nettime We must build social power, not pretend we can hold the powerful to account. (on 9/11)
The day after the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks a discusion broke out on the theory list of the wonderful Philadelphia Socialists[1] group, triggered by a CunterPunch article that critiques 9/11 conspiracy theory[2]. Cockburn's article includes this important point: These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list. This is quite well said! Other than perhaps recommending a few other critics of political economy to go along with Marx, I couldn't agree more with Mr Cockburn! However, rather than continue this line of reasoning and give us a materialist analysis of the events of September 11, Cockburn instead dives head first into the Conspiracy theory muck. Cockburn unleashes a bewildering number of arguments rooted in demolition logistics, air defense and flight control procedures and the capacity and competency of intelligence agencies, the military and the United States Government, because unlike the wild-eyed Truthers, Mr. Cockburn, apparently, really does knows what happened. Really. He does. Not only are Cockburn's claims just as much riddled with bias and fallacy as those of the Truthers, but they also require us to make judgements based on subjects most of us can not possibly be very literate in. But even worse, he misses his own point, as quoted above. The trouble with Truthers is not that they are wrong, it is, exactly as Cockburn writes, that they locate class conflict as being a consequence of some bad-apple politicians and organisations, and not in the crisis of capital accumulation. Let's be clear here, Conspiracy Theory is a bit of a misnomer. The official version of events is that an underground network of Islamists planed and carried out these attacks in secret. Isn't that a conspiracy? So, the issue is not so much whether or not there was a conspiracy, but who was involved in it. Given the well documented inter-connections between intelligence agencies and terror networks it is clear that we can not possibly know how far or wide the network spreads. Certainly, whether by plot or blowback, the events of 9/11 must be connected to anti-Soviet geostrategy during the cold war. And clearly, governments world-wide have seized the opportunity to impose counter-insurrectionist police states and to justify interventions and wars. Should we really be blaming the masses for being suspicious of the whole thing? Should we really be berating the masses about the malleability of steel at 1000 degrees centigrade, the ideal timing of demolition charges relative to aircraft impact, and disputing how long it really ought to take air defense to intercept rogue aircraft? WTF? Can't we just stick to politics and leave the make-believe popular science posturing alone? The botom line is even if we could know The Truth, we can't hold the powerful to account. They are not accountable to us. The illegal and immoral is commonplace in the administration of class war and empire. Knowing the incriminating details will not help us overthrow the class structure. The Truth will not set us free. Why should I care if the events of 9/11 where planned in Tora Bora, Camp David or a Starbucks on Madison Avenue? They are clearly the consequence of the struggle for Capital accumulation, regardless of the operational details. In order to prevent such events we need to build social power and abolish class. Instead of wasting our time telling people they are wrong about what really happened how about we argue that such conflicts would not happen in a society without classes, and that getting at The Truth is not so important as building this new society? In any case, we will certainly get to the bottom of it and figure out the Real Truth tonight at Cafe Buchhandlung[3]. Personally, I'm convinced it was Colonel Mustard with the Candlestick in the Billiard Room. I'll be there at 9pm as usual. [1] http://phillysocialists.org/ [2] http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after... [3] http://j.mp/buchhandlung -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist http://dmytri.info # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:48:34 +0200, Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de wrote: The Pirate Party Germany is just a young liberal party defending benefits for and of middle class business or creative people in the so called hypermobile city as some belive Berlin may be one. Hey Matze, the text is not about the pirate party. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.
On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:09:41 +0200, Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de wrote: Hi Dmytri, yes, but the paryt was simply your kind of proposition to the rest of the text. The party was used as an example of a cause based party, which I argue can not mobilize the masses, and therefore can only remain politically fringe. It is not in the workplace that the appropriation is felt, but rather after work, when they go home to pay their bills. this is maybe a slightly too simple view on what's called free or leisure time. There is only free time since there was a working time for wage beforehand (a non-free time and a stolen time for surplus work to produce the surplus product [overproduction]) and because there was a time without working for wage before the working time for wage. What seems to be left here is time to voting for parties, if you like via liquid democracy technologies -- in its ideologiocal parts a pluralistic and anti-proletarian technology -- but it remains voting within a sysrtem of representation. So important is first and foremost the time-horizon and not the places shifted or the drift of places. For with every hour of wage work workers (and service providers) pay a sort of bill, the time bill. Not clear what you are saying here, I didn't discuss free time or leisure at all. The argument is that politics must be based around economic classes and framed according the felt conditions of those classes, not theory or opinion, but terms of struggle. Such terms that have shifted in a financialized, post=industrial society where most are no longer direct-producers, and thus class politics needs to adapt to that if it is to have resonance. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.
On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:19:25 +0200, Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de wrote: Well, you've been telling that the the workplace is not the place where appropriation is felt. Feeling and knowing are diffrent types of consciousness or awareness. To feel I'm not exploited does not mean that your're not. And I never argue that they are not exploited, quite the oposite. Yet knowing that they are exploited would require acquiring significant theory, which the masses will not. They know they are Debt, so this is the logical place to start. Thus a Debtors' Party is the logical solution. You don't need to convince people they are debtors', they know that already. We need to convince them instead that non-capitalist provision of housing, education and medicine is the solution to the problems they have, and this is possible because the solution is implied by their felt conditions, and does not require being convinced of any complex theoretic or ideological positions to support. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.
On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:13:38 +0200, Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de wrote: Sorry, some last words to it: Thanks, I appreciate your feedback. If you reject the possibility of knowing the essence (which is a dynamic thing not just 'static essence') behind, under or besides the appearance(s) (Hegel), you just follow what's the form of it and see only form (impressionism). I don't reject the possibility of knowing anything, I've arrived at the realization that movements are not fueled by theories. That is your contradiction: First you state the debtors would feel equal know their situation as debtors with power and then you want to missionise them. Us. Not Them. It is not them I wish to missionise, it is the historic mission of the proletariate to abolish class, and do this, we must organize. What is the alternative? Do nothing and lecture the few random people you encounter on theory? The proletariate must organize themselves. The Debtors' Party can be a component of such organization. So the only possibilities are Capitalism or Bolshevism? Never said that. It's only that one can learn a lot from the Bolsheviki-story and from must of a New Economic Policy (NEP) around 1921. Yes, and since we didn't learn that Capitalist provisioning was the only possible solution, and since we've not talked about, nor should we talk about, the specifics of how such provisioning would be implemented, how is this is not yet another random, non-germaine, tangent? You're simply employing a false dilema; that any non-capitalist provisioning must lead to same outcome as it did in Bolshevik history. You are forgetting that almost no worker has built a care he can not afford since most workers in the Western economies are no-longer direct producers. As explained in the text. Well, that's wrong as we know. You seem to be misunderstanding what is meant by direct-producer as opposed to indirect producer. There are many texts on the subject, perhaps you would find my description of technologists as non-direct workers more clear: From http://dmytri.info/capital-doesnt-automate-it-entangles While the skilled technologists that design the software are increasingly separated from the location of direct production, where surlus-value is created, and thus are abstracted from the appropriation of surplus value. Technologists, often do not see themselves as exploited labour. Since they do not directly toil in the production of consumer goods or services, they often feel enabled, not exploited by capital. They produce ideas, designs, maybe prototypes, but never final products for sale. The Capitalists allow them to realize their technical visions, they don't directly take anything from them. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The Revolutionary Role of a Transnational Counterparty
Hey Chris, not sure yet how the actual internal democracy would be structured, I guess that itself would be designed byway of a democratic process. On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:38:48 -0400, chris mann chrs...@gmail.com wrote: or, everyone gets five (5) votes which they can spend in the countries of their choice. (youre particularly engaged in the struggle in burma, then spend some of your votes there (a minimum of one (1) vote has to be spent in the jurisdiction where you currently reside.)) but how often do you vote? -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The Revolutionary Role of a Transnational Counterparty
Thanks Brian, I certainly agree that there would be a lot of commonality with these movements. However, I think the opportunity here is bigger than, we need to have a Mass movement, which the radicalism of OWS, etc, as much as I love it, and identify with it, could never have. We need to reach the average person, and allow them to have organized representation without taking radical action themselves, as their class condition does not allow for it, they have kids, studies, jobs, etc, and are struggling against debts, and mainly insecure about their own historical or political knowledge, and uncomfortable taking radical stances that may alienate their social peers. A movement like OWS can certainly be in solidarity with the masses, but the feeling is unlikely to be reciprocated, and the movement is unlikely to actually attract the 99%. The total number if people involved in OWS will never outnumber the 1% they protest against. This is not in anyway a criticism of OWS and similar movements, this is just the reality. Focusing on a simple message that people are in debt, not because of any moral failure on their part, but because of inadequacies in the way education, healthcare, child care and housing is provisioned in our society is not efficient nor fair can be a bridge from a very common, even conservative (in the social sense) consciousness to a very radical conclusion. The Debtors' Party should definitely be in solidarity with OWS and other radical movements, but it should not, imo, overly identify, or be seen as The party of OWS, not that I wouldn't be proud to be part of such a party, but it's simply not a large enough community to be viable, we need to aim bigger. Over 50% of the population of the planet has a negative net worth. In terms of party discipline, my vision is something like liquid democracy internally, strict discipling externally. External interfaces like local parties and elected posts would be instruments, strongly bound to respect the consensus of the internal democracy, which must be global and extremely non-hierarchical and participatory. If you would like to get involved with the party, please let me know. As for wether it's an artwork or a real party, that's a topic to explore over a beer. Perhaps next time you're in Berlin. I've collected all the texts that I've written about this initiative here: http://dmytri.info/collected-texts-related-to-the-debtors-party Thanks for your comments! Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime How I accidentally became a blogger and blogged the #28c3
Well, #28c3 has come and gone. I’m not sure how it happened, but after all these years on the internet, It looks like I’ve somehow become a blogger. I never really wanted to be a blogger, after all the most exciting thing about the Internet has always been the ability for users to interact on neutral turf. Yet, the web, even when it has social features, is always home-court for somebody or another. The definitive technology of the Internet to me was always UseNet, a worldwide distributed discussion system, and this was where I first began to express and discuss political issues, where the worlds of political activism and media art intersected with my life as a computer programmer, and drew me into ideas and projects and communities I would otherwise have had no connection with. I didn’t start out thinking about what I was doing as “publishing” so much as fishing, posting not so much so people would read my texts, but so people would respond to them. Their responses give me new ideas, insights, and more leads to better understand these topics I could now begin to access, byway of the Internet. UseNet was an ongoing multiparty dialogue. When people started blogging I couldn’t see the point. Why post something on just one website, instead of millions of news servers all around the world? Why force people to use dodgy webforms to leave comments, instead of slick news reading software? It seems so retrograde, so hierarchical, privileging one writer as the blog’s “author” with everyone else reduced to “commentators,” under the tyrannical moderation of the blogger, meaning that the presence of opposing views, that made UseNet groups so vibrant, was absent. A personal website seemed to me no more useful than as an elaborate .plan file, a kind of online brochure, good for a CV and Contact info, maybe even a archive of what you had really posted online (meaning on UseNet), but certainly no way to reach any community. Sadly, UseNet has become increasingly obscure, for reasons that I have discussed at length, as part of the Capital-financed enclosure of the peer-to-peer Internet with centrally controlled client-server technologies. As a result for years I’ve been lost in wilderness, making my contributions on web-boards like Autonomedia’s InterActivist, mailing lists, etc, and even *gasp* “Social Media,” Eventually being published by Mute Magazine, and other websites, leading to the Telekommunist Manifesto being released by the Institute for Network Cultures. In an effort to co-ordinate my use of these disparate platforms, somehow a blog emerged. So here we are. I’ve accidentally become a blogger. Last week the #28c3 occurred in Berlin, and it served as the point of departure for the last six texts that I’ve written. For completeness, I’ve collected links to all of them below. - Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded! | http://wp.me/p24fq When a place becomes too crowded, things like getting in, getting a table, getting service, etc, become more competitive and thereby difficult. Some of the original regulars become crowded out and stop going, eventually the others stop too, “because nobody goes there anymore.” - The Suck Principle | http://wp.me/p24fqL-qo Only places that suck can really have a continuous community, because if nothing about the place sucks, it will attract more and more people until it sucks because of crowding. So if you want a continuous, closely knit community, something about the venue or event must suck, your only choice is what should suck or how it should suck. - Exceptionalism and The Internet Surveillance Industry | http://wp.me/p24fqL-r1 Expressing outrage that enemies of the US and it’s allies are using the technology being developed by the west also seems misplaced, and rests on regressive exceptionalist view that privileges western states as being somehow noble enough to be trusted with the ability to survey their citizens, but not sinister foreign powers. - Capital and The War on General Computing | http://wp.me/p24fqL-rg It is not ignorance, nor even genuinely the needs of law enforcement that is driving the war against general computing and a general network. It’s too simple to understand this war as simply tyrannical law enforcers and paranoid music execs duping clueless legislatures into locking-down cyberspace to save Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Rather this war is simply a consequence of the fact that our technology industry is funded by finance capital, and finance capital requires profit as a return. - There Is No A List | http://wp.me/p24fqL-rC Certainly the freedom-loving free markets will punish peddlers of tyranny and domination! No doubt ethically minded investors will move their investments to the virtuous firms of list A, leaving the B listers starved of Capital. Justice conscious consumers will immediately dump B’s products and take up the A list! Politicians, eager to
nettime #R15N, The Official Miscommunication Platform of @transmediale 2012
A delegation from Transmediale 2012 [1] came over to my place last night to discuss the latest Telekommunisten artwork, R15N [2]. In addition to various organizational and technical details that we need to work out in preparation for the not-to-be-missed upcoming Transmediale, we talked about the artistic qualities of R15N and the Miscommunication Technologies series in general, which includes works such as deadSwap [3] and Thimbl [4]. R15N in some ways represents the purest example of a miscommunication technology so far in the series, not only is it a broadcast model, thus fulfilling the Telekomunisten slogan The Revolution is Calling, but it really combines many of the core characteristics common to the work of Telekommunisten. Like Thimbl, it is an economic fiction [5], a platform that for the most part is free to use, yet does not in anyway monetize user data or interaction. Like deadSwap, the system depends on the diligence and competency of the users [6] and their willingness to co-operate with random people, who are likely to be completely unknown to each other. Without such diligence and co-operation of the users, the system breaks down into nothing more than a telephonic game of broken telephone. R15N will be the Official Miscommunication Platform of Transmediale 2012. Our hope is that the system will serve to create engagement and a greater sense of community at this years Transmediale. The installation side of R15N is minimal. Some signage and two retro phones under desk lamps, along with a phone booth in which to access the website will represent the work in the physical space of the festivals, but the main purpose of these is to get visitors to register to the system. Only once the user is registered is the artwork really experienced. The system is extremely miscommunicative, failed calls and missed calls and occasional poor call quality seem bewildering at first, and the R15N experience begins quite mysteriously and somewhat awkwardly, as users get dropped into the network and begin to be connected with strangers, with whom they are ment to interact. But very quickly the experience starts to feel normal as users acclimatize to it's quirks and begin to lose inhibitions. Very quickly, the system becomes a highly efficient way to broadcast information, as despite the somewhat unmanageable communication flow happening on the system, the very cooperation and engagement such a miscommunicative platform requires amplifies the message on channels outside the system, as users share their experience with the people around them and people connected to them on other mediums. By building community though the shared experience of the system, R15N becomes a catalyst for the exogenous propagation of information as well. Technically, this style of broadcast is similar to what is known as the Random Phone Call broadcast model [7], a theoretical model which proves that a given message can saturate a network very quickly by simply connecting random nodes together. Historically, it works like a randomized, ad-hoc version of the old phone tree method of pushing information out to a large community. Phone trees where used by many communities, from schools to church groups to the military [8], when they needed to notify a large number of people quickly. Setting up and maintaining a phone tree was one of the essential tasks of activist groups and political campaigns. Artistically, we have given the system a retro identity, harkening back to the early days of computer networks and telecommunication platforms and the utopian visions of a new society these new platforms inspired. Both playing on the related nostalgia, but also as a parody of modern corporate web platforms today, who peddle centralized and captured implementations of use cases that have been around for decades as somehow revolutionary and innovative because they have managed to squeeze out more powerful open alternatives by way of exclusive access to finance capital. Economically, such a system is extremely accessible, since all calls are initiated by the system and incoming calls are free in most countries, the system is free to use for most people, even for people who have no calling credit on their mobile phones. Nothing more than a working telephone is required to participate. The system is currently in beta stage, and thus usually inactive, however registration is open and everyone is free to sign up now. Be a part of the R15N community. Don't miss out on important information! Register Today! I'll be at Cafe Buchhandlung [9] tonight at 9pm as usual, please come by. [1] http://transmediale.de [2] http://r15n.net [3] http://deadswap.net [4] http://thimbl.net [5] http://wp.me/p24fqL-Z [6] http://deadswap.net/HandBook [7] http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~tfried/paper/2011STOC.pdf [8] http://www.state.nj.us/military//familysupport/family_readiness/telephone_tree.html
nettime The Debtors' Song
Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything about the Debtors' Party, I have a few texts in mind about horizontal money, about why we should continue to use the word communism, and more about the macroeconomics of class struggle, but I thought I'd start by honouring a debt. I promised my friend Tsvika Frosh of the Raw Men Empire that I'd write a Debtors' Song. So here it is. = The Debtors' Song = My bank wants more money They gonna take away my home They gonna take away my home if I don't pay my loan My doctor wants more money You see, I had a little spill but they don't give the pills if I don't pay my bills My school wants more money The man, he call me on the phone They gonna call the lawyers If I don't pay my loan Now I may indulge some but I didn't blow my money on the drink never been the type to gamble, or live life on the brink I just did what I had to got an education and a home got some medication when I needed and had the doctor set a bone And I'm not holding back none, I've been payin' what I can I've done what can be done and I still can't pay the man - chorus - Now my bank wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. Now my school wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. Now my doctor wants more money But I ain't gonna pay. I ain't gonna pay, cuz I ain't got it anyway. There's no two ways about it, there's no progress to be made. A debt that can't be paid is a debt that won't be paid And I ain't the only one here, you all know what I'm going through wether you're a worker or student I know you're a debtor too. - end chorus - We got to get together, we got find a way we got to make them listen there's no way that we can pay Tell them creditors to back off, show them profiteers the door, we got to get together, so we don't need them any more. They say the market system, is all so fair and free, but there's just some things, and I can list them, that don't add up for me. To get an education, do you need to drown in debt? There's a way to teach each other in a better way I bet, and to get your medication, is this the way it's got to be? We all need medical attention, why can't it just be free? Whats the point of making profit on hospitals and schools? Do we want to be surrounded by sick and angry fools? Wouldn't everyone be better off if we all had health and skills? There's got to be a better way, we just gotta find the will. - repeat chorus - Now animals deserve a habitat, and even fish deserve the sea. And even birds need a branch to build a nest, so why does it gotta be, that the people got to go to work, got to work most every day, and struggle just to get a home, a place where they can stay? Who's planet is this anyway? How did this come to be? That them creditors own everything, while the rest face misery. If we can't go and find a job, and if we can't get that loan, then we just can't get the things we need, no school, no health, no home. Them creditors got everything, us debtors pay and pay, we gotta put a stop to this, we gotta find a way. If us debtors get together, all together, every one we can heal, and house and teach each other and do the work that must be done. Them creditors, they don't help us none, they just get in the way, their profits are what drags us down, we must refuse to pay. - repeat chorus - I'l be at Stammtisch, as usual, around 9pm. Come by! Maybe we'll have a sing-a-long! -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Mute article on Bitcoin
On 04.03.2012 16:50, Jaromil wrote: hi Josie, The Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society and Scott Len take the currency seriously but ask, how exactly does it differ from 'real' money? A rather quick conclusion, comprehensible since it takes some knowledge of cryptography to understand that Bitcoin is less than what you are talking about, while what might come next is the most interesting part. BitCoin is nothing more and nothing less than electronic specie. Sure, the cryptography behind has some interesting possibilities, like Namecoin. But BitCoin is like digital gold coins, it's main advantage over gold is that it can be electronically transfered, however, it also has disadvantages, it can't be made into a gold tooth, and earring or a pimpin' belt buckle. In terms of electronic commerce, this can be quite usefully, but macroeconomically the significance of electronic specie seems quite negligible, taking it place among various less interesting, non-decentralized, exchangeables, including pre-paid telephone credit and online shopping gift codes. It's main advantage over these is it utility for unsanctioned economic activity, which certainly is critical for some undertakings, but hardly disruptive to the economy as a whole. I'd very interested in a co-herent argument otherwise. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Mute article on Bitcoin
Hey Jaromil! Great to see you too, too bad I couldn't hang out longer, no doubt we'll bump into each other again sooner, rather than later. I fully understand that DYNDY and your research is not focused only on BitCoin, however this thread, and the mute article it references is specifically about BitCoin, as where my comments that BitCoin is nothing more (or less) than digital specie. So I'll stick to BitCoin as a topic here, although I do agree a much larger topic is related. The two direct questions I asked, which I don't feel your response really addressed in any direct way, was what reason do we have to believe that BitCoin (or any specie new or old, digital or physical) would affect the structure of wealth and income in society in such a way as to bring about more fairness and equality? I'm not looking for a macroeconomic prediction here, merely an argument that has macroeconomic consistency. Meaning an economically logical argument. In simple terms, how can a digital specie change the structure of wealth or income? In the most basic macroeconomic terms: total income is equal to profits plus wages, so for BitCoin to have a macroeconomic effect, are you suggesting that it will lower profits or raise wages? If so, how? Or perhaps are you suggesting that BitCoin will redirect profits from private to social forms? And again, if so, how? The other direct question was: in what way is BitCoin democratic? Your response was directed at being state-centered, yet, this was not the point or implication of the question. The question was: in what way can BitCoin (or any other specie) perform democratic economic functions, such as the provisioning of public goods, leveling of accumulation and moderation of price fluctuations. In other words, what are the mechanisms for making collective social choices about economic outcomes? You raise a point of wether accumulation of capital is a consequence of capitalism or an obstacle to a freer society, yet, it is of course both, so this is a false dilemma. Clearly the structure of wealth and income today is a consequence of capitalism, just as clearly, it is an obstacle to new economics modes as well. Not only because of the coercive requirement that the majority of us work for, and thus continue to enrich, capital, and not only because the accumulated wealth available to capitalist interests is used to capture and direct social and public institutions, compelling the to put the interests of the elite above the interests of the masses, but also very directly in that, the current division of income in society means that the amount of wealth that is available for non-capitalist productive modes is simple too negligible to bring about major changes as is. Best, -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime 'Occupy' as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation
Hey Ben, just quickly, first of all I don't intend to dictate answers to you questions, my question is economic, how to allow labour to retain more of the product of it's labour, your question is administrative, and that is, of course, something that's best discovered through practise. In any case, my own thoughts, in the case of the peer production license/ copyfarleft, is that there could be collectively owned collection societies that collects on behalf of all its artists, and does use this money to fund commons-based projects. However, even if the artists themselves kept all proceeds from non-free licensing, copyfarleft still allows their work to remain available for commons-based production by others, unlike the traditional non-commercial licences which it's meant to replace. As funny side note, I just posted this in another forum: So, Alan Avans, Chris Cook ... no comments? At least let me know if I've got my X's and Y's right. (I need to make another wonkish friend who has the initials BB so I can say I will consult the ABCs). So hello Ben Berkinbine! Best, On 12.03.2012 23:38, Ben Birkinbine wrote: Just a quick point of clarification/elaboration, and I apologize if I've missed it in earlier posts. ... -- Dmyri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime The Macroeconomic Identity of Communism
get there, and counter-politics, venture communism and insurgent finance, I will continue this theme over the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, I look forward to being at Stammtisch /2/ tonight around 9pm, please come by if you can. /1/ http://www.dmytri.info/its-the-macroeconomy-stupid/ /2/ http://bit.ly/buchhandlung You can find a sharable version of this article online here: http://www.dmytri.info/the-macroeconomic-identity-of-communism/ -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Revolutionary Flows of Value in the Macroeconomy
it has a trade surplus because the consumption from other countries are funding wages and profits within the country. However, at the global level net exports must always be zero, so a trade surplus in one country implies a trade deficit elsewhere. When a country has a trade deficit then N is negative, meaning that the country's total wages and profits are below it's consumption and investment. This naturally means that the country is building debt and thus, such a situation is not normally sustainable. The economy of the country with a trade deficit is shrinking relative to the economy of the country with the trade surplus. We can look at intermodal economic flows in the same way. We can define the capitalist sector of the economy with P + Wm = Cm + Ip + Nm, or profits plus wages of workers working for capital equals consumption of the output of capital (market consumption) plus investment derived from profit plus net intermodal consumption. That is, the exports from the capitalist sector to the communist sector minus the imports from the communist sector to the capitalist sector. Whenever money earned in the capitalist sector is used to consume wealth produced in the communist sector, the net effect is that the capitalist sector shrinks relative to the communist sector, and vice versa. Conversely, we can define the communist economy as Wc = Cc + Iw + Nc, that is wages of commons-based producers are equal to commons based consumption plus workers' investment plus net intermodal consumption. Of course, Nm + Nc = Zero. Thus, economic reformism is only to be dismissed with it simply increases Cm and thereby does not change the balance of economic power, while a revolutionary must strive to push Nc above zero, for if it can be sustained as such then this means the inevitable disappearance of the capitalist sector. To abolish capitalism and replace it with a commons based economy we need to build an intermodal trade surplus. I'll be at Stammtisch as usual at 9pm (#5). Please come! (1) http://www.dmytri.info/its-the-macroeconomy-stupid/ (2) http://www.dmytri.info/the-macroeconomic-identity-of-communism (3) http://www.dmytri.info/false-defences-of-utopian-thought/ (4) http://wp.me/p24fqL-2E (5) http://bit.ly/buchhandlung A shareable version of this text is online here: http://www.dmytri.info/revolutionary-flows-of-value-in-the-macroeconomy/ -- Dmytri Kleiner http://www.trick.ca # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12
of neoliberal public sector retrenchment, the austerity craze and the ever increasing precariousness of most communities, it seems unlikely the public or voluntary sectors will be the source of such a dramatic turnaround. Given the general tendency of capitalist economies toward accumulation and consolidation, such a turnaround seems even less likely. Thus, there is no real reason to believe Moglen's trajectory will come about. The obstacle to decentralized social media is not that it has not been invented, but the profit-motive itself. Thus to reverse this trajectory back towards decentralization, requires not so much technical initiative, but political struggle. So long as we maintain the social choice to provision our communication systems according to the profit motive, we will only get communications platforms that allow for the capture of profit. Free, open systems, that neither surveil, nor control, nor exclude, will not be funded, as they do not provide the mechanisms required to capture profit. Facebook is worth billions precisely because of it's capacity for surveillance and control. Same with Google. Thus, like the struggle for other public goods, like education, child care, and health care, free communication platforms for the masses can only come from collective political struggle to achieve such platforms. In the meantime, we have many clever and dedicated people contributing to inventing alternative platforms, and these platforms can be very important and worthwhile for the minority that will ever use them, but we do not have the social will nor capacity to bring these platforms to the masses, and given the dominance of capital in our society, it's not clear where such capacity will come from. As surveillance and control is enforced by the powerful interests of capital, privacy and autonomy become a question of power and privilege, not just consumer choice. It's not simply a question of choosing to use certain platforms over others, it's not a question of openness and visibility being the new way people live in a networked society. Rather it's a fact that our platforms are financed for the purpose of watching people and pushing them to behave in ways that benefit the operators of the platform and their real customers, the advertisers, and the industrial and political lobbies. The platform exists to shape society according to the interests of these advertisers and lobbies. As such, how coercive these platforms are largely depend on the degree to which your behaviour is aligned with the platform-operators' profit-driven objectives, and thus privacy and autonomy is not just a feature any given platforms my or may not offer, but determine the possibility of resistance, determine our ability to work against powerful interests' efforts to shape society in ways we disagree with. As Jake said at our talk We can't have post-privacy until we are post-privilegehttp://www.dmytri.info/privacy-moglen-ioerror-rp12/ Eliminating privilege is a political struggle, not a technical one. I'll be at Stammtisch as usual around 9pm, please come by, anybody still hanging around after #rp12 is more than welcome to join us. You can find us here: http://bit.ly/buchhandlung A sharable version of this text can be found here: http://www.dmytri.info/privacy-moglen-ioerror-rp12/ -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime crowd-funding on nettime
On 31.08.2012 12:28, Felix Stalder wrote: There are some definitely positive potentials to it. For example, it point towards a cultural economy that does not depend on the standard copyright model where investments in the first copy are regained through controlling subsequent copies. But in practice, as far as I can see, there are relatively few projects on kickstarter that actually release their products under a free license once they have been financed in advance. I have no opinion as far as the moderation policy of crowd-funding requests on the list. But certainly feel the topic of crowd-funding itself is quite important for us to discus here, both for it's positive potentials, but also to clarify it's limitations. The fact that projects funded by Kickstarter are not released under a free license, and the organisations behind them rarely take social/ co-operative forms, is part of the reasons that the model is limited as far as it's overall economic impact. Crowd-funding does not replicate itself. We're all familiar with the M C M' type circuits (including finacialized ones) wherein, capitalists invest money and end up with more money by doing so. This is what allows the capitalist mode to expand. In kickstarter style CF, funders do not, neither individualy nor collectively, end up with more money to invest. This means that CF does not have it's own reproductive curcuit, leaving it as nothing more than a form of consumer expenditure drawing only upon disposable incomes, the majority of wich must therefor come from retained wages of workers. As such, it can never grow beyond the level of the retained income workers can sustainably divert from consumption, at the expense of workers' savings. This means, that crown-funding can not directly have a significant effect on the social distribution of wealth unless what it it funds is itself something that itself directly challanges political or economic power. For this reason I strongly agree that projects like goteo.org are significantly more interesting. We can not really crowd fund a cultural economy, we can perhaps crowd fund capacity by way of the commons to sustain a new society from wich a new cultural economy can emerge. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Eternal September
and EMail with social platforms embedded in
private, centralized web-based services that look and work very much
like the old Online Services.
Scratch-off the Facebook logo, and you'll find the AOL logo
underneath.
The internet is no longer a open free-for-all where old-timers
acculturate new-comers into a community of co-operation and sharing.
It is a stratified place where privileged users have preferential
access, including broadband at-home, servers online, users who can
control there own domain, can run their own mail and web services
and access the internet as a whole, including the old platforms such
as Usenet and IRC. New users, who may have broadband at home, but have
no services and need to use online services like facebook or gmail to
communicate at all, subject to the terms of use of those companies.
Users who have no broadband at home, and rely on internet cafes and
libraries. And at the lowest tier, Users who can only access the
mobile internet, on locked-down iPhones and other smart phones, where
apps stores control the available apps users can us, and the apps
tightly control the users that use them. And of course, each bit of
data is paid for from the users' precious mobile airtime.
As the African people finally cross the digital divide, the
once-vibrant cyberspace they arrive in has already been colonized,
enclosed and captured by the profit motive. The culture of sharing and
co-operation destroyed by the terms of service of online platforms,
by copyright lobies pushing for greater and greater restrictions and
by governments that create legislation to protect the interests of
property and security against the interests of sharing.
The culture of co-operation and sharing has been replaced by a culture
of surveillance and control.
We once believed that perhaps getting the Africans onto our Internet
would help them in their struggles, now perhaps we can hope their
capacity for struggle will allow us to find ways to make the Internet
a transformational force again. Yet, like the urban centers of cities
like Johannesburg, once access is finally won, the centers have been
abandoned. The common squares and open markets have already been
deserted in favour of protected suburbs and gated communities. Access
is allowed not to extend freedom and welcome, but to facilitate
exploitation.
If the modern Internet can't be the liberating force early net.culture
believed it could be, maybe we can hope that as the African people
come online, their experience in working within environments
where inequality, repressions and privilege rule will bring a
transformational consciousness to us. They might be our last hope.
If you're in Berlin this evening, join us at Cafe Buchhandling {9},
while we reminisce and reflect on the unforgettable experience we had
in Johannesburg at AMAZE / INTERACT. I'll be there around 9pm.
{1} http://secushare.org
{2} http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW_imx0z3LY
{3} http://telekommunisten.net/octo/
{4} http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/miscommunication-station
{5} http://www.amaze-festival.de
{6} http://i-mine.org
{7} http://r15n.net
{8} http://www.eternal-september.org/?language=en
{9} http://bit.ly/buchhandlung
--
Dmytri Kleiner
Venture Communist
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# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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nettime Debt As A Public Good, Berlin #BeautifulTrouble Book Launch w/ @AndrewBoyd @Info_Activism // Attn @BTroublemakers
the economy, which
almost always means it must spend more than it taxes, if it fails to do
so, then the result would either be economic stagnation or global trade
imbalances. As we can see from the words of Scott F. Grannis, the
bankers know this.
While public debt is a public good, private debt is a burden, often a
crippling one. A sensible fiscal policy would be to use government
spending to reduce private debt, especially household debt.
Understanding the way the Sectoral Balances function is key to
understanding what is going on in the economy today. For instance,
austerity measures reduce the government deficit, which in turn reduces
private sector savings, or rather, increases private sector debt.
Imbalances of political power within the private sector, for example
between corporations and household, mean that the burden of this debt
mostly born by households. The only way to reduce such household debt is
either increase corporate debt or increase public debt, or decrease
trade deficits. This not only explains why household debt is exploding,
but also explains the Euro crisis. Germany has a large trade surplus,
thus other countries, like Greece have a trade deficit. If the Euro is
to be stable, Greece can only decrease its trade deficit if Germany
increases its budgetary deficit. Somethings got to give.
Organizing around debt means uniting against insane policies that
promote the interests of rich corporations and rich countries against
common households and poorer countries. Much of the debt born my
households and the debt born by peripheral nations is a result of bad
government and bad economic policy.
To quote The Debtors' Song{4}:
If us debtors get together,
all together, every one
we can heal, and house and teach each other
and do the work that must be done.
Them creditors, they don't help us none,
they just get in the way,
their profits are what drags us down,
we must refuse to pay.
Look forward to discussing this with some of you tonight at
Stammtisch{5} and this Thursday at the Beautiful Trouble Booklaunch!
{1} http://andrewboyd.com/
{2}
http://beautifultrouble.org/event/beautiful-trouble-book-launch-berlin/
{3}
http://www.dmytri.info/collected-texts-related-to-the-debtors-party-initiative-updated/
{4} http://www.dmytri.info/debtors-song/
{5} http://bit.ly/buchhandlung
Find this text online for comments and sharing:
http://www.dmytri.info/debt-as-a-public-good/
--
Dmytri Kleiner
Venture Communist
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# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Re: nettime Debt As A Public Good, Berlin #BeautifulTrouble Book Launch w/ @AndrewBoyd @Info_Activism // Attn @BTroublemakers
Hey Kieth,
Whether I would advocate a return to a national economy or not, there
is no path back, that ship has sailed.
In anycase, The sectoral ballances approach is used by many modern
economists, i.e. Wynne Godley, L. Randal Wray, etc. The accounting
identities are facts that are true by definiation, and thus certainly
apply. Peter Cooper explains it as follows:
When a sector, in aggregate, spends more than its income, it is
said to be in deficit.
If it spends less than its income, it is in surplus. We can write
the identity as:
(G – T) + (I – S) + (X – M) = 0
This makes clear that the deficit of the government sector plus
the deficit of the
domestic private sector plus the deficit of the external sector
(foreigners, including
both foreign private sectors and governments) must sum to zero,
balancing each other out.
This is an identity, true by definition. It tells us that whatever
the net positions of
two sectors, the other sector must offset them exactly. {1}
Dispute emerging economic relations which may be off the books. The
social reality of debt, whether that of US students or Eurozone nations,
and is very much on the books and thus understood by way of the
macroeconomic identities described.
If you're studying emerging economic practice these formulations may
seem obsolete, however they still shape the big politics of the day. The
fact remains that student debt and bond debt alike must be paid in
government currency, the availability of which is governed by the
accounting facts described. Thus, in terms of political organization,
these identities help understand and analyze the policies of existing
governments.
Now, one day we may transcend the national economy even more than today
so as to make it completely irrelevant to everyday life. Perhaps at some
higher level of society we will have so much available wealth and
spontaneous co-operation that we wont need to count anything at all.
However we are a long way away from there, and in the meantime we still
need to confront society as we encounter it.
And even looking forward, certain questions like how do we collectively
achieve economic and social outcomes, and no matter how we define the
collective form, no matter how we view the constitution of the public
after the national form has receded in importance, our new public still
need means, at least for some time, by which to withdraw productive
capacity from the service of private consumption towards the service of
public good. In other words, the need for these new publics to have
fiscal and monetary policy is likely to remain for some time, and thus
the understanding of macroeconomic identities remains far away from
being a relic.
Best,
{1} http://heteconomist.com/?p=2360
On 11.09.2012 18:17, Keith Hart wrote:
Hi Dmytri.
I agree with: Organizing around debt means uniting against insane
policies that promote the interests of rich corporations and rich
countries against common households and poorer countries. Much of the
debt born my households and the debt born by peripheral nations is a
result of bad government and bad economic policy. But I don't understand
why you stick with this Keynesian analysis which, if it ever applied
anywhere, partly illuminated the national economies of Europe during *les
trente glorieuses* of social democracy. The approach doesn't offer much
insight into the current global system of money where most of it goes off
the books. Do you advocate a return to national economy? There must be
some rhetorical purpose for exhuming this relic.
--
Dmytri Kleiner
Venture Communist
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Re: nettime Olivier Auber: Network symetry and net neutrality
On 26.02.2013 00:05, Florian Cramer wrote: Today, nobody uses http proxies for those purposes any more. In a time where most information on the Internet is dynamically generated, this issue has become obsolete. The issue as presented by Van Jacobson is today addressed by content ditribution networks like Akamai, CloudFlare, etc. Caching is very much in use today, not only at on the CDN, but also in the stack of most major sites, who use proxies like Varnish. Strategies like HTTP ETags are used to identify when dynamically generated content has not changed and can be retrieved from local cache. [...] In the end, it would be mostly big broadcasting stations profiting from IP multicasting because they would have to pay much less for bandwidth - while those packets would still generate the same transmission load on the rest of the Internet and thus outsource costs to the user's ISPs. Yes, this is true, multicast does not help day-to-day peers sharing as such, but it does allow less well capitilized organizations to broadcast to a larger audience when they have one, like for instance coverage of a large scale political action, and thus it is in a political issue, since without it, only institutions such as google can broadcast to large audiences. I agree that it is a different issue than P2P. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime M-C-LOL: Circuits of value in the Lulz economy.
created, so not only must the software be free, but we must collectively own the wealth that results form using the software in production. We must collectively own the products produced by crowd funding, so that we can use the wealth created to reproduce the cycle, again, and again. So long as our free labour earns only lulz in return, Capitalism has the last laugh. I'll be at Cafe Buchhandlung tonight around 9pm or so, come by if you're in time, hope we have lots of surprise guests still hanging around Berlin after transmediale. sharable version: http://www.dmytri.info/m-c-lol/ -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Finn Brunton: A short history of spam (LMD)
the DEC message, but I can't imagine I would have been bothered if I have. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc. At least a demo MIGHT have been interesting. 2) The amount of harm done by any of the cited unfair things the net has been used for is clearly very small. And if they have found any people any jobs, clearly they have done good. If I had a job to offer, I would offer it to my friends first. Is this evil? Must I advertise in a paper in every city in the US with population over 50,000 and then go to all of them to interview, all in the name of fairness? Some people, I am afraid, would think so. Such a great insistence on fairness would destort everyone's lives and do much more harm than good. So I state unashamedly that I am in favor of seeing jobs offered via whatever. 3) It has just been suggested that we impose someone's standards on us because otherwise he MIGHT do so. Well, if you feel that those standards are right and necessary, go right ahead and support them. But if you disagree with them, as I do, why hand your opponents the victory on a silver platter? By the suggested reasoning, we should always follow the political views that we don't believe in, and especially those of terrorists, in anticipation of their attempts to impose them on us. If those who think that the job offers are bad are going to try to prevent them, then those of us who think they are unrepugnant should uphold our views. Besides, I doubt that anyone can successfully force a site from outside to impose censorship, if the people there don't fundamentally agree with the desirability of it. 4) Would a dating service for people on the net be frowned upon by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one. 10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,685;0001 Mail-from: MIT-AI rcvd at 9-MAY-78 1528-PDT Date: 9 MAY 1978 1827-EDT From: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman) Subject: MSGGROUP# 698 DEC message [VERY TASTY!] To: Stefferud at USC-ISI CC: Geoff at SRI-KL Redistributed-To: [ISI]MsgGroupMailing.List;154: Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP) Redistributed-Date: 9 MAY 1978 Well, Geoff forwarded me a copy of the DEC message, and I eat my words. I sure would have minded it! Nobody should be allowed to send a message with a header that long, no matter what it is about. Forward this if you feel like it. [EDITORS NOTE: ACTUALLY, I THINK RMS@MIT-AI NEEDS SOME MORE COPIES. /STEF] 10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,13632; Mail-from: SRI-KA rcvd at 10-MAY-78 0921-PDT Date: 10 May 1978 0910-PDT Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA Subject: MSGGROUP# 699 [THUERK at DEC-MARLBORO: ADRIAN@SRI-KL] From: Geoff at SRI-KA (Geoffrey S. Goodfellow) To: msggroup at ISI Message-ID: [SRI-KA]10-May-78 09:10:14.GEOFF Begin forwarded message === Mail-from: DEC-MARLBORO rcvd at 3-May-78 0955-PDT Date: 1 May 1978 1233-EDT From: THUERK at DEC-MARLBORO Subject: ADRIAN@SRI-KL To: DDAY at SRI-KL, DAY at SRI-KL, DEBOER at UCLA-CCN, [SNIP]... [SNIP]... [SNIP]... [SNIP]... [SNIP]... [SNIP]... [SNIP] -- Dmytri Kleiner Venture Communist # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Dear #NETMundial, Governance is cool and all, but we need to DEMAND
Many of my friends and colleagues where in Sao Paulo last week for NETMundial, the Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance. Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, convened this initiative to focus on principles of Internet governance and the proposal for a roadmap for future development of this ecosystem. NETMundial was originally motivated by revelations from Edward Snowdon about mass surveillance conducted by the US and UK governments, including spying on President Rouseff herself. These revelations prompted Mrs Rousseff to state In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy in a speech to the UN at the 68th General Assembly. Yet, as important as Internet governance is for our future, and as valuable any effort to address this is, it is unlikely to do much, if anything, about the right to privacy online. Why? Because surveillance is not an issue of Internet governance, but of the way the Internet is financed. The vast amount of consumer data amassed by private companies like Google, Facebook and Verizon is not the result of IANA or ICANN policy, but of the business models of these companies which seek to generate profits by way of this data. It is inconceivable that these companies could amass such vast amounts of consumer data, use it for marketing purposes, sell and share access to it with other companies, and yet, somehow keep it out of the hands of the NSA and similar intelligence agencies. Likewise, the extraordinary hacks, mods and exploits the NSA has conducted, as revealed by Snowdon, would not be thwarted by any IANA regulation. Aggression by the US is not an Internet problem, and Internet governance can not do away with it, any more that it can do away with drone strikes and regime change projects. Yet, there is lots that governments can do to ensure the right to privacy, and they can do so today, even absent any change in global Internet governance. Governments have the ability to regulate the way Telecomms and Internet companies operate within their countries, indeed, the government is no stranger to creating regulation. Government regulation ensures buildings are built correctly, structurally sound, follow the fire code, etc. Governments create rules that make sure highways, roads, and sidewalks are used safely. Governments pass laws to prevent consumers from being defrauded, create statuary warranties, labour standards, regulate broadcast media, etc. Governments can pass regulations to protect the right to privacy. The idea that the Governments such as Brazil, Germany and the others participating in NETMundial need reforms to IANA and friends before they can work towards guaranteeing their own citizens' right to privacy is absurd. To guarantee the right to privacy, communication systems must implement the end-to-end principle, which states that functionality ought to reside in the end hosts of a network rather than in intermediary nodes. The term end-to-end principle was coined in a 1981 paper by J.H. Saltzer, D.P. Reed and D.D. Clark at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, End-to-End Arguments in System Design, in which they specifically address privacy. In the section titled Secure transmission of data, the authors argue that to ensure that a misbehaving user or application program does not deliberately transmit information that should not be exposed, the automatic encryption of all data as it is put into the network [...] is a different requirement from authenticating access rights of a system user to specific parts of the data. This means that to protect the users' rights to privacy, it is not sufficient to encrypt the network itself, or even the platform, as this does not protect against the operators of the network, or other users who have access to the platform. What is needed, the authors argue, is the use of encryption for application-level authentication and protection, meaning that only the software run by the user on the end-node, or their own personal computer, should be able to encrypt and decrypt information for transmission, rather than any intermediary nodes, and only with the user's own login credentials. The end-to-end principle is a key concept in the design of the Internet itself, the underlying Transmission Control Protocol, one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP), exemplifies the end-to-principle, and allows applications running on remote nodes to use the Internet for the reliable communication of arbitrary data across the network, without requiring any of the intermediary nodes to know or understand the purpose of the data being transmitted. In principle, therefore, there is absolutely nothing technically stopping everybody from employing private communications on the Internet. So then, how do we get into this mess we're in now? Why did the Internet, which
nettime WhiteSave.me -- The App That Delivers Privilege
WhiteSave.me The App That Delivers Privilege WhiteSave.me enables White men to help non-Whites to succeed in life without disrupting existing systems and long-standing traditions. http://whitesave.me http://whitesave.me/#release http://whitesave.me/#call Just released this new work. --- fwd --- We were brought together as a team through the Art-A-Hack initiative. Our project is “Imbalances in Tech.” We want to push people to reflect on digital saviorism, the danger of biased algorithms and binary approaches, the ridiculousness of simple solutions to complex deep-seated problems, and the folly that techno-utopian fixes can address issues like poverty, inequality and exclusion without addressing power imbalances and the entrenched historical privilege of certain individuals, institutions, and nations. To explore those topics, we chose to focus on a complex, historical, systemic and touchy issue – white privilege – because it is highlighted by and a strong driver of all of the above. We created a real/fake tech start-up with a business model, an app, a cheesy self-centered founders story, and everything else that a real start up aimed at “doing social good” typically has. We used the language bandied about by those in tech and social good – focusing our fake start up on ‘doing good while making a profit.’ We purposely centered our fake app on white people and their user experiences, and set it up so that non-white people would foot the bill through both cash, data mining and targeted advertising. The app enables white men to ‘deliver privilege’ to the less privileged. We chose this language because ‘delivering privilege’ is just about as impossible as ‘delivering development’ or ‘delivering democracy’ through tech applications. We created a special discount for getting advice from white women - 77% of the price of a white man to reflect the current pay gap between men and women. In order for someone to participate in the WhiteSave.me experience, they need to first prove their qualification to be a White Savior through the “whiteness detector,” which is based on a faulty algorithm. It uses a video camera to determine whether a person is white or not white. The algorithm is both simplistic and biased. It’s also often wrong. Once the algorithm determines if a person is white or not, the person is matched a 'White Savior' or a non-white ‘Savee’. The White Savior provides privileged answers to the Savee’s lack-of-privilege-related questions through SMS, voice, video or in person (depending on how much the Savee is willing to pay). We created a satire because because satire can be deep and cutting, and it often makes people think while they laugh nervously (or sometimes hysterically). We want people to look at this site and feel unsure if it’s real or not. We want people to feel uncomfortable with both imbalances in tech and with white privilege. We want some people to see themselves in the caricatures and reflect on the 'solutions' they design. People of Color are normally well aware of the issues we highlight, but often white people shy away from talking about them or they talk about them in a way that puts whiteness at the center, reconfirming white privilege. Our site purposely puts white people at the center in an over the top way, as commentary on this tendency. Through the project, we highlight how technological quick fix solutions are Band Aids that do nothing to resolve deep historical and institutionalized inequalities and biases. Tech often serves to distract people from these deeper issues and potential longer-term changes that will necessarily touch issues of power and require change by and in those who hold power. Through the “white or not” algorithm, we show how tech, as a binary tool, does not do a good job with nuances and complex issues. We also use the algorithm to comment on the false idea that race is binary, or that it even biologically exists. From the start of the project, we’ve consulted and shared the project with a diverse group of advisors and testers (white and not white) for orientation, criticism, commentary and other feedback. We felt this was especially important given that the three of us are white. We've taken the feedback and incorporated it into the site. We wanted to avoid offending People of Color, while we did want to call out white people of all political persuasions for overt and unconscious bias. One commenter pointed out our own white privilege in creating this site, saying that a person of color would seem too angry doing a site like this. Others cautioned us about offending or shocking white people, or creating feelings of guilt and stress. One person suggested that we might be targeted and harmed by white supremacists. We hope that is not true. Through the creation of the website and the fake app, we were able to explore and comment on imbalances in tech and how they reflect the world’s
Put On Your Corbyn Face!
Web game using emotion classification to score you based on how closely you can match the emotions of Jeremy Corbyn. https://gamesforthemany.com/corbynface/ Uses this face detection library https://github.com/auduno/clmtrackr With browser based face detection, etc, this opens ever better and more interesting tracking models. -- Dmytri Kleiner http://dmytri.info @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour Theory of Value
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/face-value-bitcoin-proof-work-labour-theory-value/2018/02/01 # The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour Theory of Value Dmytri Kleiner Bitcoin was created to be a new kind of money rooted in a vision of a market not bound by geography, banks and governments. Despite the intentions of its creators, Bitcoin is not money. It was designed with a faulty understanding of money, and as a result has a bug, a kind of a short circuit that kick-started an asset bubble and that will eventually turn Bitcoin into a toxic asset. In order to to fix this bug we need to employ the labour theory of value. Writing at New Economic Perspectives, Eric Tymoigne, a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute, argues that the fair price of Bitcoin is zero. Tymoigne's reasoning is based on the the fact that money is a financial instrument. The value of a financial instrument can come from being redeemable to its issuer, from providing an income stream or from having a collateralized value. For example US Dollars are redeemable against taxes. Bonds bear interest and stocks pay dividends. Gold coins contain gold, which can be sold as a commodity. Since Bitcoin is not redeemable, provides no income and has no collateralized value, it is worthless as a financial instrument. Thus, its "fair price" is zero. Eric concludes that "Bitcoins are purely speculative assets." From the point of view of modern finance, Bitcoin is not money at all. The inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, did set out to create a new kind of money. The very first words of the Bitcoin whitepaper state that a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Bitcoin is intended to be money. A different kind of money. A form of money that is not a financial instrument issued by a bank or government, as Tymoigne understands it, but a form of money that is independent of financial institutions, governments and all other intermediaries. Bitcoin is intended to be a kind of money that can be used to make payments across the internet in a way that makes government unnecessary and doesn't reveal real names or physical locations. As such, it does not have properties that would tie it to an issuer who could redeem it, or provide a money income, or be collateralized with a physical commodity. Decentralized money can not have the properties on which Eric Tymoigne bases fair price. The economic school most associated with the Bitcoin community is the Austrian school, especially its libertarian capitalist adherents. This school views money as being firmly rooted in what Tymoigne refers to as its collateralized value, i.e. the gold content in a gold coin, what Austrian-influenced economists call "sound money." While the modern finance view holds that even with gold coins, "the gold content of the coin is not a monetary instrument, and it is not what makes the coin a monetary instrument" as Tymoigne puts it, on the hand the Austrian view is that it is specifically the gold content of a gold coin that makes it money. Frank Shostak, associated scholar of the Mises Institute, claims "An object cannot be used as money unless it already possesses an objective exchange value based on some other use." Murray Rothbard, one of the key theorists of libertarian capitalism, states that money cannot originate "by everyone suddenly deciding to create money out of useless material, nor by government calling bits of paper 'money.'" Rothbard further explains that the only way money can come to exist is "by beginning with a useful commodity under barter, and then adding demand for a medium for exchange to the previous demand for direct use." Though inconvenient to Bitcoin proponents, it's clear that Austrian theory would not consider Bitcoin money, since it's a "useless material," which never had any "value based on some other use" prior to being money. Despite this, Bitcoin's design has been influenced by a faulty application of the Austrian theory of sound money, especially the "gold standard." The logic of the gold standard is that the supply of sound money, a useful commodity such as gold, determines the value of paper money issued by governments. Paper money is not a useful commodity and therefore has no intrinsic value. The government should be limited in the amount of paper money they create to the amount of gold they have. The gold standard is a proposal to have a fixed ratio between sound money, e.g. gold, and paper money. It is not the amount that is fixed, but the ratio. Neither the amount of gold, nor the amount of paper money is fixed in the gold standard, the ratio between them is. If the government gets more gold
Re: Mechanical Turkish
On 2018-01-29 22:40, Brian Holmes wrote: > The urgent question today is how to > create collective forms of democratic government for complex societies > captivated by the myth of the sovereign individual. Read C.B. Macpherson? -- Dmytri Kleiner http://dmytri.info @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour
Sure, a blockchain without a cryptocurrency could work that way, but that would not accomplish the goals of the bitcoin creators. You might be interested in Taler: https://taler.net/en/ Anyway, thanks for the feedback, if you're on twitter, would be awesome if you'd share it! Where are you based these days? Cheers. On 2018-02-03 16:24, Douglas Rushkoff wrote: > This is a fine analysis, Dymitri. > Of course, where the blockchain could work would be to authenticate > value exchange against some other unit of measurement. The whole thing > becomes a ledger for Time dollars or some other metric. <> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
Frank, honestly, and with all due respect, it is your take that is boring beyond words. It is, word-for-word, the one that is propagated by the imperialist institutions that play the embedded left like a fiddle, it is so boring it could well have been written by a twitter ebooks bot, and it can found verbatum in almost every underbelly comments section on the web. And it's not only boring, but it's a total dead-end that leads only to irrelevance and failure. Seriously, blah blah, I lived in east Germany, blah blah, imperialism and racism, blah blah, both sides, blah blah Xi-Fans. This is plainly disrespectful and bad faith intellectual gymnastics performed to denounce and deny the accomplishments of the global left and ignores the fact that any government should be obviously be judged by the outcomes it delivers, not by any third party evaluation based on doctrinaire idealism, faux-journalistic sleuthing and entitled, judgemental cherry-picking. I'm not here to argue, I understand that almost none of us in the imperial core will actually join the global left, even when we would want to, we are resident here and this limits our ability to be involved. We must keep in mind the global left does not need us or really care what we think about them, and we have no right to judge them, at best, we can heed the words of Liebknect, Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land, and focus on how you can help the local oppressed while confronting the foreign aggression of your own country and its allies. Freire and McAlevey explain best why the "both sides" take is so boring, as already explained, we when moan "blah blah both sides" it means we are a third party, not part of either side, and therefor we are at best irrelevant, and at worst an instrument of the oppressors. As for the "if you like China so much why don't you marry it" level comment -- "I suggest the Xi-fans who find that attractive go live in one of their dream countries for a bit" -- I mean, besides being a reactionary drunk uncle type cliche, this is clearly backwards and confused. It is those that critique the Chinese Communist Party that should go live there, if they truly care about the laundry list of of regurgitated issues they claim to care about, then they should be involved in solving them by struggling along with the Chinese workers who alone have the insight and the stake to understand what needs to be done and the agency to do something about it. If we are not involved, if we have no insight and no stake, then what is the point of our denouncements and critiques? What purpose can they serve as third party? Well, none. Only the oppressed can liberate themselves. This needs to be the core idea of any left strategy. "Nothing about us without us" is an excellent way to understand struggles. Meanwhile, the reverse is plainly the morally and intellectually superior position: As I am not working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Chinese workers, I therefore have no insight and no stake into their affairs, I should therefore not judge them, and not denounce or deny their accomplishments, but should trust them to continue their struggle and defer to their leadership when it comes to their affairs. If I am not working with the movements that are making a difference, then I am also in no position to chart a "New Strategy" for the left. Meanwhile, the global left is winning, despite losses and sacrifice, despite us and despite the aggression of our countries. If we want to work out strategies, we first need to join a side, there is no role for random, powerless, disconnected self-entitled judges of "both sides" that leads anywhere but defeat. Best, On 2021-01-11 13:59, Frank Rieger wrote: On 10. Jan 2021, at 22:56, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: Meanwhile, the “old left” we made fun of, the “authoritarian” and “out of date” mostly brown and yellow “Tankies” of the world, like the Communist Parties of China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, the “pink tide” in Latin America, Marxist movements like MAS, MST, NUMSA, etc, have made incredible progress for humanity. Progress that is measurable, undeniable, and desperately needed. Its the 70s all over in the confused left, now with Xi-fanboys and Dengists instead of Maoists. How boring. Having lived in East Germany (where we lived at the pinnacle of socio-economic progress in the countries aspiring to achieve socialim) I have learned one thing: any movement and government has to be judged by the means by which it tries to achieve progress. Suppression and criminalization of "divergent" art, relationships, thought and publishing being justified with the greater goal: I had that already in my life. So I suggest the (mostly US-american) Xi-fans who find that attractive go live in one of their dream countries for a bit. I for one came to the conclusion that the &q
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-11 16:55, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: Frank, honestly, and with all due respect, it is your take that is boring beyond words. And just to be clear, when I say with all due respect, I mean it. CCC has many commendable projects, including Chaos Macht Schule, and has worked with the local groups like the Refugees Emancipation Project, and as a community driven project is a community many can learn from and be inspired by. Free software and hacker culture is growing in China, and honestly, the CCC should avoid clichéd demonization. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
volved" is just patronizing and unproductive. What it should be is a wake up call, because it's true. Your repeating the chauvinistic claim that the Chinese state does not represent the Chinese people illustrates this. You ignore the democratic outcomes that prove this is not so, and instead offer doctrinaire idealism and judgements derived from no insight and no stake. I don't mean this as insult, or to single you out. I suggest that this is the key strategic mistake. If we reject the largest and most successful groups in the global left and instead take as our model the brave but struggling ones around us, we are making a grave strategic mistake. What’s a more privileged position than leveling criticisms about global ideological alignments while basically letting yourself off the hook by claiming that "none of us in the imperial core will actually join the global left, even when we would want to, we are resident here and this limits our ability to be involved”? I'm not letting myself off any hooks, but it is peak-liberalism to make this question of my personal merit. I'm not campaigning for anything. Come on, take a walk with Freire and McAlevey and actually grapple with your relationship to the oppressions around you. I promise you, like them, you won’t find a way out in the embrace of a state. I take both very seriously, especially Freire. If you study his work, you would know he is a student of Che, Lenin, Fanon and Mao, among many others. He has plenty of critical views, including of socialist countries, but he doesn't get lost in chauvinsim nor doctrinaire idealism, the state is just people and develops dialectically, and the people who make it up must be engaged with dialogically. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-11 20:28, Francis Hunger wrote: I'm surprised by the arrogant and insulting tone of your mail. Defending China always brings out the tone police, no doubt the labels and pejoratives are soon to follow. There has been a long line of Marxist critique which acknowledges the atrocities of Stalinism and questions the state fixation of the traditional reading of Marxism, while still being able to deliver a notion of non-capitalist futures. Namely Moishe Postone, Michael Heinrich and Bini Adamczak, to name only a few. Though few will believe it, Marxists can be wrong too. Especially when their paycheques depend on it. Plenty of material from which Franks' position could be critiqued, yet certainly not through toxic male dominance gestures like yours. I have great respect for Frank. I trust he wont mistake spirited writing with insult. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
MST leader João Pedro Stédile way back in 2008 Here is something more recent from João Pedro: https://mronline.org/2020/04/17/neoliberalism-and-finance-capital-have-been-defeated-by-coronavirus/ "China is also consolidating its power economically and politically. He said that this shift, which had already begun before the pandemic, will open up new possibilities to challenge unipolarity in international institutions. [...] "I also heard that the Chinese Communist Party is circulating a document where it questions the existing multilateral institutions, particularly the unipolarity due to the power of the US in these institutions, such as the United Nations, ILO and other organizations. The document proposes new formats for the functioning of international institutions that reflect the new correlation of forces that will emerge from this crisis, such as the economic power of China. "China will emerge from this crisis with a lot of high morale not only because it preserved its economic primacy but also because it resolved the crisis rapidly, and with a relatively lesser death toll. Also, all the evaluations say that the GDP of China will increase 2-3%. This is not at the same level as before but it will grow nonetheless. And now everyone is desperate and knocking on China’s door for masks, equipment, and this is already a sign that the new hegemonic power in the global economy is China. And this will evidently have consequences for the international organizations, which are the results of the post-World War II order. The international sphere will see great changes after this crisis and in the beginning of next year. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
know, a "strategy" for the left? Best, On 2021-01-11 23:18, Brian Holmes wrote: On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 3:57 PM Dmytri Kleiner The point is to contribute to what's actually happening. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-12 00:43, Flick Harrison wrote: Dmitry is really swinging a wrecking ball today! Representing the Left wing of the Global Authoritarian Detente. And here we thought it was only the far right that would be gasllighting us this week. So you categorize me with we cartoonish cold war pejorative and envoke Trumo, and yet think you are the one being gasslighted? Well, I guess you are, but not by me, rather by anti-communism. You dismiss his life experience living in one of the regimes you worship "I lived in east Germany, blah blah,” "Worship" here is obviously deployed as a strawman, meaning an ackowledgement is "worship" when it comes to "official enemies" But this clever usage of "lived experience" is a great innovation! I mean, normally, rejecting lived experience would mean ignoring or denying what people are saying about how given experiences form their view, but as Frank said nothing about east germany at all, your version means that making any declaration of being a person and having been born somewhere means your views must be accepted! I'll give this a try! Next time my wife of 20 years, born in east germany, the former territory of which we live, and who along with her family has been publishing about east germany for decades, disagrees with me, on anything at all, I'll say "But I was raised in Canada, Don't deny my lived Experience!" and if she says, "OK, what specifically is it about having been raised in Canada that informs this topic, and why should I expect other who where also raised in Canada to have the same view?" I will just shout "but I was born in the USSR!" and she will then certainly concede to my lived experience! ... even as you later demand that those living outside these regimes have no right to so much as comment on them. No, I said they are not entitled to judge them and denounce and deny their accomplishment. Comment is good, it's part of dialog. You are using hypocritical doublespeak. And to be clear: insulting him. Your response to him is NOT respectful. If you think otherwise, you need some therapy. I'm a bad person, possibly crazy. Noted. And of course, you can cry “tone policing” as an excuse for your behaviour, because you’ve appropriated a few key catchphrases to stay one step ahead of the people who call you out. I have no language other that what I've appropriated, and I only write here to excuse my behavior, because I'm bad person. Possibly crazy. Noted. I hesitate to join a war of words with someone who seems to buy ink by the barrel, but Dmitry’s whole argument is sophistic and wrong. OMG, just used the same ink by the barrel line in my response to Brian before reading this. I even appropriate language before I read it. I think you are really on to something here. I don't, by the way, buy ink by the barrel. This thread here requires effort I wont sustain for long. He tells us that the CCP is doing the will of the Chinese worker but then tells us we have no right or ability to analyze the very topic he’s making such bold assertions about. It’s Prima Facie nonsense. Doublespeak. You have every right to "analyze" if that is what you think you do, you are not entitled to judge, and the strategy of denying and denouncing is a bad one for the US left. Your analysis should start with a measure of democratic outcomes, such as human development, approval rates, etc, rather than doctrinaire idealism and the framing and stories of the imperial intellegence aparatice. Here's that lived experience thing again, perhaps its a good idea to check out what the Chinese worker's believe, and I don't mean cherry-picked examples that have cherry-picked and weaponized. Bullying people with long diatribes that explicitly deny their right to any thoughts of their own, while laying down page after page after page of his own thoughts Yeah, bullying people with cartoonish characterizations and pejoratives, writing paragraphs about of why they are bad people, invoking trump in comparison, etc is bad. Oh wait. All the while insisting that none of the work any of us is doing in our communities has any value, because we aren’t… what? Falling in line blindly behind Dmitry, without having any opinions? This is literally the opposite of what I'm saying, just your comical inability to hear what I'm saying. I'm saying work *with* these communities, at hope and also in the global south, and defer their leadership. It’s just a terrible thing to do in a discussion. It’s in terrible bad faith. Projection is a hell of a drug. Cheers, What.. There's more?? Inline comments too! Oh man, What happened to being against long diatribes and laying down page after page of your own thoughts, etc. Oh well.. On Jan 11, 2021, at 12:35 , Dmytri Kleiner wrote: MST is certainly not, MST is a direct movement
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
and “subvert” a bus shelter billboard, but they need to be working with and among the oppressed, not white-saving them with “clever hacks.” They advocate on behalf of or critique an oppressed they do not work shoulder to shoulder with. They don’t share the same social position and interests. Their own real reproductive material interests are often more closely aligned with the oppressor, the boss and the imperialist aggressor than it is with the oppressed, workers or people in the nations targeted for aggression. They therefore identify as neither the oppressor nor the oppressed, neither the worker nor the boss, neither colonizer nor the colonized. They are a third party. They position themselves above both sides offering enlightened judgement, but have no insight and no stake. They are narcissistic propagandists. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
the global left, and that our prospects as an isolated embedded left are slim to none, but our prospects as part of a connected global left are world changing. A dialogical internationalist approach is the way to resolve this contradiction, think globally, act locally, as even the patches sewn on to student backpacks and bumber-stickers on hybrid cars tell us. Cheers, -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-12 22:49, Ryan Griffis wrote: Dmytri, I have no interest in engaging further in whatever it is you’re doing, or think you’re doing, here. Why do you feel my contribution here is particularly suspicious or illegitimate? I did *not* attempt "to use _ Stedile, a leader of MST, against China.” Yes, you did. There was no other context for you to drag up a 2008 quote other than to pretend it contradicts the argument I was making about a strategy of cooperation and respect with the Chinese workers and their country. It’s a *very* simple fact that China (and its corporate proxies) is involved in massive agribusiness in the interior of Brazil that runs counter to the objectives of the MST, *on its own terms*. It comes as no surprise that there are conflicts and contradictions, and these are being worked on and resolved by the first parties involved, namely the Chinese companies in question and the MST. We don't need to enter the fray as judgmental third parties, and we offer no value to the first parties, who are able to resolve their issues without us. can trust the judgements of those working in that context, which is *in fact* where my observations came from. That's great, however it's plain from the context that you only brought it up to support judgemental denouncements of China. I could go back and forth with you about my experience with the MST and their multi-faceted (and multi-coalition-based) responses to global agribusiness, including that originating from China. I could go on to discuss how the work of the MST is connected with a global network of agrarian movements that take different shapes in different contexts (Via Campesina which includes orgs like the Family Farm Defenders based in nearby (to me) Wisconsin). About how I learned of the work of the MST not because I was trying to leverage something as a “third party,” but because the work they do has direct relevance to land-based movements where I live. It’s something to learn from and alongside. That all sounds quite interesting, and it would actually be far more relevant here if you did talk about that experience rather than throwing out an out of context and out of date quote from João Pedro that is critical of China. About how I learned of the work of the MST not because I was trying to leverage something as a “third party,” but because the work they do has direct relevance to land-based movements where I live. Please do tell us more about the work described above! It sounds really commendable and interesting. However, this is the first you mention any of this in the thread, so yes, tell us more instead of looking for material that denounces China. It’s something to learn from and alongside. But, whatever, based on the fact that you responded earlier with an article that was probably a first page search result looking to see who Stedile was, you don’t seem to care about such details. I do care about such details, and quoted the relevant parts of the article. The only value that article seemed to have for you was as a discursive retort (seemingly because it included the word “China” in it while acknowledging shifting geopolitical dynamics). Yes, it is indeed the shifting geopolitical dynamics that relevant here, as I've argued here that the shifting geopolitical dynamics are import strategic considerations for the left, if we are willing to see ourselves as part of a larger team that includes the global left, including the MST and China. In fact, you even *introducing* the MST into the conversation was simply a matter of convenience for you, one amongst an interchangeable array of movements that you can mobilize as an example. What objection do you have of me introducing the MST as an example? What is meant by casting my "convenience" as sinister or insincere? Maybe try taking your own advice before committing to your responses, you know, like not speaking about things for which you have no stakes and of which you seem to know little. First of all, I have never asked anyone not to speak about anything, speaking is good, as noted elsewhere, speaking is a part of dialog, and dialog is good. What I've suggested is that people not judge and denounce the countries and movements of the global left in which they have no stake, and clearly I have not done so. I’ll leave it to others to reply further if you/they wish to continue. Just try leaving out further gross mischaracterizations of my comments if you can. My characterizations where accurate, tho perhaps you are not being honest with yourself about why you find my participation here suspicious or illegitimate. In any case, your work sounds very interesting, and drawing on it more would enrich this discussion, especially as concerns your experience in Wisonsin and the networks you describe. Cheers, -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use wit
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
For what reason do you wish to evaluate China? Do they need to fulfill some doctrinaire and idealist definition of communism such that we don't denounce them and deny their accomplishments? The CPC has many millions of well-informed members. What does our ill-informed opinion matter? And further, what does this evaluation of China have to do with a thread about dialogical internationalism and a strategy for the left in our countries? This seems like a derailment of the thread, more likely to trigger white rage and yellow peril concern trolling, then help imagine a viable left strategy. On 2021-01-15 21:02, Joseph Rabie wrote: A question for Dmytri: Is China a truly Communist country, and if so, what are the markers of this? -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-19 14:27, Bruce Robinson wrote: I agree with Andreas. It is a far better example of Dmytri's much vaunted 'proletarian internationalism' to support those in China, and that the moment particularly Hong Kong, fighting for their rights against the repressive and anti-working class regime. The core idea in proletarian internationalism is to turn your weapons against the class enemy at home, so unless you are in Hong Kong, I'm not sure how that is an example of it. If you are not in Hong Kong, you also have no agency there, so your support can only be heard by your local government, so what is you hope to achieve? Aggression by our governments towards China? What specific support do you want to give? I cannot see any reason why the Chinese Communist Party should be considered part of an international left, assuming that being on the left has something to do with democracy, socialism and working class self emancipation. The party needs to be held to account by the mobilized working class, like any instrument, it is the Chinese workers that make up a part of the international left, and from everything we know, their demands are being met by their government and the party, but, as the Harvard Study also notes, that will only be true so long as the government and the party continues to deliver on the people's demands. As for the functioning of the Chinese Government, I once again recommend Daniel A Bell's work, this video, introduced by Canadian cringelord Moses Znaimer, is a good starter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OGjUCbiDY Dmytri will no doubt denounce this as 'third way'. I would describe myself as a Third Camp socialist as these are the only criteria by which to measure regimes and movements against the aims that I see as fundamental to any kind of real human liberation. I suggest that human development figures and approval rates are probably the best way we have to measure human liberation. On that basis I reject having to choose between US and Chinese imperialisms. You don't need to chose anything, the imperialism of your own government is on you, as you have the agency to do something about it. If you chose not, you are not rejecting it, you are enabling it. (There has been a recent wave of arrests in Hong Kong including many of the leaders of the independent trade union movement. There is a meeting on January 30th with speakers from the UK labour movement and HK unions here: https://www.facebook.com/events/247169266771050/) I would suggest that the Labour movement in the UK has some pressing issues at home to address, and it's unclear to me what sort of strategy could be undertaken by them that would improve the conditions of workers in Honk Kong, or why I would expect the former colonial master, under a brutal Conservative regime, with no recourse to any strategy except aggression, to play a helpful role here. If there is some strategy with which UK labour could help HK workers, without heightening aggression, let me know what that is. Meanwhile, UK labour has been bamboozled by Brexit, gutted by weaponized bad faith charges of antisemitism and watches helplessly as immiseration in the UK grows. Workers everywhere have struggles to attend to. A strategy where workers everywhere directly intervene in all struggles everywhere is not a viable strategy. A strategy where workers everywhere focus on their local struggles, while confronting their own governments aggression against workers abroad is viable, and this is what proletarian internationalism calls for. I am not in favour of ending this discussion bureaucratically. But what I find hard to take is the 'live and let live' attitude towards Dmytri's contributions by some who have responded. His positions are something the real left needs to fight against. My positions are also those of groups like Vijay Prashad's Tricontental Institute, do these groups also need to banished from left in your view? "Rather than tackle the great social and economic challenges within the US, its ruling class has taken refuge in anti-Chinese rhetoric." -- The Country Where Liberty Is a Statue, Vijay Prashad. [1] https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/2-united-states-democracy/ -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-19 07:16, Andreas Broeckmann wrote: However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support from it's people. After all, by every measure they are doing better than we are in terms of getting what they want from their government. I'm not in the "we" group of your first statement, and I doubt the second. "since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction" -- Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University [1] This is widely known, confirmed by many studies such as this one from Harvard. (It's strange that you decline to know enough about prisoners, but this you are sure enough of for all of us, readers.) It's not that I decline to know, it's that I decline the white man's burden and support the self-determination of the Chinese people, and since I also oppose imperialism, I feel our duty is to prevent our own countries from promoting insecurity in China by way of aggression. Thus, the strategy I have proposed is that we trust the people of China to improve their own situation, while we do the same hare and focus on preventing our own governments from doing harm. This is the strategy known as proletarian internationalism. For someone who complains so much about people around him shouting (even if they aren't), Where I have made such complaints? you shout a lot... There is no shouting happening here. The self-declared Stalinists of the Marxistische Gruppe at my university in the 1980s sounded like this; and they were also always right, and kept on shouting until everybody was exhausted and the lecture was declared over. I always thought that Western Stalinists were people hopping between denial, apology, and assertion (at that time, with regard to the USSR, but exactly at the pitch you also choose to singsing). I'm sorry about your experience in the 80s with white western leftists, but it has nothing to do with the discussion here. If this was a conversation, I might ask what, in your view, is "Stalinism". "Stalinism" was not introduced here by me, it was introduced as a bargain-bin pejorative by Brian, which you are now making rollmops of as a red herring. If this was a conversation you would address the topic, namely the questions of left strategy that have been discussed. [1] https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The List needs a new Topic
to the land reform process taking place in South Africa and became an independent organisation in 1997. By the early 2000s, CLP realised that the struggle against apartheid had not led to an end to oppression, that the state’s land reform programme was not taking an emancipatory direction, and that its own work was not helping to end oppression. Therefore, CLP decided to incorporate Freire’s idea of animation and enter into solidarity with new struggles. Zodwa Nsibande, an animator with CLP, says that: In our engagements, we let people think because we do not want to take their agency. We ask probing questions to get people to think about their lived experiences. We embrace Paulo Freire’s thinking when he said that ‘problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming’. When we engage with communities using problem-posing methodologies, we seek to give them their power. Sibabuyisele isithunzi sabo, ngoba sikholwa ukuthi ngenkathi umcindezeli ecindezela ususa isthunzi somcindezelwa. Thina sibuyisela isithunzi somcindezelwa esisuswa yisihluku sokucindezelwa [We restore their dignity, for we believe that when the oppressor oppresses, he takes the dignity of the oppressed. We restore the dignity of the oppressed that is taken by the cruelty of oppression]. In recent years, connections to the Landless Workers’ Movement, or the Movimento Sem Terra (MST), in Brazil have reenergised the potency of Freire’s ideas in South Africa. Formed in 1984, the MST has mobilised millions of people and organised thousands of occupations of unproductive land. The organisation has built close relationships with the National Union of Metalworkers in South Africa (Numsa), the largest trade union in South Africa, and with Abahlali baseMjondolo, the country’s largest popular movement. This has meant that a number of activists from Numsa and Abahlali baseMjondolo have been able to participate in the programmes at the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF), the MST’s political education school. There are direct connections between activists’ experiences at the ENFF and the establishment of political schools in South Africa, such as The Frantz Fanon Political School built and managed by Abahlali baseMjondolo on the eKhenana Land Occupation in Durban. Vuyolwethu Toli, who is the Numsa JC Bez Regional Education Officer, explains that: The schooling systems in South Africa and throughout the world use the banking method of education where there aren’t reciprocal or mutual learning processes. The teacher, or whoever is facilitating, positions themself as the dominant knowledge disseminator where they see themself as having a monopoly of wisdom. As comrades responsible for popular education in the trade union, we do not operate like this. We make sure there is collective knowledge production and that all sessions are informed by workers’ lived experiences. Our point of departure is that worker knowledge informs the content and not the other way around. We don’t believe in the banking method of education. Freire’s ideas, first generated in Brazil, have influenced struggles all over the world. Almost fifty years after they began to influence intellectuals and movements in South Africa, they remain relevant and powerful. The work of conscientisation is a permanent commitment, a way of life. As Aubrey Mokoape said, ‘[c]onsciousness has no end. And consciousness has no real beginning’. [1] In reading Freire’s writings and his use of gendered language such as ‘men’ to mean ‘human’, which was still common in the late 1960s, we must undertake the intellectual exercise of entering into dialogue with his gendered forms of expression with the aim of critical reflection and developing emancipatory alternatives. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-16 16:53, Joseph Rabie wrote: Le 16 janv. 2021 à 11:24, Dmytri Kleiner a écrit : Judging China is not a part of his strategy, and should not be, because it's a bad strategy. We should trust the Chinese workers to resolve their contradictions, and focus on our own rather than allowing our elite to propagandize into thinking they are our enemies. My layman's understanding of Communism is that one of its essential markers is the collective ownership of the means of production. China's reversion to a market economy suggests that Communism in that country has for all intents and purposes failed. Instead of judging china according your layman's understanding of doctrine, you should recognize the outcomes, especially those of human development and popular approval of government policies, and figure out how you can achieve these in your own country. It's very unlikely a doctrinaire analysis will help, and any attempt to do so becomes very technical and context specific very quickly, so it's best to forget this mirage. You can't do "a China" in your country. You can, however, work to improve the conditions of people in your country, while working against the aggression of your country abroad. For those (as myself) who consider Capitalism a dead end, trying to understand why Communism could not perdure in a country such as China (or the USSR, or the Eastern Bloc) is of interest. Communism is an ends, not a means, it must be achieved, and it can not be "tried" or just "done." This is the first thing to understand, and rest assured the Chinese workers do understand this. China has a Communist party, but it does not "have Communism" and can not. We do not move toward such ends by implementing some sort of plug-and-play doctrine that checks a list of idealist checkboxes. Communism can not be installed and fix everything like a software upgrade. We move forward by way of a mobilized and militant working class identifying it's principle contradictions and using it's class power to overcome them, and iteratively moving on to the next contradiction. This is a dialogical process, I've made many citations towards work that has elaborated on this, most accessible and applicable in a western context is Freire and McAlevey, the process is broadly called dialectical materialism, which is a fancy way of saying "problems and loops." If you want to understand problems and loops from the Chinese perspective, Mao's On Practice and On Contradiction are key, if you prefer something that wont trigger the PTSD all westerns have from decades of propagandist brainwashing, then you can find a lot of the key concepts in business management literature, old-school like Eliyahu Goldratt "The Goal", which explains the "Theory of Constraints" from a business point view, but of course is bounded by the same logic of Mao's On Contradiction, and W. Edwards Deming's "The New Economics" which explains iterative cycles and statistical management, along the lines of Mao's On Practice. If you want something more tech-conference hipster, then these same ideas, completely devoid of any political content, can be found in the agile and design literature of people like Jeff Gothelf. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-16 02:22, Joseph Rabie wrote: China is a single-party state ruled by a Communist Party. I'm sure that the Chinese workers know this, so not sure why you're telling us. If you are interested in how the Chinese government works, Daniel A Bell is interesting, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OGjUCbiDY At the same time, it has become the leading actor of the global market economy, with the usual trappings of capitalism - millionaires, stock exchanges, labour exploitation, etc. So, like the USA, Canada, Germany and the many other countries, then. In the face of such contradictions, how might one even consider China as being capable of furthering any genuinely leftist strategy at all? Because it has mobilized and militant workers, which is the only thing that makes a left strategy possible anywhere. As already stated, the strategy I support is fighting to improve the conditions of the people in our countries and fighting to prevent our countries from engaging in aggression abroad. Judging China is not a part of his strategy, and should not be, because it's a bad strategy. We should trust the Chinese workers to resolve their contradictions, and focus on our own rather than allowing our elite to propagandize into thinking they are our enemies. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 13:42, Felix Stalder wrote: So, what exactly is the lesson that China holds for "us", that is, cultural/knowledge workers While these questions hold promise, it feels to me like the precondition is that cultural/knowledge workers in the west stop carrying water for US intelligence and work on developing a respectful relationship with the global left. I'm not sure that many who are here in the core realize how badly we are viewed by our comrades abroad due in no small part to the cartoonish cold war pejoratives we see here on this list all the time. I understand not knowing, it's hard to know what is said about us at MST schools or among comrades in Kerala or in shop-floor meetings among Numsa members, as we are most often not there. What I do not understand is not caring, and when this is mentioned, reacting with white rage and mccarthyist gatekeeping and doubling down on chauvinist denouncements, as we've seen from some contributors here. While asking "what lessons" can we learn from China is interesting, in my view there are far more pressing questions. What role should we play as tensions heighten with China? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases progress of our comrades abroad are directly sabotaged by way of aggression from our own countries? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases workers here benefit from exploitation abroad, and so we have differences in material interests that create obstacles to solidarity? What strategy can we pursue that addresses the challenges of worsening social conditions at home, heightening international tensions and aggression and the existential threat of climate change? Many of these questions are not new and where key areas of discussion in the "old fashioned" position of proletarian internationalism elaborated on in Stuttgart, Basel and Zimmerwald from 1907 to 1915, before the Russian revolution led to the 3rd international era, with it's spy-vs-spy intrigue in the bosom of which the western embedded left was distilled and synthesized as a liberal strain, separate from and hostile to the global left, branded "authoritarian" by the spin-doctors of Der Stürmer or der Wochenspruch der NSDAP, who's greatest hits continue to be spun on the Mighty Wurlitzer to irresistible effect among the meandering pundits in our midst, who gladly dance to this beat. In my view, we mustn't dragonboat all the way to China to find the lessons we need, we just need to stop feeling entitled to judge and denounce the Chinese workers and deny their accomplishments. We must understand that the struggle continues everywhere, there and here, and trust them in their struggle, while we focus on our own. We only really need mention China at all when confronting the propaganda used to justify aggression against it by our own countries. We must turn our weapons on the class enemy at home. In terms of lessons to take, we can find the lessons we need in the legacy of the US Progressive Era right here in the imperial core, in the work of Freire, and building upon the practices of Jane McAlevey, "deep organizing." We don't need a "new left strategy" we need to stop the ever changing iterations of the bullshit new left and its various derailments into thirdwayism from sheepdogging our movements away from the tried and true dialectical materialism that has been proven to work everywhere, among the revolutionary workers of the global left, and has blossomed in art, pedagogy, labour organizing, and even business management and design practices. As has been advocated in this thread now many times, in my comments, in Frank's comments, in William's comments, in Vincent's comments, etc. We need a practice resident among and rooted in the efforts of the people themselves facing concrete proglems, led by their own organic leaders, not third party pundits, where we organize, try stuff, learn the results and iterate forward, always building class power. This is the strategy we need, and as Jane McAlevey would note, there are no shortcuts. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
Notes: - I'm an unknown, illegitimate, defiler with a mania for china. - Brian is a profound ubermench whose invoking of stalin and hungary where totally relevant. - The mods should intervene to silence me. Just a coincidence that none of these folks, supposedly interested in dialogical approaches, have picked up on any thread in my arguments relating to dialogical practices. Neither the intermingling of global socialist practices in the orbit of Jane Addams's Hull House, or the various rays of those practices in pedagogy, labour, business management and design. Also, no engagement with the roots or strategies of proletarian internationalism, any attempt suggest a respectful approach to foreign comrades is out of hand rejected with fallacious absurbdum, charges of mania, idolizing, etc. But this lack of engagement is not evidence of chauvinism and white rage, of course not, it's just that I'm a bad person, possibly crazy, and I have no right to be here. So sure, no mccarthyist gatekeeping going on here. Plainly. On 2021-01-18 18:13, Iain Boal wrote: Nettimers, I’ve no idea of the identity of the sinomane telecommunist (‘Kleiner') defiling this conversation, or their whereabouts, or their condition (though the aggressive logorrhoea is suggestive). However, to call Brian’s profound - and profoundly open, generous, and dialogical - contributions to the discussion “mccarthyist gatekeeping” is either wild self-satire or grounds for a strategic ‘intervention' from our moderators. Ted? IB On 18 Jan 2021, at 08:28, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: On 2021-01-18 13:42, Felix Stalder wrote: So, what exactly is the lesson that China holds for "us", that is, cultural/knowledge workers While these questions hold promise, it feels to me like the precondition is that cultural/knowledge workers in the west stop carrying water for US intelligence and work on developing a respectful relationship with the global left. I'm not sure that many who are here in the core realize how badly we are viewed by our comrades abroad due in no small part to the cartoonish cold war pejoratives we see here on this list all the time. I understand not knowing, it's hard to know what is said about us at MST schools or among comrades in Kerala or in shop-floor meetings among Numsa members, as we are most often not there. What I do not understand is not caring, and when this is mentioned, reacting with white rage and mccarthyist gatekeeping and doubling down on chauvinist denouncements, as we've seen from some contributors here. While asking "what lessons" can we learn from China is interesting, in my view there are far more pressing questions. What role should we play as tensions heighten with China? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases progress of our comrades abroad are directly sabotaged by way of aggression from our own countries? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases workers here benefit from exploitation abroad, and so we have differences in material interests that create obstacles to solidarity? What strategy can we pursue that addresses the challenges of worsening social conditions at home, heightening international tensions and aggression and the existential threat of climate change? Many of these questions are not new and where key areas of discussion in the "old fashioned" position of proletarian internationalism elaborated on in Stuttgart, Basel and Zimmerwald from 1907 to 1915, before the Russian revolution led to the 3rd international era, with it's spy-vs-spy intrigue in the bosom of which the western embedded left was distilled and synthesized as a liberal strain, separate from and hostile to the global left, branded "authoritarian" by the spin-doctors of Der Stürmer or der Wochenspruch der NSDAP, who's greatest hits continue to be spun on the Mighty Wurlitzer to irresistible effect among the meandering pundits in our midst, who gladly dance to this beat. In my view, we mustn't dragonboat all the way to China to find the lessons we need, we just need to stop feeling entitled to judge and denounce the Chinese workers and deny their accomplishments. We must understand that the struggle continues everywhere, there and here, and trust them in their struggle, while we focus on our own. We only really need mention China at all when confronting the propaganda used to justify aggression against it by our own countries. We must turn our weapons on the class enemy at home. In terms of lessons to take, we can find the lessons we need in the legacy of the US Progressive Era right here in the imperial core, in the work of Freire, and building upon the practices of Jane McAlevey, "deep organizing." We don't need a "new left strategy" we need to stop the ever changing iterations of the bullshit new left and its various derailments into thirdwayism from sheepdogging our movements away from the tried and true dialectica
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 19:11, John Young wrote: "iterate forward" is promisingly constructive action. "Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing." -- Mao, On Practice, 1937 Indeed, there is no other way. Not so much name-callingly destructive "sinomane telecommunist." The white ragers here feel justified in this kind of behaviour, just like the other white ragers of #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllMen fame. The very accusation of bias or chauvinism is treated as insult; how very dare you say that of me!! And so this justifies random unhinged insults in return, as we see here. It's very import for them to portray me as bad person, possibly crazy, rather than engage in the difficult process of confronting their own chauvinism and bias. And of course, there cognitive dissonance means they can't hear what is actually being argued; dialectic materialism and proletarian internationalism. They instead pepper their responses with fallacious absurdum barely above calling me a chink-lover, and weak-minded strawmen about "party lines" and "out of date" bad think, all expressed with the most cornball hollywood tropes. Demanding moderators to regulate is hardly insightful, more inciteful, downright spiteful. I'm confident the hand-shake deal I made with Pit and Geert over swigs of Advocaat while taking shelter beneath the ruins of the Telegrafenamt as we fought in the trenches with the resistance in The Second Browser Wars. I'm entitled to shock and awe nettime once every decade, and neither Ted nor Felix will risk relegation to the tickle gulag. However, I never resist moderation. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 20:26, Brian Holmes wrote: Why don't we all just cool out? I am glad to bury the hatchet. It's also possible to simply not read what one has no patience for. Yes, and when we talk in person, social cues, back channel and nonverbal communications enrich the dialog, reducing the negative effects of bias and missed cues. As always, I'm open to moderation and ready to self-crit, there's almost never a hatchet I'm unwilling to bury. So, for those with the patience to engage, the essence of the arguments I'm putting forward lay in dialectical materialism and proletarian internationalism. Which, in less arcane language, means working directly on concrete problems directly with the people facing them in iterative cycles, and insisting on respectful engagement with our comrades abroad, deferring the resolution of their contradictions to them rather than judging and denouncing from afar, and confronting our own countries aggression against them. This is a strategy. As mentioned, this strategy has a distinguished and interesting pedigree, with roots in Mao, Fanon and Che, a solid trunk in Dewey, Freire and Foster, and modern flowers in everything from McAlevey to Lean UX, as well as a domesticated parallel construction in Business Management Thoery, especially Goldratt and Deming. If all this is boring, I'm not sure what this list finds interesting anymore. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
first ask "by what means?" By what means will you make what you think should happen actually happen? With no means, you will will not accomplish what you intend. If we are talking about "left strategy" then the strategy has to start with the oppressed themselves, this includes the oppressed in the imperial core, as well as the workers of the global left. By denying the accomplishment of the global left with cornball hollywood tropes like "dying for ideology" you support suffering and death. That kind of thing is word-for-word the position of the US state department, and the propoaganist frame is Nazi derived, and it is use to justify aggression by the imperial core countries. Aggression which has causalities. Meanwhile the Chinese workers do not agree with you. Our best strategy is to trust in them. As mentioned elsewhere, it's idiotic to hold China to standards we have not achieved in our own countries. Neither China nor Germany has abolished injustice. Neither China nor Canada has abolished Capitalism. Neither the China nor the USA has abolished class. However, our countries, founded on war, colonialism and slavery, are the global hauptfiend. Any attempt to "both sides" that is just like reactionary counter-complaining, "reverse imperialism" is just as incoherent a concept as "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism." Domination only has one direction, and its systemic. Just like "reverse sexism" is a sexist trope, and "reverse racism" is a racist trope, "reverse imperialism" is a chauvinist trope. And when this is called out it triggers the same white rage and fragility the other two do, as we've seen in other parts of this thread, tho thankfully absent in your (Frank's) response. And while the global left countries have not abolished injustice, capitalism or class, they have made great strides in human development, and enjoy broad support from their people, and have achieved these things in the face of aggression from the global hauptfiend, namely us. Any "strategy" that involves us judging each other rather than trusting each other is not the left strategy, it is not dialogical, and it is doomed to fail. The left strategy must be dialogical and internationalist, this means we turn our weapons against the class enemy at home, we fight to improve the conditions for our people here, and we fight to oppose aggression of our governments abroad. This is true whether we are fighting against MegaCorps and Corporate Oligopoly, or censorship and disinformation, and isolation, or against war and militarization, in every fight we must turn our weapons against the class enemy at home. Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land. And yes, we must retrieve the best tradition of marxist dialectics to get there, this is only possible here if the hip embedded left get over their white rage and fragility when challenged on feeling entitled to judge the countries, leaders and movements of global workers in terms handed down by imperial propagandists. So long as they can't make that leap, they are not part of the left in any tangible way, but are hapless instruments of the right they claim to oppose. And yes again, facing concrete problems is always the best way forward for the left, concrete problems where you are actually resident, where you are not a third party propagandist, but you have insight and stake. Problems and loops. That is dialectical materialism. If it's not problems and loops, but judgements and punditry, it's doctrinaire idealism, and more than likely whack-ass doctrinaire idealism. The practices you promote in your response are exactly correct, and tho you are not speaking on behalf of CCC, are also evident in it. Federated small groups with voluntary structures that analyze and iterate. Building alternatives, experimenting, replicating. This has always been the left strategy, and if you step back and take a wider view, you see that it's everywhere, and that we're winning. The trouble is the western left has mostly abandoned this strategy in favour of third party "advocacy" or "mobilizing" or other punditry and doesn't want to be on the same team as the global left. This is why this embedded left is synthetic, it is not an organic emergence of small groups iterating on real problems, but a creature of pundits, many of whom work for the key institutions of the imperial core, it's media, intelligence and education apparatus. They keep their jobs if, and only if, they do their part to ensure that the western left does not want to be on the same team as the global left, but denounces them and denies their accomplishments, and only if they sheepdog them into ineffective practices rather than anything that is a real threat to the elite. So that's where we are and how we lose. They are a misleadership class. A d
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 23:47, Allanmini2 wrote: What is also unbearable is someone who name drops revolutionary and theoretical icons (gee, how did you miss Rosa Luxemburg or Nelson Mandela, etc. etc. Dmytri?) as if the names alone qualify you to continue with unbearably one dimensional verbiage about strategies for the left (new or otherwise). I make every effort to connect the people I am citing to what I am arguing, and try to explain my argument as clearly as I can, while not claiming these ideas are my own, but referencing the sources and contexts. Your comment here is simply another example of a personal attack because what I am arguing makes you uncomfortable, so you prefer to attack me rather than cite anything I've said to refute or use as an example for your criticism. Nice to expound from behind the browser barricades when people are actually grappling with new strategies in numerous constituencies and workplaces. Rest assured that much of what I'm discussing comes from experiences in constituencies and workplaces, even when I don't provide surveillance photos to match. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 23:11, podinski wrote: But i am going to move on, without feeling too abused this time... it was simply ear-less mansplaining + more-radical-than- you attitude... at a pretty belligerent level ! And i can laugh a little more about it now ! Once again, you come in with insults and denouncements, while pretending to be the injured party. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 21:09, Andreas Broeckmann wrote: i find it unbearable though to see untenable claims of "mccarthyism" made against somebody who just stays in an argument, when anybody in his right mind should know that we must reserve the "mccarthy" reference to cases where livelihoods are threatened, or destroyed, of people who speak their mind. But you didn't have an issue with the allegations of "stalinism" these claims where made in response to. i find it equally unbearable that this thread should end without reference to the political prisoners that are being made and held and convicted in the PRC and the territories it controls. many of them are people like us. they require our solidarity. You are worried about political prisoners in China. Given we are not in China, and we have no direct agency to resolve this issue, the way we do have, for instance, a far greater degree of agency and class power to help political prisoners in the west, like Julian Assange as one example, so what sort of strategy might we pursue, given our lack of agency in China? Our strategy must also include some concept of the map we're working on or Simon Wardley will come and make fun of us, a map which includes imperial powers engaging in aggression towards China, and in Hippocratic fashion, we must first do no harm, so our efforts to help political prisoners in China should not aid and abet imperialist aggression. So what strategy could we pursue that would most likely help political prisoners in China while opposing imperialist aggression of our own countries? If I advocate against China, denouncing and condemning them, what could this possibly lead to? Not only are my sources of information very difficult to trust, but it is very unlikely I will have any influence inside of China, where I have no agency and no reach. It is however very likely my joining the China Bad choir be very useful to our own countries to justify aggression. Aggression which has real causalities. Aggression which also raises insecurity within China. Insecurity which then creates the kind of atmosphere which is highly unlikely to be conducive to improving the situation of political prisoners. However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support from it's people. What if I believe in those people? What if I defer issues within their own country to them and trust them to fight to make things better? Just as I expect them to trust us here in the west to fight to make things better. There is no lack of condemnable injustice in our own countries. After all, by every measure they are doing better than we are in terms if getting what they want from their government. What if I focus on opposing and confronting my own countries aggression abroad? To me, by any strategic analysis, the later is the better strategy. Freire and McAlevey point out that any strategy in which you set yourself up as a third party advocating on behalf of other people on issues where you have no direct stake is always a bad strategy, and will always fail, or worse, will worsen their situation. As mentioned here before, I think many of us here do not fully realize how offensive our self-entitlement to judge and condemn China and deny the accomplishments of the Chinese workers is to the people of China, and if you, like me, want to work with these people, want them included and involved in our networks, then we need to clear away this type of toxic chauvinism we all are so comfortable with here. This is what strategic planning looks like. White saviours saving everyone on earth by getting in their business, even when we have not managed to save the people directly around us, seems like an unlikely plan to work. Workers everywhere trusting each other to confront the class enemy at home, as we only have the agency and insight to do so in our homes, while we protect each other from aggression from our own Hauptfiend is a strategy that could well work, and thus is a good strategy for the left. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-18 19:22, Geoffrey Goodell wrote: Every now and then, people talk of forcing his removal, but for various logistical reasons this seems not to be possible, and moreover the other people on the list want to profess openness to debate. [...] So, I must ask: Is it possible that our pseudonymous contributor is deliberately seeking to exploit our respect for anonymous speech as a way to undermine our forum? Narrator: Little did Geoffrey know that the "pseudonymous" contributor was using his real name and has met probably the majority of the people on list in person. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-16 20:01, Vincent Gaulin wrote: This kind of pro-institutionalism parses out the difference between a "good state" and a "bad state" in a way that anarcho-politics' anti-statism, overvaluing of protest, and wholesale scepticism of hierarchy never will. And yet remains dialogically rooted in the communities themselves, without making those institutions into a "third party," or seeking to transfer leadership into the institutions rather than with the people themselves. I don't recall if McAlevey directly cites Freire, but the similarity of their approach is striking. I think the recent success of MAS in Boliva is instructive here. MAS, from what I understand, is not the movement, but rather it is referred to as "the instrument" of the movement. Even short of a Coup like the one against Morales, participation in bourgeois democracy is inherently opportunist, so there is always a risk of the political representatives becoming unmoored from the people and identifying with their new found peers in the political class instead. If leadership is vested in the "instruments," like the political representatives in bourgeois parliaments, rather than in the movements, the movements can be cut of at the head. When the leadership remains with the organic leaders in the movement it stays resilient, and can move to retake or replace the instrument when setback occurs. Maybe it's best to define a pro-institutionalist strategy as thus, the extent to which any institutional form is deemed "democratic" aka legitimate, follows the extent (and breadth) to which peer review carries throughout the whole process of leadership appointment, agenda setting, and resource allocation. Yes, and ultimately held to account by what is delivered. Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: offlist Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy
On 2021-01-16 21:33, Brian Holmes wrote: I keep writing in this thread because it would be just too absurd to abandon the theorization of the present for some banal Stalinist ideas of the 1950s - as though the Soviet invasion of Hungary never happened, whew, what nonsense. You are a mcarthyist gatekeeper, that is why you keep writing in this thread. The good news is more and more of the young are no longer swayed by this victims of communism memorial foundation type chauvinism and epoch times talking points. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Uneasy Social: The Telekommunisten Assembly @transmediale
experience expands and improves the more you share, learn and exchange with other people. In uneasy social, soci-ability combines social and ability, you develop real relationships with people who help you and you help get the most out of the platform. Unlike easy social where the platform extracts a hefty price for the ease of interaction and the narrow freedoms of indifference and dissociation, in uneasy social, the platform provides the minimum viable infrastructure for the robust social construction which can only emerge in community togeher. In uneasy social, everything you can do on the platform is made by someone you know, so you can ask how it works. Contributing to the social construction means getting to know others as co-creators and comrades. For transmediale, telekommunisten retrieves uneasy social technology from the dawn of the Internet age in the form of a MOO. A MOO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO is a pre-cloud and pre-web fully programmable social environment, first developed in the 90s, where the environment can be infinitely expanded as desired by the users. In this work of uneasily socialist contemporary networked artwork, valencies of social interaction are radically emancipated, all manner of new modes of social being can not only be designed, they can be co-designed, experienced and lived together. Uneasy social builds real social bonds because these serve purposes, there is a real economy of friendship in the network, because everyone’s satisfaction depends on everyone else. Easy social merely means the hard part is being hidden from view, but we all know this hiding comes at a price! Real social is uneasy, cringe at times, but we bear with it because of the perks. Come rediscover the benefits of uneasy social at the Telekommunisten Assembly! Local networked media art hosted on a little board beneath a love seat in Prenzlauer Berg! MOO programming sessions every month! The Telekommunisten Assembly: https://asym.me/assembly/ or join us by telnet assembly.asym.me port need help? just ask in the MOO or join our discord! https://discord.gg/tZymcq4XTW -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The List needs a new Topic
On 2021-01-20 09:59, Geert Lovink wrote: the authoritian grip of the Xi regime is only further tightening. I'm really done with this discussion here, but with all due respect, comments like these are comically ridiculous. I'm finished trying to explain why, I feel I have tried. Anybody that wants to talk further, please feel free to reach out. In the meantime, please see these resources, all of which are published by people I know personally and have spent time with, so while I in no way speak for them, I have some insight into how they feel and what they think: - https://www.thetricontinental.org - https://www.newframe.com - https://peoplesdispatch.org - https://www.newsclick.in - https://ruralindiaonline.org These are my comrades, as much as I would like for all of you to be my comrades also, as I have met and worked with so many of you, so long as you perpetuate a climate of toxic chauvinism with pompeo-level blanket denouncements, you are burning any bridges possible with these communities, and this is profoundly disappointing to me. If there is one thing you are able to hear from my comments, just know that denouncements like the one Geert makes above means that the communities those publications emerge from will feel unwelcome and looked down upon here. If there is any desire to "extend the nettime project" then this culture of intolerance to the views of so many people will not help. For my own part, I am so glad that the telekommunisten project, born in the hacker, activist and media art circles that many of us share, has led me to be in contact with these communities, and I will now go where they lead, even if that means, sadly, walking away from some of you. -- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Disassociation from Michel Bauwens
t talking points which are carefully honed to sow division among people who could otherwise more easily combine forces towards commons based production. As a result of this shift, Bauwens has been disinvited from high-profile events that would otherwise have benefited both the P2P Foundation and P2P or commons-based thought more generally. Rumours of his alt right radicalization are spreading rapidly and have caused concern among other organizations, Bauwens has publicly complained about being deplatformed, his “free speech” curbed, and has encouraged his followers to swarm those who disinvited him with mob criticism. Michel Bauwens has done a great service to commons scholarship as an aggregator of prevailing tendencies—but he has overstepped his role as curator of the community. Historically, the commons always required the magnanimity of a sovereign whose authority presided over and protected the territory of the commons. This is perhaps the secret hegemony and patriarchal model in Bauwens’ Commons. We, on the P2P left, want a commons scholarship which is radically intersectional and heterodox. Our “Left” commons is built on the principle of commoner’s control and a comprehensive understanding — which is race-conscious, feminist and socialist — of how power is produced and distributed. P2P Left members are committed to exploring a more egalitarian P2P mode of exchange. This egalitarian approach understands that historical forces have shaped us powerfully and created many systemic differences that cannot be overlooked nor wished away by imagining some even playing field that is yet to be brought into existence. The very violent forces that have created inequity have shaped how we think and how we experience the world; any movement that does not attend to this and reflect the shifts required will sadly only end up replicating the very same violence and uneven distribution of power that we are fighting to transform. We left to generate a group closer to the original aspirations of a P2P movement informed by a critical consciousness, sensitivity and the knowledge and practices of intersectional thinking forged in the struggle by those at the front lines. We welcome heterodox perspectives that may be less addressed in other forums including Marxist, Communist, Anarchist, Feminist, Postcolonial, Indigenous, Abolitionist, Racial Justice Positive, Queer, Hacker and Pirate. This is not about Michel Bauwens being wrong, this is about safety for people of colour, LGBT and women in the community. We emphasize that all efforts (including personal, offline appeals) to bring Michel to a place where reasonable, responsible discussion on these issues can safely be had, have failed. Therefore we the undersigned in the P2P community disassociate ourselves from Michel Bauwens, and we ask others to consider doing the same. See → Appendix P2P LEFT March 2021 Kevin Barron, ICT Director (retired) Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California Santa Barbara. Joanna Boehnert, lecturer, designer, Nottingham, United Kingdom. Kevin Carson, researcher of postcapitalist transition, northwest Arkansas. Rebecca Conroy, artist and independent scholar, Sydney, Australia. Elisabeth De Laet, artist, CHT/Totalism.org hackbase, Canary Islands. Baruch Gottlieb, artist, curator and writer, Berlin, Germany. Dmytri Kleiner, software developer, Berlin, Germany. Cindy Kohtala, researcher of peer production, Helsinki, Finland. Alekos Pantazis, researcher, Tallinn University of Technology & core member, P2P Lab. David Potočnik, CHT/Totalism.org hackbase, Canary Islands. Sharon Prendeville, Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University and Co-Founder of OSCEdays. Poor Richard, creator and first admin of P2P Facebook group. Penny Travlou, lecturer and Co-Director Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research, Athens, Greece. Jayu U, translator, Brazil. Dr. Jedediah Walls, former research practicum intern with the P2P Foundation. McKenzie Wark, Professor, New York, NY. To add your name to this letter of disassociation in solidarity, please email p2pleft [at] protonmail.com. * The discourse mentioned includes articles from conservative media celebrities, particularly from the US; non-academic, non-journalistic, at times explicitly racist, videos on YouTube that researchers have classified as belonging to or adjacent to the ‘alt right’; conservative mass media tabloids; articles from Quillette and Areo online magazines; and “Intellectual Dark Web” commentary videos. Figures as authors and speakers include Bari Weiss, Jesse Singal, Lindsay and Pluckrose, Andy Ngo, and the Rubin Report. Quillette and Areo are conservative magazines for editorials, opinions and non-peer reviewed articles marked by anti-feminism and concern with “anti-whiteness” and Quillette particularly publishing on eugenics and ‘race realism’. (For more on the IDW, see e.g. this Vox arti
Re: what does monetary value indicate?
On 2021-03-13 15:14, tbyfield wrote: If I drew a venn diagram of how uninteresting mass digital art, the art-systems economics, and cryptographic para-currencies have become, you'd think it was just a circle. If it's helpful, I wrote a fairly detailed explanation of the monetary economics of crypto currencies, though an NFT is a collectible not a currency, so it has a different economic identity. https://www.newsclick.in/face-value-bitcoin-proof-work-and-labour-theory-value --- The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour Theory of Value Dmytri Kleiner Bitcoin was created to be a new kind of money rooted in a vision of a market not bound by geography, banks and governments. Despite the intentions of its creators, Bitcoin is not money. It was designed with a faulty understanding of money, and as a result has a bug, a kind of a short circuit that kick-started an asset bubble and that will eventually turn Bitcoin into a toxic asset. In order to to fix this bug we need to employ the labour theory of value. Writing at New Economic Perspectives, Eric Tymoigne, a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute, argues that the fair price of Bitcoin is zero. Tymoigne's reasoning is based on the the fact that money is a financial instrument. The value of a financial instrument can come from being redeemable to its issuer, from providing an income stream or from having a collateralized value. For example US Dollars are redeemable against taxes. Bonds bear interest and stocks pay dividends. Gold coins contain gold, which can be sold as a commodity. Since Bitcoin is not redeemable, provides no income and has no collateralized value, it is worthless as a financial instrument. Thus, its "fair price" is zero. Eric concludes that "Bitcoins are purely speculative assets." From the point of view of modern finance, Bitcoin is not money at all. The inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, did set out to create a new kind of money. The very first words of the Bitcoin whitepaper state that a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Bitcoin is intended to be money. A different kind of money. A form of money that is not a financial instrument issued by a bank or government, as Tymoigne understands it, but a form of money that is independent of financial institutions, governments and all other intermediaries. Bitcoin is intended to be a kind of money that can be used to make payments across the internet in a way that makes government unnecessary and doesn't reveal real names or physical locations. As such, it does not have properties that would tie it to an issuer who could redeem it, or provide a money income, or be collateralized with a physical commodity. Decentralized money can not have the properties on which Eric Tymoigne bases fair price. The economic school most associated with the Bitcoin community is the Austrian school, especially its libertarian capitalist adherents. This school views money as being firmly rooted in what Tymoigne refers to as its collateralized value, i.e. the gold content in a gold coin, what Austrian-influenced economists call "sound money." While the modern finance view holds that even with gold coins, "the gold content of the coin is not a monetary instrument, and it is not what makes the coin a monetary instrument" as Tymoigne puts it, on the hand the Austrian view is that it is specifically the gold content of a gold coin that makes it money. Frank Shostak, associated scholar of the Mises Institute, claims "An object cannot be used as money unless it already possesses an objective exchange value based on some other use." Murray Rothbard, one of the key theorists of libertarian capitalism, states that money cannot originate "by everyone suddenly deciding to create money out of useless material, nor by government calling bits of paper 'money.'" Rothbard further explains that the only way money can come to exist is "by beginning with a useful commodity under barter, and then adding demand for a medium for exchange to the previous demand for direct use." Though inconvenient to Bitcoin proponents, it's clear that Austrian theory would not consider Bitcoin money, since it's a "useless material," which never had any "value based on some other use" prior to being money. Despite this, Bitcoin's design has been influenced by a faulty application of the Austrian theory of sound money, especially the "gold standard." The logic of the gold standard is that the supply of sound money, a useful commodity such as gold, determines the value of paper money issued by governments. Paper money is not a useful commodity and therefore has no intrinsic value. The government s
Re: what does monetary value indicate?
I heard y'all like #NFTs This one comes with a story of p2p gone wrong https://v.cent.co/tweet/1371180841162932230?s=u_a On 2021-03-14 19:55, Rachel O' Dwyer wrote: wow. that story reminds me of the auction of Damian Hirst's For the Love of God in 2007 (the diamond skull). it sold for something staggering like $100 million to a private collector, but the collector was later revealed to be an investment consortium consisting of Hirst, his dealer Jay Joplin and a third unnamed party. On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 6:23 PM Felix Stalder wrote: On 14.03.21 14:25, Rachel O' Dwyer wrote: The article includes a discussion of economic *'signalling' *that was prompted by conversations with Ruth Catlow which chimes with Felix's questions about what the digital art purchase 'says'. Doma alerted me to this analysis, and if it's correct, then this is basically a "pump-and-dump" scheme. https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme I suspect there is more to it, more layers of scamminess, but so far the story goes like this: The buyer, MetaKovan, and the seller, Metapurse, are entities controlled by the same person, Vignesh Sundaresan. Metapurse is a fund which owns digital art works. It's mission is to "democratize access and ownership to artwork." Quite a statement to make in relation to digital art, but the entire story is full of scammy rhetoric. You can buy into this fund, called B20, then you own a tiny portion of its art works. You do this by buying special B.20 tokens. The value of these tokens reflects some speculative position on the underlying value of the art works held by the funds or profits to be made from selling these works. There are 10 million tokens minted. 56% of these are owned by Metapurse/MetaKovan who thus controls the entire process in terms of writing to the blockchain. 2% are owned by Beeple himself (oh!). In December, Metapurse bought Beeple's art work for 2.2 million. On January 23, Metapurse sold 1.6 million tokens at $0.36 a pop. After the sale, which greatly inflated the value of the "assets" held by the fund, the value of the tokens rose to 23.00 and then fell back to 16.00. Given that buyer and seller are controlled by the same person, the actual costs for the purchase are only the feeds to be paid to Christie's, some 9 million. You can do he math yourself, but the profit margins are staggering, if Sundaresan manages to to get cash out his own tokens while it lasts. What I find remarkable is the role of Christie's in generating the narrative. Auction houses seem to have specialized in this lately, perhaps they always have. But, remember Sotheby's sold a Banksy work that shredded itself (Oct 2018). Well, almost shredded. The story went around the world, greatly enhancing the value of the work. It's hard to phantom that Sotheby's did not examine the art work before hence realized that there was something hidden in the frame. Or, when Christie's auctioned off the "Portrait of Edmond de Belamy" in December 2018. The value is really generated by the story, told by a blue-chip auction house. The fact that all of this is so scammy doesn't seem to matter, because it's the money that makes it real, the sheer scale is self-validating, even if the money itself is barely real to begin with. -- | || http://felix.openflows.com | | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- http://www.rachelodwyer.com/ +353 (85) 7023779 # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- Dmytri Kleiner http://dmytri.info @dmytri # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
A.I. Lenin: What is to be Done Today, by ChatGPT and Dmytri Kleiner
A.I. Lenin What is to be Done Today, by GPT and Dmytri Kleiner In the early 20th century, Lenin recognized the importance of an all-Russian newspaper as a means of building the capacities and capabilities necessary for a revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism. Similarly, a digital agency can help build the capacities and capabilities necessary for a revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism in the modern world. As Lenin wrote in "What Is To Be Done?": "Without a newspaper, it is impossible to unite, to direct, to arouse, and to organize the masses" (Lenin, 1902, p. 28). For Lenin, it was not the newspaper as such that was important, but the organization capable of publishing it. In this sense, a digital agency is not an end in itself, but a means of building the abilities necessary for a revolutionary movement to coordinate and communicate with supporters, as well as carry out propaganda and agitation efforts. One key capacity that a digital agency can help build is the ability to disseminate information and propaganda effectively. Social media platforms and other modern technologies have become major channels for the distribution of information and ideas, and a digital agency can help a revolutionary movement leverage these channels to reach a wide audience and spread its message. In the past, Leninist organizations used underground newspapers and smuggled literature to disseminate their message, often at great risk to their own safety. Today, a digital agency can help a revolutionary movement use modern technologies to reach a wider audience and spread its message more effectively. As Lenin wrote in "The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats": "The spread of revolutionary ideas among the masses depends above all on the degree of their own organization" (Lenin, 1898, p. 42). And as he wrote in "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder": "The party must have its own press, its own organization, and its own set of tactics" (Lenin, 1920, p. 22). Another key capacity that a digital agency can help build is the ability to mobilize and organize supporters. In the past, Leninist organizations relied on secret meetings and underground networks, known as konspiratsiya, to coordinate their activities. Today, social media and other modern technologies can provide similar capabilities, allowing a revolutionary movement to quickly and effectively organize and mobilize supporters. For example, a Leninist organization might use a closed social media group or a secure messaging app to organize meetings, distribute propaganda, and coordinate actions. As Lenin wrote in "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back": "Only konspiratsiya can ensure the freedom and independence of the Party" (Lenin, 1904, p. 80). Konspiratsiya refers to the practice of maintaining secrecy and keeping activities hidden from the authorities in order to avoid detection and repression. In the past, Leninist organizations used a variety of tactics to maintain secrecy and avoid detection, such as using code words and symbols, holding meetings in secret locations, and using fake names. In the context of a digital agency, this might involve using aliases and pseudonyms, as well as secure communication methods and infrastructure, to protect against surveillance and to maintain secrecy. As Lenin wrote in "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder": "The party must have its own press, its own organization, and its own set of tactics" (Lenin, 1920, p. 22). A digital agency can also help build the capacity for a revolutionary movement to engage in digital activism and direct action. This might involve creating and distributing memes and other digital content that can go viral and spread the movement's message, or using hacking and other digital tactics to disrupt the operations of capitalist institutions. In the past, Leninist organizations used a variety of tactics to engage in direct action, such as strikes, boycotts, and sabotage, as well as organizing demonstrations and protests. In the context of a digital agency, these tactics might be adapted for the digital realm, such as organizing online boycotts or launching cyber attacks against capitalist institutions. Another key capacity that a digital agency can help build is the ability to defend against digital threats and attacks. This might involve developing and implementing security measures to protect against cyber threats, such as hackers and malware, as well as implementing measures to protect against surveillance and monitoring by the authorities. In the past, Leninist organizations often faced repression and persecution from the state, and they had to develop tactics and strategies to defend against these threats. In the context of a digital agency, this might involve using encryption and other secure communi
Re: Moving Nettime to the Fediverse
On 2022-11-30 01:34, nettime's mod squad wrote: Dear nettimers, Oh wtf why not https://tldr.nettime.org/web/@dk -- Dmytri Kleiner # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
nettime Bitcoin and The Public Function of Money
I want to write a bit about the public function of money, especially as compared to the market function of money, in light of some of the recent discussion about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is already a very useful technology due to the fact that it allows transactions to take place without any central authority. This alone is significant. The technology behind it is also perhaps applicable in other areas, such as the Namecoin project to replace centralized Domain Name system. Does Bitcoin have the potential to replace Government fiat money? No. It doesn't. It only has the potential to be one commodity form within the money economy. Countless books and papers have described money, money is a very complex thing which serves many functions. Keith Hart has written about the Two Sides of the Coin, heads on one side, tails on the other. One way to interpret this might be to contrast between the public function and the market function of money. The origin of money is tribute. The source of money is the public, in whatever form, whether empire or democracy or something else, money is spent on public expenditure and demanded back as tribute. Whatever it's commodity value, whether minted on gold, printed on paper or electrified as bits in a database, this sort of money has value because it can be used to fulfill tributary obligations, for example, it can be used to pay taxes. As the entire source of this money is government spending, the amount of this money is determined by the amount we want to provide on behalf of all as a society. This is the Heads side. Not all economic activity is done for money. Much of it takes, and has historically taken, gift and kin-communal forms, where work and wealth is shared without specific prices for specific commodities, but rather on a basis of social trust and reciprocation. Markets emerge as economic activity extends beyond communal and neighbourly forms, markets extends the social to beyond the kin-communal, and along with such social distance come more transient relationships that can not rest on trust and reciprocation, and thus must be encompassed by spot transactions, and as a result specific prices for specific commodities and specific price relationships between commodities. With these transient relationships comes money. But this sort of money is different. Commodities can also be traded directly, even if their relative worth is counted in Heads money, and trade can also be done on-account, by credit. The amount of which is not limited to the physical amount of Heads money in circulation. In the wider economy, money is endogenous, the amount of money circulating in the economy is not a function of any monetary base, but rather is a function of the amount of things we want to make and do for each other. More specifically, the amount we want to make and do for each other for money. This is the Tails side. This is vertical money and horizontal money. Vertical money is created and destroyed by the public, horizontal money expands and contracts as a result of the economic activity of private individuals and their incorporated forms. Money that has a commodity base, i.e. Gold, is not completely rooted in a particular public form, since it's value can cross international borders. This is where Bitcoin, a digital specie essentially, emerges as a new and rather unique form of money. It's built-in cryptographic limits on supply make it essentially a virtual commodity form of money, fixed and hard, like Gold, yet digital and transferable electronically across global telecommunications networks. As such, it has attractive features as both means of exchange and store of value. Yet, while it certainly is useful on the Tails side of money, as one of the various kinds of assets circulating in the global market economy, it does not serve public function well. There is a reason that modern public forms of money are not commodities, why modern economies use fiat money, money that is not based in or guaranteed by conversion to any sort of commodity. If the public restricts itself to commodity-money for public expenditure, this means that what it spends must be limited to what it taxes plus what it borrows, since commodities have a fixed available supply. And though many ignorant or simply disingenuous commentators, such as promoters of austerity, present this to be the case even now, in a modern monetary economy based upon fiat money issued by the public for public purpose, this is factually not the case. The thing about public money is that we can have as much of it as we want to have. How much we spend relative to how much we tax is a public policy choice, and the right-wing dogma that the appropriate choice is for the budget to be balanced, for taxes to be equal to spending, is universally understood to be false, even among the most celebrated right-wing economists. In his 1948 article A Monetary and Fiscal
