free Software as a mode of production I think you need to
take into account other aspects beside the technology. For instance:
How are the projects organized?

To state that something like an anarchist theory of technology exists
might sound a bit strange at first hand. What could a political theory
of technology be? How can technologies be political at all? They seem to
be rather neutral, mere means to a great variety of ends. This is a very
common view about technologies. But it is mistaken, even more so for the
industrial age. We need to look at this mistake and will thus dwell a
bit on the relation between technology and social order.
The most substantial relation arises from the fundamental insight which
Marx had about the connection between production and social order. He
stated that certain modes of production in the turn of history produce
certain social orders. One very basic example for this is the division
of work. It arose out of the knowledge how to grow crops and herd cattle
which allowed prehistoric societies to gain excess production to store.
This freed some of its members from the immediate need to produce food
all the time and thus specialists could develop and the societies grew
more complex and developed further. A political component got to this as
some of the specialists became leader-specialists: priest-kings and the
like. Thus a mode of production established a social order. This has now
been the case ever since and at the core of every fundamental change in
social orders, we can recognize some equally fundamental change in the
mode of production.
Many of these changes have actually been technological changes, as
technologies are a substantial part of the productive force. The above
example already suggests this since the knowledge on growing and herding
is largely technical knowledge, including the introduction of a variety
of new tools. Thus the relation between production and social order has
a significant technological component to it and it is in this sense that
technologies can be deemed political. It has to be noted here that
within the philosophy of technology, there are of course a few more
dimensions in which technologies can be regarded to be political as
well. One such dimension for instance develops out of the fact that
technology often is our means to get in contact with the world. As such,
it predetermines our patterns of thought which deal with the world. Our
worldview - in a fundamental sense - is than partly technological. Some
devastating political consequences of this arrive in turn from the
modern machine-technological worldview. It renders everything into a
mere component, a ready-to-use part of some system and not only our
modern bureaucracies and self-technologies can be viewed as fatalistic
consequences of this.

I think the intention of production shines through here as well. If it
is your goal to enhance the freedoms of the users of your software
then you do things differently than if you want to receive an endless
stream of money from them.

Also people like the Nazi organizer Eichmann, who
conceived of the industrialized murdering of millions of jews as a
solution to a logistical task, are a phenomenon of this worldview. This
very idea has been the topic of the whole New Left since Marcuses book
"One-dimensional Man", which explored this issue within a marxist
framework (although the basic idea has been stated before by Marcuses
teacher Heidegger in 1954).
But these rather specific and abstract consequences of technologies
shall not be the topic here.

Well, I think they are important nonetheless. They point to the
ultimate reason of production which is different in capitalist mode of
production than in Free Software. (Doubly) Free Software is interested
in the use value of the product - otherwise it would not make sense at
all.

What shall be considered for now are the
more direct and material consequences as outlined by Marx. As such, as
has been shown, technologies open up a specific range of possibilities
for social orders. In most cases, this enlarges the range of human
actions, but since the industrial revolution, technology also had a
limiting notion to it. The complex tool-compounds called "machines", by
means of their design, their size and complexity, have to carry a number
of necessities like conditions on how to handle them, a special division
of work, sometimes specific hierarchies and so on.

Especially the management of time should be mentioned here.

Indeed another interesting point of difference between classical
industrial production and production of software. Timing is mostly
determined by the individuals and their possiblities instead of the
machines. You could say that the machines today are flexible enough to
sustain a more humane timing.

Thus the specific
range of social possibilities opened up by technologies is not only a
positive thing, free to choose. With the advent of machines,
technologies also entailed some rather ugly social necessities, some
fait accomplis. Marx had recognized this and within his concept to
actually turn the tables by not having production dictate social order
but social order dictate production (in communism), the appropriate
technological change to allow this played a significant part as the
"scientific-technological revolution" which has been a constant issue to
all communist societies ever since.

What remains to note from these considerations is the fact that
technologies open up specific possibilites for social change and this is
a point of consideration for anarchism much like it has been for
communism. It will first have to asked which technologies would be
needed in an anarchical society and this will point to some general
technological characteristics fundamental to positively promote
anarchism as a fundamentally new social order. Following these, a few
negative demands can be stated as well, more or less as the negations of
the positive characteristics, to not only state what should be the
technological case, but also what it should definitely not be. The
positive characteristics will point to genuine anarchical technological
structures whereas the negative demands will clarify which structures
oppose anarchism.

Well, but one needs to keep in mind that all such demands come from
minds which are fundamentally formed by work societies. I see this as
a severe limit to out thinking and would be careful about generalizing
such demands for a future society. *If* this future society is
different from ours then it is very likely that it will have different
moral grounds - may be moral grounds which are different to ours.

Now, finally, to the anarchist theory of technology.

Ah, here comes the beef :-) .

Like Marx, a basic intend will be to turn the tables and have social
order dictate the mode of production, not vice versa. The basic idea in
mind should thus be the positive vision of the free, decentralized
anarchist community.

This is certainly the anarchist vision.

Now which mode of production does it need? This is
easy: a decentral, local production.

IMHO this is all but easy.

Only then will people be able to
live autonomously and thus free from outside rulers.

Can you give a more detailed argumentation here?

Also, in the light of the discussions about the terms autonomy,
subsistence we shortly had on this list what is your exact meaning of
living autonomously? Together with local production it sounds to me
very much like self-subsistence. Correct?

I'd agree that a precondition of freedom is that you have the means to
be free which includes material and informational facilities and
goods.

Though it is true that if you control the means of production for
these things directly then you have the control over the production
and can produce what you need and when you need it. On the other hand
such control over the means of production is also a big burden which
limits your freedom again. You need to keep these means in a
operational condition and - most of all - to produce modern material
goods you need huge arrays of machinery. As of now that seems to me an
inalienable feature of matter.

Well, your sentence above worries about outside rulers. What if this
is simply not the case for your suppliers? What if those external
suppliers with goods and facilities are interested in your freedom?
What if they strive to enhance your freedom just like you strive to
enhance their freedom? Under such conditions I think that local
production in this universal sense you put it is no longer needed for
freedom. This of course would mean a society where alienation is
reduced largely and the freedom of the others is actively recognized
as the precondition of my own individual freedom - something hard to
imagine if you see the world as a set of enemies competing for scarce
resources.

But how can this be
achieved? The current, globalized economy is quite the opposite of this.
It grows things in one country, boils them in another, packs them in yet
another and finally sells them somewhere entirely else. Can this
irrational organization be rearranged to local models? Anarchism
believes: yes. And as mentioned above, this is to a large extent a
technological task, a task of rearranging the technological designs
surrounding us. At this point, Murray Bookchin comes into play. He is a
known socialist and anarchist and has written about the technological
foundations of anarchism. His thoughts are quite logical. For anarchist
communities, localized technologies have to be developed which are able
to gather ressources and produce goods in the most easy and comfortable
fashion possible. They should be workable by only a few people (the less
the better, but up to a hundred probably if we imagine standard-sized
communities of 1000 to 2000 individuals), they should be able to
regulate themselves and even repair themselves if possible.

A nice vision - but again: Is it really necessary? Admittedly I'm
somewhat tired of these food production examples. Certainly the
production of food is a necessary precondition for every human society
but for modern societies the production of computer chips is at least
as necessary as the production of potato chips.

For instance let's take a fab for producing highly integrated chips
like memory chips or CPUs. Currently there are only a few fabs on this
planet which supply all of the world with this life blood of modern
societies. Fabrication of computer chips *is* a big technological
challenge. You can see this if you look at the immense costs of such a
fab. As far as I can see this type of production is also very much
bound to some inalienable features of matter.

Funny enough these centralized fabs are in a way absolutely local
because they localize the whole production process in one plant.

Now if we go back to the question of control what about a vision where
such centralized means of production can be controlled via the
Internet? May be you are interested in

	http://www.oekonux.org/texts/utoklo/

for a vision of this. Visions like this IMHO would remove the
necessity of local production and all the peculiarities that come with
it. Local production would be replaced by a globalized supply of
cooperating and - where it makes sense - centralized facilities.

This
somewhat points to the old enlightenment conception of technology which
has also been at the core of the communist scientific-technological
revolution: technology as the saviour which abolishes all work for
humans so they are free to live the lifes they want to live without
being bound to the ugly necessities of daily production for daily
survival.

It is really good re-thinking all this :-) .

Yes, technology as a way to overcome necessities is certainly a strong
motivation. And it is also a pleasant vision to overcome all this
nasty work by automation.

However, technology can also be a basis for Selbstentfaltung. Seeing
it this way Bookchin's vision emphasizes the first aspect but neglects
the latter. Now while I think of this I find it actually striking.
It's good we have that discussion here :-) .

Well, Bookchin probably needs to neglect this technology as
Selbstentfaltung because he can not expect a techie in each community
who loves to care about the machines. And if you need to maintain a
large array of machines for self-subsistence then you need also a
large number of techies in each community...

On the other hand you can bring these techies together in some techie
community so they can pursue their Selbstentfaltung while they
cooperate with other communities who are not so much interested in
technology. Wouldn't that be an even more attractive vision? It also
takes into account the different needs of people much more than this
"an anarchist community must consist of 1000-2000 people"-thing. Not
everyone sees this as the ultimate way of living. There are even
persons who like big cities...

As such, anarchism is substantially technology-friendly, even
very dependent on it.

Agreed. However, IMHO and from my experience very few anarchists know
this ;-) .

Entirely without it, work would much likelier have
to be regulated, thus administered again by rulers and enforced. In
addition, anarchism even embraces the highest possible state of
technology, that of a full automation, to fully liberate humankind - at
least with Bookchin. And in that case, Bookchin holds, computers play a
significant part as well. They will eventually conceptualize the work,
operate the machines, organize everything and so on. Within his further
theory, Bookchin also states that an equilibrium between humans and
nature has to be achieved with the help of technology. This is important
so the ressources are not wasted too excessively to an extend that they
would exhaust. A lack of ressources has always been a reason for a war
and unequalities, but this is a perfectly known fact and does not have
to be explored any further.
For now, this brief look will suffice to demonstrate the technological
task at hand for anarchism.
We can now state the basic positive technological characteristics
anarchism needs. Its technologies will have to be such that they can be
produced and maintained locally and they have to enable small
communities to freely, easily and with the least possible amount of work
produce their commodities.
                ^^^^^^^^^^^

I think the term goods would be more accurate here.

Further, they should be such, that they do
not irrevocably exhaust local ressources or need very exotic ones.
Technologies which comply with these characteristics would not
necessarily need a hiercharical social order any more. They would not
create and reinforce dependencies from owners of ressources or lacks of
ressources, from central monopolizing producers, highly skilled
specialists and so on.

Here are indeed some of the reasons why you probably say that autonomy
in the sense of self-subsistence is so useful: Dependency. In this
mail I learned how distorted this view is if we think of a world where
the Selbstentfaltung of all is the precondition of my own
Selbstentfaltung. In such a world dependency is useful for me because
it means that others help me - instead of doing me harm. Well, now I
can think this way it is *so* obvious that I wonder why I haven't seen
this during all these years!

Thus they would have a liberating effect on a
society and could be called anarchical in a very close and genuine
sense. Bookchin also mentions an example of such a genuine anarchical
technology: the sun-furnace. It uses photovoltaic cells to produce more
than 5000 degrees celsius, it can thus melt iron and steel, it's easy to
build and maintain and can be operated by just a handful of unskilled
workers. Thus it promotes anarchical interests in a genuine, clear-cut
way. It promotes freedom and equalness and diminishes dependence and
asymmetric inequalities as they are transparent in current industrial
production.
And this directly leads to the negative demands. After it has been shown
which technological characteristics are demanded by a free humankind, it
can now be stated which kinds of technologies hinder the development of
a free society. Such technologies are namely designed in such a way that
they either premise or reproduce the principles of authority and
hierarchy, either in their production or in their later use. A clear
example to contrast with the afore mentioned sun-furnace is current
heavy-industrial steel production. Steelworks as machine-compounds often
need thousands of workers, from iron ore mining to melting to
transportation and administration. Thus they need and propose
hierarchical structures. They need specialists, a central organization,
authority, enforcement. And they suggest larger communities. The workers
will need food, housing and entertainment and that leads to larger
cities as we find them frequently with steel production.

Well, especially for the masses of people this relates more to
industry some decades ago. I'm sure also in steelworks nowadays
automation has removed a good part of the people. Otherwise the
regions where steel production (and coal mining) were so important
wouldn't undergo such a decline in workplaces.

I'd say that today there are not too many industries which need to
employ large amounts of people. Automation did its job already.
However, specializing is a big trend and IMHO this has to do with the
advances in sciences and technology. So if sciences and technology is
not refused altogether this trend to specialization needs to be coped
with.

All this
opposes the anarchical ideas of non-hierarchical structures, autonomy,
decentralized, smaller communities, of comparatively free lifes and
little work. Thus we will demand of technologies to be free of such
wanting structures which invite social complexity and
class-construction, which are followed by suppression and hierarchy.

Yes, I think the anarchist assumptions really boils down to this. As I
said a few days ago there is probably some general tendencies in
anarchism which are opposed to complexity.

However, I think (technical) complexity can not be reduced largely in
any post-capitalist society which is attractive for the majority of
the people. This type of complexity is an inalienable part of advances
in science and technology so IMHO it needs to be dealt with.

But I also don't see why complexity is necessarily something
preventing freedom. It *is* indeed impossible to control everything
which is relevant in your life then but I find it a misleading
shortcut to think that one has to have control over every little
detail in her/his life to be free.

If I think about it also the concept of smaller communities seem to
breathe that spirit of wanting control over every detail. This is more
possible in smaller communities than in bigger ones.

When I take "freedom / Selbstentfaltung of all as a precondition of my
own freedom / Selbstentfaltung" serious (as vice versa - but that's
not my point here), then complexity, dependency is no longer a threat
but a chance to grow. Then reducing complexity is no longer a goal to
accomplish something different (though it may be a goal in itself for
other reasons).

Of
course, the negative somewhat follows from the positive. But it still
felt necessary to mention it to achieve a contrast between what can now
be called a genuine anarchical technology (as the sun-furnace), a
technology somewhat opposed to anarchism (as the huge steelworks) and
probably technologies which could be deemed neutral from an anarchist
point of view (as a simple excavator probably). Now Free Software can be
investigated. First, it will be looked at as a technology, since that is
what it is materially, second, it will be considered as a technological
developmental method which of course it is connoted to more intimately.

Free software as a technology
Is Free Software as a technology genuinely anarchical, opposed to
anarchism or rather neutral?
This question will be approached by first stating some clear intuitions.
First it has to be noted, that software is a technology basically in
charge of controlling other things. It operates machines, tells them
what to do. As such, it is not a technology on its own. It is always
combined with some other machine which it controls.

Though software can and is used to control other machinery software is
also used directly by individuals - such as your and my mail client.

In the case of Free
Software, facing the lack of free machine software, this is always a
common personal computer, not a harvesting machine, a steel press or
anything.

This is not generally true. Software exists on many (technical) layers
and it is well possible that the control software of a harvesting
machine runs on a GNU/Linux operating system. And also the specialized
control software could be free. One important point is that often we
talk of embedded software here, which is a bit more complicated to
handle than software on a personal computer. However, I'd *love* to
hack that software inside my heating machinery ("Heizung") to do what
I want it to do...

So without personal computers, there is little use for Free
Software. Thus the question arises, in which way a personal computer can
be seen as an anarchical technology if it is being controlled by freely
developed software. To repeat: such computers could be rated genuinely
anarchical if they would promote decentralization, autonomy and the
creative and free development of humans.

One of the interesting points of personal computers is that they give
computing power to the masses. Those hippie hackers back in the 70's
and 80's were exactly after this. May be you are interested in

	http://erste.oekonux-konferenz.de/dokumentation/texte/seaman.html

for a reference.

If on the other hand such
computers are rather proliferating control, the concentration of
capital, centralization and such, they should be viewed as rather
opposed to anarchism - in this case: whatever the mode of production of
its software was.

Agreed.

The verdict is reached quickly. It stems from the current production of
personal computers. This production is highly monopolized, in very
centralized structures, the assembly-lines are globalized , exploit the
poverty of foreign countries by means of financial power and need very
sophisticated ressources. This holds for any major personal computer
brand. Personal computers have to be viewed as a typical product of a
high industrialization, involving all of its clearly anti-anarchical
structures. Thus free software as a technology is clearly opposed to
anarchism by means of its current dependence on personal computers.

On a technological basis personal computers do not differ
fundamentally from control computers embedded in some machinery. The
hardware is more or less the same. So if you have a problem with the
production of hardware as such then you need to give up *any*
computing power.

The
included obligation to buy a personal computer affirms and reinforces
the corresponding industry and the principles of its conduct.
In addition to the concept of Free Software, a concept of Free Hardware
(so to speak) would be needed as well to render Free Software into an
anarchical technology. We might question though whether such a thing is
even conceivable. The production of up-to-date PCs is so highly
specialized, drawing on extremly specific components and ressources,
that it seems rather impossible to conceptualize any decentral, small
and local fabrication for them. To achieve this, much more research and
development would first have to be undertaken into a direction entirely
different than the current, industrial one. Thus, a concept of "free
hardware" for the bearers of the current versions of free software, the
up-to-date PCs, seems still a little too fictitious to help the concept
of Free Software onto an at least principly safe ground. Here, Bookchin
has to be critized, or at least relativized as well. He placed great
emphasis on computers for the liberation of technologies, but that was
back in the 60ies and the computer Bookchin mentions as an example is
the DDP-124 from the Computer Control Company in Framingham. This was
still a rather simple device (although it already included ICs), not too
demanding in its production and the semiconductor-ressources and he
probably didn't foresee the development computers would subsequently
undergo.

This is the spirit of a revolution after which everything is different
- probably by some magic. In Oekonux there is this idea of a germ form
which develops in and on the basis of the old. Revolution - if at all
- is only a short scene in a long process. Today I think every
successful fundamental change took the germ form way.

Also this neglects software as such. I think it makes sense to
consider software separate from the hardware it runs on.

However, in comparison to these negative judgements, a point can be made
about a sensibly anarchical Free Software as well. It could be
conceivable, given our current technological situation, to program free
software for simple computers which are in use in simple machines as the
ones I have mentioned above: harvester, steel presses or things like
that. Given the case that these simple machines and computers can
principly be constructed and handled locally and decentral, without an
immediate dependence on large-scale industries, Free Software would very
genuinly promote a technological liberation of these small communities
which are now still very dependent on their deliverers. To give a case
in which this would be of actual relevance, Siemens and its "engagement"
in Third-World development can be stated. It has contracts with
development agencies and institutes and in turn provides many developing
countries with a lot of machines for agriculture, water and waste
management and so on. The machines are relatively simple to handle, but
they draw on specific parts and specialized machine-programming, thus
securing Siemens a huge and very dependent aftermarket. Free
machine-software in this case for the Siemens-machines would greatly
proliferate the freedom of the concerned countries. However, the Free
Software movement is not found here.

I don't think there is a general technical reason for this but policy
decisions made by Siemens. But we are talking of market relations
here so what do you expect. Also I could imagine that people working
with this type of machines would be willing to hack it and to share
the results - if they could get the code and the facilities necessary
to get changed versions deployed.

Thus the political difference Free Software makes materially, as a
technology, is rather small, not to say: zero. In its current shape, it
is only operated in personal computers, but these are severly
monopolized and reinforce centralization. Buying computers promotes the
according industries with affirmation and financial support. In
addition, personal computers have developed into a highly advanced and
technically demanding state which fundamentally hinders even the
conception of a thing like "Free Hardware".

Only if you demand that every ingredient of Free Hardware must be
findable in the woods ;-) .

Resulting from these
consideration, free software as a technology has to be regarded as
rather opposed to the idea of anarchism. The term doesn't fit here at all.

I'd agree. From my anarchist past I know you describe an anarchist
position very well - especially that of the communitarian brand.

Free software as a developmental method
After these investigations into the implications of Free Software as a
technology, another consideration can come into view: what about Free
Software as a purely developmental method? This of course is the more
decisive and genuine question since the whole political debate rather
refers to Free Software as a new method of development which opposes
some productive principles as such. Can this be regarded as anarchical?
Does it promote or does it restrict autonomy and freedom? The case is
not quite unambigious. It does of course operate without much apparent
hierarchy or authority, it is decentralized and free for all (who
already own a computer and know about programming) and these things are
good and have an anarchical value in a different aspect which will be
explored in greater detail in the next chapter. But on the other hand,
one also easily finds restrictive tendencies. Not only do still too
little free operating systems exist to speak of a truly decentralized,
non-authoritative method. Linux is still a very central frame here and
that is implicitly guided by Torvalds.

Or even explicitly. *But* everyone has the freedom to take what s/he
needs and build a better version herselfs. But of course this is such
a big burden only few take it. But this is what local production and
independence means: A big burden. In the end you *need* to do
everything on your own to be really independent. This sounds like hell
to me instead of heaven...

But even apart from that, Free Software development in its daily conduct
also uses a lot of the capitalist vocabulary, linguistic institutions
and: regulations. These start with GPL and the five rules for free
software development and currently end with the ever so bureaucratically
growing forest of CreativeCommons licenses. Sure: these rules are
intended to guarantee freedom and to protect Free Software and its
developers from exploitation.

Not its developers but the users. But what you are describing today I
see more as the border between a Free Form and the still dominant
capitalist surrounding. I have some thoughts about this in the Wiki
already. I'll post them here soon.

But at this point, Foucault has to be
mentioned. He has rightly wondered about where humans got the nonsense
idea from that freedom has to be guaranteed by regulations and
institutions. Freedom, by definition, is just the very absence of
regulations and institutions and never has either of one really
proliferated any real freedom. Regulations, even as moderate guidelines,
are restrictive, hierarchical and authoritative by nature, they cannot
reasonably be associated with freedom. And it is here that Free Software
development as a method fails significantly in providing a genuine
anarchical framework for any subsequent political use. It still very
much complies with the patterns of industrialized and bureaucratized
development in inventing new regulations, thus not leaving the
frameworks of hierarchy and capitalism at all. It collaborates with
these frameworks rather than it opposes them by principally affirming
their righteousness. The difference in content and reach doesn't make
much of a difference here any more: any method which principally affirms
and reinforces the mere idea of the necessity of regulations for
development can not sensibly be termed anarchical.

I agree that for many anarchists this is probably their definition of
freedom. I'd call this unlimited freedom. However, unlimited freedom
is exactly a liberal goal and it is based on the assumption of humans
which basically no relation to each other. Liberals then argue that
the state a posteriori needs to create that relation or otherwise
those unlimited free humans would kill each other. Many anarchists say
this won't happen.

I think that humans are foremost social beings and the idea of
unlimited freedom is kind of anti-social. I think every social entity
needs rules and regulations. The question to me is how they come about
and whether they are alienated from the goals of the (people engaged
in that) social entity. These regulations are not there to hinder
people's Selbstentfaltung but to help it by giving a firm ground where
they can pursue it.

Apart from licenses there are also lots of regulations called
standards. (Free) Standards are a good example of regulations which
make Selbstentfaltung possible after all. Only if some software
complies to a certain protocol it can talk successfully with other
software complying to the same protocol. Clearly a point of
regulation.

As with the autonomy / local production / dependency thing I think
this heritage from anarchism unlimited freedom needs to be rethought
thoroughly.

In addition, accompanying these regulations, another peculiar phenomenon
which also weakens the alleged anarchical character of Free Software in
its non-capitalistic aspect can be found: Free Software is often being
measured and valued in terms of its final proliferation of capitalism.
Quite a few promoters actually argue that the developmental method is
"effective" not because it proliferates freedom and autonomy, but
because it has a tremendous output with low costs which can in turn be
used to promote businesses. These lines of arguments then continue to
state the many new businesses which have opened up on the back of Linux
and how many big computer companies actually already profit
significantly from Free Software. If the developmental method of Free
Software is being measured in this way by its own promoters, its
intentions in as far as what these finally aim at cannot appear
anarchical in any genuine way any more which in turn renders the method
again and from another angle at least questionable.

If you assume that Free Software can have some anarchical value -
which you don't - then you could also argue that Free Software is able
to deliver this anarchical value directly into the heart of the beast
- like any germ form probably needs to to be successful. The question
is whether the germ form can be integrated.

In sum, free software development as a method appears
counter-capitalistic or anarchical only in a somewhat short-sighted and
premature manner, despite its own understanding. As so many
counter-movements do (if it can be accredited with this much of a
meaning beyond press rhetorics at all), it uses the very methods,
principles and words of its opponents in an only superficial
(content-related) negation to define itself as different.

Or even not really different.

And by doing
so, it doesn't recognize that it still operates within capitalism and
authority, just by the very use of its ways, even if they are in negation.
It is in this sense that the method of Free Software has to be judged as
bracketed by the ideological frameworks of capitalism and hierarchy. The
extent to which this misbelief is actually embedded in free software can
be shown in Toby Milsom who stated that the GPL uses copyright to
express anarchism. A strange idea.

:-)

The overall rating of Free Software development now doesn't look good.
It only happens within industrialized computers, thus it doesn't help to
build a decentralized society but rather promotes the opposite. And even
as a pure method, it still reproduces capitalism and authority by using
the according principles, concepts and standards. To judge it anything
anarchical or somewhat revolutionarily political now seems a strange idea.

I'd agree completely with the anarchical but I'd not agree about the
revolutionary potential of Free Software and similar phenomenons -
though it is certainly not anything like anarchists usually imagine a
revolution.

Free Software as a demonstration of productive anarchy
But is this the end of it? Does Free Software development really not
have anything political to it? This does not have to be denied: A
demonstrative value can be obtained from Free Software development as
well. This notion will now be developed out of the anarchical aspects
which can be found.
To do this, an argument within which the idea of anarchism in Free
Software development played a significant role has to be revised, namely
the productivity-argument for Free Software development, directed
against intellectual property rights and software patents. It is a very
central argument in the whole story, but until now didn't come into
consideration since the concern was with the more general relation
between Free Software development and anarchism in a political sense,
its factual appearance and possible shapes. The productivity-argument
however is more of an argument about what is good for software
development, not about what is good for anarchism. At this point
however, the focus will be on this argument and it will be shown how it
can be reinterpreted to state something essential about anarchism.
The productivity-argument holds that the anarchical mode of production,
in so far as it is unguided, open for everyone and (mostly) not
primarily profit-oriented, yields a very good and sophisticated
development, in fact, it even appears to be better than its capitalist
counterpart in many possible comparisons. This is empirically easily
proven and it is intended as a counter-argument to the capitalists' idea
that real development needs profit as a stimulus and a structure to work
efficiently and it thus has been a central point against the extension
of intellectual property rights.
Now in its current shape, this is an argument which basically states
that a partly anarchical mode of production is actually good for
software development. This has an attractive potential for anarchist
theory, if it is being reformulated a little into the following: an
anarchical mode of production is more productive and yields a better
development than the capitalistic mode of production. This is a
legitimite reformulation (in fact, a simplification) of the
productivity-argument and now, the focus is on anarchism and software
development can be taken to be a mere example. In this case, the
validity of the argument, which would substantially draw on Free
Software development as a case study, suggests that our current
authoritative-capitalist order of the world not only has those many
evils which it has already been accused of so frequently. In addition,
it would have proven that the authoritative-capitalist mode of
production is not even effective as such - which is sort of a core merit
it assigns to itself from within its own measures. Thus seen from a
global point of view, it is irrational to maintain the
authoritative-capitalist world order not only in light of all its
negative side-effects, but also as a mode of generally maintaining and
promoting humankind. Because it does neither as good as an anarchical
order would do. In comparison, it can now actually even be regarded
proven to hinder the development of humankind. Such a conclusion would
be of great importance since this topic so far has been only a matter of
intellectual debate. Free Software now could help this debate onto an
empirical footing, it could state a case in point for anarchism.
However, the critical remarks on behalf of Free Software production as a
method still have to be accredited to render the argument fully valid.
The mere existence of the few anarchical characteristics which initially
invited the equation does not suffice. To make the case of Free Software
development a good and truly valid example, it has to be stratified.
Free software would have to be produced entirely without any allegiance
to regulations or authorities.

I think this is not possible. Standards for instance are absolutely
necessary. And they are clearly regulations.

Any development restricted by such
regulative ideas can not be regarded as a genuine anarchical development
and would thus belatedly weaken the demonstrative value. Only if better
development also takes place in the total absence of anything
regulating, Free Software development can be accepted as an example for
a better, more productive and more creative humankind in absence of an
authoritative-capitalist order.

Thanks for this input, Sandro. I hope my comments and rambling can be
helpful in one way or the other.

I'd also would be very interested in a comment from FranzN. Large
parts of what you, Sandro, describe as demands for an anarchist
technology sound so well-known from FranzN's GlobalVillage idea.
Though during my anarchist times I never read Bookchin I already
thought that Bookchin and other communitarian anarchists could be very
close to the GlobalVillage idea.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
reached my mailbox since yesterday evening.

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT03153 Message: 2/4 L1 [In index]
Message 03304 [Homepage] [Navigation]