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

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Franz,

I think both views are true,

i.e. that openness, peer to peer, commons and other values are particularly
driven by a new type of labour, which has some of the characteristics of the
digital artisans, and that this is essentially driven by having access and
control over the means of intellectual production .. this is new and did not
exist on that scale before the internet

on the other hand, it is also an aspect of at least one billion humans,
regardless of their structural position ...

I would agree that it would make little sense to develop a 'class position'
on this, to pretend it is a 'class struggle' by digital artisans,

it is rather, in the second sense, a production of the 'multitude' (though I
don't like to use this term either, outside of the intellectual class, it
falls totally flat)

Michel

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> Thanks Michel for the extra forward.
>
> On one side I am inclined to say yes, of course, and on the other side its
> really hard to track down something like a distinct class base of openness
> and P2P.
>
> One could easily argue that p2p mirrors "empowerded labour" able to create
> its own base for associating - while traditionally the social web of
> labour was a product of capital. Information technology brought us nearer
> to the "general intellect" and "general productive worker" that Marx
> envisioned in Grundrisse.
>
> Its amazing though the socio-economic form of many of our activities is
> self-employment and "leisure" time. So thats hardly related to a class
> position. What we see and observe that people like to work in coworking
> style, clusters and hubs.
>
> All in all, the emphasis on class and class struggle might be attached to
> a contested concept of political theory and practise. At least I would not
> give it the status of a self-explanatory buzzword any more.
>
> Franz
>
>


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