[ox-en] Re: Graham Seaman * The Two Economies; Or: Why the washing machine question is the wrong question
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 22:11:57 +0200
Hi Graham and list!
I did not read this until now. It's great! It contains some very
interesting thoughts.
Some small comments.
50 minutes ago Stefan Merten wrote:
Guild
inspectors would check not only the quality of the goods produced
Isn't this some sort of peer review?
May be that is why I find the guilds interesting: Instead of the
market the masters themselves evaluate the quality of the products of
their own profession.
but
also adherence to proper employment procedures and encroachment on the
territory of other guilds: a shoemaker in the shoemakers guild should
not encroach on the work of cobblers, who repaired old shoes, nor
should he tan his own leather, the mystery of the tanners' guild.
So the guilds had the opposite of Free Information: mysteries.
Interesting - but makes them really incompatible with Free Software.
What the guilds could not do was cope with the increasing number of
journeymen with no hope of becoming masters in their own guilds. In
the big cities desperate journeymen began to abandon their own trades
and set up as small manufacturers. These small manufacturers, though
persecuted, managed to survive outside the guild system and the
mediaeval hierarchy of rights and obligations, and in spite of the
many caught by guild inspectors and fined or even imprisoned, by the
mid-17th century parts of London were dominated by them. Since they
were outside the guild system their employees were not apprentices in
the old sense, but workers for a wage: this was already a fragment of
a new mode of production.
I'd like to highlight that the journeymen have neither been the top
nor the bottom class in their society. They have been in the second
rank if you like. Aren't there more examples where the (interests of
the) second rank brought about fundamental change? Does this allow for
the conclusion that the second rank is the moving force in history?
Well, Free Software people seem to be in the second rank - don't they.
So this would at least match Oekonux theory ;-) .
The key questions are whether the penetration of free software into
the old economy is deep enough to start to slow the introduction of
laws which can force it underground; whether free software can find
allies outside itself to begin to reduce the dependencies listed
above, and whether it can begin to gain new ground by moving into new
areas, to gradually move closer to the washing-machine makers.
Particularly this paragraph is a very good thought IMHO.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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