A Manifesto for Communist Technology Use

By Blair Vidakovich - vidak@riseup.net

Thesis Zero: Electrical Systems Are Tools For The Liberation of Humans From Work

1. Electrical systems are tools created by humans for the purpose of solving the many and various problems humans may encounter. Unless some electrical system acquires sapience, electrical systems cannot have moral agency. They remain at the status of tools, and not people.

2. Almost all the electrical systems we come across today were created and implemented for the purpose of profit. The fact that capitalism is the dominant mode of production for the human species obscures the fact that electrical systems are tools, which are created, operated, maintained and for the benefit of humans. As Marx says in Das Kapital: Volume I, capitalism makes it look as if electrical systems, as commodities, have some sort of magic power, and have some sort of ability to move themselves through human society. Capitalist makes it look as if commodities themselves have the ability to make decisions and limit or enable human potentials.

3. But the idea that, say, Facebook, the x86_64 ISA, Twitter, Bitcoin, the US Dollar, MacOS or Windows are moral demeritous forces in human society in and of themselves is a complete falsehood, and an illusion of capitalism.

4. Electrical systems, like computers, music synthesisers, lasers, satellite surveillance systems, RFID tags etc. etc. are always under the control of some human, or group of humans. The evil effects that electrical systems can have in our current society are because they are under the control of a tiny minority of ultra-rich people. This ruling class uses systems like nuclear weapons and big data processing algorithms to control and oppress the population of the world.

5. ~nand.club stands for the liberation of electronic technology from the hands of the few. When placed into the hands of the many, electrical systems will lead to the liberation of the human species from work, boredom, and drudgery. ~nand.club promotes the use of electrical systems for the liberation of human beings.

Thesis One: Technological Disobdience is a Categorical Imperative

1. When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. There exists a ruling class using electrical technology to enrich itself at the expense of the great mass of humanity. It is therefore everyone’s moral duty to protect themselves against the oppression that the global ruling class exerts through computers and electronics.

2. It is also everyone’s duty to fight back against the oppression of the global capitalist ruling class that they exert through electrical systems. Reverse engineering, circuit bending, piracy, theft, and other forms of ethical hacking are all necessary to bring about the end of capitalism.

3. This is because big electrical-commodity producing firms are trying to limit your freedom through your use of their products. Microsoft and Apple operating systems for instance are not distributed with their source code. This renders them non-liberatory forms of technology, because one is not able to transparently check to see exactly what is running on one’s computer when it is running Apple or Windows code.

4. The same goes for the “purpose” for which capitalist firms originally advertise their commodity to be put. Following and obeying the technological authority of a capitalist firm and using their commodities the way they tell you to limits your freedom. Marx put it rather vividly: capital is like a vampire, feeding on your living vital forces. The more capital sucks from you, the more it lives. The more you follow the authority of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Adobe, Nvidia etc., the more they gain control over you, and continue oppressing the human population of the world.

Thesis Two: Private Property Must Be Abolished; All Products Should be Giftware

1. Private property is immoral. The sole basis of capitalist private property is the ability to coerce people, by excluding them from control of the means of production. Without private property, it is possible to have democratic control over the means of production. In a word: Communism.

2. In order to combat the forces of capitalism under capitalism, the ~nand.club tilde promotes the practice of gifting objects (use-values), products, services, and data. Capitalism seems to succeed because the use-values it provides are incredibly cheap:

The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, 1848)

3. As the quotation from Marx and Engels explains, people choose commodities like Windows and fast food because (at least when OEM), they are cheap and conveninent. People frequently opt not to participate in more ethical and environmental practices because capitalism deliberately disincentivises them from doing so. Why use some Free Software when there is some cost in time to gain the skills in order to use it?

4. Nothing is more convenient, however, than a gift. Some data, some electronic components, either liberated from some capitalist outlet or otherwhise, should all be gifted on ~nand.club. This is one way we can create a culture of true hacking–the kind of hacking of the 1950s and 1960s–the free sharing of tools and information by those with bosses trying to steal their products of their labour. Something freely available in the commons that does not ameliorate the effects of capitalism is resistance to capitalism.

5. ~nand.club also supports the practice of liberation of use-values and services from the status of being private property of some capitalist firm. In the case of tangible, physical use-values, theft is not an insurrectionary or power-building form of praxis, it is merely amelioratory, but is is a progressive act of resistance. In the form of software, some liberation of software may in fact significantly damage the control the ruling class may have over some particular means of production.

Thesis Three: The Best Solution to the On-Coming Ecological Catastrophe is Solar Punk

1. ~nand.club is a part of the Solar Punk movement. The following sections are lifted from What is Solar Punk @Solar Punk Anarchist. They express the essence of what solar punk is, and it is worthwhile giving quotation at length because it is good to re-use and promote other people’s work where it expresses the same goals as your own.

2. Solarpunk’s vision is of an ecological society beyond war, domination, and artificial scarcity; where everything is powered by green energy and a culture of hierarchy and exclusion has been replaced by a culture founded on radical inclusiveness, unity-in-diversity, free cooperation, participatory democracy, and personal self-realisation.

3. While steampunk imagines a past that might have been, based on Victorian-age technology, solarpunk imagines a future that could be, based on current-age technology. It anticipates the type alternative history science-fiction the people of the future might write about us if things turn out horribly. But more than just a new science-fiction or fantasy subgenre, it’s also practical vision for (maybe) bringing the things it imagines into being in the real world.

4. This would be a world of decentralised eco-cities, 3D printing, vertical farms, solar glass windows, wild or inventive forms of dress and design, and a vibrant cosmopolitan aesthetic; where technology is no longer used to exploit the natural world, but to automate away needless human labour and to help restore the damage the Oil Age has already done.

5. ~nand.club exists, among the other purposes of anti-capitalism, commodity liberation, participatory democracy etc, for the promotion of the solar punk movement.