In the preface to "A Contribution the Critique of Political Economy," Marx and Engels argue "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production." What is possible in the information age is in direct conflict with what is permisable. Publishers, film producers and the telecomunication industry conspire with lawmakers to bottle up and sabotage free networks, to forbid information from circulating outside of their control. The coporations in the recording industry continue to forcibly maintain their position as mediators between artists and fans, while fans and artists merge closer together and explore new ways of interacting. Competing software makers, like arms manufacturers, play both sides in this conflict; providing the tools to impose control, and the tools to evade it. The non-heirachical relations made possible by a peer network such as the Internet are contradictory with Capitalism's need for encosure and control. It's a battle to the death, either the Internet as we know it must go, or Capitalism as we know it must go. Will Capital throw us back into a network dark-ages inspired by CompuServ, Mobile Telephones and Cable TV rather than allow peer communications to bring about a new society? Yes. If they can. Marx and Engels go on to conclude "No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself."
The Internet represents a powerful platform for new forms of production to emerge, however, the rapid commercialization of the Internet is increasing the centralization of ownership and control of Internet-based communications platforms. This is visible in the consolidation of Internet service providers by massive international telecommunications conglomerates. This rise of Social Media and "Web 2.0" have pushed more free, decentralized "peer to peer" systems to the clandestine margins of the network while "cloud computing" further centralizes the infrastructure. If new ways of producing and distributing wealth do not emerge to challenge the capitalist order, ways which are not based on force and enclosure, it is not only the freedom of the Internet that will be lost, but the chance to remake society in it's image will be lost with it.
The Telekommunist Manifesto is an exploration of class conflict and property, born in the realization of the primacy of economic capacity in social struggles. Much temphasis is placed on the distribution of productive assets and their output. The interpretation here is always tethered to the understanding that wealth and power are intrinsically linked, and only through the former can the later be achieved. As a collective of intellectual workers, the work of Telekommunisten is very much rooted in the free software and free culture communities. However, acentral premise of this Manifesto is that engaging in software development and the production of immaterial cultural works is not enough. The communization of immaterial property alone can not change the distribution of material productive assets, and therefore can not eliminate exploitation. Only workers self-organization of production can. Venture Communism is a form of struggle against the continued expansion of property-based capitalism, it is a model for worker self-organization inspired by the topology of peer to peer networks and the historical pastoral commons.
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