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

Thu Dec 23 04:25:00 CET 2010

Hi Neal, you write:

Do you really think the 'masses' are only moved by selfish interest, and are
not, like everyone else, moved by a contradictory mix of  selfish,
relational/reciprocal, and altruist/idealist motivations?

I know of few social movements that would have been successfull with an
appeal to pure self-interest,

advertising is a counter-example, but that does by promoting isolation and
envy,

Michel

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 1:48 AM, j.martin.pedersen <
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> .......
>
> 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
>
>

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