This essay begins with the following proposition: given that we
spend a large proportion of our time working, a just society will
provide or encourage meaningful work. I further assume that, rather
than mounting a full frontal assault on the root of the problem, which
I identify as capitalism and instrumental wage labour, we should
instead seek out and broaden spaces where life can unfold freely (Gorz, 1994).
Hackers, a group or label used in a sense unfamiliar to analytical
philosophers, have created such spaces, and fit Melucci's description
of individuals who "invest... in the creation of autonomous centres of
action". Hackers have, to an extent, "oppose[d] the intrusion of the
state and market" (quoted in Della-Porta & Diani, 2003) into their lifeworld since they first emerged as a social group in the late 1950s (Levy, 2001).
I shall therefore set out to show how the Hacker Ethic, by which all
hackers work, provides a promosing model both for further research into
meaningful work and for public policy in the same area.
I shall proceed by first developing an understanding of the Hacker
Ethic, which will highlight a central concern of my essay, that of
orientations that I characterise as self-indulgent and social placing
conflicting obligations upon individuals. I will then analyse Marx's
concept of alienation to deepen my understanding of meaningful work,
and to show how the Hacker Ethic addresses Marx's concerns. Finally, I
will show how, by employing my conception of alienation, the Hacker
Ethic can to an extent overcome the conflicting obligations.
The word 'hacker' originated in the computer labs of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1950s amongst a group of
programmers who believed that "all information should be free" and that
"access to computers... should be unlimited and total" (Levy, 2001, p.40). Hackers now define themselves as "an expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example" (Raymond, 2003).
One could work in a 'hackerish' way in any field of endeavour where
universal access to, and sharing of, the tools of your trade would be
positive and viable. Decades later the media began to apply the term to
criminals using computers, who hackers began to call 'crackers' (Raymond, 2003).2
Pekka Himanen wrote the first major study of the hackers' attitude
from a philosophical perspective, establishing a 'Hacker Ethic' with
seven key characteristics: passion, freedom, their work ethic, their
money ethic, their network ethic, caring and creativity (Himanen, 2001,
p.141). Broadly speaking the Hacker Ethic suggests (a) the importance
of a particular kind of work, namely the kind that hackers can be
passionate about, that isn't motivated by money, and that is playful
(b) a particular approach to working, which allows an individual rhythm
of life and yet also places the community and cooperation at the
centre, and (c) a particular approach to building productive
communities, involving equal and unfettered access to information and
tools facilitated by open sharing. Utopian though it sounds, it is
important to recognise that the hackers who subscribe to this ethic
have built much of the infrastructure of today's information society 3.
Parts (a) and (b) encapsulate a work ethic that is orientated
towards work as being intrinsically worthwhile and motivating, rather
than instrumental. Hacker work is, in the words of the hacker Linus
Torvalds, "interesting, exciting, and joyous", "intrinsically
interesting and challenging" (Himanen, 2001, pp.xiii-xvii) and "goes beyond the realm of surviving or of economic life" (Capurro, 2003).
That these features are intrinsic to the work, rather than being a
subjective attitude on the part of the individual, is demonstrated by a
comment from an employee of Microsoft. The company competes with the
work of hackers, often attacking them, and so charged an employee with
the task of investigating the competitiveness of the hackers' work.
Without any bias in favour of hackers, he wrote that when hacking on
their software, "the feeling was exhilarating and addictive" (OSI, 1998).
It is important to note that when hackers talk about intrinsic
motivation they almost always use adjectives like "fun", "passionate",
"joyous" and "entertaining". In contemporary society we maintain a
distinction between work and leisure, and are acutely aware of when
work erodes the time we usually dedicate to leisure. To hackers, the
distinction is a non sequitor. Hacking on some challenging code is
every bit as entertaining as playing a game of football or reading a
book, albeit in a different way. Not all play is "something wasteful
[or] frivolous", and can be "the experience of being an active,
creative and fully autonomous person"; to hack "is to dedicate yourself
to realizing your full human potential; to take an essentially active,
rather than passive stance towards your environment; and to be
constantly guided in this by your sense of fulfilment (sic), meaning
and satisfaction" (Kane, 2000).
This guiding sense is apparent in hackers' approach to work
management, and specifically in how they decide what to work on. The
dominant factor, according to most theorists, is the desire to "scratch
and itch", i.e. to satisfy a need (Raymond, 1999) (Lakhani & Wolf, 2005).
This need may be a functional one where the hacker needs a particular
bit of software, or it may be a personal one where the hacker wants to
try his hand at a particular technique. Most hacker work is entered
into voluntarily because it is "intellectually stimulating", because it
"improves skills" and because of the code's "work functionality" (Lakhani & Wolf, 2005).
If this is the case, then the adjectives given by Torvalds and the
Microsoft employee should not be thought of as the sole motivations for
work, nor solely as pleasant byproducts, but rather as factors that
affect how a hackers prefer to scratch their itches.
This orientation around the activity and its inherent worth gives
rise to a meritocratic form of organisation. According to Levy,
"Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as
degrees, age, race, or position." If a hacker wants to pursue a line of
work, they simply start hacking and gain approval from other hackers
when their work shows merit. Access to computing equipment and advice
from fellow hackers isn't restricted by bureaucracy or unjust social
arrangements (Levy, 2001,
p.43). Of course meritocracies place demanding barriers to entry
insofar as they require a certain level of skill and aptitude. They
also fail to emphasise other aspects of personality or capability that
we might find positive such as race and gender, which may be "deeply
felt" by some individuals (Adam, 2004).
This problem can be overcome simply by acknowledging the positive
aspects of equal opportunities, and of social duties that help the less
able; these suggestions are coherent with the hackers' work ethic.
Weizenbaum, an early critic of hackers, suggested that hackers work
"without definite purpose". Unable to set long-term goals or analyse
information in a teleological context, he claimed that hackers are
aimless and disembodied. Compulsively scratching itches, Weizenbaum's
hacker is like a hyperactive child who may engage passionately in
frenzied activity without ever achieving anything. This is a culture
that he describes as "instrumental rationality", the result of the
belief that if some task is technically feasible then it is worth
performing (quoted in Hannemyr, 1999).
For a work ethic to be truly fulfilling, truly meaningful, he suggests
that it must account for some kind of worthwhile aim towards which the
hackers' activity is directed. However, as Hannemyr (1999) has pointed
out, hackers create products not only for the pleasure of the work but
also for the utility and beauty of the products themselves. Hackers
value "flexibility, tailorability, modularity and openendedness to
facilitate on-going experimentation". The activity of creation may not
be as aimless as Weizenbaum suggests, however one can still object that
these aims are limited. Creating for the sake of abstract features in
the product could still be characterised as a form of instrumental
rationality, without wider personal or social goals such as the
creation of tools that enhance personal life quality or that meet a
pressing social need.
Wiezenbaum could reply that such a creative act would simply
fetishise the role of information and activities that create it,
without good reason to value them as abstract entities. He could
further point out that such an attitude would have no objection to
creating harmful products, such as software that facilitates anonymous
online transfer of child pornography, if the creation of the product
was particularly enjoyable and if the code was deemed to be beautiful.
This lack of focus on outcome leads to an ambuguity in the work ethic:
is it the case that hackers value characteristics inherent to the work
and the code they create, or do they also account for the use value of
the products? This ambiguity makes it difficult to say, given that they
have a limited amount of time during which to hack, how they should
spend it.
The hackers' work ethic, insofar as it concentrates on how one
should work and why it should be motivating, invites the charge of
self-indulgence. It argues for an autonomy in work that facilitates
personal fulfilment without clarifying this ambiguity of values, and
without accounting for social obligations that might reasonably abridge
this autonomy. The Hacker Ethic does, however, encapsulate social
obligations in part (c) mentioned above. These obligations can be most
clearly studied in the free software movement, an applied example of
the hackers' social ethic.
The free software movement arose out of the hacker subculture in MIT
in the 1980s. It was started by Richard M. Stallman, who wanted to
produce an entire operating system that would be developed and
distributed according to the principles of the Hacker Ethic. This act
would be "a way of bringing back the cooperative spirit" found in the
hackers' social ethic (FSF, 2003).
This spirit was being taken away by an increasingly proprietary
application of copyright to software, whereby the copyright owners
abridge hackers' access to information.
The hackers' social ethic is based upon three principles: First, the
belief that sharing information, be it about the weather or a novel, is
good; second, that hackers have an ethical duty to share the
information with which they work 4; and third, that hackers should facilitate access to computers wherever possible (Raymond, 2003).
These principles are closely related to the hacker work ethic, since
they facilitate it by removing artificial restrictions on the hacker's
freedom to use the information with which they work. It is important to
note that there is no obligation to create socially valuable products,
only to remove restrictions, a liberal feature that I will attend to
later.
Stallman applied these axioms by subverting copyright, a limited
monopoly granted by the state to a creative person in return for their
increased productivity. He wrote and applied a license to his
copyrighted work that gave the community free access to the
information. He coined this act "copyleft", and described the licensed
work as "free software", where "free" refers to freedom rather than
price. The license guarantees the following four freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits
(FSF, 2004)
Stallman conceived of these freedoms as an ethical duty on the part
of the hacker to society. Not sharing information in this way is "the
wrong treatment of other people", "anti-social" and it "cuts the bonds
of society" (Stallman, 2004a) (Stallman, 2004b).
These bonds are hinted at when he writes that not sharing with others
is "divisive" because it reduces the emphasis on "helping one's
neighbors" and on working "for the public good". To do this is an
obligation, but not one so strong that we must always work for the public good (Stallman, 1992) (Stallman, 2005).
Even the suggestion that we ought to work for the public good on
occasion seems to contradict Raymond's reluctance to mention working on
socially valuable products.
In a seminal position paper, Stallman describes the harms that
non-free software causes, which parallel the freedoms his licenses
guarantee. In the first place, "fewer people use the program" (Stallman, 1992).
People might be unable to use a program because of 'natural
restrictions', such as blindness, or by 'artificial restrictions', such
as copyright. In correspondence with Stallman, he confirmed that only
harms caused by artificial restrictions need concern a hacker,
suggesting that they have no obligation to ensure that, for example, a
blind person can use their program as well as somebody with sight (Stallman, 2005).
The second harm he identifies is that "none of the users can adapt or
fix the program", caused by an application of copyright that obstructs
access to the program's source code. This also causes the final harm,
which is that "other developers cannot learn from the program, or base
new work on it" (Stallman, 1992). Again, a person with no programming skills or with blindness would suffer the harms regardless of artificial restrictions.
The free software philosophy operates on the harm
principle, suggesting that placing any artificial restriction on the
sharing of information causes a social harm that is never
justified and that must therefore be avoided.rom this Stallman develops
a golden rule, that one must always share software freely under the
terms described above. Though he suggests that it is a Kantian moral
position, one could also advance a rule utilitarian or rule
consequentialist account, that one ought to share software freely
because the good consequences, and the avoidance of the aforementioned
harms, always outweigh the bad. He writes that "if anything deserves a
reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can be a social
contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results.
If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs,
by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use
of these programs." 5.
This analysis is admittedly trivial, but necessary since the ambiguity
of his moral philosophy, and his probable focus on either a Kantian,
utilitarian or consequentialist account, causes problems in my account
of alienation later in this essay.
The free software social ethic also has an important positive
component that goes beyond Raymond's weak or liberal emphasis on rights
and access. Though these are an important part of the free software
ethic - Stallman maintains that the freedoms his licenses guarantee are
a human right (Berry, 2004, p.70) 6
- it also emphasises values such as cooperation and communication in
productive communities. "The conception of the social good is strongly
communitarian and privileges both a vision of a social order that
assigns rights and obligations, and one that is fair and equitable" (Berry, 2004,
p.73). The rights and obligations that this position implies are taken
as a Kantian categorical imperative and should be scrupulously followed
by all hackers.
Stallman's position poses two problems. In the first place, one
might reasonably ask why it is that we have any obligation to share
information but not to produce it. The ethic is neutral towards an idle
hacker who does no work but hostile to a busy hacker who refuses to
share his work. It may be simply that social sanctions against idleness
already exist, and so the Hacker Ethic is only concerned with an
additional sanction not present, that against exclusive ownership of
information. Raymond, for example, is an ardent supporter of the free
market and so presumably he believes that we needn't worry about
idleness because the need for money will compel a hacker to work.
Stallman's more left wing political stance, on the other hand, explains
his reference to working for the public good. It is safe to say, then,
that the Hacker Ethic does place value on individual performing
socially useful work, but that there is no consensus on where the
responsibility for this lies, be it in the market or social obligations.
The second problem is to do with Stallman's aversion to natural
restrictions. By 'natural', Stallman doesn't just refer to biological
restrictions but also to other restrictions that we would normally
think of as outside the direct control of the hacker. So both blindness
and poverty in the user are natural restrictions that the hacker cannot
directly overcome, or at least that is the prevailing opinion in the
society in which Stallman lives. But the aversion remains strange.
Imagine if I were blind or if I had no money. I would be unable to use
free software for any purpose, be it to use it, to adapt it
or to learn from it if the program doesn't work with accessibility
software or if I am unable to purchase a computer. Would I not be less
free, according to Stallman's criteria, than a person who faces no
natural restrictions but is nonetheless unable to study how the program
works because of artificial restrictions? Surely the hacker breaks the
bonds of society more strongly if he refuses to make it usable for the
majority of his fellow human beings out of a desire for other work that
would be characterised as self-indulgent? Furthermore, buying a
computer for the poorer person would seem to heed Raymond's call for
universal access to computers, and Stallman's call to work for the
public good.
An amended rule based upon his four freedoms might state: where the
good consequences of a hacker overcoming restrictions outweigh the bad,
the hacker has a duty to overcome these restrictions, be they natural
or artificial. In the examples given above, adapting my software for
blind people or buying a computer for a poorer person would have
obvious good consequences, whilst abridging my autonomy and setting me
back financially. Given that Stallman suggests we ought to accept a
lower wage writing free software rather than attempting to "get rich"
through writing non-free software, the hacker will have to heed his
social obligations in most cases.
In response to this claim, Stallman simply wrote to me that "to
demand an impractical level of clarity in practical applications of
ethics simply brings it to a standstill, since it sets the bar
impossibly high" (Stallman, 2005).
In other words, his philosophy is based upon a utilitarian principle
that, if taken to its logical extreme, becomes impractical or even
undesirable but which, when applied in moderation, becomes desirable.
Aside from the fact that this violates his desire for a categorical
imperative, because it is impossible to apply the ethic in full to all
members of society, it also suggests that he is wrong either in
thinking the bar is too high, or somewhere in the construction of the
social obligations that set the bar so high.
In his defence, it would be absurd to suggest that a hacker must go
out of his way to educate the whole of society to an advanced level of
physics so they could use his physics program, even if society wanted
to use it. This would involve the hacker volunteering a phenomenal
amount of time and resources to educating society, with limited
discernible public good. It is not so absurd, however, to suggest that
a hacker should spend a small proportion of his time adapting a program
essential to a group of people so that they can use it, even if that
work isn't intrinsically interesting for the hacker.
The free software philosophy, as an example of the hackers' social
ethic, seems to be a strongly socialistic counterweight to the
self-indulgent work ethic. Stallman writes that "a user of software is
no less important than an author... their interests and needs have
equal weight, when we decide which course of action is best" (Stallman, 1992).
That is to say that the author of some software has obligations to
himself and to society. The self-indulgent obligations are met by
working in a joyous and passionate way on software that is
intellectually challenging, that develops skills and that has
significant use value; the social obligations are more complicated.
Stallman posits a weaker social obligation that can be met by
distributing any information produced under a free, copyleft license. I
have advanced a stronger social obligation, more consistent with the
calls for universal access, that can only be met by producing
socially useful information, distributing it under a free, copyleft
license and purchasing equipment for those whose poverty denies them
access.
A hacker will automatically meet Stallman's social obligations
without prejudicing his self-indulgent obligations simply by virtue of
working according to the Hacker Ethic. By releasing his work under a
free license, the hacker won't prejudice his ability to work freely,
passionately, joyously and so on. In fact, as part of a community that
also meets this obligation, the free distribution of information will
facilitate his self-indulgent work practises. A hacker may, however,
have to temper his self-indulgent obligations to meet the stronger
social obligations. For example, making a piece of software usable for
blind people may not challenge the hacker, it may be uninteresting
work, but it should nonetheless be undertaken for the sake of universal
access to that software.
In practise, of course, the point of moderation between the
obligations bestowed by the work ethic and the social ethic is decided
not by an ethical principle but by judgement of each individual hacker.
But the question remains as to whether or not the Hacker Ethic has
anything to say on this matter. For Torvalds and Himanen, once a hacker
is self-sufficient then the Hacker Ethic can account for
characteristically self-indulgent work practises. For Stallman, given
self-sufficiency, he is interested in social relations and obligations.
Unlike in other cases, where the two demands are clearly antagonistic,
the mechanisms that hackers employ to meet their social obligations
facilitate their self-indulgent work practises, and vice versa. Given
the close connection between these two aspects of the ethic, it would
seem possible and attractive that there might be some common framework
that could account for both aspects and help resolve the conflicts.
I propose that the Marxian theories of alienation are a good
candidate for such a framework. In dealing with relations between the
worker and his labour, the worker and his product, and the worker and
other people it presents a unified theory with a common language. This
allows me to overcome the discursive chasm between Himanen's and
Stallman's accounts of the Hacker Ethic whilst retaining both the
spirit and language of each. In focussing on relations of production
and creation it addresses the central concerns of the Hacker Ethic: how
we work and what we do with the products of our labour.
Marx's theory of alienation identified four kinds or aspects of
alienation, which I shall analyse in turn: alienation from labour, from
products, from society and from our species essence. For Marx,
alienation is not a matter of psychology; we cannot make our activities
meaningful by changing our attitudes towards the activity nor our
perspective on the context of the activity. Rather, alienation arises
from the material conditions of our labour, and the relations those
conditions set up between ourselves and our product, between ourselves
and the activity, between ourselves and others, and finally between
ourselves and our species being. To overcome alienation, then, requires
that we change the way we work such that these relations become more
healthy.
A product is the embodiment of a worker's labour, it's "objectification", it's "realisation" (Marx, 1992,
p.324). There is a relationship between the worker and his product that
is socially constructed, which will have both concrete and abstract
components. The concrete is between the worker and the product itself
with its own specific and unique qualities. The abstract is based on a
perception of the product's generality, ignoring many of the specific
qualities but appreciating its uses and its status as the realisation
of the worker's creative powers. "The full and productive relatedness
to an object comprises this polarity" (Fromm, 1963, pp.113-114).
Under capitalism, the product is a commodity that is traded on a
market, rather than remaining a product for the worker's own
consumption. A commodity is produced according to the needs of the
buyer rather than the self-sustaining needs of the worker, and so the
worker's labour becomes subordinate to the division of labour within
society (Marx, 1960,
p.71). "The worker's needs, no matter how desperate, do not give him a
license to lay hands on what these same hands have produced" (Ollman, 1980, p.143). Thus by losing any concrete relationship with the product, the worker suffers a loss of reality.
When the product becomes a commodity, the abstract relationship is
transformed, and the generality of the product becomes one of market
value rather than one related to the concrete product. The worker loses
his abstract relationship with the product and gains a relationship
with congealed market value. That value is determined as much by the
market as by the efforts of the worker and the abstract and concrete
qualities of the product. When the commodity is sold the worker is left
with money, and so the worker loses the abstract relationship with the
product representing a further loss of reality. "In exchange for his
creative power the worker receives a wage or a salary, namely a sum of
money, and in exchange for this money he can purchase products of
labour, but he cannot purchase creative power. In exchange for his
creative power, the worker gets things" (Rubin, 1975, p.xxv).
This is more than a matter of the worker losing control over the
product; rather than being experienced as a result of his creative
power, the product is experienced by means of the other commodities
bought with the product's market value. By contrast, a relationship
whereby the worker experiences his labour as the results of his
creative power, where he can use the product and value it not as a
means to an end but for its own sake, is one in which the reality of
the product is preserved. And a product that increases the worker's
creative power would be a gain in reality.
Marx says that the relationship under capitalism, with its unhealthy
concrete and abstract components that no longer relate to the product
at all, causes alienation (Marx, 1992,
p.324). He goes on to say that the product takes on an "external
existence" that confronts the worker as "hostile". One can understand
this in one of two ways. According to the first, not only is there no
guarantee that an increase in productivity will improve your living
conditions, but it is likely to increase the power of the hostile
system that keeps them in these conditions by giving the capitalist
more than the worker receives. The devaluation of the worker increases
in proportion to his productivity (Cox, 1998).
According to the second interpretation, the unhealthy relationships
directly diminish the reality that the worker created and so are
hostile, as opposed to relationships that increase the reality or those
that are neutral in this respect.
Elster raises a problem relating to the objectivity of this kind of
alienation: is the worker in fact external to and in a hostile standing
with the product, or does he feel external? If it is the
former then an individual can overcome alienation only by changing the
mode(s) of production that give rise to the alienated relationship,
whereas if it were the latter the worker could overcome alienation by
changing his state of mind, either by replacing it with positive
feelings or by accustoming himself to them such that they no longer
made him feel miserable (Elster, 1985,
pp.74-76). I would suggest that Marx be opposed to the psychological
explanation, and that the worker cannot give meaning to his product
when he has no real connection to it, concrete or abstract. This
disconnection gives rise to the feelings Elster describes.
Another problem is that, according to this account, the only way to
overcome the two losses of reality would be to keep control of the
product. But this would make productive social relations impossible;
exchange of products in any form would represent a loss of control and
therefore of reality. If there is nothing special about a worker being
in control of his own products, and instead we worry about workers
being in control of a sum total of reality that provides a sum total of
creative power, then we can at least conceive of social relations based
on equally valuable products, such that nobody loses any reality or
creative power. Labour-based theories of value are one likely candidate.
I would suggest that in exchanging one product for another that
increased one's creative powers, without the abstractification of
money, one is at least mitigating the alienation caused by moneyed
exchanges. This weaker claim means that already we have to forfeit any
hopes of an unalienated society, but it allows us to rescue some
semblance of pragmatism whilst providing a basis for lessening
alienation. This can then be applied to the Hacker Ethic.
Because hackers deal with information they can overcome alienation
in both the concrete and abstract components of the relationship. In
the first place, because their products are non-rivalrous they can
continue to use their product whilst sharing it freely with others. By
employing free software licenses, as per the Hacker Ethic, they retain
a concrete relationship with the product that can increase the hacker's
creative powers. Hackers revere work that enables them to achieve new
things (Levy, 2001, pp.46-48).
Secondly, by creating the product for its own sake - i.e. for its
valuable generalities such as its usefulness and intellectually
challenging design - rather than as a means to an end, the hacker can
continue to appreciate the product's abstract qualities, such as artful
or concise expressions of complex ideas (Levy, 2001,
pp.43-45). Though a hacker may sell his product, the commodification
isn't absolute because the free software licenses guarantee that the
hacker can retain his full and productive relatedness to the product.
Commodification in this context isn't directly connected to the
worker's relationship with the product, it isn't hostile as in the
capitalist context. It would only be relevant if, as Torvalds, Himanen
and Stallman suggest, the hacker was unable to be self-sufficient and
so had to treat his products primarily as commodities. In this
situation the market value of his work would determine the concrete and
abstract relationships.
Marx claimes that, if the worker is alienated from the product,
which is itself the objectification of labour, then it follows that
labour is an activity of alienation (Marx, 1992,
p.326). This is dubious, since the alienation only occurs when the
product is finished and becomes a loss of reality; there is nothing in
the activity of production that suggests alienation takes place,
according to my explanation of Marx's account of alienation so far. But
Marx develops a similar terminology to explain how the relationship
between worker and his labour is also alien.
Marx ascribes various attributes to alienated labour: He says it is
"external", which he further defines as making the worker "feel
miserable and not happy", that which "does not develop free physical
and mental energy", that puts the worker in a state where he cannot
"feel himself" whilst working; alienated labour is also forced labour;
it is a means to an end, not satisfying in itself; and finally it is,
as with the product, "directed against himself" (Marx, 1992, pp.326-327). Unalienated labour involves the "free actualisation and externalisation of powers and ... abilities" (Elster, 1986, p.101). This notion can be broken down into two component parts: the freeness of the activity of labour, and the capacity of actualisation and externalisation of one's powers through labour.
Central to this list of adjectives is the idea that the labour ought
to be entered into freely as a conscious activity. Men should gain
freedom through labour that is free "from autonomous social forces and
laws" (Gray, 1986,
p.178), and that allows the individual to choose both what work he
does, and when and how he does it. Marx gives the example of an
individual in a capitalist society who is forced to specialise in
hunting, fishing or literary criticism (Marx, 1968,
p.45). Unregulated market forces control not only the value of any
commodity, as previously mentioned, but also therefore what labour
workers can feasibly enter into if they are to sustain themselves;
these forces are ultimately autonomous, in that the worker has no
control over them whatsoever.
Using Lukes' analysis of power (Lukes, 1974),
I understand this free activity that Marx describes as requiring three
kinds of autonomy: first, the worker must be able to directly influence
decisions about the work he does (this may be more or less compatible
with "reasonable" social forces such as utilitarian or egalitarian
considerations); second, the the worker must be able to affect the
perspectives and agendas that determine the work he does, such that
social laws cannot unfairly predetermine the scope of his activity;
third, the worker must be able to enter into discourse that determines
how society understands work and in particular the kinds of work he
wants to engage in. On the second point I say unfairly
because it would be absurd to posit a scenario in which an unskilled
labourer could work as a neurosurgeon without proper training.
Similarly, as noted in my section on free software, we may want to
account for reasonable social forces such as the relative social
utility of various kinds of work.
In terms of self-realisation, Elster defines activities that lend
themselves to it by reference to "some further goal or purpose" that
"can be performed more or less well", and that offer "a challenge that
can be met". One can contrast self-realisation to passive consumption,
suggesting that any productive activity - i.e. one in which the
individual has an affect on the world external to him that is creative
rather than destructive or insignificant - lends itself to
self-realisation, more or less (Elster, 1986).
One could further object that there may be individuals who wish to
pursue productive activities that have no social utility whatsoever, or
even negative utility. For example, an scientist might want to build a
nuclear weapon that could misfire and destroy an entire city. It
wouldn't seem acceptable in this situation to allow the scientist to
fulfil his natural capabilities. I will look at this tension in more
detail later in the essay.
The crucial point for Marx is that, insofar as we accept that each
individual will have natural capabilities that can be developed and
give the individual new productive capacities, society shouldn't limit
the scope of the individual's development and productive activities.
Alienation occurs where the reverse is true, where workers are
restricted either in their ability to develop their natural abilities,
or to pursue a variety of productive activities.
One consequence of modern capitalism makes this kind of alienation
particularly stark, namely that "the lives of millions of people are
reduced to the narrow limits of their undemanding work. Fantasy, rather
than creative effort, then becomes the vehicle through which they
escape it, and fantasy itself, packaged as accessible pleasures to be
bought in the market place, is relentlessly commoditized" (Williamson, 1997).
The essence of the capitalist division of labour is deskilling, an
economic and political process whereby the workers' tasks are reduced
to "mechanical routines that can be quickly learned". The worker has no
control over his tools and "becomes a mere appendage to an already
existing material condition of production", resulting in a kind of
"operational autonomy" akin to the autonomous social forces and laws
posited by Gray. The worker, meanwhile, suffers a "knowledge deficit"
and a "solidarity deficit, defined with respect to the levels of
understanding and community required for self-rule" (Feenberg, 1991, pp.27-28).
In the context of this essay - that of computer hackers - one might
balk at the notion that highly qualified software engineers are engaged
in "mechanical routines" that provide little or no scope for the
development of skills and a growth in knowledge. Many in the industry,
however, think that this is the case. Scott Adams' popular comic
Dilbert satirises a software engineer's life inside a cubical, churning
out code according to the wishes of the clueless managers, working
according to Taylorist management principles (Adams, 1996).
Alan Kay, a legendary computer scientist, thinks that computer science
degrees in the US are becoming little more than "vocational training".
Deskilling needn't be as extreme as forcing a worker to manage an
operationally autonomous machine, and software engineers may be
afforded more scope for developing their skills that many other
workers, but they are nontheless susceptible to deskilling and a loss
of operational autonomy. The absence of deskilling and a total
operational autonomy in a workplace wouldn't invalidate the place of
these factors in a theory of alienation; rather, it would suggest a
division of labour that has overcome alienation to some extent.
Thus the worker is alienated both in the division of labour and in
the division of himself. The former forces him to engage in productive
activities that preclude him from using his productive capabilities,
leading to miserable and unfulfilled feelings, whilst the latter
precludes him from being able to develop his nascent productive and
social capabilities through his work. The alien character of labour
under capitalism is demonstrated, Marx says, by the fact that if we
weren't forced we would avoid work "like the plague" (Marx, 1992, p.326).
As with the worker's relation with his product, it is difficult to
see how the relation with production could be entirely unalienated, as
conceived by Marx. In the first place, Marx's conception of a perfect,
unalienated individual involved a bewildering diversity of productive
activities, all combining to satisfy every creative and productive
potential. He wrote that:
[In capitalism man] is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical
critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of
livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he
wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it
possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in
the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming
hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. (Marx, 1968, p.45)
Elster rightly criticises this vision as "fanciful", accusing Marx
of "wishful thinking". It would impose huge burdens on workers to know
about all of his creative and productive capabilities, to have the
resources required to fulfil them and to be able to pursue each of them
whilst guaranteeing self-sufficiency. Even the most self-indulgent
worker bent on total self-realisation would have a difficult time
achieving it. However, even if one cannot posit a system that
completely overcomes alienation, one can suggest systems that provide
more possibilities for "autonomy, creativity and community" that can
mitigate alienation (Elster, 1985, pp.89-92).
Unalienated labour, then, requires operational autonomy and a
variety of productive and creative activities that actualise the
worker's capabilities. Through it the worker must meet some challenge
and be able to judge how well the challenge was met. This is exactly
the kind of productive activity that hackers engage in. By working to
scratch an itch, with a desire to improve skills, meet an intellectual
challenge and all the while increase one's productive powers, the
hacker overcomes the external nature of alienated labour. Nobody would
voluntarily enter into labour that made him feel miserable, or that
didn't develop free mental energy. Hackers, entering voluntarily into
their work with passion, cannot be characterised as working against
themselves, against their productive nature. Moreover, by rejecting the
distinction between work and leisure and by emphasising instead the
active realisation of potential, "the experience of being an active,
creative and fully autonomous person" (Kane, 2000),
the Hacker Ethic orientates all life activities around this
unalienating maxim. The Hacker Ethic's emphasis on play and fun create
the basis for opposition to top-down management of their work, and for
the positive alternative of self-organisation and an overall
operational autonomy (Adam, 2004).
The Hacker Ethic also goes beyond Elster's understanding of
self-realisation to include an account of passion. A hacker might, for
example, spend her working day studiously hacking some problematic
code, realising her capabilities in abstract mathematics, debugging and
other technical pursuits. Alternatively, she might stay up late into
the night for days on end in frenzied hacking sessions, passionately
trying to solve the problem with as elegant and concise code as
possible. According to Elster's criterion, if the outcome were the same
- i.e. she realised her capabilities equally in each case - then we
should consider each case equal. The Hacker Ethic, however, argues that
the latter case is a better example of meaningful work because it truly
engaged the individual; it enriched her life, gave it focus, to return
to Levy's account of the early MIT hackers (Levy, 2001, p.45).
One may object that this maxim is too demanding, and makes
justifying necessary drudgery extremely difficult. Again, this
objection has two components: an objection related to personal tasks
such as cleaning and cooking, which can be dismissed by building in the
need to first be self-sustainable and then to adhere to the maxim; and
secondly an objection related to socially useful or necessary tasks
that conflict with this maxim, which I will return to later in this
essay.
A further objection is that, though there is emphasis on a diversity
of tasks in the Hacker Ethic, there is little emphasis on developing all
of your capabilities, and in particular those not related to software.
Though many hackers do engage in other creative activities it cannot be
said that they all develop their full mental and physical energy. This
is a result of a hesitance on the part of most hackers to advocate a
perfectionist account of personal development such as Marx's; they
favour a more liberal or welfarist approach that emphasises the freedom
to engage in fulfilling activities as well as the virtue of engaging in
these activities in general. But Marx's account of developing
all of our capabilities seems too demanding, both because we are
limited by time and by our capacity to know of all of our capabilities.
I may need five lifetimes to properly develop all of mine, including
some that I wouldn't know about until I pursued certain activities; I
may, for example, have the potential to be a talented police officer,
but I won't know until I try it, and I cannot spend my life trying
every life activity in the hope that I might find and develop my
capabilities. The Hacker Ethic's emphasis on pursuing tasks that we
know will develop our capabilities, rather than pursuing tasks for
other, external reasons such as the potential for financial gain is
more reasonable.
Because information sharing is such a powerful force in hacker
communities, hackers actively help and encourage each other to develop
skills. This is one instance in which the ethic takes a more proactive
and perfectionist approach, both creating and promoting an environment
in which hackers developer their skills fully. This is not identical
with promoting the realisation of all capabilities, as Marx suggested.
Instead, the Hacker Ethic emphasises the value of developing and
realising capabilities in all productive activities. The onus, as
Stallman suggested in the context of social obligations, is not to work
but, if one is to work, to do so in a particular way. This can be seen
in the importance given to "the freedom to study how the program works,
and adapt it to your needs" (FSF, 2004) and in emphasis on documenting everything for the benefit of nascent hackers.
Crucially, following my analysis of operational autonomy using
Luke's analysis of power, we can see how hackers are able to exercise
operational autonomy. There isn't a single organisational structure
adopted by all hacker communities - some adopt democratic structures,
others voluntarily defer the final decision making to a benevolent
dictator (with the proviso that they can always "fork" the project by
taking the code and developing it in a new community with a different
organisational structure), whilst many allow structures to organically
develop (Brand & Chance, 2005).
In each of these arrangements, however, hackers can choose what code to
work on; they can influence the agendas that direct their work, both by
entering into the open discussions about the direction of the
project(s) they work on and by simply opting out of any projects whose
agendas conflict with the hacker's own priorities; and finally though
it is not forced nor prevalent in every productive forum, hackers can
and often do enter into discussions about work itself and what it means
to engage in meaningful work.
Marx asserts that "the relationship of man to himself becomes
objective and real for him only through his relationship to other men" (Marx, 1992,
p.331). The alienation of the worker from his product only becomes real
when his product is bought by a consumer, an act that constructs the
hostile standing of product to worker and also of worker to consumer.
If, as is the case under capitalism according to Marx, the relationship
between worker and consumer is one of domination, of the non-producer
over production and its product, then we can see how the relationship
becomes one of man to an alien being. This of course rests on the
assumption that a healthy relationship - the opposite of an alienated
relationship - is one where the parties are relatively equal and where
nobody suffers a significant loss of reality, which I think is fair.
The consumer is also alienated when he receives a product that "does
not belong to him", since he put none of his labour into it, making the
commodity alien to him (Marx, 1992,
p.331). Marx refers here to his contention that value and ownership can
only be bestowed by labour, and that this value and ownership is only
conferred on the creator, so that the consumer cannot own nor value the
product. Again for the sake of preserving exchange-based relationships,
we can instead say that a product may lose value when it is exchanged
as a commodity. This kind of alienation is obviously not as bad as
losing your product, since the consumer may gain creative and
productive power through purchasing the product. But where the product
is treated entirely as a consumable (i.e. it isn't used productively),
and where it doesn't contribute to the sustenance of the worker (e.g.
food), then the product is neither a gain nor a loss in reality; the
consumer simply gains a thing that has limited use value. Therefore at
both ends of this relationship, worker and consumer, people can be
alienated.
There are also other relationships in which a worker stands, those
in relation to his fellow workers, which are marked by competition
rather than cooperation and that put the worker in a hostile and
disconnected standing. Workers must compete for jobs in the first
place, and then within the workplace they must compete for better
positions with better wages, and even to keep their job. They only
cooperate insofar as it benefits the company, i.e. for the end of
capital. In general, workers have no power to change the nature of
these relations; though in many contemporary workplaces workers are
afforded notionally managerial positions, they must manage according to
the needs and ends of the company, i.e. capital accumulation. Though
this may seem an overly stark and pessimistic view of the workplace, it
is the logical application of the principles of capitalism, and so any
instances of cooperation - any real relationships between workers - are
incidental and a sign of the worker rebelling against capitalism's
constraints. Where cooperative work environments exist, unless the
arrangement has capital advantages over more competitive environments,
they will generally be under pressure to change to a more competitive
basis. There is limited space for the cooperative spirit that Stallman
has tried to restore (FSF, 2003).
Marx's heavy emphasis on the importance of social alienation -
suggesting that alienation only becomes real through his relationship
to other men - seems to contradict, or at least call into question the
seriousness, the reality, of his claims about the other forms of
alienation. It implies that alienation in the activity of production,
which is a matter of the activity becoming external and unfulfiling,
can only occur in a social context. This would mean that an isolated
worker who produced according to his needs would always perform
fulfilling work regardless of how it affected his creative powers. Or,
Marx means no productive activity can be real in such an isolated
context, and so whatever the worker did, it would never be real and
fulfilling until placed in a social context. Both of these
interpretations are flawed, if we are to take seriously his previous
claims about the importance of the relationship between a worker and
his product, and between a worker and the activity of his work. I would
suggest that, to be consistent, placing work and products in a social
context makes them more real because in the new inter-personal
relationships they provide the worker with more use value, more social
value, in other words more reality.
In the case of hackers, as I have already mentioned, the hacker
won't lose the product to the users, and the users won't passively
consume the product. This is generally true of all computer software,
whether or not it is produced by hackers and released under a free
license. But the license guarantees that the hacker and the user
receive exactly the same rights with respect to the product, and that
both are endowed with the product's full creative and productive
potential. Relations between hackers as workers are based upon
cooperation and the free sharing of both the workload and products;
they are characterised by a positive cycle, whereby the more hackers
produce and relate to one another through sharing, the more productive
and communicative powers they have. Furthermore, as I mentioned in the
section on alienation from the activity of work, the Hacker Ethic
emphasises operational autonomy meaning that hackers have the power to
change or opt out of any relationships that they don't like. Giving
control to all parties, avoiding relations of domination and fostering
"a community of goodwill, cooperation, and collaboration" are
explicitly stated as goals of the free software movement, for example (Kuhn & Stallman, 2001).
As well as creating healthy social relations through its mode of
production, the Hacker Ethic also accounts for why its social relations
are more healthy, suggesting that to do otherwise is to cut "the bonds
of society" (Stallman, 2004b). By emphasising the need to work "for the public good" and to "help one's neighbours" (Stallman, 1992) (Stallman, 2005)
- including people we are connected to through productive and
interpersonal relations - the Ethic puts social sanctions on alienated
relations.
The Hacker Ethic, therefore, overcomes the alienation between
producer and consumer by making such a distinction as producer and
consumer invalid, and by basing the relationship upon the future
potential endowed by the product. The user may simply consume the
software, or at least only use it and never modify or even share it,
but that is their choice. There is nothing in the relation with the
product nor the person who shared it with them that forces their hand
in this respect.
This raises a problem that is related to the question of social
obligations I raised at the end of the section on free software. It may
be the case that hackers aren't aware that a relationship is unhealthy,
either because they are too altruistic or simply not sufficiently
self-aware, and so may fail to change or opting out of the alienating
relationship. Worse still, a hacker may feel compelled to remain in a
relationship that abridges his operational autonomy because of other
considerations. These could include egalitarian obligations such as to
create usable software for everybody (where the hacker has to give up a
proportion of his time to work on less fulfilling code), or to provide
computer equipment to poor people (where the hacker has to be motivated
by what will earn the most money, rather than by factors intrinsic to
the product and the activity of work).
If the interests of the workers and the users "have equal weight" (Stallman, 1992)
then these relationships are equal ones, not characterised by
domination. If one takes Stallman's weaker social obligations and
discounts the stronger obligations I posited, then this study of
alienation describes the normative basis for my claim that social and
personal obligations aren't in conflict in the Hacker Ethic, but rather
intimately linked. Hackers maintain healthy social relationships -
Stallman's "bonds of society" (Stallman, 2004b)
- by working in communities and releasing their work under a free
software license. Their doing so in no way prejudices their ability to
pursue what I have characterised as healthy, unalienated work and to
remain in healthy relations with their products. The Hacker Ethic, if
followed properly, allows a worker to achieve our "species being",
Marx's vision of the essence of and the ultimate example of mankind. A
hacker is able, through his work, to strive towards his essence, his
individual life (Marx, 1992, p.328).
If, however, one assumes the stronger obligations, and one takes
seriously the problems that these cause for the account of productive
relations and alienation, then there is no obvious way out. A strong
egalitarian assumption presents the possibility of social relationships
fuelling alienation in one aspect (the hacker's relation to his
activity of work) whilst soothing alienation in another (the hacker's
relationship to the needy users). Analysing the Hacker Ethic in terms
of alienation at least provides a common framework within which these
conflicts can be understood. They are not simply a matter of individual
autonomy being abridged by social obligation, nor simply vice versa,
but as a necessity for balance between the two demands. Improper
prioritisation of one would simply shift the locus of alienation.
There also remains the problem of kinds of work that have a negative
social utility. I gave the example earlier in the essay of a scientist
who wants to develop a nuclear weapon that could misfire and destroy an
entire city. Should a community of hackers allow one of their
colleagues to pursue such work? This asks not only whether or not a
hacker ought to prioritise certain kinds of socially useful work, but
also whether or not it is acceptable for hackers to abridge an
individual's operational autonomy in blocking them from pursuing that
work. A less extreme example may be a hacker who has shown no
capabilities in the field of medical science, but who nonetheless would
like to spend a few years studying the field, which will mean a break
from other socially useful work. If there is no guarantee that the
hacker will be any more socially useful at the end of her study should
hackers accept and even support this sabattical?
One possible solution lies in an aspect of Marx's conception of
alienation that I haven't touched upon yet. I have omitted it so far
because it seems to contradict his emphasis on operational autonomy;
this problem, and a proper explanation of the idea, need addressing
before I show how it can help resolve the central conflict of personal
and social obligations. Marx describes how labour ought to be
"consciously regulated by [the workers] in accordance with a settled
plan" (Marx, 1996,
p.40). Commonsense suggests that we cannot immediately grasp what our
capabilities are, and what work we will find most fulfilling; even as
children in relatively cooperative environments we take time to learn
what we enjoy, be it passive consumption or a childlike productive
activity. The ancient Chinese philosophy Taoism understands our
individual essence - our Tao - as something inexpressible, a
self-defining basis for our character. When we act in accordance with
our essence we find that our body and mind work "self-so", or without
forcing. These ideas, despite their poetic and vague expression, can
lend insight into Marx's idea of our essence. It is not something that
we can rationally come to understand or discover, but rather something
that we happen upon. We cannot express why we find certain activities
more fulfilling, we simply do, and we understand this when we partake
in them.
The most pressing objection to Marx's settled plan, then, is that no
system of regulation or organisation can hope to determine each
individual's appropriate activities. Instead, it should set-up
conditions whereby individuals can discover and then partake in their
essential activities. This might satisfy Elster, who says that
Liberalism "forgets that the choice is to a large extent preempted by
the social environment in which people grow up and live". Yet it must
avoid the heavy-handed paternalism advocated by some Marxists lest it
violates the workers' operational autonomy. "The solution", Elster
continues, "must be a form of self-paternalism", whereby people can,
individually or collectively, shape their choices relating to their
labour (Elster, 1986,
p.98). We can interpret Marx's "settled plan", then, not as a kind of
micro-management by some wiser beings for the benefit of the workers,
but as a kind of macro-management that creates the conditions for
unalienated labour.
Returning to the central conflict, then, if hacker communities can
collectively shape their choices relating to their labour, then they
can meet some or all of their social obligations consensually in a way
that isn't alienating. A community may, for example, undertake a study
to see how usable their software is. They would then identify certain
shortcomings and draw up a list of tasks to resolve the usability
problems. This would be exactly the kind of situation that I have, so
far, identified as causing a conflict between the individual hacker's
self-indulgent needs and the social obligations that the tasks
represent. However, if the community were to draw up this list and
then, by common consent, distribute the tasks evenly - a "settled plan"
of sorts - then the decision would not create problems in the same way
as under capitalism. If the worker were to work on a usability problem
because they were paid then they would have no control over the matter,
the product they create would be the realisation of somebody else's
needs and the whole venture would be performed towards the goal of
capital accumulation. In the hacker community, by contrast, the worker
still exercises control over every aspect of the process, if not
absolute; the worker can realise his capabilities to some extent, if
not completely or most appropriately; and the worker is oriented
towards a socially meaningful goal. This is exactly how hackers,
tracking, assigning and resolving problems with public mechanisms and
employing social incentives and sanctions to encourage collective
action.
In this essay I have first sketched out an understanding of the
Hacker Ethic with two components: a work ethic and a social ethic. In
clarifying the somewhat fuzzy articulations of each ethic that
currently exist, I have raised one central concern: how one can balance
social obligations with those that I characterise as self-indulgent.
Hackers themselves practise a balance that they decide upon already,
but they lack a coherent normative basis for deciding how to achieve
the most ethical balance.
I have then explored Marx's theory of alienation, developing an
understanding of meaningful work as constituting relations between
worker and product, worker and activity of labour and worker and other
people. This allows me to describe the conditions and relations of
meaningful, unalienated work by reference to each relation. I have
shown that each relation has equal importance such that, contrary to
more individualistic accounts of personal fulfilment, a worker can only
be fulfilled when she stands in healthy relations to other people and,
contrary to some strongly socialistic accounts of meaningful modes of
production, a worker can also only be fulfilled when she stands in
healthy relations to her work and her products. Thus modes of
production can be judged according to how well they resolve conflicts
between these three relations, by how well they balance competing
demands on a worker's time and energy.
There is a slight flaw with my argument, but one that I think should
be solveable. The hacker work ethic as described by Himanen operates on
a kind of virtue ethic, as does my account of alienation; both concern
themselves with promoting virtuous qualities in hackers. But Stallman's
account of social obligations, as I mentioned on page 10, is morally
ambiguous and is most likely based upon a Kantian, utilitarian or
consequentialist position, none of which are immediately compatible
with the virtue ethics of Himanen and my account of alienation. Thus an
area for further work involves working on a coherent moral basis for
all three accounts, which I suspect would involve developing a virtue
ethic for social obligations in relation to intellectual products and
production. Questions include: Is Stallman's position better captured
by Kantian ethics, rule utilitarianism or rule consequentialism? Can
Stallman's position be restated in terms of virtue ethics? Can we
advance a virtue ethics of intellectual products and production, work
or even more generally of meaningful life activities?
If we limit the scope of social obligations to those articulated by
Stallman, which deal only with the relations defined by the way you
distribute your work after it has been produced, then the Hacker Ethic
achieves and ideal balance. Social obligations in no way abridge the
hacker's scope to meet his self-indulgent obligations, and in fact the
two kinds of obligations in the hacker mode of production complement
one another. However, if we take more seriously stronger social
obligations that deal with what you produce in the first place - i.e.
could your products be more socially useful? - then the Hacker Ethic
only represents an improvement upon the capitalist mode of production.
This improvement is significant and shouldn't be denigrated, not least
because it provides further opportunities for research in the justice
of work distribution. These include questions of where we draw the line
between reasonable and unreasonable social obligations, and how workers
should make decisions about how to meet them.
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Free software - free society. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/rms-interview-edinburgh-040527.txt, on file with author.
Stallman, R. (2004b).
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incomplete success, what now?
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Footnotes
...ER:2.2
For the purposes of this essay I refer exclusively to the earlier
meaning of 'hacker', and in particular on computer hackers, who remain
the most successful example, though their attitude is now spreading
into other fields of endeavour such as the arts and science. The
Creative Commons organisation, for example, have translated the
orientation and techniques of computer hackers to the arts and science.
They cite the Free Software Foundation's software license, the GNU GPL,
as their inspiration. See http://creativecommons.org
... society3
Though governments and corporations undoubtedly had a role to
play, most of the people working on technologies like TCP/IP and the
World Wide Web were and remain self-identified hackers.
... work4
In computer programming, the information is the source code,
human readable and modifiable instructions that programmers work with.
The source code is usually compiled into a binary that the computer
understands and can run; sharing of binaries isn't useful to
programmers, since they are essentially black boxes that reveal little
or cryptic information.
... programs."5
To be clear, not all software can be shared because of artificial
restrictions. Microsoft Word, for example, cannot be freely shared
because of the way that Microsoft have licensed their copyright.
According to Stallman's account, Microsoft aren't making a real social
contribution because they restrict people's use of Word.
...DB:1 6
I don't agree that software is a human right. Though this idea
isn't central to the social ethic, it is helpful to understand how
seriously Stallman takes the social obligations in this context.
