[p2p-research] The difference between anarchism and libertarianism

[Michel Bauwens]

my reactions are in-line

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Stefan Merten <smerten at oekonux.de> wrote:

> Hi Michel!
>
>
> .
>
> > I would rather take the position of Roberto Verzola, i.e. there is a
> > polarity  between abundance/non-rivalry and scarcity/rivalry, whereby
> money
> > encodes unneccessary scarcity and whereby the current market mechanisms
> > actively create and protect scarcity even where it is not necessary.
>
> I don't understand what unneccessary scarcity is. If you say
> unneccessary then the question is unneccessary for whom? In particular
> it is not unneccessary for an exchange based system because otherwise
> the exchange based system you mention would not need to protect it.



This is not difficult to understand. Nature 'naturally' or with human help,
renews itself. When we use terminator seeds, this natural mechanism is
artificially interrupted. An objective abundance is changed into artificial
scarcity for the benefit of a corporation. Roberto suggests we work 'with'
that naturally available abundance, rather than impede it. Market mechanisms
create many of these artificial scarcities because it can only operate when
there is a tension between supply and demand.

>
>
>
> Put simply: If we think of a post-capitalist society then there is no
> use in relating to pre-capitalist money.


People are not really advocating pre-capitalist money systems, but rather
mechanisms that take full use of the most advanced technologies. In mutual
credit clearing for example, money becomes a pure accounting system of
mutual streams of exchange, and this can now be done easily because of the
low transaction costs that result from computer networks. Some of these new
currencies or un-monies can be considered post-capitalist, because they
divorce the exchange or market mechanism from capitalist accumulation.
Obviously between 'pure capitalism' and a hypothetical 'full communal
shareholding' system, there are many transitions and hybrid systems
requiring exchange accounting mechanism. This is true unless you assume you
can ban every reciprocity from the system. But even if you advocate such
extreme position, you still need to explain how to get from A to B, and
there again it is likely to require post-capitalist mechanisms that take
reciprocity into account. Your position only works if there is a magical
transition from today to 'pure communal shareholding'.



>
>
>
> May be. But the same goes for warlords in so-called failed states.
> They also apply an alternative allocation method. I'd agree, however,
> that the rule of warlords has the same use as money.


Good point. Does this mean that you prefer warlord allocation above
equitable social currencies, given that pure communal shareholding may not
be possible? This is of course exactly my critique. By refusing to think
through any transition and hoping for a magic bullet, you objectively end up
endorsing the most regressive alternatives.


>
>
>
>
>
> >> Money is either scarce or it makes no sense. It follows that if you
> >> want to overcome scarcity money makes no sense.
>

This is not true. There are 'sufficiency-based' social currencies.

In debt money, you create the amount for the loan, but not the amount that
needs to be paid back, so there is embedded scarcity mechanism. However,
when you use a social currency that records existing exchanges, and/or use
debt free investment money,  you do not have that embedded scarcity.

See: quote by Keith Hart, from the book, *Reading Money in an Unequal World.
New York and London: Texere, 2001*


“Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. *We have to find ways of
organising markets as equal exchange and that means detaching the forms of
money from the capitalist institutions which currently define them. I
believe that, instead of taking money to be something scarce beyond our
control, we could begin to make it ourselves as a means of accounting for
those exchanges whose outcomes we wish to calculate*. Money would then
become multiple sources of personal credit, building on the technology which
has already given us plastic cards. The key to repersonalisation of the
economy is cheap information. Money was previously impersonal because
objects exchanged at distance needed to be detached from the parties
involved. Now growing amounts of information can be attached to transactions
involving people anywhere in the world. This provides the opportunity for us
to make circuits of exchange employing money forms which reflect our
individuality, so that money may be more meaningful to each of us as a means
of participating in the multiple associations we choose to enter. All of
this stands in stark contrast to state-made money in the 20th century, where
citizens belonged to one national economy whose currency was monopolised by
a political class claiming the authority of representation to manage its
volume, price and allocation." (http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/ )




> >
> > Again, there is no black and white separation between abundance and
> > scarcity, so you necessarily have to deal with hybrid situations
>
> I still have no idea why in hybrid situations a simple co-existance of
> peer production and capitalism doesn't suffice.


Some people prefer peer production to co-exist with more equitable
mechanism, whereas you prefer capitalism continue to exist with its current
financial system, but there are indeed other points of view. I'm assume that
most non-Oekonux people would prefer equitable mechanisms.


>
>
>
>
>
> And that is fine by me. Why should the next mode of production solve
> the problems of the current mode of production *inside* the old mode?


Because this is where we are living today, we need to solve our problems
inside current reality, not a hypothetical situation. Reality cannot be
magically abolished, it requires many steps that break the old logic and
replace it with new logics, and a interconnection of those patterns of
change. Peer production is only one of them, social currencies are another.
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