I am not a Communist — Crooked Timber

An interesting discussion on the meaning of innovation in the era of social networking. Namely that the most interesting work being done today is communal and shared, and implicitly anti-capitalist but noone wants to admit it for fear of being branded a Marxist. Except, as Henry points out:

The degree to which Marx and Engels might or might not have approved e.g of the methods employed by Russian Communists to come into power is still the topic of vigorous controversy. The degree to which Marx and Engels invented, or ‘helped invent’ the command economy is not. Neither had any role whatsoever in inventing it, except as conveniently dead sources of rhetorical justification to those who came after them. They were themselves extremely vague as to exactly how the economy would work after socialism.

So the future could look increasingly communistic without necessarily moving toward a scary command economy and leading us down the path to Hayekian serfdom.