[p2p-research] The difference between anarchism and libertarianism

[Michel Bauwens]

2009/6/17 Stefan Merten <smerten at oekonux.de>

> Hi Sm ári!
>
> 5 days ago Sm ári McCarthy wrote:
> > Forgive the length of this rant, and please refrain from drawing
> > conclusions before the end of it:
>
> Indeed this was necessary. Your rant started out nicely but IMHO ended
> poorly.
>
>
> Well, I'd go one step further: Money *encodes* scarcity (where
> scarcity means a man-made limitation). If you want to end up at
> commons (i.e. absense of scarcity) you have simply no more use for
> money.


Hi Stefan, this means that you disagree with the thesis of Raoul Victor,
based on historical research, that money re-appeared even when there were
attempts to abolish it, in order to deal with scarcity .. see for example
the situation in prisons, where cigarettes are used as currency


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. The key
issue becomes then how to allow abundance to exist, respect cycles of
natural abundance and regeneration in nature and agriculture, and improve
the scarcity/abundance mix in material goods


>
>
>
>
> > Usury, or interest, creates an interesting situation in the monetary
> > system.
>
> Here your analysis starts to get wrong. Interest does not create a
> situation in the monetary system but is created by a monetary system.


This is historically incorrect, most historical currencies had negative
interest rates. In the West, there was a long fight, from the 12th century
onwards, to legitimize interests and usury, a fight only 'won' after the
Reformation and Calvin's re-interpretations



>
> But then: What do we need money for at all?


There are many situations in which alternative allocation methods may not be
possible, may not be socially accepted, and as Raoul Victor argued, 'money'
would appear



>
>
>   I wholeheartedly suggest that you just look at peer
> production. Scarcity is no part of peer production. And thus money is
> not missing.


yes, but then it only exists, so far, for immaterial production ... I'm sure
Smari is very aware of that .. so he's talking about situations where that
doesn't apply (yet)

>
>
>
> By using computers you move the authorities into the machine. Code is
> law - already forgotten? You can not remove authorities by moving them
> into a computer program.


No, but you can make rule or code-making democratic, either outside or
within computers ...

This is what protocollary power and value-conscious design is about. When
you design free software or network services, you implicitely encode  values
and rules; you can now understand why this is also the case with money. This
is why we need free software, open standards, data portability, privacy
protections etc...



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


Again, there is no black and white separation between abundance and
scarcity, so you necessarily have to deal with hybrid situations


>
>
>
>
>
> No. Anarchism is a concept related to capitalism. For instance
> equality is a fundamental value in capitalist societies. Equality is a
> concept to deal with scarcity and limitations. The future is peer
> production. Equality will simply be no topic any more in peer
> production.
>
>
There is some truth to that assertion, but then only some. Capitalism is
theoretically based on an equality of rights, but not on its realization in
practice. So the social movements of the 19th century arose, promising to
turn the legal fiction into an actual reality.

But peer production today is arising as an emergent phenomena within a sea
of scarcity and inequality, and by itself, though it practices
'equipotentiality' (not equality), it does not care and does not offer any
solution to the really existing inequalities, it simply ignores them. If you
are starving, you can't rely on any peer producing community to assist you,
unless it is allied with a cooperative or other production system that also
insures social reproduction of peer producers lives.

So, more in general, your attitude is problematic, you are generalizing from
a marginal (though important and bound to grow) practice, pretending as it
is the whole of society, so that we can simply ignore all existing problems,
you are asking us to 'open your eyes' to an utopian possibility, at the
price of denying complex realities.

The reality is that we have to seek solutions, practical solutions for
social reproduction and survival, in a hybrid reality, and find either a
solution within the existing capitalist market (as you are doing in your own
life), or in counter-hegemonic alternatives, that either already exist or
should be created.

There's now way out of dealing with real problems, something that Smari
understands well.

Michel
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