[p2p-research] Historical anti-materialism

[Ryan Lanham]

What follows is a crude sketch forming in my own mind:

There were three great historical threads of anti-materialism in
the Anglo-American sphere that all reached their peak in the 1930s.

The first was the conventional Utopian socialist model.  This one still
plays out today (often in this list) and suggests a higher moral ground for
certain enlightened parties who can see clearly the ills that affect
society.  These groups tend to form communes, tend to collapse when sects
become unworkable, and tend to have radical ideas for doing away with money,
creating leisure societies, etc.  Their futurist component is the group that
hopes Star Trek replicators become reality.  There is a high quantity of
self-proclaimed intellectuals in this group often made up of disaffected
rebels who fair poorly in conventional schools and degree programs.  Their
past patron saint is George Bernard Shaw.  It seems to me the world center
of this movement now is German-speaking.

A second group of anti-materialists peaked with the writings of C.S. Lewis
against materialism.  These persons tend to be motivated by faith
considerations believing that money is a spiritual evil.  Wealth destroys
the soul.  They have threads permeating radical religious groups in the US
and British protestant movements.  Often these groups conflate anti-semitism
and anti-materialism.  The average devotee is the working poor with a strong
theological upbringing or those who fill jobs such as military roles,
teachers or small civil service posts where pay is low and discipline is
strong.  Their futurist component is millenialist.  They often speak of
divine judgment and hope for their justice to be delivered by spirit-world
interventions.  This group is now centered in Latin American and radical
protestant groups and sects.  Without the otherwise essential religious
thread, members of participating movements tend toward nationalist
socialism/fascism as in Venezuela.

A third group was the classical technocrats.  These were disaffected
engineers, architects and planners who foresaw the problems of maintaining
continuous consumption societies.  They tended to want to arrange the world
based on energy use and accounting which tied closely to the growing
awareness of physics theories in related areas from the 1880s-1930s.  Their
futurist component is a strong thread in the transhumanist discourse.  The
typical devotee is a technophile idealist who has tough encounters with
conventional modes of power and economic control.  These conflicts lead to
inflated views of technical possibilities that are usually Utopian, absurd
and ego-building for those who are able to conceive grand visions--the
rightful heirs of social control.  This group now fills subaltern positions
in universities and are leaders in social networking technologies, tending
to be early adaptors, idealistic visionaries and the like.  Their geographic
center is in Scandanavia, California, and, to some extent, Japan.  The
modern national manifestation is something like Holland or perhaps Finland.

My own view is that only this third group has legitimate linkages to the
current P2P movement.  The second makes no effort or has no interest in
worldly sharing models outside of the Church.  They tend to align with the
right politically.  The first group is jumping on to the P2P movement so as
to advance their own often stifled idealism.  They tend to hope for radical
catalysts to realize a future they expect to emerge regardless of any
evidence to the contrary.  In a sense, they are millenialist as well, but
they tend to have limited or no spiritual focus.  Their end times results in
some Utopian socialist vision of paradise on earth.

My guess is that the interaction of these groups will continue to prove
mutually destructive.  The third will maintain leadership and action roles
because of their technical interests and skills.  The second will continue
to reject earthly models.  The first will alienate others by their constant
focus on theory with little commitment to empirical action or results.

The end product will be a slowly growing P2P movement periodically
revitalized by neo-technocrats fixated on future issues and their seeming
powerlessness to respond to unresponsive power structures.  Ironically, this
mentality is extremely close to the techno-entrepreneur movement of the
1980s and beyond.  The difference is that the neo-technocrats tend to be
anti-materialistic.  One will continue to see cross-overs between the
neo-technocrats and the techno-entrepreneurs in the areas of social
entrepreneurism.  Again, both the millenial heirs of C.S. Lewis and the
Utopian socialists will be at the fringes of these projects.


Ryan
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