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> 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 fr

> 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.)
  - simonh 7y ago
    Sure, but Wikipedia depends for it's existence as a service on considerable capital resources. Github and Gitlab are also far from capital free enterprises, yet even though the example of such services is clear and their value obvious, the Chinese state for example has yet to provide anything even remotely comparable. Capitalism has provided a structure to create and sustain such services, while socialism fails to do so, or even follow in it's tracks. Buy why so? It's one of the fascinating characteristics of actual socialism that it's universalist ideals turn, when faced with the problem of practical implementation, into a centralising and therefore monopolising force. That applies to information just as much as capital, because ultimately all individual freedoms threaten a centralised authority that claims sole legitimacy to speak for society.

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.)
- simonh 7y ago
  Sure, but Wikipedia depends for it's existence as a service on considerable capital resources. Github and Gitlab are also far from capital free enterprises, yet even though the example of such services is clear and their value obvious, the Chinese state for example has yet to provide anything even remotely comparable. Capitalism has provided a structure to create and sustain such services, while socialism fails to do so, or even follow in it's tracks. Buy why so? It's one of the fascinating characteristics of actual socialism that it's universalist ideals turn, when faced with the problem of practical implementation, into a centralising and therefore monopolising force. That applies to information just as much as capital, because ultimately all individual freedoms threaten a centralised authority that claims sole legitimacy to speak for society.