# Open source and Marxism
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 11, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589 "2011-05-11T23:58:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/21 "2011-05-12T01:30:20Z")
> [@Hambil](#):
>
> Discussing what that movement is and what it means, politically, historically, and in terms of a future society and potential economic models, is hardly something I would consider worth brushing off, but, as always YMMV.
I think open-source like economic models may be important in the future, but I don’t think its because of any resemblance to Marxism. Rather, I could imagine that in the future, technology will advance so that not only intellectual property, but other types of goods will be producible for close to zero marginal cost. Then people may fall back on the distribution methods that were used for software, either setting up gov’t enforced monopolies are using GPL type laws to avoid those monopolies.
To some degree I think this is already happening, IIRC the cost of producing an Ipad is almost all the cost of paying for the “intellectual property”, while only a small part of it is the cost of actual manufacturing (granted that probably has as much to do with cheap labour in the developing world as technological advance). Obviously most goods are still limited by scarcity, but I’m not sure that will always be the case.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/22 "2011-05-12T01:32:27Z")
> [@Hambil](#):
>
> Wow. Thanks, I guess. I think I will just drop it though. One can only be insinuated to be an idiot so many times in one day before getting offended.
Yea, weird random spats of hostility are kinda the order of the day on the Straightdope. There’s enough interesting conversation that its worth ignoring if you can, though.
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/23 "2011-05-12T01:42:01Z")
> [@Hambil](#):
>
> I think it’s an amazing movement with all kinds of social repercussions and I guess that is what I wanted to discuss, and it seems I simply chose the wrong approach to the topic - apparently hitting on some existing sore points I hadn’t realized existed.
Very few of the open source developers I know do it for free. Many of us are quite expensive 🙂 And not so young these days.
Just because we don’t sell shrink-wrapped copies at $x a pop doesn’t mean we don’t charge for anything. There have been times when I’ve worked for a period on creating open source code without being paid for it directly, but that was because I expected to use it to sell services in the future.
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### Author:  [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/24 "2011-05-12T01:53:50Z")
> [@friedo](#):
>
> Marxism necessitates the confiscation and redistribution of property by the state through the use of violence or the threat of violence.
Obviously this is true of what occurred in every single state that has claimed to be Marxist, but the use of state violence is not a part of Marxist theory. Marx didn’t even believe violence would necessarily be required to bring about the revolution, let alone be used to continually enforce a communist economy. To the contrary, he believed that once established the state’s role could shrink to near-nothing. That this has been proved impractical and subsequent people used Marxism as a justification for state violence later does not make it an essential component of Marxist theory.
I think, therefore, that the OP’s question is fair. Open source software does appear on at a casual glance to be a rare example of a psuedo-Marxist system. There is no clear connection between production and compensation, so it is a system that apparently functions without a capitalist profit motive.
Now, there’s plenty of reasons you can come up with for why it isn’t really a Marxist system, like what **Simplicio** said or like what **tellyworth** is getting at with there often being an indirect profit motive. But saying “they don’t use violence” is about as good an argument as saying they don’t dress in red and wear funny hats (well, not usually).
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### Author:  [@Hambil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hambil)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/25 "2011-05-12T02:17:18Z")
> [@Simplicio](#):
>
> Yea, weird random spats of hostility are kinda the order of the day on the Straightdope. There’s enough interesting conversation that its worth ignoring if you can, though.
Thank you for that - it helps 🙂 _putting on thicker skin_
I also find (to geek out even more) some interesting ties to the age old geek question of what kind of society/economic model is Star-Trek. When a replicator makes all objects in theory zero cost manufacturing, then you have a model that is potentially similar to the current intellectual property model.
I think one could even argue that open source is also about the decentralization of knowledge, which has been an ongoing process since the ‘breaking’ of the Catholic Church’s hold on knowledge in the Dark Ages.
In that respect, you can think of things like the recent revolution in Egypt as indirect results of open source, or at least knowledge decentralization.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/26 "2011-05-12T02:41:48Z")
> [@Hambil](#):
>
> Can open source be viewed as the beginning of a true Marxis revolution?
>
> “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx
> I create software because I can, and I share it with no expectation other than that others do the same.
>
> “The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” - Karl Marx
> I also create said software because I do not want to pay for it, or be bound by the restrictions of software I cannot control or change.
Doubtful. Capitalism has always co-existed with some cooperative forms of economic activity, without being threatened by them.
Software, once written, can be copied and distributed at no cost, with minimal labor,and no significant use of material resources; but you can’t very well apply an “open source” model to the production of steel.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/27 "2011-05-12T02:49:51Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#):
>
> Obviously this is true of what occurred in every single state that has claimed to be Marxist, but the use of state violence is not a part of Marxist theory. Marx didn’t even believe violence would necessarily be required to bring about the revolution, let alone be used to continually enforce a communist economy. To the contrary, he believed that once established the state’s role could shrink to near-nothing. That this has been proved impractical and subsequent people used Marxism as a justification for state violence later does not make it an essential component of Marxist theory.
Near as I can figure, what Marx expected was that the proles would take over the means of production just by taking over the means of production – i.e., going in and working the factories and disposing of the products themselves, while simply **ignoring** the legal owner and the State – which would be powerless to act because they could find no prole enforcers, or, if they could, they would be grossly outnumbered. It all depends merely on an increasing “class consciousness” among the proles, i.e., on their simple realization that they can **do** that, any time enough of them want to, because they do not **need** the bosses. And so the “capitalist integument” is “burst” and society flows into a more, well, natural shape.
Somehow . . . it never works out that way. Almost never. The nearest anything like that ever came close to happening in real life was the predominantly Anarcho-Syndicalist (still heavily Marxist-influenced) [Spanish Revolution,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution) which was not allowed to last very long before the Republic (not Franco) crushed it.
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### Author:  [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/28 "2011-05-12T06:32:27Z")
I make very good money working as a consultant with Open Source Software. If that’s Marxism then I’m all for it.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/29 "2011-05-12T12:42:50Z")
> [@Hambil](#):
>
> I see. I am fairly new here. I joined ages ago, but that was when it was pay to post (I think) and I moved on. I have only recently returned. I do plan to subscribe soon, since I like what I see so far, but must wait a paycheck or two.
>
> If this belongs someplace else then I apologize, and hopefully a helpful mod will move it to it’s proper home.
>
> I found (find) the question interesting, and was just surprised by the seemingly hostile answer(s). Though, I fully recognize that tone is very hard to read into a typed message.
Don’t apologize. He gave a rotten GQ answer, as the good ones are backed by reasoning, and the best by citations. Even the bad ones usually use anecdotes. (I’ve made some of each kind, I’m sure.)
Sure, random hostility happens, but it’s usually not so bereft of content. And it’s less common in this forum, as the people who hang out here are more likely to care more about answering questions.
Some people just take the “fighting ignorance” thing a bit too literally.
AS for an answer to your query: I also can’t give a GQ quality answer. But I can say that some people disagree with the answers given here. [This essay](http://replay.web.archive.org/20080407140602/http://www.oekonux-konferenz.de/dokumentation/texte/Victor.html) is from a pro-Marxist, pro-revolutionary view. But it’s based on opinions, and would be better fodder for GD.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/30 "2011-05-12T23:26:37Z")
While it’s true that software is fundamentally different from most commodities, in very significant ways, it’s also true that all previous attempts to implement Marxism have failed horribly in their goals. Might it be that a commodity like software is just what is needed for Marxism to be successful?
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### Author:  [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/31 "2011-05-13T20:10:56Z")
Marxism/Communism has failed in part because at the national level it forces everybody to participate even if they don’t want to. It _can_ work if everybody is committed to it (e.g. a nuclear family is often run like a Communist society). Open Source Software is Marxist-like (albeit with the caveats noted by others) and works because its participants do so voluntarily. I don’t think it says much about the viability of Marxism as a national system.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/32 "2011-05-13T22:50:19Z")
True, I should have said “all previous attempts to implement it _on a large scale_”.
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### Author:  [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/33 "2011-05-15T04:19:20Z")
No, no, no. Open source is not Marxist. It is Christian, as in share the unlimited loaves and fishes that are produced by God.
Time to stop thinking of Marxism as a socio-political model and recognize it for the the religion that it has become.
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### Author:  [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2011, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/open-source-and-marxism/581589/34 "2011-05-15T16:05:42Z")
> [@Simplicio](#):
>
> Yea, I know, I was over-simplifying. But the GPL doesn’t create a false scarcity, so it doesn’t function like the types of copywrites I was talking about.
>
> And vi is better.
Open source is not Marxism. It can be loosely defined as an “expression” of Marxism, but not a concrete example.
Also: Emacs!
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