Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 23:42:48 +0000 From: richard barbrook <richard at hrc.wmin.ac.uk>
<THE::CYBER.COM/MUNIST::MANIFESTO>
Richard Barbrook
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the prophets of American neo-liberalism are heralding the imminent arrival of the digital utopia. They believe that the noise and confusion of industrial production are being replaced by friction-free trading within the perfect markets of cyberspace. They claim that an elite of entrepreneurs, inventors and ideologues are pioneering a digital lifestyle which will eventually become available to everyone. These right-wing gurus even measure our progress towards the privatised future through increases in the ownership of new technologies: computers, mobiles, decoders and Net connections. Ironically, this neo-liberal futurism echoes the preconceptions of Soviet communism. During the 1930s, Josef Stalin similarly measured progress towards utopia through the rising output of modern products: steel, cars, tractors and machine-tools. In the former Soviet Union, the enlightened minority was also leading the ignorant masses towards eventual emancipation. Most notoriously, the Stalinists used the promise of future liberation to justify the forcible silencing of the noise of dissent. Although the Soviet Union has long disappeared, the ideologues of American neo-liberalism are still inspired by the Stalinist version of communism.
vanguard party digerati
The Five-Year Plan The New Paradigm
boy-meets-tractor nerd-meets-Net
Third International Third Wave
Moscow Silicon Valley
Pravda Wired
party line unique thought
Soviet democracy electronic town halls
Lysenkoism memetics
society-as-factory society-as-hive
New Soviet Man post-humans
Stakhanovite norm-busting overworked contract labour
purges downsizing
Russian nationalism Californian chauvinism
According to most politicians, executives and pundits, intellectual labour within the Net must be enclosed into commodities and protected by copyright. However, the scientists who invented computer-mediated communications were working within the academic gift economy. As a consequence, they embedded the free distribution of information within the technical structures and social mores of the Net. Over time, the charmed circle of users has slowly grown from scientists through hobbyists to the general public. Crucially, each new member doesn't just observe the technical rules of the system, but also adheres to certain social conventions. Without even thinking about it, people continually circulate information between each other for free. By giving away their own personal efforts, Net users always receive the results of much greater amounts of labour in return from others. Although many on-line activities are trivial, some collaborations are now creating very sophisticated products, such as the Linux operating system and interactive music pieces. Net users are now developing a much more efficient and enjoyable way of working together: cyber-communism.
commodity gift
enclosure disclosure
copyright piracy
fixed fluid
product process
proprietary open source
digital encryption free download
original recording latest remix
scarcity abundance
alienation friendship
market competition network communities
e-commerce cyber-communism
For those nostalgic for ideological certainty, there can be no compromise between these contradictory visions of the Net. The digital future must be homogeneous and unsullied. However, it is impossible to expel noise and disturbance from cyberspace. Already the synthesis of dialectical opposites is happening for pragmatic reasons. The low cost of entry into e-commerce depends upon the absence of proprietary barriers within the Net. The rapid expansion of the hi-tech gift economy is facilitated by hardware and software sold by large companies. Above all, Net users always adopt the working methods which are most beneficial to their own interests. While sometimes engaging in e-commerce, they often prefer to collaborate within the hi-tech gift economy. Many social activities have long been organised by voluntary labour and with donated resources. Now, with the advent of the Net, this gift economy is hybridising with market competition at the cutting-edge of modernity. Living within a prosperous society, many people will work solely to gain the respect from their peers for their digital artefacts. During the last two hundred years, the intimate bonds of kinship and friendship have simultaneously inhibited and underpinned the impersonal relationships needed for market competition. The modern has always co-existed with the traditional. Now, within cyberspace, the exchange of commodities is being both intensified and prevented by the circulation of gifts. The modern must synthesise with the hyper-modern. Far from needing leadership by a heroic elite, ordinary people are now successfully constructing their own utopia. In the age of the Net, cyber-communism is becoming an everyday experience. The digital future is a noisy festival.
The Dialectics of Cyber-Communism
The Positive: work-as-commodity
e-commerce
reactionary modernism
The Negation: waste-as-gift
potlatch
revolutionary anti-modernism
The Negation of the Negation: work-as-gift
network communities
revolutionary modernism
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Richard Barbrook is a member of the Hypermedia Research Centre, University of Westminster, London. <www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk>
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This piece appears in the catalogue for 'Noise: the digital and the discrete', an exhibition about information and transformation held in Cambridge at Kettle's Yard; the Whipple Museum of the History of Science; the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology; and the Fitzwilliam Museum; and in London at the Wellcome Institute from 22nd January to 26th March 2000 <www.kettlesyard.co.uk/noise>.
------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Richard Barbrook Hypermedia Research Centre School of Communications, Design & Media University of Westminster Watford Road Northwick Park HARROW HA1 3TP
<www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk>
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