June 6 2016

Dmytri Kleiner, Venture Communist

In the early days of the world wide web, there was end-to-end communication with hardly any “mediators” in between. By the time though, it was “colonized” by corporations. Server farms, for example, constitute a monopoly of how information flows, Facebook makes you accept terms of use which actually f*** around with the immediacy of your communication.

Yet, not just the resources and thus, the web, are colonized but also the way of how money is being made through web platforms. There is a class struggle going on. To us, service platforms and apps might seem very convenient. On the end of the workers who carry out their duties, we can hardly talk about convenience. Drivers who work for Uber, for example, form something one might call “Cyberproletariat”. They are exploited, have no insurances whatsoever.

In his talk, Berlin based software developer Dmytri Kleiner illustrated how communcation networks have been colonized and in how far alternative models of infrastructure could help break the cycle of monopolized data flow. In short, one option is a peer-production license, a commons-friendly license Kleiner describes as CopyFarLeft, on which he expands in his Telekommunisten Manifesto. This manifesto also proposes venture communism, a mode of worker-controlled production modeled on peer networks and the pastoral commons. This model is based on end-to-end communicatoin, cutting out the middle man.

Dmytri Kleiner coined the term venture communism in 2001 “to promote the ideal of workers’ self-organization of production as a way of addressing class conflict.”

Dmytri Kleiner, Photo: Thomas Mueller
Dmytri Kleiner, Photo: Thomas Mueller

Under the patronage of

Deutsche UNESCO Kommission

Supported by

Thüringen

Organized by

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