[p2p-research] newsweek on The Creativity Crisis

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/19/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> otherwise, of course, Ryan's comment that the death of creativity is "good
> news for socialism", is baffling,
>
> first, because as you correctly point out, it occurred in the era of
> neoliberal dominance, so following the policy prescriptions of the free
> market ideology, secondly, because historically, socialism has been about
> extending creativity for all .. while I think Stalinist systems were
> counter-creative because of their enforced collectivism under the umbrella
> of a bureaucratic state, the historical record of social-democracy in
> extending aphabetisation, schooling, and creative education for all, has no
> parallel ... it stands as a major achievement of humanity ...

I wonder how much creativity there'd have been a few centuries ago if,
say, the Petrarch estate got a copyright extension every few years
from the government of Florence, and Shakespeare had to worry about
getting a DMCA takedown notice.  I think Soderberg's direct comparison
between Soviet control of photocopiers and the FBI-RIAA control of
file-sharing technology, as totalitarian supports to the rule of a
dominant class, is a good one.

I do object to calling it "free market ideology," any more than
Stalin's bureaucratic oligarchy was "socialism."   What we had was a
showdown between two totalizing statist systems:  "socialism" for the
Party apparat vs. "socialism" for the corporate plutocracy.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html