Making nonsense of Marx

“Joi Ito”:http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/09/21/commonsbased_peer_production_is_not_communism.html links approvingly to a “short essay”:http://alevin.com/weblog/archives/001482.html#001482 by Adina Levin, criticizing the Dan Hunter article on open source and Marxism that I “discussed”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002501.html last week. Ms. Levin says that open source is not, in fact Marxist, a claim which may or may not be true, but which would be better supported if she knew more about what Marxism actually says.

First, she claims that Marxism argues for a form of “collective production where production is organized and rewards are distributed fairly through central planning.” Not true – Marx himself had almost nothing to say about what form the state or alternative distributional mechanism would take in a socialist or communist society. While one can reasonably contend that _some_ later Marxists have believed in central planning, this is, for obvious reasons, a minority opinion among Marxists these days. Nor does it flow in any logical or necessary way from Marx’s basic ideas, which, as far as I can tell are just as compatible with decentralized distribution as with centralized distribution – “collective ownership” can take a variety of forms. Given all this, the identification of Marxism with “collective farming” is a bit of a straw man. Second, Levin seems to think that Marxists believe in “mandatory equality” and would be opposed to open source’s “meritocratic culture with dramatic inequality, where founding leaders and high-value contributors have greater prestige, influence, and sometimes financial reward.” Perhaps wisely, she doesn’t try to provide any empirical evidence or backing from Marx’s writings, or from the writings of prominent Marxists, to try to support this claim. As far as I know, there is no intellectually reputable strain of Marxist thought which suggests that “high-value contributors” shouldn’t receive greater prestige and influence as a point of principle. Simply put, this is not the sort of thing that serious Marxists are bothered with – they’re concerned with inequalities in the ownership of the means of production, not with the distribution of social brownie points. Finally, Levin is half right when she says that Marxists (or, to be more precise, the early Marx) are opposed to the money economy. But as she more-or-less admits, strictly money-based explanations of open source software don’t do a very good job at explaining open source programmers’ motivations – at most, the open source economy is complementary to the money economy.

None of this is to say that mainstream Marxism provides a good explanation of open source. Indeed, as I suggested in my earlier post, the open source movement has at least as much to teach lefties (including Marxists) as vice versa. Still, the degree of ignorance of Marxism among those who purport to criticize it is sometimes a little astonishing.

Update: In an “earlier post”:http://alevin.com/weblog/archives/001480.html#001480, Levin says

bq. For example, “a commons of any sort is inherently Marxian, even if other types of private property rights still operate within the commons.” Nope. Marxism argues that all property is theft, and all property is to be held in common. And “Marxism isn’t about society against the individual, but seeks to put the individual first, allowing him or her access to the aspects of life that make them complete.” Don’t think so. Marxism is collectivist, requiring individuals to give up personal ownership and personal benefit for the advantage of the group.

She simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about – not only does she hopelessly confuse Marx and Proudhon, but Marxism is emphatically about individual benefit. You may disagree with Marx’s ideas of what will benefit the individual, let alone how he suggests that you get there – but Hunter is right on this, and Levin is plain confused.