TeleKommunisten
activism, infoecology, market, network, sustainable
Interview wirth Dmytri Kleiner, an anarchist hacker and a co-founder of Telekommunisten, a worker-owned technology company specialising in telephone systems. It’s a biref talk inspired by the article InfoEnclosure 2.0, wroted for the Mute magazine.
ECO: When a hype end to be useful to engage people on a new technology and become rather a way to improve corporate investement?
Dmytri Kleiner: Finance Capital is primarily interested in profit, thus it will always chose the most potentially profitable investment even when the end result is not the most useful. It is for this reason that Investment flows to centralized approaches, such as those characterized by Web 2.0, and not Peer-to-peer solutions.
ECO: Investment flows prefers controls to innovation?
DK: When the source of that Investment is private profit-seeking finance capital, yes. Profit depends on the extraction of surplus value, which requires control.
Innovation is rarely funded by venture capital, usually simply exploited by it after the fact.However, other more social kinds of investment are possible, such as what I suggest in venture communism.
ECO: Web 2.0 means also a lot of personal datas collected by few companies, and the digital realm is just a part, because for example ChoicePoint (http://www.choicepoint.com/index.html) does the same in the real world, but why do the state need all this datas?
DK: Well, the State “needs” this to carry out it’s central task of controlling and terrorizing the people on behalf of the rich. To facilitate then transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. This includes both using data to create barriers to opportunities, such as Jobs, health insurance, homes, etc, but also insure than no-one can escape the “long arm of the law.” The primary purpose of the law itself being to terrorize the poor into submission.
In other words reduce access to opportunities to ensure that the poor stay poor, and thus have no choice but to sell their labour to the rich and no leverage with which to demand any more than subsistence as there wage.
ECO: The primary purpose of the law itself wasn’t “being to terrorize”, when did it switched his pourpose?
DK: It has never switched, it has always been so. The law is created and enforced from above by the State and the private interests that it serves. It’s purpose is to legitimize the use of force, primarily to protect private property.
ECO: The interfaces and the possibilities of Web 2.0 application, talking about real relation, are quite near to a karaoke rather than real cultural exchange, instead of every one is an expert digital technology it became everyone is a Schizophrenic, with “personal” soundtracks and Ronnie McDonald as”friend”? Is there a problem of tools or the net is wide but superficial?
DK: I’m not sure about this. It is true that in general many people, especially in suburban communities, live quite isolated, culturally bankrupt lives, thus it should be no surprise that this is expressed on-line in that the cultural exchange is generally banal and relationships in on-line communities are often artificial and superficial. It is even true, to a point, that the tools and context available online facilitates this banality and false community. However, I am inclined to believe that it is the fact that the users are scarred by the emptiness of suburban consumerist culture and thus the online communities just give us a window into a degraded society. I believe participating in online communities will reduce isolation and increase cultural diversity, but this can not happen over night.
ECO: can you describe the telekommunisten project?
DK: telekommunisten is a part of the venture communism project. Starting from the belief that political change can only follow a change in the mode of production, venture communism is an attempt to create a mode of production that will expand socialism by reducing the labour available to be exploited by property.
We have formed a small technology company that is completely worker-owned, and starting with no money of our own, nor any external financing, we have launched a long distance calling product called Dialstation.
If the project succeeds, it will enable us to expand our own activities, as well as helping others attempt similar efforts to build a workers-controlled economy.
ECO: what do you mean exactly with a “mode of production that will expand socialism by reducing the labour available to be exploited by property“?
DK: Socialism is defined as a mode of production where the workers own the means of production, and especially the final product.By withholding our labour from Capitalists and instead forming our own worker-owned enterprises we expand Socialism.
The more labour withheld from Capitalists, the less they are able to exploit.
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Luca @ May 21, 2007