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George N. Dafermos * Global Pessimists or Global Optimists - How the Free/Open Source Software Community responds to the Global Pessimists and the Counter-Globalisation Movement [1/2] (was: [ox-en] Conference documentation / Konferenzdokumentation)



[This is so long that I need to break it up in two parts]

Global Pessimists or Global Optimists
=====================================

George N. Dafermos [Georgedafermos at discover.org]

How the Free/Open Source Software Community responds to the Global Pessimists and the Counter-Globalisation Movement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acknowledgements, Motivation and Objectives.
============================================

This paper, and the motivation for writing it, would have not come
into being had not been for the Oekonux Project[1] and the burning
thoughts it is concerned with. Allow me to briefly summarise a few of
the notes I kept during the 2nd Oekonux Conference[2]:

...I was told that market competition is by principle hindering
knowledge sharing, blocking the creation of networks of collaborative
entrepreneurship (amid which innovation admittedly thrives), and
stifling the creative abrasion that is so vital for technological
innovation. ...The voice that money relations are been rendered
useless due to emerging technological developments that empower
society to reproduce and disseminate digital artefacts at negligible
cost was also echoed. ...The discussion quickly resorted to the
insufficiency of price mechanisms as a means to co-ordinate and
organise production activity, and that online co-operation is not
subject to monetary returns, and thus money and other price mechanisms
should be abolished in their entirety, as they are useless if not
utterly catastrophic. ...I also took part in a workshop expanding on
the distinction between open source and free software as ultimately
depending upon ideological beliefs[3]. According to this workshop,
free software supporters are supposedly leftist in political
orientation whereas open source supporters are more inclined towards
the right in favour of laisser-faire economics, scoffing at the
protective and regulative role of the state and unwilling to pay
taxes, in essence being more entrepreneurial and individualistic, yet
seemingly anarchic and disorganised in perspective when compared to
the rather subordinate to communal organisation dynamics free software
segment. This workshop's ideas took quite some time to settle in my
mind. What this dichotomy between open source and free software
actually meant to invoke is that open source translates into ruthless
global capitalism and socially-indifferent free markets whereas free
software is synonymous to an utopian Marxist society run in such a
decentralised manner, that even Max Stirner, were he still in life
today, would develop a fondness for.

Of course, the above notes are just that - a few of the notes I
scribbled down on my PDA. So, they inevitably reflect only a small
fragment - an out-of-context part of my personal reflections - on and
of what the Oekonux Project is. At the same time, the discontent with
globalisation and the abstract forces of evil and ill the latter
seemed to subject democracy to, were all the rage. Negri and Hardt's
Empire had only been recently published, and it provided a refreshing
perspective to the discussion of what globalisation really is, without
resorting to theories of global conspiracy, nor suggesting an
US-engineered beast gone amok on the verge of terminal capital-induced
psychosis [4].

Introduction
============

Many proponents of free/open source software (F/OSS) are fiercely
opposed to the ongoing march of global capitalism and unfettered
global markets. On these premises, it's no coincidence that several of
the swathe of evil forces that globalisation has allegedly unleashed
and the anti-globalisation movement has tentatively short-listed, have
found fertile ground for adoption within F/OSS circles. Such
unwelcoming effects of globalisation include but are not restricted to
the devastating influence that corporate behemoths and multinational
corporations exert over nation states' sovereignty, effectively
inducing labour alienation through work coercion and 'sweatshops' and
aggressively driving out smaller-scale regional producers; social
dislocation through paralysis of community cohesion processes;
destruction of public congregation spaces as a result of turning
public policy into an empty rhetoric; and abolishing locally and
regionally - rooted social identity through a process of gradually
substituting culture with marketing artefacts. The above ills that are
presumably brought about by a twisted, corporate - hijacked form of
globalisation provide the cornerstones around which the
anti-globalisation movement has coalesced and against which the
movement continues to mobilise resources.

One need not look further than at the nologo website [5] - a weblog
dedicated to discussing the ideas present in Naomi klein's No Logo
book which is one of the prominent manifestos embraced by the
anti-globalisation community - to realise the degree of
interconnectedness between F/OSS and anti-globalisation. The nologo
website is powered by slashcode [6] which is the underlying software
platform that slashdot [7] - the most popular and widely accessed
F/OSS community website worldwide - runs upon. Moreover, the company
employed to support the nologo online undertaking (to customise and
support the slashcode platform that powers nologo is Openflows [8].
Openflows is a commercial organisation making money out of enabling
other organisations to adopt F/OSS and offering support and
customisation services on F/OSS technologies. But Openflows is not
simply a commercial company. It is run in harmony with the F/OSS
community ethics and is also a public forum dedicated to the
continuation of democratic public discourse centred on matters of
interest to the F/OSS community. In effect, Openflows is being
inextricably embedded in the F/OSS community [9]. You may think that
the above assumption is anecdotal at its best and says nothing more
than software adoption and technology transfer. In a way, I agree. The
above correlation offers only a tiny glimpse of the extent of overlap
between the F/OSS community and the anti-globalisation movement, yet
it is indicative of an existent relationship between the
anti-globalisation movement and the F/OSS community since Openflows,
as we said, is more than just a company, and nologo, as we also said,
is more than a website promoting a book.

Don't take me wrong: there is nothing wrong with being liberal, free
markets advocate, communist, atheist or god fearing. It's people's own
right to be pessimists or optimists about the effects of
globalisation. And it rests upon people to decide whether they will
embrace or dismiss globalisation or any other socio-economic idea and
process. This paper is not political and will not propose any
manifesto or anything that has the slightest to do with political
organisation. It will be solely an analysis based on what I would call
The Two Sides of the Same Coin. By this I mean that on the one hand
the F/OSS community rallies against the shortcomings of globalisation
(and so can be said to be an anti-globalisation movement, in essence a
global pessimist in its own right) but on the other hand, the means by
which it opposes to globalisation demonstrate that it is an emerging
example of the constantly changing face of globalisation, and in my
view the F/OSS community can be seen as a leading global optimist.

In more detail, the F/OSS community counters the global pessimists on
four grounds: Firstly, marketing within the community and marketing of
F/OSS technologies is not coercive or corporate-engineered in any
sense, instead it is of "the markets are conversations" kind [10].
Second, community formation, cohesion, identity and norms are of
paramount importance for F/OSS development models to be fruitful and
sustainable. And even though software is at the forefront of global
capitalism [11], it hasn't altered or diminished the significance of
community ethics or community development. Third, as far as companies
whose business and revenue model is based on F/OSS are concerned,
industrial fragmentation and consolidation are avoided as a result of
intra-industry sharing of information in the form of obligatory
exchange of product specifications (source code) [12] and indeed the
political processes of the community dictate corporate behaviour and
precede firm strategy.

The paper will discuss how the F/OSS community and F/OSS development
models counter the thesis of global pessimists and exemplify an
evolving, yet truly democratic and socially-conscious, model of
globalisation centred on community involvement, global co-ordination
and local responsiveness, proliferating forums for democratic public
discourse and community action, and partnership models between
developer-user communities and commercial companies with the latter
'succumbing' to the demands of the former. This paper does not attempt
to define globalisation, althought it reviews and critically examines
a plethora of arguments raised within circles debating globalisation's
pros and cons. In my opinion, globalisation can be hugely beneficial,
embracing small, big, poor and rich alike and bridging the gap between
them, but this should by no means be interpreted to mean that
globalisation ought to be left to its own devices. I adopt a view
similar to Charles Leadbeater's (2002) and George Soros's (2002) [13],
a worldview [14] that compels us to acknowledge that many social
wounds are being healed as a result of globally increasing
participation in the administration of market-based processes, and
that we should seek to improve markets and institutions rather than
destroy them in their entirety. Therefore, in light of the changing
face of capitalism, I will argue that F/OSS represents a fresh
approach to many of the critical dilemmas touched upon by
anti-politics.

What does the F/OSS Community stand to win from Globalisation?
==============================================================

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the F/OSS is a global community like no
other. Home to scores of IT professionals and computer science
enthusiasts, whose talent is frantically sought by organisations
competing in technology based industries in exchange for hard cash and
highly promising stock options and career prospects, one would
reasonably assume that the community is an ardent supporter of
globalisation.

Despite the current economic downturn that has admittedly deprived a
good many software and hardware developer from a steady wage,
technological know-how is definitely a skill worth picking up. As
George Gilder says, "My children aren't learning Spanish. They are
learning C++" [15]. Gilder does not refer to children's natural
infatuation with technology, instead he emphasises that technologic
prowess can nowadays be the single most decisive factor guaranteeing a
luxurious career in the epicentre of a very competitive, fast-pacing
and highly rewarding global labour market. Thus, in a classic revival
of the yuppie culture that reached its peak during the 1980s, one
would expect that any young person with the ambition to rise to the
top would seriously contemplate a career in technology rather than the
fast lane of high finance. Although many might find the above
syllogism laughable, a good degree of economic reality adds further
credibility to this scenario. During the dot-com craze, who would deny
that the (new?) elite were funnelling their labour ingenuity in
Silicon Valley in hope that a hot new technology would make them
filthy rich fast or world famous? It is not my intent to celebrate the
climate of irrational exuberance that reigned during the mid-to late
90s [16]. Nevertheless, whether the goal is riches or fame, the
assumption is perfectly laudable: the knowledge worker of the future
is IT literate. And one aspect of the oft-cited digital divide is that
inability to understand technology at working level would
automatically result in diminishing career prospects.

In fact, prominent studies delving into the F/OSS development model
conclude that market pressures are of primary importance to those who
choose to join the community. Lerner and Tirole (2000) maintain that
signalling effects such as enhancing one's employability or standing
better chances of joining a dot.com are a prime incentive for
involvement in F/OSS projects. David Lancashire (2001) similarly
asserts that "hacking falls and rises inversely to its opportunity
cost" and hence F/OSS developers tunnel their labour pains where
market opportunities gravitate [17]. Or as Gregor Rothfuss (2002: 93)
wittingly puts it, "reputation does not put food on the table".

Considering the success that several of the community's brainchildren,
such as the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server,
currently enjoy in the marketplace would only reinforce the view that
the F/OSS community is globalisation-friendly. F/OSS is a booming
market, no doubt. Hordes of micro-businesses and mega-corporations
alike are discovering new win-win opportunities for unprecedented
growth by competing in open source time. It is no coincidence that two
prominent manifestos of the open source world, the Cathedral and the
Bazaar (Raymond 1999) and Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source
Revolution (DiBona)et al. 1999), shun any references to Marxist
utopias and make a conscious effort to pull a business case for open
source. The reason, besides, for the distinction between open source
and free software is practically boiling down to commercial
attractiveness. Only by departing from the negative connotations
embedded in the term free software and in parallel devising a
commercially uplifting promotional strategy conveying the business
advantages of open source to corporations, coupled with less
commercially restrictive licenses, would F/OSS software become
prevalent in the marketplace (DiBona et al. 1999 This transition and
the ideological chasm that came with it has led many to assume that
free software supporters are supposedly leftist in political
orientation whereas open source supporters are more inclined towards
the right in favour of laisser-faire economics, scoffing at the
protective and regulative role of the state and unwilling to pay
taxes, in essence being more entrepreneurial and individualistic, yet
seemingly anarchic and disorganised (less cohesive) in perspective
when compared to the rather subordinate to communal organisation
dynamics free software segment (Seaman 2002).)

Ideological stances aside, what could have possibly been a more
spectacular and symbolic success story of global capitalism than a
student project done for fun turned global community of hackers
boasting unparalleled programming capacity turned operating system of
choice for scores of corporations, and in the process spawning a
swathe of commercial enterprises and freelancers? The student project
turned global community turned commercially viable playground [18] is
obviously Linux. To outsiders, the growth that Linux has enjoyed seems
inexplicable by conventional logic and practically non-stopping as the
Linux platform creeps into more markets and areas of commercial
deployment such as embedded systems and desktops. But according to
evolutionary economics, the Linux phenomenon can well be understood as
the marvel of capitalist reality, in fact representing the most
defining feature of growth in a capitalist system - creative
destruction [19] - which sweeps away established market power by
changing the rules of the game.

Nevertheless, had not been for resilient global communication
networks, the community's creative endeavours would not have been
possible to co-ordinate so as to give rise to technologies as
sophisticated and complex as Linux. The community is a networked
tribe, owing much to the network of networks for sustaining its
critical processes. Because of the Internet, it can operate like
always-on clusters of neurons in a massive brain-shaped mosaic
galvanised by electronic impulses. For certain, the Internet is not
only enabling new forms of collaborative work to unveil their full
potential, it is also the single most powerful driver of
globalisation. Digitisation and global communication grids facilitate
novel re-configurations of economic and social activity without which
the promise of a globally connected world would remain constantly
elusive. Disseminating knowledge in all its possible structures and
expressions, from collective cultural experiences to scientific
artefacts and complete end-user products, the Internet is the catalyst
for pushing beyond the boundaries. But as much as the community owes
to the Internet, there is more that globalisation owes to the F/OSS
community. A great deal of the software that makes the Internet what
it is is free/open source software and as a result the community is
inextricably linked to the Internet's past, present and future
development. Playing such a prominent role toward global
interconnectedness, the community invariably boosts the ongoing march
of globalisation at all levels of socio-economic, cultural, artistic,
political and technological transformation when it acts as a power hub
for openness in any of those domains.

For all the above reasons, the F/OSS community could be seen as a
global player well positioned to reap full benefit out of the
avalanche of systemic transformations that the combined effect of
digitisation and globalisation is poised to bring about. However, in
stark contrast to what would have been otherwise reasonable, the F/OSS
community has a gargantuan in size overlap with the anti-globalisation
movement.

Anti-Organisation and Anti-Intellect
====================================

Using no means other than text messaging on mobile phones [20], the
Internet, and word-of-mouth, the anti-globalisation movement has come
up with a meaningful way to establish a virtuous circle of social
connections that are empirically impossible to break. Organised in
autonomously run clusters and groups that merge when the time comes to
hit the streets, these social connections morph into raw power for
concerted action. Ever since its first roar in 1999 during the Seattle
demonstrations, the brute force of the movement has effectively
infiltrated all realms of social and political discourse related to
globalisation. Although electronic forums solely dedicated to the
movement mushroom, the movement feeds off of existing networks and
communication media and energises them to its cause, in essence
turning them into impenetrable collaboration venues. It seems
impossible to bring the anti-globalisation demonstrations to a halt,
mainly due to their being organised in a decentralised fashion which
allows no time slack for hierarchically elaborate responses to occur
[21].

Leaderless at first glance [22], the movement mobilises a wide
spectrum of resources encompassing all fields of socio-economic and
bio-political life. To achieve this heterogeneity in its core, which
is instrumental for the coherence of a global grassroots organisation,
the movement's key message has to be flexible enough in order to
accommodate the largest possible degree of subjectivism, pluralism and
diversity. Having said that, it should be obvious why the movement has
no structured agenda for debate, instead it resorts to adjust and
modify its intellect whenever possible on the pretext of widening
inclusive civic participation. The movement, in other words, neither
excludes anyone from joining in nor marginalizes any individual
opinion. Anyone can join the demonstration whatever their reasons for
protesting might be. That has proven to be a huge advantage. For not
only the movement grows constantly bigger and more powerful as it
fuses more viewpoints and groups together, but its case cannot be
answered [23].

It is not my intent to diminish the contribution that people could
make to the institutions of democracy by becoming involved in the
decision-making process. The anti-globalisation movement demonstrably
proves that the constituent masses are not willing to be passive
consumers of reality. Apathy, for all the seduction it superficially
offers, can be destructive; a basic element of socio-political
decadence that wears away our capacity for self-rule. And fortunately,
apathy is not one of the qualities of the movement. The fear is that
the anti-globalisation rhetoric contains the seeds of its own
dystopia. By employing such a vague and diverse intellect, the
movement puts pragmatism in jeopardy. It threatens to close off the
future by nourishing a culture of global pessimism to a scale the
world has never experienced before. Escapism, utopianism, and
pessimism are a recipe for destruction, especially because they are so
appealing. By rejecting all efforts to leap into forward-thinking
consciousness, the movement runs the risk of sacrificing a potentially
better future. The future is not irreversible and not necessarily
harmful, as many would like us to believe. We could well be better off
or worse off, if globalisation and corporations are left to their own
devices. Apathy, as I've stressed above, is not the solution, and it
would be ludicrous to advocate such a disengaged course of action. But
by considering forces currently underway - changes the lie inside the
belly of the beast - coupled with the emergence of a new commercial
actor - community-managed projects (and the way the community
consequently interfaces with commercial organisations) we shall be
able to further our understanding of how to practically bring a
socially responsible marketplace arrangement in life whilst not
holding the future back.

F/OSS Intersects with Anti-globalisation movement
=================================================

It should come as no surprise that a good part of the F/OSS community
is sympathetic to the anti-movement's plight. To begin with, the
Thomas Paine of the Net - Richard M. Stallman - launched his GNU
Project and founded the Free Software Foundation because he felt his
non-commercial community had been shattered by corporate interests.
When most of the hackers employed by the now legendary AI Lab at MIT
were lured away by commercial organisations offering them wages that
exceeded those of academic establishments, and the AI Lab started
resembling a ghost town with all but two programmers, one of them
being Richard Stallman, gone to work on developing proprietry
technologies, Stallam was enraged. The F/OSS community's roots can be
traced back to open systems and the 60s, however the start of the GNU
Project signalled the beginning of a new era of computing centred
around digital freedom, openness, and community values, and it still
remains the most vibrant and exciting political idea on the Net. It
should be borne to mind that the GNU Project not only meant to produce
a free alternative to the Unix operating system, but it aimed at
re-creating an open community whose ideals, norms and ethics would be
cut off from corporate agendas.

Simlar examples pointing to the same conclusions abound. In what ought
to be seen as perhaps the most defining document of the Internet
community, the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,
Electronic Frontier Foundation's co-founder and Grateful Dead lyricist
John Perry Barlow makes it crystal clear that there is no room for
governments on the Internet. Writing in 1996, Barlow described the
Internet as a place unlike any other, where physical world laws and
consitutions have no power and declared that no take-over attempt by
governments will be tolerated. Although there is no reference to
commercial interests and organisations in that landmark document,
there is no reason to believe that corporations are exempt from what
applies to governments [24]. Put bluntly, neither organisations nor
governments are welcomed or allowed in cyberspace.

In a similar vein, hackers have always valued decentralisation for its
own sake and rejected potentially abusive forms of central governance
(Levy 1984). In the words of David Clark:

"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus
and running code" [25]

A garganduan in size overlap between the anti-globalisation movement
and the F/OSS community is evident when considering the widespread
deployment of F/OS software by tactical media activists. The
Independent Media Center (IMC), also known as Indymedia, is a
fully-fledged syndicated news network that emerged during the first
roar of the anti-globalisation movement in 1999 in Seattle to bypass
traditional media and provide an alternative coverage of the events
from the perspective of the protesters themselves. According to its
homepage at Indymedia.org, "Indymedia is a collective of independent
media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots,
non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the
creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth".
Since 1999, tens of local indymedia sites have sprung up to support
the organisation of protests and provide quality radical journalism on
issues the mainstream media would report insufficiently, if at all.
While indymedia does not explicitly seek to contribute to the
organisation of the protests, it nonetheless does so by reporting the
events - something police forces seem to be aware of. "By the act of
reporting they (de facto) direct the protests. The Italian police at
the Genoa protests broke in, smashed computers, stole tapes and discs,
then lined people in a building across the road up against a wall and
beat them unconscious" (Headmap 2003: 83). Despite its radical
character, many believe that indymedia rivals the reach of a good many
news network such as CNN, which is an outstanding accomplishment given
that the content is mostly provided by volunteers for free. While it
is true that many of these indymedia sites are powered by F/OSS, the
connection between the F/OSS world and anti-globalisation extends
beyond software and technology, even though it is clear the the
selection and evolution of software for indymedia sites takes place
within a politically conscious environment [26]. The most lucid
illustration, that I've come across, of this connection is set forth
in the uniquely bizarre and unconventional in terms of style, but rich
in literary wit and well-informed opinions, self-published work called
Headmap: mapping out spatialised computing:

Both Linux and IMC are examples of new forms of collectively
constructive community made possible by computer networks. Both have
relatively flat, contribution and merit-based hierarchies (Ibid : 90)

In the seminal Hacker Ethic, Pekka Himanen (2001) argues that hacking
is not confined to programming ingenuity, and hackers exist in every
conceivable sphere of life [27]. A hacker can be a gardener, a painter
or even a politician. Hacking is about an attitude towards life, a
mode of conscioussness, and a pattern of explorative thinking, says
Himanen, that is characterised by passion for one's work and eagerness
for all aspects of freedom. Hackers value and respect their
surrounding community, believe that money has no intrinsic value, and
motivate their activities with the goals of social worthiness and
openness. Himanen masterfully contrasts the Hacker Ethic to Max
Weber's Protestant work ethic - the sociological basis of capitalist
society that defines how man should regard work and life inside
organisations, and assumes that even seemingly purposeless and
painstakingly repetitious work that requires man to submit himself to
the instruments of capitalism is blessed - to arrive at the rather
interesting conclusion that "the hacker ethic is a new work ethic that
challenges the attitude toward work that has held us in the thrall for
so long" (2001: ix). Therefore, according to the hacker ethic, the
F/OSS community is not only delivering a blow to the spirit of
capitalism, threatening to replace it with what Himanen and Manuel
Castells call Nethic and the spirit of informationalism, but it also
exposes us to a new modus operandi revolving around playfulness,
creativity, community values, and social accountability [28].

The F/OSS community had always been confronting corporate empires,
whether that had been IBM, Microsoft, SCO or anyone else. Despite the
community's love and hate relationship with Microsoft (ef newsforge,
Krishnamurthy 2001 which is well documented) [29], and the furious
anger that SCO's recent ridiculous ownership claims over Linux code
snippets have provoked (ef the community has always been dubious about
commercial companies'true intentions). As Taylor emphasises:

"We can not expect our industrial partners, such as IBM and HP, to
help with patent defense or with the matter of software patenting in
general. While those companies are often our friends, their interests
also come into conflict with ours. Some of them use software patents
to generate revenue or provide monopolies for their businesses. Thus,
IBM has been calling for increases in software patentability, despite
the fact that this is contrary to IBM's involvement in Open Source."
http://perens.com/Articles/Taylor/

Of course, IBM's notorious history of selling computers to Nazis that
were used to count and record Jews-to-be-sent-to-cencentration-camps
(Black 2002) is not helping much to overturn suspicions of underhand
corporate games and hidden agendas.

After all corporations demonstrably piggyback on social reality, so
what would prevent them from applying their expansionist logic to
cyberspace? The corporate takeover of the Internet is not an
Orweillian syndrome, it is underway since the first day the Web went
through corporate radars. In the Age of Access, Jeremy Rifkin (2000)
is warning us that the emergence of cyberspace and the socio-cultural
relations it produces are a perfect fit with commercial aspirations to
turn culture into a paid-for experience. As the gravity of power
shifts from commodity-based commerce and relations of physical
ownership to intangible services and commodified marketer-customer
relationships, and access to networks becomes the new economy's modus
operandi, the Internet is consistently exploited to turn culture into
a commodity. Rifkin claims that the commercial sphere steadily
swallows the cultural sphere, and this process, which Rifkin sees as
inevitable, is further accelerated by cyberspace. Naturally, the F/OSS
community is not comfortable with such a future shock, and Rifkin's
dystopian view finds its most powerful counter-argument in the GPL
Society proposed by Stefan Merten [30] (2001) of the Oekonux Project.
Merten's thesis is the exact opposite of Rifkin's: the principles
inscribed in F/OSS development are a harbinger of a new era of
production freed from capitalist rules and constraints, and these
collaborative principles are catalysing new non-commercial structures
in more and more spheres of production activity. The central question
in the GPL Society could be described as: Since the F/OSS paradigm is
so successful in producing first-class software, and software like
other information artefacts are the pillars of economic value in the
current phase of capitalist development, then why hasn't free software
infected capitalism by an order of magnitude so great that to become
the dominant mode of production? The point here is not to examine
neither Rifkin's nor Merten's argument in great detail. But it is all
the more evident that the GPL Society argues that the commercial
sphere will be swept away by the collaborative, non-commercial sphere,
a manifestation of which is the development paradigm typified by F/OS
software. Of course, not everyone in the F/OSS community agrees with
Merten [31], but then again, none explicitly denies the possibility
that the F/OSS development paradigm might be applicable to other
industries. Perhaps the best illustration of this tension is the
archetypical open source manifesto - the Cathedral and the Bazzar. In
this book, Eric S. Rayomond argues that the collaborative and the
commercial sphere are not mutually exclusive, and they can co-exist in
harmonious symbiosis [32]. However, in the final section of "[..]"
where Raymond explores the potential applicability of the F/OSS
development methodology to other domains, he concludes that time has
not yet come for a triumphant victory of the methodology over other
industries, but time is on the side of the methodology rather than
against it.

Not easily dismissed as pure fantasy, the corporate takeover of the
Internet assumes many forms. In Imagined Electronic Community , Chris
Werry (1999) chronicles the migration from a new frontier populated by
primitives to a polished e-commerce utopia. Werry identifies three
major stages. The online community was first seen as peripheral to
business goals or even as an obstacle to be overcome, not to say a
threat. The second stage had taken hold by 1995 and was mainly
concerned with revenue streams generated by e-marketing "as dreams of
online sales fade and advertising and strategies of interactive
marketing become the primary means of making money on the Internet".
And from 1997 onwards, 'online community' is increasingly portrayed as
the core of all e-commerce endeavours, however still driven by
e-marketing expectations in a paranoia of mass customisation and
personalisation.

What can free/open source software do to counterbalance this threat?
Iconoclastic law professor Lawrence Lessig (1999) sees free/open
source software as one of the last vestiges of freedom online. In the
landmark Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig warns against the
imminent danger of turning the Internet to an instrument of control.
The Internet has no nature, says Lessig, for the Internet is a
collection of software and hardware layers. Thus, one could affect the
'nature' of the Internet by replacing any of the existent layers with
one that favours control and regulable behaviour. Neither governments
nor corporations alone are capable of compromising the current
Internet, argues Lessig, however, a shady alliance between the two
worlds could change everything on the pretext of facilitating secure
e-commerce transactions and containing cyber-crime. A powerful check
on the shady alliance's power is free/open source software, says
Lessig.

In all, grounds for concern and agitation with the commercial world
are not in short supply. As individual users of popular file swapping
software are charged with criminal offences, and people are put behind
bars because of tweaking technology they have themselves bought with
hard cash, the rage within the community's circles grows stronger than
ever. Nowadays, it seems that governments and corporations are not
content with solely regulating behaviour online. They strive to force
a regime change whereby fiddling with technology is to be illegal. If
granted legitimacy by the courts, such a regime change would, without
exaggeration, classify the F/OSS community as an outlaw too,
effectively criminalizing thousands of technologists. This fact alone
appears to be a sufficient reason to the effect of marshalling
community resources against the takeover of free creativity,
innovation by end-users and DIY networked ethic.

Corporate Hijacked Globalisation
================================

It must have been surprising for Kenichi Ohmae to witness how
receptive Western audiences would be to anti-globalisation concerns
and talks of globalisation to be cast with suspicion and scepticism at
every conceivable occasion. In his books, where the notion of
globalisation is introduced for the first time, globalisation is
synonymous with the expansion of autonomous, yet interdependent
corporate networks that bring better products and services to market.
In co-operating and aligning their operating processes with other
organisations across the borders, business managers develop a global
worldview of the marketplace, and because of this added insight,
managers are better suited to deliver value in a world characterised
by global interconnections than the disconnected Nation State. From
Ohmae's vantage point, globalisation is good. It is a vehicle to
render the slow moving government bureaucrat personified by the Nation
State obsolete and justified by consumer markets that ask for more
than what nation states can possibly offer. When Ohmae, McKinsey's
superstar consultant in Japan, first laid out a vision of a borderless
world in which organisations oblivious to geographical boundaries rise
to reigns and in their passage from locally-run headquarters to global
in reach amoeba-like structures eliminate the inefficiencies emanating
from centrally - planned, state-owned governance systems - a vision
that many of his contemporary management thinkers were eager to
embrace - he could not have anticipated the lengths that an emerging
social response would go to in order to impede the expansion of global
empires. But while Ohmae and subsequent management thinkers have great
difficulty in accessing the extent of growth that corporations could
achieve, and the power they could amass by engaging in strategic
alliances surpassing national borders and forging partnerships with
dispersed links in supply chains remotely controlled through all
pervasive communication networks, to anti-globalisation protesters it
was clear from the outset that globalisation acts in malicious ways.

Upon closer scrutiny within the movement, one realises that it is not
globalisation per se that is seen as malevolent, but the instruments
upon which globalisation hinges in order to advance its aim, that is
commercial entities, are essentially ripe for corruption. The
rationale goes that unless corporations can be checked upon in their
effort to create real economic activity, the stage is set for
detrimental consequences. On these grounds, the movement proclaims,
globalisation is bound to spiral out of control. The latest addition
to this debate comes from a documentary called The Corporation
[http://thecorporation.tv/], [33] which has opened to rave reviews in
Canada and has caused quite a stir. Rather than drumming example after
example of hard numbers and facts showing a quantitative degradation
of the planet and its inhabitants, the Corporation takes one through a
deeply emotional and unsettling journey where a couple dozen of
interviews with corporate androids, market speculators, and noted
commentators make sure what is left in the end is the bitter taste of
a monster gone crazy. This is the central thesis of the documentary:
money driven organisations are psychotic, dancing to the whims of bad
craziness, and in their never ending struggle to satisfy their
financial thirst they have become too dangerous to be let loose. From
Chris Parry's brilliant review:

"Set aside three hours of your life and watch The Corporation. Hunt it
down, find it, any way you can. I just watched 750 people sit down as
capitalists and stand up yelling for change. I witnessed people
throwing brand name products into garbage cans afterwards in disgust.
I witnessed hundreds signing on to email lists for more information
about how they can help change the world. I saw an audience moved to
exact change on the world around them, to take back what was once
theirs and maybe one day can be again....Normal documentaries don't
have that kind of an effect on an audience. Normal documentaries don't
give you enough to get truly fucked off at what is being done to us.
The Corporation, to be sure, is far from a 'normal' documentary. This
is the kind fo filmmaking that could, if seen on a large scale, change
the society we live in".

The following photo which is shown in the documentary is
characteristic of the corporation is a psychopath metaphor set forth
in the documentary and its accompanying book.

** Unable to import figure Dafermos1.jpg **

The photo (above) was modeled after a 1960s TV ad (right) that is
shown in part within the documentary.
[http://www.thecorporation.tv/public-media/icorp-psycorp.wmv] The
original ad asks: "Analyzed your business lately?" The psychopath
metaphor is a unique revelation that animates both the film and
Bakan's book [http://www.thecorporation.tv/filingcabinet.html#book].
And it begs the question, if the corporation is a psychopath, can it
be cured? Photo by Nancy Bleck. Photoshop montage by Terry Sunderland.
Miniature by Sean Q. Lang. Art direction by Katherine Dodds. Produced
by Good Company Communications.

Of course, the question whether corporations suffer from a pathology
of irrationalityhas been discussed in great detail within psychology
circles. Particularly in the reading of Deleuze and Guittari where
special emphasis is given to the fact that "everything is rational in
capitalism, except capital or capitalism itself... Capital, or money,
is at such a level of insanity that psychiatry has but one clinical
equivalent: the terminal stage" [34] (Lothringer 1995).

The movement knows that organisations making more money than
individual states should be held accountable at all costs. And the
best way to exorcise the evil is by attacking at all fronts. This
largely explains why the movement has been staggeringly successful in
bringing such a wide and distinctively heterogeneous spectrum of
groups together, joined by academic heavyweights, environmental
pressure groups, NGOs, human rights advocates, philanthropists of all
sorts and sceptic communitarians, to name but a few.

Anti-Theses
===========

Nowadays, there is a substantial body of knowledge providing the
movement with a theoretical backbone. It is worth briefly reviewing
the central theses of a few leading anti-globalisation thinkers
because it is those theses that the case for a socially responsible
and economically sustainable globalisation will have to answer [35].

The key text of the movement is perhaps Naomi Klein's hugely
successful No Logo, which maintains that the ever-increasing pace of
competition, regardless of industry, threatens to turn all products
into non-distinguishable commodities. As manufacturing degrades in
importance, companies are forced to differentiate themselves by
bundling their products with a variety of intangible notions;
stressing for example family and community values, individual styles,
political beliefs and work attitudes. This part is nothing new. Many
before Klein, chief among them Tom Peters, have vividly described the
value that such intangibles can add to corporate balance sheets since
this is exactly what consumers yearn for, whether on the lookout for a
new pair of Nike trainers, a Porsche car, or a Rolex watch. But Klein
goes way further than that. She sees that such market transformations
fuelled by the logo war that global empires have waged on
smaller-scale regional producers escalate in a global conformity in
the form of projected values that companies push through their
branding practices which ultimately destabilise local cultures or
worse threaten to replace regional values and attitudes with
single-facetted, globally pervasive brands. As culture and marketing
become overlapping elements of society and teenagers worldwide develop
a taste for the same kind of art, clothing and status symbols, a
global consumer consciousness perfectly aligned with the demands set
by corporate marketing departments overshadows our geographically,
politically and historically rooted social identity. In the process,
politics diminishes to empty rhetoric, sweatshops mushroom and human
rights are ruthlessly infringed as production moves where cheap labour
abounds and corrupt or powerless governments fall easy prey to
unstoppable organisations that set the tone for legislation favourable
only for their own purposes.

LSE Professor John Gray's rhetoric is more poetic, melancholic and
vague. In The Era of Globalisation is Over, Gray (2001) argues that
the September 11 tragedy was essentially an attack toward
globalisation, a blow to its relentless drive to dictate the pace of
modernisation on a global scale, and the first blatant warning that
global anarchy is imminent unless the blame for such devastating
events is put on mega-corporations and international economic
institutions that discharge states of their cultural and economic
sovereignty. In a nutshell, Gray (1998) sees all things remotely
connected to the American model of capitalism as inherently evil and
he attributes all social ills to the pursuit of the US model of
unfettered free markets. Globalisation is a delusion on a grand scale,
and Gray believes that Americans are suffering from this very
delusion. He denounces the universal civilisation that US and global
markets have set in motion and even goes on to compare free-market
liberalism to communism in terms of their capacity to inflict harm.
But while Gray is sparing with the details and is obviously lacking a
sufficient grasp of economics and management, Noreena Hertz, Associate
Director of International Business and Management of Cambridge
University, offers a more powerful and substantiated view of the
massive social turmoil that globalisation has unleashed.

In The Silent Takeover, Noreena Hertz (2001) chronicles a
socio-economic alliance between organisations and governments, dating
back to the days of the Iron Lady's political omnipresence, which has
put democracy under siege. As economics has become the new politics,
and the political agenda is driven by corporate directives, social
needs have been consistently overlooked. In light of widespread
government inertia and negligence, organisations are now expected to
tackle social problems as well as to assume the role of benevolent
global regulators, however without being chosen by the electorate to
do so [36]. Acting on the assumption that commercial organisations are
better suited to boost the economic engine of countries than
state-owned agencies, and that the generated economic growth would be
eventually or automatically matched by social progress, governments
resorted to delegate immense power to businesses in exchange for funds
and another safe seat. This political vanity has set the stage for a
corporate takeover of democracy.

The most down-to-earth critique of globalisation, in my opinion, comes
from George Monbiot, a dyed-in-the-wool activist that has been
arrested, imprisoned, and hospitalised due to his support for the road
protests movement. Monbiot is clearly emphasising the need to
formulate global-in-reach institutions that push for standards, and
that task is now more urgent than ever as existing institutions are
perverted by corporate power (Monbiot 1999a, 1999c). Monbiot claims
that what is beneficial for developed countries and big companies is
not necessarily good for developing countries, small and medium sized
companies and consumers. For instance, economies of scale may mean
higher production output and reduction of per-unit costs for big
companies, yet at the same time may be marginalizing poor countries
that lack the entrepreneurial and infrastructural resources required
to build massive production plants on their own without having to
suffer extortive terms laid from abroad. In addition, as companies
grow in size, they wield enormous political influence which allows
them to become anonymous and totalitarian, and as a consequence
asymmetries of bargaining power rise to stratospheric heights. In such
a marketplace, consumers' bargaining power is reduced to the minimum
and the scope of consumer activism loses its meaning (Monbiot 1999b).
Champions of globalisation defend that global corporations with their
global brands are more fragile than they seem because consumer
activism, which can be better understood as voting through buying, is
a very direct form of stating consumer discontent [37]. If the image
of a company like Coca Cola is damaged in a single geographical area,
the argument goes, it is almost inevitable that the echo of the damage
will spread like wildfire through the information ocean to inundate
the company's global presence. In theory, the agony that a local
action may lead to globally destructive consequences should be
sufficient to prevent mega-corps from abusing their power. In practice
though, Monbiot is adamant, consumers have no real option. One way or
another, consumers are obliged to hand their fares over to big
companies as the small stores around the corner and regional producers
tend to eclipse altogether in the name of corporate expansion. In
time, consumers may be lured by the comparatively lower prices that
such corporate giants will be offering, however, the freedom to choose
between the familiar small merchant and the new empires will have
vanished. When that time comes, the power to dictate the terms of
trade will lie solely in the hands of managers divorced from the real
needs of the marketplace and consumers will find themselves in the
awkward position of having no alternative than accept what the empires
offer. As long as globalisation means regulation by vested interests
in corporate profits, people will be alienated and consumers will be
disempowered. And that is not going to change, says Monbiot (2001),
unless market freedom is restored and globalisation comes to mean
decentralisation rather than consolidation.

Needless to say, all of them share a profound concern that
environmental resources are been depleted due to corporate negligence,
and that globalisation is a homogenising force. Klein sees this
homogenisation taking shape through aggressive marketing that seeks to
redefine cultural values and attitudes and make them fit with product
launches and corporate branding. Others do not focus so heavily on
marketing, but still suggest that corporate marketing practices
encourage a global culture of mass consumerism. Such escalating
consumerism, they suggest, can only lead to a sterile cultural
skeleton, which narrows people's perceptive horizons and promotes a
shallow culture of narcissistic individualism with catastrophic
consequences for personal growth, civic society, community life and
public services.

In all, the themes that pervade the anti-literature stress that
consumer power is draining out and the surrounding community is
deprived of the ability to stand up to abusive corporations through
the constitutional mechanisms of representative democracy amidst a
general climate of decaying politics. In the absence of a level
playing field, small businesses are forcefully squeezed out of local
markets by large companies that have no moral and ethical constraints.
As the process of homogenisation marches forward, cultural differences
are been eliminated; so it is the space to be different and authentic.
No cultural diversity is to be tolerated and if any cultural niches
are to survive at all, they will be most certainly surrounded by an
ocean of consumerism which values individualism before community. The
only role left for communities is that of manipulative communities of
brands. All other forms of social collaboration and group forming that
cannot be categorised for easier targeting through the marketing
shotgun and cannot be commercially exploited will be left to perish.
The above ills that are presumably brought about by a twisted,
corporate - hijacked form of globalisation provide the cornerstones
around which the anti-globalisation movement has coalesced and against
which it continues to mobilise resources.

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



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