[p2p-research] The three exodus and the transition towards the p2p society

Tue Apr 27 16:23:19 CEST 2010

Hi Michel:

A few thoughts on what you write:

1. The world is urbanizing in a hurry.  That isn't slowing.  So exodus seems
some time away.

2. I don't think the biosphere is the imminent issue of capitalism...maybe
in 100 years...but the issue will, IMO, be long solved by then.

3. Instead, the imminent issue is labour...as is was in the rise of
feudalism and the rise of capitalism...in short, the issue was productivity
changes through organization (e.g. guilds and trading networks) and then
through technology (the steam engine, etc.).  The same is true now.  The
death of capitalism is occuring because labour productivity cannot keep pace
with the changes in automation.  In other words, humans are becoming
obsolete.  This either means that population falls sharply (what many
capitalists like Buffett believe) or we find a new system of Hans Moravec
like robo-socialism.  I tend to see a blending of both outcomes especially
with a lot more transhumanism (which I think touches on your Negri Hardt
body...discussion).

The future is close...not more than 30 years off.  By future, I mean a major
systematic transition.  To my mind, that transition is driven almost
exclusively by technology.  Today is YouTube's fifth birthday.  Imagine.  I
had a recent discussion with a biologist who said "hold on to your ankles"
the world is about to start turning very fast.  Aubrey de Grey...no dummy,
is saying very similar things.  Cambridge England is all abuzz now in
general about post-humanism as is the campus of MIT.  It isn't carbon that's
going to be the driver...it is technology.  Thus, the systemic crisis you
await will be much more internalized...as it was in the others.  Rome fell
from within, not from without.  Feudalism arose from structural
instabilities of production in urban places and the need for distributed
labour systems that made sense absent a strong state.

Ryan

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 4:01 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-week-escape-routes-control-and-subversion-in-the-21st-century/2010/04/26
>
> Dear friends, on may 2, I publishing the following, which I think is quite
> important as a hypothesis,
>
> (the above link is to a related approach on escape routes: dimitri, I
> published it earlier than planned because of a mistake in post-dating)
>
>
>
> Three Times  Exodus, Three Phase Transitions
>
>
>
> In my lectures, based on my reading of history books during 2003-2004, I
> use a genealogy of social change and phase transitions from one system to
> another, that starts with the crisis of a dominant system, creating an
> exodus, which in turns leads to a mutual reconfiguration of both managerial
> and producing classes.
>
>
>
> Here is the story, and I’m interested in your thoughts, and challenges,
> especially based on the historical record.
>
> The narrative is of course simplified, but the aim is to get the main
> points of the process, and my hypothesis, across.
>
>
>
> The first transition: Rome to feudalism
>
>
>
> At some point in  its evolution (3rd century onwards?), the Roman empire
> ceases to expand (the cost of of maintaining empire and expansion exceeds
> its benefits). No conquests means a drying up of the most important raw
> material of a slave economy, i.e. the slaves, which therefore become more
> ‘expensive’. At the same time, the tax base dries up, making it more and
> more difficult to maintain both internal coercion and external defenses. It
> is in this context that Perry Anderson mentions for example that when
> Germanic tribes were about to lay siege to a Roman city, they would offer to
> free the slaves, leading to an exodus of the city population. This exodus
> and the set of difficulties just described, set of a reorientation of some
> slave owners, who shift to the system of coloni, i.e. serfs. I.e. slaves are
> partially freed, can have families, can produce from themselves and have
> villages, giving the surplus to the new domain holders.
>
> Hence, the phase transition goes something like this: 1) systemic crisis ;
> 2) exodus 3) mutual reconfiguration of the classes.
>
> This whole process would of course take five centuries. In the First
> European Revolution, historian xxx claims that the feudal system would only
> consolidate around 975, the date of the political revolution confirming the
> previous phase transition, and setting up a consolidated growth phase for
> the new system (doubling of the population between 10 and 13th century).
>
>
>
>
>
> The second transition: feudalism to capitalism
>
>
>
> Something very similar starts occurring as of the 16th century. The feudal
> system enters in crisis, and serfs start fleeing the countryside, installing
> themselves in the cities, where they are rejected by the feudal guild
> system, but embraced by a new type of proto-capitalist entrepreneurs. In
> other words, a section of the feudal class (as well as some upstarts from
> the lower classes) re-orient themselves by investing in the new mode of
> production (and those that don’t gradually impoverish themselves), while
> serfs become workers.
>
> In short,  we have the same scheme:
>
> 1)      Systemic crisis
>
> 2)      Exodus
>
> 3)      Mutual reconfiguration of classes
>
> 4)      After a long period of re-orientation and phase transitions: the
> political revolutions that configure the new capitalist system as dominant
>
> Again, the process of reconfiguration takes several centuries, and the
> political revolutions come at the end of it.
>
>
>
> Hypothesis of a third transition: capitalism to peer to peer
>
> Again, we have a system faced with a crisis of extensive globalization,
> where nature itself has become the ultimate limit. It’s way out, cognitive
> capitalism, shows itself to be a mirage.
>
> What we have then is an exodus, which takes multiple forms: precarity and
> flight from the salaried conditions; disenchantement with the salaried
> condition and turn towards passionate production. The formation of
> communities and commons are shared knowledge, code and design which show
> themselves to be a superior mode of social and economic organization.
>
> The exodus into peer production creates a mutual reconfiguration of the
> classes. A section of capital becomes netarchical and ‘empowers and enables
> peer production’, while attempting to extract value from it, but thereby
> also building the new infrastructures of cooperation.
>
> This process will take time but there is one crucial difference: the
> biosphere will not allow centuries of transition. So the maturation of the
> new configuration will have to consolidate faster and the political
> revolutions come earlier.
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
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