[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Michel Bauwens]

hi Dmytri, see inline

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Dmytri Kleiner <dk at telekommunisten.net>wrote:

>
> On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:44:21 +0700, Michel Bauwens
> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Dmytri Kleiner
>
> >> It is my position that non-reciprocity is a red herring.
>
> > It has always existed and will always exist, see the many different
> > anthropological accounts such as the structure of social life and its
> > detailed description of communal shareholding over the ages
>
> I can can only conclude that you have not read these accounts Michel, for
> in reading them, it is impossible
> to miss the fact that these relationships are, in fact, reciprocal. See for
> instance, Marcel Mause's "The Gift."
>
> Even the etymology of the word "Gift" reveals how deep the concept of
> reciprocation is in humans.
> It's a Germanic word that shares it's root with the word for Poison.
> Receiving a gift is like being poisoned,
> you must get it out of your system by reciprocating or suffer.


Hi Dmytri, I cannot believe you are not aware of the deep difference between
two forms of gifting, specifically reciprocal gifting, as described by
Marcel Mauss, or 'generalized exchange', i.e. gifting to a commons (give a
brick, get a house).

Since this is so crucial to an understanding of peer production, I'm
reproducing the difference between both here, from
http://p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske

Any cursory examination of FS/OS practices will quickly show what kind of
reciprocity is involved, and it is obviously not the personal kind.

So here's the distinction:

Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or
group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the social domain
in question. Examples are people using a commons (CS with respect to
utilization of the particular resource), people intensely in love (CS with
respect to their social selves), people who "ask not for whom the bell
tolls, for it tolls for thee" (CS with respect to shared suffering and
common well-being), or people who kill any member of an enemy group
indiscriminately in retaliation for an attack (CS with respect to collective
responsibility).

In Equality Matching (EM) relationships people keep track of the balance or
difference among participants and know what would be required to restore
balance. Common manifestations are:

   - turn-taking


   - one-person one-vote elections


   - equal share distributions


   - and vengeance based on an-eye-for-an-eye, a-tooth-for-a-tooth

Examples include:

1. sports and games (EM with respect to the rules, procedures, equipment and
terrain)

2. baby-sitting co-ops (EM with respect to the exchange of child care)

3. and restitution in-kind (EM with respect to righting a wrong).



<You are conflating reciprocity with the Market. Value in non-market
reciprocity, as I've mentioned before,
is placed on relationships, not individual item and transaction prices.
When a member of a family does not
meet the expectations of the other family members in their contributions,
disputes arise.>

I'm well aware of the difference.

<Further you miss the point that we are not talking about circulation, but
production, and no matter how altruistic
and selfless the producers are, if they are not able to attain the
reproduction costs of their inputs,
they are not able to continue producing. A mode of production must explain
how all inputs are reproduced, your
Benklerian model of peer-production, "non-reciprocal, immaterial
production," can not.>

It does that very well, pragmatically. Both Benkler and myself are very well
aware of the embeddedness of peer production in the market mode, and of the
different streams going from one to the other. We are not positing an
idealized 'should', just looking at what is.




<You continue to misunderstand the nature of free software production and
persist in your belief in the
fairytale of random volunteer developers making free software for no reason
at all. No such "Free Software" exists
outside the long tail of abandon-ware and vapour-ware listed on the
backpages of freshmeat searches.>

I'm well aware of the different motivational structures, including the
proportion of paid developers (the ratio depends on the projects) in it,
which depends on the maturity of the project. Projects often start (or used
to start, before corporations understood open source as the default mode)
with an almost exclusive volunteer force, then gradually professionalize and
hybriditize. There's a whole polarity between community led, hybrid, to
'corporate commons' models.


<Free software is a common productive stock, we use it and improve it
because we need it. Most significantly from
an economic view, is that we need it as an input to production, even though
it has nearly no circulation cost, the production that
depends on it must provide for production costs, not it's circulation
costs. However because it has nearly no circulation cost, the production
costs can be spread out over a great many users, each motivated to
contribute their small part to better derive value from the whole common
stock.>

Well, said.

<What is interesting about the production of free software is that free
software is a common stock of productive assets employed in production
independently by many producers, not that it is non-reciprocal (It's not)
nor immaterial. What is interesting is that it is commons-based, that is
it's definitive characteristic.>

If the commons would require reciprocity, it would not be a commons, but a
reciprocally based gift economy, which it is not, it's a form of generalized
exchange, communal shareholding, as explained above.



<A commons-based market, one where productive assets where held in common by
peer-producing networks of independant producers
is exactly the equitable market you are looking for. I wont champion a
particlar model in this thread, but there are many, from Mutualism,
Syndicalism and Georgism, to their mash-ups such as Gesselian
Freiwirtshaft, Geolibertarianism, and my own Venture Communism.>

Well, this is where perhaps we can find common ground.

But there is something I need to understand about this:

when you say:

<peer-producing networks of independant producers>

do you mean that the commons would be restricted to the independent
producers of a specific network, i.e. the members of a particular project,
or network of projects, it is to the particular members, and not universally
available, as FO/SS is now?

If that were the case, that would be the major difference in approach.

1) Would you restrict it only from the corporations, as you indicated in
copyfarleft, or from other workers and their organizations also?

2)Would you make any difference between the immaterial assets (software,
knowledge, designs) and the material assets (machines, productive assets,
"money"), or not.

Whatever the case, and I hope you can answer those 2 specific questions
without repeating that people who differ from you are necessarily ignorant,
whatever the answer is, it would be really useful if we could have an
overview document on how the

'network of indepedent producers' immaterial assets', would interoperate
with the property and organizational forms that you mention here, i.e.

<Mutualism,
Syndicalism and Georgism, to their mash-ups such as Gesselian
Freiwirtshaft, Geolibertarianism, and my own Venture Communism.>

It would be really useful to have such an overview at our disposal.


<In peer production the stock of productive assets is common, not owned by
one co-operative, but by many independent individuals and groups.>

Is it owned abstractly by the common, which is universal, or by a particular
organization, linked to a license? Does that apply to all productive assets,
included the material ones?


<Users of and contributers to the Linux kernel, for example, are not a
co-operative, but rather a distributed network of individuals and groups
for whom the Linux Kernel is a common productive assets, some of them make
routers, some of the make distros, some of them do client-funded
customizations, etc. The vast majority of benefit directly from the Linux
Kernel, and thus contribute to it so that it better suites their needs. The
value the derive from the Linux Kernel is far greater than that of their
own contributions to it.>

yes, that is what I meant to say above by <give a brick, get a house>, but
the other characteristic of a digital commons like the Linux Kernel, is that
it can also be used by people who are not contributing.


<Free software, primitive commons society, the family and every single
example you use is much better explained if you understand that the
definitive feature in peer-production is the commons, not some imaginary
"non-reciprocity.">

the commons is defined by generalized exchange, see above, but let's not
quibble about words, if you agree that the exchange is not between persons,
but between persons and a common stock, then we mean the same thing. The
only thing you then need to explain to maintain your definition of absolute
reciprocity is what happens to people who use without contributing anything.





> I already know you would restrict universal availability, how else would
> it change?

<Please stop repeating this false statement.>

Hi Dmytri, I'm surprised here, because you confirmed it yourself in an
earlier exchange, you even added that corporate firms would find it normal
to pay for the commons, you said, literally, "it's what they expect anyway".
So, if my interpretation is false, you are saying that corporations, and
anybody, can use your type of commons? In that case, the GPL would be
sufficient isn't it, no need for a new copyfarleft.




<By excepting their framing of peer-production, you also fall victim to the
limits inherent in a definition which tries to evade the objective costs of
sustaining production by mesmerizing you with novelties in circulation.>

Not at all, these objective costs are my central concern.


Michel
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