[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p
Wittel, Andreas
andreas.wittel at ntu.ac.uk
Sun May 17 21:40:20 CEST 2009
Hi Ryan,
now things are going a bit funny. Of course technology does not cause inequality. If you reread my first email you will notice that I did not talk about technology at all. I was using this parallel in my last email to argue that technology in itself is unlikely to undo inquality.
As you were not very specific in your last emails what it is you object to I was trying to figure it out and came up with 2 messages: First message: Inequality will be overcome information technologies. On this I disagree. Second message: There is nothing wrong with inquality. Reading this email from you ('If you hate inquality') I assume now that you dont hate it.
Fine by me, we have different values here. But there is no need to start a rant against Marxism just because someone sees inequality as a severe problem and uses Marxist terms to explain the problem. I really dont to want to talk to you about Marxism as this just can't turn into a productive conversation. Let's just leave this please.
Let's talk about p2p instead. You see p2p as an alternative to capitalism and socialism. You like practice and dislike theory. P2P stands for practice, for doing things. A specific form of practice (collaborative, inclusive, distributed, constructive). I have a lot of admiration for this, but wonder (as I did in my first email) how far this mode of production (oh dear, another Marxist term, sorry) can reach. And if we consider a famous football star who earns in a day what a cleaner/small shopkeeper/nurse etc. earns in a year, I would assume that p2p systems and p2p modes would neither reach the football star nor the nurse. Should this be correct, then there are limits in the reach of p2p production, and due to these limits p2p cannot replace economic systems at large.
Andreas
________________________________
From: Ryan Lanham [mailto:rlanham1963 at gmail.com]
Sent: Sun 17/05/2009 15:40
To: Wittel, Andreas
Cc: Michel Bauwens; p2presearch at listcultures.org
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p
So the argument goes that technology caused inequality?
How about the rise of graduate management education? Or the rise of statistics tracked by compensation consulting firms?
My own view is that the real reason that income inequality has increased is that the "understanding" of value in processes changed. We have lawyers, accountants and management professionals pointing out value contribution and negotiating who is actually contributing value in processes--and it generally isn't the exploited worker who is easily replaced by someone in a poorer country. That wasn't capitalism...it was professionalism in management, marketing, law and accounting.
Social norms against high pay for managers fell for numerous complex reasons--mostly based on new management value theories. And there was an argument that capitalists ought NOT to be the winners--shareholders who paid for their shares didn't do that great compared to managers who made options to purchase cheap stock and took away big salaries. Take professional sports where in the 1950s players barely made a living. Now they are lavished in tens of millions of dollars...at the behest of their own collective bargaining actions. Owners lose money and own teams for prestige and fun. Where is the capitalism there?
The story is complex and to frame it is rather simplistic Marxian terms isn't helpful in my view; it is just absurd and loses credibility amongst anyone who actually deals with global business and production systems.
Marx was incredibly wrong. His ideas have been a source for endless misery. Invoking him is a source of lost credibility for the left that wants some vague utopian state that neither makes any sense nor is it even remotely feasible.
The discussion here is about voluntary participation in lives of contribution, service, balance and tension--not some utopian rubbish that has been tried, failed, rejected and justifiably now ignored by the masses.
If you hate inequality, spread education, advance normative values of sharing, responsibility and trust. Work for microcredit systems (which charge interest) and which work incredibly well. To say otherwise is sheer ignorance--like arguing with people who think God is touching their daily lives--there really isn't anything to say to that level of nihilism and anti-truth.
If you want to understand development economics, read Bill Easterly and others who know that you can't do big things through big governments or big NGOs which will go corrupt and that development works when people are free, empowered, taught to build their own systems and to not rely on help from above. The answers come from the grass roots--not in organizing vast labor or governmental systems that go corrupt, but in their organizing themselves into small sustainable processes and systems that advance P2P opportunities. That's what P2P is about. It isn't anti-capitalist. It isn't pro-socialist. It is pro living sensibly. That doesn't have any systematic economic philosophy. It is inherently anti-system...anti hierarchy. That's why we keep coming back to anarchist mutualist histories--like Proudhon, like Streeter, like the LETSI people in a much more modern and viable sense than Proudhon ever was. With technology, those systems can lead to happy, reasonably fair and reasonably sustainable lives--and should.
If you want a mantra to align your life to, then I propose that we don't organize hierarchies, we should rather organize modes of sharing...P2P.
And, to my mind, spare us the silly Marxian critiques (interest is inherently evil?--just absurd) which are unworthy of further discussion because they will never happen and shouldn't happen.
Ryan Lanham
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Wittel, Andreas <andreas.wittel at ntu.ac.uk> wrote:
Ryan,
the intensification of income differences is not something that happened in the 19th century, but in the last four decades.
Are you suggesting, that knowledge and information-driven production will somehow undo this development? If so, how would you explain the following parallel: Exactly at that moment when information and knowledge became the motor for economic development (from the 1970s onwards), the gap in income differences opened up significantly.
Andreas
________________________________
From: Ryan Lanham [mailto:rlanham1963 at gmail.com]
Sent: Sun 17/05/2009 01:23
To: Wittel, Andreas
Cc: Michel Bauwens; p2presearch at listcultures.org
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p
As I understand it, capitalism is the accumulation of capital to control means of production. Who or what does that now? Name five "capitalists" who matter. Most either parlayed intellectual property rights into fortunes, or they invested in large financial engineering schemes where debt was the leverage to create huge cash flows.
Very few successful firms actually produce things with capital--that is all in China and Eastern Europe and such places. Like I said, it is like discussing the 19th century. Not sure what world this is that people are discussing, but it isn't the one I live or work in.
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Wittel, Andreas <andreas.wittel at ntu.ac.uk> wrote:
There are many terms in Greek and Latin vocabulary which are still relevant today. So what is the problem with this? Yes, trems like capital and labour are probably not part of most people's worlds, and actually they never have been. They remained in the realm of concept/model/theory. That is not great. But that is not really the point.
I have used these terms to describe a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Most people who dont use these these terms still worry about this development. The terms might be old, the problem is contemporary. Would you agree that this increasing gap of inequality is a serious problem, Ryan?
Also, I really don't think that the left is unaware of how knowledge changes the game, all the debates on immaterial labour show that knowledge is today's battleground. But this does not mean that knowledge operates outside of capital and labour. Let's not talk about terms, let's talk about the organisation of production (and knowledge production) in capitalism
Andreas
________________________________
From: p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org on behalf of Ryan Lanham
Sent: Sat 16/05/2009 15:06
To: Michel Bauwens
Cc: p2presearch at listcultures.org
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p
I believe the seemingly absurd idealism of the European left is useful to the world. Whether it leads anywhere or just gives fodder to the right that the left is silly remains to be seen in the voting booths. But my own interpretation is that it is useful for pushing collaborative, open inquiry types (I hope like myself) to further question and reflect on their own equivocations.
Most of the discussions seem better set in 1880 than 2009. Terms like "capital" "labor" "management" seem to me to belong with terms like "steam engine" "railroad" and "factory." They aren't even seriously part of most people's worlds.
The battlefield today is the mind. Can its produce be free? Can there be justice in allocating knowledge and the expansion of knowledge? Who wins when knowledge is expanded? Knowledge isn't a conventional capital like a gear or machine tool. It is very different. The left seems unaware of that. Is there a left that open to post-capital social arrangements? Or maybe I'm it.
Ryan Lanham
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Marco,
you may be right that there are many people who want to abolish the personhood of corporations, but I have yet to meet the first one ... on the other hand, I meet scores of people who want to be enterpreneurs and create a company, regardless of its bylaws ...
I think that the answer here, if I'm correct about the lack of traction, is not necessarily to fight the old, we can do that later when we're stronger, but rather to build constructive and better alternatives .. I think that social entrepreneurships, fair trade, for-benefit associations and blended/value good-capital approaches, including chris cook's open capital, aim to do precisely that, to create better formats that can outgrow the limitations of the corporate patholotical form ...
So I agree with the ultimate aims of POCLAD, but I think it's more fruitful to build alternatives at this stage,
As you know, Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc., is doing a good job of educating people in POCLAD type critiques, as did The Corporation a few years earlier ...
Michel
On 5/15/09, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
On Fri, May 15, 2009 16:14:02 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> Hi Marco,
>
> Thanks for your contribution.
>
> I understand your comment, but my 'feeling' is just the opposite.
No problem! As I said, I'm all but an expert on monetary reform issues
or corporate law, so I don't really have any strong opinion or
position to defend, no problem. When these specific issues are
concerned, I'm still a student collecting material for homework.
With respect to this:
> Hundreds of cities and regions and tens of thousands of people are
> working on monetary issues .. it's a vibrant and growing movement ..
> In contrast, POCLAD is just minuscule
There is no doubt that the "monetary alternatives" movement, for lack
of a better term, is much more vibrant, growing and known among
activists than things like POCLAD. I myself discovered POCLAD by pure,
pure chance online some years ago. I also have no problem, at least
now, to accept your evaluation that POCLAD has much, much smaller
possibilities of success than monetary reform. What I didn't expect,
and find really interesting, is this assertion:
> and it requires really what the immense majority of people will find
> an unacceptable reform.
Regardless, again, of the probability of success and of any inherent
flaws in the idea, I am pretty sure that, around here, I would find:
1) much, much less difficulties to explain POCLAD proposals than any
money reform scheme passed on this list since when I subscribed
2) (partly due to 1) ) many more supporters of such a corporate reform
than of any of those scheme.
That is, my **feeling** is that if both sets of proposals were given
equal coverage in mainstream media (we can dream, can we not?), the
majority of non-activists, the "Joe Sixpack" class, in American slang,
would go for POCLAD (especially in these times...) rather than money
reform which would be, in that context, a much more alien concept than
"corporations are bad".
So I wonder how much of this feeling depends on where one lives. What
do list subscribers from other parts of the world think? Which of
those two classes of concepts is easier to sell (regardless of its
intrinsic value) to Joe Sixpack? Just curious, really, answer off list
if you think it's off topic.
marco
--
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you: http://digifreedom.net/node/84
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