[iDC] What is Left? / What Does a Distributed Politics Look Like?

[Abe Burmeister]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the lengthy and informative reply. Focusing upon the  
atomism of the right is indeed a fruitful endeavor, but where things  
get really interesting is not at the atomic level, nor at the  
"whole", but somewhere in between. The philosophy of the does indeed  
focus on atomism, and is import to their success, but their most  
important unit of action is not atomic at all, but instead  
*corporate*. Now when we start speaking about corporations and  
incorporation it's very important make it clear that we are not just  
talking about the 20-21st century for-profit corporation, but instead  
a much larger class of institutions, that at the present just happens  
to be dominated by one particular for-profit form. The corporation in  
itself is neither a leftist nor right wing institution, but something  
whose political ramifications are decided at least in part by the  
rules and laws governing the actual act of incorporation. Most non- 
profit organizations, from Greenpeace and Oxfam to the National Rifle  
Association and RAND are also incorporated and while many try and  
hide it are in fact corporations. Labor unions as well are often  
incorporated and perhaps more pertinently to the audience on this  
mailing list the second oldest form of corporation in the world  
(after monasteries) is the university.

Now if one looks at the history of corporations (of which  
surprisingly little has been written) something rather remarkable  
happens around the 1830's in America. Until that point corporations  
could be created only by very specific acts of governments. Each  
corporation was granted very specific rights that were associated  
with very specific areas and limitations. A corporation might for  
instance be created with the explicit goal of creating a bridge over  
the River Charles, for which they were granted the right to sell  
bonds to raise funds and right to charge a toll on the bridge for a  
limited period of time. There are few examples of corporations being  
granted absurd powers, the British East India Company being the most  
glaring, but even that psuedo-state was subject to periodic reviews  
of and alterations to it's charter. What began to happen in the US in  
the 1830's though is that states began to offer abstract articles of  
incorporation that allowed nearly any group of people with access to  
a lawyer to create corporations without any legislative oversight at  
all, and with sole explicit purpose being the generation of profits  
for the owners. It took some time for this early abstract corporation  
form to evolve into the large for-profit corporations that so  
dominate the economic landscape today, a process that occurred  
largely in conjunction with the spread of railroads and the  
evolutions of the organizations that run them.

One of the interesting things about the abstract for-profit  
corporation is that it's rise coincides directly with the time in  
which the old conservative structures of land based aristocracy began  
to disintegrate. While Europe was busy eliminating, or at least  
weakening the land based hierarchies, America was busy creating a new  
highly codified hierarchical structures that were completely divorced  
from the ground. One of the more curious things about this rapid  
evolution of the for-profit corporate form is that it occurred behind  
the backs of the classical economic theories that were evolving at  
the same time. From Adam Smith through Marx and on till Alfred  
Marshall economic theory focused upon individual entrepreneurs,  
industrialists who remained in individual control of the factories  
and business they built. That is to say economic theory on both the  
left and right evolved through to critical forms without ever taking  
into account a newly powerful form of organization that sits directly  
in between the atomism of the individual and the massive whole of  
"society."

What is interesting to me when I ask "what is left" is the  
possibility that the "left" might in fact be able to find and or  
create new forms of incorporation which allow for them to address the  
large swarm of for-profit corporations out there on a level that is  
neither atomistic nor in need of the whole to cooperate. There of  
course are already a few forms in existence, unions, universities,  
nonprofit corporations, coops and open source networks all function  
on this level to various extents. But so far none of those forms has  
ever proven to be able to scale up the levels in which for-profit  
corporations are now operating. There is no promise for an answer  
there of course, but well, I'm tired of waiting for the "whole" to  
wake up and solve it's problems, and what the level of incorporation  
offers is action without the whole, and that in itself offers hope.

cheers,
Abe


On Sep 18, 2007, at 11:36 AM, Stephen Downes wrote:

> Well OK.
>