Author: Professor Johan Söderberg

Description: Professor Johan Söderberg's correspondence with Defense Distributed began in 2014, while he was an editor and associate of the P2P foundation Journal of Peer Production. His review of the Rep-rap project (for all its pragmatism, it began with the goal of transcending capitalism), and of the impact of “geek publics” on traditional social movements, influenced the open-source politics and licenses of the first generation of 3D gun files. Söderberg is that rare autonomist Marxist who still believes in developing historical materialism as a science. He used this science to correctly anticipate the failure of Adrian Bowyer’s brand of smuggled socialism in Rep-rap.

We reproduce Söderberg’s 2002 paper on the contradictions in information capitalism because it offers a historical account of the recurring schism between hacktivists and techies, typical of online free software projects, that is now prominent in 3D gun culture. Söderberg’s interest in the drift of hacker projects from ideological programs to an instrumental, engineer’s discourse is already present. Aside from startling moments of comedy, like the reference to Stallabrass’s 1995 prediction in New Left Review that serious computing would never be available to the working poor, I believe the paper works as cultural prophecy. This discussion of the political claims and values of free and open-source software development, now a quarter century in hindsight, is to the reader’s benefit.

I have only lightly edited Professor Söderberg’s original text to highlight his commitment to structural Marxism. His marginal comments are reproduced without alteration.

Contributor: Cody R Wilson

Date: 2025-03
Date: 2002-03

Type: Text; Online resource