[wos] idea for new panel: "Three Grand Experiments of the 20th Century"

[Volker Grassmuck]

Hi everybody,

while talking with Vera Franz and Darius Cuplinskas of the Open 
Society Institute in Budapest last week, lots of ideas emerged, among 
them that for the following panel. Among many specific topics, this 
could be the Big Picture Panel. What do you think?

Volker


Three Grand Experiments of the 20th Century
Communism, Open Society, Commons

The Russian Revolution started the large-scale in situ experiment of 
establishing a communist  society, and half the globe participated. 
After its failure became apparent and the experiment came to a 
grinding halt, one man single-handedly attempted to turn former 
socialist Eastern Europe into an Open Society. With free software, 
the late 20th century saw another revolution. While not a vision for 
a complete social system, its protagonist continually asks what kind 
of society we want to live in. 

The three experiments, connected to the names of Lenin, Soros and 
Stallman are distinguished by their respective property regime: state 
ownership, private ownership, and community ownership of essential 
goods. 

As we move forward into the 21st century, neo-liberalism is still the 
dominant mode. At the same time, it becomes apparent that there are 
public goods of which the state should be in charge. The re-
nationalization of British Railways is a symbol for this trend. 
Commons goods which have regularily been slandered using Garret 
Hardin‘s idea of the „tragedy of the commons" have powerfully proven 
their viability by free software and other forms of informational 
goods produced, owned, and managed by a community. 

Globalization has changed the scope of these issues. Corporations and 
industry groups have made the world their oyster. Inter-governmental 
organizations create frameworks attempting to ensure global public 
goods like economic stability, security, environment, humanitarian 
assistance and knowledge. The means of informational production and 
the means of global communications turned into commodities available 
to endusers, and enable productive global communities of individuals.

The panel looks back at the lessons learned from the three grand 
experiments of the 20th century, and asks for the right balance 
between private, state and commons regimes in he 21st century. 


Possible speakers

On (post-)communism:

* Slavoj Zizek, Ljubljana
Bio: http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm
Biblio: http://lacan.com/bibliographyzi.htm
Repeating Lenin: 
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek1.h
tm
Excerpts from the introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of 
The Communist Manifesto
http://www.arkzin.com/munist/ziz1e.htm


On Open Society:

* George Soros
Bio: http://www.soros.org/gsbio/
Biblio: http://www.soros.org/gsbio/writings.html
Opening the Soviet System, 1990
http://www.osi.hu/oss/index.html
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, 2000
http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/books/ope-sum.html

* Istvan Rev [preliminarily agreed to participate]
Professor of history and political science at Central European 
University Budapest; Director Open Society Archives; member of the 
OSI board. Since the early 1980s Rev has published widely on the 
political cultural, and architectural history of Hungary and other 
Eastern bloc countries. Since the political transformations of 1989, 
he has emerged as one of the most highly regarded writers on issues 
of post-socialism, publishing on various dimensions of the transition-
such as official and popular memory, state discourse and popular 
resistance, andthe status of socialist-era monuments-in journals such 
as Daedalus, Dissent, and Representations.
Bio: http://www.ceu.hu/hist/pages/cv/rev.html


On Free Software/Commons:

* Richard Stallman
[might not agree because he doesn't want free software to be talked 
about in the neighbourhood of communism.]

* Yochai Benkler
http://www.benkler.org 
„Freedom in the Commons, Towards a Political Economy of Information"
http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/frey/benkler.rm

* Larry Lessig

* Elinor Ostrom 


Quotes

„And why are we, from the "post-Communist" Eastern European 
countries, the ones to assume this task? Because we are compelled to 
live out and sustain the contradiction of the global capitalist New 
World Order at its most radical. The ideological dream of a unified 
Europe aims at achieving the (impossible) balance between the two 
components: full integration into the global market; retaining the 
specific national and ethnic identities. What we are getting in the 
post-Communist Eastern Europe is a kind of negative, distopian 
realization of this dream - in short, the worst of both worlds, 
unconstrained market combined with ideological fundamentalism. [...] 
Are we then condemned to the debilitating alternative of choosing 
between a knave or a fool, or is there a tertium datur? If The 
Communist Manifesto still has something to say to us, then there is 
still hope for a tertium datur." (Slavoj Zizek, Introduction to The 
Communist Manifesto)

„Markets are eminently suitable for the pursuit of private interests, 
but they are not designed to take care of the common interest. [...] 
Communism sought to abolish the market mechanism and to impose 
collective control over all economic activities. Market 
fundamentalism seeks to abolish collective decision-making and to 
impose the supremacy of market values over all political and social 
values. Both extremes are wrong. [...] I believe that international 
institutions could be made to work better only with the help of civil 
society. It may be true that states have no principles, but 
democratic states are responsive to the wishes of their citizens. If 
the citizens have principles, they can impose them on their 
governments." (George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global 
Capitalism)

„I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I 
must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to 
divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to 
share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in 
this way. [...]  Many programmers are unhappy about the 
commercialization of system software. It may enable them to make more 
money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other 
programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. [...] In the 
long run, 
making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where 
nobody 
will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be 
free to 
devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, 
after 
spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as 
legislation, 
family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting." (Richard 
Stallman, 
GNU Manifesto, 1985)