[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Dmytri,

I could have written exactly the same thing, as indeed, this is the central
concern, and this is exactly why I/we are so interested in finding the fit
between the immaterial and the material:

<exactly because the common stock is immaterial it can not directly
capture exchange value with out access to scarce inputs, physical, legal,
and financial, and thus this is not such a significant shift as you make it
out to be. Capital will still get it's surplus value in the main.>

Apart from that, I think that, at the same time that capital and state are
incorporating p2p elements, at the same time, the immaterial commons,
sharing practices, p2p ethos, and the revolution in the structure of desire,
are still continuing and expanding, at the same time.

So, not only do I not think that p2p is already over the top, but rather
that we have seen nothing yet,

Untold more numbers of people are now able to peer produce, than say, 10
years ago, despite the existence of sharing platforms (but actually also
thanks to it)

Michel

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Dmytri Kleiner <dk at telekommunisten.net>wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:55:24 +0700, Michel Bauwens
> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > However, there is one big change, and this is what we address at the p2p
> > foundation, which is that knowledge workers now own the means of
> > immaterial production, that represents a real shift.
>
> In most cases they do not. Not until they can account for their own
> subsistence costs by employing these means of production, which for the
> vast majority is not possible.
>
> What is new is a common stock of productive assets which have nearly no
> reproduction costs, thus a great many independent producers can share the
> production costs by each contributing only small amounts, each having the
> ability to derive more value from the whole common stock than that of their
> own contributions to it.
>
> However, exactly because the common stock is immaterial it can not directly
> capture exchange value with out access to scarce inputs, physical, legal,
> and financial, and thus this is not such a significant shift as you make it
> out to be. Capital will still get it's surplus value in the main.
>
> What is a real shift, is the ability to form and maintain near real-time
> relationships at a distance. That the form of social and economic
> communities is no longer geographical bound, and that the structure of
> these communications is not mediated by any individual corporate or State
> agency, but rather consists of direct interactions. This is the meaning of
> p2p, and it does have explosive potential to reshape society.
>
> However I am increasingly worried that p2p is already on the decline,
> already being dismantled as the internet becomes more commercialized,
> centralized, censored, etc. "Cloud Computing" and "Web 2.0" are actively
> displacing the free, peer, internet with centralized proprietary platforms
> with proprietary APIs that are under direct corporate control and highly
> restrictive user agreements, internet access is already consolidated in the
> hands of fewer and fewer major corporations, under terms that more and more
> restrict subscribers in their run their own servers, and more and more
> degrade net neutrality.
>
> A distopian future could easily be one where your ISP sells you access to
> YouTube and a package of other corporate sites, not the Internet, where if
> you want to have your own site, you will need to overcome many legal and
> financial barriers to entry designed to restrict the ability to operate
> internet platforms to a oligarchy of well financed providers.
>
> The future may look a lot more like CompuServ, cable TV and the mobile
> phone network than the Internet as we know it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dmytri Kleiner
> editing text files since 1981
>
> http://www.telekommunisten.net
>
>
>


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