Michael Szpakowski
Since the beginning
Works in Harlow United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Wired Misses the Marx


I think your general criticisms are largely on the nail Brian. Nonetheless it does seem to me that hidden in Kelly's confusion is a real and useful insight. One of the arguments I've heard correctly deployed against those who argue that socialism is impossible because there would be no "incentive" to do anything, is that people often labour hard and carefully with no expectation of reward within the family, or for friends or in the service of some cause or in the pursuit of hobbies &c. We have to rehabilitate a good old Marxist term - dialectic - to understand why, because everything is in flux, a phenomenon can be both progressive *and* backward looking. Marx famously praised the bourgeoisie to the skies for its role in developing the means of production at the same time as dedicating his life to overthrowing rule of said bourgeoisie (' I only hope my writings plague the bourgeoisie as these have plagued me' he is said to have remarked of a particularly bad attack of the boils from which he suffered chronically)
So what, for example, Wikipedia serfdom demonstrates is two-fold: (1) just how capable of working constructively and effectively people are even without a boss to crack the whip or without "incentives" and (2) just how capitalism shapes and structures, or, better, distorts said impulse. This is true of open source software too; people work their arses off for nothing & corporations step in and make huge piles from what they've done..
Secondly - there's no doubt that tools such as Google, e mail, social networking have the *possibility* of connecting people up in all sorts of new and exciting and progressive ways. Most of the time they won't, but it doesn't mean that the potential isn't there. Socialism is predicated on technological advance making a society of real generalised plenty a possibility - technology in and of itself of course doesn't do this. I remember when growing up in the sixties we were told that by now we'd all be working a five hour week and our biggest problem would be how to use our leisure time. Of course despite huge technological progress the opposite is true -people work longer hours with greater intensity of labour because that's how capitalism works, *necessarily* squeezing every last drop of profit from those who actually create the wealth. Nonetheless every technical advance has the *possibility* of being used to enhance lives rather than sell things or turn a profit for the already obscenely rich.
So whatever there is that is sinister and controlling about Google there is also a huge freedom in terms of being able to quickly and effectively access not only facts but huge chunks of other otherwise difficult to access cultural and informational artefacts. A block to this being even more useful is the existence of capitalist competition between institutions - imagine if every single academic paper *had* to be posted, with free access, to the net.
Once we've appropriated Google, Apple, Microsoft , the banks , whatever and are running them under real democratic workers control then we'll be able to see that they are used solely and gloriously for the common good, for human growth...
Lastly, there's a whiff of sectarianism of , I think, an unhelpful sort in attacking Kelly for misuse of terminology.
Of course it is important to argue for clarity and against ideas we believe to be mistaken or misconceived but rather than socialism as a concept coming out of hiding amongst groups of intellectuals because of some weird get-Obama-off-some-future-hook notion it seems to me more likely that minds are turning in this direction because of the spectacular scale of economic, social and political crisis we're in, which has seen the failure of capitalism pretty unequivocally demonstrated.
michael

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This is great!
It felt like a big part of my life was missing.
Thanks for all your work on this Nick.
michael

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