[p2p-research] agri, industrial and info modes

[Roberto Verzola]

j.martin.pedersen wrote:
> 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

I have retitled this thread and will try to keep it shorter, to improve 
the S/N ratio.

I think this debate about how significant (primary or not?) the 
differences between agriculture, industrial and information modes of 
production is a key debate. Resolving it (or at least identifying the 
strongest arguments from both sides) will be very helpful to subsequent 
interactions between commoners working within or straddling these modes, 
so I hope you will keep on.

I will rephrase my assertion, in the hope that the debate can move on: 
the differences between agriculture, industrial and information modes 
are *significant enough* that they should be considered qualitatively 
*distinct* modes, despite their many commonalities.

I am presuming (and please confirm if you agree) that this assertion is 
obvious for agriculture and industry, so the debate really centers on 
the industrial and information modes.

I suggest the following basis for the qualitative distinctions between 
the three modes:
agriculture -- living, material goods
industrial -- non-living material goods
information -- non-material goods

The economy has a few more sectors (human services, financial) but I 
will focus at this point on the above.

Note that the industrial mode uses agriculture as a base (it needs the 
land, and uses raw materials from agriculture). The information mode 
also uses the industrial mode as a base (the hardware required to make 
the Internet work).

Note further that all three grapple with similar issues: 
self-provisioning, mutual provisioning, community provisioning, market 
provisioning, State provisioning etc. In the property/ownership 
language, private property, joint property, commonly-held property / 
common pool resources, municipal / city / public / govt / State property 
etc. These are also very important issues and I have tackled them 
elsewhere. Google, for instance "cyberlords rentiers of the information 
economy".

Some people have actually failed to recognize the essential difference 
between agriculture (the farmer nurtures and protects living processes 
to ensure a perpetual stream of goods, services and other income from 
these processesl) and industry (the worker, aided by machines, 
transforms dead raw materials into finished products). The 
misapplication of the industrial mindset in agriculture is a major cause 
of the ecological crisis under industrialism (of the capitalist and 
socialist types). And this problem of treating agriculture as simply 
another branch of industry persists today.

I think the heart of the current debate is whether or not to recognize a 
similar essential difference between the industrial and information 
modes, significant enough to consider them qualitatively distinct modes. 
Significant enough to distinguish between agriculture, industrial, and 
information modes. I think so, Martin thinks not. This is how he 
expressed it:

> 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?
>   
If we can agree that this is in fact the heart of the debate, that would 
be an advance.

It is common for a debate between two sides to be deadlocked. In such a 
case, new participants might help break the deadlock and move the debate 
forward. I would appreciate opinions from others. I think it would also 
be helpful for a debate among friends if we were a bit less polemical in 
tone. I am trying to do so.

Greetings to all,

Roberto