Re: [ox-en] What do we mean by Politics
- From: z3118338 <z3118338 student.unsw.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 08:04:55 +0100
Graham Seaman wrote:
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, z3118338 wrote:
Politics and Passions: the Stakes of Democracy
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/csd/Politicsandpassions.pdf
But I don't see how the paper helps.
First it's complaining about about the attempted flattening out of
political differences in the world as a whole. Which means in the
interests of the powerful. No-one inside FLOSS has that sort of power;
no-one can order up an army or decide to starve a country. So the
analogy doesn't hold very well.
Graham
My first response is that in the flateening out of the world - the end
of politics; the rational consensus, *is* in many ways where Floss sees
itself. Mako's "apolitical" is right in here. But politics within the
consensus is not politics its just a bit of room to move within the
binary, complementary, dialectic, rational neo lib consensus of modernity.
She says and I dont have it too hand, something about the need for
splitting of the ... for a break so that other forms of thought may
exist. She then seems to argue that this can be done wthin democratic
politics. here I think she is a bit wet.
But for me maybe the essential thing is that she is dientifyig that
politics as modernty knows it is just a flim flam wet soppy form of
control within the dialectic of modernity. What it says to me is that to
think about politics (and therefore in our case re floss) you need to
make a complete break with the current consensus. Maybe what Athusser
called an epistemological break rather than a mere paradigm shift (that
is from my late teens in the CPA so I am grasping at the far reaches of
my memory bank...).
Another thing that comes to mind is the question that if networks,
flexibilty, openness, the merging of consumer with producer etc etc ...
the so called characteristics of floss are also characteristics of post
modern capitalist production (post fordism post toyota-ism) does this
not raise fr considertaion the questio that this "new mode of
production" "the gpl society" s firmly a part and parcel of capital. I
know it is the view of advisors to the FSF that the GPL s firmly within
capital.
What does making a break with the consensus mean for organisation ..
even of lists like this and the decisons we have had to try and make
recently, for licencing models, for the use of IP????
Moving right along and making a little break, I read this little Negri
thing yesterday....It is in the way that he and his amte deal with
things at first glance contradictory and or confusing. But it I think
raises in another way a related question - is the commns as Flossers
percieve it itself a product of capital?
I will link it here:
‘Public Sphere, labour, multitude. Strategies of resistance in Empire.’
Seminar organised by Officine Precarie in Pisa, with Toni Negri and
Paolo Virno. Coordinator: Marco Bascetta. [5th February 2003].
http://www.generation-online.org/t/common.htm
You can find it and more things I am trying to organise here:
http://mozambique.twiki.us/twiki/bin/view/Main/OpenSourceResearch
Any help is greatly appreciated ......
And on a personal note does anyone want to say anything about my sarai
article Foreigner in a Free Land ???? I suppose in a way it is in this
same area...
--
http://www.auskadi.tk/
"the riddle which man must solve, he can only solve in being, in
being what he is and not something else...."
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: projekt oekonux.de