Richard Stallman is one of the forefathers of the open source community. Here, he explains how the thinking behind it constitutes a synthesis of anarchism, communism, and capitalism.
I mean it might be true that open source software now dominates the mobile market and is present in every aspect of our lives, but if it is a successful idea, are we allowed to call it communism?
People get triggered by the word "communism," and it is stupid that they get triggered. Most people, when they say "communism," what they really mean is something more like "de jure state monopoly" or something similar. That is not what I am thinking when I say "communism."
Communism is really just acting as a community. Let's pretend that Julia, Brianna, and Abby were all growing vegetable gardens. When their crops came to fruition, they simply gave away most of their crops to their friends. Now, let's say that they were all to get together for a potluck dinner, and they were to use Julia's chili peppers, Brianna's potatoes, and Abby's string beans to make three unique dishes, and they all sat around a table and drank a wine that Brianna made out of Abby's grapes from ceramic cups that Julia had made herself.
Now, you do not have to call that communism, but it is communism.
Whenever you point out a successful real world example of communism, you get a "no true Scotsman" argument, but I think that the time has come that we stop avoiding the word "communism" when we are talking about ideas that are quite obviously communist.
In my ideals, though, I am not just an anarcho-communist, but I am really closer to Richard Stallman's way of thinking. I am not just an anarcho-communist, but I also like to sell things I have made. Some people would say that I was more of an "anarcho-capitalist." Well, sometimes, I am. So what? I don't give a damn.
Some people that say they are "anarcho-capitalists" are really implying that they adhere to the mutualistic ideas of Proudhon and Pyotr Kropotkin, which are really "anarcho-communist" but which are considered to be a subset of "anarchism." The "anarchist" component of "anarcho-capitalism" is really collectivist, but people that identify with the philosophy avoid openly acknowledging it because they just get tired of being trolled by people that want to try to make every conversation a so-called debate to try to hold them personally to blame for every sin of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.
However, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "mutualism" is undeniably a left-leaning principle for the organization of society, and even though it is officially "anarchist" and not "anarcho-communist," I believe that Peter Kropotkin's efforts to revive Proudhon's ideas were an important reason behind the continued survival of anarchist philosophy in the 21st Century.
And there is something very queer about anarcho-communism. I mean literally. Thanks to a conversation between Pyotr Kropotkin and Oscar Wilde, Wilde produced a historic essay called "The Heart of Man Under Socialism," which inspired the LGBTQIAA community, in generations that followed, to embrace those ideals as part of their philosophy. Harry Hay, co-founder of the Mattachine Society and founder of the Radical Faeries, was both a socialist and an anarchist, and his interest in paleontology further insinuates that he may have been influenced by the writings of Pyotr Kropotkin, who was also interested in evolution.
If you own an Android device, then you are holding in your hand physical evidence that anarcho-communism is good for something, even though I am not sure it proves that anarcho-communism can necessarily cure all of the ills of this world or provide all solutions to its problems. Even so, if you bought an Android device of any kind, then you must have believed that anarcho-communism was worth something to you, even though you did not know that that was what you were buying.
I am not to blame for the ignorance of others. Communist philosophy is much more broad than just the writings of Karl Marx, and besides, Karl Marx did not even invent the political left. He merely ruined it. Furthermore, the Marxists actually persecuted the followers of Pyotr Kropotkin. The last time, in Russian history, when the followers of Pyotr Kropotkin were allowed to speak openly, it was at Pyotr Kropotkin's state funeral. Before the dirt had even cooled over Kropotkin's grave, the Marxists stabbed them right in the back. They were brutally suppressed thereafter.
There is a world of communist philosophy outside of Marxism, and I believe that Marxism is really the weakest example of communism. I detest authoritarian philosophy. It is repellent to me on an instinctive level.
If there is anybody in the world that sees Richard Stallman as somebody to be afraid of, then they are a fool. He is one of the most caring and decent individuals currently living, and he has helped to change our very way of life in a way that I think most people would see as benevolent. When I say that anarchism and communism are a part of my philosophy, I mean it in the same way that Richard Stallman does. Rather than thinking anarchism and communism in terms of excluding other ideas, I see anarchism and communism as concepts that can enrich other ideas. We cannot enrich our heart by spiting out our liver.
Synthesis ideas are inherently attractive to me. After all, a dragon is nothing more than a synthesis.