[P2P-F] If the ?Tea Party Join Together, We Can End the Malignant Partnership Between Big Government | ZeroHedge

Fri Nov 25 15:34:06 CET 2011

Unless someone breaks the law, or encourages, provokes, assists illegal acts, how can you justify not cooperating with them? First, in many cases-you may never know what’s “ in their hearts.’” In a Democratic-General Assembly kind of system-how can you exclude people because they don’t share your value system? You draw the line with personal relationships and voluntary acts like not working for a polluter, or voting for an anti-gay politician. There have been many Anti-Semitic signs at OWS protests. Do you not go because they are there? Kick them out? Less than full inclusion turns freedom of speech, or any other freedom into a mockery-just another kind of segregation.

From: Michel Bauwens 
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 4:17 AM
To: P2P Foundation mailing list 
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] If the ?Tea Party Join Together, We Can End the Malignant Partnership Between Big Government | ZeroHedge

On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net> wrote:

  Michel Bauwens wrote:
  > On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net>wrote:

  >> > Would you work with the Ku Klux Klan if it could help foster your goals?
  >> > Where do you draw the line?
  >
  > good question, I would draw the line with explicitely 'anti-p2p' forces
  > such as racism, genderism, etc ..

  Yes, that sounds reasonable. Peer production requires treating others as
  your peers, as equals, and anybody with racist, homophobic, sexist,
  anti-semitic views won't be able to do that, hence their participation is
  likely do to more bad than good.

  Anti-abortion is about denying women's right over their own bodies (while,
  of course, men's rights over their bodies are never put in doubt), hence it
  is equally 'anti-p2p'.

well, the last thing is a bit more problematic for me, I see this as an ethical opinion; for example, I have worked and communicated with catholic distributists, who are very egalitarian (support distributing proprety, catholic worker movement, live in collectives without property etc ..) but find abortion objectionable because of their egalitarianism .. of course, I disagree with this,  but I find it has little practical importance in the cooperation

  > a question for you: if you are working on a piece of free software, and you
  > discover your co-developer is KKK, would you stop working with her?
  >
  > these are by no means easy questions, FLOSS is full of libertarians, whose
  > values I object to ...

  I know. Eric Raymond's pro-gun standpoint and some of his possible
  more-or-less racists sayings haven't stopped me from quoting his insights
  about free software. 

they are also majorly wrong in the bazaar/cathedral metaphor <g>; the cathedrals were very participatory and distributed efforts involving the whole population ..

  Some time ago I discovered that the author of a little
  piece of free software I'm using has shockingly right-wing views:
  http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/enemies/ . That didn't stop me from using
  his software, nor from contributing a little patch back to him, of course.

  So I don't think people having personal views contrary to my own is a
  problem as long as it doesn't hinder cooperation in a project. But on the
  other hand I would think it very wrong to invite people with such
  standpoints precisely *because of* their standpoints -- which is what
  anybody who talks about "building an alliance with the Tea Party" is
  proposing to do.

I agree, I would oppose any formal cooperation with tea party organisations, they are a very dangerous, fascism-inducing political force; but a few people call themselves that way and are pro-open source libertarians; they should disown the label instead of claiming that they are the true TP'ers and all the others are fake.

  And, of course, if (say) an openly racist person's participation in a
  project would cause black people to leave to product, or discourage them
  from joining it, since they could feel no longer welcome, then it would be
  the racist who would have to leave so as to correct the situation. I hope we
  agree on that?

yes

  > what do you think of nader's alliance with ron paul, around the 3
  > priorities of ending the war, ending the war on drugs and 3 ??

  "and 3"? Ending wars, and ending the war on drugs are fine goals, and it
  seems to me that Ron Paul is by far not the worst of the Tea Party--near
  candidates currently running. Nevertheless I suppose that such alliances
  will ultimately do more bad than good, since they will increase acceptance
  for causes that are anti-emancipatory and 'anti-p2p'.

ron paul also has quite terrible positions on civil rights and the like; I'm not sure if nader is correct is doing such an alliance, though I respect Nader a lot; I think ows has a better position, by eschewing formal political alliances altogether, and seeking broad commonality on a few key goals 

at least for the time being ... if time, circumstances and maturation require much more radical steps, even such commonality may become strained

Michel

  Best regards
         Christian

  --
  |------- Dr. Christian Siefkes ------- christian at siefkes.net -------
  | Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/ | Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
  |    Peer Production Everywhere:       http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
  |---------------------------------- OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --

  It is only the identification of a Them that makes it possible for us to
  live with the epidemic of Aids in Africa or the death of thousands of
  children each day from curable diseases. The existence of capitalism is
  conceivable only on the basis of the dulling of our feelings ... that
  enables us to erect private morality into a wall to keep out the pain of
  the world.... Communism is the movement of intensity against the dulling of
  feeling that makes the horrors of capitalism possible.
         -- John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power

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