Michael Albert: Fifth International?! (2010.)

Published with the permission of the author.

To be a contender, “21st Century Socialist” vision needs elaboration, advocacy, and program. To improve focus and increase power, worldwide anti-capitalist organizations, projects, and movements need shared coherence and mutual solidarity. To fulfill these needs, Venezuela’s President Chavez recently announced to widespread support and also some critical response that a gathering in Caracas this April would establish a new International.

But what might this new International look like? What might it accomplish? How might people, such as those reading this essay, and particularly people in grassroots movements around the world, relate to it?

Not Our Predecessor’s International

Richard Barbrook: Andres Lomena interviewed Richard Barbrook. (2007.)

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Question 1

Andres Lomena: Franco Bifo Berardi criticises your The Holy Fools. In his opinion, you simplify the rhizomatic thought of Deleuze and Guattari, making equal it to technonomadism and The Californian Ideology. Berardi argues that the state cannot solve the self-organisational structure of the Net. My question is: what ethical and aesthetic paradigm should we take for Internet given that the May ‘68 Revolution was defeated?

Lysander Spooner: Poverty : Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure. (1846.)

CHAPTER I.

ILLEGAL CAUSES OF POVERTY.

The existing poverty would be rapidly removed, and future poverty almost entirely prevented, a more equal dis­tribution of property than now exists accomplished, and the aggregate wealth of society greatly increased, if the princi­ples of natural law, and of our national and state constitutions generally, were adhered to by the judiciary in their decisions in regard to contracts.

These principles are violated by the judiciary in various ways, to Wit:

1. In a manner to uphold arbitrary arid unconstitutional statutes against freedom in banking, and freedom in the rate of interest; thus denying the natural and constitutional right of the people to make two classes of contracts, which will hereafter be shown to be of vital importance, both to the general increase and to the more equal distribution of wealth.

Unknown: Selling Ourselves Out : Why just "selling things" is inherently counter-revolutionary.

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Look at the hardcore community, from a distance—what do you see? The most visible signs of our existence, besides bands playing in basements and rented out halls, are the 'zines and records we sell. And open up almost any one of those 'zines, and you see advertisements for other 'zines, other records, other products. In fact, aside from the advertisements, what are most of our 'zines about? The record reviews, the 'zine reviews, the top ten lists all deal with products to buy and sell. The photos of hardcore bands hopping around and shouting invariably feature kids dressed in certain styles (band shirts, tattoos, etc.), as if to indicate that these fashions, which are not too cheap, are an intrinsic part of being involved in hardcore.

Amulya Gopalakrishnan: For Love Or Money. (2008.)

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‘I wouldn’t work for you no matter what you paid/ And I may not be able to change the whole f..king world/ But I could be the million you never made.’

That was indie singer-songwriter Ani Difranco’s kiss-off to the mighty music industry circa 1995. But as it turns out, the real million-dollar mutinies against the record business are only just beginning. Recently, British band Radiohead shoved aside the big labels and directly put their latest album up for grabs on the Internet. Fans could pay what they thought fit, or not pay at all.

Sheldon Richman: Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property : What Are Copyrights and What Do They Mean for Liberty? (2009.)

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Intellectual “property” is a sleeper issue. It seems uncontroversial: Someone invents or writes something and therefore owns it. What could be plainer? But intellectual property contains the power to destroy liberty.

Intellectual property isn’t merely about rock bands preventing kids from sharing MP3s over the Internet. (See “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical commentary, “Don’t Download This Song,”) It’s about crusty incumbent firms trying to preserve market share by stifling competition, domestically and in the developing world.

The crux of the issue is this: Do intellectual property laws protect legitimately ownable things? One’s view of the laws will proceed from one’s answer to that question, and that’s what I will concentrate on here. I leave for another time the issue of incentives.