Politics obsolete? (was: Re: [ox-en] New economic model for free technology?)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:01:47 +0100
Hi Michel and all!
Last month (50 days ago) Michael Bouwens wrote:
I guess I know what you mean but I value that very most people in the
Free Software community accept the world as it is. One of the main
strengths of the Free Software movement IMHO that it is *not* a
political movement as we all know them.
<<THEY ACCEPT IT but they are only changing it.
I'm not sure whether I understand you correctly but to me changing it
is fine.
Is politics
altogether obsolete for you? I do not mean representative democracy
politics generally, but purposeful intentional human creation of the
conditions of collective life.
Indeed this is a good question. [...thinking about it...]
Well, I think a rather differentiated answer is necessary here. If you
think of politics as of the OHA process which recreates the
(respective) current conditions I think this will never be obsolete.
If you think of politics as furthering more or less a revolution - as
we are doing here - I think it is not obsolete in general. However, at
present I don't know whether it is the right time to have it already
(thinking Oekonux background alone).
I think at present we see a movement which - as movements do - comes
from a variety of sources. Free Software is probably the most visible
but for instance what happens in the music scene is at least
interesting. There are a couple of more such instances in the
practical world as well as in reflection of many thinkers. I see
Oekonux as part of this movement. One important aspect to me is that
each part of the movement has its very own reasons for moving in the
some direction which happens to be the same for others.
I'd compare this with the early history of bourgeoise revolution where
there were a similar movement. The explicit politics came later.
At some point it probably makes sense to add some explicit politics to
this movement but personally I doubt that this point is already there.
May be in a few years this has changed.
However, I think any such explicit politics needs to pick up the ideas
of the movement and not impose some ideology on the movement. I see a
movement in the Oekonux direction and I see a movement for money
trickery like alternative currencies. I do not see any connection
between these movements so I think any explicit politics needs to
adopt only one of these ideas. An attempt to combine it would result
in a dead birth (Todgeburt).
So my conundrum,
and that of many others is to find a sustainable way to be creative,
outside of the market, or through some kind of compromise. Surely
that is one of the priorities for peer production, both short term,
individual solutions, but looking for a general social solution in
the long term.
I'd agree but today I'd say we are not yet there that it is really
possible to leave capitalism. However, Free Software, Wikipedia, etc.
are already making live cheaper.
<<ON THE ONE hand you argue for a GPL society, one hundred percent
nonreciprocal, on the other hand, you totally accept society as is,
without any transitional strategy.
See my comments above. Indeed as of now I'm not thinking about a
transitional strategy. For me the germ forms are not mature enough for
this. But of course different people may decide this differently for
themselves.
Well AFAIK it was not Marx who (rightly) mostly kept silent about a
communist society but Lenin. These two, however, have completely
different points of departure and completely different agendas. Thus
I'm not agreeing here. In fact I think we are already beyond this
point.
COULD YOU SPECIFY YOUR LAST SENTENCE?
I think we already have the productive capacities nobody needs to
hunger (which is probably a proven fact) and also to have a decent
life style. So no more "Who does not work may not eat!" is necessary
any more.
If we unleash the power of automation of a GPL society we could even
quickly remove painful work so the level of (structural) force
necessary to make people do something useful will become smaller.
<<<ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE 'CAPITALIST ROAD TO COMMUNISM'
advocated by left libertarians such as Philippe Van Parijs.
Nope.
Seems
you definitely fall in that category. Or not?
I don't know but since I have an anarchist background - but would
certainly not call myself an anarchist today - some similarities are
not too far-fetched.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
--
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