Message 04233 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT03726 Message: 28/35 L4 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

Superior results? (was: Re: [ox-en] Free Software and social movements in South America)



Hi Raoul and all!

Still I have a few older threads lying around...

7 months (224 days) ago Raoul wrote:
Stefan wrote:
I'm still holding the position that
the only area were capitalism can be overcome is to eradicate it by
its roots. And this root is the productive process. Organizing an
effective productive process with superior results is *the* stronghold
of capitalism. Unless this stronghold is beaten by even superior
results there is no hope to overcome capitalism. At least not in a
positive way.

I agree in the sense that a social system is based first of all on a
specific way of organizing social production. To go beyond capitalism is to
go beyond the way it organizes social production, and beyond means to have
"superior results". But here two questions raise: first, "superior results"
on what ground? Second, who or what ascertains or establishes this
superiority?

Both very crucial questions indeed.

The ground IMHO is product quality. I.e. the usefulness of the
products. And yes I'm talking of the use value of things here.

I mean capitalism succeeded *also* because it were able to produce
better products in at least these respects:

* Lower prices because of improved use of labor (i.e. higher
  productivity)

* Products which were only possible by industrial (and thus at that
  time capitalist) production processes

* Mass availability of products

There were probably also an improved product quality such as always
having the same features because of the uniformity of the industrial
production process but that is probably debatable so I won't stress it
here.

I'm sure: Had this not been the case capitalism would not have taken
off.

Well, the second question is easy then: The users of these products.
Whether these users are private persons - like at least partly for the
early textile industry - or institutions like corporations doesn't
matter much here. And IBM as well as some of the feudal Lords *see*
the superiority of Free Software.

You say in your mail: "This is where capitalism can be beaten on its own
ground". But the "own ground" of capitalism is first of all producing
"profit"... Producing goods for human needs is not (and cannot be) its
essential goal. It does it only as it is a condition for selling and thus
making profit. But, if it can't sell or make profit it does not produce.

Well, I'd say it depends on the perspective. Sure making profit is an
important goal in capitalism. But it is neither an end in itself nor
is profit only used for consumption by the rich. A capitalist needs to
invest back some part of the profit into production or his source of
profit quickly dries out.

If you confirm the disembedded nature of alienated production like in
capitalism then I'd agree with you that there can be nothing superior
to making profit compared to capitalism. But I'd say on a bigger time
scale the disembedded nature is only the phenomenon of a certain age.

In fact production is a very societal process and the results of that
production is important for every society. So I'd say that if there is
a system which is able to out-produce capitalism on a large scale
basis then it will. Just as capitalism out-produced feudalism.

If we look at the two previous historical transitions (the birth of
feudalism from slavery, and the birth of capitalism from feudalism) things
were relatively simple. Feudalism and capitalism had "superior results" than
slavery and feudalism, simultaneously on the ground of social production
(allowing society to fulfill its economic needs)

Well, a bit contrary to what I just stated I think the general value
system of a society also plays a certain role. It is a big shift from
a God based value system to a money based one. And since the assertion
of quality is always based on notions and ways of thinking coined by
the society what we now see as superior must not have looked this way
from e.g. a feudal mind set.

Well, IMHO these are typical problems if you stand at the edge between
two ages...

and on the ground of
allowing the ruling classes to maintain or increase their income. The Roman
masters emancipated their slaves and transformed them into "coloni", the
basic form of feudal serfs, also because they could see in practice that
this was for them a more profitable relationship. Part of the European
feudal nobility could also see how bourgeois manufactures and traders became
richer than them and become capitalists themselves.

But - as you rightly say - only part of. And IMHO it is more important
that it is only a part. In fact the mind set of a feudal noble and the
mind set of an entrepreneur are probably so fundamentally different
that it is quite hard to shift from one to the other.

No I don't buy it that this all happened because the ruling class was
so pleased by it. Certainly there were always a ruling class. But IMHO
though some jumped on the train it more changed in the process than it
stayed.

The famous speech
delivered by Marlon Brando in the film Queimada, persuading the colonial
Portuguese landowners of the advantages of wage labor over slavery by
defending the advantages of prostitution over marriage (you pay the
prostitute only when you need her), that's the kind of "reason" which helped
in the past the historical transitions between social systems. The "superior
results" were recognized by a more or less important fraction of the ruling
classes.

Certainly they were. But I don't buy that it was *only* the ruling
class.

But, will this be the case for a transition into a post-capitalist, a non
proprietary society?

Yes.

Can we imagine the capitalist ruling class saying: We
recognize that the non proprietary logic gets "superior results" for human
needs than the capitalist one, so, we abandon our property and profit rights
over all the means of production in order to open the way to a more human
society? That would be great! But we know it won't happen.

It is certainly not so simple and also would mean some consciousness
which IMHO capitalists as a class - at least nowadays - just don't
have.

Capitalists may be convinced of the "superior results" of the non
proprietary logic only as it is applied to specific activities and allows
them to increase their profits and their properties, not to suppress them..

In fact "more or less important fraction of the ruling classes" *are*
recognizing peer production as useful for *them*. They can use it to
make profit *now*. Why give a shit about a long-term future? And that
was the same with feudal Lords.

If you use germ form theory then there is absolutely no problem here.
In the third step the germ form becomes an important aspect of the
development of the old. IMHO the importance is intentionally
unlimited: Even the ruling classes can benefit from the germ form.

If the germ form would be just some sort of anti-theses I'd totally
agree with you. However, the power of the germ form comes *not* from
any anti but from being on the next step of the spiral of modes of
production. That's essential - though probably hard to grasp for
people so used to think in antis.

But it would be an illusion to think that this is a non limit process and
that one day we shall wake up in a free non proprietary society without even
notice-it.

True alone for the fact that this process takes more time than a night
;-) .

My point here is not do deny the importance of capitalist introducing "free
practices" in the process of production, but to stress the fact that, in the
final analysis, the most important and fertile conviction created by FS
practices will not be the profit/property limited conviction of the ruling
classes but the conviction of the immense majority of the population (the
non ruling classes) that a non profit/property society is possible.

Yes.


						Grüße

						Stefan

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT03726 Message: 28/35 L4 [In index]
Message 04233 [Homepage] [Navigation]