From 6f3b058d51404aea742934d7e3d4e5efeee760f0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Nicol=C3=A1s=20Reynolds?= Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2015 22:03:23 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] Red Plenty al 55% --- abundancia_roja.markdown | 1354 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 1354 insertions(+) create mode 100644 abundancia_roja.markdown diff --git a/abundancia_roja.markdown b/abundancia_roja.markdown new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1eec28e --- /dev/null +++ b/abundancia_roja.markdown @@ -0,0 +1,1354 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "Plataformas para la abundancia roja" +author: "Nick Dyer-Witheford" +license: http://endefensadelsl.org/ppl_deed_es.html +--- + +Plataformas para la abundancia roja +=================================== + +> Publicado originalmente en Culture Machine Vol. 14 (2013) como _"Red +> Plenty Platforms"_. Publicado bajo la Licencia de Producción de Pares +> con permiso del autor. + +Introducción: Abundancia roja +----------------------------- + +Shortly after the great Wall Street meltdown of 2008, a novel about +obscure and remote historical events provided an unexpected node for +discussion of the ongoing crisis. Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty (2010) +offered a fictionalized account of the failed attempt by Soviet +cyberneticians of the 1960s to establish a fully computerized system of +economic planning. Mixing historical figures – Leonid Kantorovich, +inventor of linear programming equations; Sergei Alexeievich Lebedev, +pioneering Soviet computer designer; Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary +of the Communist Party – with imaginary ones, and setting them all in +motion through Kremlin corridors, rural collectives, industrial +factories and the Siberian science-city of Akademgorodok, Red Plenty +succeeded in the unlikely mission of making cybernetic planning a +page-turner. But the interest it attracted from economists, computer +scientists and political activists was not solely due to its narrative +of scientific endeavor and political intrigue; it also owed much to +timing. Appearing amidst austerity and unemployment, as the world +market still teetered on the brink of collapse, Red Plenty could be +interpreted in different ways: a) as a cautionary tale that, recalling +Soviet debacles, reminds us capitalism remains the only game in town, +even if it has behaved badly (‘There Is No Alternative’); or b) +contrawise, as a recollection of unrealized potentialities, whispering +not just the quaint altermondialiste slogan, ‘another world is +possible’, but what David Harvey (2010: np) identifies as the more +cogent and subversive possibility, that of ‘another communism’. + +Poco despues de la gran caida de Wall Street del 2008, una novela acerca +de eventos historicos oscuros y remotos proveia un inesperado punto de +discusion sobre la crisis en marcha. Abundancia roja, de Francis +Spufford (2010), ofrecia un recuento ficcionalizado del intento fallido +de los ciberneticos sovieticos de los '60 por establecer un sistema +completamente computarizado de planificacion economica. Mezclando +figuras historicas --Leonid Kantorovich, inventor de las ecuaciones de +programacion lineal, Sergei Alexeievich Lebedev, pionero del diseño de +computadoras sovieticas, Nikita Khrushchev, Secretario General del +Partido Comunista-- con imaginarias y poniendolas en accion en pasillos +del Kremlin, colectivos rurales, fabricas industriales y la ciudad +cientifica siberiana de Akademgorodok, Abundancia roja tuvo exito en la +improbable mision de convertir la planificacion cibernetica en un libro +atrapante. Pero el interes que atrajo por parte de economistas, +informaticas y activistas politicas no fue solo por la narrativa +cientifica y la intriga politica. Tambien le debio mucho al momento en +que se publico. Al aparecer en el medio de la austeridad y el +desempleo, con el mercado global todavia al borde del colapso, +Abundancia roja puede interpretarse de distintas formas: a) como un +cuento con moraleja que al retrotraernos a las debacles sovieticas nos +recuerda que el capitalismo sigue existiendo, aun cuando no funcione del +todo bien ('no hay otra alternativa'); o b) contraintuitivamente, como +una recoleccion de potencialidades no realizadas, no solo susurrando el +pintoresco eslogan altermundialista 'otro mundo es posible', sino lo que +David Harvey [-@harvey-2010] identifica como la otra posibilidad, mas +fuerte y subversiva, la del 'otro comunismo'. + +This paper takes Spufford’s novel as a starting point from which to +embark on an examination of the computing platforms that would be +necessary for a contemporary ‘red plenty’. It is not a discussion of the +merits and demerits of hacktivism, digital disobedience, electronic +fabrics of struggle, tweets in the street and Facebook revolutions, but +of digital communism. This is a topic that has already been touched on +by the wave of rethinking life after capitalism triggered by the 1989 +implosion of the USSR, in proposals for ‘participatory economics’ +(Albert & Hahnel, 1991), a ‘new socialism’ (Cockshott & Cottrell, 1993), +‘twenty first century socialism’ (Dieterich, 2006), or forms of +‘commonwealth’(Hardt & Negri, 2009). Unlike some of these sources, +however, this essay does not aim to provide detailed, often competitive, +‘blue-prints’ for a new society, but rather what Greig de Peuter, in a +personal conversation, once called ‘red-prints’- approximating +orientations to revolutionary possibilities. + +Este articulo toma la novela de Spufford como el punto de partida desde +el que examinar las plataformas informaticas que serian necesarias para +una "abundancia roja" contemporanea. No es una discusion sobre los +meritos o no del hacktivismo, la desobediencia digital, los entramados +electronicos de las luchas, twits en las calles o las revoluciones por +Facebook, sino del comunismo digital. Este tema ya ha sido tocado por +la ola de repensadores de la vida luego del capitalismo iniciada por la +implosion de la URSS en 1989, en propuestas como "economia +participativa" [@albert-hahnel-1991], un "nuevo socialismo" +[@cockshott-cottrell-1993], "socialismo del siglo XXI" [@dieterich-2006] +o forma de "_commonwealth_" [@hardt-negri-2009]. Al contrario de estas +fuentes, este ensayo no intenta proveer cianotipos detallados, a menudo +competitivos, para una sociedad nueva, sino lo que Greg de Peuter +llamaba (en una conversación privada), "rojotipos", es decir +orientaciones aproximativas a posibilidades revolucionarias. + + +In discussing computing and communism it is almost impossible to escape +accusations of abandoning struggles and subjects to a machinic +determinism. Certainly all automatic, teleological, and evolutionary +models, including schematic choreographies of forces and relations of +production, should be rejected. Just as important, however, is the +avoidance of a contrary humanist determinism, which overstates the +autonomy and ontological privilege of ‘man versus machine’. Here, modes +of production, and the struggles that convulse them, are understood as +combinations of human and machine agents, entangled, hybridized and +co-determined DeleuzoDeLandian ‘assemblages’ (Thorburn, 2013). That is +why the estimate sent to me by Benjamin Peters, historian of Soviet +cybernetics, that, compared with the machines available to the planners +of Red Plenty in, say, 1969, the processing power of the fastest +computer in 2019 will represent ‘roughly a 100,000,000,000 fold increase +in operations per second’, is exciting, a factoid that is, as Peters +remarks, ‘not itself meaningful but still suggestive’. The argument that +follows explores this suggestivity. This article thus looks at the most +direct through-line from Soviet cybernetics’ continuing attempts to +theorize forms of economic planning based on labour time algorithms and +super-computing. It then discusses how concerns about authoritarian +central planning might be affected by social media and software agents, +before going on to consider whether planning is redundant in a world of +automata, copying and replication. In partial answer to that last +question, ‘Red Plenty Platforms’ scans the role of cybernetics in the +planetary bio-crisis, concluding with some general observations about +cybernetics on today’s ‘communist horizon’ (Dean, 2012). First, however, +it reviews some of the problems, both practical and theoretical, that +were grappled with by the Soviet planners depicted in Red Plenty. + +Al discutir informática y comunismo resulta casi imposible escapar a las +acusaciones abandono de las luchas por un determinismo mecanicista. +Ciertamente todos los modelos automaticos, teleologicos y +evolucionistas, incluyendo las coreografias esquematicas de fuerzas y +relaciones de produccion, deben ser rechazados. Resulta tan importante, +sin embargo, como evitar por el contrario un determinismo humanista, que +exagera la autonomia y el privilegio ontológico del "hombre contra la +maquina". Aqui, los modos de producción y las luchas que los +convulsionan, son entendidos como combinaciones de agentes humanos y +mecanicos, enredados, hibridizados y co-determinados "ensamblajes +deleuzo-delandianos" [@thorburn-2013]. Es por esto que la estimacion +que me enviara Benjamin Peters, historiador de la cibernetica sovietica, +comparando las maquinas que los planificadores de Abundancia roja tenian +a disposición en, digamos 1969, con la computadora mas rapida de 2019 y +que arroja que el poder de procesamiento de esta ultima representara +"aproximadamente un aumento de 100 mil millones de veces en operaciones +por segundo" resulta excitante, un factoide que es, como remarca Peters, +"no significativo en si mismo pero aun sugestivo". El argumento que +sigue explora esta sugestividad. Este articulo trata sobre la linea mas +directa en la continuidad de la cibernetica sovietica en cuanto a +teorizacion de formas de planificacion economica basada en algoritmos de +tiempo de trabajo y supercomputacion. Ademas discute las preocupaciones +sobre el autoritarismo en la planificacion centralizada y como es +afectado por los medios sociales y los agentes de software, antes de +pasar a considerar si la planificacion se vuelve redundante en un mundo +de automatas, junto con la copia y la replicacion. Como respuesta +parcial a la ultima pregunta, este articulo recorre el rol de la +cibernetica dentro de la biocrisis planetaria, concluyendo con algunas +observaciones generales sobre la cibernetica en el "horizonte comunista" +actual [@dean-2012]. Primero, no obstante, revisa algunos de los +problemas, tanto practicos como teoreticos, con los que los +planificadores sovieticos de Abundancia roja se encontraron. + + +Is Capitalism a Computer? + +¿El capitalismo es una computadora? +----------------------------------- + +Digital philosophers suggest the universe may be a computer simulation +programmed by aliens: without engaging this position, there are grounds +for considering a more mid-range proposition, namely that capitalism is + a computer. This is the contention implicit in one of the most serious + intellectual challenges mounted against communist thought, ‘the + socialist calculation problem’, formulated by ‘Austrian school’ + economists such as Ludwig von Mises (1935) and Frederick Hayek (1945). + Writing in the period defined by the success of the Russian + revolution, these economists attacked the premises and feasibility of + the centrally planned economy. All social systems, they recognized, + need some form of resource planning. The market, however, enacts a + distributed, spontaneous and emergent, non-coercive plan – what Hayek + (1976: 38) called the ‘catallaxy’. Prices provide a synoptic, + abstracted signal of heterogeneous and changing needs and conditions, + to which entrepreneurial investment responds. A command economy, in + contrast, must be both despotic and impractical, as calculating an + optimal distribution of scarce resources depends on innumerable local + knowledges about consumption needs and production conditions that no + central reporting method could compile and evaluate. + +Las filosofas digitales sugieren que el universo podria ser una +simulacion por computadoras programada por extraterrestres. Sin +involucrarse en esta posicion, hay motivos para considerar una +proposicion intermedia, es decir que el capitalismo es una computadora. +Esta es la contienda implicita en una de las mas serias respuestas +intelectuales al pensamiento comunista, "el problema del calculo +socialista", formulado por economistas de la escuela de Austria como +Ludwig von Mises [-@mises-1935] y Frederick Hayes [-@hayes-1945]. +Escribiendo en el periodo definido por el exito de la revolucion rusa, +estos economistas atacaron las premisas y la factibilidad de la +economica centralmente planificada. Todos los sistemas sociales, +reconocian, necesitan una forma de planificacion de recursos. El +mercado, sin embargo, funciona como un plan distribuido, espontaneo, +emergente y no-coercitivo --lo que Hayek llamo la "catalaxia" +[-@hayek-1976]. Los precios proveen una señal sinoptica y abstracta +sobre condiciones y necesidades cambiantes y heterogeneas a los que la +inversion empresarial responde. Una economia comandada, en contraste, +debe ser a la vez despotica e impractica, porque el calculo de una +distribucion optima de recursos escasos depende de innumerables +conocimientos locales sobre las necesidades de consumo y las condiciones +de produccion que ningun metodo central de reporte podria compilar y +evaluar. + +The Austrian economists thus offered an update of Adam Smith’s +celebration of capital’s ‘invisible hand’, now re-envisioned as a +quasicybernetic information system: It is more than a metaphor to +describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, +or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to +watch merely the movement of a few pointers as an engineer might watch +the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes +of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price +movement. (Hayek, 1945: 527) + +Por lo tanto los economistas austriacos ofrecian una version actualizada +de la "mano invisible" del capital de Adam Smith, ahora reconvertida en +un sistema de informacion cuasi cibernetico: es mas que metaforico +describir el sistema de precios como una especie de maquinaria para +registrar el cambio, o como un sistema de telecomunicaciones que permite +a los productores individuales observar algunos puntos como una +ingeniera observa las indicaciones de un medidor, para ajustar sus +actividades a cambios de los que no podrian saber mas que lo que se +refleja en el movimiento de precios [@hayek-1945]. + +Although he referred to telecommunications and engineering, Hayek, +writing in the final year of the Second World War, might as well have +invoked the giant mainframe computers of the Manhattan Project, for what +he proposed was that the market acted as an automatic calculating +engine: a computer. + +Aunque se referia a las telecomunicaciones y la ingenieria durante el +ultimo año de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Hayek bien podria haberse +referido a las gigantes _mainframes_ del Proyecto Manhattan, porque lo +que estaba proponiendo es que el mercado actua como un motor de calculo +automatico: una computadora. + +This was, however, a two-sided argument deployed polemically against +socialism. For if the market acts as a computer, why not replace it with +a computer? If central planning suffered from a calculation problem, why +not just solve it with real calculation machines? This was precisely the +point made by Hayek’s opponent, the economist Oskar Lange, who, +retrospectively reviewing the ‘socialist calculation’ debate, remarked: +‘today my task would be much simpler. My answer to Hayek … would be: so +what’s the trouble? Let us put the simultaneous equations on an +electronic computer and we shall obtain the solution in less than a +second’ (1967: 159). Such was the project of the cyberneticians featured +in Red Plenty, a project driven by the realization that the apparently +successful Soviet industrial economy, despite its triumphs in the 1940s +and ‘50s, was slowly stagnating amidst organizational incoherence and +informational bottlenecks. + +Este es sin embargo un argumento contra el socialismo que tiene dos +filos. Si el mercado actua como una computadora, ¿por qué no +reemplazarlo por una? Si la planificacion centralizada sufria de un +problema de calculo, ¿por que no resolverla con maquinas de calculo +reales? Este fue precisamente el argumento del oponente de Hayek, el +economista Oskar Lange, que refiriendose en retrospectiva al debate +sobre el "calculo socialista", remarcaba: "hoy mi tarea hubiera sido +mucho mas simple. Mi respuesta a Hayek hubiera sido: ¿cual es el +problema? Pongamos las ecuaciones simultaneas en una computadora +electronica y obtendremos la solucion en menos de un segundo" +[@lange-1967]. Este era el proyecto de las ciberneticas de Abundancia +roja, un proyecto motivado por la realización de que la aparentemente +exitosa economia industrial sovietica, pese a sus triunfos en los '40 y +'50, se estaba estancando en medio de la incoherencia organizativa y los +cuellos de botella informacionales. + +Their effort depended on a conceptual tool, the input-output table, +whose development is associated with two Russian mathematicians: the +émigré Wassily Leontief, who worked in the US, and the Soviet Union’s +Kantorovich, the central protagonist of Red Plenty. Inputoutput tables – +which, it was recently discovered, are amongst the intellectual +foundations of Google’s PageRank algorithm (Franceschet, 2010) – chart +the complex interdependence of a modern economy by showing how outputs +from one industry (e.g. steel or cotton) provide inputs for another +(say, cars or clothing), so that one can estimate the change in demand +resulting from a change in production of final goods. By the 1960s such +tables were an accepted instrument of large scale industrial +organizations: Leontief’s work played a role in the logistics of the US +Air Force’s massive bomber offensive against Germany. However, the +complexity of an entire national economy was believed to preclude their +application at such a level. + +Su esfuerzo dependió de una herramienta conceptual, la tabla de +entrada-salida, cuyo desarrollo está asociado a dos matematicos rusos: +el emigrado Wassily Leontief, que trabajo en EEUU y el sovietico +Kantorovich, protagonista de _Abundancia roja_. Las tablas de +entrada-salida --que recientemente se han descubierto parte del +fundamento intelectual del algoritmo PageRank de Google +[@franceschet-2010]-- trazan la compleja interdependencia de una +economia moderna al mostrar como las salidas de una industria (por +ejemplo el acero o el algodón) proveen las entradas para otras +(automoviles o ropa), de forma que puede estimarse el cambio en la +demanda resultante de un cambio en la producción de bienes. En los '60 +estas tablas eran un instrumento aceptado por las organizaciones +industriales de gran escala: el trabajo de Leontief tuvo un rol en la +logistica del masivo bombardeo a Alemania por parte de las fuerzas +aereas estadounidenses. No obstante, se creia que la complejidad de una +economia nacional completa impedia su aplicacion a tal nivel. + + +Soviet computer scientists set out to surmount this problem. As early as +the 1930s, Kantorovich had improved input-output tables with the +mathematical method of linear programming that estimated the best, or +‘optimizing’, combination of production techniques to meet a given +target. The cyberneticians of the 1960s aimed to implement this +breakthrough on a massive scale by establishing a modern computing +infrastructure to rapidly carry out the millions of calculations +required by Gosplan, the State Board for Planning that oversaw economic +five year plans. After a decade of experimentation, their attempt +collapsed, frustrated by the pitiful state of the Soviet computer +industry – which, being some two + +Los cientificos informaticos sovieticos se propusieron resolver este +problema. Ya en los '30, Kantorovich habia mejorada las tablas de +entrada-salida con el metodo matematica de programación lineal, que +estimaba la mejor, u "optimizaba", combinación de técnicas de producción +necesarias para un objetivo. Los ciberneticos de los '60 intentaron +implementar ese descubrimiento a escala masiva, estableciendo una +infraestructura informatica moderna capaz de procesar los millones de +calculos requeridos por Gosplan, la Mesa Estatal de Planificación que +supervisaba los planes quinquenales económicos. Luego de una decada de +experimentación, su intento colapsó, frustrado por el lamentable estado +de la industria informática sovietica --que al estar dos decadas +atrasada con respecto a los EEUU, se perdió la revolución de la +computadora personal y no desarrollo un equivalente a Internet. Por lo +tanto era totalmente inadecuado para lo que se proponia lograr. Ademas +tenia la oposición de la _nomenklatura_, que veia en la planificacion +informatica una amenaza a su poder burocratico y ayudo en el abandono +del proyecto [@castells-2000; @gerovitch-2008; peters-2012]. + +decades behind that of the US, missed the personal computer revolution +and did not develop an equivalent to the Internet. It was thus utterly +inadequate to the task set for it. All this, alongside political +opposition from a nomenklatura that, seeing in the new scientific +planning method a threat to its bureaucratic power, compelled +abandonment of the project (Castells, 2000; Gerovitch, 2008; Peters, +2012). This was not the only twentieth century project of ‘cybernetic +revolutionaries’; as remarkable was the attempt by Salvador Allende’s +Chilean regime to introduce a more decentralized version of electronic +planning, ‘Project Cybersyn’ (Medina, 2005). Led by the Canadian +cybernetician Stafford Beer, this was conceived as a system of +communication and control that would enable the socialist regime to +collect economic data, and relay it to government decision makers, even +while embedding within its technology safeguards against state + micro-management and encouragement for many-sided discussions of + planning decisions. This was an attempt at socio-technical engineering + of democratic socialism that today perhaps seems more attractive than + the post-Stalinist manoeuvres of the Soviet computer planners. But it + met an even more brutal fate; Project Cybersyn was extinguished in the + Pinochet coup of 1973. In the end the failure of the USSR to adapt to + a world of software and networks contributed to its economic/military + defeat by the United States. Its disintegration, in which, as Alec + Nove (1983) demonstrated, information bottlenecks and reporting + falsifications played a major role, seemed to vindicate the Austrian + economists. Hayek’s praise of market catallaxy thus became central to + the ‘neoliberal thought collective’ (Mirowski, 2009) that led the + subsequent victory march of global capitalism. + +Este no fue el unico proyecto de "cibernetica revolucionaria" del siglo +XXI. Igual de remarcable fue el intento del gobierno de Salvador +Allende en Chile por introducir una versión decentralizada de +planificación electrónica, el "Proyecto Cybersyn" [@medina-2005]. +Liderado por el cibernetico canadiense Stafford Beer, fue concebido como +un sistema de comunicación y control que habilitaria al gobierno +socialista a recolectar información económica y presentarla a los +decisores politicos, aun cuando incluia en su tecnologia salvaguardas +contra la microgestión estatal y estimulos para discusiones +multilaterales sobre la planificación. Este fue un intento de +ingenieria sociotecnica para el socialismo democrático que hoy en dia +parece mas atractivo que las maniobras post-estalinistas de los +planificadores sovieticos. Pero se encontró con un destino mas brutal: +el Proyecto Cybersyn fue exterminado por el golpe pinochetista de 1973. +La falla de la URSS por adaptarse al mundo del software y las redes +contribuyó a su derrota economica y militar ante EEUU. Su +desintegracion, en los que, como demostraba Alec Nove [-@nove-1983], los +cuellos de botella informacionales y la falsicación de reportes jugaron +un rol preponderante, pareció reinvindicar a los economistas austriacos. +Las alabanzas de Hayek a la catalaxia del mercado se volvieron centrales +al "pensamiento colectivo neoliberal" [@mirowski-2009] que lidero la +marcha victoriosa del capitalismo global. + +The combined pressure of the practical disaster of the USSR and the +theoretical argument of the Austrian school exerted immense force inside +what remained of the left, pressuring it to reduce and reset the limit +of radical aspiration to, at most, an economy of collectively owned +enterprises coordinated by price signals. The many variants on such +‘market socialist’ proposals have evoked rebuttals from Marxists who +refuse to concede to commodity exchange. Perhaps because they grant to +the market the automatic informationprocessing functions ascribed by the +Austrian economists and market socialists, they may address issues of +technological innovation or public data availability, yet do not seem to +engage deeply with the potentialities of contemporary computing. + +La presion combinada del desastre practico de la URSS y el argumento +teorico de la escuela de Austria ejerció una fuerza enorme dentro de lo +que quedaba de la izquierda, presionándola para reducir y redefinir el +limite de sus aspiraciones radicales a, como mucho, una economia de +empresas colectivamente apropiadas, coordinadas por señales de precios. +Las muchas variantes de tal "socialismo de mercado" han provocado el +rechazo de los marxistas que se resisten al intercambio de mercancias. +Tal vez porque le otorgan al mercado las mismas funciones de +procesamiento automatico de información que los economistas austriacos y +los socialistas de mercado, pueden tocar temas como la innovación +tecnológica o la disponibilidad de datos publicos, pero no parecen +involucrarse profundamente con las potencialidades de la computación +moderna. + +Today, post-crash, claims that markets are infallible information +machines may seem less credible than they did a quarter of century ago. +The parasitic energy-theft that underlies price-signal transmissions +(exploitation at the point of production); the inability of individual +commodity exchanges to register collective consequences (the so-called +‘externalities’); and the recursivity of a chrematistic system that +loops back on itself in financial speculation, have all become more +salient in the midst of global capital’s economic and ecological +implosion. But identifying such flaws does not excuse communists from +the requirement to specify how another system of resource allocation – +one avoiding the ‘serfdom’ of the statist subjugation Hayek (1944) +predicted – might work. + +En la actualidad y despues de la crisis, decir que los mercados son +maquinas infalibles de informacion puede sonar menos creible que un +cuarto de siglo atras. El parasitario robo energetico que subyace a las +transmisiones de señales de precios (es decir la explotacion en el +momento de la produccion), la incapacidad de los intercambios +individuales de mercancias para registrar las consecuencias colectivas +(las llamadas "externalidades") y la recursividad de un sistema +crematistico que se vuelve sobre si mismo en la especulacion financiera +destacan cada vez mas en el medio de la implosion economica y ecologica +del capital global. Pero la identificacion de estas fallas no excusa a +los comunistas de especificar como otro sistema de distribución de +recursos podria funcionar, sin caer en la "servidumbre" de la +subyugacion estatista que predijo Hayek [-@hayek-1994]. + +Labour Algorithms + +## Algoritmos laborales + +Despite the fall of actually-existing socialism, the idea of +computerized economic planning continued to be developed by small groups +of theorists, who have advanced its conceptual scope further than +anything attempted by Soviet cyberneticians. Two schools have been of +particular importance: the ‘New Socialism’ of Scottish computer +scientists Paul Cockshott and Alan Cottrell (1993); and the German +‘Bremen School’, which includes Peter Arno (2002) and Heinz Dieterich +(2006), the latter an advocate of Venezuelan-style ‘Twenty First Century +Socialism’. These tendencies have recently converged (Cockshott, +Cottrell & Dieterich, 2010). However, because little of the Bremen +group’s work is translated, the focus here will be on the New Socialism +of Cockshott and Cottrell. + +A pesar de la caida del socialismo real, la idea de la planificacion +central computarizada continuo siendo desarrollada por pequeños grupos +de teoricos, que han avanzado su alcance conceptual mas alla de lo que +habian intentando los ciberneticos sovieticos. Dos escuelas han sido de +fundamental importancia: el "Nuevo Socialismo" de los cientificos +informaticos escoseses Paul Cockshott y Alan Cottrell +[-@cockshott-cottrell] y la "Escuela de Bremen" alemana, incluyendo a +Peter Arno [-@arno-2002] y Heinz Dieterich [-@dieterich-2006], el ultimo +de los cuales es un militante del "Socialismo del Siglo XXI" al estilo +venezolano. Estas tendencias han convergido recientemente +[@cockshott-cottrell-dieterich-2010]. Sin embargo, como muy pocas obras +de la Escuela de Bremen han sido traducidas, el foco aqui estara puesto +sobre el Nuevo Socialismo de Cockshott y Cottrell. + +The distinguishing mark of the New Socialist project is its classic +Marxist rigor. Accordingly, its twenty-first century super-computer +planning follows to the letter the logic of the late nineteenth century +Critique of the Gotha Program (Marx, 1970), which famously suggests that +at the first, ‘lower’ stage to communism, before conditions of abundance +allow ‘to each according to his needs’, remuneration will be determined +by the hours of socially necessary labour required to produce goods and +services. In the capitalist workplace, workers are paid for the +reproduction of the capacity to labour, rather than for the labour +actually extracted from them; it is this that enables the capitalist to +secure surplus value. + + +La marca distintiva del proyecto del Nuevo Socialismo es el rigor +marxista clasico. De esta forma, la planificacion por supercomputadoras +del siglo XXI sigue al pie de la letra la logica de la Critica al +Programa de Gotha [@marx-1970] de finales del siglo XIX, que sugeria que +en el primer estadio del comunismo, antes que las condiciones de +abundancia permitan el "a cada cual segun su necesidad", la remuneracion +seria determinada por la cantidad de horas socialmente necesarias +requeridas para la produccion de bienes y servicios. En el espacio de +trabajo capitalista, los trabajadores son pagados por la reproduccion de +su capacidad de trabajo y no por el trabajo realmente extraido de ellos. +Esto es lo que permite al capitalismo asegurarse la plusvalia. + + +The elimination of this state of affairs, Cockshott and Cottrell +contend, requires nothing less than the abolition of money—that is, + +La eliminación de este estado de hechos, dicen Cockshott y Cottrell, +requiere nada menos que la abolicion del dinero --es decir, + +the elimination of the fungible general medium of exchange that, through +a series of metamorphoses of money in and out of the commodity form, +creates the self-expanding value that is capital. In their new +Socialism, work would be remunerated in labour certificates; an hour’s +work could be exchanged for goods taking, on a socially average basis, +an equivalent time to produce. The certificates would be extinguished in +this exchange; they would not circulate, and could not be used for +speculation. Because workers would be paid the full social value of +their labour, there would be no owner profits, and no capitalists to +direct resource allocation. Workers would, however, be taxed to +establish a pool of labour-time resources available for social +investments made by planning boards whose mandate would be set by +democratic decisions on overall social goals. + +la eliminacion del medio general de intercambio que, a traves de una +serie de metamorfosis desde y hacia la forma mercancia, crea el valor +auto-expandible que es el capital. En su Nuevo Socialismo, el trabajo +seria remunerado en certificados de trabajo. Una hora de trabajo podria +ser intercambiada por aquellos bienes que requieran la misma cantidad de +tiempo social promedio para ser producidos. Los certificados quedarian +extintos en el acto, no son capaces de circular ni ser utilizados para +especular. Como los trabajadores son retribuidos con el valor social +completo, no habria ganancias ni capitalistas para dirigir la +distribucion de los recursos. De todas formas los trabajadores pagarian +un impuesto que establezca un pozo de recursos en tiempo productivo, +disponible para las inversiones sociales hechas por mesas de +planificación cuyos mandatos serían establecidos por decisiones +democráticas sobre objetivos sociales generales. + +Labour time thus provides the ‘objective unit of value’ for the New +Socialism (Cockshott & Cottrell 2003: 3). It is at this point that its +proponents invoke the capacities of information technology. Such a +system would require an enumeration of the labour time expended, both +directly and indirectly, in the creation of goods and services, to +assess the number certificates for which these goods and services can be +exchanged, and to enable the planning of their production. The basic +tool of the input-output table reappears, with special attention to +labour time, both as an input necessary for the production of goods, and +as an output that itself requires the inputs of training and education. +However, here the New Socialists have to confront a basic objection. +Since the fall of the USSR it has been conventionally accepted that the +scale of information processing attempted by its cyberneticians was +simply too large to be feasible. Writing in the 1980s, Nove (1983) +suggested that such an effort, involving the production of some twelve +million discrete items, would demand a complexity input-output +calculation impossible even with computers. This claim was repeated in +recent discussions of Red Plenty, with critics of central planning +suggesting that, even using a contemporary ‘desktop machine’, solving +the equations would take ‘roughly a thousand years’ (Shalizi, 2012). + +El tiempo de trabajo provee "la unidad objetiva de valor" del Nuevo +Socialismo [@cockshot-cottrell-2003]. En este punto son invocadas las +capacidades de la tecnologia informatica. Tal sistema requeriria la +enumeracion del tiempo de trabajo utilizado, tanto directa como +indirectamente, en la creacion de bienes y servicios, para evaluar la +cantidad de certificados necesarios y tambien para habilitar la +planificacion economica. La tabla de entrada-salida reaparece, poniendo +especial atencion en el tiempo de trabajo, tanto como una entrada +necesaria para la producción de bienes como una salida que requiere a su +vez las entradas del entrenamiento y la educacion. No obstante, aqui +los Nuevos Socialistas deben confrontar una objecion básica. Desde la +caida de la URSS se ha aceptado convencionalmente que la escala del +procesamiento de información que intentaron los ciberneticos sovieticos +fue simplemente demasiado grande. En los '80, Nove [-nove-1983] sugeria +que tal esfuerzo, involucrando la produccion de unos doce millones de +items discretos, demandaria una complejidad de calculos de +entrada-salida imposible aun con computadoras. Esto fue repetido en las +discusiones recientes sobre _Abundancia roja_, donde los críticos de la +planificación central sugerian que aun con la "maquina de escritorio" +actual, resolver las ecuaciones tomaria "algo asi como mil años" +[@shalizi-2012]. + +Cockshott and Cottrell’s answer involves new tools, both conceptual and +technical. The theoretical advances are drawn from branches of computing +science that deal with abbreviating the number of discrete steps needed +to complete a calculation. Such analysis, they suggest, shows their +opponents’ objections are based on ‘pathologically inefficient’ methods +(Cockshott, in Shalizi, 2012). The input-output structure of the +economy is, they point out, + +La respuesta de Cockshott y Cottrell involucra más herramientas, tanto +conceptuales como tecnicas. Los avances teoreticos son tomados de ramas +de la ciencia informatica que tratan con la abreviación de los pasos +discretos necesarios para completar una ecuacion. Tal analisis, +sugieren, demuestra que las objeciones de los oponentes estan basadas en +metodos "patologicamente ineficientes" [@cockshott-2012]. La estructura +de entrada-salida de la economia es, dicen, + +‘sparse’—that is to say, only a small fraction of the goods are directly +used to produce any other good. Not everything is an input for +everything else: yogurt is not used to produce steel. The majority of +the equations invoked to suggest insuperable complexity are therefore +gratuitous. An algorithm can be designed to short-cut through +input-output tables, ignoring blank entries, iteratively repeating the +process until it arrives at a result of an acceptable order of accuracy. + +"dispersa" --es decir, solo una minima fracción de los bienes son +utilizados directamente para producir cualquier otro bien. No todo es +una entrada para todo el resto: el yogurt no es utilizado para producir +acero. La mayor parte de las ecuaciones que se invocan para sugerir +complejidades insuperables son por lo tanto gratuitas. Es posible +diseñar un algoritmo para encontrar atajos en las tablas de +entrada-salida, ignorando las entradas en blanco, repitiendo el proceso +iterativamente hasta que alcanza un resultado con un orden de precisión +aceptable. + +The time would be further reduced by massive increases in computer +processing speed yielded by Moore’s Law. Suggesting high-level economic +planning is done on a ‘desktop machine’ is disingenuous. The issue is +supercomputing capacity. According to an email communication from +Benjamin Peters, in 1969, the time of Red Plenty, the ‘undisputed +workhorse’ of the Soviet information economy was the BESM-6 (‘bol’shaya +electronicheskaya schetnaya mashina’ – literally the ‘large/major +electronic calculating machine’), which could perform at an operating +speed of 800,000 flops or ‘floating operations per second’ – that is, at +8 megaflops, or 10^6 flops. By 2013, however, supercomputers used in +climate modelling, material testing and astronomical calculations are +commonly exceeding 10 quadrillion flops or ten ‘petaflops’. The holder +of the crown at the time of writing is Cray’s Titan at the Oak Ridge +National Laboratory achieving some 17.6 petaflops (10^15) (Wikipedia, +2013). Supercomputers with an ‘exaflop’ capacity (10^18 flops) are +predicted from China by 2019 (Dorrier, 2012). Thus, as Peters (2013) +says, ‘giving the Soviets a bit generously 10^7 flops in 1969, we can +find (10^18 - 10^7 = 10^11) . . . a 100,000,000,000 fold increase’ by +today. + +El tiempo podria reducirse masivamente por la velocidad de procesamiento +computacional predicha por la Ley de Moore. Sugerir que la +planificación economica de alto nivel se realice en una "maquina de +escritorio" resulta poco sincero. De acuerdo con una comunicación +electrónica de Benjamin Peters, en 1969 (la epoca de _Abundancia Roja_) +el "caballo de tiro indisputable" de la economia informatica sovietica +era la BESM-6 ("_bolshaya electronicheskaya schetnaya mashina_", +literalmente "gran maquina calculadora electronica"), que podria operar +a una velocidad de 800.000 flops u "operaciones flotantes por segundo", +es decir, a 8 megaflops, o 10^6^ flops. En 2013, no obstante, las +supercomputadoras utilizadas en el modelado climatico, testeo de +materiales y calculos astronomicos generalmente sobrepasan los 10 +cuadrillones de flops o diez "teraflops". La mayor al momento de +escribir este articulo es la Titan de Cray, en el _Oak Ridge National +Laboratory_, alcanzando unos 17,6 petaflops, es decir 10^15^ flops +[@wikipedia-2013]. Las computadoras con una capacidad de 1 "exaflop", o +10^18^ flops, han sido predichas para el 2019 en China [@dorrier-2012]. +Por lo tanto, como dice Peters [-@peters-2013], "otorgandole a los +sovieticos unos generosos 10^7^ flops en 1969, podemos encontrar que +10^18^ - 10^7^ = 10^11^ ... es decir un incremento de 100.000.000.000 de +veces". + +With these capacities, Cockshott and Cottrell’s suggestion that the +computer requirements for large scale economic planning could be handled +by facilities comparable to those now used for meteorological purposes, +seems at least plausible. The ‘calculation problem’, however, involves +not just data processing but the actual availability of data; Hayek’s +claim was not merely that central planners cannot crunch economic +numbers fast enough, but that the numbers in a sense do not exist prior +to price setting, which provide an otherwise absent measure of +production performance and consumption activity. Again, Cockshott and +Cottrell suggest the answer lies in computers being used as a means of +harvesting economic information. Writing in the early 1990s, and +invoking levels of network infrastructure available in Britain at the +time, they suggest a coordinating system consisting of few personal +computers + +Con estas capacidades, se vuelve plausible la sugerencia de Cockshott y +Cottrell donde los requerimientos computacionales de la planificación +económica de gran escala pueden ser manejados por instalaciones +comparables a las de las estaciones metereológicas actuales. El +"problema de cálculo", no obstante, no solo involucra el procesamiento +de los datos sino también su disponibilidad. La crítica de Hayek no +pasa solo por la velocidad imposible con la que los planificadores +centrales deberían procesar las cifras económicas, sino que esos números +no existen hasta el momento de la fijación del precio, que provee una +medida de otra forma ausente de performance de la producción y actividad +del consumo. De nuevo, Cockshott y Cottrell sugieren que la respuesta +está en el uso de computadoras para la recolección de información +económica. Escribiendo en los '90 e invocando los niveles de +infraestructura de red disponibles en la Inglaterra del momento, +sugieren un sistema de coordinación compuesto por unas pocas +computadoras personales + +in each production unit, using standard programming packages, would +process local production data and send it by ‘telex’ to a central +planning facility, which every twenty minutes or so would send out a +radio broadcast of adjusted statistical data to be input at local +levels. This is a scenario too reminiscent of the ramshackle +techno-futurism of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. To bring the New Socialists +up to date we should instead refer to Fredric Jameson’s iconoclastic +vision of WalMart as ‘the shape of a Utopian future looming through the +mist’ (2009: 423). His point is that, if one for a moment ignores the +gross exploitation of workers and suppliers, Wal-Mart is an entity whose +colossal organizational powers model the planned processes necessary to +raise global standards of living. And as Jameson recognizes, and other +authors document in detail (Lichtenstein, 2006), this power rests on +computers, networks and information. By the mid 2000s Wal-Mart’s +data-centers were actively tracking over 680 million distinct products +per week and over 20-million customer transactions per day, facilitated +by a computer system second in capacity only to that of the Pentagon. +Barcode scanners and point of sale computer systems identify each item + +en cada unidad productiva, que usando paquetes de programación estándar +procesarían los datos de la producción local y los enviarían por "telex" +a una instalación de planificación central, que cada 20 minutos +respondería por señales de radio con los datos ajustados +estadísticamente, para ser reutilizados en el nivel local. Este +escenario recuerda mucho al destartalado tecno-futurismo que nos muestra +Terry Gilliam en _Brazil_. Para actualizar a los Nuevos Socialistas +deberíamos referirnos más bien a la iconoclasta visión de Fredric +Jameson sobre _Wal-Mart_ como "la forma del futuro utópico avecinándose +entre la niebla" [-@jameson-2009]. El punto es que si por un momento +ignoramos la explotación de trabajadoras y proveedoras, _Wal-Mart_ es +una entidad cuyos colosales poderes organizativos modelan los procesos +planificativos necesarios para elevar los estándares globales de vida. +Como Jameson reconoce y otros autores documentan en detalle +[@lichtenstein-2006], este poder descansa sobre las computadores, las +redes y la información. Para mediados de los 2000, los centros de datos +de _Wal-Mart_ procesaban activamente más de 680 millones de productos +distintos por semana y más de 20 millones de transacciones de venta por +día, todo esto facilitado por un sistema computacional solo seguido en +capacidad por el del Pentágono. Los escáneres de código de barras y las +computadoras en los puntos de venta identifican cada ítem + + +sold, and store this information. Satellite telecommunications link +directly from stores to the central computer system, and from that +system to the computers of suppliers, to allow automatic reordering. The +company’s early adoption of Universal Product Codes had led to a ‘higher +stage’ requirement for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in all +products to enable tracking of commodities, workers and consumers within +and beyond its global supply chain. Wal-Mart is significant because it +stands ‘at the front-edge of a seismic shift in the corporate +imaginary’. It is a shift that links the notion of a ‘logistics +revolution’ with ‘just-in-time-production’, and ‘harnesses emerging +digital and cybernetic technologies for managing production, +distribution and sales in as swift and efficient a manner as possible’ +(Haiven & Stonemouth, 2009: np). This shift is spurred by the emergence +of an ‘Internet of Things’, relating digital information to real world +physical items through a network of sensor-instrumented products, users +and locations. Enabled by the spread of sophisticated 4G Wireless +networks, data storage-ondemand services via the ‘cloud’ from firms like +Amazon, and, especially, by the latest internet protocol IPV6’s +enlargement in addressability, which provides unique digital identifiers +for a ‘truly humongous 340 billion billion billion billion’ items, such + device to device communication by now probably exceed in data volume + the person-to-person traffic of the Internet (Economist, 2012; np). As + Benjamin Bratton (2013) observes, such addressability, combined with + digital coding compressed to the sub-microscopic level, opens up a + virtually limitless capacity for the identification of not just of + things and people, but also of their most elementary components and + their relationships. Thus the trajectory of both information + processing speeds and data gathering capacities points to the + suppression of the ‘socialist calculation problem.’ However, to speak + of planning in such panoptic contexts is to inevitably invoke fears of + omniscient state control. The New Socialists come from a vanguard + Marxist-Leninist lineage, with a self-avowed ‘Jacobin’ centralist + perspective (Cockshott, Cottrell, & Dieterich, 2011). To consider how + cybernetic planning might be developed in more transparent and + participatory modes, we need to look to different communist + traditions. + +vendido y almacenan su información. Los comunicaciones satelitales +vinculan a las tiendas con el sistema central y esta a su vez con las +computadoras de los proveedores, posibilitando el re-abastecimiento +automático. La adopción temprana de los códigos universales de producto +llevaron a un "estadío más alto" requiriendo que todos los productos +lleven etiquetas de Identificación por Radio Frecuencia (RFID) para +permitir el seguimiento de mercancías, trabajadoras y consumidoras +dentro y más allá de la cadena de suministro global. + +Communist Agents Historically, the anti-statist tendency in Marxism has +been largely carried in a very different ‘worker council’ tradition, +that, against the powers of party and state has insisted on the role of +workplace assemblies as the loci of decision-making, organization and +power. In an essay antediluvian by digital standards, ‘Workers' +Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society,’ written in 1957 +but republished in 1972, immediately after the Soviet crushing of +Hungary’s Workers Councils, Cornelius Castoriadis noted the frequent +failure of this tradition to address the economic problems of a ‘totally +self-managed society.’ The question, he wrote, had to be situated +‘firmly in the era of the computer, of the knowledge explosion, of +wireless and television, of input-output matrices’, abandoning +‘socialist or anarchist utopias of earlier years’ because ‘the +technological infrastructures … are so immeasurably different as to make +comparisons rather meaningless’ (Castoriadis, 1972: np). Like the +planners of Red Plenty, Castoriadis imagines an economic plan determined +with input-output tables and optimizing equations governing overall +resource allocation (e.g. the balance between investment and +consumption), but with implementation in the hands of local councils. +His crucial point, however, is that there should be several plans +available for collective selection. This would be the mission of ‘the +plan factory’, a ‘highly mechanized and automated specific enterprise’, +using ‘a computer’ whose ‘memory’ would ‘store the technical +coefficients and the initial productive capacity of each sector’ +(Castoriadis, 1972: np). This central workshop would be supported by +others studying the regional implications of specific plans, +technological innovations, and algorithmic improvements. The ‘plan +factory’ would not determine what social targets should be adopted; +merely generate options, assess consequences, and, after a plan has been +democratically chosen, up-date and revise it as necessary. Castoriadis +would agree with Raymond Williams’s (1983) later observation that there +is nothing intrinsically authoritarian about planning, providing there +is always more than one plan. This early concept of cybernetic +self-management is a precursor of a more recent envisioning of +post-capitalism, Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s (1991) ‘Participatory +Economics’ or ‘Parecon’. This too emerges from a ‘workers council’ +tradition, though from an anarchist, rather than Marxist line of +thought. Their work is famous for its model of ‘decentralized +participatory planning’ (Albert, 2003: 122), alternative to both market +mechanisms and central planning. Councils are, again, the basic +societal units for democratic decision, but in Parecon these include not +just worker but consumer councils, too. Resource allocation is +determined by these organizations’ bids for different levels of +production and consumption, which over a series of rounds of negotiation +are progressively reconciled by Iteration Facilitation Boards. At +successive stages of the planning process, worker and consumer councils +are encouraged by the IFBs to revise their proposals in knowledge of +each other’s inputs, until enough convergence is produced to put a few +possible plans to a vote. Parecon has been the topic of considerable +controversy. One of the most frequent objections is that it exemplifies +the problem Oscar Wilde identified when he remarked that ‘socialism is a +good idea but it takes too many evenings’ – i.e. it seems to require +endless meetings. Hahnel (2008: np) suggests both that increased social +interactivity is a positive feature of Parecon, and that its complexity +would not necessarily be greater than that of many routine requirements +of capitalist everyday life – shopping, taxes, finances, etc. But it +does appear that conducting the tiered and iterative planning cycles +they imagine at a speed sufficient to get anything done, would demand a +very sophisticated network infrastructure and a high level of +technologically mediated participation: extensive data banks accessed by +councils and individuals subjects, electronic swipe cards for the +measurement of labour and consumption, off-the shelf software for +proposal preparations, and just-time-inventory systems for production +(Albert, 2003: 133). + +In fact Parecon seems to call for a digital development that postdates +its proposal: social media. A society of participatory, informed, +democratic and timely collective planning would require fast, varied and +interactive communicative platforms where proposals could be circulated, +responded to, at length or briefly, trends identified, reputations +established, revisions and amendments generated, and so on. It would, in +short, demand that Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickrr and other Web 2.0 +platforms not only themselves become operations self-managed by their +workers (including their unpaid prosumer contributors), but also become +fora for planning: Gosplan with ‘tweets’ and ‘likes’. We also have to +think of these organs transformed in directions pioneered by experiments +in alternative social networks, such as Diaspora, Crabgrass, Lorea, +freed of profit incentives and centralized control and taking more +‘distributed’ and ‘federated’ forms (Cabello et al., 2013; Sevignani, +2013), becoming, as Hu and Halpin (2013) propose, networks that in their + very format prioritize group projects over individual identities, + or as platforms of ‘collective individuation’; not, perhaps social + media as much as ‘council media’. Yet perhaps the idea of everyone + watching mobile screens lest they miss, not a Facebook poke, but + voting the seventh iteration of the participatory plan, duplicates + unattractive features of everyday life in high-tech capitalism. So + we might speculate further, and suggest that what decentralized + collective planning really needs is not just council media but + communist agents: communist software agents. Software agents are + complex programmed entities capable of acting ‘with a certain + degree of autonomy… on behalf of a user (or another program)’ + (Wikipedia, 2013b: np). Such agents manifest ‘goaldirection, + selection, prioritization and initiation of tasks’; they can + activate themselves, assess and react to context, exhibit aspects + of artificial intelligence, such as learning, and can communicate + and cooperate with other agents (Wikipedia, 2013b: np). + Commercially, software ‘bidding agents’ are able to consistently + outperform human agents so that ‘Humans are on the verge of losing + their status as the sole economic species on the planet’ (Kephart, + 2002: 7207). The ability of such entities to create ‘perfect + competition’ in electronic markets makes them a favorite of + Austrian School-influenced economists (Mirowski, 2002). As + preprogrammed buyers and sellers capable of processing vast + amounts of market data, software agents have transformed + electronic commerce because of their ability to quickly + search the Internet, identify best offers, aggregate this + information for users, or, indeed, make purchases + autonomously. However, the arena in which such agents truly + excel is in the financial sector, where high frequency + trading is entirely dependent on software ‘bots’ capable of + responding to arbitrage possibilities in milliseconds. One + can’t help but ask, however, what if software agents could + manifest a different politics? Noting that Multi-Agent System + models can be thought of as a means to answer problems of + resource allocation, Don Greenwood (2007: 8) has suggested + they could be geared toward solving the ‘socialist + calculation problem’. As planning tools, Multi-Agent + Systems, he notes, have the advantage over real markets that + ‘the goals and constraints faced by agents can be + pre-specified by the designer of the model’ (Greenwood, 2007: + 9). It is possible to design agents with macro-level + objectives that involve more than just the maximization of + individual self-interest; two ‘welfare’ principles that + economists have experimented with incorporating are equality + and environmental protection sustainability. Perhaps, then, + we should envisage the repeated decision-cycles of democratic + planning as being, not just debated and deliberated in social + media, but partially delegated to a series of communist + software agents, who absorb the attentional demands of the + process, running at the pace of high-speed trading + algorithms, scuttling through data rich networks, making + recommendations to human participants (‘if you liked the + geo-engineering plus nanotechnology but no-nukes five year + plan, you might like…’), communicating and cooperating with + each other at a variety of levels, preprogrammed to specific + thresholds and configurations of decision (‘keep CO2 + emissions below 300 parts a million, increase incomes of the + lower quintile… and no rise in labour hours necessary for a + cup of coffee’). In the age of autonomous machines, this may + be what a workers’ council would look like. + +Automata, Copies and Replicators Yet, is planning necessary at all? +Centralized, neo-socialist planning schemes and decentralized, networked +councilist versions both see computers as calculative instruments, a +means to measure, particularly to measure work: their aim is to abolish +capitalist exploitation by returning to workers the full worth of their +labour time. There is, however, another line of communist futurism which +understands computers not so much as instruments of planning as machines +of abundance. There are, we might say, two ways to beat Hayek’s +capitalist catallaxy. One is to out-calculate it. The other is to +explode it: scarcity is replaced with plenitude, ending the need for +either prices or planning. For Marxists, ‘plenty’ yields the transition +from the ‘lower’ phase of communism, which still must grapple with +problems of scarcity, to the higher phase of ‘from each according to his +abilities, to each according to his needs’. A popular metaphor for the +technological conditions necessary for this latter moment is the Star +Trek ‘replicator’, which automatically, and with a limitless energy, +provides for human needs (Fraise, 2011). This essay is not going to +adjudicate what level of needs satisfaction should be considered +‘enough’, or what combination of growth and redistribution is adequate +to attain it: this surely would be the issue facing the collective +planners of the future. It will, however, identify three cybernetic +tendencies that point towards the ‘higher’ phase of communism: +automation, copying and peer-to-peer production. Automation has been +the most central to the communist imagination. Its classic statement is +the now-famous ‘Fragment on Machines’ in Grundrisse, where, looking at +the industrial factory of his age, Marx (1973: 690-711) predicts +capital’s tendency to mechanize production will, by destroying the need +for waged labour, blow up the entire system. The founder of cybernetics, + Norbert Weiner (1950), saw its main consequence to be the computerized + elimination of jobs. This digital ‘end of work’ thesis has been + developed very bluntly by thinkers such as Andre Gorz (1985) and + Jeremy Rifkin (1995). Over the late twentieth century, however, + capital has notably avoided this scenario. Far from totally automating + work, it has both sought out global reservoirs of cheap labour, and + followed a ‘march through the sectors’ that pushes a moving front of + labour commodification through agriculture, industry and services. + Since 2000, however, the automation debate has been renewed. + Continuing reductions in computing costs, improvements in vision and + touch technologies, the military investments of the 9/11 wars in + drones and autonomous vehicles, and wage demands by workers in China, + India and other sources of formerly cheap labour has spurred a ‘new + wave of robots… far more adept than those now commonly used by + automakers and other heavy manufacturers’, more flexible and easier to + train, that are now replacing workers not just in manufacturing but in + distribution, circulation and service processes such as warehousing, + call centres and even elder care (Markoff, 2012: np). Erik + Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2011: 9), economists at the + Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have sounded an alarm that the + ‘pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills’ is now + reaching a new level with ‘profound economic implications.’ These + concerns are being echoed by mainstream economists (Krugman, 2012). + Within capital, automation threatens workers with unemployment or + production speed-up. If, however, there were no dominant structural + tendency for increases in productivity to lead to unemployment or + greater output without reduction in labour time, automation could + systematically yield to less time spent in formal workplaces. In a + communist framework that protected access to the use value of goods + and services, robotization creates the prospect of a passage from the + realm of necessity to freedom. It reintroduces the goal – closed down + both within the Stakhanovite Soviet experiment and in the wage-raising + trades unionism of the West – of liberating time from work, with all + this allows both in terms of human selfdevelopment and communal + engagement. Juliet Schor’s (1991) estimate, that if American workers + had taken gains won from productivity increases since the 1950s, not + in wages but in time off, they would by 2000 have been working a + twenty hour week. It indicates the scale of possible change. Proposals + for a ‘basic income’ have recently figured in left politics. There are + certainly criticisms to be made of these insofar as they are + advanced as a reformist strategy, with the risk of becoming merely a + rationalized welfare provision supporting neoliberal precarity. But + it would be hard to envision a meaningful communist future that did + not institute such measures to acknowledge the reductions in + socially necessary labour time made possible by advances in science + and technology, destroying Hayek’s calculation problem by + progressively subtracting from it the capitalist ur-commodity, + labour power. If robots undermine the centrality of the wage + relation, the Internet presents a parallel possibility, priceless + goods. Mainstream economists have long recognized the anomalous + features of nonrivalrous informational goods, which can be endlessly + copied at almost zero cost, all but instantaneously circulated, and + shared without detracting from their use value. As intellectual and + cultural production have become increasingly digitized, these + tendencies to make the Internet ‘a place of plenty’ (Siefkes, 2012: + np) have become increasingly problematic for the price system. + Capital has struggled to maintain the commodity form in cyberspace, + either by attempts to enforce intellectual property, or by treating + informational flows as advertising accelerators for other + commodities. Nonetheless, the drift to software decommodification + has proven ineradicable, and been intensified by the capacities to + conduct this circulation outside of centrally controlled servers, + through peer-to-peer networks. Piracy, which now accounts for the + majority of digital music, games, film and other software + distributed in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe + (Karaganis et al., 2011) is the clandestine and criminalized + manifestation of this tendency; and the free and open source + software movement its organized expression. The latter has been the + focus of interest on the libertarian left since the inauguration of + the Free Software Foundation (by Richard Stallman in 1984), which + released code under a General Public License (GPL), guaranteeing + users the freedom to repurpose, study, customize, redistribute, and + change it. As Jacob Rigi (2012) observes, the so-called ‘copyleft’ + clause in the GPL, which requires that any program using GPL code is + itself issued under GPL, is a ‘dialectical negation’ of copyright, + because it simultaneously preserves and abolishes property in + software, formulating ‘an allinclusive global property right’. This + development was elaborated by Linus Torvalds’ organization in the + early 1990s of the online voluntary collective cooperative method + for open-source software production. As Rigi (2012) says, the + combination of GPL license and Linux-style open source collective + programming ‘represents the gist of the P2P [peer-to-peer] mode of + production’; he sees in this an instantiation of Marx’s ‘higher + communism’, acknowledging the collective nature of scientific + knowledge, and rejecting any scarcitybased demand for ‘equivalence + between contribution to social production and share of social + product’. Open source software has attained considerable + practical success (Weber, 2004), while P2P production has + developed in various directions, with its political inflection + ranging from libertarian capitalism, to liberal views of the new + ‘wealth of networks’ (Benkler, 2006) as supplementary to and + compatible with markets, to specifically communist versions, such + as the Oekonux project (Meretz, +2012), with the ecumenical Foundation for P2P Alternatives (Bauwens, +2012) working across the entire spectrum. However, even if one regards + open source and P2P as a germinal of a new mode of production, + difficulties in cultivating this seed have become apparent. One + such difficulty is the relative ease with which capital has + incorporated this seed as a contribution to downstream + commodification processes: indeed, the whole tendency of Web 2.0 + could be said to be the containment of ‘new’ P2P production and + circulation methods firmly within the shell of capitalist ‘old’ + commodity forms. The other issue has been what Graham Seaman + (2002) terms the ‘washing machine problem’ – the gulf between + virtual and material production, cornucopian software and + industrial production, which seems to restrict P2P practices, + however progressive, to a small subset of total economic activity. + Over the last decade, however, this gap has been narrowed by the + rapid development of forms of computer controlled microfabrication + devices: additive 3D printing is the most famous, but there are a + variety of others, including subtractive micro-mills and other + miniaturized and digitized engineering devices that put industrial + capacities within the grasp of ‘hack labs’, households and small + communities. These have provided the basis for an emerging ‘maker’ + movement, which links these digital manufacturing units to the + networked circulation of design, suggesting to some that the ‘P2P + mode of production can be extended to most branches of material + production’ (Rigi, 2012). These technologies are also associated + with the proliferation of robots and small-scale automata; indeed, + the holy grail of the ‘maker’ movement is the self-replicating + replicator, the perfect von Neumann machine. Extrapolation from + these tendencies places the ‘fabbers’ and ‘replicators’ of sci-fi + imagination much closer to realization than seemed possible even + quite recently. Even the most market-oriented of ‘makers’ don’t + hesitate to point out that such developments appear to return the + means of production back to popular hands (Doctorow, 2009; + Anderson, 2012). But as the example of open source suggests, there + is no intrinsic communizing logic in the maker movement, which + could as easily result in a proliferation of + micro-entrepreneurship as in a micro-industrial commons. In his + critique of liberal P2P enthusiasts, Tony Smith observes that full + development of commons-based peer production is ‘incompatible with + the property and production relations of capital’ (2012: 178); as + long as these relations persist those involved in volunteer peer + production will continue to be explicated in the wage work on + which they depend, their creations will be appropriated by capital + as ‘free gifts’, and the wider development of such projects + starved of resources. However, in a world where investments were + determined without systemically favouring the commodification of + knowledge, and without the possibility of combining common goods + with proprietary knowledge, the ‘immense emancipatory promise’ of + peer-to-peer production could be fulfilled (Smith, 2012: 179). As + Smith remarks, capital contains within itself a tendency to + develop technologies ‘that allow certain types of use-values to be + distributed in unlimited numbers to individuals at marginal costs + approaching zero’ (2006, 341): ‘In any form of socialism worthy of + the name, the costs of the infrastructure and social labour + required to produce products such as these would be socialized and + the products would be directly distributed as free public goods to + any and all who wanted them’. Although Smith is sceptical that + this tendency could, ‘in the foreseeable future’ become prevalent + throughout the economy, he concedes that if it did, the Soviet + experience, ‘plagued by scarcity issues’, would be ‘completely + irrelevant to the socialist project’ (2006: 241-2). + +Anthropocene Knowledge Infrastructures An abundant communist society of +high automation, free software, and in-home replicators might, however, +as Fraise (2011) suggests, need planning more than ever – not to +overcome scarcity but to address the problems of plenty, which +perversely today threaten shortages of the very conditions for life +itself. Global climate change and a host of interlinked ecological +problems challenge all the positions we have discussed to this point. +Bio-crisis brings planning back on stage, or indeed calculation – but +calculation according to metrics measuring limits, thresholds and +gradients of the survival of species, human and otherwise. Discussing +the imperatives for such ecosocialist planning, Michael Lowy (2009) +points out how this would require a far more comprehensive social +steering than mere ‘workers control’, or even the negotiated +reconciliation of worker and consumer interests suggested by schemes +such as Parecon. Rather, it implies a far-reaching remaking of the +economic systems, including the discontinuation of certain industries, +such as industrial fishing and destructive logging, the reshaping of +transportation methods, ‘a revolution in the energy-system’ and the +drive for a ‘solar communism’ (Lowy, 2009: np). Such transformations +would involve cybernetics along two major axes, as both contributors to +the current bio-crisis and as potential means for its resolution. On the +first of these axes, the ecological costs of nominally ‘clean’ digital +technologies have become increasing apparent: the electrical energy +requirements of cloud computing data-centres; the demands of chip +manufacture for fresh water and minerals, the latter from large scale +extractive enterprises; and the resulting prodigious quantities of toxic +e-waste. Making every home a fab-lab mini-factory will only speed-up +planetary heat death. Contrary to all idealistic notions of virtual +worlds, cybernetics are themselves inextricably part of the very +industrial system whose operations have to be placed under scrutiny in a +new system of metabolic regulation that aims for both red and green +plenty. However, cybernetic systems are also a potential part of any +resolution of the bio-crisis – or, indeed, of even fully recognizing it. +Paul Edward’s (2010) A Vast Machine analyzes the global system of +climatological measurement and projection – the apparatus of weather +stations, satellites, sensors, digitally archived records and massive +computer simulations, which, like the Internet itself, originated in US +Cold War planning – on which comprehension of global warming rests. This +infrastructure generates information so vast in quantity and from data +platforms so diverse in quality and form that it can be understood only +on the basis of computer analysis. Knowledge about climate change is +dependent on computer models: simulations of weather and climate; +reanalysis models, which recreate climate history from historical data; +and data models, combining and adjusting measurements from multiple +sources. By revealing the contingency of conditions for species +survival, and the possibility for their anthropogenic change, such +‘knowledge infrastructures’ of people, artifacts, and institutions +(Edwards, 2010: +17) – not just for climate measurement, but also for the monitoring of + ocean acidification, deforestation, species loss, fresh water + availability – reveal the blind spot of Hayek’s catallaxy in which + the very grounds for human existence figure as an arbitrary + ‘externality’. So-called ‘green capital’ attempts to subordinate + such bio-data to price signals. It is easy to point to the fallacy + of pricing non-linear and catastrophic events: what is the proper + tag for the last tiger, or the carbon emission that triggers + uncontrollable methane release? But bio-data and bio-simulations + also now have to be included in any concept of communist collective + planning. Insofar as that project aims at a realm of freedom that + escapes the necessity of toil, the common goods it creates will have + to be generated with cleaner energy, and the free knowledge it + circulates have metabolic regulation as a priority. Issues of the + proper remuneration of labor time require integration into + ecological calculations. No bio-deal that does not recognize the + aspirations of millions of planetary proletarians to escape + inequality and immiseration will succeed, yet labour metrics + themselves need to be rethought as part of a broader calculation of + the energy expenditures compatible with collective survival. + +Conclusion: For K-ommunism? Marx (1964), in his famous, or notorious, +comparison of the ‘worst of architects’ and the ‘best of bees’, saw the +former distinguished by an ability to ‘erect in imagination’ the +structure he will create. Today, with our improved knowledge of bee +communities, this distinction reeks of anthropocentricism. Yet even +alongside bees, beavers and other primates, humans manifest a +hypertrophic planning capacity. The Soviet experience, of which the +cyberneticians featured in Red Plenty were part, was only a narrow, +historically specific and tragic instantiation of this capability, whose +authoritarianism occludes the most crucial point in the Marxist concept +of planning, namely that it is intended as a means of communal election +of which, of a variety of trajectories, collective human +‘species-becoming’ might follow (Dyer-Witheford, 2004). A new +cybernetic communism, itself one of these options, would, we have seen, +involve some of the following elements: use of the most advanced +super-computing to algorithmically calculate labour time and resource +requirements, at global, regional and local levels, of multiple possible +paths of human development; selection from these paths by layered +democratic discussion conducted across assemblies that include +socialized digital networks and swarms of software agents; light-speed +updating and constant revision of the selected plans by streams of big +data from production and consumption sources; the passage of increasing +numbers of goods and services into the realm of the free or of direct +production as use values once automation, copy-left, peer-to-peer +commons and other forms of micro-replication take hold; the informing of +the entire process by parameters set from the simulations, sensors and +satellite systems measuring and monitoring the species metabolic +interchange with the planetary environment. This would indeed be a +communism heir to Lenin’s ‘soviets plus electricity’, with its roots in +red futurism, constructivism, tektology and cybernetics, together with +the left-science fiction imaginaries of authors such as Iain M. Banks, +Ken McLeod and Chris Moriarty. It would be a social matrix encouraging +increasingly sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence as allies of +human emancipation. For those who fear the march of the machine it holds +only this comfort: whatever singularities might spring from its networks +would not be those of entities initially programmed for unconstrained +profit expansion and the military defense of property, but rather for +human welfare and ecological protection. Such a communism is consonant +with a left accelerationist politic that, in place of +anarchoprimitivisms, defensive localism and Fordist nostalgia, ‘pushes +towards a future that is more modern, an alternative modernity that +neoliberalism is inherently unable to generate’ (Williams & Srnicek, +2013). If it needs a name, one can take the K-prefix with which some +designate ‘Kybernetic’ endeavors, and call it ‘K-ommunism’. The +possibile space for such a communism now exists only between the +converging lines of civilizational collapse and capitalist +consolidation. In this narrowing corridor, it would arise not out of any +given, teleological logic, but piece by piece from countless societal +breakdowns and conflicts; a post-capitalist mode of production emerging +in a context of massive mid-twenty-first century crisis, assembling +itself from a hundred years of non-linear computerized communist history +to create the platforms of a future red plenty. + +References Albert, M. (2003) Parecon: Life After Capitalism. New York: +Verso. Albert, M. & Hahnel, R. (1991) Looking Forward: Participatory +Economics for the Twenty First Century. Boston: South End Press. +Anderson, C. (2012) Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Toronto: +Signal. Bauwens, M. (2005) ‘The Political Economy of Peer Production’, +CTheory, January 12: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499 +Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks. New York: Yale University +Press. Brynjolsson, E, & McAfee, A. (2011) Race Against the Machine. +Lexington, MA: Digital Frontier. Cabello, F. et al. (2013) ‘Towards a +Free Federated Social Web: Lorea Takes the Networks’, in G. Lovink & M. +Rasch (eds), Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their +Alternatives. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Castells, M. +(2000) End of Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University Press. +Castoriadis, C. (1972) ‘Workers' Councils and the Economics of a +Self-Managed Society’: +http://www.marxists.org/archive/castoriadis/1972/workerscouncils.htm +Cockshott, P. & Cottrell A. (1993) Towards a New Socialism. London: +Spokesman Books. Cockshott, P., & Zachariah, D. (2012) Arguments For +Socialism, June 2: www.lulu.com Cockshott, P., Cottrell, A., Dieterich, +H. (2010) ‘Transition to 21st Century Socialism in the European Union’: +http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Berlinpaper.pdf Dean, J. (2012) The +Communist Horizon. London: Verso. Dieterich, H. (2006) Der Sozialismus +des 21. Jahrhunderts – Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Demokratie nach dem +globalen Kapitalismus. Berlin: Homilius. Doctorow, C. (2009) Makers. +New York: Tor. Dorrier, J. (2012) ‘The Race to a Billion Billion +Operations Per Second: An Exaflop by 2018?’, SingularityHUB, January 11: +http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/01/the-race-to-a-billionbillion-operations-per-second-an-exaflop-by-2018/ +Dyer-Witheford, N. (2004) ‘1844/2004/2044: The Return of Species-Being’, +Historical Materialism. 13(4): 3-25. Economist (2012). ‘Welcome to the +thingternet: Things, rather than people, are about to become the biggest +users of the internet.’ The Economist, November 21: +http://www.economist.com/news/21566428-things-rather-peopleare-about-become-biggest-users-internet-welcome. + +Edwards, P. (2010) A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and +the Politics of Global Warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Franceschet, +M. (2010) ‘PageRank: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’, Cornell +University Library, February 15: http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2858 +Gerovitch, S. (2008) ‘InerNyet: Why the Soviet Union Did Not Build a +Nationwide Computer Network’, History and Technology 24 (4): 335-350. +Gorz, A. (1985) Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work. London: +Pluto Press. Greenwood, D. (2007) ‘From Market to Non-Market: An +Autonomous Agent Approach to Central Planning’, Knowledge Engineering +Review 22 (4): 349-360. Hahnel, R. (2008) ‘Robin Hahnel Answers Various +Criticisms of Participatory Economics’, ZNet, November 19: +http://www.zcommunications.org/robin-hahnel-answers-variouscriticisms-of-participatory-economics-by-robin-hahnel +Haiven, M. & Stoneman, S. (2009) ‘Wal-Mart: The Panopticon of Time’, +Globalization Working Papers, Institute on Globalization and the Human +Condition: McMaster University, April: +http://www.academia.edu/1474872/WalMart_The_panopticon_of_time Hardt, M. +& Negri, A. (2009) Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University +Press. Harvey, D. (2010) ‘Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist +Transition: Talk Given at the World Social Forum 2010, Porto Alegre’, +Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey, +http://davidharvey.org/2009/12/organizing-for-the-anti-capitalisttransition/ +Hayek, F. (ed.) (1935) Collectivist Economic Planning. London: +Routledge. Hayek, F. (1976) Law, Legislation and Liberty v. 2: The +Mirage of Social Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. + +Hayek, F. (1945) ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, American Economic +Review 35 (4): 519-530. Hayek, F. (1944) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: +University of Chicago. Hui, Y. & Halpin, H. (2013) ‘Collective +Individuation: The Future of the Social Web’, in G. Lovink & M. Rasch +(eds), Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives. +Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Jameson, F. (2009) Valences +of the Dialectic. London: Verso. Karaganis, J. (ed.) (2011) Media +Piracy in Emerging Economies. New York: Social Science Research Council. +Kephart, J. (2002) ‘Software Agents and the Route to the Information +Economy’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United +States of America, vol. 99, no. Suppl 3, May 14:7207-7213. Krugman, P. +(2012) ‘Robots and Robber Barons’, New York Times (December 6): +ttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robotsand-robber-barons.html?_r=0 +Lange, O. (1967) ‘The Computer and the Market’, in C. H. Feinstein +(ed.), Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to +Maurice Dobb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lichtenstein, N. +(ed.) (2006) Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First Century Capitalism. New +York: New Press. Lovink, G. & Rasch, M. (eds) (2013) Unlike Us Reader: +Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives. Amsterdam: Institute of +Network Cultures. Lowy, M. (2006) ‘Ecosocialism and Democratic +Planning’, in L. Panitch & C. Leys (eds), Socialist Register 2007. +London: Merlin. Marx, K. (1964) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of +1844. New York: International Publishers. + + +Marx, K. (1970) Critique of the Gotha Program. Moscow: Progress +Publishers. Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marx, +K. (1977) Capital Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books. Medina, E. (2011) +Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. +Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mirowski, P. (2002) Machine Dreams: Economics +Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. +Mirowski, P. (ed.) (2009) The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the +Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. +Nove, A. (1983) The Economics of Feasible Socialism. London: Allen & +Unwin. Peters, A. (2001) Computer Sozialismus: Gespräche mit Konrad +Zuse. Berlin: Verlag. Peters, B. (2012) ‘Normalizing Soviet +Cybernetics’, Information & Culture 47(2) 145-175. Rifkin, J. (1995) +The End of Work. New York: Putnam. Rigi, J. (2012) ‘Peer-to-Peer +Production as the Alternative to Capitalism: A New Communist Horizon’, +Journal of Peer Production 1: +http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/invited-comments/anew-communist-horizon/ +Schor, J. (1991) The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of +Leisure. New York: Basic Books. Seaman, G. (2002) ‘The Two Economies or +Why the Washing Machine Question is the Wrong Question’: +http://second.oekonuxconference.org/documentation/texts/Seaman.html +Sevignani, S. (2013) ‘Facebook vs. Diaspora: A Critical Study’, in G. +Lovink & M. Rasch (eds), Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and +Their Alternatives. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. + +Shalizi, C. (2012) ‘In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You’, +Crooked Timber (May 30): +http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-unionoptimization-problem-solves-you/ +Siefkes, C. (2012) ‘Beyond Digital Plenty: Building Blocks for Physical +Peer Production’, Journal of Peer Production 1: +http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-1/invitedcomments/beyond-digital-plenty/ +Smith, T. (2012) ‘Is Socialism Relevant in the ‘Networked Information +Age’? A Critical Assessment of The Wealth of Networks’, in A. Anton & R. +Schmitt (eds), Taking Socialism Seriously. Lanham: Lexington. Smith, T. +(2006) Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account. Boston: Brill. +Stallman, R. (2004) Free Software, Free Society. Thissur, India: +Altermedia. Thorburn, E. (2013) ‘Minoritarian Assemblages: Embodied and +Machinic Agencies in the New Cycles of Struggle’, Journal of +Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, forthcoming. von Mises, L. +(1935) ‘Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’, in F.A. Hayek (ed.), +Collectivist Economic Planning. London: Routledge. Weber, S. (2004) The +Success of Open Source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. +Wiener, N. (1950) Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. +Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Wikipedia. (2013a) ‘TOP 500’: +http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500 Wikipedia. (2013b) ‘Software +agents’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent Williams, A. & +Srnicek, N. (2013) ‘#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist +Politics’ (14 May): + +http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/acceleratemanifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics +/ Williams, R. (1983) Towards 2000. London: Chatto & Windus. -- GitLab