Free Software as Part of the Anarchist Toolkit

Interesting. Yes it reminds

Interesting. Yes it reminds a bit of the old days when we were really focused on relations between Free Software and social systems (something as post-capitalism, I even coined a term "infoliberism" though that might sound a bit silly now ).

Anyway, reading the article and comments (although not too deeply) I am left wondering whether labeling of social systems helps clarify things or make them even more complex than they really should. What is capitalism anyway? Within the context of this article and also some of the early articles I wrote back in 2004/2005 it is the system currently enforced by the people currently in power (governments and in almost even bigger part industries). And this is why it is so easy to see capitalism as a corrupt system, because there is a lot of corruption in those governments and there is a lot of uncaring and disproportional thinking within these industries. In other words, we equate capitalism with governments like USA and industries like the music and movie industries represented by RIAA and MPAA - hence we immediately conclude: capitalism is evil.

So it seems to me that before starting to talk about capitalism and whether Free Software helps it or helps its opposition we should make up our mind about what exactly do we mean by capitalism. From what I have understood for a while the original idea of capitalism is not what is being manifested today, meaning that what we are currently seeing in the world is not a real capitalism, much as it may be said about communism in the soviet union, an original idea that was corrupted into something else, but in the name of the original idea, making that name unfairly evil sounding.

What I've seen for a while with Free Software is in fact exactly the opposite of undermining capitalism (and yes, this is a very different view from what I had in the days of founding of Libervis.com). It is *restoring* capitalism to its roots. Free market, that's what it is all about. Free Software allows for a perfect free market capitalism, and so does Creative Commons and the larger movement that all this belongs to, fueled by the advent of digital technology.

The article has some good advices though, like free travel and bus transport. We are just discovering that there are in fact a lot of ways to make something very affordable, cheap or free, without breaking the free market. The key is simply in collectivism among ordinary people. So basically, in some ways peer production can teach us how to peer produce offline as well, at least to a point freeing or making it more affordable what was once expensive. Is this killing capitalism? Not really. In fact it may very well be a sign that a time for real capitalism has finally arrived.

Which brings me to another thought. Maybe the reason why humanly devised social systems fail is because they are applied before their time, before technology can allow for them. Hence, before digital technology instead of the growth of proper capitalism we've seen the growth of corrupted capitalism. Now that we have digital technology, and are on the verge of nano-technology, new possibilities are reinforcing the original idea of capitalism (based on freedom of the individual, ability to act within a market on equal footing). This equal footing maybe couldn't even exist in a pre-digital era and in a physical world can only maybe partly exist before we develop nano-technology further. But of course, the governments and industries (even more the latter) of the corrupt semi-capitalist system that developed in the meantime are fighting the real capitalism that is emerging now. So in a way, instead of this being a battle between capitalism and anarchism/socialism/whatever maybe it is simply a battle between two versions of capitalism. But I guess.. if capitalism as a word gets so tainted as to make it impossible to associate with the proper capitalism we are talking about, we may need a new word for it.

It wont be anarchism, socialism, communism or anything like that though.

On the same line of thinking, applying anarchism today would be pre-mature. Technology needs to advance even further than basic nano-technology to allow for that, and then the humans should evolve their thinking and powers as well.

But this is getting too long for a comment. Maybe I should revise and turn it into an article.

I guess it'll feed a discussion though.

In some sense, anarchy

In some sense, anarchy already exists on the net. It's very hard to enforce any laws there, because what is forbidden in one country will just happen in another. Yet there are less problems than one would expect in a lawless area. Is this anarchism at work?

At the same time, we could observe exactly the same net and conclude that true free market capitalism is emerging there.

So which social system is it that exists on the net? I would say none that has been given a name for the physical world. Things that can be regarded as laws of nature in the physical world simply don't exist on the net (the distance problem, finite copying, etc etc). So the net is just the net, and considering what appears on the net as the result of a physical world political system is... well, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

Maybe one day nanotechnology will disable what we consider laws of nature now. Then what happens on the net now might be a good model for how to deal with it. Or maybe not, maybe it will still be quite different in a way we don't understand yet.

Yes, well said. So with

Yes, well said. So with regards to that I suppose we should just keep learning about how the society on the net works before squaring it under any existing labels or giving it new ones.

Yes it's gas, every label

Yes it's gas, every label has it's supporters and detractors, and over-simplify. I recall debating against Anarchism on another forum only to do some reading and discover it wasn't what I thought. For me it was punk rock, anti-establishment, anti-everything, a bunch of begrudging nay-sayers and low lives with no plans for a better tomorrow, turns out it has a decent if splintered history of sober thinking and values democracy at levels from local to global (yes in a hierArchy, so much for anArchy).

But democracy is the key, because whatever other values the introducer's have are irrelevant, once people get to vote the majority will decide the rest, not a small group.

My last point was that "Anarchy" is a branding nightmare, people just turn off when they hear that word given contemporary mass perception, all their arguments get tainted because people are remembering heroin-addicted punks and skins with the symbol on their backs. Some supporters can set you back...

I often find it convenient to use the label capitalism when describing the architects of various world ills, but maybe I should stick to 'elitism'. A boss once questioned me after I'd expressed joy at the unions success in negotiating a good pay deal for some other workers - "this is bad for the company, we're going to do worse than last year, I know you're a union man but are you turning into one of them socialists now?". He was visibly shocked when I said "not entirely, in this capitalist company we're here for maximum profit just like the shareholders".

That last point raises a big issue for my conclusion that what's needed is the rise of the democratic social enterprise. It occurred to me that the energy released by this could backfire badly even where the local society is valued by staff, this capitalism for all would likely make competition even more vicious with everyone aggressively engaged in an ever intensifying global economic war.

Therefore the other plank is direct democracy from local to global levels to co=operate on achieving sustainable socio-economic cohesion, that way we can have a transparent innovative enterprise ecosystem but keep it fair and within ecological constraints. In time I think the voting majority would get the balance right between what's agreed globally and individual freedom, taking particular care to promote entrepreneurship, which personally speaking is a very different thing to mere money-grubbing.

Not that my view is the same as other posters here, but I'd be uneasy about putting any label on it for fear of over-simplified symbolism. I think it's more effective to come up with a concise accessible description of your proposal than refer to some 'ism. Easier said than done though where the system is complex.

The recent phenomenon of

The recent phenomenon of BarCamps reminds me of what Bakunin said in one of his footnotes in 'God and the State'. He talks about how all the teachers should be dismissed after the revolution as they only know the capitalist ways of teaching and to replace it there should be an ad-hoc education system where people would go to the 'school' and give impromptu lectures on milking cows before going to someone else's lecture on physics. This is the closest I can link Free Software and its community to anarchism. Most of what the article stated were more socialist/Marxist ideas which while broadly correct don't entirely portray Free Software as it is. Free Software is not against copyright, it just has licenses which allow you to do more with the software than copyrighted works without the license. Companies such as Red Hat are a totally capitalist company (it has listed shares for instance) and still produces free software - they make most of their money with the 'value added' market of services, but they still employ wage-slaves and people who do not own the property they work on (RH gets the copyright for works it pays for - much the same can be said for the FSF).

The Internet is a great mix of the world, no view really trumps another, everyone has a voice - within Free Software there are anarchical, social, capitalists and a whole host of other ideologies which create it. As people have already mentioned you cannot lump it in with a group of certain ideas, the Internet and Free Software are just great big boiling pots of knowledge.