[p2p-research] Kolakowski is dead...

[Michel Bauwens]

This is fairly classic gnostic position, that no progress at all is possible
in this world.


I disagree, though we always pay a price and though there are always
unintented consequences and though achievements become a new baseline making
us desire yet new advances ... progress in some areas are possible and I
think are not difficult to see (abolition of slavery comes to mind)

I also think that the classic modernist opposition between freedom and
equality does not hold entirely. I think in fact that both condition each
other, that both are prerequisites for each other. In peer production it is
the freedom to contribute, equipotentiality, which creates the equality of
the right to contribute, but of course, within the limits of the peer
project itself. However, the principle of equipotentiality can be extended
as a general social principle.

Michel



Kolakowski's "How to be a
Conservative-Liberal-Socialist"<http://www.mrbauld.com/conlibsoc.html>
:

Motto: "Please step forward to the rear!" This is an approximate translation
of a request I once heard on a tram-car in Warsaw. I propose it as a slogan
for the mighty International that will never exist.A Conservative Believes:

1. That in human life there never have been and never will be improvements
that are not paid for with deteriorations and evils; thus, in considering
each project of reform and amelioration, its price has to be assessed. Put
another way, innumerable evils are compatible (i.e. we can suffer them
comprehensively and simultaneously); but many goods limit or cancel each
other, and therefore we will never enjoy them fully at the same time. A
society in which there is no equality and no liberty of any kind is
perfectly possible, yet a social order combining total equality and freedom
is not. The same applies to the compatibility of planning and the principle
of autonomy, to security and technical progress. Put yet another way, there
is no happy ending in human history.


On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 6:11 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/07/leszek-ko%C5%82akowski-19272009.html
>
> His how to be a liberal-conservative-socialist...
>
> http://www.mrbauld.com/conlibsoc.html
>
> ...was a piece that helped put me onto cross boundary studies in the
> history of ideas.  It wasn't new to the world, but it was new to me.  Still
> very original writing.
>
> Ryan
>
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>


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