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Re: [ox-en] Free Software and social movements in South America



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Hi Stefan and all!




On April 30, 2007, Stefan answered to my mail of April 10.

I had said:

As Michael Bauwens, I think that Free Software is only a part of a more

global reality. A reality which could be specified as the new non market

practices allowed by the ICTs.

Stefan wrote:

Well, I guess I said something similar before, but this is so

important that it is worth repeating again and again: Non-market

practices are common and (nearly) everywhere. Families / raising

children are the standard example, religion / spirituality is another

one. Market practices could even not exist without non-market

practices.

However, a non-market practice is *NOT* per se something which leads

to a different society. (...)

The usage of ICT alone is also no useful indicator - as the mobile

phone example shows.

No, no. We need to be careful and need to analyze what really has the

potential to overcome capitalism.




OK. I agree. My formulation: "new non market practices allowed by the ICTs" is too large.

Even if the examples you give (raising children, religion, flat rate drinking, etc.) are not precisely "new" practices, it is true that the use of ICT or the fact of being "non market" or "new" are not sufficient criteria for a practice to be a potential contribution to overcome capitalism. ICTs also allow new practices of totalitarian control reinforcing the atmosphere of "big brother is watching you", for example.




---

I'm still holding the position that

the only area were capitalism can be overcome is to eradicate it by

its roots. And this root is the productive process. Organizing an

effective productive process with superior results is *the* stronghold

of capitalism. Unless this stronghold is beaten by even superior

results there is no hope to overcome capitalism. At least not in a

positive way.




I agree in the sense that a social system is based first of all on a specific way of organizing social production. To go beyond capitalism is to go beyond the way it organizes social production, and beyond means to have "superior results". But here two questions raise: first, "superior results" on what ground? Second, who or what ascertains or establishes this superiority?

You say in your mail: "This is where capitalism can be beaten on its own ground". But the "own ground" of capitalism is first of all producing "profit"... Producing goods for human needs is not (and cannot be) its essential goal. It does it only as it is a condition for selling and thus making profit. But, if it can't sell or make profit it does not produce.

If we look at the two previous historical transitions (the birth of feudalism from slavery, and the birth of capitalism from feudalism) things were relatively simple. Feudalism and capitalism had "superior results" than slavery and feudalism, simultaneously on the ground of social production (allowing society to fulfill its economic needs) and on the ground of allowing the ruling classes to maintain or increase their income. The Roman masters emancipated their slaves and transformed them into "coloni", the basic form of feudal serfs, also because they could see in practice that this was for them a more profitable relationship. Part of the European feudal nobility could also see how bourgeois manufactures and traders became richer than them and become capitalists themselves. The famous speech delivered by Marlon Brando in the film Queimada, persuading the colonial Portuguese landowners of the advantages of wage labor over slavery by defending the advantages of prostitution over marriage (you pay the prostitute only when you need her), that's the kind of "reason" which helped in the past the historical transitions between social systems. The "superior results" were recognized by a more or less important fraction of the ruling classes.

But, will this be the case for a transition into a post-capitalist, a non proprietary society? Can we imagine the capitalist ruling class saying: We recognize that the non proprietary logic gets "superior results" for human needs than the capitalist one, so, we abandon our property and profit rights over all the means of production in order to open the way to a more human society? That would be great! But we know it won't happen.

Capitalists may be convinced of the "superior results" of the non proprietary logic only as it is applied to specific activities and allows them to increase their profits and their properties, not to suppress them..




You say: "they spread Free Software and thereby spread the idea and also the spirit.

Isn't that great?" Yes, it is positive. In my previous mail I wrote: "they introduce some 'free practices' and thus extend them."

But it would be an illusion to think that this is a non limit process and that one day we shall wake up in a free non proprietary society without even notice-it.

My point here is not do deny the importance of capitalist introducing "free practices" in the process of production, but to stress the fact that, in the final analysis, the most important and fertile conviction created by FS practices will not be the profit/property limited conviction of the ruling classes but the conviction of the immense majority of the population (the non ruling classes) that a non profit/property society is possible.




---




You write:

* What are the goals of these social movements and how does Free Software

help these? How can Free Software help?

I start to think that this is the most important question at all.

Can't the goal of (classical) social movements always be expressed in

terms of money? The name "workers movement" for instance is a strong

hint to this because this work is about money.

The goals of the Free Software movement, however, can not be expressed

in terms of money. May be this is the fundamental difference!




In the same sense, in your mail of April 25, answering to the same question, you write:

Well, I understand that the main goal of these (classical) social
movements is to fight poverty. Is that true? Fighting poverty,
however, is a fight for more money.



This is indeed a crucial question. However, to begin, I would say that I do not agree with the reductionist equation you make between fighting poverty and fighting for more money. This is only fighting for LESS poverty. Why fighting poverty could not be a fight against the existence of poverty itself? Poverty, especially today (but not only), is not a "natural" thing but the result of the social organization, of the capitalist logic and this is something everyday easier to see. Why could not the fight against poverty be a fight against a society based on money? Since the beginning of the classical/workers movement there are always been more or less important minorities which expressed a more radical way to fight poverty by fighting the system itself. And they were not always people politically organized. In Poland, in 1980, for example, during the first spontaneous strikes in June and July against the raise of basic food products prices decided by the government, before the Solidarnosc's influence development, you could find in a local list of "demands": first, the lifting of the price increases; second, "the end of all privileges". That might seem ingenuous and unrealistic, but was a real expression of the complex nature of "classical" social movements. It is not so difficult to understand that one may wish at the same time to be less poor and the end of poverty itself, even it may be contradictory in some circumstances..




Your reductionist equation is true only if you identify classical social movements with the official unions spirit. Since the end of the XIX century the unions have played an important role in containing any fight against poverty into a fight for "less poverty" within the frame of a strict capitalistic/money logic. But, as the clashes between rank and file movement and unions directions show in the most radical fights, for example, this identity is only a superficial and partly state manipulated vision of social reality.

Just to take a recent and important example of classical social movement: the fight a year ago in France against a law instituting a new "low cost" contract for young people and allowing corporations to fire them without justification during the first two years. It lasted almost two months, involving high school and university students but also workers, often their parents, who participated in the street demonstrations all over the country. At the climax of the movement they were between 1 and 2.7 million people in the streets. ( http://www.lemonde.fr/web/infog/0,47-0 2-3224,54-755523 51-725561,0.html). The immediate goal of the movement was about money and conditions of hiring. But, in almost all the the demonstrations you could also see signs saying things like: "We don't want any kind of contracts", "The only solution is the end of capitalism", etc. Of course, they were in minority, but they were as spontaneous as the more immediate ones.

I think that the main contribution of FS spirit and practices will be to help (even if may take decades) these minority ideas to become majority because their content will appear less and less abstract and utopian.


But, as you say: "this raises the question of consciousness again."


Raoul Victor

7apr07




----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefan Merten" <smerten oekonux.de>
To: <list-en oekonux.org>
Cc: "Stefan Merten" <smerten oekonux.de>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ox-en] Free Software and social movements in South America


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hi Raoul and all!

Thanks for your thoughtful reply :-) .

3 weeks (21 days) ago Raoul wrote:
On  March 18, 2007 12:55 PM
Stefan Merten wrote:
* What kind of connection is there between social movements and Free
Software exactly? What is the nature of this connection? How strong is it
really?
Very interesting questions. But I think it would be useful to pose them in a
more general way, trying first to clarify what can be meant by "Free
Software" and by "social movements".

I guess this thread will take us yet another step closer to an
understanding of the concept of movement and what to check for in the
Oekonux framework.

As Michael Bauwens, I think that Free Software is only a part of a more
global reality. A reality which could be specified as the new non market
practices allowed by the ICTs.

Well, I guess I said something similar before, but this is so
important that it is worth repeating again and again: Non-market
practices are common and (nearly) everywhere. Families / raising
children are the standard example, religion / spirituality is another
one. Market practices could even not exist without non-market
practices.

However, a non-market practice is *NOT* per se something which leads
to a differnt society. It is even possible that non-market practices
like racism (just an example - may be not the best one) is not really
what we want to see in a next society.

Those non-market practices can involve using ICT as well as they can
ignore it. For instance the free time activities of the younger
generation today completely relies on ICT (aka mobile phones). So far
I can not see any revolutionary potential in making dates for joined
flat rate drinking, however.

What I want to emphasize: In our attempt to find germ forms we need to
be careful not to label everything which is not capitalist as
anti-capitalist or even with a potential to overcome capitalism. If
things would be so simple capitalism would not have been possible in
the first place.

The usage of ICT alone is also no useful indicator - as the mobile
phone example shows.

No, no. We need to be careful and need to analyze what really has the
potential to overcome capitalism. I'm still holding the position that
the only area were capitalism can be overcome is to eradicate it by
its roots. And this root is the productive process. Organizing an
effective productive process with superior results is *the* stronghold
of capitalism. Unless this stronghold is beaten by even superiorer
results there is no hope to overcome capitalism. At least not in a
positive way.

I don't know whether there is a term to name
that. Michael put the emphasis on P2P, but giving to that term a very
general meaning, as he put-it: "the open/free (input), participatory
(process/governance) and commons-oriented (output) solutions". That reality
can be also seen through other (non contradictory) dimensions, as for
example, different ways of "sharing" without commercial relationships:

sharing efforts: free software;

sharing digital goods: P2P;

sharing material means (computer power): Grid computing, (Stanford Folding,
etc.)

Which are all - more or less - productive examples.

In any case, I think it is more fruitful to take this global new reality to
be analyzed in its links with the "social movements" and not only FLOSS.

Agreed. And I for one do see similarities in Wikipedia, OpenAccess,
FreeCulture to name a view of the more visible.

But we also must not link it with everything. And IMHO we need to be
extra careful with our personal pets.

About "social movements". The first reality considered by Stefan's is what
he calls the "classical" social movements, in Latin America and in the
more industrialized countries. Michel Bauwens conceives a more global social movement as he implicitly considers a movement leading to "the new society".

A social movement could be defined as a movement involving a more or less
extended part of the society acting in order to try to have an effect on a
specific aspect (or even on all aspects ) of social life.

Ok. But this raises the question of consciousness again. But I can
agree that for a definition of movement including at least a little
consciousness makes sense.

As such, they may
be more or less conservative or opposed to the reigning social order. Of
course, those we are the most interested in are the second ones.

Why?

Copyright law protects Free Software and I'm glad that there is a law
system which allows that and prevents capitalists to re-appropriate
that software. And if a government furthers Free Software for national
reasons than for me this is not a first class reason but hey - they
spread Free Software and thereby spread the idea and also the spirit.
Isn't that great?

No, no, again I think things are not so simple.

This question takes all its relevance when you see that the ICT (specially
Internet and mobile phones) played and important role during the social
movements in France, in 2003 (against the pension reforms) and specially in
2006 (against a new low cost contract for young workers), helping the
attempts of people trying to self-organize outside the control of the
unions. The monopole of information and the representation of unions, these powerful weapons of the unions to keep their control over the movements has
been questioned and some times openly contested. IMHO, this is something
that will develop in the future.

But IMHO it has nothing to do with the Oekonux question. To make a
point: To me there is no difference for what purpose ICT - of Free
Software for that matter - is used. The point is *not* in using an
advanced technology as an opaque artifact. Everyone who can afford it
can do this - and does it. A call on a mobile phone during a strike is
no different from a similar call calling the police.

The difference begins when people start to develop a special
relationship to these things - may be it can be called a productive
relationship - may be in contrast to a pure consuming relationship. If
they use it in a productive way changing it to their liking, according
to their needs. That is something capitalism can not equally well for
principal reasons. The review of Eric v. Hippel's book will outline
this. This is where capitalism can be beaten on its own ground.

By the way, I just read that beginning March, in Copenhagen, during a week
of fights between the police and youths defending the symbolic Ungdomshuset
(House of youth) sold by the new mayor, Internet and mobile phones played
also a useful role. The police draw the conclusion that it was necessary to
find a way to trouble that kind of communication, specially a network of
Internet sites.

I don't know the details but this could be an example where IMHO there
is really a connection: If those youngsters modify or even write the
software to exactly suit their needs.

Social practices that may show that humans can organize themselves in a
different way, in a non capitalist way, is thus a vital element to overcome
that deadlock. Helping to develop the visibility of what could be a non
capitalist society is certainly one the most important connections between
FS, et al. and social movements.

I totally agree.

At a more immediate level, the new ICT and
the "FS spirit" may transform the social movements themselves, the way they
organize, their goals and means, increasing their power and fruitfulness.

IMHO: Free Software spirit yes, ICT no.

However, the question is whether (classical) social movements did
*not* employ Free Software spirit at all. When transforming the term
"Free Software spirit" back to the (classical) social movements I'd
call it solidarity. Isn't solidarity *the* fundamental value of these
movements?

* What are the goals of these social movements and how does Free Software
help these? How can Free Software help? (SM)

I start to think that this is the most important question at all.
Can't the goal of (classical) social movements always be expressed in
terms of money? The name "workers movement" for instance is a strong
hint to this because this work is about money.

The goals of the Free Software movement, however, can not be expressed
in terms of money. May be this is the fundamental difference!

IMHO, how to "help" (contribute, participate in) social movements is
certainly one of the most important and fruitful questions for Oekonux, as
it is based on the idea that "the principles of the development of Free
Software may be the foundation of a new economy which may be the base for a
new society".

The answers are surely multiple and future developments of reality will be
determinants to find them. It could be a good program of work for the future
of Oekonux.

I agree if we distinguish carefully between (classical) social
movements whose goals can be expressed in terms of money and movements
for Free Something in the sense of Wikipedia / OpenAccess / Free
Software / ...


Mit Freien Grüßen

Stefan

- --
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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