Eben Moglen‘s talk Software and Community in the Early 21st Century expresses an aspiration and belief that as nonrivalrous components of the economy become more important peer production can produce radical equality where previous movements with the same ostensible aims have used violence, killed many people, and failed. An excerpt (transcript), emphasis added:

Ownership of software as a way of producing software for general consumption is going out, for economic reasons. But as I said, the economic insight that we can get from watching the transition from steel to software is far less important than the moral analysis of the situation. The moral analysis of the situation presents where we are now as, if I may borrow a phrase, a singularity in human affairs.

One of the grave problems of human inequality for everyone who has attempted to ameliorate the problem of human inequality – which is most thinkers about the morality of social life – the greatest problem of human inequality is the extraordinary difficulty in prising wealth away from the rich to give it to the poor, without employing levels of coercion or violence which are themselves utterly corrosive to social progress. And repeatedly in the course of the history of our human societies, well-intentioned, enormously determined and courageous people willing to sacrifice their lives for an improvement in the equality of human life have had to face that problem. We cannot make meaningful redistribution fast enough to maintain momentum politically without applying levels of coercion or violence which will destroy what we are attempting. And again and again, as Isaiah Berlin and other late 20th century political theorists pointed out, through hubris, through arrogance, through romanticism, through self-deception, parties seeking permanent human benefit and an increase in the equality of human beings have failed that test and watched as their movements of liberation spiraled downward from the poison of excess coercion.

We do not have to do that anymore.

The gate that has held the movements for equalization of human beings strictly in a dilemma between ineffectiveness and violence has now been opened. The reason is that we have shifted to a zero marginal cost world. As steel is replaced by software, more and more of the value in society becomes non-rivalrous: it can be held by many without costing anybody more than if it is held by a few.

This reminds of a 1992 Richard Stallman quote:

If we don’t want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others.

There’s much to debate concerning the speed, scope, and desirability of political and social change led by peer production. However, I find observations like the above rather satisfying and I believe deeply underappreciated. Peer production will not lead to absolute equality, but it does increase the scope for equality, freedom, autonomy, and decrease the need for violence or threats thereof. In other words, liberal ends achieved through liberal means, for a very broad range of meanings of “liberal.”

This I find more compelling than discussion of liberal/libertarian fusionism embedded deeply in the context of current U.S. jurisdiction politics. But perhaps my thought is too embedded in the free software context, and too cynical about power politics.

Moglen talk via Slashdot, also blogged at Creative Commons. Stallman quote via Dan Connolly.

153ofsZ1PrnCnDGjvWAenRJc53TRhR9BzK Posted 2006-12-10, filed under Creative Commons, Economics, Open Source, Politics.