Elite Socialism revamps the communist experiment

Elite Access Only

When access remains limited to the privileged few, the pall of socialism cannot be invoked. Kelly neglects the important consideration of access. Becker indicates the vast divide between who will have access to Kelly’s means of production. The very lack of access for so many precludes any socialism. Socialism may have traditionally depended on the vanguard to manage the centralized government as an effort to protect the people, but simply the presence of cooperation, collaborative work, and sharing do not prove a case for socialism.

Ownership: Means of Production

Where in Kelly’s model of Socialism do the proletariat control the means of production? Access to the means of production for an elite few remains a far cry from the control of production falling into the hands of the working class. The elite within the Wiki world clearly maintain access to the means of production, but very few own the hardware and infrastructure which comprise the nessessary conditions for this utopian "new socialism." Even granting that there may be an automatic inevitablity of the internet going forward, the access remains limited to those with access to a network node. When the company providing broadband access decides to limit bandwidth thanking to profit margins, the elite will grow smaller yet. Socialsim? No, because already limited access depends on the captial concerns of the corporate gatekeepers. Digital divide remains and it prevents socialism.

Faceless Meritocracies

Kelly got one thing right: “we have faceless meritocracies.” Socialism rejects elitism, and the meritocracy finds its ranks among the elite with access. No meritocracy exists which incorporates all possible perspectives when the tools of production remain outside the scope of so many directly affected.

Socialism may fit within many contexts, but in this case Kevin Kelly reforms the term to fit into a world exclusive of many. Kelly writes in "The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online" that open source efforts and collective media have coalesced into a neo-socialist hybrid, neither naughty communism nor evil capitalism. Many of the wiki style cannons and the open source software projects thrive on both altruism and unexpectedly self-sacrificing behavior, he says.

http://harrisoncenter.us/wikipage/new-socialism-global-collectivist-soci...

Works Cited:

Becker, Henry Jay. "Who's Wired and Who's Not: Children's Access to and use of Computer Technology." The Future of Children 10.2, Children and Computer Technology (2000): 44-75. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. "The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online." Wired Magazine 22 05 2009: 1-4. Web. 13 Oct 2009. <http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism>

Malecki, Edward, . "Economic Geography of the Internet's Infrastructure." Economic Geography 78.4 (2002): 399- 424. Web. 14 Sep 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140796?cookieSet=1>