[p2p-research] Information sector: a qualitatively different mode of production?

[j.martin.pedersen]

The signal to noise ratio is probably not very conducive for this kind
of discussion and there is a good chance that we are quite simply on
different playing fields. I am concerned with a philosophical inquiry
into the foundations of economic relations.

Anyway, I have tried.

On 01/01/11 02:00, Roberto Verzola wrote:


>> Unless we disconnect ourselves from the past and the future, and
>> disregard wider social relations in favour of an objective view of
>> separate objects in nature and laboratories, the qualitative differences
>> between agricultural, industrial (those have merged in the era where
>> they have been vuiewed in that manner) and digital production (which is
>> very industrial) is not something that strikes me as of primary
>> importance.
>>   
> Well, that's the heart of our debate then. The above was just banter.

Not quite "just banter": firstly, one of the pride fruit trees of the UK
(which human beings and other animals carried from Kazakhstan once upon
a time) is the apple tree. There used to be more than 6000 varieties on
this island, all propogated by human beings, none emerged god given by
nature. Since, if you grow this crop from pip you are very unlikely to
get any nice fruit at all. Hence apple trees as we know them are all
grafted. As far as I know, the same goes for avacado trees and probably
many others. In any case, the intergenerational aspect of cultivation
cannot be underestimated - there is no objective state, only process and
symbiosis.

This latter point - and the more socio-cultural positive understanding
of human-soil relations - is also more and more entering into
development theory and practice in the context of food sovereignty and
community-led development in order to counter the myth that rural
populations degrade the environment (another modern, science derived
aberration) and show that in fact landscapes are often a result of human
interventions for the purpose of working with nature (which is hard work
- that's why the green revolution obviously led to urbanisation, no more
work in the countryside to do). For instance:

"Historical research in West Africa has shown dominant deforestation
estimates to be vastly exaggerated. Many of the vegetation forms that
ecologists and policymakers have used to indicate forest loss, such as
forest patches in savannah, are, according to the knowledge of local
resource users and historical evidence, the results of landscape
enrichment by people." - from:
http://pubs.iied.org/14535IIED.html

Or, as Terence McKenna used to say: Humans and the other animals are
invented by the plants to carry their seeds around - essentially we give
them a better life and they give us a better life. A feedback loop. To
view them in isolation is bizarre to me and somewhat unfair and arrogant.

Secondly, of course there are differences between, say, UK and the
tropics - why do you think the English et al. have been robbing the
tropics blind for 500 years? - and this is another reason why starting
out with the "thing" is reductionistic (and as noted below, also
economistic thinking). Context is everything and we organise the thing
in the political realm as we see fit, not as the things determine.

For what concerns permaculture and for what it is worth, I am actually a
certified permaculture designer, although I have never practiced it for
real, except when I visit my friends in permaculture villages. I must
remember to tell them that they do something wrong, since they work so
hard to be in symbiosis with nature - instead of just reaping its
abundant fruits that come by themselves from the blue sky. You need to
come and teach proper permaculture in this country, for they seem to
work so hard to make ends meet.

So, no, not just banter, but socio-cultural realism.


> I assert that the differences between the agricultural, industrial and
> information modes are of primary importance. These differences arise
> from the very nature of the goods involved in each mode, and the
> differences propagate to the level of social relations, including the
> thinking of people involved in the production of such goods.
> 
> If one's family is hungry and one has a loaf of bread, it is quite hard
> to share that bread with another family, because you lose what you
> share. But if you have a copy of a song, you can let another person make
> a copy, without foregoing your own enjoyment of the song. The very
> nature of the intangible good is in harmony with the social relation of
> sharing.

This is the common, mainstream argument, which arose in the context of
creating artificial scarcity, and which I reject. It is misleading and
springs from a line of thought associated with the rise of neoliberalism
and informational capitalism. Its origins is a wrong and adding another
wrong doesn't make it right in my eyes.

I find it reductionistic, simplistic and in denial of the material base.
It relies upon the export of the costs - the externalities - of that
production, and is as such very close to neoliberal thinking. If you had
to chop down three trees in the village orchard and dam the river to
generate the power required for digital copying could you *just* do it?
Would you be encouraged - or does the encouragement and ease of copying
and redistributing rely on turning a blind eye to externalities?

This common, widespread, well rehearsed argument is an abstraction ad
absurdum entirely divorced from reality, which of course is no surprise,
as it originates in a neoliberal context of ulterior motives. It is an
argument that fits much better in the neoliberal context in which it
arose: How can we prevent people from copying the thing and ensure we
can profit from it indefinitely? This economistic perspective concerns
the thing once it has been produced, yes, but it also centrally concerns
the fact that those who did produce the thing actually had to invest in
the material base from which it springs.


> While the rivalrous nature of tangible goods makes sharing
> harder, there are still situations that can push people to share
> material goods; for instance, if the means of producing them requires
> the cooperation of several or many people, then sharing also becomes a
> logical option.
> 
> In short, you cannot ignore the nature of the different goods themselves
> (living, non-living material, non-material) when considering what kind
> of social relations are appropriate for particular goods.

It is very difficult to discuss this if you change the goal posts: I say
"not primary" you say "ignore". That is either misleading or confusing.
I didn't say that essential characteristics of a thing are not
important, or even crucially important, but they are not of primary
importance at all. They come at best in third place - after the
collective answering of the primary question: Do we want to share it?
Secondly, what is our context environmentally and beyond that? Then you
can begin to ponder features of the thing. Starting with the thing is an
odd fetishist hang over from capitalist thinking.

In any case, I disagree. You might say that I am wrong and that you are
right, but I still disagree.

In political philosophy terms I consider the primary and deterministic
view on "production process" and "thing in question" somewhere between
crude marxism (as I said earlier, but this is probably an idiosyncratic
error, since I don't really know much about marxism) and neoliberalism:
void of social relations around it and disregarding externalities. At
any rate: the shaping of social relations have been subjected to the
essence of a thing - so if we can generate a list of essential
shareability properties, then all we need is a computer to calculate
degrees of sharing? No need for politics, no need for dialogue: the
thing determines. What a horrible vision and logical conclusion.

I do not want to envisage a world in which the essential properties of a
thing determine whether it is shareable or not. It sounds so mechanic
and reductionistic - it makes the little hairs in my neck stand up. If
we need to share it, let's do it. If we like to share it, let's do it -
let us find a way, then worry about how easy or difficult it is next.

Most of this - if that should be of any interest at all - I have argued
in the context of property relations here (especially pages 160-164) and
although it is a somewhat different context, the parallels should be
obvious - and the need to escape reductionistic thinking were social
relations are subjected to the essence of things transpire:

Pedersen, J.M. (2010) ‘Properties of Property: A Jurisprudential
Analysis‘, The Commoner, Special Issue, Volume 14, Winter 2010, 137-210.

There is also some stuff on "things" here (pages 12-18):

Pedersen, J.M. (2010) ‘Introduction: Property, Commoning and the
Politics of Free Software‘, The Commoner, Special Issue, Volume 14,
Winter 2010, 8-48.

> I have already pointed out that the non-rivalrous nature of intangible
> goods leads to certain unique patterns of thought about these goods. For
> one thing, social relations such as sharing are  very much in harmony
> with the nature of information goods. With material goods, living or
> non-living, it depends.
> 
> The point is you cannot ignore the nature of the different types of
> goods, because their nature often determines or significantly influences
> the way the goods can be produced and the social relations that arise
> out of such production modes.

I find this a sad statement and testimony to the end of politics: let
the thing determine all. Let us compute society.

> So, in fact, sharing as a social relation can arise from several
> distinct origins: 1) the nature of the good to be shared itself
> encourages sharing, as in the case of information goods

Still the people who are displaced as a real-life consequence of this
encouraged sharing, the river that is dammed, the trees that are cut to
make way for the road etc. etc. either have to be ignored in this
argument, or we have to decide that we do not care about externalities,
even if it makes a killing in more than one sense. All that matters if
the essence of the thing - humans and their relations are secondary or
simply given by the nature of thing. I am in tears...

So, yes, you are right, the nature of a thing is important, but not of
primary importance in a social world, -- but certainly in an objective,
reductionistic, laboratory-like reality.

-martin

-
http://commoning.wordpress.com