[p2p-research] Is peer production a real mode of production?

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear friends,



I believe the following is an important statement on the hypotheses for
p2p-oriented social change. I would like to ask, not just an impromptu
discussion on the mailing list, but equally formal and structured replies
that can be published independently on the p2p blog,



Michel





Is peer production a real mode of production?



In the foundational essay on peer to peer, I call peer to peer a third mode
of production (as well as a third mode of property and governance).

The question is: is this correct?

A mode of production classically is viewed as a combination of forces of
production, how we extract value from nature (i.e. how exactly we produce
what we need to live by transforming nature into human-usable products), and
relations of production (how humans are organized in the sense of how is the
surplus labour produced and distributed).

How does ‘peer production’ stack up in this sense, especially in the context
that it is not a dominant mode, but rather a seed form within the dominant
capitalist mode?



So, in peer production, how is value extracted from nature? The answer must
be, it is not yet. At this stage, it is a process to create immaterial use
value, where there is a self-aggregation of individuals around the creation
of a common object or project. The result is the creation of a commons,
where everyone can use that use value directly, without passing through the
commodity stage. As I argued, following the Circulation of the Common thesis
of Nick Dyer-Whiteford, it requires open and free input, participatory
process, and commons oriented output.  But this is the pure form of
commons-oriented peer production as described by Yochai Benkler. Often, in
fact in most cases, because such peer production is not sustainable within
capitalist society (more precise, the projects are sustainable collectively,
but not for the individuals involved), the real process is a mixture of
voluntary labour, and paid labour. The minimum requirement however, is that
the result is still put in a usable commons, of knowledge, code, or design.
In practice, corporate forces gain substantial control over such commons and
their governance modalities.

Because we live in a capitalist society, where value is derived from the
commodity form (firms buying labour power and selling products at higher
value than the cost of that labour power, and its derivate financial forms
of surplus value extraction), when there is no commodity, there is no
‘realisation’ of that surplus value in monetary form.

So what we see happening is still that individuals are selling their labour
power, and get paid for it, while firms realize the monetization and profit.
In the other variant, what I call the sharing economy in contrasts with the
commons economy, people create, share and use “use value”, outside the
monetary nexus, but they do this on proprietary platforms, where there
aggregated attention is then sold as a commodity to the advertising
industry.

Another aspect is the following: peer producers often own or have access to
their own means of production, i.e. their brains, computers and access to
the means of communication, but, they cannot realize the monetary surplus
value without selling their labour to the market, especially and precisely
because the end result itself, the common code, is no longer a commodity.

So we have a paradox that we have a new modality of creating value, that
clearly sustains the workings of the present system of capital, that
substantially departs from classic forms,  yet at the same time cannot
realize any independent value for its own self-reproduction outside that
system.

However, this is not new. Within feudalism, there where capitalist
modalities, but they were still subsumed to the dominant mode of surplus
value extraction under feudality, and similarly, there were colony (early
serfs), but it was similarly subsumed under the ‘ancient mode of
production’.

In a stimulating book that I’m reading, “Pre-capitalist modes of
production”, the authors, Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hirst, insist that
capitalism is not an evolutionary continuation of the capital seed forms
within feudalism, and that the feudal mode of production is not an
evolutionary continuation of its seed forms within the Roman Empire.

The reason they give is that the state form, the Roman Empire and the feudal
states, protected the old dominant form of value extraction, and the new
modes of production could only become realized and dominant after the
breakup of that old-state form.

What would be required to make peer production evolve from its present seed
form, to a full and dominant mode of production?

The key condition is that it must be connected to a modality of material
production that ensures the physical reproduction of the peer producers, but
without destroying the commons and voluntary aggregation that is at the
basis of it. Therefore, any modality of revenue sharing, whereby
participants would be rewarded by a part of the market value, is not a
solution. Indeed, in this scenario, say paying people for Facebook
production, while it would create an income, this would be based on the
creation of commodities, and therefore, it would no longer be peer
production. Benefits-sharing on the other hand, whereby the entrepreneurs
who benefit from the commons send a part of the money back to the collective
to sustain the infrastructure of cooperation, does protect and insure of the
viability of the commons, but does not insure the sustainability and
physical reproduction of the individual participants. Having corporations
pay for the labour, while recognizing the commons-based licenses, does
create an income, does create and sustain a commons, but keeps labour power
as a commodity. The latter is pretty much today’s reality in open source
software, and may be the reality tomorrow of open hardware.

One of the possible answers comes from Dmytri Kleiner and is Venture
Communism, which I guess I could call a secessionist approach. It may also
be related to the emerging solidarity economy. What is the scenario here? As
I understand it, a community of commoners,  band its productive forces
together, but shares its immaterial production only with other commoners,
not with for-profit companies, who would have to pay for access to the
commons. Its physical value is exchanged in a non-capitalist market (because
outside of capital accumulation by for profit companies), preferentially to
other common enterprises. Though the property format may vary, it is my
understanding that solidarity economics is a substantially similar approach,
though it mostly uses classic cooperatives. In both cases, the attempt is
made at creating a counter-economy. Our mutualist friend Kevin Carson, sees
I think a similar evolution towards small and localized free market players,
but who operate in a knowledge commons.  Here again, what Kevin has in mind,
is not a capital accumulation, but a market operating outside of the support
of a ‘distorting’ state, which directs accumulation towards monopolistic
players. The benefit of these approaches is that none of them is passive,
and needs not wait for a phase transition to occur first. They all operate
within present reality and seek to strengthen alternative modalities that
work in parallel with the dominant system, seeking maximum independence from
it. The weakness of these approaches is that at present, there is a lack of
evidence that this is working in any substantial way. There is I believe one
single venture communist company in existence; the solidarity economy as I
understand it, is stronger but still weak and probably functions mostly with
the capitalist market. The problem of cooperatives and solidarity economics
entities is the following I think: do you buy commodities from less
efficient alternative enterprises, when more competitive ones are available
from classic for-profits. If you choose the former, you are less
‘competitive’ towards consumers, if you choose the latter, you’re on a
slippery slope of total adaptation. What is imperative here though in my
mind, is to combine production for the market, with the use of commons of
knowledge, code and design, as a way to eventually outcooperate and
outcompete the pure closed-IP for-profit companies. The fact that Kleiner’s
option does in fact not create a full commons, but only a semi-closed one
for other VC coops, poses a problem  in this regard, since it also
undermines the commons logic. It would seem to me that open commons would
outcompete semi-closed commons of that nature. Of course, I’m open to
empirical refutation of this critique.

A second approach comes from the French-Italian school of cognitive
capitalism, expressed for examples in the basic income orientation of Andrea
Fumagalli. The idea here is to achieve a deep reform of the capitalist
state, whereby instead of individual appropriation of surplus value by
for-profit firms, a substantial part of surplus value is collectively
appropriated and distributed through the mechanism of the basic income. In
this scenario, basic living expenses would be covered, offering a
substantial improvement for individual sustainability, and allowing a more
sizeable portion of the population to periodically engage. Because this
demand is not anti-capitalist as such, but sees itself as a deep reform, it
would still operate within the dominant mode of production,  but would
nevertheless achieve a significant redistribution and be a substantial boost
to peer production. Obviously, this second approach is not incompatible with
the first set. However, it also raises a number of problems. Such as: 1)
would a basic income movement be able to convince the population; 2) how
strong would a social movement of that nature need to be to achieve its
aims, and if it did achieve this strength, why not push further?; 3) if the
basic income is low, does  it not serve to depress the wages, while if it is
high, is it affordable by the present economic and state forms? While basic
income has some traction, it is entirely relative, and it would, it seems to
me, need a deep crisis and massive mobilization, before it could be
achieved.

A third approach is my own, which is born out of a certain recognition of
ignorance. In this approach, we do not know yet, how the phase transition
will be achieved, importantly because we are at a early seed form stage.
While it is not opposed to the first and second approach, it focuses on the
autonomy of the communities. It recognizes that at present, we live in a
capitalist society, that no sustainability is possible outside of its market
mechanisms, but that commons oriented production is a sufficient social
advance, that it needs to be protected and stimulated. It focuses on the
continued meshworking and strengthening of open infrastructures, on the
protection of the commons from the entrepreneurial coalitions which derive
market value from it. In sharing communities, it seeks to strengthen the
social strength of user communities against the predations of platform
owners. .It posits an ethical preference for those forms of physical
production, which are most compatible with it. In other words, commoners
would need to choose free software coops above for profit companies, fair
trade and social entrepreneurship above shareholder entities. Each commons
would seek to make itself as sustainable as possible, first collectively,
then for an increasing number of individuals, and seek policy initiatives in
that sense. It also supports the first and second approach as a general
direction of movement. It also builds as much as it can the new culture of
sharing and communing as an alternative, and promotes commons-oriented
institutions as policy solutions on every level.

This approach has its own problems. First of all, it is a slow approach. For
example, it is now clear that Europe and the U.S. workers face a full
onslaught of extreme neoliberalism, with a substantial loss of income
levels, welfare and social protections. This capitalist dislocation may be
temporary, a cleaning out of the accumulated problems of the previous
neoliberal cycle, or may reflect much deeper and ‘endgame’ problems. In any
case, while it may be temporarily successful in its attack on living
standards, it seems guaranteed to also create deep social instability.

In this context, what seems most important   is to create a connection
between the new commons culture, and the emerging social movements. Finally,
under conditions of such direct attacks by the financial predators and the
market state that is substantially under their control, the issue of state
power is again on the agenda.  If that power cannot be broken yet, it opens
the way for mobilizations that could achieve substantial reforms, as it did
at the end of previous cycles.

So, what I’m advocating is a fusion of the constructive approach of building
open infrastructures and free culture, supporting alternative modalities of
physical production wherever possible (the first approach), while finding a
connection with progressive social movements around commons-oriented  policy
platforms, with the aim of achieving a substantial reorientation of the
state, or eventually, its replacement by a peer to peer state (a
transitional state form that would protect the new form of accumulation
around peer production).

In the last analysis, my conviction and approach is the following: at this
stage of history, what matters most is creating the culture and social
movement that can become the subject of the phase transition. This can only
be achieved by a dialogue and them combination of the classic social
movements, with the new culture and practice of communing.


-- 
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