Dmytri Kleiner/ Friends.

Democracy Diner

2008-10-22T20:09:38Z

Here are few thoughts about the upcoming US election.

Regards,
Dmytri Kleiner

http://www.telekommunisten.net

---

DEMOCRACY DINER

Dmytri Kleiner

The US election is dominating the press and airwaves worldwide, but what is
the real relevance of this spectacle?

Neither McCain nor Obama nor Palin nor Biden will have any more control of
America Inc than the Revlon Spokesmodel has over Revlon Inc, or the
Playmate of the Month has over Playboy Inc, or Ronald McDonald has
over McDonald's Inc.

The candidates are competing for the job of representing government policy
to the public, not the job of deciding it. The job of deciding policy is
not an elected position, but rather is a ruthless, cut-throat, back alley,
no-holds-barred cage match of raw power. Any candidate who is not already
vetted as being willing and able, nay, eager, to serve the powerful never
raises above school trustee, if they make it that far.

The candidates are selling themselves to the power elite, what they are
selling is an ability to gain compliance from the American people. What
they will gain compliance for, exactly, is not up to them, but rather
decided by full-contact conflicts among the rivalrous, and internationally
involved, power elite. And whatever campaign platforms they take or
promises they make in selling themselves, including policy promises, are
not binding, but rather a screen-test of their ability to represent a
certain policy, and a market research project to help the elite understand
exactly what sort of masses they need compliance from.

The candidates are competing for the job of legitimizing the interests of
the elite, not for representing the people. A head of state is no more
chosen by the people than a Pope or a King is chosen by god, the public
spectacle of the choice is only needed as a means of creating legitimacy.
Each time a new leader is chosen, the crimes and failings of the nation's
elite are washed away. No matter how much legitimacy was squandered during
the last administration, a brand new celebrity spokesmodel is an
absolution, the very act of the previous administration's end of term
is celebrated as a victory for it's victims and discontents. The Holly King
kills the Oak King, yet the two are one and the same.

The individual presidential candidates and their parties fight just as
bitterly for the job as the mothers of juvenile beauty queens fight for
their daughter's crown, but that the job is quite important to those that
seek it should not lead anyone to conclude that it makes a difference to
anybody not involved in the contest.

Democracy is like going to a restaurant with only one thing on the menu and
being given the choice of which waiter of the two waiters on staff serves it.

---
copyfarleft 2008 telekommunisten. reproduce at will, with or without
attribution. independent or collective commercial usage encouraged.

Dmytri Kleiner/ Friends. There Can Be No Bailout

2008-09-30T18:46:23Z

Hello, here is a quick rant about the Bailout. Feel free to forward/blog, etc. Comments welcome, as always.

Cheers.

---

THERE CAN BE NO BAILOUT
Dmytri Kleiner

The housing bubble caused housing prices to rise by making money cheap.

The boom in demand for housing attracted developers who wanted to cash in
on high housing prices and the heavily government subsidized system of
highways and big box retailers that is the life-support system of ever
more remote satellite suburbs.

The increase in housing prices is the byproduct of money created by the
banking system and government subsidized development, neither the banks nor
the government have the economic basis to continue for ever. Driving up
location rents by increasing money supply and subsidizing irresponsible
development has no end-benefit, like any pyramid scheme, money just flows
up the chain, or up the "property ladder," until no more suckers can be
found to build up the downline. In the end, prices must fall. Deflation
is inevitable. There can be no bailout, a pyramid scheme can not be
rescued, not even if public funds are used to add one more, one final,
level to the pyramid. Of course, a new publicly funded level, thereby
forcibly roping-in the many who did not choose to get in on the Ponzi
scheme in the first place.

In every somber corner, from parliament to board room to coffee shop, the
debate over a false dilemma rages on. Bail out the home owners not the
lenders! First of all: AS IF! As if, a political class dripping wet with
financial industry campaign contributions will really be interested in
doing anything but soaking the small mortgage-holders further. This crisis,
like any financial crisis is an opportunity for wealth to concentrate even
more, and those who are in favorable political and economic proximities
will happily take any public funds they can get to reduce the costs of all
the juicy acquisitions while leaving the public holding assets no willing
buyer would buy at any price.

Even so, bailout the Home owners? I'm sorry, it may be pointless to
reject something that is never going to happen in any case, but fuck that
too. How many people lack adequate housing or pay an unreasonable portion
of their income for housing? If we're throwing trillions around, shouldn't
that be the fundamental issue? In the same way that the farm subsidy lobby
uses the myth of the independent rustic farmer to justify subsidies of
massive corporate conglomerates, no doubt the hard working family
will be used as the poster child for the "bailout" lobby. In truth, many of
the "Home owners" are as driven by greed and delusions of the "property
ladder" as the lenders, why should they be rewarded over renters and
residents of co-operative and public housing? There is a lot of
profit-motive speculation in the housing market among "home owners" and
this is just as much money-for-nothing greed as that which motivates the
money lenders. Private home ownership in ever-expanding satellite suburbs
is neither socially, economically nor environmentally desirable and has
been far over-subsidized already.

Bailout people with sustainable housing in livable communities
with effective social benefits. Create a society where people do not
require life-long wage-slavery to pay life-long debt for the privilege of
having a place to live.

-
Copyfarleft 2008 Telekommunisten. Reproduce at will, with or without
attribution. Independent or collective commercial usage encouraged.

Dmytri Kleiner/ Friends. Multiply And Share Forth, Dialstation Notes, Call for labour investment and some pr0n.

2008-09-25T17:02:05Z

~# Multiply And Share Forth!

Our friends at EXGAE & Conservas are putting together a massive free culture event in Barcelona, THE OXCARS, billed as "The Greatest Cultural Extravaganza of All Time," the event promises "12 hours of free culture, non-stop" including contributions from MattBlack of ColdCut, Wu Ming Foundation, Platoniq and many others.

For more information check out:

http://exgae.net/exgae-multiply-and-share-forth/theoxcars

~# Reach out and touch someone!

If you haven't tried Dialstation recently, there is no better time than now to make a call, improving call quality has been one of our recent aims, and so far it seems like some significant progress has been made, but only you can tell us what your experience is. Please help us by making calls and letting us know about the quality and reliability of the service. If you're setting up you account for the first time, make sure to email us and ask form some free trial credit. If you have any questions, please ask us.

http://www.dialstation.com

~# Invest in Telekommunisten! (only labour investment accepted).

Telekommunisten are looking for labour investment, particularly for copywriters, people that can translate from english to other languages and graphic artists/designers. If you want to help us develop and promote our projects and support the ideal of worker's self-organisation of production as a form of struggle against capitalism and corporate rule, contact us at contribute@telekommunisten.net

~# Download pr0n!

Unfortunately it seems there will not be a Cum2Cut in Berlin this year, however videos from the last two Independent Pornography File Festivals are now online, you can find them here:

Cum2Cut 2006: http://media.telekommunisten.net/index.php?fpp=10&did=0-0
Cum2Cut 2007: http://media.telekommunisten.net/index.php?fpp=10&did=0-1

All videos are under a copyleft-non-commercial license.

For more info see:

http://www.cum2cut.net

Telekommunisten: The Revolution Is Calling.

2008-06-07T19:50:04Z

Venture Communism and Telekommunisten are both projects that have come a long way over the past two years, however it would be kind of hard to put it all together from the various bits and pieces on our websites, which are always quite far behind the actual ideas and practices that develop in our day to day activities. This article is meant to express some these and to explain a little more about what it is we are working on and why.

Please forward or post anywhere where interested may be found.

Hope to see some of you at the New Life Festival this Sunday!

Cheers,
Dmytri Kleiner
dk@telekommunisten.net ~ call long distance with Dialstation! --> http://www.dialstation.com

= Telekommunisten: The Revolution Is Calling. =

Telekommunsiten is German/Canadian Worker's Collective based in Berlin. The collective is involved in the art, hacker/free-software and activist communities, our work focuses on promoting the ideal of worker's self-organization of production as a form of class struggle. Telekommunisten was formed as a part of the Venture Communism project and is an experiment in the development of Venture Communism.

= Telekommunisten, Venture Communism and Dialstation =

Venture Communism is a form of worker's self organization which provides a model of sharing property and forming mutual capital that is compatible with anti-capitalist ideals. However, venture communism does not provide a means of acquiring such property in the first place. Telekommunisten is intended to realize possibilities in forming the privative mutual property required to initiate venture communism.

The lack of any initial financing, most forms of which would be incompatible with the venture communist principal of ownership as a reward for labour not wealth, present twin challenges for a proto-venture-communist enterprise to overcome: Forming capital and finding customers. The first challenge in essence requires breaking the Iron Law of Wages, the implications of which are that worker's can never form capital because they can never earn any more than their subsistence cost from wages alone.

The primitive accumulation theory of Telekommunisten proposes to break the Iron Law by exploiting it's boundary conditions, namely that some labour is scarce, and therefore captures a form of scarcity rent in addition to wages and that some forms of capital are themselves commodities, and therefore can not even capture interest, more to the point, often these forms of capital are common inputs to production and are subsidized by private and public funds and are available on the market for below their own reproduction costs. Therefore, the Iron Law can be broken if you are able to invest scarce labour and employ commodity capital in production.

An obvious example of such commodity capital is basic telephone and internet infrastructure, which connects the farthest reaches of the globe together, built almost entirely with public money and available to be exploited for far less than it's real cost.

And likewise, an obvious example of the needed scarce labour investment is the IT and media skills required to derive new products from basic internet and telephone service.

Thus, Telekommunisten propose to form the primitive mutual property required to initiate venture communism by collective investment in the form of IT and media labour using only commonly available internet resources to derive marketable products.

The first of these products is Dialstation, which allow any land line or mobile telephone to make very inexensive international phonecalls.

The second challenge, finding customers without any initial financing for marketing, is addresses by linking the artistic and political nature of the project very closely with our products, therefore we promote products such as Dialstation as a matter of course in our artistic production and our participation in the activist and hacker communities.

Our basic premise is that people will use and promote our products if they identify with our artistic and political practices, and in turn the economy generated can support and expand these practices.

= For Miss Information Call =

"For Miss Information, Call" is the first artwork expressly presented as being a Telekommunisten creation, and is appropriately self-reflective focusing on miscommunication, rather than glamorizing technology.

Communications technologies are often described in terms of signal and noise, in other words parts of the message are either sent or not sent, received or not received. Yet communication is not composed of discrete message chunks, but rather a multitude of interdependent signifiers each of which modifies the meaning of the each of the others.

Communication on a natural scale, in physical proximity, by natural means, voice, body, smell, site, touch, delivers these signifier in a dense, interactive flow. Communication technologies abstract that flow, and with every signifier lost, not only are parts of the message lost, but other parts, whose meaning is influenced by the missing signals, is transformed, its meaning not lost, but rather changed, corrupted, miscommunicated.

The more technical and abstract our communication channels become, the more mis-communicative they become.

Miscommunication is neither signal nor noise, not the original message, nor a lost message, but, in fact, a new message, unintended by the original communicator, but none the less perceived by the recipient.

"For Miss Information Call" examines the message arising from miscommunication, capturing samples of miscommunication for analysis and exhibit with a playful and interactive city-scale experiment.

The character of "Miss Information" is a double entendre, being a homophone of "misinformation" it reveals a little of it's game up front, counting on curiosity or perhaps simply a lack of attention to prevent disbelief.

"Miss Information" presents herself as an Information Service, affixing stickers out of context to other media, posters, signs, walls, anywhere where information may be sought, creating the impression in callers that if they call her, she will inform them about the item of their interest.

These stickers present a telephone number and an invitation to call "for Miss Information."

Instead, the callers are welcomed into our experiment in miscommunication, the first callers are played a recording from Miss Information she tells them a simple message, including such details as the name, location and dates of the Hack.Fem.East exhibition, they are also asked to pass on this information should anybody ask them.

After that, when the next callers call Miss Information, they are connected directly to the last callers, and then are called themselves when the following callers call, and so on. The information, naturally, being transformed as it passes from person to person.

In the exhibition the recordings of these calls will be played, in a cycle, starting with the original message from Miss Information, and continuing exhibiting the message throughout the various transformations. What it becomes at the end, being unknown at the beginning, but constructed by a network of accidental communicators engaging in unintended collaborative miscommunication.

= The Revolution Is Calling =

Beyond the artistic and economic possibilities and challenges presented by telecommunications, Telekommunisten is founded on the broad revolutionary possibilities introduced by the ability of individuals to instantly interact on a global scale.

On it's own, neither venture communism nor the primitive accumulation theory of Telekommunisten is remarkably novel or revolutionary, these just address basic economic facts that any collective enterprise must address, and indeed history is full of related ideas, practices and attempts. Any revolutionary theory must be founded on revolutionary conditions, not simply interesting ideas.

The emergence of peer networks such as the Internet creates such conditions.

The society we live in, and societies everywhere and always, are composed of social relationships, the relationships of production, in particular, form the economic capacities required to impose social and cultural structures. The relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society,on which arises the legal and political structures that define it.

New kinds of relationships, if they can can create new productive relations, can thus constitute a new economic structure which is able to give rise to a new kind of society.

Capitalism, the current dominant form of society, depends on the extraction of interest and rent for it's subsistence and growth. Capturing interest and rent by way of the theft of surplus value depends on State granted title and State enforced privilege. Communications based on global peer networks have a chance to resist and evade such title and privilege.

Examples of this include the fact that Free Software, whose production depends on peer networks, does not capture rent or interest, and popular attacks on the rents captured by the Recording and Movie Industries by users of file sharing technologies, show us the difficulties faced by those whose incomes depends on controlling reproduction.

It is clear we now have new forms of relationships that have never existed before, and therefor communicating in these new ways, especially when this communication becomes a component of production, is the making of the new society. The Revolution is sending email. The Revolution is chatting, The Revolution is posting articles. The Revolution is file sharing. The Revolution is calling.

Sunday, June 8: Art & Economics Group Quarterly Forum 2008, Q2 @ New Life Festival

2008-06-06T15:06:56Z

Please note that the Art & Economics Group will have our quarterly
discussion this Sunday, this will a special installment as a
part of the New Life Festival, and will be at the Wooloo/New Life
studio at Choriner Str. 85 / Mitte.

Details follow:

Cheers,
Dmytri Kleiner
dk@telekommunisten.net ~ call long distance with Dialstation! --> http://www.dialstation.com

---------------------

Art & Economics Group Quarterly Forum 2008, Q2 @ New Life Festival

Presented by Tanja Ostojic / David Rych / Dmytri Kleiner
on behalf of the Art & Economics Group

Sunday, June 8, 2008 at 17h

New Life Festival
Choriner Str. 85 / Mitte
5 PM
^^^ please note special Q2 location!
// we return to Galarie 35 again for Q3 <<<

Program:

- Introduction & overview of the Arts & Economics Group
- Special edition of Art-bonds
- Dmytri Kleiner will lead a discussion on the Iron Law of Copyright Earnings.

The Quarterly Workshop of the Art & Economics group will be on Sunday,
June 8th, 2008 at 17h at New Life Festival..

For more information regarding the New Life Festival, please see:

~#: http://www.wooloo.org/festival/

The Art & Economics Group investigates the intersection of art and
political economy. Topics include political economy as a theme in
art, the economics of art production and economic activity as an
art practice. Discussions are held Quarterly, each one with a
particular topic is discussed and a new edition of the
Art & Economics Group Bonds are released.

The discussion of the evening focuses will present a brief
overview of the Art & Economics Group for the New Life Festival,
and a discussion of the economics of intellectual property
from the point of view of art production as presented in the
article "Copyfarleft, Copyjustright and the Iron Law of
Copyright Earnings" by Dmytri Kleiner.

~#: http://www.telekommunisten.net/CopyjustrightCopyfarleft

Links to German and Portuguese translations can be found here:

~#: http://www.telekommunisten.net/venture-communism

Please join us if you can.

Yours,
Art & Economics Group

contact: tostojic@web.de

The Art & Economics Group is presented in co-operation with Galerie 35.

TODAY, May 8th:: Sieges ueber den Fascismus ! TOMORROW: May 9th:: HACK.Fem.EAST ! And some Dialstation notes...

2008-05-08T14:22:52Z

TODAY, May 8th:: Tag Der Sieges ueber den Fascismus

Hello, I hope everyone here in Berlin can join us today at Cafe Buchhandlung, 32 Tucholskystr, this
is the first of the now-on-Thursday Stammtische, and it will be a special occasion, Johannes Wilms
will read a selected anti-fascist text, the first to guess the author earns a free drink!

TOMORROW, May 9th:: HACK.Fem.EAST!

Miss Information and her Telekommunisten will be one of the participants in HACK.Fem.EAST,
with the "For Miss Information, Call" Street Art/Phone Art project.

HACK.Fem.EAST presents Women, Technology and Networks in Eastern Europe.
Exhibition, performances, meetings.
Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien Berlin. Opening: 9 May, from 19.00.

For Miss Information, Call
+49 30 2000 9039
Call Now!

//~~_ http://www.hackfemeast.org _~~\\

For those outside of Germany, call with Dialstation:
[[--> http://www.dialstation.com/CallMissInfo

And speaking of Dialstation...

As expected, we have some rough spots in the launch of the new Dialstation and there
has been some downtime in different parts, all is up now, so please check it out and
spread the word.

Also, PLEASE NOTE, that as a result of certain treacherous counterrevolutionaries
attempting to compromise Dialstation, we have had to suspend the automatic
provisioning of free credit for new accounts, for instant access you will now need to
make a payment.

HOWEVER, we still are more than happy to give you and your comrades some free
credit to try it out, but you will need to send an email at support@dialstation.com
or use the feedback box first.

Telekommunisten 2008 Dialstation Reimplementation Now Live!

2008-05-02T14:32:13Z

Dialstation 2008 Launch

http://www.dialstation.com

May 1st, 2008
International Day of Workers Solidarity

Telekommunisten
The Revolution is Calling

WHAT IS DIALSTATION?

Dialstation is the ideal way to make international calls from your
mobile telephone. Inexpensive and convenient, Dialstation works with any
normal telephone and does not require any special software.

Epoch-defining revolutionary changes in transportation and
communication, along with the growth of the informal economy and
trans-local communities are changing the world. Many of us have friends,
family and business contacts in different countries. Communicating
internationally is increasingly a daily fact of life.

In order to make international calling affordable, new ways of calling
have emerged. Most people have heard of Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Calling
Cards, however each of these have their drawbacks. VoIP requires you to
make your calls from a computer or IP telephone, which is not always
possible. Calling cards are not always available, and cumbersome.

Dialstation is a prepaid calling service designed to be used from your
landline or mobile phone.

Dialstation gives you Personal Direct Numbers for the people you
call most often. A Personal Direct Number is a unique phone number
that you can save in your contact book. You can use the PDN to
reach this person simply by telephoning directly to it, as
often as you like, with no codes or calling card numbers to remember.

Dialstation is very inexpensive. Rates to many countries, such as China,
Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, the USA and Canada are less than 1
cent per minute (0.58). Most European Landlines are also just 1 Euro
cent perminute. Mobile telephones in most European countries are 14
Euro cents per minute. Calls to Russia and Brazil are less than 5
Euro cents. Calling India is just 6 Euro cents per minute.

Check our website to find the detailed rates for your common destinations.

http://www.dialstation.com/rates

To get you started, your first calls are free!

Telekommunisten is a Berlin-based Canadian/German worker-owned
technology company.

WHO ARE THE TELEKOMMUNISTEN?

Telekommunisten is 100% worker-owned. We are committed to free software,
social justice, environmnetal protection, international development and
building a worker-controlled economy.

We believe that capitalism and the resulting global dominance of
undemocratic corporations are the source of poverty, inequality, war and
environmental catastrophe.

We believe a solution can be found in workers autonomously organizing
their own production. Without the theft of labour's product, the oligarchs
would not have the wealth to control corrupt politicians and
fund immoral wars.

We believe that only socialism can create a truly free market.

When you use Dialstation, you support our work. We need your help to
spread the word. Please forward this announcement to where interest may
be found.

The Revolution is Calling.

For more information please see: http://www.dialstation.com

TODAY >> May 1st :: Telekommunisten Tag der Arbeit Salon @ C-BASE // Dialstation 2008 Launch <<

2008-05-01T08:31:12Z

TODAY >> May 1st :: Telekommunisten Tag der Arbeit Salon @ C-BASE // Dialstation 2008 Launch <<

The Telekommunisten would like to invite all who can make it to C-Base Today to celebrate the International Day of Workers
Solidarity with us!

We will holding discussions about the Telekommunisten project as well as Introducing the brand new version of Dialstation.

~:: http://www.c-base.org
~:: http://www.dialstation.com

The shinny new and highly experimental DIALSTATION is now available, please try it out!! You will need to re register your account, use
the new quick register form on the Dialstation website to get started with the new kommPanel.

Find out more about the Tag der Arbiet festivities at:

~:: http://www.theRevolutionIsCalling.com

We will also preview and discuss our Street-art/Phone-Art project, "For Miss Information, Call, " which will be a part of the Hack.Fem.East
exhibition at Kunstraum Kreutzberg.

~:: http://hackfemeast.org/web/?page_id=72

//// C-BASE
//// Rungestrasse 20
//// 10179 Berlin
~2pm unti ~2am, Thursday May 1st, 2008 ////

all are welcome, pass it on....
////

Belgrade, Novi Sad, Zagreb and an IMPORTANT STAMMTISCH MESSAGE

2008-04-14T11:50:48Z

** Stammtisch ***

In order to accommodate my unrelenting travel schedule, our weekly Telekommunisten
amtstunden, Stammtisch, well be permanently moved from Tuesdays to Thursdays,
starting May 8th, pass it on.

...................................................................................................................................................................

Telekommunisten are gearing for the launch of Dialstation beta2 on May 1st, I will be doing a series of discussions
about Telekommunisten and Venture Communism in Serbia and Croatia, details below, please forward.

Revolucija zove!

~~ Belgrade ~~

Saturday 19th of April 7 PM, MKM, (address: Kraljevica Marka 4) Belgrade
With Vladan Jeremic <http://slobodnakultura.org>;

~~ Novi Sad ~~

Sunday 20th of April 7 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, (address: Dunavska 37) Novi Sad
With Vladan Jeremic <http://slobodnakultura.org>;

~~ Zagreb ~~

Tuesday 22nd of April, 7PM, Multimedijalni institut/ net.kulturni klub mama (address: Preradovićeva 18) Zagreb
With Marcel Mars <http://www.mi2.hr>;

/////////////////////

##english

Dmytri Kleiner is a USSR-Born, Canadian software developer and cultural producer, he is a co-founder of Telekommunisten, a worker's collective that provides telephone and Internet services, and an independent researcher investigating the intersections of art, technology and political economy.

With Telekommunisten, the Art & Economics Group, and Venture Communism, as well as the related writings and activities, Dmytri Keiner encourages a critical analysis of the social and economic relations of communications and promotes the ideal of worker's self-organization of production as a means of class struggle.

##serbo-croatian

Dmytri Kleiner je haker, programer, teoreticar, roden u Ukrajini, odrastao u Kanadi, zivi u Berlinu. Dmytri predlaze radnicima investiranje u komunizam. 1. maja 2006. pokrenuo je Telekommunisten, prototip Venture Communism enterprisea. Dmytri je, s drugima, razvio softver za IP telefoniju i srednje veliku PBX centralu, jeftino telefoniranje, automatske sekretarice, preusmjeravanje poziva. Radnici svih zemalja, pridruzite se. Revolucija zove!

Farewell Oekonux, we barely knew you.

2008-03-10T01:38:43Z

Farewell Oekonux, we barely knew you: A Open Goodbye to the Neo-Utopians.
Dmytri Kleiner, 2008.

"The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves
far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the
condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored.
Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction
of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people,
when once they understand their system, fail to see it in the best
possible plan of the best possible state of society?. Hence, they
reject all political, and especially all revolutionary,
action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor,
by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the
force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel."
-- Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.

By 1848 the European continent may have been haunted by the spectre of communism,
as feudal relations where unraveling and transforming while the major European
powers where experiencing violent social spasms as they adopted the Industrialism
pioneered by Great Britain, however back in the "Workshop of the World," the
newly privileged English working class had noticeably mellowed.

As Great Britain entered the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, her own
industry turned away from (now highly competitive and thus low profit) textile
markets, and moved to far more lucrative Capital Goods.

Income from Steel and Machines sold to newly industrialising nations on the
continent, the new world and beyond made the United Kingdom the world's dominant
financial power. Her workers, if perhaps only for a brief moment, enjoyed
a level of relative wealth and social stability far removed from the gruesome,
inhumane conditions brutally imposed during the first phase of Industry.

After a century of Capitalization, all the newly formed productive capacity
created a massive increase in the supply of basic consumer goods, prices
where in free-fall across the board. And, with the repeal of the protectionist
Corn Laws in 1846, British tables where overflowing with cheap imported food.

The radical convulsions of Luddites, Levelers, and Diggers, from the eras of
enclosures, civil wars and the birth of industry, where long over
and even Chartism was quickly disappearing.

Wealth, however briefly, had fattened the worker, the Capitalist,
the Landlord and the State alike, whose raw, ruthless, violent power, so
crucial in the primitive accumulation that created the basis of Capitalist
social relationships, whose history is written in "Letters of Blood and Fire,"
was now hidden behind the chubby, smiling face of British Imperialism
and wrapped in the legitimizing veneer of Tradition.

The Socialism of the day, the Socialism denounced by Marx & Engels in their
Communist Manifesto, was Utopian Socialism. A Socialism that doesn't chose sides,
denies struggle, denies even class. A socialism that ignores the dialectic
nature of change, and assumes that some new form of organisation, born from the
inspiration of a kind of enlightened social designer, driven by a technologically
determinist world view, will be adopted whole-scale on the basis of it's
undeniable merit by worker, capitalist, and landlord alike, the latter
two classes happily abandoning the privileges that distinguish them and
uniting with the meritous worker in a new homogeneous mono-class of
postindustrial Utopian Man, living happily in Phalanstère and New Harmonies
ever after.

Utopian Man never came about.

The brief gravy train of the British worker derailed in a train-wreck of
depression, unemployment, general glut and Capital flight. The teeth and
claws of Power and naked Imperialism where again shamelessly exposed as
two world wars shook the world. Utopian Socialism quickly became a historical
curiosity as Anarchist and Marxist Communism spread among workers, politicians,
and intellectuals world wide and erupted in various syndicalist, political and
insurrectionist forms, none of which hesitated in denouncing the Bosses.

In the aftermath of Soviet collapse, the dream of Homo Utopicus returned.

An accelerated plundering of second and third world alike, unhindered by a
now lost geostrategic balance of power, valourised triumphant Capitalism and
the Capitalist State alike.

The Internet, born of Cold War military funding, introduced the most significant
technological development since the dawn of electricity, a medium of
communication and exchange that was synchronous, peer to peer, and international.

A network of equals, communicating and exchanging globally, A free network that
could route around censorship and State intervention alike, a network where citizen
journalist played on equal footing with media tycoon, a network that could expand
anywhere where one node consented to inter-connect with another.

The territorial monopoly on violence that was the essence of the State and its
landlords now made obsolete by Cyberspace. The control of the circulation of
capital and product that was the lynch-pin of Capitalist wealth now undone by
direct online commerce. The scarcity of the instruments of production that
chained the worker to his employer and social station now obliterated by
immaterial capital, nonreciprocal production, free software, free culture.

"The Californian Ideology," replaced class struggle with techno-utopianism and
economic liberalism. The Neo-Utopians where born.

However once again, Utopian man hasn't come about.

The Internet, born in the generous nursery of the arms race, was now forced
to pander for finance from the very Capitalist ruling class it's anarchic
structure was supposed to neutralize.

Mom and Pop ISPs with backrooms full of consumer-grade modems are replaced by
giant telecommunications corporations with shiny and expensive DSL infrastructure.
Networks become less neutral and more asymmetrical.

Like the downfall of the heyday of the pre-Depression British industrial worker,
the dotCom bust marked the explosion of the era of domino asset bubbles,
precarious McJobs, wars of economic desperation and naked State repression.

Strengthened copyright laws, enhanced data retention laws, digital rights management,
software patents and other. political legal, and capital interventions combine to make
the data you store, receive, and transmit a matter of national security and property
privilege. Usenet is replaced by Yahoo! Groups, email is replaced by Facebook,
Napster is replaced by iTunes. IRC by Skype, All funded by great accumulations of
wealth and firmly in the hands of the ruling class.

Day by day, communications systems are becoming more and more centralized and
exclusively mediated.

The role of peer to peer technology, the core breakthrough of the Internet,
is more and more a contraband technology, a technology for criminals, pirates,
rebels, maybe even "terrorists."

The days that we can continue to pretend, despite all evidence to the contrary in a
world of rapidly increasing wealth stratification, that mankind will anyminutenow be
emancipated by Ubuntu, Wikipedia and Facebook are over.

If we are to create a society where we produce and share as peers, where direct
unmediated communications and commerce allows peer producers in informal, translocal
communities to throw off the chains of Monopolist and Rentier, then we must
resurrect the language of resistance, of class struggle, and acknowledge the fact
that no privileged class will give up it's advantage gladly, that bottom up
revolution will always face top-down repression.

If we are unwilling to identify the thieves, we can never end the theft.

Saturday, March 8: Art & Economics Group Quarterly Forum 2008, Q1

2008-03-07T00:22:56Z

Hello everyone, thanks for all the congratulations emails for Henriette's kleiner bruder Nikolai! Franziska and I
will respond to each and every one over the weekend! Maybe we'll even figure out how this digital photograph stuff
works.

Please not that the Art & Economics Group will have our quarerly discusion this Saturday, and that we have
changed the time to a more family-freindly 5pm.

Details follow:

Cheers,

---------------------

Art & Economics Group Quarterly Forum 2008, Q1

Presented by Tanja Ostojic / David Rych / Dmytri Kleiner
on behalf of the Art & Economics Group

Projektraum, Galerie 35
Simon-Dach-Str. 35
Berlin-Friedrichshain

Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 17h

Galerie 35
Simon-Dach-Straße 35
10245 Berlin-Friedrichshain

Program:

- Quarterly report
- Talk with the guest of the evening: Stephan Kurr, artist based in Berlin
- Special edition of Art-bonds: designed by Stephan Kurr
- Stephan Kurr will auction a money sculpture!

The Quarterly Workshop of the Art & Economics group will be on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 17h at Project room, Gallery 35.

The Art & Economics group that was established in 2006, investigates the intersection of art and political economy.
This will be the first in a series of four discussions held this year. Topics include political economy as a theme in art,
the economics of art production and economic activity as an action based art practice.

The discussion of the evening focuses on the economical development of the art market,
its relation to the stock market and the price of an art work as a final criterion for quality.
It ends with money, subject in the art practice of Stephan Kurr. (www.kurr.org <http://www.kurr.org>;)

Please join us if you can.

Yours,
Art & Economics Group

contact: tostojic@web.de

---------------------------------------
Galerie 35
Simon-Dach-Straße 35
10245 Berlin-Friedrichshain
mail@galerie35.de
http://www.galerie35.de
tel 030 - 25 76 88 89