[p2p-research] so is there a new class?

Sun Jan 6 16:56:06 CET 2008

I agree that it exists still, as do many components of the legacy of earlier
eras. I also agree that people use the word "class" in more than one way. I
understand the paradigms of emancipatory tradition. I agree that there are
objective structural conditions in society. I agree it's possible to
"classify" them, based on many different ways of measuring, including
income, quality of life, etc. I tend to find some of the classification
systems we employ, both in general discourse, and in more academic circles,
limiting. Limiting to both our quest to understand the nature of humans, and
limiting to the people who come to accept their classification.

Yet, I also try to understand human nature, not just through the world view
of academic and philosophical viewpoints, but also equally through the
complex adaptive, bio-psycho-social-systems active in the majority of people
in the world, who are processing and acting from a viewpoint that is
generally not literate of the concepts that you describe.

So, I ask "why are there objective, structural conditions in society? Why do
some people end up in some 'class' in society? Why are some people reacting
against the notion of being part of a class?"

My argument is that quite a significant amount of people do not even know,
nor understand that they are adopting and adapting to external conditions by
solving problems in a "peer production" fashion. Instead, these people are
gravitating towards these ways of solving problems, because the pressure of
the conditions of the existing social paradigm is compelling them towards
it.

There are many more dimensions to the emergence of "p2p" human phenomenon
than I've often seen or heard being discussed. These dynamics of shifts in
human nature have, at the same time, at least a biological, a psychological,
and a social/complex environmental component. Integral theory is useful, but
often unfortunately not understood. I think integral theory was successful
in accurately packaging multiple complexities, and emergent patterns into
useful shorthand terms before very many people outside of a small circle of
academics were able to understand and comprehend how it all is
inter-related.

I am starting to outline a "Literacy of Human Nature" here:
http://communitywiki.org/en/LiteracyOfHumanNature that attempts to explore
how these dimensions and factors fit together.

Those different factors combine to affect the emergence of humans who solve
their problems of existence by carrying out activities in a "peer
production" fashion. I think that many of those very people actually intuit
the confining nature of being regarded as being part of a "class".  So, some
of them seek and find ways of solving existential problems in ways that seem
to them to obsolete the dominance of the "class" paradigm. Not abolish
"class", but to make it irrelevant and obsolete, and impotent in their own
lives, and the lives of those connected with them. A quaint, old-fashioned
notion, like the dusty old books about eugenics that you can find in the
basement archive of our local university library.

The need to frame and define an emerging new phenomenon as the "Rise of a
new class" is especially ironic to me, when the people under consideration
in the case of "p2p" phenomena appear to me to be rejecting "class", and
that rejection,  in my observation and estimation,  is one of their core
fundamental assumptions about how to solve their problems of existence. The
definition of people as part of a "class" is too limiting, even if it
originates in widely accepted academic roots. It confines the "view" too
narrowly, and even when employed from academic/critical/emancipatory
tradition, tends to confine understanding to a very few people.

My observation is that the need or desire to frame emerging human phenomenon
in terms of "class" is actually more often than not employed *because* of
it's confining properties. Because it reinforces the limited concepts it
refers to. Plus, it's a headline component that is guaranteed to grab some
readers :)

I also don't see Marx as the penultimate go-to filter through which to
understand p2p phenomena. I see Marx as one man who thought about this a
while ago, and articulated his thoughts very well. Yet, I see that many
people are able to intuit and act upon their conditions of existence, and
their existential problems in ways that I have never seen described by Marx,
nor very many other people. The best way that I have found to date
understand "why" these people are doing this, "what is in it for them?",
"who is doing what to whom, and why?" is to look at the bio-psycho-social
conditions of existence, and to think about how this human bio-psycho-social
system fits into larger complex systems. Looking at it this way immediately
reveals to me that this is *not* a "mass-culture" phenomenon. It is not the
rise of a "class" of people in society. Instead it is a simultaneous
localized emergence of ways of solving problems that is a reaction to the
breakdown, corrosion, and failure of existing mass culture social, economic,
political, and other infrastructure. Many of these failures and breakdowns
are rooted in the fundamental need to establish caste, class, and other
stratified barriers among people, so as to establish "one-up/one-down"
relationships with people, for the purposes of control of people and
resources.

On Jan 6, 2008 2:57 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sam,
>
> I must partly disagree with you. That there is differentiation,
> complexity, individualization does not mean there are no objective
> structural conditions in society, though of course people within a
> structural condition may behave in different fashions. I think class in the
> US is used in a descriptive, psycho-social fashion, but that is not how it
> is used within the emancipatory tradition. This being said, the original aim
> of Marx was not different than yours, i.e. analysing class, but in order
> to supersede and abolish them.
>
> I think that peer to peer, if we use an integral methodology, should be
> recognized as both a (inter)subjective and (inter)objective phenomenom, so
> that inquiries into its objective side, make sense and can be illuminating.
> It is both the cause and the effect of new structural conditions, which
> includes class configurations that are changing.
>
> This being said, giving a class analysis of peer to peer trends is no easy
> matter, since it is both the expression of new groups of people responding
> to new structural conditions and possibilities, but at the same time a
> general change in life practice that affects everybody.
>
> Now, in practical terms in my own work, I do generally avoid 'class
> language', as it has mostly antagonizing and dysfunctional results, but that
> does not mean that thinking about it is superfluous,
>
> But I also agree with your statement that peer to peer in fact reflects a
> very basic desire to be emancipated of class, but that doesn't mean it
> doesn't 'exist' still,
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Jan 5, 2008 9:50 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Class" is a framing that comes from mass culture/large
> > corporate-industry-oriented views of the world.
> >
> > By framing all emerging new behavior as a the "rise of a new class",
> > this puts the new behavior in a context that it can be potentially studied,
> > and ultimately co-opted and/or controlled to benefit systems and
> > beneficiaries of (what I calling) mass culture.
> >
> > Think about how "class" is usually employed as a descriptor: "The
> > working class, the management class" etc
> >
> > It's my opinion that one of the key, vital components of social systems
> > that afford healthy peer to peer activity is the widespread rejection of
> > "class"-systems of people, among people. A shift in the focus of fundamental
> > motivators, from a motivation in control of the perceivable world towards
> > materialistic gain, to a way of solving problems that is motivated by a
> > newfound realization of the nature and value of humans, living systems,
> > resources is free and un-controlled things, who must be listened to, to be
> > understood, and who are not just another "resource", but are actual people.
> >
> > This is what David Korten is talking about with his idea of a "Great
> > Turning" from "Empire" to "Earth Community". It's what Clare W. Graves
> > talked about in explaining his research of human value systems, and the
> > pattern of fundamental assumptions of humans that he recognized being
> > centered around individual materialistic gain, and the subsequent
> > fundamental assumption that emerged that found people instead focusing on
> > person-to-person sharing, and commons-based economies. Graves observed that
> > the latter did not go about thinking about people in terms of "classes" so
> > much, and instead radically insisted that all people are "equal". Graves
> > then observed that a new type of individual emerged from *these* groups (at
> > least in the western world), who rejected the totally "equal" notion, and
> > did see differences in people, but the differences were in *thinking
> > systems*, the way that people solved problems, and not in people themselves.
> >
> >
> > This is a recognition that people's total "world" view is a combination
> > of internal dynamic neuronal systems, *and* external life conditions.  There
> > is (at least) a biological "scale", and a psycho-social "scale",and an
> > environment "scale" to be observed in total system of a human and it's
> > environment.
> >
> > I think the usual notion of "class" strips away much of the complexity
> > of the human condition, and re-inforces the illusion in people's minds that
> > human conditions are highly "fixed". I'm interested in "p2p" ideas, because
> > I think they leverage the potentials that were already there in the total
> > human system (internal bio systems, and external environment) to explode
> > "classes" from within.
> >
> > It's interesting to me that the building blocks now exist that allow
> > many, many people to defy being classified, and to avoid having to settle
> > into a socio-cultural "role"/strata. Yet, I observe that many people do it
> > anyway. Even people as young as 20 years old. Of course, it's due to the
> > legacy of mass culture, and it's design to reinforce those roles. But, if
> > you talk to many of those people, they will readily admit that they do not
> > desire their pre-assigned "role", but they accept or adopt it, because it is
> > perceived as being "needed" to survive in existing culture. So, not wanting
> > to be part of a "class" is one potential that I see, along with the
> > conditions that make it possible for a person to live in such a way as to
> > defy easy classification within existing systems. People who can now produce
> > their own mass media, people who can now collectively create and grow and
> > fund the collection of knowledge. People who can design and release
> > technology as part of a commons that they co-maintain. Those collections of
> > people are usually made up of people from many different traditional
> > economic "classes".
> >
> >
> > On Jan 5, 2008 1:01 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > fascinating article ... insightful ...
> > >
> > > but I think that 'conservative' is not the right word .. there is no
> > > relationship with the christian right or neoconservatives ..
> > >
> > > I think that for Gen Y, distinctions like working inside or outside
> > > the system no longer make sense, they simply use what is there,
> > > pragmatically, and create the new stuff that they need to realize themselves
> > > ... And similarly for the conservative/progressive divide, they pick and
> > > choose pragmatically
> > >
> > > whether there is a new class is a complex issue
> > >
> > > 1) I think that a section of the owner class is reconfiguring to
> > > participation-enablers
> > >
> > > 2) I think that a section of the 'producing' class is increasingly
> > > involved in peer production and peer-informed practices and are structurally
> > > different from industrial workers
> > >
> > > 3) that young people most clearly exemplify that trend
> > >
> > > 4) that p2p is a new life practice for everybody, to different degrees
> > > ...
> > >
> > > There are now 800,000 free agents in the netherlands ... a very
> > > sizeable number ....
> > >
> > > I created an overview page here ...
> > > http://www.p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Class_Theories
> > >
> > > Michel
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Michel
> > >
> > >
> > > On Jan 5, 2008 5:35 AM, Paul B. Hartzog <paulbhartzog at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/01/04/obama%e2%80%99s-victory-in-iowa-sheds-light-on-todays-workplace/
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > the emergence of a p2p class?
> > > > or not?
> > > >
> > > > -p
> > > >
> > > > --------------------------------------------------------
> > > > http://www.PaulBHartzog.org
> > > > http://www.panarchy.com
> > > > PaulBHartzog at PaulBHartzog.org
> > > > PaulBHartzog at panarchy.com
> > > >  PHartzog at umich.edu
> > > > --------------------------------------------------------
> > > > The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
> > > >                 --Muriel Rukeyser
> > > >
> > > > See differently, then you will act differently.
> > > >                 --Paul B. Hartzog
> > > > --------------------------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > >
> > > > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
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> > > alternatives.
> > >
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> > >
> > > Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview
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> > >
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Sam Rose
> > Social Synergy
> > Tel:+1-+1(517) 639-1552
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> >
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>
>
> --
> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
> alternatives.
>
> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net ; Blog, at
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>
> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
>
> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
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>
> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
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-- 
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1-+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
AIM: Str9960
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose
skype: samuelrose
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Related Sites/Blogs/Projects:
OpenBusinessModels: http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
http://www.cooperationcommons.com
http://barcampbank.org
http://bfwatch.barcampbank.org
http://communitywiki.org
http://extinctionlevelevent.com

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