http://psychology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site
=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softpanorama.org%2FPeople%2FStallman%2Findex.shtml
Stallman as the founder of Software Anarchism
Most readers know that Richard M. Stallman(in short as RMS) was the principal
author of many important free software products including Emacs, GCC and GDB.
Emacs is one of the few programs that has a definition in
the Hacker Dictionary
But what most readers probably not suspect is that RMS is also an influential
left philosopher, a unique mass movement leader. In this chapter I'll try to
describe the details of his political crusade and telling analogies between
Stallman views and the views of the famous Russian utopist, anarchist and
philosopher Prince Peter Kropotkin. And that's go besides the beard ;-)
While Mikhail Bakunin represented the militant branch of anarchism, Kropotkin
(although he started his career in the anarchist movement as a militant) was
more focused on the value of cooperation and reciprocity. That made his the
most well known representative of classic anarchism, that professed a belief
in cooperation as the cement that held human society together and guaranteed
social and cultural progress and a total denunciation of state authority. As
utopian as they are, his ideas nevertheless were ahead of his time in
understanding of the value of mutual aid and cooperation. See for example
Anarchist Morality by Peter Kropotkin. The preface stated the following:
This study of the origin and function of what we call "morality" was written
for pamphlet publication as a result of an amusing situation. An anarchist
who ran a store in England found that his comrades in the movement regarded
it as perfectly right to take his goods without paying for them. ...
Account-book morality --doing right only to receive a benefit-- he scores
roundly, urging instead the satisfactions and joy of "sowing life around you"
by giving yourself to the uttermost to your fellow- men. Not of course to do
them good, in the spirit of philanthropy, but to be one with them, equal and
sharing.
The most famous work of Prince Kropotkin was Mutual Aid A Factor of
Evolution. In this book he opposes the Darwin theory that only the strongest
and toughest can keep up with the evolution. His view is that not rivalry but
mutual aid is the key factor for survival. With many examples he shows that
socializing rather than rivalry dominate. Even in the human world mutual aid
is more the rule than the exception. Kropotkin traces the mutual aid back
from primitive tribes over early villages, communes to the present with the
unions, the Red Cross and so on. He believes that the trend of the modern
world goes back to decentralized, apolitical, cooperative societies, in which
people can be creative by themselves without influence from bosses, soldiers,
priests and other positions of power. Similar to the fact that GPL license
influenced modern copyright theory and led to the proliferation of so called
"free/open software licenses" Kropotkin's views influenced modern legal
theory, see for example Is Subjectivity Possible The Post-Modern Subject in
Legal Theory by James Boyle.
Despite his heavy emphasis on the mutual aid Kropotkin did not ignore the
evolutionary role of competition and struggle. He went so far as to suggest
that both cooperation and competition are rooted in man's instincts, but that
only cooperation ensures the progress of human society. In his view, Darwin
used the term "struggle" in a figurative rather than in a literal sense.
Kropotkin recognized competition, or conflict, as a functional component of
social life: man always encounters natural or social barriers that he must
overcome. Struggle is an immanent component of social relations, but it has a
positive ethical and social value only when it is directed against
institutionalized barriers, such as the bureaucratic structure of the state
or a monopoly, that stands in the way of man's creative power.
"True Believers" and Utopian Visions
Utopian visions draw our attention to the deficiencies of existing society
and help us to find alternatives. They motivate people to work on social
change. Realizing utopian visions in a real world is a difficult undertaking,
a very few succeed. You need participants to bring about the desired
transformation and thus the success largely depends on the movement ability
to attract and keep followers. That often depends on the factors outside the
leader control. In this sense successful leaders are always accidental:
chosen by the circumstances.
I also think that the most devoted participants of utopian visions ("true
believers") is a special social type. Utopian visions appeal to people who
are creative and imaginative, prone to building the castles in the air. They
find the existing social order unjust and prefer revolt to adaptation.
The true believer yearns to return to a simpler, more certain, time, and is
perfectly willing to throw out the baby with the bath water to get it,
including equal rights, scientific advances, better living conditions, etc.
Anyone skeptical of this statement is invited to consider Iran, the Taliban,
Creationism, and the like. Coping with a world of harsh realities in an era
of instant gratification, our society has become obsessed with magic cures
for all ills and easy solutions to difficult problems. And that creates a
fertile environment for cult-style Utopian movements.
The type of "true believers" that RMS belongs to and that was organized by
him into a movement were programmers: not very common occupation until
recently, but that in the late 80th had grown into a pretty large
international crowd. This brand of "true believers" seek meaning in life
through the commitment to the free software. This is often combined with a
protest against the existing order (proprietary software or previous forms of
free software that are considered "impure"). As we will see from the RMS
biography, often "true believers" go though a period of searching before
setting on a course. After than the chosen course became a dominant force in
their lives and they often identify themselves so closely with their cause
that have difficulty separating their personal life from the cause.
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