Profits, losses, contradictions (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: Business opportuities based on Free Software)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 08:55:24 +0200
Hi list!
6 days ago Christoph Reuss wrote:
Indeed, "privatizing the profits while socializing the losses" has always
been a core paradigm of capitalism.
May be it's the paradigm of every successful movement. Free Software
privatizes the profits while it socializes the losses as well.
However, this time the profits and losses are in terms of
Selbstentfaltung. All the fun goes to the Free Software developers
while wage slaves are (structurally) forced to do the dirty work :-) .
But that's really an interesting thought and may be worth thinking
about a bit longer.
In Christoph's sentence there is a core concept of value involved.
While Christoph understands only capitalist value here in my reply I
extended this value to the core paradigm of a social relationship /
society. In capitalism this is exchange value while in GPL society
this is Selbstentfaltung.
Then we need to think about what it would mean if the core of a
society would try to integrate the opposite of its core value, or - in
other words - its own contradiction. It would mean that the
contradiction would be drawn in the core of the society. A situation
which is probably not very sustainable. Thus IMHO a movement trying
this can not be successful. It follows logically that a movement which
wants to be successful needs to externalize contradictions to its core
principles.
And that is exactly what people in Free Projects do when they use the
paid for infrastructure given by capitalism. Really smart ;-) ...
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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