Skip to content
Wide screen resolution Auto adjust screen size Increase font size Decrease font size Default font size

FreeeBay - Anarchism and Gift Economy


News
Announcement PDF Print E-mail
News - Latest News
Written by Romano Krauth   
Friday, 07 November 2008
Gift Economy
FreeeBay is dedicated to gift economy on the Internet. Apart from connecting people to give and get for free, our web site also serves as a library of useful contributions about anarchism, gift economy, and the Internet.
 
Please register to the site and post items you would like to give away, or items you would like to be given, in the Gift Section of the Forum.
 
Thank you for including a photo of your gift, and tell us a story if you wish.
                                                                                                           FreeeBay Crew
Read more...
 
Fifth International?! PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Anarchism
Written by Michael Albert   
Saturday, 06 February 2010

Michael Albert 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

Suppose a new International is an excellent venue for debate but has no practical component, or, worse, is a gathering place for big egos who mostly preen at long, aimless meetings. Or suppose a new International intelligently addresses programs and ideas, but is a vehicle for a small group to issue instructions from above.
Read more...
 
Andres Lomena interviewed Richard Barbrook PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Anarchism
Written by Richard Barbrook   
Friday, 05 February 2010

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

Published with the permission of the author.

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?

Richard Barbrook: Bifo is attacking me for the very crime which inspired my article! In late-1990s London, Hari Kunzru and others at Wired UK were arguing that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were proponents of the Californian ideology. Knowing these gurus’ political history and theoretical writings, I was curious as to why it was so easy to confuse their particular brand of hippie leftism with its apparent opposite: dotcom neo-liberalism.

 

Read more...
 
Poverty PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Roots
Written by Lysander Spooner   
Wednesday, 03 February 2010

Lysander Spooner 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.

Read more...
 
Selling Ourselves Out PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Anarchism
Written by Unknown   
Wednesday, 03 February 2010

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

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons.

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.

And when you get more deeply involved in hardcore, you find that you really do spend quite a bit of time buying and selling products. You start going to more shows and buying the records and 'zines you hear about.

 

Read more...
 
For Love Or Money PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Gift Economy
Written by Amulya Gopalakrishnan   
Tuesday, 02 February 2010

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

Published with the permission of the author.

‘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.

Sounds crazy? Get this: Radiohead CD sales have been just fine, and in fact the album topped the Billboard charts this past week.
 
What’s going on here? Well, lots of things, but primarily the crazy, counter-intuitive logic of the Internet that has busted all kinds of revenue models. Whether it’s music, publishing, entertainment, education, the Web threatens to simply take the bottom out of their businesses by supplying almost the same thing at no cost.
Read more...
 
Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property PDF Print E-mail
Concept - Anarchism
Written by Sheldon Richman   
Monday, 01 February 2010

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

Published with the permission of the author.

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.

Read more...
 

Members

User List

Financial reports

					

Donate

Thank you for generosity and support!

Enter Amount:

Statistics

Members: 53
News: 564
Web Links: 12
Visitors: 204530

Who's Online

Login or Register






Lost Password?
No account yet? Register

Sponsored Links

Donors

Kolding