The Pirate Party.
This is a post about piracy, or rather, about the pirate party of Sweden. Several of my friends belong to it for one reason and another and after reflecting over their aims: to stop surveillance of all citizens and to severely reduce copyright I have come to a few understandings.
I sympathize a great deal with the pirate party. I don't want to be put under surveillance, but it is not a new thing, it's been going on for a while. The Social Democrats began to register Communists during the Second World War, or even before. You see, the reason why this happened is because that the "furies of private property" are awakened by various radical leftist groups, you can see it in history time and time again. The burgeoise, that is, the capitalists who own the means of production (factories, offices, the person who reads this most likely) cannot survive without revolutionising the means of production constantly.
That is, because they are all driven by competition that kills the weaker (the holy principle that all burgeoise economists from Smith and forward raise to the skies as the saviour of mankind), and so they must constantly bring forth new ways to create. And the faster they build up, the faster they revolutionize... the world of today can hardly be comprehended by still-living members of the older generation.
Computers have been driven forward by capitalism and when they were found to be useful, they were created faster and stronger in an ever-increasing line. Now most everyone in the center possesses one. And with that, we come to the irony of history that they have to protect their private property against the wishes of the majority. You and I want to download music, books, etc. Computers, for many of us, have become extensions of ourselves. They allow freedom and instant connection all around the world with just a press of a button.
So now we find ourselves with two interesting parallels. The opposition of a property-less majority (when we speak of property that is at all meaningful we speak of owning property that can produce) to a property-owning minority that has it's fingers deep in the self-professed Social Democratic state. With the threat of a lack of profit, they rally to instantly punish and lash out at the people who dare to fight for their own class interests. Because that is what this is. The scenario stings in our eyes: class struggle returns in the guise of information and things that cost a tiny, tiny bit in electricity charges and that can be divided for all, however much they like. But it doesn't just stop there. No, the burgeoise also wants to keep their bizarre copyrights of medication that each year harvests millions of lives in the periphery as they do not allow governments or groups like Amnesty International or the Red Cross to simply copy the medication that could easily cure people dying of diseases that are not even remotely threatening in the economic center of today.
Young artists delight in being able to spread something they create not because they want to get rich (seriously, becoming a musician because you want to get rich is like becoming a philosopher because you want to get a job) but because they are driven to create. Their interests, however, are oftenly perverted by the humongous movie, publishing and music industry that conforms everything that it can get it's own hands on. (An interesting piece of evidence is Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, a clever and interesting movie outside the Hollywood spectrum. When the director confronted the Hollywood bigshots about his success and the possibility to give more leeway in making movies to the mainstream they shot it down immediately).
In truth, what is produced belongs to everyone. With finite assets this can become a problem, and I recognize that, but the thing is: Digital media is not finite in the same way at all! The cost of copying is minimal, it is fast (the irony that it is the capitalists which have given us the ability, and them who continously clash against themselves with faster computers, connections and better CD:s is overwhelming, but typical of blind capitalism) and it can give a lot of ease, pleasure and education to the great mass of people who cannot afford to see every new movie, who cannot get to all the artists they want and so on. And the old arguments of declining profits and so on don't really function, as our erudite pirates have shown us. It hurts the big businesses but there seem to be no real empirical evidence for the smaller.
In the end, my buccaneer friends, your cause is ours. Our cause is yours. File-copying is merely the most apparent flank in a greater struggle between the great mass of people against the small, rich elite. Without complaining: people often believe that they are in situations that have never been before. This is not so. History tends to repeat itself, or at least, give us strong senses of deja vu. If you're truly interested in your integrity, in your interests and actually changing something on a deep level you should realize that you should connect yourself to the Left. A party is merely an organized vehicle for class confrontation and for victory, and I support the Pirate Party in that, but when all is said and done there is much more to fight for than just copyright.
I sympathize a great deal with the pirate party. I don't want to be put under surveillance, but it is not a new thing, it's been going on for a while. The Social Democrats began to register Communists during the Second World War, or even before. You see, the reason why this happened is because that the "furies of private property" are awakened by various radical leftist groups, you can see it in history time and time again. The burgeoise, that is, the capitalists who own the means of production (factories, offices, the person who reads this most likely) cannot survive without revolutionising the means of production constantly.
That is, because they are all driven by competition that kills the weaker (the holy principle that all burgeoise economists from Smith and forward raise to the skies as the saviour of mankind), and so they must constantly bring forth new ways to create. And the faster they build up, the faster they revolutionize... the world of today can hardly be comprehended by still-living members of the older generation.
Computers have been driven forward by capitalism and when they were found to be useful, they were created faster and stronger in an ever-increasing line. Now most everyone in the center possesses one. And with that, we come to the irony of history that they have to protect their private property against the wishes of the majority. You and I want to download music, books, etc. Computers, for many of us, have become extensions of ourselves. They allow freedom and instant connection all around the world with just a press of a button.
So now we find ourselves with two interesting parallels. The opposition of a property-less majority (when we speak of property that is at all meaningful we speak of owning property that can produce) to a property-owning minority that has it's fingers deep in the self-professed Social Democratic state. With the threat of a lack of profit, they rally to instantly punish and lash out at the people who dare to fight for their own class interests. Because that is what this is. The scenario stings in our eyes: class struggle returns in the guise of information and things that cost a tiny, tiny bit in electricity charges and that can be divided for all, however much they like. But it doesn't just stop there. No, the burgeoise also wants to keep their bizarre copyrights of medication that each year harvests millions of lives in the periphery as they do not allow governments or groups like Amnesty International or the Red Cross to simply copy the medication that could easily cure people dying of diseases that are not even remotely threatening in the economic center of today.
Young artists delight in being able to spread something they create not because they want to get rich (seriously, becoming a musician because you want to get rich is like becoming a philosopher because you want to get a job) but because they are driven to create. Their interests, however, are oftenly perverted by the humongous movie, publishing and music industry that conforms everything that it can get it's own hands on. (An interesting piece of evidence is Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, a clever and interesting movie outside the Hollywood spectrum. When the director confronted the Hollywood bigshots about his success and the possibility to give more leeway in making movies to the mainstream they shot it down immediately).
In truth, what is produced belongs to everyone. With finite assets this can become a problem, and I recognize that, but the thing is: Digital media is not finite in the same way at all! The cost of copying is minimal, it is fast (the irony that it is the capitalists which have given us the ability, and them who continously clash against themselves with faster computers, connections and better CD:s is overwhelming, but typical of blind capitalism) and it can give a lot of ease, pleasure and education to the great mass of people who cannot afford to see every new movie, who cannot get to all the artists they want and so on. And the old arguments of declining profits and so on don't really function, as our erudite pirates have shown us. It hurts the big businesses but there seem to be no real empirical evidence for the smaller.
In the end, my buccaneer friends, your cause is ours. Our cause is yours. File-copying is merely the most apparent flank in a greater struggle between the great mass of people against the small, rich elite. Without complaining: people often believe that they are in situations that have never been before. This is not so. History tends to repeat itself, or at least, give us strong senses of deja vu. If you're truly interested in your integrity, in your interests and actually changing something on a deep level you should realize that you should connect yourself to the Left. A party is merely an organized vehicle for class confrontation and for victory, and I support the Pirate Party in that, but when all is said and done there is much more to fight for than just copyright.
posted by Björn at 5:54 PM
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