hey
michel,
no doubt, some open source projects - linux being the most famous -
have a 'benevolent dictator'. in the case of linux, that's linus
torvalds who ultimately decides what code (contributed by other linux
developers) goes into the mainline kernel release. however, as you
know, this model is by no means the only governance model encountered
in the realm of free software development. for instance, *perl* uses
rotation so that for every new version of the software a different perl
developer is responsible. other projects diverge even more radically
from the benevolent dictator model: in *freebsd* decisions are made
collectively by consensus. freebsd has an element of 'representation',
or more precisely, it has a formal means of representing its few
hundreds of developers (known as committers because of their ability to
'commit' changes to the code repository) in project leadership. the
so-called core team - the administrative organ of the project -
consists of 9 committers elected biennially by and amongst committers,
and is responsible for (a) granting/revoking commit privileges and (b)
mediating in serious conflicts between committers. it is obvious that
this type of representation and modern parliamentary representation are
markedly different. in freebsd core members are revocable and
accountable: they have to defer to the wishes of the base of
committers, making decisions that receive their consensual backing.
core team membership is not accompanied by any special privileges, nor
by the mandate to tell others what to do. many sociologists, following
max weber, view such 'instructed representation as inherent in
direct-democratic/antiauthoritarian types of government and hence as
the opposite of the enlightened dictator model.
as for soviets in russia, in my last email to the list i spoke of
'self-rule' referring to individual autonomy of action, using the term
as a property of the individual. you, on the other hand, use it to
refer basically to a circumstance in which the administrative organ (by
appropriating or monopolising the means of administration?) becomes
independent from the collectivity and starts to act as a distinct
social stratum with its own goals and interests. this is a syllogism
that i can understand: it warns against vesting authority bearers with
unlimited powers and advises in favour of employing checks and balances
to ensure that administrative organs don't turn into mechanisms of
domination of the many by the few. but i still don't see the connection
between self-rule and totalitarianism.
in any case, what transformed soviets into administrative organs of the
openly totalitarian regime of the bolsheviks was not their own internal
tendency toward totalitarianism but the fact that the bolsheviks
stripped them of their autonomy and turned them into extensions of the
bolshevik party. that's what i've gathered from my readings on that
period.
x,
g.
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:47 PM
To: P2P Foundation mailing list
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] autocracy as most efficient governance?
hi george,
don't you agree that a lot of open source projects have some degree of
autocratic rule (the so-called benevolent dictator phenomenum), in
order to insure productivity .. .(though this does not involve command
and control over labour, nor over the allocation of resources, but
rather over the post-hoc quality control mechanisms)
now, regarding " self-rule leads to totalitarianism"
this was the debate between rosa luxemburg and lenin, discussed in the
poulantzas books which I have been reading this year (p. agrees with
rl). Basically, Rosa Luxemburg warned that a total reliance on
self-rule through soviets, could lead to authoritarianism, so she urged
the bolcheviks to retain representational parliaments in a structure of
dual power ... I tend to agree that we need plurarchic forms of
governance keeping each other in check, to avoid the degeneracy of any
form of self-rule that may be the 'only game in town' ..
I'm also warming up more and more to greek sortition mechanisms ..
interestingly, this is now also being discussed by the new Anonymous
Party I believe ..
Michel
On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 12:22 AM, George
Dafermos
<G.N.Dafermos@tudelft.nl> wrote:
Yes,
you're right: the interviewee (MT) uses the word - erroneously - in
both senses, without realising he's contradicting himself by saying
first that social conduct in his world is based on players' self-rule
and then going on to say that his authority is fast becoming
'autocratic' (i.e. totalitarian).
the point he's apparently making is that self-rule is the norm for vast
sections of eve space that remain free from 'policing' but authority
inside the big corporations/alliances of eve tends to be autocratic
(i.e. centralised in the hands of one person). yet, there is no logical
connection between the two: there's no proof - neither in the real
world nor in eve - that self-rule leads to totalitarianism.
g.
I think that what he is saying is that he is the ultimate
ruler, ie an autocracy.
2011/7/13 George Dafermos
<G.N.Dafermos@tudelft.nl>
Hi
Michel,
there's a basic misunderstanding here. the passage conflates
*autocracy* with *autarchy* (i understand that greek words can be
confusing..). the author uses the former term to refer to a situation
'where players rule themselves'. That is, what he means to say is
'self-rule', self-government. that being the case, (s)he should have
used the word autarchy instead; or even better: self-rule or
self-management. in light of this correction, the subject line of your
email should read: 'self-government as the most efficient governance?'
x,
g.
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Sincerely yours,
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