5 ms·

The New Socialism

22 points by yaa_minu 7y ago

febeling 7y ago
(2009)
robertAngst 7y ago
While I give away 100% of the stuff on my website for free because I like to help people, it is NOT socialism. I could not live off my website being free, I have a day job. And as the author says, open source advocates tend to be more libertarian. And also as the author said, using 'socialism' will make people cringe. Yes, because the author is trying very hard to find 'digital' socialism.
- simonh 7y ago
  The term Socialism is often used for shock effect, but yes this article isn't about socialism, or even anything new. Just because something has to do with a social project and sharing resources doesn't make it socialism. Capitalist societies are still social structures, with communal resources and shared spaces. Socialism and Communism are specifically to do with shared ownership and control of capital resources. Feely choosing to give things away isn't socialism, or inherently anti-capitalist. It's simply the exercise of one of the freedoms of private ownership of one's goods or labour - the freedom to share it or give it away.
  - Veen 7y ago
    What they are calling socialism used to be called generosity or philanthropy.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    > Socialism and Communism are specifically to do with shared ownership and control of capital resources. Yes, but know-how of all sorts - including both the freely-available content of sites such as Wikipedia and the institutional frameworks that are themselves embedded in the computer code of e.g. MediaWiki, Mastodon, PixelFed and PeerTube - is a form of capital, too. In a way, the article is not exactly wrong; it's just that this instance of socialism - along with a few others, such as socialization of basic, monopolized "platforms" on a rigorously neutral basis - postal services, roads, railways, power-grids etc. etc. - is the only one that can possibly work as part of a wealth-creating society. "Communal ... shared spaces" are capital in the "capitalist" sense, as much as a privately-owned factory is.
    - simonh 7y ago
      I don't think it's useful to use the word socialism in this way though. If we do, then socialism simply becomes a subset of capitalism. It has always been possible in capitalist societies for people to pool their resources and share the results of their labour, as I said it's simply the exercise of one of their rights as owners. Political and economic socialism is predicated on the principle that individual ownership is immoral, because resources should belong to society. This is why socialists are against the individual, or even collective ownership of companies by shareholders because that's still private ownership. For them the sole legitimate owner is 'society' as a whole, which in practice means the state. That's what genuine socialists believe in and campaign for, which would of course threaten the freedom of individuals to build something like Wikipedia. That's because they would not have individual ownership of the capital resources contributed towards it. The decision about allocating those resources would reside with the state, not individuals as free agents. Paradoxically, universal collective ownership dramatically limits freedom to organise collectively without state sponsorship. That's why you see communist and socialist countries cracking down on grass roots movements. They challenge the legitimacy of the state.
      - 0815test 7y ago
        What you say is true of actual, physical resources but not of things like Wikipedia content or computer code, which is what I was talking about in my previous comment. These things "belong to society" by nature, so to say; whereas "state sponsorship" itself is the only factor that can create "ownership" in them out of thin air. Note that since these are not resources in the sense of "something that's subject to scarcity and competing allocation needs", "decisions about allocating resources" simply don't matter here! (Monopoly platforms are in kind of an intermediate position where what we want to avoid is simply for "the decision to allocate these resources" to be subject to the sorts of favoritism, opportunistic behavior and inefficiency that tend to come with monopolized private ownership. In practice, this is a weird case where public ownership turns out to work quite well; especially if the monopolization can be efficiently kept to a very local level, so that users are still incented to "vote with their feet" for the very best provider. All in all, it's not that different from capitalistic provision while avoiding some really obvious pitfalls of entirely-private models.)
Dowwie 7y ago
Just as my car isn't an industrial horse carriage, so too are modern forms of organization not socialism.
s_kilk 7y ago
As a socialist, this article is moronic, almost offensively so.
- jkingsbery 7y ago
  Maybe the point was to write an article so bad, that it would create a comment section on hacker news where people I'd wildly different world views could unanimously agree on something?
p4bl0 7y ago
This article misses so many points. It's wrong about what socialism is. It's wrong about how online communities work. It's wrong about who free software / free culture supporters are (or maybe it adopts a very US-centric view while claiming a worldwide truth). It's kind of sad, I was really expecting it to be interesting.
jkingsbery 7y ago
> "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' " "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "Socialism" is notoriously challenging to define, but you can't have it mean whatever you want it to mean.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Socialism has a straightforward definition. People just confuse it with social democracy.
throw0101a 7y ago
To everyone who is saying "that is not socialism" * Please talk to the US Republican Part and tell them to stop lying. When someone (especially a Democrat) brings up universal healthcare, the GOP says "that's socialism!". When free tuition is brought up: "that's socialism!". Universal daycare: "that's socialism!". Carbon pricing: "socialism!". Higher taxes on upper income to pay for social programs: "socialism!". The GOP has thrown the word "socialism" around as a boogeyman to the point that it is now meaningless in the US: * https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/defining-socialism-down https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/defining-s... This isn't the 1950s anymore. The problem is not with the author's (Kevin Kelly [1]) use of the word, nor necessarily with the policies that are being proposed by some (left-leaning) politicians, but with the fact that the GOP (as a party) does not participate in US politics in good faith. * [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor) Edit: Case in point, McConnell called granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico “full bore socialism” in a Fox News interview just this week: * https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dem-d-c-statehood-full-bore-socialism https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dem-d-c-sta...
- 0815test 7y ago
  The weirdest part is not that Republicans think universal healthcare is socialism; it's that they think that it is, while also thinking that Medicare is not! Remember "keep the government out of my Medicare"?
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    > [...] that Republicans think universal healthcare is socialism. Do the Rs really think that, or do they simply say "socialism!" because they've trained their base and some independents to think (socialism = bad)? Centrailly planned economies generally don't work, and I wouldn't want actual socialism for most things where I live. But if you don't like a particular policy, argue the pros/cons of that policy instead of trying to 'slander' it. A lot of people in the US want affordable health care, and there are various ways to implement that, but if you label them all as "socialism", then people will end up "wanting" socialism.
craigsmansion 7y ago
The article itself is a bit of a train-wreck, but hopefully it can provide some insight for "open source" people to how they are perceived, if the article is anything to go by. - You work for free, and should work for free. - You sharing your programming is equated with sharing whatever non-sense on Flickr and Twitter. - Collective action and sharing is always positive, even if it erodes privacy and strictly gains commercial 3rd parties, because it's "culture". In short, your ideals and ideas are being co-opted by large businesses and pundits, and in return you get to be part of "a movement" that might not benefit you. Please be aware of that when large corporations "warm up" towards open source, or when pundits proclaim that, in effect, you should be more "pragmatic" and go with the flow or miss out on the revolution. In contrast, Free Software, even if considered crusty and old-fashioned, is about one thing: respecting the freedoms of users. That single thing can facilitate making great, fun communities; it can create a solid basis to boost commerce and enhance capitalism; it can serve to prop up your libertarian Utopia. It can help with all these things and many more, but it is none of these things.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  One thing I liked about liberally licensed libraries was that I could use and contribute to them both at my day job and my side hustle. If I wanted a particular library at my regular job and my side hustle, the lowest effort way to do that was to release something as MIT/BSD/Apache (and maybe MPL) on my own time, then use and improve it at my regular job, which meant I could avoid doing the same work twice (and maybe get coworkers to contribute). That just isn't feasible most of the time for Free Software. If you want to profit from Free Software, you have to design both the software and your business model around the license. With liberally licensed software, you just use it. And yes, it certainly benefits other companies, but is that really the bad thing? I'll work on something if it benefits me, and if it benefits someone else too, that's fantastic. I don't care if it nets me hundreds while netting someone else millions, I'm still getting hundreds. I used to build stuff to be "part of the community", but that's less important to be now than building stuff because it benefits me. There are a million projects I could involve myself in, so now I'm just a bit more selective on what I contribute to.
  - 7y ago
foolzcrow 7y ago
Socialism = government control by the 1%
beatgammit 7y ago
The only way socialism works to describe open source and free software is if you try to force political or economic terms onto something like software development. Graffiti isn't socialist just because it's done gratis and relatively collectively. In fact, it could be considered as capitalist because it's essentially advertising (in many cases). Donation-based museums aren't socialist because they offer free entry, they're still run by a small, exclusive group and have essentially decided on a different business model. Likewise, open source and free software isn't necessarily "socialist", and it may not even necessarily be collectivist. Essentially, open source software gives up state protections and adds limitations of its own. In that sense, I'd argue that open source and free software are more laissez-faire than collectivist, since their license terms are often what you'd get if there were no government providing copyright protections (especially for liberal licenses like MIT). Any software project could be collectivist if it chooses, but that has more to do with the organization governing maintainence of the codebase than the license it uses. For example, RedHat is very centralized and commercial and Debian is very democratic, yet they both use the same GPL license. Likewise, the Go project is very centralised and the Rust project is a bit more Democratic, yet they both use liberal licenses. So no, socialism is not a good word to describe open source or free software licenses or even the community as a whole, though it could be a decent term for specific projects.

22 points by yaa_minu 7y ago

(2009)

While I give away 100% of the stuff on my website for free because I like to help people, it is NOT socialism. I could not live off my website being free, I have a day job. And as the author says, open source advocates tend to be more libertarian. And also as the author said, using 'socialism' will make people cringe. Yes, because the author is trying very hard to find 'digital' socialism.

simonh 7y ago
The term Socialism is often used for shock effect, but yes this article isn't about socialism, or even anything new. Just because something has to do with a social project and sharing resources doesn't make it socialism. Capitalist societies are still social structures, with communal resources and shared spaces. Socialism and Communism are specifically to do with shared ownership and control of capital resources. Feely choosing to give things away isn't socialism, or inherently anti-capitalist. It's simply the exercise of one of the freedoms of private ownership of one's goods or labour - the freedom to share it or give it away.
- Veen 7y ago
  What they are calling socialism used to be called generosity or philanthropy.
- 0815test 7y ago
  > Socialism and Communism are specifically to do with shared ownership and control of capital resources. Yes, but know-how of all sorts - including both the freely-available content of sites such as Wikipedia and the institutional frameworks that are themselves embedded in the computer code of e.g. MediaWiki, Mastodon, PixelFed and PeerTube - is a form of capital, too. In a way, the article is not exactly wrong; it's just that this instance of socialism - along with a few others, such as socialization of basic, monopolized "platforms" on a rigorously neutral basis - postal services, roads, railways, power-grids etc. etc. - is the only one that can possibly work as part of a wealth-creating society. "Communal ... shared spaces" are capital in the "capitalist" sense, as much as a privately-owned factory is.
  - simonh 7y ago
    I don't think it's useful to use the word socialism in this way though. If we do, then socialism simply becomes a subset of capitalism. It has always been possible in capitalist societies for people to pool their resources and share the results of their labour, as I said it's simply the exercise of one of their rights as owners. Political and economic socialism is predicated on the principle that individual ownership is immoral, because resources should belong to society. This is why socialists are against the individual, or even collective ownership of companies by shareholders because that's still private ownership. For them the sole legitimate owner is 'society' as a whole, which in practice means the state. That's what genuine socialists believe in and campaign for, which would of course threaten the freedom of individuals to build something like Wikipedia. That's because they would not have individual ownership of the capital resources contributed towards it. The decision about allocating those resources would reside with the state, not individuals as free agents. Paradoxically, universal collective ownership dramatically limits freedom to organise collectively without state sponsorship. That's why you see communist and socialist countries cracking down on grass roots movements. They challenge the legitimacy of the state.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      What you say is true of actual, physical resources but not of things like Wikipedia content or computer code, which is what I was talking about in my previous comment. These things "belong to society" by nature, so to say; whereas "state sponsorship" itself is the only factor that can create "ownership" in them out of thin air. Note that since these are not resources in the sense of "something that's subject to scarcity and competing allocation needs", "decisions about allocating resources" simply don't matter here! (Monopoly platforms are in kind of an intermediate position where what we want to avoid is simply for "the decision to allocate these resources" to be subject to the sorts of favoritism, opportunistic behavior and inefficiency that tend to come with monopolized private ownership. In practice, this is a weird case where public ownership turns out to work quite well; especially if the monopolization can be efficiently kept to a very local level, so that users are still incented to "vote with their feet" for the very best provider. All in all, it's not that different from capitalistic provision while avoiding some really obvious pitfalls of entirely-private models.)

Dowwie 7y ago

Just as my car isn't an industrial horse carriage, so too are modern forms of organization not socialism.

s_kilk 7y ago

As a socialist, this article is moronic, almost offensively so.

jkingsbery 7y ago
Maybe the point was to write an article so bad, that it would create a comment section on hacker news where people I'd wildly different world views could unanimously agree on something?

p4bl0 7y ago

This article misses so many points. It's wrong about what socialism is. It's wrong about how online communities work. It's wrong about who free software / free culture supporters are (or maybe it adopts a very US-centric view while claiming a worldwide truth). It's kind of sad, I was really expecting it to be interesting.

jkingsbery 7y ago

> "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' " "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "Socialism" is notoriously challenging to define, but you can't have it mean whatever you want it to mean.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Socialism has a straightforward definition. People just confuse it with social democracy.

throw0101a 7y ago

To everyone who is saying "that is not socialism" * Please talk to the US Republican Part and tell them to stop lying. When someone (especially a Democrat) brings up universal healthcare, the GOP says "that's socialism!". When free tuition is brought up: "that's socialism!". Universal daycare: "that's socialism!". Carbon pricing: "socialism!". Higher taxes on upper income to pay for social programs: "socialism!". The GOP has thrown the word "socialism" around as a boogeyman to the point that it is now meaningless in the US: * https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/defining-socialism-down https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/defining-s... This isn't the 1950s anymore. The problem is not with the author's (Kevin Kelly [1]) use of the word, nor necessarily with the policies that are being proposed by some (left-leaning) politicians, but with the fact that the GOP (as a party) does not participate in US politics in good faith. * [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly_(editor) Edit: Case in point, McConnell called granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico “full bore socialism” in a Fox News interview just this week: * https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dem-d-c-statehood-full-bore-socialism https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dem-d-c-sta...

0815test 7y ago
The weirdest part is not that Republicans think universal healthcare is socialism; it's that they think that it is, while also thinking that Medicare is not! Remember "keep the government out of my Medicare"?
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > [...] that Republicans think universal healthcare is socialism. Do the Rs really think that, or do they simply say "socialism!" because they've trained their base and some independents to think (socialism = bad)? Centrailly planned economies generally don't work, and I wouldn't want actual socialism for most things where I live. But if you don't like a particular policy, argue the pros/cons of that policy instead of trying to 'slander' it. A lot of people in the US want affordable health care, and there are various ways to implement that, but if you label them all as "socialism", then people will end up "wanting" socialism.

craigsmansion 7y ago

The article itself is a bit of a train-wreck, but hopefully it can provide some insight for "open source" people to how they are perceived, if the article is anything to go by. - You work for free, and should work for free. - You sharing your programming is equated with sharing whatever non-sense on Flickr and Twitter. - Collective action and sharing is always positive, even if it erodes privacy and strictly gains commercial 3rd parties, because it's "culture". In short, your ideals and ideas are being co-opted by large businesses and pundits, and in return you get to be part of "a movement" that might not benefit you. Please be aware of that when large corporations "warm up" towards open source, or when pundits proclaim that, in effect, you should be more "pragmatic" and go with the flow or miss out on the revolution. In contrast, Free Software, even if considered crusty and old-fashioned, is about one thing: respecting the freedoms of users. That single thing can facilitate making great, fun communities; it can create a solid basis to boost commerce and enhance capitalism; it can serve to prop up your libertarian Utopia. It can help with all these things and many more, but it is none of these things.

beatgammit 7y ago
One thing I liked about liberally licensed libraries was that I could use and contribute to them both at my day job and my side hustle. If I wanted a particular library at my regular job and my side hustle, the lowest effort way to do that was to release something as MIT/BSD/Apache (and maybe MPL) on my own time, then use and improve it at my regular job, which meant I could avoid doing the same work twice (and maybe get coworkers to contribute). That just isn't feasible most of the time for Free Software. If you want to profit from Free Software, you have to design both the software and your business model around the license. With liberally licensed software, you just use it. And yes, it certainly benefits other companies, but is that really the bad thing? I'll work on something if it benefits me, and if it benefits someone else too, that's fantastic. I don't care if it nets me hundreds while netting someone else millions, I'm still getting hundreds. I used to build stuff to be "part of the community", but that's less important to be now than building stuff because it benefits me. There are a million projects I could involve myself in, so now I'm just a bit more selective on what I contribute to.
- 7y ago

foolzcrow 7y ago

Socialism = government control by the 1%

beatgammit 7y ago

The only way socialism works to describe open source and free software is if you try to force political or economic terms onto something like software development. Graffiti isn't socialist just because it's done gratis and relatively collectively. In fact, it could be considered as capitalist because it's essentially advertising (in many cases). Donation-based museums aren't socialist because they offer free entry, they're still run by a small, exclusive group and have essentially decided on a different business model. Likewise, open source and free software isn't necessarily "socialist", and it may not even necessarily be collectivist. Essentially, open source software gives up state protections and adds limitations of its own. In that sense, I'd argue that open source and free software are more laissez-faire than collectivist, since their license terms are often what you'd get if there were no government providing copyright protections (especially for liberal licenses like MIT). Any software project could be collectivist if it chooses, but that has more to do with the organization governing maintainence of the codebase than the license it uses. For example, RedHat is very centralized and commercial and Debian is very democratic, yet they both use the same GPL license. Likewise, the Go project is very centralised and the Rust project is a bit more Democratic, yet they both use liberal licenses. So no, socialism is not a good word to describe open source or free software licenses or even the community as a whole, though it could be a decent term for specific projects.