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CyberCommunism: New Threat for the New Millennium

Contributed by TechnoJoe
    www.osOpinion.com,
    Part of the NewsFactor Network
    January 19, 2001

    According to some observers, the goal of cyber-communism is to move all high-tech products into open source, shifting control from the corporation to the digerati.

My expedition into cyber-communism began when I read Brock Meeks' "Hackers Stumble Toward Legitimacy" article about a recent hacker convention. Interestingly, the keynote speaker at the convention was Eric Boucher (alias Jello Biafra), a rock star with no technical background.

    Numerous questions ensue. Who is Eric Boucher? What does he believe? More importantly, why schedule someone with no technical background to speak at a hacker convention?

    Boucher's proposed Green Party platform is not inconsistent with the "Manifesto of Libertarian Communism." This answer produces a more troubling question. Was his speech against corporate America mere socialist babbling -- or was it part of something more sinister, perhaps a subversive cyber-communist movement?

    I am not the first to see possible communist subversion of the digerati. Corey Winesett's "Are Linux Users Really Communists?" article published on this Web site questions the nature of the relationship, if any, between open source and communism. Likewise, Scott Billings' "Heresy and Communism" article ponders the issue of whether the Linux community's knee-jerk reaction to negative opinions about Linux could be the result of being under a communist spell.

    Before I can evaluate cyber-communism's merits, I must define communism's true nature and communism's real threat to America.

    Communism Revisited

    Theoretical communism and practical communism have long been held as different political philosophies. Despite Marx's call for the working class to revolt, the communist revolution's leaders always ascend from the intelligentsia.

    John Stormer's "None Dare Call It Treason" supports this assertion, saying that "Fidel Castro was a product, not of the cane fields of Cuba, but of the halls of Havana University. Joseph Stalin was not a simple peasant rebelling at the oppression of the Czar. He became a communist while studying for the priesthood in a Russian Orthodox seminary. The membership of the first Communist spy ring uncovered in the U.S. Government was not spawned in the sweat shops of New York's lower East Side or the tenant farms of the South. [The conspirators] came to high government posts from Harvard Law School."

    Communism's fallacy is the belief in everyone's benevolence. Yet human nature often proves the existence of more than benevolence.

    Future Perfect

    Communism cannot create a perfect society with imperfect people. Hence, to direct Utopia, communism produces a totalitarian government over the less-perfect people, ruled by the perfect people -- communists. Thus, communism's true nature creates a controlling government in the name of a better world.

    Not every supporter needs be a knowing conspirator. Supporters could be under the communists' spell. The true communist threat comes from people who can be deluded into supporting a controlling government in the name of a better world.

    John Stormer's "None Dare Call It Treason" concurs with this conclusion saying: "Communism is a disease of the intellect. It promises universal brotherhood, peace and prosperity to lure humanitarians and idealists into participating in a conspiracy which gains power through deceit and deception and stays in power with brute force."

    Now, Cyber-Communism

    Richard Barbrook's "The Cyber.Com/Munist Manifesto: How Americans are Superseding Capitalism in Cyberspace" draws parallels between communism and cyber-communism. He associates the Soviet Union's gift/communist economy, where people freely exchange material goods, with the open source gift/cyber-communist economy, where people freely exchange source code. Barbrook concludes that cyber-communism promises a digital Utopia.

    However, like communism's promises, cyber-communism's promises are not manifesting themselves. Monty Manley's "Be an Engineer, Not an Artist" article cites poorly designed code to assert that unpaid programmers will work only on "sexy" projects.

    Scott Billings' "Where's the Creativity" article challenges Linux supporters to show one original idea in Linux, reminding us that Linux itself is not an original idea.

    Practical Questions

    Now, I am not condemning open source itself. Cyber-communism's fallacy is funding the open source development method. Xavier Basora's "Open Source and Nag Screens: Contradictions of the Bazaar" mentions a shareware open source program to demonstrate the difficulty of funding "free" software. Eric Raymond's "The Magic Cauldron" provides many theoretical economic models, but he fails to provide any case studies to demonstrate their practicality.

    Red Hat follows Eric Raymond's economic model and still suffers fiscal losses. Richard Stallman's "The GNU Manifesto" admits programmers will "not [be] paid as much as now." Therefore, cyber-communism's true nature moves software development to an unfeasible economic model.

    Andrew Leonard's "The Cybercommunist Manifesto" concurs with this conclusion in his critique of Richard Barbrook saying: "Barbrook's analysis does jibe well with fears expressed by some software programmers concerning the possibility that free software could prove to be an economic disaster for the software industry."

    Cyber-communism, like communism, is about control. John Zedlewski's "Winning the Open-Source Support Game" article proposes that one company provide technical support for all open source software. Instead, his plan would only create an open source support monopoly.

    Liviu Andreescu's "What to do About Monopolies?" article said "Communism has nothing to do with turning [Microsoft's] code in open source."

    To the contrary, cyber-communism wants all products to move into open source to shift control from the corporation to the digerati. Thus, the true cyber-communist threat comes from the digerati's members, who can be duped into supporting an economically unfeasible development method.

    New Meaning

    Subversion is already in progress. The term "hacker" originally meant highly skilled programmer.

    Eric Raymond's "How to Become a Hacker" redefines "hacker" as a programmer who supports open source. Robert Lemos' "The New Age of Hacktivism" observes hacking being done for political reasons.

    Still, halting cyber-communism is not difficult.

    Halting the Red Menace

    Stopping cyber-communism is simple. We need only break the cyber-communists' source of control.

    End users depend on the digerati/hackers to provide technical support. To break the dependency, we need to make technology so easy that everyone can use it, as said in John Holmes' article "The End of Geekdom As We Know It." However, Michael Kellen's "Death to the Wizards" illustrates that some, mostly cyber-communists, will oppose what is easy-to-use.

    Besides, an easy-to-use program translates into little technical support revenue for an already failing economic model.

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