Re: [ox-en] Re: Two texts
- From: Chris Croome <chris croome.net>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 00:09:48 +0000
Hi
On Thu 30-Jan-2003 at 05:52:02PM [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Stefan Merten wrote:
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg00745.html
I just read the first text. It's *great* :-) !
Me too (following this mail), I was away for December and still
haven read any lists from that month.
I think about whether to add it to the English Oekonux texts at
http://www.oekonux.org/texts/
Good idea.
How about creating a OpenTheory project [http://www.opentheory.org]
for each of the texts so they can be commented easily?
That would be good as well.
Perhaps it might also find a place in the book? I think it's great.
Is Raoul on this list?
One paragraph I particularly like to emphasize is this one:
Contrary to the vision of an invariant Marxism that has already
foreseen everything and contains no possible shortcoming, whatever the
development of capitalism, Marx and Engels always stayed true to their
critique of dogmatic religious thought: They knew that the role of
theory is not to deny or to ignore facts that contradict it, but to
enrich itself with these new elements, knowing to question itself, to
better develop its explanatory and revolutionary power.
If Marxism has not specifically foreseen the possibility of the
appearance of "germs" of nonmarket relations in the midst of
capitalism, and thus finds itself contradicted in a particular aspect,
the phenomenon of free software constitutes by that same token a
screaming verification of the more general and fundamental aspects of
Marxist theory.
Yes it's good stuff :-)
This bit also struck me from the first section:
The fact that communist principles (even if incomplete) can be
rediscovered from a scientific approach confronted with the
possibilities of new technologies, without any explicit reference
to Marxism and to communist theories of the past, constitutes a
spectacular verification of the Marxist idea according to which
communist ideas are not the product of the benevolent brains of
certain thinkers, but the fruit of the development of capitalist
society itself.
And this from the second:
The fact that, today, free software and, more generally,
digitalizable goods concern no more than a part, again, marginal, of
social production and consumption, does not constitute any argument
showing the impossibility that the economic relations that they
induce will not one day become the dominant social relations.
...
That which today permits one to envision the possibility that
relations of production founded on the principles of free software
(production with a view toward satisfying the needs of the
community, sharing, cooperation, the elimination of market exchange)
could become socially dominant is the fact that these relations are
the most able to employ the new techniques of information and
communication, and that the recourse to these techniques, their
place in the social process of production, can only grow,
ineluctably.
I agree with this:
I, for one, believe that the Marxist theoretical framework
constitutes the best tool to respond to the crucial questions that
this new reality poses, and that research in this domain constitutes
a priority, if not the priority, for the revolutionaries of our
time.
This is a great question:
How long will it take before the share of the digitalizable means
necessary for the production of alimentary goods or raw materials is
sufficiently important for the production cost of those goods to be
almost completely eliminanted by simple recourse to free software?
And from the third document:
Anyway, one can hardly deny that the emergence in the capitalist
production process of a free reproducible means of production
constitutes a qualitatively new and essential element for the
realization of a society without scarcity. This is all the more
important as the place of software in the capitalistic production
can only expand, irreversibly.
...
The current technical advancements, while allowing the appearance
and the beginning of the generalization of productive forces which
have the capacity to escape the constraints of scarcity, bring, in
the center of capitalism, in its most modern sectors, the material
basis for a non commercial, anti-capitalist logic. In this sense,
they are revolutionary.
And this is a great ending:
Even if they are powerful, software are never but instruments used
by men. Their influence on the forms of social life depends
primarily on the men who create them and use them. What one can
foresee is, first, that the place in the economic and social life of
these freely reproducible goods can only go increasing; second,
that this development will constitute a practical challenge, a new
contradiction in the kingdom of the commercial, capitalist laws (7).
It is the revolt of the productive forces against the relationships
of production that generated them. But, this revolt will succeed
and become effective only by the action of the main productive
force, the social class which does not benefit from the commercial
relationships but undergoes them in the form of exploitation and of
alienation, the proletariat. The technological revolution in
progress, as it will induce an industrial revolution, will bring new
weapons to him.
Chris
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