5 ms·

The Telekommunist Manifesto: a useful but faulty map

15 points by ctoth 14y ago

Jach 14y ago
It'd be nice to have more time to properly deconstruct this. Did anyone else feel that the author and the author of the linked page about decentralization don't really grasp the decentralization ideas elaborated within cypherpunk culture?
tjic 14y ago
Related: I'm a right libertarian who didn't really understand what "left libertarian" even meant. This essay seems to explain it well: http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right-libertarian-sticks-a-toe-in-left-libertarianism-and-finds-that-the-water-is-fine/ http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right-libertaria...
- ctoth 14y ago
  I like this. I would add to this: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm for an idea of how a leftest libertarian Utopia might look. Your link mentions Ken MacLeod, I think Iain M Banks also has something to contribute here.
- scarmig 14y ago
  As a left libertarian, I'd say one other big difference between right and left libertarians is how rigorous people are in opposing the State. Most right libertarians (except those of certain strains of anarcho-capitalism) wholeheartedly embrace State recognition and enforcement of property rights, while left libertarians take a more laissez faire approach toward them.
Finster 14y ago
I guess I spend so much time on reddit, I tend to think the internet community in general is much more liberal and Democrat-leaning. Certainly, there is a strong Libertarian thread, but most of the online communities that I interact with are definitely socialist-leaning. Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance. On the other hand, copyleft certainly seems compatible with certain anarcho-capitalist ideals. So, I don't know.
- baddox 14y ago
  > Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance. I don't see how. If customers of ISPs value neutrality, then there is profit motive for ISPs to offer it. Obviously, it's a balance between how many potential customers care about neutrality and how much they're willing to pay for it. Net neutrality legislation, along with any regulations or subsidies on privately-owned infrastructure, is definitely anti-capitalist, just like legislation that says McDonald's must always offer the McRib.
  - sethrin 14y ago
    Yes and no. To the degree that capitalism is about efficiency by means of competitive markets, net neutrality is no more "anti-capitalist" than, e.g. requiring all drugs to be tested for efficacy. To the degree that capitalism is about blind accumulation of capital, then net neutrality is anti-capitalist. You could consider Government as the solution to the problem of natural monopolies.
  - prodigal_erik 14y ago
    Without network neutrality legislation, an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable competitors. Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market?
    - baddox 14y ago
      > an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable competitors. Pay who exactly? They could pay the government, of course, and that's usually how things go, but that's what I am opposed to. > Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market? It depends on your definition of "unfettered access." Most capitalists, for example, are fine with the failure of a competitor who has no idea how to run a business, even though his incompetence certainly fetters him. Pro-capitalists are generally strong advocates of private property, so the only types of fettering they would oppose would be violations of property rights (like theft, assault, or threats thereof). Simply using capital to one's advantage and to the disadvantage of one's competitors is, as the name suggests, not generally considered a bad thing in capitalism.
Isamu 14y ago
Can someone tell me if this is crypto-satire? I really can't tell. Maybe something along the lines of the Sokal hoax, maybe not.
- jsnk 14y ago
  I don't think so. The content is not immediately understandable, but I think it's simply because the subject of the writing is very academic. The article is not intentionally obfuscated.
- modulux 14y ago
  I can tell you that it isn't, as I've written it (thought I should show up here when I saw the traffic spike). I suppose though, that if people come to this conclusion on reading it, I've failed to make it clear and accessible enough. The original manifesto I'm reviewing/criticising is written in the same language register, which I would admit is perhaps too academic. There's also a certain tendency to using this register in Marxist circles, which certainly doesn't help us put our message across. I could also plead second-language privilege. Sorry about that.
  - prodigal_erik 14y ago
    Thank you. I have to admit when I reached By this I mean that the category of rent is deployed to explain the hegemonic power of the bourgeoisie vis-a-vis the working class. I found myself wondering whether it was a conscious imitation of "The Architect", but I'll give it another chance when I have more time.
baddox 14y ago
I'm curious about the economic justification behind this statement: > Without market inefficiencies, capital would be unable to capture any more than its own reproduction cost in any branch of industry. The elimination of competition is central to the logic of capitalism. Without unfair advantages, a capitalist class of owners could not accumulate wealth and there could be no capitalism. I'm well aware that market inefficiencies are real and inevitable, but why is all net value increase attributable to them? In the most obvious case, I can certainly buy a shovel and recover way more value by digging and finding gold. Net wealth can and does increase over time, due both to the harvesting of natural resources and the cumulative advantages of human knowledge and technology. Perhaps the whole statement hinges on the definitions of "unfair advantages." If the speaker considers exclusive ownership of capital to be unfair, then the claim is a tautology.
- scarmig 14y ago
  A world without market inefficiencies is a world where there are no excess profits--everything converges to the natural rate of profit. Any place money could be that offers an economic profit would immediately receive many competitors who would drag it down to the natural rate. What I gather he's saying is that the natural rate of profit is itself zero: given that and no economic profit, capitalism could not reproduce itself. It's probably true that, in a world with complete and perfect knowledge, the natural rate is zero: that world, however, is so radically different from our own or any conceivable socialist one that I've got to reject that part of his point.
  - baddox 14y ago
    It would require more than just perfect knowledge, wouldn't it? Market inefficiency has other sources, too, like transaction costs, non-excludability and non-rivalry (e.g. public goods), etc.
- dreamdu5t 14y ago
  Yup, they don't believe there should be private ownership of capital/property. What is often overlooked is the only way to administer community ownership is an elite group that decides who gets what. A very common misconception amongst socialists and other self professed anti-capitalists is that economics is a zero-sum game. It is not.
dreamdu5t 14y ago
Has the author considered it's because hackers value liberty? There is no place for liberty, individual sovereignty, or natural rights in a communist state. In a communist society, you don't get to hack. You only get to do the things provided for and prescribed to you by the ruling party.
- modulux 14y ago
  Definitely, the author has considered this. I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though. Capitalism gives people abstract rights: if they have property, they can use it how they want; if they have money, they can spend it how they want; and so on. But this doesn't preclude the absence of concrete choices when one has none of those things. I'm obviously opposed to a state which tyranizes over people, but I think it's interesting to consider how much the hacker community sprung out of academic institutions, which aren't exactly private. The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack.
  - dreamdu5t 14y ago
    > I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though. Property rights are liberty. If I don't own my property then necessarily someone else does. Capitalism is a natural consequence of property rights. Money is property. > The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack. The difference is you're trading voluntarily with your boss, supervisor, or company owner. You entered into an agreement to trade labor for something. In communism, the boss is chosen for you by someone you've never met.
martinced 14y ago
"This should be surprising to Marxists, given that, exceptional aberrations aside, information workers are members in good standing of the working class." But there is not one "working class" besides in Marxist's totally obsolete and pseudo-scientific writings. This has been proved again and again. This all "bourgeoisie vs working class" does not exist anymore. It never did in Asia. And Marx himself admitted his theories were broken in that they couldn't explain the situation over milleniums in Asia. Well, he was a bit harsh on himself, poor Marx: he was not all wrong. His theories can totally explain the situation in North Korea. So the basic premises of this junk, just as any Marxist junk, are totally wrong. Why oh why do poisonous words from communist websites are now getting upvoted on hacker news, a site dedicated to entrepreneurs, is totally beyond me. Let's make a deal: all the communists who believe Marx's unfalsifiable (and hence non-scientific) theories are sound move to North Korea. From there they can keep posting and upvoting communist junk on HN. Seriously that said: for people who are unaware of the unfalsifiability of marxists' reworded theories (to cope with events that proved the first version wrong), these words are poisonous. They are poisonous because they are carefully crafted to sound "scientific". This article is, just like its mentors' writing, pseudo-scientific cerebral masturbation. Life is too short and liberty is too important to pay attention to that kind of crap.

15 points by ctoth 14y ago

Jach 14y ago

It'd be nice to have more time to properly deconstruct this. Did anyone else feel that the author and the author of the linked page about decentralization don't really grasp the decentralization ideas elaborated within cypherpunk culture?

tjic 14y ago

Related: I'm a right libertarian who didn't really understand what "left libertarian" even meant. This essay seems to explain it well: http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right-libertarian-sticks-a-toe-in-left-libertarianism-and-finds-that-the-water-is-fine/ http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right-libertaria...

ctoth 14y ago
I like this. I would add to this: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm for an idea of how a leftest libertarian Utopia might look. Your link mentions Ken MacLeod, I think Iain M Banks also has something to contribute here.
scarmig 14y ago
As a left libertarian, I'd say one other big difference between right and left libertarians is how rigorous people are in opposing the State. Most right libertarians (except those of certain strains of anarcho-capitalism) wholeheartedly embrace State recognition and enforcement of property rights, while left libertarians take a more laissez faire approach toward them.

Finster 14y ago

I guess I spend so much time on reddit, I tend to think the internet community in general is much more liberal and Democrat-leaning. Certainly, there is a strong Libertarian thread, but most of the online communities that I interact with are definitely socialist-leaning. Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance. On the other hand, copyleft certainly seems compatible with certain anarcho-capitalist ideals. So, I don't know.

baddox 14y ago
> Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance. I don't see how. If customers of ISPs value neutrality, then there is profit motive for ISPs to offer it. Obviously, it's a balance between how many potential customers care about neutrality and how much they're willing to pay for it. Net neutrality legislation, along with any regulations or subsidies on privately-owned infrastructure, is definitely anti-capitalist, just like legislation that says McDonald's must always offer the McRib.
- sethrin 14y ago
  Yes and no. To the degree that capitalism is about efficiency by means of competitive markets, net neutrality is no more "anti-capitalist" than, e.g. requiring all drugs to be tested for efficacy. To the degree that capitalism is about blind accumulation of capital, then net neutrality is anti-capitalist. You could consider Government as the solution to the problem of natural monopolies.
- prodigal_erik 14y ago
  Without network neutrality legislation, an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable competitors. Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market?
  - baddox 14y ago
    > an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable competitors. Pay who exactly? They could pay the government, of course, and that's usually how things go, but that's what I am opposed to. > Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market? It depends on your definition of "unfettered access." Most capitalists, for example, are fine with the failure of a competitor who has no idea how to run a business, even though his incompetence certainly fetters him. Pro-capitalists are generally strong advocates of private property, so the only types of fettering they would oppose would be violations of property rights (like theft, assault, or threats thereof). Simply using capital to one's advantage and to the disadvantage of one's competitors is, as the name suggests, not generally considered a bad thing in capitalism.

Isamu 14y ago

Can someone tell me if this is crypto-satire? I really can't tell. Maybe something along the lines of the Sokal hoax, maybe not.

jsnk 14y ago
I don't think so. The content is not immediately understandable, but I think it's simply because the subject of the writing is very academic. The article is not intentionally obfuscated.
modulux 14y ago
I can tell you that it isn't, as I've written it (thought I should show up here when I saw the traffic spike). I suppose though, that if people come to this conclusion on reading it, I've failed to make it clear and accessible enough. The original manifesto I'm reviewing/criticising is written in the same language register, which I would admit is perhaps too academic. There's also a certain tendency to using this register in Marxist circles, which certainly doesn't help us put our message across. I could also plead second-language privilege. Sorry about that.
- prodigal_erik 14y ago
  Thank you. I have to admit when I reached By this I mean that the category of rent is deployed to explain the hegemonic power of the bourgeoisie vis-a-vis the working class. I found myself wondering whether it was a conscious imitation of "The Architect", but I'll give it another chance when I have more time.

baddox 14y ago

I'm curious about the economic justification behind this statement: > Without market inefficiencies, capital would be unable to capture any more than its own reproduction cost in any branch of industry. The elimination of competition is central to the logic of capitalism. Without unfair advantages, a capitalist class of owners could not accumulate wealth and there could be no capitalism. I'm well aware that market inefficiencies are real and inevitable, but why is all net value increase attributable to them? In the most obvious case, I can certainly buy a shovel and recover way more value by digging and finding gold. Net wealth can and does increase over time, due both to the harvesting of natural resources and the cumulative advantages of human knowledge and technology. Perhaps the whole statement hinges on the definitions of "unfair advantages." If the speaker considers exclusive ownership of capital to be unfair, then the claim is a tautology.

scarmig 14y ago
A world without market inefficiencies is a world where there are no excess profits--everything converges to the natural rate of profit. Any place money could be that offers an economic profit would immediately receive many competitors who would drag it down to the natural rate. What I gather he's saying is that the natural rate of profit is itself zero: given that and no economic profit, capitalism could not reproduce itself. It's probably true that, in a world with complete and perfect knowledge, the natural rate is zero: that world, however, is so radically different from our own or any conceivable socialist one that I've got to reject that part of his point.
- baddox 14y ago
  It would require more than just perfect knowledge, wouldn't it? Market inefficiency has other sources, too, like transaction costs, non-excludability and non-rivalry (e.g. public goods), etc.
dreamdu5t 14y ago
Yup, they don't believe there should be private ownership of capital/property. What is often overlooked is the only way to administer community ownership is an elite group that decides who gets what. A very common misconception amongst socialists and other self professed anti-capitalists is that economics is a zero-sum game. It is not.

dreamdu5t 14y ago

Has the author considered it's because hackers value liberty? There is no place for liberty, individual sovereignty, or natural rights in a communist state. In a communist society, you don't get to hack. You only get to do the things provided for and prescribed to you by the ruling party.

modulux 14y ago
Definitely, the author has considered this. I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though. Capitalism gives people abstract rights: if they have property, they can use it how they want; if they have money, they can spend it how they want; and so on. But this doesn't preclude the absence of concrete choices when one has none of those things. I'm obviously opposed to a state which tyranizes over people, but I think it's interesting to consider how much the hacker community sprung out of academic institutions, which aren't exactly private. The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack.
- dreamdu5t 14y ago
  > I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though. Property rights are liberty. If I don't own my property then necessarily someone else does. Capitalism is a natural consequence of property rights. Money is property. > The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack. The difference is you're trading voluntarily with your boss, supervisor, or company owner. You entered into an agreement to trade labor for something. In communism, the boss is chosen for you by someone you've never met.

martinced 14y ago

"This should be surprising to Marxists, given that, exceptional aberrations aside, information workers are members in good standing of the working class." But there is not one "working class" besides in Marxist's totally obsolete and pseudo-scientific writings. This has been proved again and again. This all "bourgeoisie vs working class" does not exist anymore. It never did in Asia. And Marx himself admitted his theories were broken in that they couldn't explain the situation over milleniums in Asia. Well, he was a bit harsh on himself, poor Marx: he was not all wrong. His theories can totally explain the situation in North Korea. So the basic premises of this junk, just as any Marxist junk, are totally wrong. Why oh why do poisonous words from communist websites are now getting upvoted on hacker news, a site dedicated to entrepreneurs, is totally beyond me. Let's make a deal: all the communists who believe Marx's unfalsifiable (and hence non-scientific) theories are sound move to North Korea. From there they can keep posting and upvoting communist junk on HN. Seriously that said: for people who are unaware of the unfalsifiability of marxists' reworded theories (to cope with events that proved the first version wrong), these words are poisonous. They are poisonous because they are carefully crafted to sound "scientific". This article is, just like its mentors' writing, pseudo-scientific cerebral masturbation. Life is too short and liberty is too important to pay attention to that kind of crap.