[p2p-research] quote on early history as gift economies

Fri Feb 20 05:56:52 CET 2009

As always, very thoughtful analysis Michel. Thanks.

I just want to add a note on hierarchies....

You can have a functional hierarchy (not a political one that keeps
power at the top) between equally empowered peers where the structure
of the hierarchy is known but where the nodes are occupied by randomly
picked peers from a set of all peers that meet a given functional
criteria.

In such a hierarchy, all the peers are equally empowered AND no
built-in dependency is created on any peer in particular.

What would such hierarchy be known as?  It exists today due to Search
technology. When someone running some business goes out to find
suppliers they go to Google and search for e.g. Python developer. They
find tons of links. They pick one or pick one that leads them to
another search engine which ultimately leads them to some supplier.
Now we have a hierarchy of two levels: the business owner and the
supplier. If the business owner repeats this every time she needs a
Python developer, which some people do, and uses the same criteria but
picks another supplier from the range of all potential suppliers
(those matching the criteria) then that is power to the business owner
and power to the developer. Neither is stuck with each other, and
neither develops a dependency on each other. I ran a number of
projects like that in the past with higher reliability than depending
on the same developer for all projects. Every developer had to prove
themselves and I had to prove my ability to manage the project.

Marc

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks David,
>
> David Graeber has written a whole book examining 'value' throughout
> different (anthropological) societies.
>
> I think the other David must have had the same experience as me during my
> university years, I was explicitely taught the barter-leads-to-market story,
> with no mention at all of the gift economy, a notion I only encountered
> years ago. Perhaps neoclassical economists have evolved over time,
> integrated other types of knowledge ..
>
> Still, there is a difference between saying, early economies had barter,
> which was complicated, so they invented tokens which became money and
> ultimately resulted in capitalism and the other story which is: we had gift
> economies, but when force intervened, we created debt, which eventually
> resulted in the necessity of inventing money ...
>
> Whether force is constituent to the human experience, even before the advent
> of unequal class societies, is  perhaps difficult to resolve, but I tend to
> believe that it is inherent to the human condition; this is why I think the
> state cannot be simply abolished, and I'm not an anarchist.
>
> You are right about 'economies' being a misleading term, and I have read
> remarks of Graeber in the same sense, it's an industrial concept we are
> projecting backwards, but perhaps also a distinction we have learned to see;
> so I think it is okay to use by analogy, as long as we know its limitations.
>
> This brings me to the crux of the debate: the role of networks.
>
> Like hierarchies, and markets, I do not see them in a univocal way. Rather,
> hierarchies can be feudal, or meritocratic; markets can be capitalist, or
> not; and similarly for networks: they cannot be divorced from the class
> structure of society, even as they have their own 'independent' effect of
> society which adapt these forms. But these forms will be thoroughly adapted
> and changed through the process of differential adoption.
>
> So, my view is the following: networks first arose for the privileged elite
> through private networks (multinationals and such), then became democratized
> and peer to peer. This leads to widespread adoption of new economic,
> political and social practices, which are more productive in many ways than
> the earlier modes. Hence, peer production, governance and property, as 3 new
> modes. As more productive ways of doing things, they are not only practiced
> by the bottom of society, but by all sectors, which initially use them
> within the existing dominant mode, just as early capitalist practices were
> used to strengthen an ailing feudal order. But as it is adapted it also
> changes the order, and new social forces are organizing around it. Chiefly,
> the knowledge workers and other associated producers on one hand, but also
> what I call 'netarchical capitalists', who created new forms of activity and
> business based on 'enabling and empowering social production'.
>
> As our infinite growth mechanism is hitting its limits, it is groping for a
> change towards markets which include former externalities (green
> capitalism), but also realizing it can't be done, or much less effectively,
> without adopting much wider participatory practices (co-creation, co-design,
> crowdsourcing, peer production and sharing modes of all kinds), hence, the
> force of the new modes of peer production, governance and property are
> growing, from emergence to eventual equivalence.
>
> If the current infinite growth system succeeds in being a natural
> capitalism, that may be the end of the story, otherwise, a phase transition
> will eventual occur, with the former core mode becoming a subsystem in a new
> meta-system based on peer to peer dynamics.
>
> Will this totally eliminate force? I do not think so, but it may
> significantly reduce their centrality to social life. But we can already see
> that successful networks or peer production efforts also deal with threats
> to their existence, i.e. to violence directed at them (even if through
> spamming, trolling, etc...). So there are three elements to network
> production: 1) enabling participation; 2) finding mechanisms for selection
> of excellence that are no threat to that universal participation and
> availability; and 3) defense against threats.
>
> Michel
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:15 AM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> many thanks, michel, for including me on this.  but i find it confusing.
>>  i also find it confused, for i think the author is conflating.  i'm not
>> aware that any major social theorist has grandly claimed that societies once
>> had economies based solely on barter.  that barter may have been an
>> important element, yes.  and that barter preceded money, yes.  but that's a
>> narrower and different kind of claim.
>>
>> perhaps there are economists who claim that barter came first, but the
>> conceptual hinge for them may be that, from their perspective, economies do
>> not exist unless material trade is taking place.  however, the economists i
>> happened to see at lunch today, though not historians, saw no particular
>> reason to start economic history with barter, and a couple thought it could
>> start with gifts, esp if the gifts had an exchange aspect.
>>
>> but that raises another matter.  early tribes depend significantly on
>> gifting.  we've agreed on that before, citing mauss in particular, and
>> graeber seems to be in agreement too.  but are we really talking about a
>> "gift economy" with ancient tribes.  not exactly.  especially not if there
>> is no economy per se that is separable from what else goes on in a tribe.
>>  and particularly not if the purpose of the gifting is to create honorable
>> relationships and social solidarity, rather than just to engage in
>> potentially equal material exchanges.
>>
>> but perhaps i'm not seeing the point you wanted me to see.
>>
>> in any case, i took a look at his long article and something else caught
>> my eye:  he claims that "neither states nor markets can exist without the
>> constant threat of force."  he repeats this at various points, once or twice
>> referring to "societies" instead of "states" since "Societies' are really
>> states."  i'd question this, but i'd rather raise another point:  tribes
>> also have not existed without the threat of force.  tribes often get
>> idealized, perhaps especially by people fed up with states/hierarchies and
>> markets.  but tribes can turn out to be as based on force and violence as
>> other forms of organization.  if the author were to add this to his
>> analysis, i wonder where it would lead.
>>
>> which leads to a question:  what about the kinds of information-age
>> networks that you and i are hopefully counting on?  as an emerging form of
>> organization, they look marvelous and necessary (in my timn view, as much so
>> as tribes, hierarchies, and markets).  but their present-day emergence is,
>> in many areas, tied to the nature of force.  and some networks may turn out
>> in practice, once embedded in future multiform societies, to reflect the
>> roles of force, even though many networks will be directed at the public
>> good.  does this end up meaning that all forms of societal organization
>> depend, to some extent, on the possibility of force?
>>
>> just a thought.  and i'm not entirely sure about it.  but it relates to
>> some propositions for the timn framework i'm trying to develop.  i'll
>> eventually get around to elaborating.
>>
>> meanwhile, i'll leave you with two quotes i happen to have handy that
>> relate a bit to all this and get at contrasting dynamics that underlie
>> civilization (though i'm not sure the author above approves much of what
>> others know as civilization):
>>
>>        "All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on
>> success in war."  (Kenneth Clark, Civilisation: A Personal View (New York:
>> Harper & Row, 1969, p. 18)
>>
>>        "Every living culture must possess some spiritual dynamic, which
>> provides the energy necessary for that sustained social effort which is
>> civilization."  (Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An Historical
>> Inquiry (London: Sheed and Ward, 1929; reissued: Washington, D.C.: The
>> Catholic University of America Press, 2001, pp. 3-4)
>>
>> enough.  onward.
>>
>> ===
>>
>> On Feb 18, 2009, at 11:46 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>>> Dear friends,
>>>
>>> this is a quote from anthropologist david graeber, that has a bearing on
>>> our earlier discussions on how to characterize tribal societies:
>>>
>>> "One of the traditional roles of the economic anthropologist is to point
>>> out that the standard narrative set out in economic textbooks – the one we
>>> all take for granted, really, that once upon a time there was barter; that
>>> when this became too inconvenient, people invented money; that eventually,
>>> this lead to abstract systems of credit and debt, banking, and the New York
>>> Stock Exchange – is simply wrong. There is in fact no known example of a
>>> human society whose economy is based on barter of the 'I'll give you ten
>>> chickens for that cow' variety. Most economies that don't employ money – or
>>> anything that we'd identify as money, anyway – operate quite differently.
>>> They are, as French anthropologist Marcel Mauss famously put it, 'gift
>>> economies' where transactions are either based on principles of open-handed
>>> generosity, or, when calculation does take place, most often descend into
>>> competitions over who can give the most away. What I want to emphasise here,
>>> though, is what happens when money does first appear in something like it's
>>> current form (basically, with the appearance of the state). Because here, it
>>> becomes apparent that not only do the economists get it wrong, they get it
>>> precisely backwards. In fact, virtual money comes first. Banking, tabs, and
>>> expense accounts existed for at least 2 thousand years before there was
>>> anything like coinage, or any other physical object that was regularly used
>>> to buy and sell things, anything that could be labeled 'currency'.
>>> (http://www.metamute.org/en/content/debt_the_first_five_thousand_years)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>
>>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
>>> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
>>> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>>>
>>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>>
>>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>