To Cory Doctorow, capitalism is something that other people are conspiring to do to him, and DRM is the weapon they’re doing it with.

His antipathy to kapitalizm is understandable in view of his Trotskyite upbringing, but history has demonstrated that beneath every socialist’s flesh beats the heart of a capitalist. The latest installment of his Publishers Weekly series tracing the odyssey of his self-published book bolsters the impression that if he could turn the tables he’d be as exploitative as any publisher that ever kneed an author in the groin.

His article is called Doctorow’s First Law, suggesting that his quest for truth in publishing has at last reached bedrock. What is the First Law? “Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won’t give you a key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.”

We suppose that Doctorow’s discovery will seem like a blinding epiphany to some of his acolytes, but for anyone who has been around the book industry track for more than a decade it comes as something of a Duh. Warfare between author and publisher, and between publisher and retailer, has existed since the earliest recorded words. Mary Beard, a professor of classics at the University of Cambridge and classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, reported in the New York Times Book Review that “Horace, the tame poet of the emperor Augustus, made the obvious comparison: booksellers were the rich pimps of Roman publishing and authors, or even the books themselves, were the hard-working but humiliated prostitutes.” (See In Ancient Rome, Every Author Was on a Roll).

Doctorow is blessed to have come into the publishing world long after the bitter campaigns of postwar 20th century when screwing authors was a blood sport. Perhaps a better First Law would be that 21st century publishing is a collaborative effort among three capitalistic entities: authors, publishers and booksellers. Though there are occasional imbalances, none of them can so dominate that they drive the others out of business. Such is the complex ecology of our enterprise that if you destr0y one you destroy all.

Doctorow writes that he is “more than happy to offer my otherwise free books for sale in any vendor’s store, of course, but only if the vendors agree to carry them on terms I feel I can stand behind as an entrepreneur, as an artist, and as a moral actor.” Well, Mr. Doctorow, publishers have terms too, and if you listen to them long enough you come to understand why they need to impose them.

All economic systems are about control of capital.  Cory Doctorow is no different – he’s just more entertaining and colorful about it.  Robin Hood was colorful too, but withal he was an entrepreneur who happened to redistribute capital via the business end of a longbow.

Read Doctorow’s First Law.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.