[p2p-research] [ox-en] Difference between Physical and Information production

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/23/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Stefan,
>
> please note that when we are talking  about craftmanship, we are NOT talking
> about 'common sense' craftmanship of the 19th, but about the possibility of
> localized, more customized production using the latest in technology
>
> You should have a look at Kevin Carson's Organization Theory, a really good
> study showing the weaknesses of the industrial model in terms of
> sustainability, and how the full force of state intervention is needed to
> keep it viable
>
> I also notice you are not informed about recent comparative studies on
> organic/sustainable  vs. industrial agriculture, so here is some material

Thanks, Michel.  And "craftsmanship," in the sense of custom or
small-batch production with skilled workers using general purpose
machines as tools (rather than deskilled workers using
product-specific machines to produce in large batches) is the basis of
the manufacturing model used in industrial districts like
Emilia-Romagna.  Such localized craft production is actually more
productive than mass-production industry, because it eliminates the
costs of long-distrance production by producing close to the point of
consumption; and because lean, demand-pull production eliminates the
enormous overhead costs from buffer stocks, inventories of finished
goods, etc., that result when production is not governed by
consumption.

The integration of electrically powered general-purpose machinery into
small-scale craft production is the direction industrialization would
likely have taken after the invention of the electric motor, had not
the state (through railroad subsidies and other aids to centralization
and concentration) instead forced the new technology into the old
institutional forms of the paleotechnic era.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html