[p2p-research] [Commoning] Non digital commons a lot more complicated than Free Software

[j.martin.pedersen]

.......

On 19/12/10 17:23, Neal Gorenflo wrote:
> 
> This was supposed to be funny.  Comedic FAIL.  I added this only
> because I honestly couldn't think of a specific example.

This is an important point - and it would be great to hear Michel, who
has been using this term throughout this exchange, to actually exemplify
it. Otherwise, one could easily be misled to suspect that it is a demon
in an imaginary closet.

> 
> However, you don't need virulent anti-capitalist rhetoric to
> marginalize this movement or create divides.  You can use ordinary
> leftist phrases like social justice, which I heard aplenty at the ICC.


"Social justice", in Western thought, is a 2000+ year old greek
philosophical concept attributed to Aristotle, which runs through most
of liberal thought since and today. _Liberal_ here doesn't mean what it
does in common US parlance, where anything left of Kissinger is liberal,
but is used in the sense of the "Political Philosophy of Liberalism".
Social justice also appeared in the thought of Confucius a few hundred
years earlier during the Spring and Autumn Period.

To say that social justice is a leftist thing is entirely misleading and
quite simply false. Even a neoliberal philosopher would suggest that the
free market delivers social justice. Capitalism, according to its
proponents and advocates, is a system that is intended to deliver social
justice. In fact, I don't think there is much leftist-ism about it,
really, since leftist thought is extra-ordinarily preoccupied with
critiques of the liberal concept of justice, which is an abstract,
community-detached concept where all are equal before the law,
notwithstanding particular contexts.

Indeed, you are quite right, you don't need anti-capitalist rhetoric to
divide or marginalise a movement - but you will probably need a sound
analysis of capital and power if you want to avoid the processes of
recuperation and enclosure that most other social change movements have
suffered in the past. Learning lessons from history can be a good thing.

The history of the labour movement - which in itself signals a defeat of
the commoning peasantry - is a prime example: managers and negotiators -
self-styled leaders and representative spokesmen - undermined the
interests of the working class while smoking cigars and drinking cognac
with capital interests. Very similar dynamics can be observed in almost
all social movements to varying degrees and the same thing goes for the
commons: influence seeking individuals water down the principle waves
upon which they surf and emerge as leaders of a new market expansion niche.


>  I love the intention behind such phrases, but also think that these
> phrases are of varied effectiveness in moving new practices for
> managing society into the mainstream.  They're loaded with moral
> obligation.

What is moral obligation? That one or a community is obligated to show
consideration to others?

The GPL is an articulation of social and moral obligations, for instance.


> In order for an innovation to move from early adopters to the early
> majority, the language around the innovation has to change from "true
> believer" language of those at the margin to "what's in it for me"
> language of the masses.  The language of science is a possible source
> of inspiration since they do not focus on the moral dimension but
> rather focus on practices that actually work.  That's why I'm an
> admirer of the Resilience Alliance and Ostrom's work.  This is not to
> say that the moral dimension is unimportant, what I'm addressing here
> is the need to use inclusive, benefits-driven language to create a
> broad-based movement.

The language of "what is in it for me" - also known as self-interest -
is central to liberal thought (againt this is not US liberalism, but
political philosophy liberalism) and at the heart of the capitalist
ecnonomy --- and that is the very system of thought and frame of mind
that Stallman reacted to when he conceived of the GPL as a social
justice good.

When Ostrom set out in the 1960s on her life's mission she also began in
reaction to the all-pervasive myth (or, rather, the by now
self-fulfilled prophecy) of self-interest. It is at best an incomplete,
short term strategy to base a movement on self-interest, unless, of
course, that is the kind of positive feedback loop that you do want to
establish and institute. That is precisely what capitalist democracy is
based on and perpetuates: exclusive, self-interest.

Commons, on the other hand, are not based on (a narrow conception of)
self-interest and both the challenge and the promise of commons as a
concept of social organisation, as far as I am concerned, is precisely
that it is not based on self-interest, but on notions of sociality and
community.

It seems to me to be rather bizarre to want to move commons into
mainstream society by disregarding the manner in which commons differ
from what philosophically, legally and economically underpins mainstream
society, and replacing that underpinning with the very same idea that
underpins the mainstream society which is sought changed. Very
backwards/awkwards approach to social change.

-m