Comments on: Dmytri Kleiner’s Critique of Peer Production Ideology

By: Poor Richard

Poor Richard — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 09:38:24 +0000

Words like communism, socialism, capitalism, anarchism, etc. belong to an entirely different form of language than “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” and “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” The former are academic or intellectual jargon words and the latter are plain, people’s language–the COMMON language. The meanings of those sentences of common language have not changed perceptibly since they were first uttered. OK, some implicit associations with various common words change somewhat histori-culturally; but it doesn’t matter because they change unconsciously and fairly uniformly across whole populations, so very little confusion occurs among cultural contemporaries. The same is NOT true of jargon. Jargon seldom has any broad consensus of meaning across class and educational strata, or even within strata, at any point in time. Jargon is only useful within relatively small and coherent groups of contemporary peers.

I don’t have to be a professor of linguistics– the argument is just common sense.

By: Poor Richard

Poor Richard — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 09:15:18 +0000

WADR Michel and Dmytri,

Dmytri has the weight of history about like the Palestinians do. A fat lot of good it will do him.

IMO the “true” definitions of communism, socialism, capitalism, anarchism, etc., etc., etc. are LOST–not Lost in Space perhaps, but lost in the Time Tunnel or “OUT THERE” as in the X-Files(old US scifi tv references). Objectively we can’t say the original versions are the “true” forms anymore than we can say the latest versions (or anything in between) are the true forms. The waters of these words are too muddy, too polluted, to fish in anymore.

By: Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 08:47:44 +0000

In reply to Poor Richard.

In this case, Dmytri has the weight of history behind him … the cold war definition and use of the term is a relatively late comer on the scene …

By: Poor Richard

Poor Richard — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:14:28 +0000

Dmytri, I read your blog post on communism with interest, but IMO wanting to impose your own definitions on communism and capitalism is like wanting to impose your own definition on religion or love. The ambiguity of generic labels is a common source of confusion. As soon as you depart two steps of abstraction from “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!” you are in the weeds, and what you wind up defending maybe isn’t worth defending. As you said, even “equalism” can be attacked, and perhaps rightly so. So how about sticking with “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” and “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Those two sentences alone might golden rule the world. All the volumes written on justice, morality, etc. over the ages may all count as obfuscation compared with those few, simple words.

By: Dmytri Kleiner

Dmytri Kleiner — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 08:00:28 +0000

Poor Richard, please see:

http://www.dmytri.info/communism/

Best,

By: Poor Richard

Poor Richard — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:17:49 +0000

If I can replace Dmytri’s use of “capitalism” and “communism” with authoritarianism and egalitarianism then I can completely agree with his thesis.

As written, however, communism and state socialism are undefined, (or defined only implicitly) and capitalism is described in specific terms that need not apply to all varieties of capitalism. The only definition that can be applied to all varieties of capitalism is “a system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned” (presumably as opposed to divinely, royally, or publicly owned). That would not exclude an egalitarian form of capitalism, one of equal freeholders perhaps, which would not fit what by Dmytri’s description is an unfair system of production and distribution imposed by various aggressive, authoritarian means. Why not just call it authoritarianism? And why not call a system characterized by “independent peers” requiring minimal co-ordination egalitarianism?

At some point in history that which we could call “capitalism” by its most basic definition (private ownership) may have been experienced by many as a progressive liberation of peasants and lands from unfair servitude. To insist now that capitalism per se was the root of all inequity is unhistorical, no matter how unjust a system now widely called by that name may have become.