Comments on: The cyber-socialism debate

By: Sakrecoer

Sakrecoer — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:16:05 +0000

Thank you for this intersting reading. I came across the word cybersocialism, thru a a poetic equation, when realising that the swedish status update field in facebook had a different question than the english one. (This links to your question saying: “socialism means one thing in the United States, but means something else to the rest of the world?” in many ways)

The swedish facebook says “what are you doing right now?”, where’s my english one asks: “what is on your mind?”

The equation was the following:
“Swedish Facebook ask you: “What are you doing right now?”
My Facebook ask’s me: “What’s on your mind?”
What dose our facebook ask you?”

As i realised i was questioning the crosscultural way of understanding the socialmedias functions, the following string hit my mind:

“socialy networking in the socialnetwork”

which consequently led me to the keyword:

“cybersocialism”

Whether it is a model that works or not, As a matter of fact, socialism is a very ancient model, just as capitalism. “Cybersocialism” unavoidably reminds of the old russian system in the U.S. Where’s captialism still reminds of careless and selfish interests in Russia.

I believe internet is offering us mash of these 2 fundamnetaly contradictious concepts. There is a high chance that the merging of the “free world” and the “communitary world”, will consequently lead us to the a new invention in politics. And it is about time.!

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:00:18 +0000

Very interesting post. I do think that Lessig’s turn to a “Common Cause” model of political reform explains a lot here too. It’s progressivism against populism all over again. Whereas populism and socialism take seriously the prevalence of power, struggle, and conflict in politics, progressives yearn for science and neutral principles to put policymaking on a higher plane.

I also think that Lessig is a bit too comfortable with Web 2.0 hierarchies:

http://madisonian.net/2009/01/18/the-picture-and-the-paint/

By: Andres

Andres — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:01:22 +0000

Just my luck, I slag off American academics and one of my favourite ones shows up

I think you’re right, Lessig does have a strong constitutional background, so I can see where he’s coming from. Unfortunately, he does seem to have a very American-centric view of the law, which has always baffled me a bit, as he’s well travelled.

By: greglas

greglas — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:07:26 +0000

Hi Andres –

While I haven’t taken this whole blog tempest du jour quite as seriously as you (I’ve skimmed Kelly, Lessig, and the responses and haven’t read Helprin at all), my impression, like yours, is that Lessig seems a little too eager to distance Creative Commons from socialism.

My only reason for commenting is that I want to say this is primarily about Lessig, not about an American stance toward socialism. Remember that Lessig started as a constitutionalist and that he clerked for two conservative judges, Posner and Scalia, who must have influenced him in some ways. His most well-known case, Eldred, was about trying to limit copyright by going back to the original intent of the framers. His personal history explains a lot about his current thinking.

Though it is true that “many other American academics” aren’t really competent on international and comparative law, contrary to the impression one might get, there are some folks in the legal academy over here with more cosmopolitan and internationalist sympathies.