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Re: [ox-en] Copyfarleft: Response to Stefan Meretz



Hi Dmytri and all!

I agree with nearly everything StefanMz wrote in this thread. Still
there are a few points where I'd like to hook in. This reply is to
various posts and I'd welcome it if you'd not try to engage me in a
fight.

2 weeks (15 days) ago Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
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, 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.

Well, let's for the moment assume that "controlling the circulation
of" something means capturing the surplus value. Then I wonder why it
is no problem in software but it is in media. I mean there *are* big
traders of software.

On the other hand media producers have exactly the same means to
"control the circulation" as Free Software developers have. And they
start to use it - for instance check Jamendo_ for an example.

.. _Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/

I can not see the fundamental difference here. To me it looks more
like Free Software is only farer down the same road already as music
can (and hopefully will) go.

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.

If I understand you correctly, you think this is not the case for Free
Software. Why? I mean the players in the software world are at least
as powerful as in the media world.

What's more, these media institutions
neither want nor expect free access, so why should we grant it?

Because it doesn't cost us anything? In the contrary: It is even more
costly to carefully determine who is allowed to use the material and
who not. Is an advertisement on the site providing a song commercial
exploitation? I guess the lawyers of the world will celebrate this
type of half-free access...

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?

The CC-NC_ clause forbids commercial use of the material - which
you probably know. In your opinion does that stop exploitation?

.. _CC-NC: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

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?

Simply because that is not the point about peer production. Peer
production is a new mode of production and just as capitalism were
able to ignore feudal relationships - and in the end destructed them -
so is peer production.

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?

Well, I think StefanMz made it clear but this is so important I'd like
to emphasize it again: Sure they can, but this won't change anything.

Your logic works only if people can be labelled good or bad. If the
goods ones (aka workers) are in power then everything is fine. Exactly
that logic led some to believe that real-socialist nuclear power is
good while capitalist nuclear power is bad. Chernobyl told us that
there must be something flawed here...

No, the point is that everyone working in capitalism works under the
same conditions which leads to the same schemes of behavior.
Capitalist are no worse than the workers - though capitalists
sometimes are wealthier. That is what StefanMz calls the cybernetic
machine.

Having played a strange shell game and attempting to hide profit under
the table, Stefan now descends into abject banality.

    Such "workers owned" high tech companies as the "Telekommunisten" have
    always existed.

The "it hasn't happened yet, therefore it can never happen" fallacy.
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.

Well, if you think that giving up something which showed it does not
work is bad, I recommend banging your head against the wall. If it
doesn't make you wiser then you just didn't bang hard enough probably.

Seriously: I have witnessed such approaches personally during my
anarchist times. At that time I found them very progressive. Since
Oekonux I think: nice try... but can not work. Simply because these
attempts do the same as capitalism but on a less effective stage. It
is waste of time and unless you come up with something which
distinguishs your attempts fundamentally from those thousands before I
can not see why yours should be any more successful on a political
scale.

2 weeks (14 days) ago Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
It is my belief though that their are certain versions of orthodox marxism
that discourage
worker's self-organization of production as a form of class strugle and
reject engaging in exchange
even as a transitional strategy, and that these are ultimately incompatible
with a movement
to build peer production.

Rest assured: Most of the classical leftists including orthodox
marxism have more or less big difficulties with the Oekonux approach.
Somehow it seems to me that you try to increase their number by one...

Last week (9 days ago) Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
The IWW in this case is correct, the proof being the _fact_ that we can
only build the new society in the shell of the old as that is the society
in which we exist as a starting point, not any other Once again, this is
yet another fact that should be self evident.

Indeed something which is obviously not self-evident - otherwise
centuries of leftists would not have tried to create the "new man".
But nonetheless true.

If you take the effort to check what germ form theory is about then
you'll notice that this in-the-old thing is even a key point of it. It
goes even farer than you because using germ form theory there is no
problem with capitalists using Free products (as long as they play by
the rules set by the licenses).

Yes, which is what venture communism and copyfarleft attempt to achieve by
proposing peer endogenic relations (the seed of the new society) along with
exogenic relations compatible with the real world (the shell of the old
society)  from which we must accummulate our initial wealth if we are ever
to build the new societies.

I agree that from poverty a new society can not be built. I don't
agree that it is crucial to appropriate the lion share of the wealth.
If that would be crucial real-socialism would have had a easier time.

Last week (7 days ago) Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
Capitalism depends on the theft of surplus value, which is impossible
without
alienating Interest and Rent appropriated from direct producers.

The concept of theft makes sense only based on a certain moral. Moral,
however, is something which is part of a certain society. You more or
less say that the fruits of the labor belong to the laborer. IIRC that
was exactly the argument of John Locke which in the end led to the
near-extinction of the indigenous people of North America. A rather
bloody trait you are following there...

No, I don't think it makes sense to argue in moral terms here. Whether
the surplus value belongs to the immediate producers, the owners of
the means of the production, the Gods or the society as a whole is a
very political question and can not be simply taken as granted.
Personally I tend to stop thinking in surplus value as far as peer
production is concerned.


						Grüße

						Stefan

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



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