Re: [ox-en] Copyfarleft: Response to Stefan Meretz
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 02:19:25 +0100
Hi Dmytri and all,
it is not easy for me to reply to your response. You seem to be angry
and read my paper as a personal attack, however, this is far away from
what I want to do.
It may happend that I wrongly interpreted some parts of your text. I
don't know. However, I don't have any other perpectives than my, and I
can't do anything else than explaining them. In my view the big
difference of our approaches come from these different perspectives.
I feel completely missinterpreted having an orthodox marxist perspective
(and I wrote it explictly in my paper). This is completely wrong. In my
view the opposite is true: You follow an orthodox marxist approach,
while saying you don't. However, while following a traditional approach
(I prefer "traditional") you made a lot of faults which I try bring
them back into the right light, in order to reject them afterwards.
On 2008-01-06 22:55, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
The main argument advanced in the essay is that artists can not
earn a living from exclusivity of "intellectual property" and that
that neither copyleft licenses like the GPL, nor "copyjustright"
frameworks such as the creative commons, can help.
I understand this goal, however, I reject this goal as a goal. I don't
want to improve capitalism, I don't want to talk about better ways of
earning a living inside capitalism. However, don't missunderstand this
rejection: Of course, we all have to make our living inside capitalism
by using capitalist forms (by fulfilling the roles of being a capitalist
or a worker). This is our daily life. However, this has nothing to do
with any emancipatory approach. There is no emancipation inside
capitalism.
Maybe I am mislead by your leftist and radical terminology, however, I
assumed that you want emancipation, you want a free society beyond
capitalism. Is that the case? If not, I really made a big mistake, and
then have to apologize.
Artists can make a living in a free society as any other people can do.
I am not interested in solutions for some partial groups on costs of
others. I am interested in solutions, where the selbstentfaltung of an
indivdual is the precondition of the selbstentfaltung of all -- and
vice versa.
The only thing, I believe can help, is workers' self
organisation, an approach that is popular among socialists
from anarchist, especially syndicalist, tendencies, and is also
supported by those who promote "Market Socialism" and
"Economic Democracy."
There is no principal improvement of capitalism. Current capitalism as a
self-organizing economy is by its logic the best capitalism we can get.
Unfortunately, Stefan doesn't really engage in any of the
arguments made in my essay directly, he is not for instance
arguing that either copyleft, copyright or copyjustright does
create the possibility for artists to make a living, therefore
from my point of view we seem to be in agreement on the main
claims of the essay. In fact, I could not find a single argument
in the entire "critique" that disputes my contention that only
a minute elite group of artists can make a living from
intellectual property, which is the point of the essay.
You can't accept, that my meta critique is engaged in the foundation of
your arguments. It is a meta-critique, it doesn't show, that your
single arguments within the given framework are wrong, but it shows,
that framework you use is wrong.
Instead of disputing my claims regarding the economic relations of
creative production, Stefan's "critique" seems bizarrely directed at
me personally, at proving that I don't "understand" or "am not
interested in" certain aspects of theory, claims which are repeated
throughout the entire critique, and often extraneous to the point
being addressed.
It is not directed at you personaly. If the naming really bothers you,
then read "the text" or "this argument" etc.
Unsurprisingly by "understand" he means agree with certain
self-congratulating and dogmatic tendencies that have long
attempted to refute anarchist beliefs, and when he says my use of
certain terminology is "wrong", what he means is that I am using
a heterodox economic language, instead of some orthodox language
he appears to normatively regard as "correct."
There is no orthodox approach, I use the same language as you do. And I
don't and can't know, if I am right, it is my perspective. And from my
perspective arguments given by you are not valid, because the framework
you spaned includes a lot of shortcomings. How can I know, that they
are short comings, you might ask? I can't be sure, it is my
understanding, I only can write want I understand and see.
Oddly, some of his claims of my "lack of understanding" include
such common knowledge such as the distinction between use-value
and exchange-value ("value" and "price"),
Good example. I challenge what you name "common knowledge". When you
translate value to use-value and price to exchange-value, then I only
can say this is wrong. Both translations are wrong.
a distinction I actually employ clearly in the essay,
However, not correct.
and also the basic distinction of
labour from labour-power ("work" and "work-force"),
Here, you are right. I translated the german aquivalents wrongly. Graham
already points me to this fault.
which he
raises without any reference to where my text is ambiguous that would
make his claim applicable to something I actually argue. In other
words, both these aspects of his critique are non sequiturs.
And finally, Stefan's main issue is my endorsement of workers' self
organization as a form of workers' struggle, as is typical of many
orthodox marxists, he claims that his views are categorically
correct, and the views of libertarian socialism are categorically
wrong, confused, "bourgeois" or "pre-Marxian."
I explained why. I reject orthodox marxism in my text (as I always do),
so you are wrong.
In establishing my "not understanding", Stefan argues:
There is no »natural price of labour«. The author has to
allege such a construct as Ricardo does, in order to explain,
why there is a part, which can be hold by the »property
owner«.
Of course this is explained in my essay, Stefan just choses to
ignore it. The fact is, as I claim, that "whatever wage increases
they [workers] retain are swept away by price inflation."
So long as workers sell their labour, either, by time
or based on output or "piece work," and do not actually own the
final product of their labour, then whatever wages they have will
simply be captured by prices charged by those that do appropriate
the products of labour and thus control the circulation of these
products. That is, whatever portion of their wages are not already
captured by location-rents on their dwellings, which would also
increase in response to any general increase of wages.
This is the Iron Law.
You miss the point: Workers don't sell their labour, they sell their
labour power. The iron law is wrong.
Stefan claims that:
The workers did not get the value of their work, but the
value of their work force (the wage).
The exchange of wage against work force is thoroughly just.
Economically viewed it is an exchange of equivalents.
Here Stefan appears to have lost his command of the distinction
between "value" (use-value) and "price" (exchange-value). Does
he mean that workers can capture the "use-value" of their
labour-power ("work-force")? This would mean his claim was
self-contradictory as with equal access to productive assets
this by definition would be the final product of their
labour ("value of their work")?
Due to "translations" being wrong, you are mislead. Value means value,
and not use-value. Price means price and not exchange-value.
Or is Stefan rather claiming, then, that the price of
labour-power is equal to its wage? Isn't that self-evident?
Yes I do. It doesn't seem self-evident, because you don't use it. Again
using correct terms:
The workers did not get the value of their labour, but the value of
their labour power (the wage).
This difference is essential.
"Wage" and "price of labour-power" are synonmys.
That's right. However, "value of labour-power" and "price of labour
power" are not.
One big problem in understanding (generally) comes from the fact, that
talking about value always means talking about societal means
(averages). There is _no_ way to determine a single value. However,
this is the case when taking about prices. When you go into a shop,
you'll find single prices. Along two dimensions following equations
must be valid: "value-sum = price-sum": time (long run) and space
(whole global society). Thus in a strict sense talking about "a value
is paid" is wrong when meaning a single event (it must be "a price is
paid"). However, to make it easier, I use this simplification sometimes
myself.
Isn't the question rather that is any wage less than the
final product's exchange value just?
No, this is not the question, because the labour power is already paid.
You can compare it with a machine: When a capitalist buys a machine,
then the "production power" is paid. However, the difference between
workers and machines is, that workers can produce _more_ than their
(already paid) labour power is worth. A machine can only transmit its
value (which is paid, see remark above) to the products (and not more).
Stefan has not explained why the worker would accept anything
less than the entire exchange-value of the product of their
labour as a wage.
Because it is the way capitalism work: by just exchanges. Why should the
worker get more?
The answer, of course, is that the worker and employer
do not exchange as equals, as Stefan ludicrously claims,
This is not a luxury I use, I only claim, what is. Capitalism bases on
exchange of equals. Its the law. Read any constitution.
but
rather that the exchange is asymmetrical, the worker
does not have access to productive assets without being
granted access by an owner, and thus can not
independently produce at all, and that this asymmetry
is based on State granted and enforced privilege.
No, an asymmetrical power relation you mention base on different
economic power. However, assuming we only have productive assets, then
nothing changes: We have to exploit ourselves, we can't "pay us the
final price" of the products, because of the competition. We have to
behave as capitalists to ourselves. We are forced to do investments and
all the alienated stuff capitalists do.
Being a capitalist or a worker must not be misunderstood as personal
property, but they are economic roles. In Fordism relationships of
roles and real person were quite fix, in Post-Fordism, they are more
fluid.
Marx himself understood this very well, Capitalism and
wage labour could not exist before the process of
"primitive accumulation," a revolution from above that
enclosed common lands with State-violence and created a
landless proletariat with no means of subsistence except
to sell their labour and that this history was written in
"letters of blood and fire", in other words, expropriation
by violent force.
That's right, this was the historical process.
The idea that labour and capital exchange as equals is
simply false.
No. Marx wrote a lot of texts against this assumption. Please read the
Grundrisse for example.
In any case, this dispute is far from relevant to my article,
but rather a common dispute among heterodox libertarian
socialists and those that espouse authoritarian dogmas,
a dispute that has gone on for well over a century,
therefore I do not feel any need to further refute this
in the context of Copyfarleft, rather for those interested,
I recemond Kevin Carson's critique of Anti-Dühring by Freddy
Engels in his excellent Studies in Mutualist Political Economy.
Well, in my eyes this is a self-immunisation against my fundamental
critique. It's your choice.
Later on Stefan argues:
To solve the mystery of worldwide unequal distribution
of wealth: the unequal distribution is not an result of
the exchange circumstances aka »terms of trade«, it is
also not a question of formation of prices, no question
of in/justice, not a question of global regulation, no
question of politics and also no question of property
it is a question of different productivity.
This is what Kevin Carson calls a "sort of variation on the
fable of the ant and the grasshopper", Carson quotes Marx in
rejecting this edifying myth, I will quote the same passage.
Marx writes:
In times long gone by there were two sorts of people:
one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal
élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance,
and more, in riotous living.... Thus it came to pass that
the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort
had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And
from this original sin dates the poverty of the great
majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now
nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that
increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.
Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in
the defence of property.... In actual history it is
notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder,
briefly, force, play the great part. -- Capital vol. 1
Perhaps I misunderstand Stefan, and he is not making an argument
that richer economic polities are richer as a result of greater
productivity, and not, as Marx puts it, as a result of "conquest,
enslavement, robbery, murder," etc, but if this is not his
point, then it is not clear to me what is.
I don't know Kevin Carson. I assume the passage of Marx is from chapter
24 you already mention before. Marx describe the _initial_ historic
process, and he is completely right with that. However,
while "conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder" already exist, you can't
explain capitalist economy by "conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder".
By no means. Marx made this clear too.
Stefan claims:
Presumably he would deny, that in average working time is justly
payed. And he does not know the term surplus value being the
value part of those products, which are produced by work force
extending the value of this work force.
Here Stefan seems to again conflate price (exchange-value) and value
(use-value), and labour and labour-power. For "average working time"
(labour-power) to be "justly" paid (pay=price) it would need to
capture the price of its product, it is the difference between the
exchange value of the product and the wage that is surplus value,
which refers to "exchange value", therefore price.
To cite the corrected version:
Presumably he would deny, that in average working time is justly
payed. And he does not know the term surplus value being the
value part of those products, which are produced by labour power
extending the value of this labour power.
And in my view this is correct. As I wrote before, the "price of its
product" (labour) can not be paid, instead the price of labour power is
paid. This does not depend on personal will, it is the logics of
economy. And it is also valid for self-exploition circumstances (firms
in the hand of the workers).
What Marx considered "just" was a lack of exploitation, which means
that the workers should retain the full product of their labour.
Lack of exploitation?
Therefore, claiming that "traditional Marxism" considers wages just
is simply absurd.
No, traditional marxism wasn't that plain. Well, some moral versions
might be. Or maybe stalinism too? I am not sure.
(...snip rent...)
"Surplus Value" simply describes that a surplus exists in production,
it does not explain who's income that surplus becomes, incomes are
divided into Wages, Interest and Rent.
Surplus value is the main topic of traditional marxism, because they
want to re-distribute it like you.
"Profit" is an accounting term.
No, profit is surplus value related to the invested capital. This term
is more often used even by bourgois theorists, because it obscures the
source of the value, the labour. Using Profit looks like, that the
capital, that invests, is responsible for the profit.
(...)
While misunderstanding at first, Stefan appears to come around:
Using this result »rent« can be determined more
precisely: It is the payment of an effort from value created
elsewhere. Because in the case of land the land itself does
not create [exchange] value, but the land owner has to be payed
from »elsewhere« produced value, namely from the exploitation of
work force in production.
What can I say, I agree 100% with what Stefan says here.
Cool!
Well, despite Stefan's strange desire to attack my knowledge of basic
theory, while agreeing (or at least not disputing) the basic
arguments I present, we get into the core of the dispute when it
comes to my Copyfarleft proposal, which most directly highlights our
different points of view.
Stefan argues:
Before starting my critique below, this have to be noted: This is
simply empirically wrong. The oversized number say of artists get
in no way their »subsistence«, but they earn so few, that it is even
not enough for pure physical survival.
Here Stefan proves I am empirically "wrong" by repeating my exact
argument, Which is that artists //can not// earn even their
subsistence from intellectual property.
No, your argument was, that artists cannot earn _more_ than their
subsistence (see below): "The iron law of copyright earnings makes it
obvious that it is not for the creators of the music, videos and other
creative works licensed that ‘some rights are reserved’, as artists
have no means to bargain for anything more than subsistence."
This is empirically wrong, most of them doesn't reach subsistence.
However, if you share this now, ok.
(...)
Stefan then claims:
There is simply no logical reference between income and
reproduction costs as in case of selling work force.
Here, no work force is sold, but contracts are concluded
between legal entities
My argument is that artists as a group can capture no _more_ than
their reproduction costs.
See above. They can't capture their reproduction costs, and of course
even not _more_.
Are the numbers in "contracts between legal entities" pulled from
thin air or are they also influenced by economic considerations
regarding incomes and derived from wages, interest and rent?
Sure they are, nevertheless, they mostly use contracts, which are a
different economic form. And this is important here.
Stefan seems confused by a limited interpretation of labour-power
("work force"), and misses the fact that when the media industry own
the media product, meaning that they exclusively control the
circulation, they capture all the surplus value, regardless of the
formal terms of the contract, whether it is based on time, output,
whatever, since they capture all the surplus value, this leaves
nothing more than reproduction costs left for the artist to capture,
and no guarantee they can even capture that.
Sorry, the confusion is on your side. You talk about circulation and not
about production. Any value (even surplus value) comes from production,
and not from circulation. Thus your entire argumentation is wrong. It
is a completely different situation: There are no capitalists buying
labour power to exploit (paying them only the subsistence). Here are
free and juridical equal legal entities making contracts. It is no
question, that one side has more power and controls markets, however,
this is not the cause of capitalism, but the consequence.
That is what I call "The Iron Law of Copyright Earnings," and this
iron law is worse than the Iron Law of Wages exactly because it does
not even guarantee subsistance.
Well, remaining on a very surface, it may look the same, but it is not
same.
Stefan now goes deeper into his critique of copyfarleft.
He claims that my complaint is:
since copyleft is only regulating
usage, »property owners« can use the products.
However, the issue is not that property owners can use the products,
for instance in the case of software I explain how free software
production can exist within both capitalist and socialist modes,
What is a socialist mode and where do you see it?
however because in the case of media properties, such as movies,
music, etc, using means not simply "employing in production" as is
often the case of software, but "controlling the circulation of"
which means capturing the surplus value.
Same as above.
If commons-based artistic producers allow media institutions free
access to commons media assets, then these capital financed
institutions can take advantage of the great inequality in access to
productive assets and crowd out commons-based producers. What's more,
these media institutions neither want nor expect free access, so why
should we grant it? Why not reserve the possibility to negotiate
non-free access or to deny access at all depending on the interests
of the commons-based producers?
Because then you introduce artificial scarcity and it's no longer
commons. You use same means as proprietary producers use. This may give
you an advantage when being inside the closed commons, however doesn't
change the exploitation game at all.
Why insist that we grant free access to commons assets to groups who
don't themselves engage in peer production in each and every case,
even in cases, such as artistic media, where economic relationships
are demonstrably different?
I can accept this question when I want to improve my competition
abilities, a cooperation is a real possibility. However, as stated in
my introduction: There is no improvement of capitalism. Any immanent
measures we take are of exclusive character like your proposal. We
can't build a free society on the basis of exclusion. Your approach is
not emancipatory.
Now, after flirting with various trifles, trying to find technical
"errors" in my position, we approach the crux of our dispute,
Stefan's denouncement of heterodox views as categorically wrong
simply because they vary from his chosen orthodoxy.
Amen.
Stefan states:
Since the reason of this »unjustness« is already
determined—the »property«—the solution suggests itself:
changing of ownership structure. The workers have to own
the companies themselves and rule over
the means of production and exploitation.
Exactly, only mutual property can defeat private property. Or as I
often do, let me quote from the preamble to the constition from the
Industrial Workers of World:
From http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with
capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only
for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on
production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By
organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the
new society within the shell of the old.
IWW are mistaken. Capitalism won't go away by organizing its logic using
its means.
Organizing industrially to build the new society in the shell of the
old requires that we recognize that there are two different types of
circulation. The endogenic circulation among peer producers, and the
exogenic circulation between the p2p mesoeconomy and the mixed
macroeconomy, dominated by captialist production. And that each of
these circulation paths have different economic relationships that
can not be collapsed into one set of terms, such as copyleft or
copyjustright attempts.
It doesn't matter, where from commodities come as long as they are
commodities.
(...repetition)
(...Lasalle rejected by Marx)
All in all despite using some »left« rhetorics the
author merely seems to be geared to pre-marxian and
bourgois theory of economics.
Third, "merely" implies that my "bourgeois" heterdox economics is
categorically inferior, and somehow out-of-date, "pre-marxian."
Ack.
This is not a logical argument, but rather simply a categorical
dismissal.
No.
I refer Stefan to the many post-Marx theorists who continue to
refer to the same model of income (rent, wages, interest), and
factors of production (land, labour, capital) that I employ, such
as Piero Sraffa and Joan Robinson to illustrate that while he is
welcome to disagree with any argument presented, there is
nothing "pre" anything about it.
Now, you use name dropping you accuse me in case of Lasalle and Marx.
Now, having named a troika of fallacies a "critique," he
presents his orothodox beliefs as victorious arguments:
Meretz:
Traditionally there were two ways reaching the goal of
disposition of the means of production and thus of the
labour results: revolution or reform.
All hail the false dilemma! Ever the favourite of dogmatic
arguments. There is only revolution or reform! You are either
with us or against us!
Uh? I reject both, what do you want?
Other options such as Trotskyist "entryism", DeLeonian "dual power,"
and Anarchist "Syndicalism" are simply not included, and thus
categorically "reformist," which is especially odd as syndicalism
is exactly the strategy endorced, therefore why not avoid discussing
it by simply leaving it off the "possible ways" list.
These are variants of the both above, I reject them too.
Having established only two possible ways. Stefan continues:
For me it is less interesting, whether a concept of changing of
the ownership structure via a license could be named
»naive«.
Stefan builds a strawman here, the point of my argument is exactly
that as a result of the Iron Law of Copyright Earnings,
"intellectual property" of any kind can not change the ownership
structure, only peer production can.
I do not and have never presented "copyfarleft" as an ultimate goal
or sole solution to anything, I have argued that to the degree that
a license can be useful at all it must take into account mode of
production as its basis.
It is not the license that will change the ownership
structure, but workers' self-organisation, in other words
the ownership structure will change when people produce and
share in new ways.
This is a new sound. Your text is the other way round. However, workers
self-organization leads to no alternative, when accepting the framework
of producing commodities (inkl. markets, alienation, state etc.).
The license is merely an instrument of trade
that is required only due to the nature of the external economic
environment. As the capitalist economy of the media industry neither
wants nor expects free access to a commons of media assets, I hardly
expect them to object to such a license.
After attempting to replace my argument with a strawman,
Stefan continues:
It is more important to see clearly, that the author
does not differ from other critics of property: He
wants to change property disposition, but in no
case the logic of producing goods in form of commodities
operating on top of any property regime.
Here Stefan attempts to portray the objective facts of actually
existing reality as simply something I "want". This is simply
an irrational desire, and not logically argued choice.
I logically conclude this from your arguments. And your answers here
confirm this evaluation: No critique of value, of commodities, of
markets, of alienation etc. Just reasoning of doing it in a different
way, using exclusion logics for the own advantage.
Today, peer producers must engage in exchange relations to
acquire material subsistance and to fund any mutual accumulation.
Every person must engage in exchange relations, true. We are living in
capitalism.
Both venture communism and copyfarleft employ the same logic of
proposing ways that operate within the existing reality, thus
making it possible to "create a new society in the shell of the old."
The only thing I want to argue for is, that by using the old means of
bourgoise society you can't build any germ form of a new society, it
will always be the old one. A new and free society can only be build by
means which in the core point to a new logic of societal production and
mediation.
I want to change property relations so that economic actors can
employ whatever modes of producing and sharing work for them, rather
than having owners of property appropriate the product and thus
control the circulation.
Whatever modes of producing and sharing work for them, if they stay
inside the old money-making logic nothing changes in principle. Of
course, there are some changes, however only inside the logics of
inclusion/exclusion by using them. What happens with the people outside
your new property relations when you win competition in the given
market?
Personally, I favour more communal modes, but that only matters to
the degree that I have a choice over the kinds of circulation and
sharing I engage in. Building the possibility of choice requires the
formation of mutual property, which we can only currently accomplish
by engaging in exchange.
I wonder what, besides waiting for the pseudo-messionic "revolution,"
Stefan proposes?
Ask me? Read archives? Again: I reject revolution (like reformist ways).
Both represent old style thinking.
Stefan continues:
Also a workers owned company has look for the marketing of
their products being commodities, has to keep up in competition,
has to invest, has to cooperate with partners, has to outpace
competitors—and can only pay the value of the work force.
Having considered the issues faced by any enterprise, his conclusion
is, curiously, that profit does not exist at all!
Uh?
Aparently, once a workers-owned company pays for its costs of doing
business, all that is left is the reproduction costs of the workers,
regardless of what the costs are or what the exchange value of the
product is!
If that is the case, how do owners accumulate wealth? Why exactly do
the rich, in actually existing reality, get richer?
Why does Stefan believe that owners are able to accumulate wealth by
privately owning productive assets, while workers can not accumulate
wealth with mutual ownership?
I don't understand. I believe, that both finally do the same. Exactly,
that's the problem and not the solution.
Having played a strange shell game and attempting to hide profit
under the table, Stefan now descends into abject banality.
Hide profit?? What you call "banality" seems to me the core problem,
which you want to put under the table.
Such »workers owned« high tech companies as the »Telekommunisten«
have always existed.
The "it hasn't happened yet, therefore it can never happen" fallacy.
I wrote: I had happen yet.
Many flying machines existed before any took flight. And yes,
demutualization is one
of many problems faced by mutual organisation, but that doesn't mean
that a solution will never be found.
He goes on:
This was the goal of many people, a lot of people tried
to realize this goal, and despite of so many defeats many
people already want it: They will not
succeed.
In other words, give up, that has been tried.
No, do what you want, because we all have to do something to earn our
lives. This is normal everyday stuff. And no way is better than the
other, be it driving a company or selling own labour power. Lets face
it as factual as possible with no moral reproaches. This includes to
see clearly, that all ways inside capitalism using its means are ways
inside and thus not emancipatory. If you like one way more than the
other -- ok, go for it.
A funny argument coming
from somebody promoting a version of orthodox marxism, so I guess
Stefan believes
that people who share his wants and goals have never faced any
defeats.
I didn't wrote what I want, this was not the topic.
Now, Stefan, seems to imagine that Free Software somehow embodies
liberation.
It is about a new way of producing our lives. What a production
beyond the logics of exploitation can mean, is shown by the free
software.
Free software, being almost entirely created by wage labour, and
capturing exchange value only for owners of capital, now shows us
what production can be beyond the logic of exploitation.
Sorry, you are wrong. Free software is free of value, even when produced
by wage labour. Free software is not exchanged, it's not a commodity.
It is not scarce, which is a precondition of being a commodity. There
is no capturing of any value for any person. This is a point, where it
is so important to distinguish between value and price. Free software
can have a price, however, it has no value. Therefore, the often cited
statement from Stallman "Free software is a matter of freedom and not
of price" is correct.
Stefan has now completely lost the plot of both his own arguments and
mine.
No, I am consequently in my line. I might be that you didn't get my
points. This may be rooted in my limited expression abilities using
english language.
The bulk of Free Software is created by employees
Btw. I think this is empirically wrong.
whose wages are directly or
indirecly paid by Capitalist organisation, they fund it because, like
the metric system and standardized nuts and bolts, it is a common
input to further
production, and thus having this free-stock of information assets
does not prevent them from controlling physical productive assets and
the circulation of actual goods.
You said it yourself: They fund it. They fund a free-stock. It is a
common input (like science), and thus free of value.
What is it about this Stefan thinks challanges exploitation?
What do you mean? There is no exploitation in free software. No value,
no surplus value, no exploitation.
Stefan closes with:
Copyleft exactly in the current form keeps free software legally
grounded—nothing more, but also nothing less.
I quote this only because this statement was apparently enough for
Michel Bauwens to conclude that "Stefan Meretz gives us a renewed
insight into the genius of the existing copyleft/free software
license"
I share that copyleft was a ingenious invention. It is a legal hack. It
is a subversion of the original purpose of making information goods
scarce to become a commodity.
I don't see it. Do you? Perhaps if I repeat it as a mantra often the
genius and insight will one day enlighten me.
I hope so, however, not by repeating, but by argument.
But so far, as a free software developer, I know that most of us are
still punching the clock and working for the man.
As a free software developer you should know what you do, and I am
afraid, you don't.
Btw. can you or someone explain "punching the clock and working for the
man"? Is it an idiom?
Ciao,
Stefan
--
Start here: www.meretz.de
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