[ox-en] Re: Next successful Free Product?
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:35:56 +0200
Hi Franz!
So another reply to your post where I try to reply to the points which
are not so much related to the anarchist's paradise.
3 weeks (21 days) ago Franz Nahrada wrote:
in list-en oekonux.org, Stefan Merten
wrote on Tue, 04. Oktober 2005 um 18:39 +0100:
In your thinking is mutual support mandatory during a transformation
phase? Mutual support cycles would mean that Free Projects fit
together so well they can cover a whole area. Do you think this is a
necessary condition? If so: Why?
I said it is not a necessary condition
Ok.
but it would be rather the next
step after grounding Free Projects on the resources of Hobbyists and
leisure time developers.
I'd agree that at some point this is a necessity. This is trivial
because if a whole society shall be based on the principles of Free
Software then this is a logical extension. However, we seem to agree
that as a *next* step this is not very useful a condition.
Frankly to me this looks like a kill argument because mutual support
is even harder to get than island projects.
Here you are completely right. It is hard to get, but I think with the
expansion of Free Modes into other areas of production we will see
productivity effects and feedback cycles growing.
I agree on this. Probably basically because if things are done on the
same basis they tend to fit together better.
Imagine our breads not
coming from the shop but from food cooperatives that sponsor Free Mode
developers and designers.
Well if they sponsor some special people then this bread is not a Free
Product. This to me seems more like a Genossenschaft [sorry, missing
the English term at the moment] to me which acts in solidarity
internally but has walls to the outside like every market participant.
Well, this model is also very close to the anarchist's paradise BTW.
where increasingly free products
fill the void created by lack of money.
Well, Free Software was not created to fill in a lack of money. Free
Software was created for the fun of it. Why do you think that for
furthering the GPL society it would be most useful to fill the niches
which capitalism leaves because valorization of labor is no longer
possible there?
Well you did not get me here: I refer to buying power of people, not to
the strategies of enterprises.
Well, I replied a lot to this and *then* I noticed that you meant
buying-power of people instead of buying power-of-people (aka work
force)...
Ok, so your point is that there is money that people want to spent on
products which capitalism doesn't deliver for some reason. Really? Any
example? Actually I can not believe this. Capitalism may be rotten
somewhat but if there is a way to valorize there will be someone who
uses it.
After all capitalism has filled the niches because it was able to
structurally force people to do painful work. What has changed in the
work necessary in these niches so that capitalism does not want to
structurally force people any longer but a Free Project can base on?
I so not see you answered this question.
Anything is interesting for the market as long as people have buing power.
And nothing is interesting for the market if this buing power vanishes.
"The ultimate reason for all capitalist crisis is the waning of the
consumption power of the masses" (Marx, Capital Volume 3)
Ahm - yes. Above you say the contrary. I'm puzzled.
We are told that there is an end of work
and an eternity of capital. We are told that work is useless until capital
employs it. But nowadays, autonomous labour can directly relate to each
other and coordinate cycles of support and empowerment without
interference of capital. We simply do not need capital to aggregate work.
I agree. And even on a societal level. This is what I think is really
new here.
Work can aggregate itself, that is the big historical lesson of the Free
Software Movement.
Also several areas which are classical areas the state had to organize
- like the postal system and the railways - are more and more
organized by private enterprises. I think this is also a sign for a
structural shift - though I usually not welcome such privatization.
But we are just at the beginning of this aggregation
process, and it will only be a joke unless it does not meet production
itself.
I disagree with you in thinking that producing information goods is no
production.
I see a curious parallel. Also Adam Smith was pointing at his time to the
"seed form" of his epoch. And the seed form was built outside the core of
material production. The seed form was exchange and commercial capital -
in Belgium/Flandres and in Upper Italy (Genova). So the seed form had to
find its way ito the core of production (manufacturing) and that was its
maturing. the analogy is compelling.
This makes only sense if you negate information products.
I don't know what Smith really said but I'd say that commercial
capital was not the germ form itself but the necessary pre-condition
for the germ form to unfold. The real germ form was the industrial way
of production. This was what transformed the world - not commercial
capital.
Free Software is direct aggregation
of labour, but still outside material production. How can it find a way
into the core of production, the material process?
The material process is the core of production only in a certain
historical era - namely the industrial era. It has neither been the
core of the feudal era (where it was mainly food and not general
material products) nor will it be the one of the next era (though of
course it will exist there).
I think you underestimate this question by claiming production is getting
increasingly immaterial. That is only half of the truth.
I think I disagree even on the question ;-) .
In the software business we see even in proprietary software
production elements which are common in Free Software like giving the
creators a lot more freedom than other employees. In domains which are
well suited to be covered by Free Projects I'd expect similar
developments *in* capitalism. Can you see this?
I do not object this.
May be I posed my question wrong. The question is: Which are areas
where *in* capitalism there are areas which tend to give the Freedoms
of Double Free Software producers to employees. These areas I think
are quite likely to be the place for the next Free Product.
Its not an "either - or" situation. We need people
from the top of the productivity segment to switch into alliance with
people left outside.
Why?
The "sexyness" of the whole thing is that everybody
needs to find out a way to enter such voluntary alliances with others. Do
what you really want and you will see it is already social in its very
nature.
Which is indeed the mantra of capitalism. I think I agree on this.
and conviction.
I think if conviction is a necessary precondition you should
immediately stop the Free Project. Conviction is on what all the
alternative projects throughout the last 40 years run and if we can
learn one thing from them then it is that conviction does not lead to
a new society.
Well conviction can translate into "knowing on which path you are". I do
not think this is a bad idea. Of course you can be totally based on false
convictions, and I think one false conviction was the idea that the
political and the state is the sphere of liberation.
I agree with you on the latter but tend to disagree on the first.
Conviction can be a part of Selbstentfaltung but I don't think it is a
pre-condition. If it is a pre-condition this means that what you
actually do violates your interests and the conviction is only there
to make this invisible. Conviction in this sense I find
counter-productive.
Free products must soon include basic human
needs (the "bread")
During bourgeoise revolution the commoners started with things like
textiles. They did not start with what was the basis of the old
society was but with products they were best in, where the spearhead
of the development of the means of production made most sense to
expand. If you look at this on a global scale even today there are
parts of the world where this is not fully controlled by capitalism.
And thats what I said before. I would even say more and more spheres and
areas are sliding out of control and in the middle there is a strong
"space of flows" between the centers getting faster and faster.
At the same time the potential of technology is omnipresent.
Why do you think this is to be reversed in this change or eras?
Well one point is that it is a shameful waste of the planet.
But this is purely moral point and it is one which seemingly is not
shared by too many.
For example,
in one year mankind looses soil of double the size of Austria by
desertification and other forms of degradation. All that cannot be taken
care of by the capitalist mode of production any more. It calls for
NeoSubsistence and global networks that organize it.
NeoSubsistence would not make it any better because subsistence is
exactly what leads to this phenomenon (for instance in the Sahel
zone). But I agree that global networks and a generally deeper
globalization could help.
and that is in the long run the strongest base and
tool that we have:
1) have a material base of raw materials and energy --- best is
self-reproducing / biomass based production, thats why I favor rural
areas
as birthplace of seed forms of Free Life
Ok, self-reproducing / biomass based production is certainly better
suited to be distributed into small projects than big centralized
ways of production.
One important point, however, is that with self-reproducing / biomass
production you can produce only a small share of the raw material
needed for many, many products - at least if you are to compete with
capitalist products. Doesn't sound like a sustainable way to me.
Wait and see. we are doing research on that in the global villages
movement and we are getting increasingly clear that there is almost 90% of
all advanced human material needs fulfillable with derivates of biomass
and green chemistry. even mainstream enterprises are discovering that:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/7929/7929greenchemistry.html
If you go to websites like Amory Lovins "Natural Capitalism"
(www.natcap.org) or to some comments on Braungart/McDonoughs "Cradle to
Cradle" principles (look here:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001387.html) you might give a second
thought on your statement.
We are taking this one step beyond and designing around the cradle to
cradle principle a new metabolism of rich villages in costant abundant
intercourse with nature.
Oops nature produces steel? Great!
2) make the output of each process "feed" another process, so you are
glad
something is using your "waste" --- that is a question of systems
design
Yeah but isn't capitalism already good in this? Where is the
capitalist who would not be willing to sell his/her wastes? Why should
Free Projects do better here?
Because I suppose capitalist cant make a sustainable agreement together.
Or can someone prove me wrong on this? We might have to look through
scenarios....
Long term trade contracts exist. Why should this not be possible?
3) integrate processes by agreement, not by market --- market is not a
good coordinator if you want to achieve goals 1 and 2
Agreement would mean a lot of interaction between otherwise
unconnected projects. In Free Software we see a lot of synergies
between projects without explicit agreement. It would be an
interesting study to find out where this agreement comes from.
Wouldn't it be more useful to find areas where common doing needs
little public agreement to be useful on a societal level?
We will need public agreement at last about the way we live;
Ah, back to the anarchist's dream ;-) . But wait, anarchists usually
say the opposite. After all ;-) ...
and the best
is when it comes as natural as the rules of traffic.
ROTFL. Traffic is neither natural (but cultural) nor are the rules are
in any way self-evident. It is a (well) thought out system which is
purely artificial.
But I'd agree that traffic rules are a good example for an OHA system
which people usually accept without much asking. Indeed I'd say these
are the best OHA systems.
The GPL is a good
agreement for a limited domain, and it needed a lot of thoughtwork to
carve it.
Ahm - I'm not talking of the GPL here but a far more general OHA
system.
Well, a lot of questions and they are probably not easy to answer. As
I said this is not to discard your ideas but to critical question them
to see what substance they contain and if too little where we need
think again. I'd hope you try hard to find anwers. Or may be others
have ideas, also?
I hope so. Thanks for expanding on these important issues.
Thanks to you.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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