8 ms·

Software and Anarchy (2021) [pdf]

92 points by pabs3 4y ago

bklaasen 4y ago
A 65 page tract on programming as it relates to Bookchin's "social ecology" and Wikipedia-like "peer production".
- elliotec 4y ago
  Just to be accurate in case this comment scares folks away - it's 61 pages including all the appendices and bibliography, but 46 pages and 3 chapters of the core content.
  - cholantesh 4y ago
    That's only 1.84 COTGPs*, no biggie. * Critique of the Gotha Programme, 25 pages
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nonrandomstring 4y ago
From skimming the TOC and first chapter this seems more about dynamics and fluidity than structure. It's a frustrated lament of all -archies and the idea that meaning in software comes out of the structure of its form or production. I guess that's why we call it *soft"-ware in the first place. Malleable, reconfigurable, flexible, easily re-writable. extensible... If software has a problem today it's that it's ceased to be soft. Big Tech would rather we had appliances than general purpose computers, and that we "deploy apps", controlled from the mother-ship, than "run programs". As social infrastructure rather than personal utility, software becomes about fixing and preserving power relations, rather than enabling new ones. It becomes ossified into structures - and the anarchic ones may be as dogmatic as the hierarchic ones.
- e-dant 4y ago
  I thought we call it software because it breaks when I touch it
teloli 4y ago
One thing the human race should have learned from history is that once you start restricting individual freedom, you know where you begin but you don't know where you end. You don't want corporations to use your software, fine, fuck Google. Then one day you find out that the police may use the software, so you add "law enforcement" to the list of fields of endeavor you want to restrict. Then it's the military, and that's where the definitions get tricky. The "Cooperative Nonviolent Licenses", just as an example, would have probably not been usable by the Anarchist Confederal militias in the Spanish Civil War. A think tank promoting nuclear energy uses the license, is that fine? How about a neo-nazi nonprofit? Soon enough the list of groups you don't like is gonna get long.
- tovej 4y ago
  And why is a long list necessarily bad?
  - teloli 4y ago
    With remarkable consistency across space and time, those lists have historically grown from “the capitalists” to “their allies” to “the counter-revolutionaries” to “the enemies of The People“ to “the enemies of The Party”
    - tovej 4y ago
      Wow, that's some wild extrapolation (and association) there.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- openfuture 4y ago
  Why do people think these things get respected? What ultimate authority is omniscient in this way? The fact is that if I can access the source then it is effectively FOSS, especially if I'm a military. Please take a long hard look at how the implicit assumptions behind these discussions do not line up with reality and then move on to building the web of trust with me :P
Synaesthesia 4y ago
Anarchism is something which ought discussed more. Essentially the elimination of all unnecessary hierarchy and domination. For example we can make the workplace a democratically run institution, with shared profits. I think it’s an ideal which we ought to strive towards, which might only be realised in some future century. >The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.
- CapitalTntcls 4y ago
  There are a number of cooperatives that are very successful. Not in a capitalist way but providing the workers a honest and good life with much more freedom them usual companies. There is a good example in Brazil https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344119511_Flasko_A_Worker-run_Factory https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344119511_Flasko_A_...
  - cholantesh 4y ago
    Unfortunately they have to compete under the conditions of capitalism, which don't favour workers or enterprises that make worker happiness a priority, making long-term sustainability a huge challenge.
    - seanw444 4y ago
      No system makes worker happiness a priority. At least none that can actually exist for a meaningful amount of time in the real world.
      - cholantesh 4y ago
        The 'real world' is not immutable, and even the current system has not existed for a particularly meaningful amount of time.
sph 4y ago
Thanks, looking forward to diving into this. I've been thinking about this a lot, after doing a lot of reading on anarchic theory this summer and my comment from yesterday saying that the Linux kernel is great because there's a benevolent "dictator" at the top, and the Linux desktop sucks because there is none: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163760 and below Anarchism doesn't have to mean flat structure. It's my opinion that you can have a perfectly anarchic software organisation with a leader. Linux is anarchic. You're free to leave whenever you want. There is no coercion. But if you stay, you obey the rules of the head honcho, Mr. Torvalds himself. Linux is more anarchic than Valve, which funnily enough its famous flat structure was discussed in a repost today. To me anarchy means no coercion. Anarchy does not have to mean disorganised. In fact, with no visionary at the top, the result is often mediocre. Sorry, I don't have much on topic to contribute, just that I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and this post is serendipitous.
- elliotec 4y ago
  Anarchism means the abolishment of coercion _and_ hierarchy, especially authority. This doesn't mean structureless, but structure and organization via free association to your point. Linux in production as a people org is definitely NOT anarchistic by any definition I can muster because Linus _is_ the head honcho - it is not a freely associated group skeptical of authority because he holds all authority and the keys (even without coercion, which he could readily employ). People don't get to make collective or individual decisions that don't go through the authoritative hierarchy to some degree. Another point you made somewhere else about being able to fork the codebase gives the software itself an opportunity to allow for more anarchistic setups, but in its current state is relatively far from it in my opinion. Happy to discuss this more because it's a fascinating topic and I like finding folks who want to engage in dialogue around this.
  - ewzimm 4y ago
    You can define anarchism to mean the abolishment of hierarchy, but you would be distancing yourself from most anarchist movements. One prominent counter-example would be the Kurdish Workers' Party based on the philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan. It is an anarchist organization with a strict hierarchy. By anarchism, we usually mean the movement that started in early European socialism, developed through Marxism but split with state socialists and distanced themselves from Lenninism, along with all the related movements that developed from it. It has a particular culture and history that has always stood against enforced hierarchies because they get in the way of natural hierarchies that develop through social processes as people make collective decisions and assign temporary leadership roles through defined processes.

92 points by pabs3 4y ago

bklaasen 4y ago

A 65 page tract on programming as it relates to Bookchin's "social ecology" and Wikipedia-like "peer production".

elliotec 4y ago
Just to be accurate in case this comment scares folks away - it's 61 pages including all the appendices and bibliography, but 46 pages and 3 chapters of the core content.
- cholantesh 4y ago
  That's only 1.84 COTGPs*, no biggie. * Critique of the Gotha Programme, 25 pages

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nonrandomstring 4y ago

From skimming the TOC and first chapter this seems more about dynamics and fluidity than structure. It's a frustrated lament of all -archies and the idea that meaning in software comes out of the structure of its form or production. I guess that's why we call it *soft"-ware in the first place. Malleable, reconfigurable, flexible, easily re-writable. extensible... If software has a problem today it's that it's ceased to be soft. Big Tech would rather we had appliances than general purpose computers, and that we "deploy apps", controlled from the mother-ship, than "run programs". As social infrastructure rather than personal utility, software becomes about fixing and preserving power relations, rather than enabling new ones. It becomes ossified into structures - and the anarchic ones may be as dogmatic as the hierarchic ones.

e-dant 4y ago
I thought we call it software because it breaks when I touch it

teloli 4y ago

One thing the human race should have learned from history is that once you start restricting individual freedom, you know where you begin but you don't know where you end. You don't want corporations to use your software, fine, fuck Google. Then one day you find out that the police may use the software, so you add "law enforcement" to the list of fields of endeavor you want to restrict. Then it's the military, and that's where the definitions get tricky. The "Cooperative Nonviolent Licenses", just as an example, would have probably not been usable by the Anarchist Confederal militias in the Spanish Civil War. A think tank promoting nuclear energy uses the license, is that fine? How about a neo-nazi nonprofit? Soon enough the list of groups you don't like is gonna get long.

tovej 4y ago
And why is a long list necessarily bad?
- teloli 4y ago
  With remarkable consistency across space and time, those lists have historically grown from “the capitalists” to “their allies” to “the counter-revolutionaries” to “the enemies of The People“ to “the enemies of The Party”
  - tovej 4y ago
    Wow, that's some wild extrapolation (and association) there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
openfuture 4y ago
Why do people think these things get respected? What ultimate authority is omniscient in this way? The fact is that if I can access the source then it is effectively FOSS, especially if I'm a military. Please take a long hard look at how the implicit assumptions behind these discussions do not line up with reality and then move on to building the web of trust with me :P

Synaesthesia 4y ago

Anarchism is something which ought discussed more. Essentially the elimination of all unnecessary hierarchy and domination. For example we can make the workplace a democratically run institution, with shared profits. I think it’s an ideal which we ought to strive towards, which might only be realised in some future century. >The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.

CapitalTntcls 4y ago
There are a number of cooperatives that are very successful. Not in a capitalist way but providing the workers a honest and good life with much more freedom them usual companies. There is a good example in Brazil https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344119511_Flasko_A_Worker-run_Factory https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344119511_Flasko_A_...
- cholantesh 4y ago
  Unfortunately they have to compete under the conditions of capitalism, which don't favour workers or enterprises that make worker happiness a priority, making long-term sustainability a huge challenge.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    No system makes worker happiness a priority. At least none that can actually exist for a meaningful amount of time in the real world.
    - cholantesh 4y ago
      The 'real world' is not immutable, and even the current system has not existed for a particularly meaningful amount of time.

sph 4y ago

Thanks, looking forward to diving into this. I've been thinking about this a lot, after doing a lot of reading on anarchic theory this summer and my comment from yesterday saying that the Linux kernel is great because there's a benevolent "dictator" at the top, and the Linux desktop sucks because there is none: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163760 and below Anarchism doesn't have to mean flat structure. It's my opinion that you can have a perfectly anarchic software organisation with a leader. Linux is anarchic. You're free to leave whenever you want. There is no coercion. But if you stay, you obey the rules of the head honcho, Mr. Torvalds himself. Linux is more anarchic than Valve, which funnily enough its famous flat structure was discussed in a repost today. To me anarchy means no coercion. Anarchy does not have to mean disorganised. In fact, with no visionary at the top, the result is often mediocre. Sorry, I don't have much on topic to contribute, just that I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and this post is serendipitous.

elliotec 4y ago
Anarchism means the abolishment of coercion _and_ hierarchy, especially authority. This doesn't mean structureless, but structure and organization via free association to your point. Linux in production as a people org is definitely NOT anarchistic by any definition I can muster because Linus _is_ the head honcho - it is not a freely associated group skeptical of authority because he holds all authority and the keys (even without coercion, which he could readily employ). People don't get to make collective or individual decisions that don't go through the authoritative hierarchy to some degree. Another point you made somewhere else about being able to fork the codebase gives the software itself an opportunity to allow for more anarchistic setups, but in its current state is relatively far from it in my opinion. Happy to discuss this more because it's a fascinating topic and I like finding folks who want to engage in dialogue around this.
- ewzimm 4y ago
  You can define anarchism to mean the abolishment of hierarchy, but you would be distancing yourself from most anarchist movements. One prominent counter-example would be the Kurdish Workers' Party based on the philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan. It is an anarchist organization with a strict hierarchy. By anarchism, we usually mean the movement that started in early European socialism, developed through Marxism but split with state socialists and distanced themselves from Lenninism, along with all the related movements that developed from it. It has a particular culture and history that has always stood against enforced hierarchies because they get in the way of natural hierarchies that develop through social processes as people make collective decisions and assign temporary leadership roles through defined processes.