[p2p-research] P2P revolution?

[Daniel Araya]

I like what you're saying Kevin. It tailors nicely with Marx's vision. But I'm skeptical of the premise that networks simply eliminate hierarchy. Even if peer production is the final form that we see emerge around distributed networks, I think corporations, states, etc will remain a large component of the sociotechnical infrastructure managing social systems. 

Part of the premise behind many notions of P2P is an argument for abundance over scarcity, atleast in human capacities (even if we have real scarcity in the natural world). I share this view. And I think peer production platforms can harness social innovation in profound ways. But this isn't to say that hierarchy disappears altogether. Rather the structures of human agency that are employed to perform in those hierachies will progressively disappear. The point I'm trying to make is that we will need technology to leverage and coordinate the same hierarchical functions that we now rely on leaders, mangers, specialists, etc to perform. 

Thinking out loud, I guess I would say that I accept Marx's vision of a classless society with the caveat that technology is the lever that makes it happen. Rather than some kind of miracle in social relations, or dialectic in consciousness.

>From where we stand now, this process will take a long time to become
fully manifest. In the meantime, I suspect human hierarchy will remain
apart of the human condition for some time.

Daniel



> Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 13:04:00 -0500
> From: free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com
> To: p2presearch at listcultures.org
> Subject: Re: [p2p-research] P2P revolution?
> 
> On 5/4/10, Maria Droujkova <droujkova at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > The feudal age had the church. Modernity had the university.
> > > > What does peer production have?
> 
> > The internet.
> 
> > > My gut instinct is that what peer production has is less about some
> > > new institutional basis than about the unsustainability of the *old*
> > > centralized, hierarchical institutions.
> 
> > Institutions -> Networks
> 
> Along those lines, the ubiquitous trend I see is taking place in many
> different ways:  as the old corporate and state hierarchies become
> unsustainable, they're being forced to decentralize, harden their
> component units, and increase the initiative of those in last-mile
> networks.
> 
> They try to retain some sort of residual control, in ways that Andy
> Robinson has commented on here:  i.e. the Nixon Doctrine as a way of
> pulling back from most direct superpower policing and working instead
> through proxies, attempts to maintain corporate control of networked
> manufacturing through ownership of IP, etc.  But by progressively
> outsourcing and delegating functions, they're putting themselves
> increasingly in the position of redundant nodes, so that their
> artificial property rights are the *only* source of control they
> retain.  At some point, the networked producers, having built the new
> society within the old corporate shell, will decide to "break the
> corporate integument" and ignore their IP and other property rights.
> 
> -- 
> 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
> 
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