Ven­ture Com­mu­nism

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Don't Hate the Business, Become the Business!

• Ven­ture Com­mu­nism

• Dmytri Kleiner

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: DON’T HATE THE BUSINESS: BECOME THE BUSINESS!

  In the age of in­ter­na­tional telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, global mi­gra­tion and the emer­gence of the in­for­ma­tion econ­omy, how can class con­flict and prop­erty be un­der­stood? Draw­ing from cri­tiques of po­lit­i­cal econ­omy and in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty, The Telekom­mu­nist Man­i­festo is a con­tri­bu­tion to com­mons-based, col­lab­o­ra­tive and shared forms of cul­tural pro­duc­tion and eco­nomic dis­tri­b­u­tion.  Propos­ing “ven­ture com­mu­nism” as a new model for work­ers’ self-or­ga­ni­za­tion, Kleiner spins Marx and En­gels’ sem­i­nal Man­i­festo of the Com­mu­nist Party into the age of the in­ter­net. As a peer-to-peer model, ven­ture com­mu­nism al­lo­cates cap­i­tal that is crit­i­cally needed to ac­com­plish what cap­i­tal­ism can­not: the on­go­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion of free cul­ture and free net­works.  In de­vel­op­ing the con­cept of ven­ture com­mu­nism, Kleiner pro­vides a cri­tique of copy­right regimes, and cur­rent lib­eral views of free soft­ware and free cul­ture which seek to trap cul­ture within cap­i­tal­ism. Kleiner pro­poses copy­far­left, and pro­vides a us­able model of a Peer Pro­duc­tion Li­cense.  En­cour­ag­ing hack­ers and artists to em­brace the rev­o­luty po­ten­tial of the in­ter­net for a truly free so­ci­ety, The Telekom­mu­nist Man­i­festo is a po­lit­i­cal-con­cep­tual call to arms in the fight against cap­i­tal­ism.

Category:

• Panel