Re: <nettime> W/O(C) digest [geer, salucofagos]

[z3118338@student.unsw.edu.au]

On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 08:58 am, nettime's_counterimagineer wrote:
> Today 08:58:08 am

/snip

> From: Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer@gmail.com>

/snip

> If you can explain how we can dispense with halfway measures, and
> immediately create a radically transformed social order in which all
> ideas will belong to the commons, I'd like to hear your strategy. =C2=A0In
> the absence of such a strategy, what can we do but try to use existing
> social norms (like copyright) in new ways (like copyleft), to begin
> creating transitional forms of society that include some conditions
> (like a substantial commons of ideas) that could be part of a better
> world?

I think before I can really deal with the depth of the Schijndel & Smier
 piece we have to try as they say in someplaces at least to get on the same
 page and not talk across each other.

So two points:

1. re:
> If you can explain how we can dispense with halfway measures, and
> immediately create a radically transformed social order ....

Well it seems you ask the impossible from me. And that you will not
entertain (as usual)  any "transitional forms" other than those
expounded by your high priests of the GPL of the CC. Are not the GPL and
the CC by your own admission themselves "halfway measures"? You seem to
acknowledge that they are but you will not acknowledge any other form of
passage or transition. Its a bit hard to discuss with someone who is
only open to the one and the good tranistional form.

2. re:
>in which all
> ideas will belong to the commons,

well isnt the commons just a hang over form the public/private thinking of
modernity. Isn't it the Lessigian harking back to the "real" meaning of
copyright law. Isn't it just a big open pool ready for the taking able to be
commodified by various forms (eg Trade Marks or whatever) in order to serve
the purpose of innovation and business application?

I am not really interested in the idea of building such a commons within
capital - one that is free as in speech and not free as in beer. I
prefer to think in terms of what we have in common by the composition of
relations which give us the potential to increase our capabilities to
live in common.  This is not an all encompassing thing like "the
commons". If we have nothing in common, iif for example someone rejects
the ethics by which another seeks to build a just world why would I want
them to be able to take what I have in common with others and propertise
it to turn it back on me inverted  why and for would I want to support
the process of expropriation that capital seeks to manage and control by
adding to the commons.

Agamben said :

"The extreme form of the expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that
 is the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle our
 linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because
 what is being expropriated is the very possibility of the common good) the
 violence of the spectacle is so destructive; ..."

Deleuze in his classes on Spinoza gives us a hint what the common is about:

http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/PDF/deluze_spinoza_affect.pdf

=E2=80=9CLet's now try to find the common notions. A common
notion is a perception.  It's a perception of a common
relation, a relation common to me and to another body. It follows from
affects, active affects. These  affections, perceptions and affects are
also affections of essence. They belong to essence. It's the
same  thing, but insofar as what? No longer insofar as essence is
conceived as possessing an infinity of  extensive parts that belong to
it under a certain relation, but insofar as essence is conceived as
expressing  itself in a relation. Here the extensive parts and the
action of the extensive parts are cast off since I am  raised to the
comprehension of relations that are causes, thus I am raised to another
aspect of essence.  It's no longer essence insofar as it
actually possesses an infinit of extensive parts, it's essence
insofar as  it expresses itself in a = relation.=E2=80=9D

And it see to me that Negri and Hardt use "common" in contradistinction to
 the commons, eg:

p. 188 =E2=80=9CThe legal justification of private ownership is
undermined by the common social nature of production.=E2=80=9D

p. 206 =E2=80=9C... our insistence on a legal conception of the common
against both the private and the public...=E2=80=9D

p. 303 =E2=80=9C...not a return to the public ... but a creation of the
common ...=E2=80=9D

p. 310 =E2=80=9C...the ontological conditions of society are defined by
a common fabric, which is not fixed and static but open, overflowing ...
The task is to discover a way in common  ...=E2=80=9D

So, sounding like some punky singer I want to say - Dont talk to me
about the commons, coz I aint interested in capital's commons, (to quote
Moglen: "The GPL is a straightforward capitalistic proposition") and
dont ask me to tell you how to create the new Stalisnist Pol Potist
world - there is no immediately created and radically transformed social
order - there is only life and living the passage. To do that dear Ben
you must be open to other means than the one and the true way.

And to live the passage we don't need a licence (a property form or
contract) we need ethics. If the GPL et al live in this passage
charcaterised by a permanent state of exception - where they appear as
law, have force of law; why not experiment with ethics instead of
property and the contractual form??

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