[p2p-research] P2P revolution?

[Michel Bauwens]

a few remarks,

a very large part of chinese growth and production (I have heard estimates
of 30-40%) is done through an illegal version of the open design and
distrributed manufacturing model, I think that is significant; BRIC growth
is fine but it also exacerbates all the fundamental issues of infinite
growth production that is plaguing the world system, it's not an infnite
process and it will hit significant obstacles in 10=15 years times; in other
words, growth yes, but they can't achieve western levels, and when their
systems hit a snag, you can expect huge social dislocation (you can have a
prefigurative example in thailand right now). The asian social contract,
mixes obedience and high growth, and cannot function without the latter.
BRIC growth is still catching up, it will become more interesting once they
hit their limits and will seek social innovations on their own.

In terms of institutions of peer production, I consider FLOSS Foundations to
be a significant innovation, i,.e. manages infrastructure of cooperation
without command and control of the production process. The commons of
knowledge, code and designs will gradually invent other institutional
formats.

As for p2p learning, it is massive, and happens almost totally outside of
the institutions,

question: how relevant are universities for developers? somewhat, but not a
lot, but you are right that it is very early days, but whoever said anything
different, certainly here we are always talking about emergence, and I
explicitely state in many texts that the kind of parity that capitalism
achieved in the 18th century (with feudalism), is at least another 40-50
years away,

but all of that doesn't make it 'abstract',


michel
On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 1:39 AM, Daniel Araya <levelsixmedia at hotmail.com>wrote:

> I resonate with alot of what you're writing here Kevin. I think networked
> production will change things dramatically. But the only economies in the
> world right now that are seeing significant economic growth are
> industrializing ones (BRIC, etc). This may change in the near future but for
> the moment it is BRIC countries that are predicted to become the largest in
> the world (while advanced countries begin to contract). To my mind, the P2P
> 'revolution' looks alot more like of a bunch of guys on listerves talking
> about a revolution in the abstract. I might concede that advanced economies
> lack the leadership to fully leverage peer networks for production. But for
> the moment, my money is on Asia and the development of industrialized
> capitalism outside the West. There we see a revolution in the concrete.
>
> For a fully fleshed out P2P revolution to unfold you will need to integrate
> the education system in some way. Its not going to simply happen
> spontaneously-- at least not in the numbers you would need to make
> ubiquitous. The feudal age had the church. Modernity had the university.
> What does peer production have?
>
>
> D
>
>
> > Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:38:23 -0500
> > From: free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com
> > To: p2presearch at listcultures.org
> > Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Concerning wikiworld and its use of socialist
> terminology
> >
> > On 4/30/10, Joss Winn <joss at josswinn.org> wrote:
> > > Hi, I've recently joined the list, partly because I'm interested in
> > > thinking about P2P and other aspects of online sharing in terms of 'the
> > > idea of communism'.
> > >
> > > Having seen the C word used in Michel and Daniel's discussion below, I
> > > thought I'd offer a few recent references and ask you for any further
> > > references on (re-)asserting the idea of communism.
> > >
> > > I'm specifically trying to get a sense of what theorists are asserting
> > > as communism and how developments in Open Education may or may not be
> > > positioned within this discussion, but am interested in arguments for
> > > and against the idea of communism, today, in all aspects of life.
> >
> > I can think of three aspects of P2P that might be relevant to
> > traditional Marxian ideas of "communism."
> >
> > The first is stigmergic organization, which I mentioned earlier in
> > this thread, as a way of removing the transaction costs of collective
> > action and permitting collective action to emerge as the sum total of
> > free individual actions without having to be coordinated by large,
> > hierarchical institutions.
> >
> > The second is the realm of non-rival goods with zero marginal
> > reproduction cost, specifically digital information. This is an
> > example of the law of value being superceded, in Marx's terminology,
> > as well as of what the Austrians mean by non-economic goods.
> >
> > The third, which might also be treated as a weaker subcategory of the
> > second, is the cheapening of producer goods in the physical realm.
> > The effect is to drastically lower the capital outlays and overhead
> > cost of production; make productive organizations smaller, more
> > decentralized and more resilient; and to blur the boundaries between
> > being a worker and owner that originally came about because of the
> > high cost of producer goods in the Industrial Revolution. Because
> > expensive product-specific machines are being progressively replaced
> > with cheap general-purpose tools affordable by individuals and small
> > groups, and because the overhead cost from capital amortization to be
> > serviced is imploding, we'll see a shift toward networked production
> > model in which there's little cost to being out of the market for
> > extended periods waiting for new projects, and the
> > employment-vs-unemployment dichotomy will be replaced with constant
> > shifting of free agents between networked projects (something like
> > what Piore and Sabel, in The Second Industrial Divide, described for
> > the construction and clothing industries). In this area, short of a
> > nanotech revolution in the indeterminate future, I don't see the law
> > of value or market exchange being superceded. But least it's a move
> > in the direction of Free. As Chris Anderson put it, "Atoms also want
> > to be free--they're just not as pushy about it."
> >
> > --
> > Kevin Carson
> > Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> > Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> > http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> > The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto
> > http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
> > Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective
> >
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > p2presearch mailing list
> > p2presearch at listcultures.org
> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
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