“You Can’t Code Away Their Wealth”
Code, Conflict & Systemic Change
Speaking at the Barcelona Procomuns Conference on Commons & the Collaborative Economy, Dmytri Kleiner repurposes Lucy Parson’s famed remark
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
with a twist for the information age & any lurking techno-utopians:
“Never be deceived that the capitalists will permit us to code away their wealth.”
He reminds us that real transformational change is rarely won without struggle, conflict & ‘making things actually happen’. So those of us working on alternative platforms & institutions should remember that our challenge is not just technological & conceptual— taking place in bytes & neurons — but political & social, taking place in flesh & asphalt.
This came as a welcome reminder for me, as I’ve been following the developments of so-called platform cooperativism with increasing interest as a possible vector linking my data & technology interests with my social & political interests — in a practicable, active & forward way.
Platform Cooperativism is itself emerging from a broader international cooperative movement, often associated with the burgeoning new economy / solidarity economy / commons & community-based post-capitalist approaches to economic & social justice work.
It’s important to distinguish a cooperativist technology practice from the dominant silicon valley technologism — both due to the latter’s happily hypercapitalist orientation as well as their general bullshittyness.
Unfortunately, Dmytri suffers from the same chronic superfluous neologistic jargon fetish as his silicon valley counterparts (see also ‘radical’ academics & art collectives), but otherwise his talk [embedded above] is a valuable one, with concrete takeaways & sensible guiding principles for this work.
i’ve written before about the capacity for information technology to catalyze cataclysmic social change, so unsurprisingly i think it’s worth thinking fairly deeply & deliberately about any approach to wielding such a force.
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original source of video: https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/cant-code-away-wealth-dmytri-kleiner-explains-construction-p2p-alternatives-conflictual/2016/05/25
