Communicative Socialism/Digital Socialism
Author : [[Christian Fuchs]]
URL : https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/1144
Page 7 : 3.2. Production and Labour
Page 7 : Toil is for Marx and Engels incompatible with a socialist society. They see the reduction of necessary labour and the abolition of hard labour as an important aspect of
Page 8 : In a high-tech socialist society, where the division of labour is abolished, humans are enabled to freely choose their work activities and to be active as well-rounded individuals who engage in many different activities. This means that humans can freely use their capabilities. Labour turns into free activity without a struggle for survival and coercion by the market.
Page 8 : In a socialist society, production takes place based on the principle of human need and not based on the principle of profit (the need of capital). This requires some form of planning of production:
Page 8 : Part of the reason state communism failed was that the central planning of human needs and the economy failed. Economies are complex and have unpredictable features.
Page 8 : Economic planning needs to be decentralised, which in a networked and computerised society can take on the form of a decentralised collection of the goods that individuals and households require. This information can then be sent to production units that thereby know how many goods are required during a certain period of time. Networking of production within industrial sectors enables the comparison of the available production capacities and productivity levels, which enables the production of the right amount of goods. ● not quite so simple…
Page 8 : For Marx and Engels, socialism includes a democratic economy, in which the workers own the means of production in common.
Page 9 : 348). 3.3.
Page 9 : Marx and Engels distinguish between two phases of a socialist society: crude communism as the first stage and fully developed communism as the second stage.
Page 9 : In the first stage, there is the elimination of capital, profit and the private property of the means of production, but not necessarily the abolition of wage-labour, money, exchange, and commodities. The means of production are collectively owned, but the productive forces are not yet developed to the stage that allows the abolishment of necessary labour.
Page 9 : In the higher, fully developed form of communism, the means of production are highly developed so that necessary labour and exchange are abolished:
Page 10 : From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is a central communist principle. In a fully developed communist society, there is no wage-labour and no compulsion to work.
Page 10 :
- Socialist Politics
Page 10 : Freedom is an important principle of democratic societies. For Marx, socialism means the abolition of alienation and the realisation of true freedom that allows humans to fully develop their potentials. A socialist society is a democracy and a humanism, in which the freedom of all interacts with individual freedom.
Page 11 : Progressive politics that socialists support include, for example, a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax”, the “[e]xtension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State”, the “[c]ombination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; the “gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country”, or the “[f]ree education for all children in public schools”
Page 11 : of the populace over the country”, or the “[f]ree education for all children in public schools” (Marx and Engels 1848, 505). 5. Socialist Culture
Page 11 : 5.1. Togetherness
Page 11 : Whereas capitalist culture through the logic of commodity consumption advances a culture of isolation and individualisation focused on the individual consumption of commodities and the competition for reputation, socialist culture means the development of a common culture, where humans associate and produce and consume culture together:
Page 11 : 5.2. The Family
Page 11 : Socialist society also changes personal relations and the family. It reduces the dependence and power relations within the family and thereby advances equality:
Page 11 : 5.3. Internationalism
Page 11 : and nationalism in a socialist society.
Page 12 :
- A Model of Socialism
Page 12 : For Marx (1844, 296), communism as revolutionary socialism is the “reintegration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement”, “the real appropriation of the human essence”, “fully developed humanism”
Page 13 : There are three dimensions of a socialist society: the socialist economy, socialist politics, and socialist culture.
Page 14 : Discussions about socialism in the 21st century have foregrounded the commons. The basic argument is that neoliberal capitalism has resulted in the commodification and privatisation of common goods that are either produced by all humans or that all humans need in order to exist.1
Page 14 : Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2017, 166) argue that there are two major forms of the commons: the social and the natural commons. These forms are divided into five subtypes: the earth and its ecosystems; the “immaterial” common of ideas, codes, images and cultural products; physical goods produced by co-operative work; metropolitan and rural spaces that are realms of communication, cultural interaction and cooperation; and social institutions and services that organise housing, welfare, health, and education (2017, 166).
Page 15 :
- Communicative/Digital Socialism
Page 15 : 7.1. Socialism and Technology
Page 15 : 7.1.1. The Antagonism of Productive Forces and Relations of Production
Page 16 : In the 21st century, information technology and the Internet are founded on an antagonism of class relations and the now networked productive forces. A good example is that the Internet allows the free sharing of information via peer-to-peer platforms and other technologies, which on the one hand questions the capitalist character of culture and so makes the music and film industry nervous, but on the other hand within capitalism can also constitute problems for artists who depend on deriving income from cultural commodities.
Page 16 : Networks are a material condition of a free association, but the cooperative networking of the relations of production is not an automatic result of networked productive forces.
Page 16 : 7.1.2. The Antagonism Between Productive Forces and Relations of Production in the Grundrisse’s “Fragment on Machines”
Page 16 : necessary labour time – the annual labour-time a society needs in order to
Page 16 : The capitalist antagonism between productive forces and relations of production is an antagonism between necessary labour (that technology ever more reduces) and surplus labour (that capital tries to ever more increase):
Page 17 : 7.1.3. Technology and Time in Capitalism and Socialist Society
Page 17 : But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour.
Page 18 : 7.1.4. Fully Automated Luxury Communism?
Page 18 : Bastani rightly reiterates Marx’s insight that communism requires material and technological foundations and can therefore only be a high-tech communism. ● debateable
Page 18 : A communist society requires prospective, critical technology assessment and communist tech ethics and tech policies that regulate new technologies. Technology is not just an economic issue, but also has political and cultural dimensions that are based on but not reducible to the economy.
Page 19 : requires technological foundations, but high tech alone is not enough. Communism’s guiding principle is neither technology nor love of technology, but love.
Page 19 : Bookchin reminds us that not all technologies are liberating. Technologies need to be combined with and shaped by environmentalism and communalism. Bookchin argues for an “ecological approach to technology that takes the form of ensembles of productive units, energized by solar and windpower units” (46).
Page 20 : (convivial technologies), André Gorz (post-industrial socialism), Ernst Bloch (alliance technology), etc.
Page 19 : The list of theorists of socialist technology could be continued with names such as Herbert Marcuse (post-technology), Erich Fromm (humanised technology), Ivan Illich
Page 20 : Fully Automated Luxury Communism is, despite its tendencies of idealist utopianism and historical blindness, good food for thought about the foundations of communism.
Page 20 : 7.2. Socialism and Communication
Page 20 : and Communication 7.2.1.
Page 20 : Alienated and socialist forms of knowledge and communication 7.2.2. Public Service Media and Community Media
Page 21 : The political economist of communication Graham Murdock (2011, 18) argues that the three political-economic possibilities in the media and cultural sector are ownership by capital (the commodity form of communications), by the state (the public service form of communications) and by civil society (communications as gifts/commons). ● podcasts as gift economy / commons
Page 22 : Community media are, in capitalism, often based on voluntary, self-exploitative, unpaid or lowpaid labour. The history of alternative and community media is a history of self-determined but precarious labour and resource precarity.
Page 22 : In the 20th century, many states held monopolies over telecommunications, broadcasting networks, railways, and the postal service. These are large infrastructures of communication. Organising them as public services enables fair, universal, affordable access. Today, there is a need for public service Internet platforms, such as a public service YouTube run by a network of public service companies, in order to challenge
Page 22 : Alternatives to communication services that store and process lots of personal data, such as Facebook, should be organised as self-managed community platforms because too much involvement by the state poses a certain danger of state surveillance potentials directed towards citizens.
Page 22 : 7.2.3. Rosa Luxemburg: The Freedom of the Press in Socialist Society
Page 22 : Rosa Luxemburg on the one hand supported the need to replace the Czarist regime by a socialist society and on the other hand stresses the need for the democratic character of such a society.
Page 23 : Luxemburg criticised the curtailment of the freedom of expression in Russia under Lenin.
Page 23 : service media organisations and self-managed media organisations. 7.2.4. Democratic Communications
Page 23 : In his book Communications, Raymond Williams (1976, 130-137) distinguishes between authoritarian, paternal, commercial and democratic communication systems (communications). The first three communication systems are political,
Page 24 : 7.2.5. Socialist Journalism
Page 24 : Fogarasi implicitly applies Georg Lukács’ (1971) critique of reified consciousness to the capitalist press. In the capitalist press, the focus is often not on the dialectic of totality, particularity and individuality, but merely on individual, isolated pieces of news. According to Fogarasi, strategies of the capitalist press include reporting a multitude of isolated facts that quench the readers’ thirst for knowledge; de-politicisation and sensationalism that work “systematically in the service of such diversion” (1921/1983, 150); and pseudo-objectivity. In contrast, the socialist press tries to advance the consciousness of society as totality and of the relation of single events with each other and broader contexts, the unmasking of the capitalist press, and the participation of readers as producers of reports ● stream vs gsrden
Page 24 : 7.2.6. Digital Commons
Page 24 : Given that computing has become a central resource in modern society, the use of computers for organising cognition, communication and cooperation has become a human need.
Page 25 : being loved and recognised), communicative needs (such as friendships and community) and co-operative needs (such as working together with others in order to achieve common goals) in all types of society. In a digital and information society, computers are a vital means for realising such needs. But given that computers are always used in societal contexts, computer use as such does not necessarily foster the good life, but can also contribute to damaging human lives.
Page 26 :
- Conclusion: Ten Principles of Communicative/Digital Socialist Politics
Page 26 : both public services and civil society as the realms from where alternatives emerge. There are ten principles of communicative/digital socialist politics: 1. Techno-dialectics:
Page 26 : How can technology and society be shaped in manners that benefit all humans, workers and citizens and develop the positive potentials of society and humanity?
Page 26 : Instead, it asks: How can technology and society be shaped in manners that benefit all humans, workers and citizens and develop the positive potentials of society and humanity? 2. Radical
Page 26 : workers: Communication corporations exploit different kinds of workers. Alternatives to communicative
Page 27 : Collective control of the means of communication as means of production: ● governable stacks
Page 27 :
- Break-up of communication monopolies:
Page 27 : privacy: Public and commons-based communications should respect users’ privacy and minimise their economic and political surveillance as well as other forms of surveillance. Personal
Page 27 :
- Public service media and communications co-operatives:
Page 28 :
- Democratic, public sphere media:
Page 28 : Alternatives decelerate information flows (slow media), foster informed political debate and learning through collective creation, and participation in spaces of public communication that are ad-free, non-commercial, and not-for-profit.
Page 28 : classist, fascist, racist, xenophobic and sexist discourse. 9. Political and protest communication: Communication technologies are not the cause of protests, rebellions and revolutions, but they are an important part of
Page 28 : Socialist communication politics seeks to use communication technologies for spreading socialist politics to a broad public.
Page 28 : Self-managed, democratic governance:
- public document at doc.anagora.org/communicative-socialism-digital-socialism
- video call at meet.jit.si/communicative-socialism-digital-socialism