Re: [ox-en] On consciousness
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:36:33 +0100
Hi Raoul and all!
2 months (63 days) ago Raoul wrote:
Almost six months ago,
You're welcome :-) .
Thanks for your interesting reply. While I wrote my reply I think we
have a very important debate here.
(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" ;-)
Yes :-) .
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.
Thanks for going into detail. I think one of the main points is that
there are a couple of underlying assumptions in each of us which would
not come out if we only scratch the surface. At least I am not so sure
about these assumptions and IMHO it is really fruitful to discuss
them.
BTW: When I use Free Software below that is what we probably know best
here. Other Free Projects like OpenAccess, Wikipedia and Free Culture
are similar in many regards.
"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.
These are the classic socialist arguments. I agree with them in a
socialist framework but I think the (r)evolution for a GPL society
won't be socialist - at least not in a narrow sense.
I'll analyze both of your points carefully.
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.
I completely agree with you that wage labor needs to be overcome.
Overcoming wage labor is probably key for overcoming exchange based
social systems.
Free Software in general does this already. Free Software is a group
of goods which is available independent of your amount of wage labor.
So this is part of people's subsistence. This is the consumption side
of wage labor.
I'd also not downplay the role of information goods. I think modern
societies can not live without information goods any more on the
production side and as far as the consumption side is concerned I
guess most people living without information goods such as newspaper
or a TV would be a pain today.
In Doubly Free Software we see overcoming of wage labor on the side of
production also: People do things useful on the scale of the whole
society without being paid for it. However, that is not destruction of
wage labor - i.e. the antithesis - but overcoming the old form in a
new synthesis.
Well, it *is* destruction of wage labor in the sense that it makes
some parts of wage labor unnecessary - something unions are typically
are not interested in...
Anyway I guess there is little disagreement between us about this
point.
That needs a great collective
consciousness.
My immediate question: Why? I'd ask you to think about this question.
I could imagine your ansert is deeply rooted in a society based on
scarcity. I guess the answer will go along: Abolishment of "Who does
not work shall not eat" is hard.
I completely agree with you for a society based on scarcity and severe
limitedness. However, that's a point which has been made as early as
the Russian revolution were some (IMHO: rightfully) said that
socialism is not possible based on misery - which Russia was at that
time compared to e.g. central European countries.
If scarcity is understood as a social construction - which is how I
understand it - then it is clear that it can be overcome by a society.
As far as limitedness is concerned today I think that at least severe
limitedness can be overcome. An indicator for severe limitedness could
be the feeling that justice is a useful concept.
Indeed I think capitalism did us the favor to develop the means of
production to overcome this severe limitedness (generally even within
sustainable limits BTW). I think the society you and I enjoy to live
in are *in principle* free of severe limitedness. It's only scarcity
and the need to keep it up which prevents this wealth to be enjoyed by
all.
I think basically in the North-Western societies we are already living
in societies based on abundance. "Who does not work shall not eat"
makes no sense any longer beyond keeping up scarcity / capitalism. In
effect I think, yes, there needs to be a mental shift away from "Who
does not work shall not eat". But in the first place this is a mental
shift based on existing reality. Therefore it could be part of "felt
consciousness" - or "experienced consciousness" how I'd like to
rephrase it.
I guess there is more disagreement between us on this point. May be
your answer to the "Why?" is also completely different. In any case:
Could you please outline?
I do not see how could be realized a worldwide passage
May be this is a point where we have a major disagreement. I'm
(currently) not thinking about a worldwide passage to a GPL society in
one big step. That is probably also contrary to classical socialist
assumptions where world revolution was on the agenda. When I think of
it the reason for socialist world revolution is probably that
socialism was (usually) only thought as an antithesis to capitalism
which indeed would be hard to have on the same planet.
A simultaneous worldwide passage is also not how capitalism came into
being. In the contrary: Capitalism needed 200 years - or even 700
years if you count the early forms in - to become the global dominant
model. And even whether it reached complete world domination seems
questionable to me because there are still (parts of) societies on
this planet which are not purely based on money.
In fact I think the (r)evolution towards a GPL society will happen
with different paces in different parts of the world and different
fields of human activity. So for instance for digital goods there is
already big potential from which a good part has been realized in Free
Software. Of course digital goods are of minor importance for places
where clean water is (still) a top priority.
Frankly I have no answer for those parts of the world where capitalism
didn't do its job of generating general wealth. Of course those parts
of the world will enjoy Free Goods - as we see in Free Software and
may be even more so in Free Culture. But this is probably no answer to
the question of clean water.
Instead of establishment of an antithesis like socialism seems to me
more and more I think the historical shift we are talking about will
be a synthesis. As such I think it can co-exist with thesis and
antithesis without being absorbed - whereas the antithesis being based
on the same principles as the thesis is always in danger of being
absorbed. We saw this when the Eastern bloc collapsed. The synthesis
on the other hand can spread first in fields which are most viable for
it and step by step can take over the logic of the whole society. That
is how capitalism developed and I think we agree that it was very
successful with this strategy ;-)-: .
from
an exchange value logic to a use value one without a generalized
consciousness and will to build a new society.
Well, AFAICS consciousness never made a revolution. May be I'm not
seeing enough though.
Now let me look at your second point.
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.
That was certainly true in early capitalism/socialism but I think it's
no longer true. I'd agree that at some point the big material means of
production you are naming need to be absorbed by the synthesis but
certainly not first. Those means of production are not in the focus of
the synthesis - just as land - the central means of prodcution of the
former regime - was not in the focus of early capitalists.
In Free Software we see that (today) a new mode of production in a
highly relevant field is done on material means of production which
are privately owned: PCs. Capitalism did us the favor to generate
universal information machines at prices affordable to many, many
simple people. Only the Internet as the second important
infrastructure necessary could be seen as such a big material means of
production. But frankly I can not see that there is a problem with
cheap supply of more than sufficient Internet connectivity for private
persons.
Also during the development of capitalism the importance of groups of
means of production shifted. As Marx analyzed already the
scientification ("Verwissenschaftlichung") of the production happened.
Thus the importance of the means of production heavily shifted to the
head workers which can do their job at least to some part without the
big material means of production you have in mind.
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.
That is something I agree on - if it is actually necessary.
For instance Eric von Hippel in "Democratizing Innovation" outlines
scenarios where commercial entities build innovations found by user
innovators. Think Free Software distributors: They organize and sell
Free Goods and can live from that. I could imagine that the most
successful corporations during the transfer period to a GPL society
could be such custom manufacturing services ("Lohnfertiger" - Hippel
had such a nice English term for this but I can't find it quickly
:-( ).
This is also another application of the new logic breaking way: It
starts to use the old logic to do the jobs where the new logic still
lacks abilities. Again there is not much political consciousness
needed here but a lot of experienced consciousness.
May be this way even the take-over of big material means of production
could happen without much blood.
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.
Just to clarify: I have to admit that I had those bourgeois factions
in mind. I think even they had little political consciousness as I
understand it. Admittedly I didn't even think of the masses. But
that's an absolutely valid point we should explore carefully.
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.
Thanks for these important remarks. Admittedly I'm not very good in
French history so I may miss important points. My main question is
about the motivation of the masses. You say the motivation was based
on illusions and lies. Even if so: Could you please tell us what the
content of these illusions and lies was?
For a political consciousness heading for a new society then I'd
expect something like welcoming free work / employment, industry,
entrepreneurship, nation and so on. I.e. a positive relationship to
the new mode of production - instead of only a negative relationship
to the old one. I thought the main concern of the masses was that the
old regime was in a crisis - for instance by spending enormous amounts
of money for royal purposes and so on. By "Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity" you are actually referring to the central ideological
shift. That is indeed interesting. May be you can go into detail here?
It would also be interesting to check carefully what happened in the
independence / revolution in the USA and also in UK (sic!).
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.
It would be interesting to learn whether these popular movements where
avantgarde movements in the sense that they were only a bit early and
the developments they wanted came into being later. Or whether they
headed in a direction which has not been realized later. Can you give
us an idea?
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 for forbidding of strikes and workers unions experienced
consciousness perfectly suffices - don't you think? Also for strikes
and workers unions itself experienced consciousness perfectly
suffices. That was the way to organize power against the other power.
That objectively strikes and workers unions *were* early
manifestations of the fundamental conflict of this new society -
between work and capital - does not mean that those engaged need a
political consciousness then.
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.
I'd agree as far as experienced consciousness is concerned.
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.
And may be new ones which are better suited to the new forms.
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.
In Free Software - which is a *huge* and very complex thing - we see
that political consciousness is not really necessary for it. To
organize a new regime it *is* necessary to maximize Selbstentfaltung,
however. In this sense I'd say that experienced consciousness is of
utmost importance.
Also: Couldn't it be thinkable that those "masters" keep doing their
job organizing production *while* furthering Selbstentfaltung?
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.
Though RMS is certainly coming from the politically inspired part of
the movement I think he is a bit frightful of a big vision. If I stood
in his shoes I'd probably would feel the same.
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...
I'd be careful to not hang the gripes so high they can not be reached
any more.
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.
Ok, what I call experienced consciousness you call immature
consciousness.
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.)
Yes, "felt consciousness" is probably a bad term. However, I think
neither immature nor embryonic are useful adjectives in this regard
because both mean that this consciousness is minor and needs to
develop into something different. I'm not so sure about this. For
instance I think the political consciousness in our modern democracies
is *far* less than the experienced consciousness. Yet these modern
democracies are rather sustainable.
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.)
I think this debate is an absolutely important one. I'll give another
try on a definition.
Political consciousness
A consciousness that a major change is necessary if not inevitable.
Insofar political consciousness is linked to a vision. Political
consciousness actively refers to the new set of values necessary for
the vision and actively explores options and features of the change
and the vision. It relates to the already visible germ forms as
early forms of things to come. Political consciousness needs, is
based on and maintains a more theoretical approach to the topic.
Experienced consciousness
A type of consciousness based on practical experience with the germ
forms which already evolved. Experienced consciousness does not
include a vision but relates to the practical benefits of the new
forms. Insofar it relates to the direct interests of people. These
benefits / interests are defended if necessary. Experienced
consciousness does not need a theoretical approach to the topic but
a practical approach to the already existing forms is necessary.
I'm sure we can improve this together so at least we know what we are
talking about :-) .
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.
Well, I can agree with thinking that at some point political
consciousness is more necessary then now.
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...
When I rethink your thoughts in terms of the development of the germ
form
[http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Introduction/SlideKeywordFiveStep]
you are referring to the fourth step: "Germ form becomes dominant".
Crisis of the old form is indeed a precondition for that.
Sorry for the length...
No problem. As I said I think this debate is of utmost importance for
Oekonux and going into details certainly makes sense for this.
May be where it makes sense a following discussion - which I hope will
arise - can be split into sub-threads with a useful subject. For
instance the comparison of revolutionary socialist concepts with new
forms - which a good part of this mail is about - can be split to a
sub-thread.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
reached my mailbox since yesterday evening.
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