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

Mon Jan 3 11:03:49 CET 2011

thanks for the clarifications,

I think we can agree that shareability (and commodification) are determined
by social relations, but at the same time, it seems to me that the nature of
shareability and the nature of commodification will be different according
to the nature of the good, and I don't think saying this is economism,

for example, fruits will grow from the tree, irrespective of how we intent
to share them; industrial products must be manufactured, irrespective of
sharing intent, and so for informational goods; the way of sharing, will be
influenced by some of their material conditions

while it is important to see the importance of social relations; I think it
is equally important to see that social relations are themselves embedded in
material conditions, and that we do not do what we want;

what you posit, that communities determine a priori their way of life, is an
extremely rare occurence in any case, I doubt that even tribal communities
were consciously articulating their life choices (embedded as they were in
tradition); today's intentional communities are extremely limited in their
choices, given external constraints and the characteristics of the human
participants they work with

I believe it is important to recognize a material world, a biological world,
a cultural world with social relations, and how they mutually influence each
other. If you point out that right now the really existing community of the
global capitalist society determines a lot of how we live and share and
sell, I of course, I will agree, and I'm expecting Mr. Verzola to agree as
well

even if higher layers, i.e. the social-cultural layer, reflect back and
influence 'lower' layers, they are also embedded in it, and there is
relative determination of each layer depending on previous layers.

THis is why Marx put the productions of relations as determining relations
of production, notwithstanding a recognition of the mutual interactions
between them

Stressing that material realities create certain constraints, is not
economism

Now, it is true that a generalization of terminator seeds would change the
nature of agriculture, just as star trek replicators would change the nature
of the manufacturing process, but in the meantime, current characteristics
prevail and cannot be wished away, no matter how autonomous your
hypothetical community.

Some people say indeed that economics are primary and overdetermine reality;
other people like you seem to say that social relations overdetermine, which
if really fine with me

but very few people outside yourself would claim that social relations
determine everything irrespective of material conditions and the
nature/charasterics of the goods, and would then characterise any people
with any argument about material conditions as 'economistic'

the reason I bring a person's real practice in the discussion, is not to
personalize the issue, but merely a reality check

if you make extraordinary claims, such as saying that a politically active
person ignores politics, that requires strong evidence,

in fact, that is almost never what happens, rather, you hear a few words,
phrases, a paragraph or two, and that seems enough to characterize a
person's philosophy, invariably cast as an agent of neoliberalism

I find this to be intellectually lazy, in bad form, divisive, and  I'm sure
unwisely, I feel compelled to react, while I should really let it pass

So if I bring empirical realities that go counter to your sweeping
statements and accusations, it's really also to give you a chance to show
how your integrative method leads you to such conclusions, and to learn from
it,

which is what happens in this exchange, where I/we indeed learn more and
more where you are coming from, and thus helps us to see better why you
react and discuss in a particular way

as you indicate yourself, you start from the absolute utopia of a
self-determining community, surely the common dream of many on this list,
including me; though we may differ in judging how to get there, and how to
judge various social forces' positioning

but I would hope that everyone makes a maximum effort to actually learn
about the real positions of people, the reality of material conditions and
characteristics, and not jump too fast to conclusions which are empirically
so easliy refuted

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 11:56 PM, j.martin.pedersen <
m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
> On 02/01/11 05:38, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > Hi Martin,
> >
> > below here is a part of the exchange between roberto and you, which I
> find
> > extremely puzzling, so further details would be welcome
> >
> > Roberto shows the differences between types of goods, and claims that
> this
> > has consequences, which means, they are certain constraints,
>
> Yes, of course there are constraints and it might be more difficult to
> share a car than it is to share a poem, but that is only so if you have
> (access to) a pen and a paper, or, as it were, a digital network,
> electricity, and a vast industrial apparatus inventing, developing,
> producing, distributing, discarding, disassembling, recycling hardware
> and a labour force writing the software required to do so.
>
> Therefore, in some situation, for argument's sake, it might also be more
> easy to share a car than it is to share a poem digitally. It all depends
> on access and configuration of society. That is, everyone is implicated
> and therefore everyone ought to be allowed to participate in the
> decisions about what can be and is shared, rather than just calculate
> shareability on the basis of essential features of a thing.
>
>
> > the way I interpret the argument is that  social relations are partly
> > determined by an objective material basis,  i.e. the nature of the good
> does
> > bring constraints
>
> You shift terms here, which makes this exchange rather difficult. Now
> you say "partly determine", sometimes it is "primary importance",
> sometimes it is just "determine". In any case, nothing in a thing,
> outside of an economistic dystopia (fast emerging!), determines its
> shareability - only people (ought to) determine that.
>
> What I am saying is quite simply: the nature of a thing does not
> determine whether it is shareable or not, and should not, but political
> processes - community dialogue - is where shareability is determined.
> Anything can be shared, from mountains to scrolls you bring down from it.
>
> In the moment you let the nature of the thing determine whether it is
> shareable or whether it should be organised in this or in that way, then
> we have fully entered the economistic reality that takes of - some say,
> anyway, more or less - with Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics
> (1890), which detached economics from moral, social and political
> philosophy, rendering it an objective science detached from social
> realities. The beginning of the end of the social.
>
> It was a crossroads and to go further down the wrong road is not the
> best route to a good, I would argue, but instead we need to reverse this
> trend and remarry economics with social relations and not just let the
> latter be determined by the former.
>
> In other words, first and primary question is one of community: Who are
> we, what do we have and how do we want to share it? The essential
> features of a thing might influence these decision making processes and
> localised, contextual arguments might be made invoking such essential
> features in the political process, but to say that digital sharing is
> "encouraged" by its essential features is entirely misleading unless you
> hide/export the externalities, which is a common neoliberal thing to do.
>
> > it does not talk or exclude other determinations, I see no hint of any
> > argument against politics, that everything needs to be computed
>
> No, that is an implication of the philosophy chosen, which follows the
> economistic trend and which has produced the world in which we live
> where social relations just follow (are determined by) economics (hence,
> the crude marxism + neoliberalism statement-- where the former might be
> a completely wrong association, it is just a feeling I have) and where
> politics are economics calculations and virtually nothing more.
>
> I have argued somewhat along the same lines in a critique of Benkler's
> conception of commons-based peer production here (pp: 68-77 & 130-136),
> although a lot of the more basic philosophical discussion about had to
> be cut for the final version, as it is old hat in political economy:
>
> Pedersen, J.M. (2010) ‘Free Culture in Context: Property and the
> Politics of Free Software‘, The Commoner, Special Issue, Volume 14,
> Winter 2010, 49-136:
>
>
> http://commoning.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-commoner-14-winter-2010-chapter1.pdf
>
>
> > empirically, from what I know of Roberto, his work is eminently
> political,
> > he works with farmers, with the Greens, etc ...
>
> Now you do this again, phrasing your comments so as to suggest that I am
> attacking Roberto personally. I find it manipulative and divisive. We
> are discussing concept and arguments. Not people.
>
> What I am arguing against is a way of understanding economics as
> detached from moral and social concerns and against letting things
> determine social relations -- that is the world of capitalism and
> commodity festishism, it is a reality distortion borne out of capitalist
> democracy's narrow, economistic thinking. A straight jacket of which we
> must rid ourselves.
>
>
> > so both on a theoretical and practical level, I'm wondering how you
> arrive
> > from that statement to your conclusions, what are the intermediary steps
> > that you have taken to arrive at them?
> >
> > i.e. as you write:
> >
> > < a sad statement and testimony to the end of politics: let
> > the thing determine all. Let us compute society.>
>
> I hope this makes it a little clearer. It is what you could call a
> bi-partisan concern in political economy - left and right political
> economists are trying to being these fields of study together again, to
> reconnect economics with social realities, and the way in which Roberto
> argues for essential features of a thing as determining factors -
> primary to social and community concerns, including environmental
> justice and global solidarity - reflects this narrow, economistic
> universe that is being pulled down over our eyes, in which livelihoods
> are for sale and profit maximisation (one of the the essential features
> of the thing called a commodity) determines society.
>
> It is not a particularly big point, most social and environmental
> philsophers, as well as sociologists interested in moral economy
> studies, are well aware of this point. It is a philosophical point, but
> it has extensive political ramifications - indeed, it threatens the very
> fabric of community and is also the kind of thinking that helped turn
> the Hardin's fiction of pasture tragedy into policy reality.
>
> m
>

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