[p2p-research] ecotechnic future

[Dmytri Kleiner]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:11:42 +0700, Michel Bauwens
<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I also think Dmytri Kleiner may have a different take on defining peer
> production ..

I've included a draft section on this issue below.


> I think he defines peer production everywhere where peers hold a
resource
> in
> common, and he would differentiate access and exchange with the commons
> according to whether you are dealing with other commons, or with private
> for-profit enterprises, only the former would have open and free access
to
> the knowledge commons of the community,


Michel couples venture communism and copyfarleft too closely, and thus
slightly misunderstands both, this is obviously a weekness in how I have
expressed these things, hopefull the final versio of the telekommunisten
manifesto will make this clearer.

--- excerpt --


Imaging that a “better” copyright system or a “freer” Internet could exist
within the present system of economic relations is to misplace the
deterministic factors. The intrinsic truth in arguments against copyright
and the clear technical superiority of distributed technologies over
centralized ones have not been the deciding factors in the ultimate
development of our intellectual property system or our global
communications infrastructure, both of which have gotten more consolidated,
regulated and restrictive. The determining factor is, as always, the fact
that those whose interests are served by restricting freedom have more
wealth with which to relentlessly push toward their ends then is available
to resist them. The economic reasons for this are well understood, this
numerically small class of Capitalists are the beneficiaries of an unfair
distribution of productive assets that allows then them to capture the
wealth produced by the masses of property-less workers. If we want to have
a say in the way copyright works (or to abolish it) or to influence the way
communication networks are operated, or if we want to make any social
reforms whatsoever, we must start by preventing property owners from
turning our productivity into their accumulated wealth. The wealth they use
to endorse restrictions on our freedoms is the wealth they have taken from
us. Without us they would have no source of wealth, even the great
accumulated wealth from centuries of exploitation can not ultimately save
them if the you are unable to continue to capture current wealth. The value
of the future is far greater than the value of the past. Our ideas about
intellectual property and network topology are ultimately no threat to
Capitalism, who can always co-opt, sabotage or simply ignore them. It is
the new ways of working together and sharing that are emerging that have
the potential to threaten the capitalist order and bring about a new
society.

Often discussions of the productive relations in free software projects
and other collaborative projects such as Wikipedia attempt to bottle up
commons-based production and trap it within the sphere of “immaterial
production,” restricting it exclusively to the domain where it can not
affect wealth distribution and thereby play a role in class conflict.
Yochai Benkler, Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law
School, coined the term “Peer production” to describe the way free
software, Wikipedia articles and similar works are produced. Benkler limits
his analysis to the so-called “Networked Information Economy.” The novelty
of Peer Production as understood by Benkler and many others is that the
property in the commons is entirely non-rivalrous property: Intellectual
property and network transferable or accessible resources. Property with
virtually no reproduction costs. Also, another distinguishing feature of
this limited concept of Peer Production is that the producers in these
examples do not receiver enumeration for what they have produced since
their products are available for free, for example users of free software
do not compensate the original developers. Thus they claim that Peer
Production is “Non-reciprocal.”

There is no denying that Benkler’s wealthy network has a lot to offer. The
value of this information commons to its users is fantastic, as evident by
the millions who employ Free Software, Wikipedia, on-line communications
and social networking tools, etc. However, if commons-based peer-production
is limited exclusively to a commons made of digital property with virtually
no reproduction costs, how can the use-value produced be translated into
exchange-value? Where is the money to pay for the production of these
valuable things? Something with no reproduction costs can have no
exchange-value in a context of free exchange, anybody who wants a copy can
obtain one from anybody that has one. But if what they produce has no
exchange-value, how can the peer producers be able to acquire the material
needs for their own subsistence?

The wealthy network exists within a context of a poor planet. The source
of the problem of poverty does not dwell in a lack of culture or
information but in the direct exploitation of the producing class by the
property-owning classes. The source of poverty is not reproduction costs
but rather extracted economic rents, surplus value captured by way of
forcing producers to accept less than the full product of their labour as
their wage by denying them independent access to the means of production.
So long as commons-based peer-production is applied narrowly to only an
information commons while the capitalist mode of production still dominates
the production of material wealth, owners of material property will
continue to capture the marginal wealth created as a result of the
productivity of the information commons. Whatever exchange value is derived
from the information commons will always be captured by owners of real
property, which lies outside the commons. For Peer Production to have any
effect on general material wealth it has to operate within the context of a
overall system of goods and services, where the physical means of
production and the virtual means of production are both available in the
commons for peer production. By establishing the idea of commons-based
peer-production in the context of an information-only commons, Benkler is
creating a trap, ensuring the value created in the peer economy is
appropriated by property privilege. We have found Benkler standing on his
head, and we will need to redefine Peer Production to put his head above
his feet again.

It is not the “production” in “immaterial, non-reciprocal” production that
is immaterial. The computers, the networks and the developers and their
places of work and residence are all very much material and all require
material upkeep. What is immaterial is the distribution. Digitized
information, source code or cultural works, can multiply and zip across
global networks in fractions of a second, yet production remains a very
material affair. If Peer Production can only produce immaterial good, such
as software, and the producers get nothing in return for such production,
if Peer Production is “immaterial, non-reciprocal” production, then this
form of “production” has no right to be called a mode of production at all.
First and foremost any mode of production must account for it’s material
inputs or else vanish, these inputs must include the subsistence costs of
it’s labour contributors, to at minimum “enable the labourer’s, one with
another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race” in the words of Ricardo.
“Immaterial, Non-reciprocal” production can not do so, since to produce
free software, free culture or free soup the producers must draw their
subsistence from some other source, and therefore “immaterial,
non-reciprocal” production is not a form of production at all, only a
special case of distribution within another form of production.
“Immaterial, Non-reciprocal” production is no more a mode of production
than a charity soup kitchen or socialized medicine. It is simply a
super-structural phenomenon which has another mode of production as its
base.

Rather than placing emphasis on the immaterial distribution of what is
produced by current examples of Peer Production, we may note instead that
such production is characterized by independent producers employing a
common stock of productive assets. This view of Peer Production is not
categorically limited to immaterial goods. Understood this way, the concept
of Peer Production, where a network of peers apply their labour to a common
stock for mutual and individual benefit, certainly resonates with age-old
proposed socialist modes of production where a class-less community of
workers(“peers”) produce collaboratively within a
property-less(“commons-based”) society. Unlike the “immaterial,
non-reciprocal” definition this formulation can account for its material
inputs, its labour specialization, its means of capital formation, etc, and
also better describes the productive basis of free software as well as more
closely relates to the topology of peer networks from which the term is
derived. Further, this formulation also is better rooted in history, as it
describes historical examples of commons-based production such as the
pastoral commons, cottage agriculture and cottage industry as well. As the
distribution of productive assets is so much at the root of the inequality
of wealth and power that perpetuates exploitive systems, a mode of
production where productive assets are held in common is clearly a
potentially revolutionary one if it could take root. However if the form of
production can be contained to the immaterial, if it can be categorized as
immaterial by definition, then it’s producers can not capture any of the
value they create, and thus Harvard Law Professors strive to keep it so
defined. However if we can implement ways of independently sharing a
common-stock of material assets and thereby expand the scope of the commons
to include material as well as immaterial goods, then direct producers who
employ these assets in their production can retain a greater portion of
their product.

Peer production is distinct from other modes of production. Worker’s
independently employing a common-stock of productive assets is a different
mode, distinct from both capitalist and collectivist modes. The capitalist
mode of production is exploitive by nature, its fundamental logic is to
capture surplus value from labour by denying independent access to the
means of production. However, collectivist modes can also be exploitive.
For instance in Co-operative production, in which producers collectively
employ jointly owned productive assets, the distribution of productive
assets is likely to be unfair among different co-operatives, allowing one
to exploit the other. Larger scale collectivist forms, such as Socialist
states or very big diversified co-operatives can be said to eliminate the
sort of exploitation that can occur between co-operatives, however, the
expanding coordination layers needed to manage these large organizations
give rise to a coordinator class, anew class consisting of a
techno-administrative elite that has proven in historical examples to have
the capacity to be just as parasitic and stifling to workers as a
Capitalist class. However the community of Peer producers can grow without
developing layers of co-ordination because they are self-organizing and
produce independently, and as such they do not need any layers of
co-ordination other than that what is needed to provision the common stock
of productive assets, thus co-ordination is limited to allocation of the
common stock among those who wish to employ it. It is no surprise then,
that this sort production has appeared and flourished where the common
stock is immaterial property, the low reproduction costs eliminate
allocation concerns. Thus what is needed for Peer production to incorporate
material goods into the common-stock is a system for the allocation of
material assets among the independent peers which imposes only a minimal
co-ordination burden. Venture Communism is such a way.




-- 
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist