[P2P-F] autocracy as most efficient governance?
James Wallbank
jw at access-space.org
Mon Jul 18 12:28:54 CEST 2011
Hello All,
It's interesting to reflect on the demonstrable effectiveness of
autocratic governance on the development of many open source software
projects, but it's also important to understand how they differ from
real-world enterprises.
The key is that open source projects always provide the opportunity for
the fork - so whatever their governance mechanism alternative solutions
can branch off to become parallel projects. Software development
projects do not occupy scarce territory, or monopolise scarce resources.
(Except in circumstances where sufficiently skilled coders are in short
supply - which is generally a temporary phenomenon.) Unlike in the
physical realm, the digital land expands when you decide to set up a new
farm or factory. This possibility to fork is the guarantor of freedom,
and the ultimate counterbalance to any open source power structure.
When considering forms of governance the distinction between the context
of software development and real-world contexts is crucial.
Best Regards,
James
=====
On 18/07/11 09:34, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> hi George,
>
> thanks for both the details on perl and freebsd, any links on this, to
> document in the wiki?
>
> as for the soviets, as I was indeed talking on the situation 'before'
> they were turned into administrative organs of the bolcheviks, but so
> did rosa luxemburg when she wrote about it; her point was I think that
> without checks and balances coming from multiple governance, there
> would be an inherent tendency for this councils to degenerate into a
> single power mechanism ... Your argument is that the bolcheviks were
> the proximate cause of that, and it is indeed difficult to know what
> would have happened without them, but the reality was also that the
> councils were not strong enough an independent power to actually
> oppose that transformation, and that once they submitted, no other
> power in society could counter-balance the power of the bolchevik
> regime, which is a good argument for the rosa luxemburg position.
>
> My conclusion from that is that it is better to take into account
> antagonisms and to have institutional self-rule within a pluralism of
> institutions and social logics.
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 6:41 AM, George Dafermos
> <G.N.Dafermos at tudelft.nl <mailto:G.N.Dafermos at tudelft.nl>> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>
> [p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>] on behalf of
> Michel Bauwens [michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>]
> *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 at tudelft.nl <mailto:G.N.Dafermos at 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.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>
> [p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>] on
> behalf of Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis [xekoukou at gmail.com
> <mailto:xekoukou at gmail.com>]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 13, 2011 6:09 PM
> *To:* P2P Foundation mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [P2P-F] autocracy as most efficient governance?
>
> 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 at tudelft.nl
> <mailto:G.N.Dafermos at 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.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>
> [p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
> <mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org>] on
> behalf of Michel Bauwens [michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:53 AM
> *To:* p2p-foundation
> *Cc:* John Robb; Robert Steele
> *Subject:* [P2P-F] autocracy as most efficient governance?
>
> see
> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/07/eve-online-audience-with-the-king-of-space/
>
> Autocracy is the most effective form of government in null
> sec [the enormous sections of space within Eve Online with
> no AI police, where players rule themselves]. Council
> systems don’t work very well. Goonswarm is very lucky in
> that we have one large corporation, Goonwaffe, which used
> to be Goonfleet, which is mostly Something Awful members
> and has over 2,000 people. Since I’m the CEO of that
> corporation all the other ancillary corporations in the
> alliance are relatively powerless, and that works towards
> an autocracy. Council-based alliances typically have
> corporations of roughly the same size.
>
> (I actually agree with this, in case of warfare, even
> egalitarian tribes had warchiefs for the duration of
> hostilities; or does anyone want to challenge thi?)
>
> --
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> --
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>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
>
>
>
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--
James Wallbank
CEO, Access Space Network Ltd.
Access Space, Unit 1, AVEC Building, 3-7 Sidney St, Sheffield S1 4RG
Access Space is UK Registered Charity: #1103837
Tel: +44 (0)114 2495522
Fax: +44 (0)114 2495533
Web: http://access-space.org
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