Re: [ox-en] Re: compulsion
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 16:36:09 -0500 (EST)
Hi Stefan,
Another mammoth email ;-)
On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Stefan Meretz wrote:
Hi Graham,
it seems to be an obsession moving such hard stuff. Must be
selbstentfaltung...;-)
Well, if it's too boring for everyone else (hello Petr ;-), they
can always skip it.. But tell me if you want to drop this discussion
because it's taking too much time, or if you prefer to take it off-line.
I'm not good enough in understanding and using english, so I'm not sure
whether I get your points. Please take this into account.
I don't see any signs of that, I think the problem is ideas, not language
:-)
This mail was getting very long; I'm chopping out bits where we seem to
be agreeing, I hope I left enough to show your logical chain of thought..
I also broke it into sections (with --title--------).
--word innate -----------------------------------------
(Stefan:)
Sure. But only if you don't take 'innate human character' as a kind of a
special 'behavior' or such. What I mean with 'innate' is the potence to
live in a society by using societal infrastructures. I call this 'the
human is societal by nature'.
OK, but then I think use of the word 'innate' can be a little confusing,
because it is so often used by people arguing that genetics determines
human behaviour.
--vergesellschaftung definition -----------------------------------------
(Stefan)
IMHO there are two 'histories' with had to be distinguished. First the
history of evolving the societal human nature (phylogenesis). And second
the history of different forms of society which leads to different forms
of mediation between the individual and society (Vergesellschaftung). In
the following I use the german word vergesellschaftung
(societalization?). It addresses all questions on how society is
organized and on how an (general) individual participates in production
reproduction of its life and society. Schematically said the word
vergesellschaftung is neither on the side of society nor on the side of
the individual, it is in between, it focusses on the mediation between
both sides.
My thesis is, that selbstentfaltung is part of the societal human
nature, which at first time in history had developed to a germ form in
free software. Yes: if released from capitalist vergesellschaftung all
potences of selbstentfaltung are revealing itself.
You always have personal carriers of rules which are driven by
non-personal mechanism like the rules of the cybernetic machine and
resulting ways of vergesellschaftung.
And oekonux is a project which tries to find the points which had come
to historically mature. This is not easy. IMHO an historical perspective
on the overall processes helps to see the wood and not only lots of trees.
--workers movement ----------------------------------------------------
(Stefan)
You don't agree that workers movement helped with(?) establishing
capitalism?
No, this statement still sounds very strange to me, and I don't know
exactly what you mean by it. But it seems to imply that you think
the workers movement is irrelevant to the movement for a gpl-society
(where in both cases the words 'the movement' is just a shorthand for
something quite complex). I would guess the opposite - that at some time
the two will need to merge to be successful. But there are only tiny signs
of this happening so far, and probably both 'movements' will be very
different when it happens.
On a more immediate level, I find it hard to relate to your statement
living in a country where the workers' movement was massively defeated
in the 1980s, and where we still feel the consequences in everyday
life (in health services, transport, pensions wages etc) compared with
the way life seems to be in (at least Western) Germany.
--base/superstructure-----------------------------------------------------
(Graham)
The rest of the paragraph I also disagree with, but I know why. You have
collapsed all of life in capitalism into a single level, the 'cybernetic
machine', and therefore lost all of politics, law, tradition etc. This
seriously limits what you can think about doing.
(Stefan)
This is due to giving only this simple schematics. In contrary I think,
that you can better analyze politics, law, patriarchy etc. if you don't
make this traditional separation between basis and superstructure
(ueberbau) of traditional marxism. But I cannot point this out here
The 'base/superstructure' separation is really just a metaphor, even
though people tried to treat it as a theory. And I think it's a bad
metaphor - it implies that each 'superstructure' is self-contained. But
I still think something like the law cannot be reduced to economics -
it has its own history, and is own internal logic which has somehow to
be kept coherent, even though.the key parts of the law also have to
defend/enforce the current economic system.
<snip>
Yet obviously this doesn't apply to you at all. So, if you have this view
of capitalism, I suppose selbstenfaltung HAS to be something innate which
is suppressed by the cybernetic machine, but bursts out when the machine
is taken away.
Not in the sense, that you only have to make changes of the economic
basis, and everything follows (the old basis-superstructure separation).
If you take this picture "cybernetic machine" for the entire mechanisms
of vergesellschaftung, then: yes.
This is the point I was complaining about before: I don't think you can
reduce the whole of vergesellschaftung to the 'cybernetic machine',
whether you call the non-reducible parts the 'superstructure' or something
else. Maybe we should make what you/I understand by the cybernetic machine
more concrete.
For example: investment fund managers have to maximize return on
investments. The value of shares rise normally when two companies merge,
because mergers normally make it possible to reduce the total workforce
Therefore, fund managers will tend to move funds into companies likely
to have this kind of merger (and in general any company thought likely
to be about to sack people). If a fund manager does not do this because
he objects to people being sacked for reasons which have only
a financial motivation, his fund will do less well than others and he is
likely to be demoted or fired. Something which has human effects is
therefore done as if without reference to the humans actually carrying out
the action, as if capital were acting directly in its own interests.
This kind of thing is part of the 'cybernetic machine', which is
self-running and in which people are only functioning parts.
Take another area of life: education. You can argue that both the content
and the form of teaching are determined by capitalism, in that they
are designed to produce people to fit into their part in production.
But even if you agree with this, the determination is very distant
and mediated by many other things. So that a good teacher can have a lot
of impact on students which is totally unrelated to the economic functions
of schools (so can a good educational theorist, or a good education
minister, etc). Education may be part of capitalism but I would
not describe it as a 'cybernetic machine' at all. But if I understood
'vergesellschaftung' correctly, education is definitely part of
vergesellschaftung.
-- valorisation/unfolding----------------------------------
(Stefan)
Selbstentfaltung and
Selbstverwertung (self-valorisation) is the antagonistic contradiction
-- and not work vs. capital btw.
I think this links back to what you said above. But it is just a
statement on its own here, with no proof. I'd like to know more about why
you say it.
The given form of vergesellschaftung implies that the individual can
only go forward on costs of others, because market economy is organized
that way - see previous mails. On the other side you have to bring your
work force into the cybernetic machine: as producer of value (worker) or
as an organizer realizing produced values on market (capitalist).
Independent of function you have I call this selbstverwertung
(self-varorization?). This is quite obvious in single person
enterprises: both functions - producer and realizer - are embodied in
one single person. However, what you can observe in multi-person
enterprises too, is a diffusion of both functions. The role model is the
self-entrepreneur of own work force. This does not say that workers and
capitalits do not have different interests, but they are not
antagonistic as thought for long time (me too).
Currently value-realization (verwertung) needs more and more of
'selbstentfaltung'. And you can find this in reality. However this
'selbstentfaltung' is limited by the frame 'on costs of others'. It
cannot expand unbounded. This leads me to the conclusion that
selbstentfaltung and selbstverwertung is an antagonistic contradiction.
It shows historical development tendencies, but cannot unfold in the
frame of the given type of vergesellschaftung.
You have two arguments here: one, that self-valorization and
self-unfolding are contradictory. That's fine, I can think of lots of
examples of that from my own experience at work, and your examples of
the problems with kanban etc also seem true from what I have read.
The other argument is that this contradiction is (more important than?
replacing?) a contraction between work and capital ('workers and
capitalists ... have different interests, but they are not
antagonistic..'). But who do you think enforces the suppression of
self-unfolding in favour of self-valorization? OK, not capitalists
directly, but the managers who represent capital. This IS part of the
cybernetic machine where the behaviour of the managers by and large
is not determined by what they're like as people, but by their position.
Giving the example of the self-employed person who embodies both sides
in one person is not a proof of anything; the number of self-employed
relative to the number of employed must be tiny. You say you have a
'diffusion' of both functions; but I think the contradiction between
capital and workforce, self-valorization and self-unfolding, is an
objective one, which can never disappear while this system lasts.
The poles can 'diffuse' far enough for each to see the other sides
point of view, but in the long run the objective position of the two sides
prevents them ever acting 100% in the way the other side needs.
---------------------------------------------------------
It works perfect for physically produced things too. Why not? (Ok, I got
some good hiding for that: typical male imaginations of omnipotence...).
Isn't your question: Why is it not so easy to build an island (or germ
form) based on physically produced things like in free software? My
answer is: because of the more easy way to make physical things scarce,
which is a precondition for being a commodity.
No, that isn't my argument. You know that my main interest is in finding
ways to do exactly that..
Exctly what?
Help find ways to complete the chain:
Free EDA software -> free hardware designs -> free electronic equipment
(where 'free' for now means ONLY 'free speech', not 'free beer' - though
now we have 'free cola' even that description is becoming obsolete ;-)
--individual/society------------------------------------------------
From here on, the argument becomes strange: both of us think the other is
making the same mistake! It seems we both think the other is seeing
individuals as some strange non-social being. All the same, I don't think
it is just a misunderstanding; I think there isa real difference of views.
(Graham)
No, I'm not taking anything for human nature. I don't believe it to be
innate, at least not in this kind of aspect. I am wondering whether there
is anything structural in the situation which may push people to think
like that. After arguing that the whole of capitalist society is simply
a 'cybernetic machine' you seem to go to the opposite extreme of assuming
that life on the gpl-society would be composed of pure individuals, with
no such thing as society.
(Stefan)
What do you mean which 'pure individuals'? And why is society an
additional thing? This sounds like 'an individual is not societal,
therefore a social structure has to be extra constructed to build a
society upon the individuals'.
No, it sounds to me that YOU are saying this. That you are saying
'once the cybernetic machine has gone, there will be nothing but
individuals and no society'.
And this sounds like 'without any type of
external force all human would get mixed up like a mass of chaotically
running chickens'. Look at free software. There was nobody telling them
what to do.
Of course not. But even with the small scale of free software (compared
with the huge scale of an entire society) social mechanisms emerged.
It isn't only a question of individuals thinking 'I feel like writing
program x today'; there are also social mechanisms.
For example:
1. If maintaining a package used by many others, you should not just
abandon it one day because you feel like working on something else, you
should find someone to pass it on to. This is a combination of tradition
and peer pressure (someone who does this will not be trusted).
2. Large systems need a layered organization, almost always built round
a single individual, but with 'lieutenants' deputising for that individual
to spread the load. The forms of this organization are not the same as
those for developing software in capitalist firms, but driven by the
objective requirements of development based on selbstentfaltung. In
particular, force being replaced by moral and technical authority combined
with good social skills.
3. Well, I'm seeing that I'm just doing a bad repeat of Eric Raymond's
ideas. The point is that free software (and other 'free' things, like
running USENET groups) already have a sociology; there is something
involved more than the individual personalities of the people involved.
When I am saying that humans are societal by nature, then this does
mean, that humans cannot live without society. All actions are mediated
by societal infrastructures. Individual and society cannot be
conceptualized as opposites. Well, bourgois ideology does it, but we
should not follow in thinking so.
Yes, I agree entirely. In these terms, my question is, 'are there any
societal infrastructures which are necessary or likely in a society based
on self-unfolding'? The answer might be 'no, those infrastructures could
be anything at all, so you will just have to wait and see'. And the answer
will certainly not be 'yes, such a society must be exactly like x, y and
z.' But I would expect the answer will be somewhere between those two
extremes - no guarantees, but some reliable guesses.
If we think of humans as societal beings than the question is not,
whether a society will be formed. The question is only, how the society
is organized, how the vergesellschaftung is realized. If not by personal
supremacy, if not by cybernetic machine (in the broad sense): by what?
My answer is so simple, that you will not believe it: By
selbstentfaltung and self-organization. Like in free software. Free
software is a germ form of a new type of vergesellschaftung. This living
example shows that it works, that individuals are endless in their
creativity to deal with all that complex problems we face.
You are back to your isolated individuals again. I am writing a Perl
module right now. If I'm happy with it, it will go on CPAN, in a
standardized format. I hope I will show a little creativity in writing
the code; but I know that where I put that code (CPAN), and the form
it has (Makefile.PL, .t/ tests etc) is a social convention which it is
sensible for me to follow. Having social infrastructures is perfectly
compatible with creativity, without meaning that everything has to
depend on 'endless individual creativity'.
When I say
'individual' then I don't have this isolated bourgois individual in
mind, I have in mind the self-enfolding individual in mind which need
the selbstentfaltung of others as a condition for its own
selbstentfaltung being at the same time that condition of
selbstentfaltung for others.
And the medium through the selbstentfaltung of all is realised may very
well have concrete social forms, established by tradition, or simply
because it's the only way it can be done in a society based on
selbsentfaltung. Or there may not yet be a social form for this particular
task, in which case, yes, the individuals involved will create one.
Nobody has a guarantee, but it seems, you are looking for it, because
you are not sure, if you can trust humans. It sounds too simple saying
'give them freedom, and selbstfaltung rules all to the best'.
Not too simple, but too abstract. More concrete would be better, if
possible. It may not be possible to be more concrete.
This is
too simple. These are 'only' potences. But what we are doing is try to
understand them in order to increase our action possibilities. Agreed?
This is the mission of oekonux as I see it.
Sounds fine to me!
Best wishes
Graham
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/