Re: [ox-en] Out-Cooperating the Empire? - Exchange with Christoph Spehr
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:31:23 +0200
Hi Geert, Christoph, all!
I'd like to make a few comments on this quite interesting text.
2 months (83 days) ago Geert Lovink wrote:
http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire-
exchange-with-christoph-spehr/
Out-Cooperating the Empire?
Exchange between Geert Lovink and Christoph Spehr on Creative Labour
and the Hybrid Work of Cooperation
[...]
CS: We really have to re-think institutions. We?re anti-institution in
our attitude, of course. But there is some distinct flavour of
neo-liberalism in this attitude. We tend to think that it?s the
institution that is black, and autonomy that is white, basically. But
it?s not that easy. There is a complicity with the system without
institutions, and this involves implementing the system?s forces and
rules while feeling apparently absolutely on our own. Deleuze raised
this issue in his famous 'Transcript on Control Society?. If we are
acting free, and the outcome of this freedom is a high level of
conformity, then there is something wrong with this freedom, then we
are not really free, obviously.
Why? Isn't it possible that conforming to something is a typical
outcome of acting free? Why freedom needs to mean to be against?
During the seventies we reflected the structures of the Fordist times
that were just about to end. ?You tell me it?s the institution,? the
Beatles sang, and the movements and projects wanted to be autonomous.
Neo-liberalism tore down the institutions as well - well, some of them,
but not others - like the IWF and the World Bank. In other words,
neo-liberalism pretendedto be extremely anti-institutional, to support
an autonomy against institutions. At the same time, integration and
assimilation under power structures became organized more and more
through markets, and so the new question became complicity, not
autonomy in the old sense.
Looking into the future, there are two things that follow from this.
First, we have to study the complicity between neo-liberalism and
institutions, to destroy its aura of 'freedom for everybody? by
re-telling the real story and its facts. Second, we have to think about
new ways to imagine institutions (and markets, as well). To balance
public, democratic control and the potentials for individualism in a
new way. That will be crucial if we want to get rid of what we have
today. We have to be clear that a new attitude, that of living in a
society that is ours, can not be obtained without institutions. This is
something very important about cooperation, free cooperation.
Yes.
[...]
GL: How do you look at the tension between giving away code, music,
texts, for free, and the growing desperation of (young) people and how
they make a living? For me there is a direct link, a strange
dialectical relationship between McJobs and Linux.
There is nothing strange in it but both are results of the decline of
the labor society. McJobs are the downside while Linux is the upside.
And I'd like to repeat that the upside of Free (so far: digital) Goods
is also useful for those who are more on the downside of this process.
The more
peer-to-peer networks there are, the less likely it will be for
'precarious? creative workers to get out of the amateurization trap.
Instead of Lawrence Lessig, Joi Ito and other Creative Commons gurus we
should argue in favour of professionalization.
I'm not clear what Geert means by professionalization and
amateurization. Being paid or not? I'd use these words differently.
Working in a professional way to me means to know how to do a task
well - by education and/or experience.
CS:
[...]
We have to realize that 'free? projects can be more exclusive than
'non-free? structures in terms of gender, race, qualification, class.
I'm not sure what is meant by exclusive here. Is an exclusive project
one where there actually is no equal distribution of gender, race,
qualification, class, religion, [your favorite separation criteria
here]? Then there is probably no non-exclusive project at all. But
what would be won at all?
Or does exclusive mean active exclusion based on criteria like this?
Then at least in the Free Software world there are probably very few
projects which do so on race, class, religion. And even for the gender
issue there is a variety of opinions about active exclusion and other
reasons external to the project.
There is, however, an exclusion based on qualification. And this is
something I think is completely justified by the nature of a
productive project as such. If you want to produce something useful it
simply makes sense to rely on people who are qualified enough to do it
well.
You need institutions to be inclusive. This sounds strange to us, but
institutions are not only a matter of alienation. They are
materializations of compromise, of conflict-borne rules on
partizipation and mutual obligation.
Yes. However, an institution which forces an equal distribution of
each and every social selection criteria down the throat of a Free
Project is probably the worst I can think of.
The alleged freedom of many
structures means actually that there?s just free competition where the
priviledged prevail.
Yes, but what does priviledged mean here? Since we are talking about
projects where there is little alienation privileges are obtained only
by doing well in the project. What's wrong with this type of
privileges?
As soon as you want gender equality in your
network, as soon as you start to practice gender mainstreaming, as soon
as you enable gender autonomy in the sense of working-groups and forums
etc., you?re building institutions. Because an institution means that
you do not have to put up the same fight at every single occasion but
establish a certain base of rule and compromise.
Why do you want to force this down the throats of (wo)men who are Free
to cooperate on a voluntary basis? Isn't this the type of abstract
equality which matches perfectly the principles of capitalism but
hardly those of a GPL society?
GL: Is it productivity that counts? Ultimately a new system will win
against the existing system, just because it?s more productive?
CS: Yes, I think so. More productive, not more efficient. Usually, a
new way of production, and a new society linked to it, is successful
because it can accomplish something the old way of production (and the
old social structures linked to it) could not. Machines, weapons,
ideologies, structures of environmental control, intelligent machines,
you name it. It is not successful because it is more cost-efficient. If
something really new, really useful, really powerful can be
accomplished, costs really don?t matter. That?s a very important
historical lesson.
I think using the term "cost" in this way is misleading because the
meaning of the term costs relates heavily to a given regime. In
capitalism costs are measured in terms of dead labor crystallized in
money. In the GPL society costs are probably measured in terms of
useful work for which only little volunteers are available.
CS:
[...]
If people can play
SimCity, why shouldn?t they be able to govern their real city? Why
shouldn?t they likeit?
That's a particularly nice idea :-) .
The Future of Creative Work
GL: Let?s go back to the question of the (im)possibility of an online
economy. Is giving away for free really the only option left?
Well, the twin question is: Is taking for free really the only option
left? Though Geert's question seems hard the twin question seems
really clear to me: Free Software and other Free Projects have shown
that on the level of productive forces we reached, on the ongoing
scientification of production taking Freely by anyone who desires so
is the only option. This logically implies that giving away your
products in the same mode *is* the only option left.
Alternative Economies
CS: 'The alternative economy aspect is under-examined?, you write
together with Trebor in Collaboration: For the Love of It.Do you see
any attempts to examine this? What about Oekonux? But it has become
more of a nerd philosophy, of a software programmers? religion, than an
instrument of economic analysis, yes?
Well, if this is so, I wonder where all the nerds are...
At what point did it start to
slip? What should be put into the centre of such an economic analysis?
GL: We might agree with a lot of people that the Oekonux debate would
need a restart, with a fresh input from various directions. Originally
German Oekonux debate (2000-2002) tried to make a blueprint for society
centred around the free software production principles. After a few
years the Oekonux debate got stuck for the simple reason that, in the
end, it was controlled by the founder of the forum, Stefan Merten, who
doesn?t want to let go and probably has little experience with how to
scale up and transform, from a cozy and closed high-level German
context, into an international debate in which there would be a
multitude of players and intentions.
Now this is really funny because *I* am the one on [pox] and probably
in the whole project who is really pushing the international side. And
for some months now on a very practical basis by doing all my original
Oekonux work in English.
What is needed, in a sense, is a
clash of theories, between the Marxist use-value approach and the
hardcore libertarian free software/open source philosophy. Oekonux
claimed to be its synthesis, but it wasn?t.
I don't know exactly what Geert thinks Oekonux needs and during his
time here was obviously not able to formulate. Anyway Oekonux is still
moving on and I for one started to see a lot of similarities to market
like phenomenons and think this is a very interesting path to follow -
mainly because it indicates potential to overcome capitalism in a
synthesis - and a synthesis always contains parts of thesis and
anti-thesis.
Still, it asked all the
right questions. I am still inspired by Oekonux, and so are you, I?d
guess. After all, that?s where we both met.
After all :-) .
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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