[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Kevin Carson]

On 6/11/09, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net> wrote:

>  Stan Rhodes wrote:
>  > Christian, your peerconomy is a market in everything but name.

> Yes, I know. Some people (like you) say it's like a market; some say it
>  isn't a market but would evolve into one; some say isn't not a market but
>  could never possible work; some say it could work in theory but is
>  impossible to reach from where we're now; some (in German) even said it's
>  like the classical "socialist" planned economies; some are happy with it.
>  That's one of the reasons why I think that I'm really describing something
>  new*: people can't agree in which way to dismiss it ;-)

I don't think Stan's characterization is intended as a dismissal.  I
certainly don't dismiss commons-oriented peer production or regard it
as worthy of dismissal,  but I regard it as fully compatible with a
genuine market as I envision them.  My desired society is one in which
the majority of the means of production are affordable to ordinary
working people, and most people own (either cooperatively or through
self-employment) their means of subsistence.  A "market" for me is not
equivalent to the cash nexus, but includes all forms of voluntary and
non-coerced relationships between working people in such a society.

It might well be, in such a market society, that the majority of
production comes to be carried out for direct subsistence in
individual households or cohousing units, or for non-monetized peer
production, and money exchange is only supplemental and secondary.
Well and good.  It's my firm belief that in a genuine free market
society, the distinctions between a self-managed anarcho-commie
collective, and a market firm exchanging for money, would be largely
academic:  just different ways for voluntary associations of
self-employed people, who own the means of production, to organize
production among themselves.

And since I've been called, in various fora, a "Rand-quoting
goose-stepping racist Nazi" for defending markets, and a
"collectivist" and a "commie" for opposing big business and favoring
cooperatives and open-source, I guess that means I'm describing
something new as well. ;)

-- 
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