In Which I Respond Briefly to Lawrence Lessig’s Socialism

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Lawrence Lessig, open source and political hero to many, including me, has recently responded to Kevin Kelley’s article “The New Socialism“, to which I also recently responded. Lessig, of Change Congress and Creative Commons, is pretty much da bomb so I was pretty jazzed to be introduced to his blog, let alone be able to comment on it. I was however, surprised (although I probably shouldn’t be), that someone so willing to challenge the way capitalism and our government works today, holds the same McCarthyist perspectives about socialism as most uncritical people do.

Now, I could be being totally unfair about this. He said he studied this stuff thoroughly, and I know other Philosophy students who think socialism is idiotic, but I have to wonder what their teachers thought. Similarly, I’m fairly sure I had a Marxist as my sociology teacher, so perhaps that influenced my thinking as well. In addition, being around the International Socialist Organization long enough to feel pretty confident in my understanding of their perspectives, makes me an insider, and these other examples outsiders. Some would say that distorts my perspective, some would say it makes it clearer. At least I can say I know what Marxist socialists actually want. It’s not Stalinism.

Anyway. I responded. Here is the response (more for posterity’s sake than interest):

I think it’s SO AWESOME that you’re writing about this, because I’m a huge fan and I think you’re doing a lot of great things. Thanks for the whole package. On the other hand, I have to say, as I did with Kelley, that I both agree and disagree with your thoughts.

I wrote a pretty thorough blog post replying to Kelley’s article, called “The New Socialism Looks Suspiciously Like The Old Socialism“.

But I’d like to respond to your particular ideas as well. As with Kelley, I think that you’ve misinterpreted (and most people do, thanks to Stalin, Mao, Castro and McCarthyism) the intention and original definition of socialism. Your assertions that socialism is “a system enforced by law, and enforced contrary to the way individuals would freely choose autonomously to associate” and that “voluntary socialism” is essentially an oxymoron indicate that you and I have very different definitions of socialism.

The “socialist/communist” states under Stalin and Mao were horrifying regimes run by dictators - they were state capitalist, not socialist. Dictators in the last century have made a bad habit of claiming to be socialist in order to garner support. So we can throw those societies away as examples of socialism.

Of the many types of people that consider themselves socialist today, I would consider myself first and foremost a Marxist. Marxist socialism, by definition, requires the will of the people even to exist - he believed that true socialism cannot exist without a bottom-up revolution (not top-down as in the case of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s Cuba). The purpose of socialism is to put the needs of people before the desire for profit by putting the people in power. Many successful but short-lived socialist societies in history organized like the Russians did in 1917, into “soviets” or committees from the local to national level.

Personally this sounds like a pretty great way to “choose autonomously to associate” to me. I would more likely choose a system in which I had a lot of involvement in my community and in figuring out how society could best meet the needs of people rather than live in a system where the wealthy and powerful generally decide how everything works for us. But that’s just me.

So I disagree Mr Lessig, with your assertion that social software should not be called “socialist” because social software is not inherently coercive.

I do agree however that it’s inappropriate to call some of these endeavors “socialist” because they are inherently capitalist. In my blog post, I distinguish between not-for-profit open source projects and social platforms like facebook and flickr, because in the latter case, a minority at the top still stands to benefit greatly from the efforts of the majority at the bottom. I would argue though, that the business model of social software is even more successful than most capitalist businesses - because the workers do the labor for free!

In conclusion, I REALLY appreciate hearing you touch upon this subject. However, I also wish people would look more deeply into the history of socialism (especially now that everyone is talking about it again), and the perspectives of people who actually consider themselves Marxist socialists (I would recommend Socialist Worker). It is admittedly, a very hard task because, like the term “feminist”, there are so many different definitions, and a history that continually clashes with mainstream ideas.

I would like to emphasize that I understand Lessig is worlds smarter than I am, but it’s clear that he hasn’t done his homework on the subject when it comes to NON-mainstream definitions of socialism. Lessig emphasizes that the main definining characteristic of socialism is coersion. He states, “all of the examples of proper ’socialism’ begin with pointing to coercion by the state.” Actually, all of the examples of IMproper socialism begin with coercion by the state. In a true socialist society, there is no state. The people are the government, every one of us participates. So you have to ask, if people are being coerced by the government, who is the government?