[p2p-research] does openness and p2p have a class basis?

[Michel Bauwens]

see
http://www.opendemocracy.net/anthony-barnett-gerry-hassan/where-do-we-go-from-here-iii-agency-and-self-determinations-retaking-fu



Digital artisans as the ‘class basis’ of
openness?<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=10136>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]
Michel Bauwens
12th August 2010

 From a three-part
exchange<http://www.opendemocracy.net/anthony-barnett-gerry-hassan/where-do-we-go-from-here-iii-agency-and-self-determinations-retaking-fu>between
Anthony Barnett and Gerry Hassan in Open Democracy, on the future of
the British left, comes an interesting passage by Anthony Barnett, *which in
essence offers a class theory for the p2p movement*:

*“Today, the next technological and productive wave offers the chance of
what might be called an artisan class, hugely productive, not marginal, and
very widespread, with an interest in creating a market society that is not
dominated by capital. ‘Self-determinations’ would fit well with its
interests. One hint of it is in what Carlotta Perez describes as the switch
from closed hierarchies to open networks, from employees as resources to
“employees as creative capital”. *

*The Sloanist period of capitalism, still expanding of course in the
developing world, gave the wealth (and debts) to its employees. From cars to
labour saving devices such as washing machines (incredibly important for
women), this transformed their lives. But they remained objects of
consumption and the fruits of equal citizenship were primarily experienced
in consumer ownership. *

*The question now is whether the micro-chip and computers are bringing about
the publics ownership and control of the instruments of production. For sure
digital technology is dissolving the massed industrial labour force of the
Sloanist period. While we are seeing the huge growth of ‘knowledge workers’
of all kinds (Research from the Work Foundation claims that such workers now
comprise 42 per cent of the total and are rising). *

*Are we witnessing is the transformation of the workforce into the shared
owners and controllers of capital? If so, can we through the organisation of
our productive power create a networked market society, which is capable of
displacing the privatised rule of capital on the basis of your
self-determinations? *

*There are two sets of evidence pointing in this direction. The increasing
rise of what can be seen as the rise of an artisan class of producers of all
kinds enabled by digital technology. Often running small, interconnected
businesses with high skills and a vested interest in openness rather than
oligopoly. The current fashion for and interest in 18th century
enlightenment issues and republicanism is associated with this shift, I
feel. Second, there is the increasing interest in mutualism, cooperatives
and other forms of self-governing businesses. There is a rapidly growing
body of research and advocacy about this too (see, for example, Robin Murray
of NESTA and the Young Foundation on “the new social economy” or the work of
the New Economics Foundation). *

*Linked to this is what could prove to be an extraordinarily important shift
in language that is also fundamental challenge to the measurement of a
return on investment: from profit “maximisation” to revenue “optimisation”.
See Will Davies here in OurKingdom.*

*Tony Judt has written powerfully about the need for a new language for the
left if we are to see a renew challenge to existing power structures. The
notion of optimisation as against maximisation, with its inclusion of the
whole environment of human planetary needs into its calculus underpins an
argument for self-determinations. It gives it a different kind of political
economy.”*


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