Re: [ox-en] On consciousness (was Re: Next successful Free Product? )
- From: "Raoul" <raoulv club-internet.fr>
- Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:53:10 +0200
Hi Stefan, hi all.
Almost six months ago,
(in http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg03292.html )
Stefan Merten wrote:
"http://dorax.club.fr/Visibility.htm
A very nice text. Indeed I agree with very most of it."
That's great. Let's deal with what makes you say only: "most of it" ;-)
You quote this part of my text:
The anti-capitalist revolution can only be the work of the immense
majority of society and it must be a conscious work. Such a
consciousness cannot be the product of the preaching -
however well formulated - of a minority of "enlightened"
revolutionaries. It is historical practice, the evolution of
material and social conditions that alone can convince billions of
individuals, including "revolutionaries," that their discourse has a
solid foundation.
And you say:
"I completely agree that preaching makes no sense. However, I'd like to know
in what sense you are referring to consciousness. Do you mean consciousness
in the sense that the actors need to know that objectively they pursue goals
leading to a new society? I'd like to call this a political consciousness. I
don't think such political consciousness is really necessary. AFAICS
bourgeois revolutions didn't need it either for the majority of actors.
Similarly Free Software people usually don't have that political
consciousness.
"However, I think consciousness is necessary in the sense that people feel
that there is a better life to win. I'd like to call this felt
consciousness. In this sense it is indeed only practice which does
everything necessary. We can see this in Free Software as well as in P2P
file sharing.
"Do you think that at some point the felt consciousness needs to switch to
the political consciousness? If so why and when?"
Well, these are important and numerous questions. I hope I can sketch some
answers without being too long.
"Do you mean consciousness in the sense that the actors need to know that
objectively they pursue goals leading to a new society? (...) Do you think
that at some point the felt consciousness needs to switch to the political
consciousness?" My answer is YES.
To go beyond capitalism means abolishing its two main foundations: wage
labour and acumulation of capital as the goal of production. (See Rosa
Luxembourg, in "Introduction to political economy", for a clear argument on
why these are the most specific characteristics of capitalism). And I don't
think that humans can definitively destroy and surpass these two pillar
social institutions without a consciousness of what they are doing, without
knowing "that objectively they pursue goals leading to a new society".
Capitalism is not only copyright.
To go beyond wage labour means that any human will be able to fulfil his
material subsistence needs independently from the "work" he does or even
from the fact that he "works" or not. That needs a great collective
consciousness. I do not see how could be realized a worldwide passage from
an exchange value logic to a use value one without a generalized
consciousness and will to build a new society.
To go beyond profit as the goal of production, means first to become master
of the material means of production, land, mines, factories, etc. (today
owned by capitalists and capitalist states) in order to steer them
exclusively toward human needs. Nothing allows to think that this could be
realised without a harsh resistance from the owners and I do not see how
that resistance could be overcome without a conscious and generalised
political fight.
You say that for bourgeois revolutions the political consciousness was not
needed "for the majority of actors". This is true, as the majority of the
population (peasant serves, city workers), were more or less cynically
manipulated by a minority of bourgeois factions. However, in the French
Revolution, for example, the serves and workers, who participated and made
the revolution possible, had a political consciousness, even if based on
illusions and lies. Most of them were really convinced that they were
fighting for a new society based on "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity", as
it is still carved onto the front doors of most of the French public
buildings. The bloody repression of the radical popular movements and the
napoleonian order came to explain what these words could mean from a
capitalist point of view. As for the leading bourgeois forces, they had a
rather clear political consciousness that they were building a new social
framework suited to the needs of their economic system and their own class
interests, as proved, for example, by the forbidding of strikes and workers
unions since the beginning (see the law "Le Chapelier" in 1791).
But if for bourgeois revolutions the consciousness of a minority was enough
(and necessary), for surpassing capitalism this consciousness needs to be a
majority one, present in almost every cell of society. Here things are much
more global and radical. This time, the change is not a modification of a
mode of exploitation, but the end of exploitation and of all the
institutions, laws, repressive forces, that the old systems needed to exist.
Here the first need will be to learn to "work" without "masters". Since this
concerns a huge majority of humanity, the consciousness needs to be a huge
majority's one.
You say: "Similarly Free Software people usually don't have that political
consciousness."
This is also true. Even if the Free Software relations of production are not
capitalist, even if some Free Software people use the word Communism to
refer to these relationships, as Moglen with his "dot.Communist Manifesto",
in most cases it is accepted that this new logic is possible only in the
digital world. I remember asking Richard Stallman, at the end of a meeting
in Paris, whether he thought that the social relationships existing in Free
Software could be generalised to the non-digitized world. He answered very
promptly: NO.
A non capitalist society cannot be a society where all the digitized goods
would be managed in a "communist" way, while all the rest would remain under
the capitalist rules with all its consequences, like, for example, the death
of a child every four seconds out of misery...
The present reality of Free Software people consciousness rather than
denying the need of a political consciousness to go beyond capitalism shows
the immaturity of that consciousness.
Because of qualitative differences of nature, it is much easier to develop
non-capitalist relations within the "digital world". But capitalism will
remain the dominant system as long as it prevails in the "material world".
I fully agree with your comments (26sep06) about the interesting image (the
onion) given by Stefan Meretz. He wrote:
Therefore "free culture" was the most used key term on WOS 4. If one
imagine this as a model of an "onion" consisting of "shells", then with
free culture we reached the second "shell" after the first "shell" (or
core) being free software. The third "shell" of the onion -- witch had
become clear at different points -- will be the core of societal
production, following my rampant thesis:-)
You commented:
";-)
"I'm not so sure whether we are already there. What we saw on WOS4 was that
the principles of production of Free Software spread out to other digital
goods. OpenAccess and Wikipedia are other important example for this. But so
far these are all relatively small islands and they are surrounded by a huge
ocean of capitalist production.
"Thus I guess we will see more such islands emerge from the ocean over time.
Digital goods are certainly the most fertile ground so far so all such goods
can be expected to flourish. I guess this will work similarly well and
peaceful like Free Software.
"But I think the material side will need some special break. I think there
is a big step from digital to material production - although I have no
doubts that it will happen. Today I'd say: I don't know when, where it
happens and which shape it will have - but I'm pretty sure I/we will
recognize it :-) ."
Indeed, "there is a big step from digital to material production". It is
relatively easy to share digital goods and difficult to prevent their
sharing. But for material goods things are different.
Some lines from a poem ("La grasse matinée", written in French by Jacques
Prévert, in 1945) can shortly say what I mean. The poem is about a man
starving in the streets.
That can't go on
it goes on
three days
three nights
without eating
and behind those windows
those pâtés those bottles those cans
dead fishes protected by cans
cans protected by windows
windows protected by cops
cops protected by fear
how many barricades for six poor sardines.
I do not think that the fear that "protects" the police can be overcome
without the confidence given by a clear consciousness of the possibility to
build a really new society. I do not think that it will be possible to
dissolve the police forces all over the world without a clear consciousness
of what is done and why?
What you call a "felt consciousness", the feeling "that there is a better
life to win", is important and necessary, but it is not enough. (By the way,
I do not think that "felt" is the best term. I would not oppose "felt" to
"political" consciousness, because the political consciousness is also
"felt", based on emotions and intuitions, and because "to win a better
life", for a *social* being is first to win a better *social* life, which
is a political action. I would rather say an embryonic or immature political
consciousness.)
Here, it may be useful to specify the meaning of "political". Commonly,
"politics" is related to the management of the capitalist society and state.
As such it is frequently and understandably abhorred or at least mistrusted
among people really disgusted with capitalism. But the word has a broader
sense. To fight against capitalism, to try to impulse a new form of social
organisation is also politics. Wikipedia (in English) says: "Politics is the
process by which groups make decisions. Although the term is generally
applied to behavior within governments, politics is observed in all human
(and many non-human) group interactions (...)"
Since we are here dealing with questions related to a change of social
organization, I understand it - and I think it is roughly the same for you -
as the process by which humans make decisions about their society, about
their "city". (The word comes from the Greek word "polis", which means
city.)
Your last question is: "when" would "the felt consciousness... switch to the
political consciousness". I would really be happy to know the answer. In the
text you quote, I wrote: "these practices [of sharing, allowed by the ICT]
are only going to develop and (...) they will constitute with time (perhaps
10 or 20 years?) a powerful element in the deployment of the visibility of
the revolutionary project." That is rather vague, but the aim was to say,
first, that we are only at the *beginning* of a developing reality and,
second, that the moment when the generalization of these new practices may
make more evident the *possibility* of a new type of society, that moment
should not be so far, not centuries ahead, since the development of ICTs is
exponential.
However, this is only a part of the reality which may lead to a "switch" of
consciousness. There are also all the dynamics that stem from the inner
capitalist contradictions and limits. The old social relationships will also
show their counterproductive reality more clearly, in a more devastating
dimension than they do at present, particularly in the most developed
countries. I am still convinced of the "non- eternal", the historically
temporary nature of capitalism at the level of the efficiency of its
mechanisms. The difficulties that stem from the always shrinking part of
living labor in the production process and from the limits to the always
necessary expansion of markets, these difficulties will certainly increase
(particularly when China's and India's economies will become "fully"
integrated in the world market). The economic and social disasters to which
these difficulties will lead, can increase the consciousness of the
*necessity* of a political upheaval.
The answer to the question of when may happen the "switch" in consciousness
should be some where around the conjunction of these two dimensions: the
perception of the possibility and the perception of the necessity of the
revolutionary project.
That is not very definite, but it may help...
Sorry for the length...
Raoul Victor
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