>> employee, including the boss. Even in big firms - at least big
successful
>> firms - it's always clear who has the skills and who doesn't.
>
>Clear to who, though? There's always an accountability problem here, of
>who judges the labor-time of others (fellow workers? distributors?
>consumers?). One of the most interesting things about the open source
>software revolution is that it proves you don't need giant corporations to
>produce, distribute and maintain a world-class product -- a different
>world is possible, at least on the average desktop.
In all the tech shops I've worked in, there was generally near unanimity about the technical skills of the most skilled people. Not that that always saved them from idiots in charge, but it did in the good firms. I've worked in shops where the best tech people had more real job security than the mangers, and sometimes better wages.
I'm not actually arguing that a class revolution is occurring - much less that it is a good thing - but I've seen a fair amount of non-socialist literature suggesting something like that. I'm curious if someone with a more Marxist vision of class has ever looked at the idea.
Open source, if it is to be a big success, would seem to me to suggest that a new non-bourgeois class is replacing the bourgeoisie. The means of production - instead of being in the hands of the owners of capital, in the hands of the possessors of specialised knowledge.
Scott Martens