Wharton professor Dan Hunter has written a provocative paper in which Lessig-style free culture activism, open source software, and open spectrum are examined for their relation to Marxism.
The paper concludes that Lessigist IP reform is more like social democracy, which tempers the exploitative excesses of monopoly capitalism with safety nets; whereas the open spectrum and open source movements are more like Marxism, in that they attempt to remove property from the exploitive hands of owners.
I think the paper gets its Marxism wrong. For example, "a commons of any sort is inherently Marxian, even if other types of private property rights still operate within the commons." Nope. Marxism argues that all property is theft, and all property is to be held in common. And "Marxism isn’t about society against the individual, but seeks to put the individual first, allowing him or her access to the aspects of life that make them complete." Don't think so. Marxism is collectivist, requiring individuals to give up personal ownership and personal benefit for the advantage of the group.
Most importantly, I think the paper gets its metaphor wrong. Lessig's Free Culture and Open Spectrum activists don't advocate abolishing the ability to earn financial reward from intellectual resources. This isn't because they are wimpier Marxists; social democrats who don't go all they way. It is because they see the public domain as a necessary resource for economic and cultural life to continue.
The environmental movement is based on the idea that life on earth depends on a healthy commons -- clean air, clean water, thriving forests that emit oxygen, thriving wetlands that absorb storm flow, thriving oceans that support the food chain, healthy soil.
Environmentalists don't try abolish fishing or farming or manufacturing. They try to halt the pollution and destruction of the commons, because without a healthy environment, life on earth isn't sustainable. If you pollute badly enough, and wreck the foodchain, everybody gets sick, starves and dies.
Open Spectrum advocates don't argue that all technology should be free. They see radio waves as a particular resource that, for technical reasons, is most abundant and generates most value if it isn't allocated into privately held chunks. It's an argument about managing a single resource, spectrum, in order to foster economic activity in the areas that depend on it.
Lessigist free culture activists don't argue that it ought to be illegal to make money from information. They contend that there needs to be a healthy public domain in order for the creation of culture to continue.
It is a difference in kind, not in degree, to believe that some resources need to be protected in public trust, in order to continue economic and cultural activity that depends on those resources.
The argument about open source marxism is differently wrong. I'll reread Benkler and noodle on that for a bit longer.
Posted by alevin at September 15, 2004 05:56 PM | TrackBackYou're right that he's wrong about commons being inherently Marxian, but you're wrong on the larger point. Marx didn't give a rat's ass one way or the other about private property in the everyday sense of the stuff we own, his beef was with private property in the realm of the means of production. That "property is theft" business is Proudhon, not Marx, and Marx thought Proudhon was a fool, and a lightweight to boot.
And Marx's (very underdeveloped) vision of a future communist society was not particularly collectivist. He saw it as a sphere of freedom where people could actually become individuals, which he considered more or less impossible under conditions of wage slavery. Remember the line from The German Ideology: Hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, criticize in the evening, etc?
Posted by: djw on September 22, 2004 07:09 PMCame upon your posting by accident and would ordinarily not comment. Always nice to be read, but you are on shaky ground on your assertions:
1. You should be really careful suggesting I don't understand Marxism, when you get Marxism so wrong. Proudhonism ("P is theft") is not Marxism. Besides the line is incoherent on its face, and Marxist scholars have disclaimed this for about 100 years.
2. You should have a look at the Hegelian basis for Marxism if you want to maintain that your statist conception of communism is the only one that exists, and that therefore communism is inherently statist. It's actually the opposite.
3. I don't use Marxism as a metaphor, but as a political philosophy to understand the IP reform movement. To the extent that i think that environmentalism is consistent with Marxism, then your example of commons-based environmentalism is consistent with the argument that IP reform is Marxist.
Posted by: Dan Hunter on September 23, 2004 10:58 AM