[lbo-talk] Re: Purer Than Thou

[Chuck]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> For nearly two centuries a major path from radicalism to finking out has
> been engaging in coop ventures. There's an old Thurber cartoon showing a
> fencer who has just been neatly decapitated -- the caption "Touche." The
> already ex-radical doesn't know (s)he has 'sold out' and can for a few
> years at any rate continue to sneer at other former radicals who have
> settled down 'in the system' -- honestly and without trying to hide from
> themselves what they are doing. Marx on Proudhon easily translates into
> Marx on free software programmers who hallucinate that their work is
> anti-capitalist.

Much of that work is consciously anti-capitalist!

Take the Indymedia network, which relies on software programmed mostly 
by anti-capitalists. The software works and it has enabled the growth of 
a media network of over 150 IMCs worldwide.

The tone of this discussion and its pissing on the free software 
movement reminds me of how the Left is so skilled at snatching defeat 
out of the jaws of victory.

FOSS is something that we can be happy and proud about. It shows that 
our ideas can work.

Chuck
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