[p2p-research] Concerning wikiworld and its use of socialist terminology

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/28/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Daniel Araya April 29 at 12:12am
>
> I'm talking about confusing p2p with communism. One is an emergent form (growing out of the real capacities of networks--- collective intelligence). The other is a romantic vision for a secular paradise of worker coops. They may be parallel but in my mind they're not the same.
>
> Don't be offended. Just reacting to the liberal use of the word 'communism' in that wikiworld book.
>

It seems to me that a lot of the juxtapositions of "individual
authorial voice" and the "collective," in critiques of "Digital
communism/Maoism" like those of Lanier, Helprin, etc., miss the point.

The Web is not "collective" in the traditional sense of the
term--i.e., as it was understood in the days before networked
organization, when "collective" action could be taken only through
large institutions representing some collective of human beings and
coordinated by a hierarchy, in which each individual's freedom of
initiative was limited by the coordination of a central authority.

It is stigmergic, which synthesizes the highest development of  both
the collective and individualism.  It maximizes the efficiency of
collective action by removing the transaction costs of voluntary
cooperation.  But at the same time, it is entirely a sum total of free
individual actions, taken by individuals on their own initiative and
without anyone else's permission.  The sum total effect is created by
individuals coordinating their own unconstrained actions with the
common goal as they understand it.

Under stigmergic organization, any individual can formulate any
individual innovation he sees fit, and make it universally available,
and any other individual or group of individuals can adopt it as they
see fit.  If there is disagreement within a group as to whether or not
to adopt it, they can fork and replicate two different versions of the
same project.  Every single "collective" is the product of the
unanimous agreement of the individuals making it up.  And every single
contribution is modular, to be adopted or not adopted by unanimous
consent in every discrete grouping out there.

So stigmergy is the highest realization of both individualism and
collectivism, without either diminishing or qualifying the other in
any way.
-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html