The New Socialism Sounds Suspiciously Like The Old Socialism

by BinaryApe (Flickr)

Through a mention by Nancy Scola via TechPresident, I found a really awesome article on Wired today called “The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online” by Kevin Kelly. This response is first to the Nancy Scola and then to Kevin Kelly.

I personally have been making similar assertions to Kelly’s, however there are a lot of points on which I disagree with him.

Before getting into that, I have to say that I feel the statement by Scola that these new social technologies are “manifestations of ‘an emerging collectivism’ akin to a Stalinistic vision” is quite inaccurate. Many people have a skewed understanding of the definition of socialism, because of distortions from within (Stalin) and without (McCarthyism) the movement. Stalin was a tyrannical dictator claiming to run a socialist society, but Stalin’s Russia was NOT socialist (ie: fully worker-run), it was state capitalist.

This is why I feel that Kelly’s assertion that there is a “new socialism” which is no longer characterized by “authority centralized among elite officials, limited resources dispensed by the state, forced labor in government factories, government- controlled information and harsh penalties for criticizing leaders” is completely inaccurate. Kelly’s list of characteristics of the “old socialism” constitute everything that socialism should NOT be.

The vision of Marx and other Marxist theorists is a society where everyone participates in making decisions about how society is run, where our vast resources are used to offer a comfortable lifestyle to everyone, where every able body participates in laboring for only as many hours as it takes to produce what we need and want, where people have more free time to do things like create art or start up their own free-speech newspapers, and where leaders who were elected by the public can be immediately recalled by the public if their actions are disapproved of.

Because of this, I feel that the “New Socialism” that Kelly is talking about is basically the same as the intended vision of the “Old Socialism”. Unfortunately that got tarnished by a bunch of mass murdering dictators who used Marxist rhetoric to garner support from the public.

I do agree that some of these new technologies have very socialist characteristics, however I think it’s important to distinguish between projects that are fully participant run (such as most open source ventures) and in which all the participants share equally in the benefits, and projects where a minority (those who designed and own the site) can still benefit financially from the efforts of the participants. They participants do, of course, benefit from their “volunteer” efforts, but in a completely different way than those getting investment or advertising dollars. From my perspective, this latter type of venture is just a more effective Capitalist business in which the laborers work for free.

On the other hand, I think all of these technologies say something about the potential for socialist organization of society offline. Kelly asserts that participants in social technologies do so for “credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience”, and I think this is a kind of proof that people will make an effort doing something they really love without the promise of unnecessary amounts of wealth. I don’t believe that all doctors are just in it for the money.

Kelly also says that many people participate in open source projects because it’s practical: “The major reason for working on free stuff is to improve my own damn software.” Progress IS practical, and I believe that if the promise of profit wasn’t a barrier to getting things done, that we could successfully progress as a species based on the passion, creativity and collaboration of people everywhere.

It’s my own personal nerdism, but I also love fantasizing about how these social technologies could actually help a future socialist society. Imagine a web app that emailed you to tell you that votes were coming up for neighborhood, state and national decisions that matched the tags you had given - “public parks budget, garbage pickup, endangered species, food labeling, fashion production, K-12 education”. Yum, efficient involvement! That of course, is just an example, since there really is no solid blueprint for a socialist society. I wonder what we could come up with if we put our heads together about that?

I think Kelly is really on to something here. We should pay attention to what works, what doesn’t, why, and what it says about people and societal organization.

Lastly, I wouldn’t use the word “socialism” to label any gains we may make under capitalism, because socialism is not defined by how much control the government has over the economy or society, but by how much control the people have over the government.