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In the age of international telecommunications, global migration and the emergence of the information economy, how can class conflict and property be understood? Drawing from political economy and concepts related to intellectual property, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a key contribution to commons-based, collaborative and shared forms of cultural production and economic distribution.

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Venture communism

Proposing “venture communism” as a new model for workers’ self-organization, Kleiner spins Marx and Engels’ seminal Manifesto of the Communist Party into the age of the internet. As a peer-to-peer model, venture communism allocates capital that is critically needed to accomplish what capitalism cannot: the ongoing proliferation of free culture and free networks.

Copyfarleft

In developing the concept of venture communism, Kleiner provides a critique of copyright regimes, and current liberal views of free software and free culture which seek to trap culture within capitalism. Kleiner proposes copyfarleft, and provides a usable model of a Peer Production License.

Encouraging hackers and artists to embrace the revolutionary potential of the internet for a truly free society, The Telekommunist Manifesto is a political-conceptual call to arms in the fight against capitalism.

About the Author

Dmytri Kleiner is a software developer working on projects that investigate the political economy of the internet, and the ideal of workers’ self-organization of production as a form of class struggle. Born in the USSR, Dmytri grew up in Toronto and now lives in Berlin. He is a founder of the Telekommunisten Collective, which provides internet and telephone services, as well as undertakes artistic projects that explore the way communications technologies have social relations embedded within them, such as deadSwap (2009) and Thimbl (2010).

Colophon

Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Producer: Rachel Somers Miles. Copy editing: Rachael Kendrick. Design: Studio Léon&Loes, Rotterdam http://www.leon-loes.nl. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: Amsterdam School of Design and Communication, Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and Stichting Democratie en Media.

Dmytri Kleiner, The Telekommunist Manifesto. Network Notebooks 03, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2010. ISBN: 978-90-816021-2-9.