Why I am opposed to State Socialism

A big socialist state led by the enlightened leaders is a recipe for disaster. The only way should be through worker activism. Through Self-emancipation.

Fatherland, Socialism or Death
Image by Nicholas Hall via Flickr

State socialism is the idea that we need to strive and implement a system where coercive power resides in the hands of a state mechanism who (ideally) uses it to progress to further stages towards communism by taking measures such as installing a democratic government and suppressing the capitalist class.

I consider that putting this as an immediate goal is a mistake. Relying on state power to handle the progression towards communism has two very mortal perils: The subdual of the activist feeling of the working class and the danger of the state leadership appropriating the power.

The revolutionary working class

By having reached the point of even considering State Socialism it means that a society has achieved a revolutionary victory over the bourgeoisie. This has obviously happened as a result of popular proletariat action. Strikes, marches, occupations etc. It has not and it could not have been achieved through the actions of an enlightened leadership as proven by the miserable failure of reformism to deliver even miniscule results in the last century. As a result installing state socialism would require the activist workers to willingly deliver coercive power to a new enlightened elite who will then guide society.

Putting aside for a moment the likeliness of this happening without external coercive factors, lets consider for a moment that this comes to pass. The immediate loss of such a setup would be the activist spirit of the working class. Where before all the gains, up to and including the revolution have been because of mass action which led to more and more revolutionary consiousness and camaraderie, now all that is required from the proletariat is continued subservience to the leadership of the state.

Even were I to grant that the state is benevolent, because the worker (and his own institutions – councils and the like) is not required anymore to strive for his own gains and progress, he is more and more losing his feeling to do it and simply learns to get along with what the state instructs him to do. Such a loss is immeasurable as this is the main reason any potential dictator can disrupt the movement towards Communism and instead turn the whole thing towards his own benefit. As the workers are now not anymore used to thinking and taking decisions for themselves but rather have to judge which of their leaders is actually on their side, it’s only a matter of propaganda before this happens.

Hijacking the State

By far the biggest threat going in the path of State socialism is that the people who have been chosen to defend the insterests of the Proletariat will turn against them. Indeed it has often been the case that the main reason why State Socialism was implemented was specifically for this purpose, as we can see by looking from Stalin’s rise to power. It was named “State Socialism” when it was actually State Capitalism.

By looking at the situation before this State setup was brought forward, we will see a surprisingly libertarian working of society, where workers councils were taking the decisions and the power was federated and controlled from its own distribution.

Once you replace the distributed and necessarily democratic organization of worker’s councils with centralized state power, you setup the base for the Socialist’s undoing. All a tyrrant needs to do is parrot the socialist rhetoric until the worker’s activism is sapped (see above) and then slowly roll back all the benefits achieved by discovering emergencies and necessities to do so. From one year to the other, the workers are back where they started, only now their leaders call themselves socialist as well.

No, state socialism is absolutely the wrong path to take. The only way to proceed towards communism is by letting the workers emancipate themselves. This can certainly include making use of the state mechanism in order to defend against counter-revolutionary attempts or to keep providing other necessary services (such as healthcare), but it should not be used for leadership or anything else that has the capability to remove the power from the workers or make them into simple passive tools.

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Here's to reaching the "Games for Linux" tipping point

Why the Linux game market is underestimated and what we should do to change it. The recent World of Goo port to Linux is a perfect opportunity.

World of Goo: Fisty's Bog
Image by kartooner via Flickr

It’s been a classic argument in the GNU/Linux VS Windows debates that people don’t switch to the former because there are no games for it. And there are no games for GNU/Linux because developers don’t think there’s a market for it to justify the cost. And there’s no market to justify the cost because gamers don’t switch to it.

It’s a vicious cycle from which it’s extremely difficult to get out of. To do that, it would need one side to do the first step. Either gamers need to switch and start being vocal on wanting their games native for their OS (ie platform agnostic) or game developers need to show good faith and port or code their games for it from the get go and then see that the effort was worth it.

Well, To my delight, It seems that some developers did decide to attempt the later. The lately popular World of Goo has finally been ported to GNU/Linux. This is exciting news and the kind of thing that gamers on linux need to show support for if we want to provide incentive for this kind of thing to continue. The developers at the moment are curious about the results of this move and I’d like to think we won’t disappoint.

To tell the truth I haven’t played the game but I certainly have heard a lot about it. It seems to involve very innovative gameplay and I was tempted to purchase it through steam. One thing stopped me of course, which was the fact that I would have to boot my whole computer if I wanted to enjoy it.

This is, incidentally, something that happens quite often and affects my game purchase decisions. I’ve ended up only purchasing:

  • Games that are very cheap and I don’t feel like wasting a lot of money If I don’t play them until the next time I happen to boot into windows
  • Games that I really, really, really want to play. The ones that I’ve known for months that I would be playing when they came out. Needless to say those are few and far between.
  • Games that run natively on my OS of choice. It goes without saying that I do not get much of those but when I do, I don’t lose the chance to purchase them and thus have something to do play when bored without the annoying reboot. Case in point: I’ve already bough both the On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness episodes and I will continue buying them in the future, because they are fun, cheap and most importantly, play natively.

The one thing that annoys me even more on this issue is how much resistance windows users display on this. It’s as if when game companies have a platform agnostic code then they are afraid that the performance on windows will drop. I honestly don’t know where this hostility comes from but it generally translates into mouthfuls of FUD and negativity on any kind of suggestion.

Incidentally very recently I had just such a discussion in a Demigod forum thread (one of the games that I really really want to play). The discussion started simply on the fact that Steam is and the Source engine are probably going to be ported to GNU/Linux and an appeal to Stardock ((One of the most progressive publishers and one that I believe can be more positive to this idea)) and Impulse to do the same. There were a lot of good suggestions and arguments on both sides and the very positive thing that Stardock devs actually took part and put forth their thoughts. For example:

As a part-time linux user myself, I’ve come to accept the fact that linux is not destined to be a gaming OS.  Until either developers abandon DirectX, or someone figures out a 100% painless DX port for linux, you won’t see a big move on linux games.  Why?  Because transitioning from a DX based engine to an OGL one is not in the least bit trivial.  iD can do it because I believe their games are done in OpenGL to begin with, so getting it to run on Linux is a much simpler task for them (by comparison).  UnrealEngine is built for both DX and OGL.

To get developers porting games to linux, there has to be a guarantee on the return on investment.  If it takes 1 full time developer a year to port some game, then that game has to at least sell enough copies to cover the cost.  To make it actually worth the time though it would have to make a lot more money than the cost to develop, otherwise it’s a better value to have that developer work on the Windows version which is a better financial bet.

The platform needs a few big-name champions to make it viable, but in a market where a big-name game can cost in the millions of dollars to develop, that’s a risk not many companies are generally willing to take.

In the end of course, Stardock wasn’t convinced. I was nevertheless surprised at the amount of negativity displayed by simple users, occasionaly without any obvious reasoning other than that they didn’t like GNU/Linux.

One of my main arguments in this thread was that the GNU/Linux gaming market is severely under-estimated at every turn. I truly believe that there are enough of us who not only are gamers but are willing to support those who extend a hand. And now is the time to put our money where our mouths are. Purchasing the World of Goo in non-trivial number will not only show its developers that it’s worth coding their future games for our OS as well, but it will certainly turn the heads of other publishers if they smell that there is a potential market once the WoG guys speak about the (hopefully positive) results.

To get Games for Linux (no TM yet) we need to reach a tipping point, either on the side of Gamers which will convince the Publishers that there is a market, or on the side of Publishers which will allow enough gamers to try the OS out without much gaming withdrawal. Lets hope that the results for the WoG experiment will be another small push towards that point.

Now go and read what Helios has to say about this. You also get a nice interview with the developers about the challenges they faced on the port (technical or not), as well as a little bonus offer 😉

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Quote of the Day: Obsolete class struggle ideas

A quote about the constant resurgence of class struggle.

Quoth Corey Oakley

Perhaps – for once – they [the conservative columnists] have learnt at least one lesson from history. That is that time and time again, just when the ruling classes relaxed, working class struggle has suddenly appeared to declare, in the manner of Mark Twain, that rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

How does distribution of wealth work in a socialist society?

A Libertarian Socialist explanation of how a future such society would deal with people who do not want to work and laziness

think about justice (portrait)
Image by Trinifar ! via Flickr

A redditor recently made the following question

how would a socialist society deal with members who do not want to work, yet still claim to be entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor? Also how would under performing or laziness be dealt with?

I’ve dealt with the similar concept of stagnation in a previous post but to this question, another redditor gave a very well thought out response that I believe should not be lost in comment history.

UPDATE: I’ve been informed by a commenter that this was actually lifted from the Anarchist FAQ. That’s why you should give attribution people…

Anarchism (Libertarian Socialism) is based on voluntary labor. If people do not desire to work then they cannot (must not) be forced to. The question arises of what to do with those (a small minority, to be sure) who refuse to work.

On this question there is some disagreement. Some anarchists, particularly communist-anarchists, argue that the lazy should not be deprived of the means of life. Social pressure, they argue, would force those who take, but do not contribute to the community, to listen to their conscience and start producing for the community that supports them. Other anarchists are less optimistic and agree with Camillo Berneri when he argues that anarchism should be based upon “no compulsion to work, but no duty towards those who do not want to work.” [“The Problem of Work”, in Why Work?, Vernon Richards (ed.), p. 74] This means that an anarchist society will not continue to feed, clothe, house someone who can produce but refuses to. Most anarchists have had enough of the wealthy under capitalism consuming but not producing and do not see why they should support a new group of parasites after the revolution.

Obviously, there is a difference between not wanting to work and being unable to work. The sick, children, the old, pregnant women and so on will be looked after by their friends and family (or by the commune, as desired by those involved). As child rearing would be considered “work” along with other more obviously economic tasks, mothers and fathers will not have to leave their children unattended and work to make ends meet. Instead, consideration will be given to the needs of both parents and children as well as the creation of community nurseries and child care centers.

We have to stress here that an anarchist society will not deny anyone the means of life. This would violate the voluntary labor which is at the heart of all schools of anarchism. Unlike capitalism, the means of life will not be monopolized by any group — including the commune. This means that someone who does not wish to join a commune or who does not pull their weight within a commune and are expelled will have access to the means of making a living outside the commune.

We stated that we stress this fact as many supporters of capitalism seem to be unable to understand this point (or prefer to ignore it and so misrepresent the anarchist position). In an anarchist society, no one will be forced to join a commune simply because they do not have access to the means of production and/or land required to work alone. Unlike capitalism, where access to these essentials of life is dependent on buying access to them from the capitalist class (and so, effectively, denied to the vast majority), an anarchist society will ensure that all have access and have a real choice between living in a commune and working independently. This access is based on the fundamental difference between possession and property — the commune possesses as much land as it needs, as do non-members. The resources used by them are subject to the usual possession rationale — they possess it only as long as they use it and cannot bar others using it if they do not (i.e., it is not property).

Thus an anarchist commune remains a voluntary association and ensures the end of all forms of wage slavery. The member of the commune has the choice of working as part of a community, giving according to their abilities and taking according to their needs (or some other means of organizing production and consumption such as equal income or receiving labor notes, and so on), or working independently and so free of communal benefits as well as any commitments (bar those associated with using communal resources such as roads and so on).

So, in most, if not all, anarchist communities, individuals have two options, either they can join a commune and work together as equals, or they can work as an individual or independent co-operative and exchange the product of their labor with others. If an individual joins a commune and does not carry their weight, even after their fellow workers ask them to, then that person will possibly be expelled and given enough land, tools or means of production to work alone. Of course, if a person is depressed, run down or otherwise finding it hard to join in communal responsibilities then their friends and fellow workers would do everything in their power to help and be flexible in their approach to the problem.

Some anarchist communities may introduce what Lewis Mumford termed “basic communism.” This means that everyone would get a basic amount of “purchasing power,” regardless of productive activity. If some people were happy with this minimum of resources then they need not work. If they want access to the full benefits of the commune, then they could take part in the communal labour process. This could be a means of eliminating all forces, even communal ones, which drive a person to work and so ensure that all labor is fully voluntary (i.e. not even forced by circumstances). What method a community would use would depend on what people in that community thought was best.

It seems likely, however, that in most anarchist communities people will have to work, but how they do so will be voluntary. If people did not work then some would live off the labor of those who do work and would be a reversion to capitalism. However, most social anarchists think that the problem of people trying not to work would be a very minor one in an anarchist society. This is because work is part of human life and an essential way to express oneself. With work being voluntary and self-managed, it will become like current day hobbies and many people work harder at their hobbies than they do at “real” work (this FAQ can be considered as an example of this!). It is the nature of employment under capitalism that makes it “work” instead of pleasure. Work need not be a part of the day that we wish would end. As Kropotkin argued (and has been subsequently supported by empirical evidence), it is not work that people hate. Rather it is overwork, in unpleasant circumstances and under the control of others that people hate. Reduce the hours of labor, improve the working conditions and place the work under self-management and work will stop being a hated thing. In his own words:

“Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is evident that these unhealthy conditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves can submit to them, but free men create new conditions, and their work will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of today will be the rule of tomorrow.” [The Conquest of Bread, p. 123]

This, combined with the workday being shortened, will help ensure that only an idiot would desire to work alone. As Malatesta argued, the “individual who wished to supply his own material needs by working alone would be the slave of his labors.” [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 15]

So, enlightened self-interest would secure the voluntary labor and egalitarian distribution anarchists favor in the vast majority of the population. The parasitism associated with capitalism would be a thing of the past. Thus the problem of the “lazy” person fails to understand the nature of humanity nor the revolutionizing effects of freedom and a free society on the nature and content of work.

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If someone fights unfairly and you nevertheless win, it doesn't mean they don't deserve condemnation

Techdirt believes that Mozilla has no basis to be siding with EU against Microsoft on browser anti-trust issues. I point out why this is the wrong way to see it.

Image representing Mozilla as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I have been a fan of Techdirt for a few years now but as Masnick becomes more and more rabidly pro-“Free” Market Capitalism,  I start to reconsider. I keep seeing articles which seem critical of one action only because it opposes the free market, not because of any utilitarian argument.

The latest post commenting on the recent siding of Mozilla with the EU anti-trust action against Microsoft is the latest such example of this trend. Within, the author complains that such a move is obviously wrong as well as misguided as obviously there isn’t a monopoly since Firefox has managed to gain market share. In the same breath however, he also mentions that the original instigator, Opera is an “also-ran”.

Basically what Masnick is saying is that if a complaint is made by someone who cannot gain any market share, it’s because they are not good enough. But if it’s made by someone who managed to gain a foothold, it’s disingenuous. Whatever happens, there can’t be a monopoly issue brought up at all.

Anyone can easily see the fallacious reasoning here. The truth of course is that Microsoft is not simply abusing its market position to stiffle innovation on the browser space ((mainly because it was in their best interest to have apps based on the OS or an OS-locked browser instead of a multiplatform browser)) but it has been doing so aggressively and for a very long and well documented time.

Firefox managed to achieve market acceptance despite Microsoft’s monopoly on the space. When the new browser came out, it didn’t even register on the radar until the first major grass root advertising and word-of-mouth campaigns started. Even though it was vastly superior to any of MS’ offerings, its growth was slow and tortured, owning mostly to the fact that most webpages were “optimized” for IE and flat-out refused to work with Mozilla based browsers.

Not only that but the fact that MS bundled IE with their OS ((After they hastily made it an “integral part” of the OS during the Netscape anti-trust case, in order to claim that they couldn’t remove it)) made any viable alternative difficult to discover. Why would most normal users even consider looking for an alternative browser which most of the time couldn’t access their banking portals? Many times. even when you put an alternative browser on one’s desktop and advised them to use it, they wouldn’t because it was not what they were used to. This is how deep the IE conditioning had gone.

There is no more striking example than what Techdirt dismisses quickly: Opera. Almost everyone will tell you that for a long time before even Firefox got conceived, Opera was the undeniable leader in features, standards-implementation, speed and basically all there was in a browser. And yet, it didn’t even make a dent in the market share of MS. Techdirt, the stalwart defender of innovation for some reason does not even wonder why Opera didn’t make it but rather assumes that it must have been because they were not good enough or something. In other words the classic  selective view of reality that annoys me so much about Free Marketeers.

Of course Firefox managed to compete, in the same way that GNU/Linux managed to compete, by being adopted immidiately by the Free Software movement who then went had to fight uphill for every percentile of market share. The reason they achieved it is because of their distributed nature, philosophical backing and knowledge of technology which allowed them to be unaffected or quickly overcome many of the hurdles in their way. Does that mean that the competition was fair? Not at all. It was stacked against them on every turn. But they persevered.

Opera unfortunately had neither a huge community behind them, nor the budget required to raise awareness of its existence which is why then, and still now, it still can’t get market share, even though it is still considered by many as one of the better browsers. However, were MS Windows to come bundled with Opera and IE and ask the user which one they wanted to use, then things would have been much much different. Most people who didn’t know either, would give a try to each and stick with Opera overwhelmingly.

The author also brings as examples of competition Google’s Chrome and Safari, both of which don’t sustain his argument in the slightest. The only reason either of those managed to achieve any market share is not because of any innovation but because of the popularity of their respective distributors. Apple has a well known fanatic fanbase and a considerable market share in the OS, for which they also bundled their own product. Google did a smart marketing campaign but overall Chrome, even though an inferior product from all others, gained share because it’s suggested in the front page of the most popular search engine.

And with all this, IE still stands at ~70% even though it’s the worse of them all and Microsoft has done practically no marketing whatsoever about it and only a half-arsed effort to improve their own offering (mainly by copying popular features). If that does not give you a very clear hint that something is amiss, then I do not know what will. Everyone must strive infinitely more to achieve even a single market share percentile while MS without doing anything can still enjoy a monopolistic percentage.

So yes, Firefox has managed to crack MS iron grip on the browser but that is not because a monopoly “obviously” doesn’t exist but rather despite this very clear, for all but the Free marketeers, monopoly. Just because they have managed to a degree to overcome the mountain of challenges posed by the anti-competitive business practices of MS does not mean that these practices should be left unpunished.

If you play a game and you opponent is obviously cheating but you nevertheless manage to defeat him by playing fair, does it mean that they do not deserve condemnation and punishment? Of course they do. You do not punish them only when you lose, you do it regardless – not out of spite or revenge – but as a lesson and a warning for the future. Leaving them unpunished simply gives the incentive to cheat the next time as well.

But the view of Techdirt is more inane than that. When you play with a cheater and you lose, you’re just a sore loser. If you win, then they couldn’t possibly have been cheating could they?

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This is why I love GNU/Linux

A short ICQ chatlog of my girlfriend having firefox problems and how easy it was to fix.

(7:16:50 PM) Viola: I have installed an update and now my firefox does not work anymore
(7:17:04 PM) Viola: chchchchilfä!
(7:17:07 PM) db0: what happens?
(7:17:13 PM) Viola: dead
(7:17:18 PM) Viola: It doesn’t talk to me
(7:17:38 PM) Viola: I can’t start it anymore
(7:17:55 PM) db0: ok, open a terminal and try the following
(7:18:02 PM) db0: sudo killall firefox
(7:18:21 PM) Viola: ok
(7:18:27 PM) Viola: un jetz?
(7:18:30 PM) db0: done?
(7:18:32 PM) Viola: jepp
(7:18:37 PM) db0: OK, try to open it again
(7:18:58 PM) Viola: aaaaaaah
(7:19:02 PM) Viola: schibby
(7:19:03 PM) Viola: danke
(7:19:06 PM) db0: 😉
(7:19:23 PM) db0: I love GNU/Linux 🙂
(7:19:31 PM) Viola: ich auch!

In windows I’d still be explaining how to open the task manager 🙂

Quote of the day: Tyranny of structurelessness

A quote about how an unstructured movement might be tyrannical.

Quoth Socialist Action

Often anarchist movements are much more undemocratic than socialist parties, because they lack the democratic procedures to make majority decisions. Instead you get the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ – where the best speakers (or the loudest!), those with the best informal clique links, are able to manipulate and dominate the movement.

Leadership has a way of always enterring into the equation wether you want it or not. The trick is of course to recognise that it will be there and find ways to make it accountable.


Ok, this is just too weird not to post about.

The amazing story of a colleague who came in late at night to find a stranger sitting calmly in his appartment using his laptop.

A colleague of mine, lets call him MB, just came into work a bit stressed and disheveled and asked me for a spare tie because he hadn’t brought one. The reason he hadn’t brought one was because he had to sleep in a hotel all weekend and forgot to bring a tie along with the rest of his work clothes.

The reason he had to sleep in a hotel was because when he returned to his appartment at Friday night (at around 3am), he discovered a random guy sitting on his couch using his laptop. Imagine that for a second: You come home in a Friday night, tired as fuck from your time out and want to hit the bed ASAP, and you open the door to find an unknown person, sitting on your couch typing away at your laptop as if everything is normal.

Now if you think that bad enough, you haven’t heard anything. One would be inclined to ask: “How did this random person enter the appartment? Pick the lock? Break a window?” But no my friends, the reality in this case is stranger than fiction. This guy, who is incidentaly his next door neighbour, had apparently cut a hole in the wall big enough for him to get through, from his own appartment. The wall incidentally, is about 50cm thick.

So there’s this guy sitting on the couch smiling at him peacefully; not upset, not startled, just smiling as if everything is as it should be. MB understandably was mightily confused by this behaviour and initially thought that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. Perhaps someone broke in and this guy drove him off and was waiting for MB to come back? It was not until MB noticed the hole in the wall and the guy took responsibility for it that MB started going mental.

At some point, MB managed to finally ask him why he did all this. Inside his mind he was still expecting some kind of plausible rationale on why someone could possible tunnel into the next appartment and just sit there. The answer? Oh that’s just the cherry on top…

God told him to do it.

This story just doesn’t need any commentary does it?

So anyway, after that finally 10 policemen arrived (after being called by the girlfriend of a friend, since the call dispatcher did not speak English) and were just as dumbfounded as MB. I can just imagine them apologizing to MB and explaining that no, this sort of thing doesn’t happen. They hauled the intruder off to the station and finally MB was left alone…with his new hole.

This is the kind of story that you can use as a table story for years to come. Ah fun!

UPDATE: We’ve got photographic evidence over at the laughing wolf’s blog, just to convince you this is not a fictional story. Plus, he has a more humorous description than I do. Now if only he would learn how to link to permalinks and send me some proper trackbacks… 😛