TANIT Discussion Board

Last month I was in London where I attended a lecture by Michel Bauwens on peer-to-peer dynamics. I wrote an article in Dutch for ‘De Wereld Morgen’, the main online newspaper of ‘civil journalists’ (but it has a professional editorial board and the project is financially supported by the trade unions). Fortunaletly, there is a edited version of the lecture on vimeo.



After the lecture, I contacted Michel for an interview that I want to publish here in the hope to start a constructive discussion on P2P and Marxism.[/i]

We all know examples of P2P in the immaterial field: Linux, Wikipedia, Arduino. Can you give some examples of P2P in the ‘real’, material world, i.e. in the field of production?
Michel Bauwens: Arduino is already an example touching on material production since the collaboratively designed motherboards are already produced and sold on the market by companies using the Arduino trademark. An example I really like is the Nutrient Dense Project, a collaborative research network of farmers and citizen scientists that directly use nutrient research in their own immediate production. One of the most exciting areas is probably that of so-called open source cars, like the Rallye Motor and the Darpa-funded XC2V marine assault vehicle, the latter which is based on an input of more than 30,000 designs. The StreetScooter, an electric car based on a corporate design commons with over 50 companies participating is perhaps most exciting, since the orders have already rolled in and the car should be driving in German cities by 2013. In the p2pfoundation wiki section on Product Hacking (p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking), we've annotated nearly 300 open hardware projects but they are just the tip of the iceberg. It helps to distinguish the design phase, where crowd sourcing and collaboration are not qualitatively different from software collaboration, from the phase of 'making', which would require an infrastructure for open and distributed manufacturing which is only marginally available. But in the field of making we have exciting developments towards shared material infrastructures such as co-working and hacker spaces, product-service systems for car sharing and many other services, and the miniaturization of production via 3D Printing and Fab Labs, all of which also have open source versions and aspects.

You compare the transition from capitalism to P2P with the transition from slavery to feudalism, or with feudalism to capitalism. In both cases there was a mutual change from the top and the bottom. In London you only dwelled on the first one: slaves leaving the system and slave owners turning slaves into serves who were better off than before, but what about the transition from feudalism to capitalism? There was the birth of a new class and the transformation from noblemen to capitalists, but you can hardly say that workers were better off than before. So where is the positive change from the bottom?
Michel Bauwens: The transition from one form of unequal class society to another is always problematic for the value producing classes at the bottom. One can argue that serfhood is an inherently better position than slavery but it was still exploitation and dominance, and many serfs had been free farmers before. The situation with capitalism is not that different, though there was, and is, a lot of hardship, the formal rights of workers are certainly an improvement, and at least for the western working class, there has been for a long while, substantial material improvement. But overall, the systems transitioned because the old system was no longer sustainable and the new one was overall more efficient in creating material riches. It all depends on the social contract and the relative strength of the forces at play. Strong labour movements have tremendously improved the situation of working people, and the situation in the Middle Ages between the 10th and the 13th century was also one of improving living standards. So the record is always mixed and the people themselves usually have a pretty clear picture of what needs to be improved. For example, what worker would want to a return to serfhood as a social condition? Since I have difficulties in imagining a classless society myself, I see peer producers in conflict with netarchical capital about their social condition, rights, and material livelihoods, until the moment that peer producers become the core social layer, and the commons the locus of core value creation. This is not a scientific scenario with a certain and unavoidable ending but rather a description of the field of tension in which peer production develops.

To continue this analogy: do you see a new class arising under capitalism, or a sort of ‘enlightened capitalists’ turning to open source (as described in Wikinomics)?
Michel Bauwens: Increasingly the commons is and will be the core of value creation, but value is still essentially captured by market economy, and netarchical capital is the fraction of capital which understands that change and want to profit from it. This means they have both to enable and empower social production, but also subject it to their own control, so that they can capture the value that is generated. The first part forces them to a certain type of strategic behaviour that fosters sharing, while the second requirement forces them to maintain a general context of continued dominance. This is in essence the new social tension of the emerging p2p age, between communities of peer producers and the platform owners. The key for peer producers is to gain control of their own livelihoods and social reproduction, and in my view this can best be done by creating their own cooperative/corporate vehicles, which I call, following Neil Stephenson in the Diamond Age and the lasindias.net suggestions, "Phyllis", i.e. community-supportive entities that allow commoners to sustain their work in the commons, and to subtract it from the mainstream economy of profit-maximization.

Can you see a parallel between P2P and the cooperative movement born in the eighteenth century (utopian socialism), or with the hippies and the communes in the sixties?
Michel Bauwens: The communal impulse is one of the permanent aspects of humanity, which ebbs and flows according to social conditions, and I think we are witnessing a revival of this impulse. However, there is a big difference, cooperative forms of organization can now work around open design commons and become hyper-innovative, and can obtain economies of scope to outcooperate shareholder-based multinationals. Cooperatives and intentional communities are therefore no longer 'dwarfish forms' but actually the vanguard of the new p2p production system. If you combine shared open innovation commons (instead of privatized intellectual property which holds back innovation), with these new product-maximizing and commons-maximizing entities, you can obtain a quantum leap in productivity. This is why netarchical capitalists invest in platforms, and this is why the alternative ethical economy needs to do the same, and if they do, they could replace the for-profit corporation at the heart of our economy.

If you say that we need to prepare an alternative to capitalism, is the P2P-movement not a sort of ‘escapism’?
Michel Bauwens: Infinite growth is not possible in a finite environment, and we are now reaching the limits of growth. This means that capitalism is increasingly unable to grow its way out of its problems and that the share of the 1% can only grow through dispossession, and this is what we are now witness in Europe, with Greece an advance example of what is in store for the working populations. So it is not a matter of escapism, the old system is dying and will be replaced, but it could be replaced by something worse, it could regress like in the early centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, or it could reorganize itself to a higher level of achievement and complexity, which is what the p2p approach indicates.

You describe #Occupy as an example of peer producing political commons. In what way is this different from historical ‘anarchist’ or ‘communist’ movements like the Paris Commune, Barcelona 1936, or perhaps even the Russian Revolution?
Michel Bauwens: If you observe an occupation, you see a community that is producing its politics autonomously, not following hierarchical or authoritarian political movements with a pre-ordained program; you see for-benefit institutions in charge of the provisioning of the occupiers (food, healthcare), and the creation of an ethical economy around it (such as Occupy's Street Vendor Project). This is prefigurative of a new form of society in which the commons is at the core of value creation; these commons' are maintained by non-profit institutions, and the livelihoods are guaranteed through an ethical economy. Of course there are historical precedents, but what is new is the extraordinary organisational, mobilization and co-learning potential of their networks. Occupy works as an open API with modules, such as 'protest camping', 'general assemblies', which can be used as templates and modified by all, without the need for central leadership. We can now have global coordination and mutual alignment of a multitude of small-group dynamics, and this requires a new type of leadership. The realization of historical moment of Peak Hierarchy, the moment in which distributed networks asymmetrically challenge vertical institutions in a way they could not do before, forces social movements to look for new ways of governance... but these are not given, and have to be discovered experimentally, and of course, there will be valuable lessons to learn from predecessor movements!

In order for P2P to really blossom, we need to get rid of intellectual property rights, copyrights, patents, etc. How do you think we can achieve this?
Michel Bauwens: I'm personally not a pure abolitionist, because I believe a lot of artists and creators believe in the necessity of author's rights, so I think we can do number things. Bring back protection to reasonable amounts of time, no more than the original 14 years of protection, or less, the Pirate Party proposes a five-year limit. Next is to offer choice to creators, by popularising choice-based licenses such as the Creative Commons. But the priority is to find new ways to fund creation ... this can be done through collective licensing and other forms of public funding, promoting and sustaining open business models, and ultimately, through a basic income, which recognizes that, every citizen is a value contributor and creator. These goals can be achieved partly through the social innovation that results from peer production communities, who are intensively experiment with open business models, and partly through stronger social and political movements, such as the free culture movement, the Pirate Parties, and other expressions of the new sharing culture.

It seems to me that P2P is creating a sort of ‘whole new world’, but without any references or links to the present political system. If Occupy represents an alternative was to engage in politics, what is the link between peer politics and bourgeois democracy and political parties?
Michel Bauwens: It is a very difficult question and results from a paradox. One is the increasing social awareness that our present democracy is a facade, and that the state has been taken over by a predatory financial faction, while classic politicians see no other way out than to succumb to their blackmail. But the other side is that people's freedoms and rights and private and social income is increasingly under pressure, which leads to political and social mobilization as well as effective policy engagement. The first aspect leads to continuous democratic innovation from the new p2p culture, think about the peer governance mechanisms in peer production communities; new inventions such as dynamic voting, and while these mechanisms operate outside the mainstream, they are also embedded in the new forms of value creation, new p2p social institutions, and therefore, poised to grow. The second aspect leads to new political and social forces that work within the present system, such as the emerging Pirate Party. In Brazil, I heard that the vibrant FORA DO EIXO cultural movement, which has a functioning counter-economy around music, is also politicising and engaging with local politics. The second leads to what I call diagonal politics, i.e. mutual adaptation between emerging p2p forces and practices, and the old institutional realities. To the degree that this is ineffective, it pushes from the solution coming from the first aspect, i.e. prepares for a more radical and revolutionary re-ordering of our institutions. Tellingly, a Swedish pirate party member once wrote that the Pirate Party is the last chance to avoid revolution. To the degree that the present system refuses adaptation, to that degree they heighten the need and push for more radical transformations.

How do you estimate the impact of P2P on the labour movement? Doesn’t it also undermine the bureaucratic structures of workers organisations?
Michel Bauwens: I'm in touch with young labour and union activist who are strong believers in networked labour movements and we also see how the Occupy movement has already radicalized the U.S. labour movement. But ultimately, the old institutional and hierarchical structure of the unions, as well as their increasing inability to protect social achievements within the present regressive system, must also lead to a profound renewal of the labour movement. In a way, the p2p movement is actually an expression of the new dominant layer of cognitive workers, who in the West are the mainstay of productive labour. P2P is their culture and what needs to happen to do productive and useful work. In that sense, the P2P movement is the new labour movement of the 21st century, with the Indignados and Occupy as the first expression of that new labour but also civic, sensibility.

You claim that P2P makes a new, ‘higher’ form of society possible. Before, that was not the case because the technology did not exist. Marxists make this claim already for more than 150 years. Do you think they were wrong then, perhaps correct today, or it P2P something ‘completely different’?
Michel Bauwens: I consider Marxism, and the other forms of socialism and anarchism, ultimately as an expression of a dichotomy within the industrial capitalist system, and proposing other logics to manage the industrial model. But P2P is the expression of the evolving class and social dynamics under cognitive capitalism. And while the former was essentially anti-capitalist, and could not really point to a new hyperproductive model of organising production (socialism was a hypothesis, and its real life examples inevitably disappointed, there was no emergent socialism within capitalism and only 'state capitalism' outside of it), what is different for the p2p movement is that it can point out to already existing models that are outcooperating and outcompeting classic capitalist models, i.e. it is already post-capitalist. Marx was right about capitalism, but wrong about socialism and I believe the politically driven model of social change, when not based on an existing prior new productive model, was ill-conceived. The P2P movement is therefore poised to realize what the 19th and 20th century social movements couldn't, because the hyperproductive alternative was not available to them. The politics of P2P flow from an already existing social practice, that is a really key difference.

As this interview was published on several websites and platforms, I will collect all eventual reactions here.
I had a very positive reaction on the Dutch translation on my blog (the two articles combined received +/- 1400 hits), a lot of people find P2P “very interesting”, but so far, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been much of a discussion yet, except from some comments on Facebook that you can read below.
I am currently reading Macro Wikinomics, a book I highly recommend, and preparing a first contribution for the discussion.


Joel Katz: It’s not clear to me why you view a post-political capitalism as outside the telos of capitalism itself. The emergent p2p economy owes equally to technological advance as to social deterioration - which has afflicted individuality.

Michel Bauwens: I don't think I view it as you suggest. What I see is an intermediary stage whereby peer production serves both the development of a new phase of capitalism and peer producing communities. This is an eminently political process, until phase transformation occurs. But even then, politics as the decision-making of the civic sphere will not disappear. And let me add that this 'dual serving' is conflictual and a new form of class struggle to use 'Marxian' terminology.

Joel Katz: In addition, Marxism is not merely anti-capitalist, but anti-liberal. Conversely, a p2p economy is not de facto anti-political, as is clear from terrorist networks. So to an extent what you're positing is that legacy class relationships will be reproduced, or recast, within this new production paradigm? You actually address a lot of this directly (now that I’m rereading your interview). The conflict between netarchical capital and homoioi production communities is easy enough. What interests me is the form politics will take among the cognitive workers, who are essentially a type of hyper-bourgeoisie.

Michel Bauwens: Joel, explain to me why mostly precarious knowledge workers are a form of hyper-bourgeoisie? At most, because they have access to networks, they are more similar to the pre-capitalist crafts-based working class (see the book, Les Sublimes - in France, on this strata at the end of the 19th century and how knowledge workers are re-enacting these social conditions). I'm focusing also less on legacy class relations (industrial structure), than on new emerging ones (peer producers vs. netarchical capital), and also positing that classlessness being unlikely to be ushered in, in any short or mid-term timescale, what we're dealing with is changing class structures rather than abolishing them.

Joel Katz: Hobsbawm speaks directly of the "part-time non-agricultural labour of the peasantry" as creating the conditions for early, producer-driven industrialization; he refers to Josiah Wedgwood as a particularly prominent early example. I suppose the "decentralized" though local character of these workers attracts the comparison. But to me it's a stretch to tie this class in with an essentially highly educated, global, and increasingly post-political "class" of information and knowledge workers. Hyper-bourgeoisie is a poor term, but what I mean is that this person -- wheelbarrow prototype; iPad designer; redhat customer-service worker; ows mainstay -- is essentially an iteration of a 19th century bourgeois liberal: a belief in progress, decentralization, private right and freedom, animus toward state or anything like it. All the traits are clearly there, heavily abstracted and made complex by technology. The difficulties of creating a political movement out of essentially post-political people, who communicate with increasing abstraction and often anonymously, is being born out by the experience of OWS -- which can't even decide if it's against capitalism. In many respects they would make more sense if they pointed to themselves as the enemy.

Michel Bauwens: I would define bourgeoisie structurally, not by any political views. The immense majority of ows participants have neo-left views, and distrust of the (capitalist) state has always been part of the labour movement; anarcho-capitalist views are present, but by no means the majority, neither of knowledge workers nor of ows participants: I see ows as the beginning of the recreation of powerful anti-systemic social movements, based on the new social conditions of knowledge workers.

Let me start by emphasising the importance of this discussion. If Marxism is a science, it is necessary to re-examine again and again the basic premises, especially when they are confronted by new developments in society. Michel rejects the hypothesis of socialism, but replaces it with a new one, “P2P”. This is also a hypothesis, based on new scientific, technological developments taking place under capitalism. The emerging "network economy" and peer-to-peer production are not only changing the global economy profoundly, but also have far-reaching consequences on the working class and its organizations. For me, this is one of the most important questions we are faced with, whether we agree with Michel’s hypotheses or not.

Michel agrees with Marx's analysis of capitalism, but disagrees with the hypothesis of socialism. We shouldn’t reject this conclusion for sentimental reasons, but take it very seriously. The only alternative in real life the working class has came up with so far, 164 years after the first publication of the Communist Manifesto, is the mixed economy and the welfare state of social democracy on the one hand, and bureaucratic planning on the other. You can argue that both are superior to the pure free market models, but it’s evident that both models are in crisis, and that it is a bit too simple to reduce the mess we are in to bad leadership. On these pages we have already discussed the pros and cons of aiming for a "classless society". We are looking for a concrete socialist alternative to the distressing problems of today, taking the interests of the working class (or should we say the 99%?) at heart.

Personally I am a novice to all this new technology stuff. I often have difficulties with the terminology, and I have little experience in the business world to know exactly how open source and peer production works in practice. I think that we should consider knowledge workers as being (a very important) part of the working class, in the Marxist sense, even if many of them are probably not members of a trade union or a political party (except perhaps the upcoming Pirate Party). But often they are organized, through (social) networks.

Internet technology enables global cooperation in ways that are qualitatively different from all earlier production methods. This development is reshaping businesses and also affects more and more existing institutions and organizations. I think this development is qualitatively at least as radical as the emergence of the first mass communication channels (telephone, radio, TV) and mass infrastructure (railways, highways, aviation).

I think that (non–dogmatic) Marxism remains an excellent tool to explain and understand capitalism. I also think that Marx was right when he said that we need to change the world. A higher form of society will not come automatically, but requires a conscious intervention of "the masses” or “humanity”, and each individual has a crucial role to play. Without a successful struggle, we are in danger of a similar scenario that occurred after the Fall of the Roman Empire, but worse. The main question is: how do we wage the struggle? Is it “simply” a question of “reforming” our organisations, work out a political program and fight for political power, or do we need to build alternative organisations or even an alternative within the present system, using new business models, institutions and even alternative money as Michel suggesting, or is it both?

We do see the emergence of entirely new organizations and institutions, based on Internet technology. They have horizontal structures, are “leaderless” and self-organising, and they are superior to the classical, hierarchical models of capitalist corporations, public institutions and NGO’s. They are developing within the womb of today's society, replacing or transforming conventional models. I think of the transformation of music industry, the print media, etc. On the other hand we see existing institutions using increasingly peer-to-peer and open source to improve their performance: IBM, P & G, even NASA. I think this development weakens the labour movement in two ways.

First, the traditional labour movement was primarily based on the organization of workers in large organizations: the heavy industry, large corporations, and later the public sector, which today is probably the sector where trade unions are still the strongest. At least in the West, these ‘heavy battalions’ suffered major defeats, because whole chunks of traditional industries were shut down, or cut into peaces. Parallel to this development, we see the end of the "eternal career" in one company. More and more people -especially knowledge workers- are job-hopping out of necessity, or are forced into self-employment. The transformation of the traditional industrial business model leads to the undermining of the traditional labour organizations. Perhaps we can compare this tendency with the demise of the craftsmen in the Middle Ages, where the guilds were defeated to make room for a ‘free’ working class’ in the emerging manufactories. In this sense, the undermining of workers' organizations, trade unions and parties is more the result of objective developments in society than of the subjective role of bad leaders (what doesn’t mean that there is no serious problem with leadership).

Here's a comment by Örsan Şenalp, made on my blog

exert from THE PEER PRODUCTION ILLUSION

taken from Part II: The Neoliberal Ideology of P2P - Published on Tuesday, the 20th of December, 2011)

IN SOME WAYS, THE RISE of the open source movement runs counter to the neoliberal ideology that has prevailed since the late 1970s. Neoliberal policies rolled back the welfare state, disciplined labor and eliminated government-supported utilities and services, replacing them with for-profit corporations, turning public goods into commodities. But in the technology industry, the movement from private ownership to open source projects engaged in social production seems to point in the opposite direction, towards de-privatization and de-commodification.
This may be cause for optimism for some anti-capitalist activists, but in Part I of this blog post, I show how de-privatization is still profitable and compatible with proprietary software – it probably wouldn’t have occurred if it wasn’t. A similar point can be made of other types of peer production in general. Wikipedia is a non-profit charity and doesn’t earn revenue directly from the work of it’s editors, but because most people search Wikipedia with Google, it generates a profit for Google. As the 6th most popular site on the Internet, this is probably somewhat significant.
But for the optimists, this is not enough. All I have shown is that peer production has not overthrown capitalism yet. The establishment of gift economies, even if they grow profits right now, might contain the seeds of eliminating capitalist production altogether. I’m going to call this the Beachhead Hypothesis: in the vast territory controlled by capitalism, P2P creates autonomous spaces free from exploitative wage labor that can be expanded to encroach further on enemy territory.
I disagree with this hypothesis because I don’t think we took this territory, I think it was created by capitalism. This possibility is often ignored because of what seems to me to be a too totalizing view of capitalism, a view which is sometimes read in Marx. From The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade.

If the expansion of capitalism involves the replacement of every relation with self-interest, then the beachhead hypothesis makes sense. But despite neoliberal ideology, this does not seem to be the case, and this can be illustrated by looking at a difference between life in France and in the US.
If you live in France and you want to start a local soccer club, you go to the local government and ask for funding. If they agree, they will subsidize uniforms and equipment and this is paid for out of tax revenue. In the US and other Anglo-Saxon countries, this is practically unthinkable – maybe there would be some very small grants available to help underprivilege.

I am not quit satisfied with the answer to my first question. For me, there remains a big difference between the examples of Wikipedia and Linux where knowledge is freely produced and shared, and the examples in the production sphere where commercial companies collaborate to produce material goods for the market by using paid labour. The examples of Fab Labs and 3-D printing are inspiring, but I don’t see them –also in the long run- as a valid alternative for large-scale production, even if we abolish the production of useless and non-durable products.
Of course peer production develops within the present system, and reinforces it in many ways. But it also clashes with its internal logic based on the protection of private interests. Take the use of open source and knowledge sharing. Private companies keep practically always a part of the knowledge private to keep a competitive advantage. They want to take advantage of the knowledge existing outside their companies, but they do not want to share the benefits. So I think that traditional (and new) contradictions that Marxism detects within the system remain, and although capitalism always tries to overcome them, it can only do so to a certain limit.
The same goes for global challenges, like the financial crisis and the need for international regulation. In their book Macro Wikinomics, Tapscott and Williams claim that in today’s global financial environment, the current patchwork of regulation is not enough. They quote Peter Gruetter, former secretary-general at the Swiss Federal Department of Finance, saying, “We have a perfectly networked financial industry but a much less networked regulatory community. Tapscott and Williams don’t believe that we can regulate the financial markets through traditional policy networks and multilateral forums like the G20, but that we need to go further, including real-time collaboration among regulatory agencies around the world. Although not one national state, including the US can solve global economic problems and global collaboration is needed to solve all major problems (finance, ecology, climate, energy, water etc), national interests do persist and withhold the unanimity needed to reach a solution. On the other hand, developing an alternative monetary system within capitalism seems too me utopian. I think we need a combination of reforming the old and building the new, but it will probably take a social revolution in one or several important countries in order to make these changes possible and let peer production in a global ‘networked society really take off.

I took the liberty to translate an interview with Michel Bauwens, first published on the Anne-Sophie Novel’s blog Greensiders.

"Peer-to-peer", often abbreviated P2P, allows for example to exchange music files or movies on the Internet. Napster, eDonkey, eMule, Kazaa or more recently Spotify ... P2P systems are prominent examples of P2P. However, this mode of operation gradually permeates our thinking, to the point of incarnating, for some, a powerful lever to change the world. This is certainly the thesis put forward by Michel Bauwens, one of the most renowned scholars of peer-to-peer and founder of the Foundation for P2P-alternatives.

Antonin Leonard and I met Michel Bauwens in a Parisian brasserie in December 2011 in order to better understand his thesis, that would indeed provide viable solutions to ensure the future of our societies.

Greensiders: How does one get involved in the world of P2P?
Michel Bauwens: In the late 1990s I was participating in the research on the long-term strategy of the telephone company Belgacom. I became aware of the glaring inconsistencies dominating our world: environmental damage, social injustice, degradation of the quality of human relations, etc. There was a whole set of indicators pointing "in the wrong direction." I started questioning myself and began to realize that the logic of peer-to-peer is a powerful 'leveraging' formula to address the failures in the system. When you are looking for alternatives today, you need to turn to P2P because it is there that the structures are changing. This lever for change corresponds first of all with a new technological paradigm, not with a traditional ideology. The revolution induced by P2P will have similar effects as those caused by the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The P2P movement is to the 21st century, what socialism was for the 19th and 20th century.

Greensiders: The concept seems a bit cryptic at first sight. Can you give a simple definition?
Michel Bauwens: In my opinion, and following the grammar of human relationships deviced by Alan Page Fiske, there are four basic modes of human relations. The first is the ‘gift-mode’, gift against gift, as our ancestors did, in tribal societies, and as we are still doing within the family and amongst friends and neighbours Then we have the hierarchical mode, as expressed for example in the relationship between parents and children. Thirdly, there’s the merchant mode, where goods and services are exchanged on the market. And finally there’s the “common mode”, in which each can contribute to the common good. This is the most beneficial option. It is just that what P2P is: contribute to the commons. This concept is easy to understand when you take the example of natural common goods, such as air or water, or when we talk about knowledge sharing.

Greensiders: How does "peer to peer” work?
Michel Bauwens: The functioning of P2P is founded on a networked architecture: it is based on the voluntary participation of people in the production of common resources. The motivation of its contributors is not based on a mechanism of financial compensation. Traditional management methods (by executing command and control) are also "old school" because they no longer function well for contemporary humans. P2P creates a "common" rather than a market or a state; it allocates resources according to social relations and not according to price mechanisms or a hierarchical system.

Greensiders: More concretely, what would a P2P society be like?
Michel Bauwens: It would be a society based on the logic of "open source", which is not that utopian. It is an extension of what we observe in the pioneering sectors of software production. The essential value is created under common license, its management structure has a non-profit cause and the markets are organized around it. At the level of the social order, the core of the new company is a collection of common goods managed by democratic institutions completing the role of the partner state, guaranteeing the community spirit of sharing and cooperation. The ethical economy resulting from this ensures that corporations respect the environment and the interests of citizens for the good reason that their success depends on their productive relationship with the wider community of contributors to the "commons". This model of society does not abolish anything, but changes everything in a more balanced synthesis.

Greensiders: But how do we apply peer-to-peer in the material world
Michel Bauwens: By playing on reciprocity, for instance: people need to know what their interests are if they contribute to a local exchange. Another example? Local Motors, a car manufacturer in open-source model, can co-create a car, which is produced locally. Thousands of cars have already been produced in this way. For another project funded by DARPA, Local Motors has generated more than 30,000 design contributions of engineers. On a local scale, imagine the amount of stuff that could be shared amongst neighbours. For every chore there surely is somebody who can help you out of the corner! Finally, P2P practices are based on a change of perspective: everyone can compensate for the failures of others. When we lack a resource or a particular knowledge, I can find it in my community. Scarce resources from the point of view of the individual are susceptible to share. The importance is to see how we can exchange without collectivizing. The challenge lies in the way in which we can generate trust and model these exchanges.

Greensiders: When can we expect to live in such a society?
Michel Bauwens: When the era of cheap energy comes to an end. We will then re-localize production with redistributed capital ("crowdsourcing", etc..), production tools will be more miniaturized (multi-machines, FabLabs, 3D printers) and everything will be based on "common shared innovation." The deployment of P2P networks lead to a "flattening" of society: in contrast to the vertical institutions that dominate our current organizations, this economic and civilization philosophy tends to rebalance our value systems. In the end, small-scale knowledge will be put to a more global scale, and the whole society will shift from a centralized logic to a logic of mutual coordination. It's been now fifteen years that things are redistributed to the Internet. The social change is accelerating, we find ourselves in a phase of emergence .

Greensiders: But all countries are not in the same phase of emergence.
Michel Bauwens: It’s true: this new economic model is favoured in countries where free culture is highly developed, above all in Latin America and particularly Brazil. The problem of Europe is that it is already too late to change the model. Emerging economies have yet to build a lot of infrastructure. They are free to choose other organisational modes; hence Brazil favours peer-to-peer structures. There are also favourable conditions in Europe; I think France has the biggest number of bloggers in the world. But the majority of politicians are not well aware of this new development of peer production. We need real politics of social change build on emerging civic movements. Movements like the "Indignados" or "Occupy Wall Street" are born in the digital age and represent the first expressions of political organizations influenced by digital technology. When these organizations will gain influence, they will promote peer-to-peer. The Pirate Party, close to the open-source movement, has already a majority amongst the youth vote in Berlin and Sweden!

Greensiders: Is the introduction of a basic income for everyone the first step to take in order to accelerate this change?
Michel Bauwens: A basic income is probably a good idea, but I take up the idea of income transition of my Belgian friend Arnsperger, which that seems more applicable in the current state of affairs. The idea is, from today, to reward those who invest time and energy in the transition.

Please find a link for another contribution to this discussion on the website of the Foundation for P2P alternatives

Here are two interesting links to an essay by Franco Iacomella on peer production patterns. I think they are worthwhile discussing:

Part 1
Part 1

Part 2

Here's are two excerpts,
from part 1:

Stefan Meretz:
“In her studies Elinor Ostrom found, that “neither the state nor the market” is a successful means for commons management (1990). Based on traditional economics she analyzed the practices of natural commons and finally simply proved liberal dogmatics wrong. Markets are not a good way to allocate resources, and the State is not a good way to re-distribute wealth and manage the destructive results of markets. Best results occur if the people organize themselves according to their needs, experiences and creativity and treat resources and goods not as commodities, but as common pool resources.

This is exactly what happens in Free Software. Interestingly it took many years to understand that Free Software is a commons and that it is basically identical to what Elinor Ostrom and others were talking about much earlier. One weak aspect of the traditional commons research and the early phase of Free Software was that a clear notion of a commodity and a non-commodity did not exist. It was the Oekonux Project which clearly said: Free Software is not a commodity. This dictum is closely related to the insight that Free Software is not exchanged (cf. pattern 1).

Critics from the left argued that being a non-commodity is limited to the realm of immaterial goods like software. From their viewpoint Free Software is only an “anomaly” (Nuss, Heinrich 2002), while “normal” goods in capitalism have to be commodities. This assumption, however, is closely linked to the acceptance of the scarcity dogma (cf. pattern 2). Moreover, it treats capitalism as a kind of normal or natural mode of production under conditions of “natural scarcity” (as they think). This view completely turns real relations upside down. Capitalism could only establish itself by enclosing the commons, by depriving the people from their traditional access to resources in order to transform them into workers. This enclosure of the commons is an ongoing process. Capitalism can only exist if it continuously separates people from resources by making them artificially scarce. A commodity – as nice as it may appear in the shopping malls – is a result of an ongoing violent process of enclosure and dispossession.

The same process occurs in software. Proprietary software is a way of dispossessing the scientific and development community from their knowledge, experiences, and creativity. Free Software was first a defensive act of maintaining common goods common. However, since software is at the forefront of the development of productive forces it quickly turned into a creative process of overcoming the limitations and alienations of proprietary software. In a special field Free Software established a new mode of production which is going to spread into other realms (cf. pattern 10).
Goods which are not made artificially scarce and are not subject to exchange are not commodities, but commons


from part 2:

Stefan Meretz:

“Socialism, as defined by Karl Marx in the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” (Marx, 1875) is a commodity-producing society ruled by the working class. Historically this was realized by the so called “real existing Socialism”. There have been many critiques of real socialist countries (lacking democracy, etc.) from within the left. Nevertheless, a good part of the left shares the assumption that an interphase between a free society (which may be called communism) and capitalism is unavoidable. The general concept is that the working class holding the power can reconstruct the whole economy according to their interests which represent the majority of the society. In short: power comes first, then a new mode of production will follow, in order to build a really free society. This concept has failed historically.

The reason for this failure is not due to internal tactical differences and shortcomings. Instead it is due to the unrealistic concept of qualitative historical transformation. Never in history was the question of power placed first, it was always the new mode of production which emerged from the old way of producing which prepared the historical transition. Capitalism initially developed from craftsmanship in medieval towns, then integrated manufactures, finally leading to the system of big industry. The question of power was solved “on the way”. This does not diminish the role of revolutions, but revolutions only realize and enhance what was already developing. The revolutions of the Arab Spring do not create anything new, but try to realize the potentials of a normal democratic bourgeois society.

This analysis of historical developments (discussed in more detail in pattern 10) has to be applied to the current situation. Historical transition can not be realized by taking over political power – be it by parliament or by street actions – but by developing a new mode of production. The criteria for being “new” can be derived from the negation of the old mode of production: instead of commodities: commons production, instead of exchange and mediation by money: free distribution, instead of labor: Selbstentfaltung, instead of exclusion mechanisms: potential inclusion of all people. However, care needs to be taken since not all developments of capitalism are to be abolished. Rather some continue – though in a transcended form."

Here's another contribution for this discussion, an essay by Michel Bauwens that I found on the website of the P2P foundation p2pfoundation.net/Place_of_Peer_Producti...n_the_Next_Long_Wave

The debate on peer-to-peer & Marxism is taking place (on a small scale), mainly through e-mails.

Today, I received a reply to the interview I had with Michel Bauwens, that I also published on my blog at the P2P-foundation.

Below, I give you the links where you can find the discussion; but I copy/pasted the e-mail discussion and put it in chronological order, so you don't have to 'click' any further:

Is Facebook Exploiting Workers? A response from Jacob Rigi and Michel Bauwens’ response to Rigi (23.02.2012)
By Jakob Rigi
(Associate Professor ; Central European University ; Budapest)

A brief response to Chris Land’s and Steffen Bohm’s Short Essay: “They are exploiting us! Why we all work for Facebbok for free” (see: oowsection.org/2012/02/22/they-are-exploiting-us-why-we-all-…)
The gist of the essay is the following hypothesis: The users of Facebook produce value in the same way as wage workers produce it. Hence, Facebook exploits users by expropriating this value.
Although I have a great respect for Land and Bohm good intentions and sympathize with their anti Facebook sentiments their thesis on Facebook exploiting users is wrong.
Facebook definitely exploits someone. But whom? The answer is the total world wage labor which is exchanged with capital (variable capital) . It is only this labor that produces surplus value. To claim that Facebook users produce value is to deny the role of wage laborers and their antagonism to rent-extracting entities such as faceebook and google.
Marx, in Vol. 3 of Capital, demonstrates that the surplus value produced by different sections of workers become a total pool and then is redistributed among industrial and commercial capitalists ( in the form of profit), Bankers (in the form of interest ), and land owners (in the form of rent). We use banks on daily basis and banks lend our money (savings, pensions..) in exchange for interests. It would be absurd to claim that users of banks produce value for banks. We spent time and energy to use bank services, even when we use credit cards. But this energy -time does not produce value, it is not exchanged with capital. Even when the users pay fees to banks for using the services they do not produce values but buy values which are produced by bank workers. It is equally absurd to claim that the users of Faceook and google produce value. The extract rents that are parts of the total surplus value which is produced by the wage laborers worldwide.
Actually the knowledge economy rests on the shoulders of the wage labor which is exchanged with capital outside it, though knowledge workers themselves also contribute to the total surplus value to the extent that their labor is exchanged with capital (variable capital).
Hence, claiming that users produce the rent which sucked from wage labor by google and Facebook, has the following practical implication: the user should expropriate the rent, the user should exploit the working class instead of Facebook.
To conclude users producing value for facebook is a very bad thesis. We should not fight to become rent suckers but to abolish wage labor, surplus value, in all its form including rent.
With solidarity
Jakob

Orsan Senalp’s comment (25.02.2012)
Hi Jakob, Michel and all,

Since personally i think this discussion is touching the key issue for instance the possible solidarity between movements so building up widest ‘counter heand difference gemonic historic orgnet’, it would worth to continue. It is featured on my blog. When your contribution is ready Michel would be good to add here too. It can also be added on the P2P - Marxism discussion?
best,
Orsan
———————————
Comment by Michel Bauwens (24.02.2012)
Dear Jacob,

I would amend both theses.My take is that Marx was talking about surplus exchange value, but that does not exhaust what value is. Facebook users are directly producing use value, that is of interest to their peers, by either creating or curating content and communicating about their lives and interests. Capitalism is NOT interested in use value, unless they can convert it to exchange value. This is what Facebook, does, but indirectly. They don’t care about the use value, but about the attention pool t hat it generates. This attention pool is itself a commodity, sold to advertisers, who can thereby sell the exchange value that has been produced by workers. In this way, as you say, the global pool is redirected, and your arguments are valid. But we should not concede that the only value created is exchange value, on the contrary, we have to stress that use value can be directly created, more easily with ‘immaterial’ production (which in any case rests on a huge material infrastructure, as we know), but also eventually and increasingly with directly material production.Hence I find more productive for social change the view, that Facebook are indeed creating value (but use value), and they are indeed exploited, but not as laborers, since they are not waged to create commodities. But as indirect creators of the exchange value of which others profit, they have the right to that value. UseHowever, not by commodification the production of content and creating even more capitalism, but by recognizing such communication as an essential public utility, that should not (just?) benefit the private shareholders of the platform, but the commons of use value creators. So the fight is to create a non-direct income stream back to the commons and the use communities, as general support for communication and (use) value creation activities. So long as this remains unattainablle, the fight is about the relative share of the different stakeholders.
Michel Bauwens

J. Rigi on 25.022012

I agree,
Actually the unity and difference between knowledge workers who perform universal labor and other workers is both the main resource for the movement and is its main fault line at the same time. Lenin and Kautsky argued that the working class needed bourggeosie intellectuals who adpoted the ideological stance of the working class to theorize and universalize the goals of working class revolution. Whether this theory was correct in the past is a matter of debate. Today, the very fact that a considerable section of working class, namely, knowledge workers perform cognitive work, make the class self sufficient in term of intellectual resources. But we need to fight hard in order to nuietralize the influence of information capitalism among knowledge workerss. It would not be an exageration to say that in this stage the winning of knowledge workers over the cause of communism is the most important task of the movement. And indeed, there are already very good news on this front, P2P debates and pubications, occupy wall street, indignado, wikiliks, anonzmous…. But, there is no place for complacency, because, if the informational capitalism will succeed in corrupting knowledge workers then the cause of communism will be posponed for decades.
cheers
Jakob

M. Bauwens on 25.02
Hi Jacob,
interesting point, though I guess my approach is quite different, i.e. by divorcing the idea of the market from capitalism (i.e. defend the freedom of trade and enterprise within a civic and commons-oriented economy) one allays the fears that communism would mean an authoritiarian imposition of collectivism … that does not mean however, any compromise with informational capitalism … actuallty, if one talks with occupy and indignados one quickly discovers the prevalence of libertarian impulses, this is in no way a ‘communist’ movement … but one can accompanty and speed up the maturation of awareness that happens through resistance and social creation.
I personally believe that the full phase transition is indeed a few decades away still, but that depends less on ‘our’ persuasion than on equallly important objective evolution, such as the inability of the mainstream system to deliver, the violence of their assault, the maturity of alternatives and yes the awareness and organisation of the workers,
Michel

Rigi’s coment (27.02)
Hi Michel.
Thanks for the reply. Actually, our difference is a difference on the nature of money and commodity, i.e, the theory of value. I hold to Max’s theory of value, in which money is the universal form which expresses the abstract labor congealed in commodities. Trade is the exchange of these values in the market by means of money. If commons (the products of peer production), will replace the commodity form, then money, trade and market will have no relevance. Now we have people like Keith Hart (see his Memory Bank) who claim that money and market can be decoupled from capitalism and articulated to a new mode of production. Actually Dimtri Kleiner in his Manifesto seems to have a similar theory of money, though he does not spell it out clearly. Now Hart’s theory of money comes from Keynes, not Marx. I think the fact that commons have put the revisiting of the theory of value/money on theoretical agenda is a great thing, and I hope we will be able to open a constructive debate on this matter. I really look forward to debating this with you. Perhaps we will propose to JOPP to devote a special issue to this matter.
Concerning the transition period, although its necessity seems logical, I have strong doubt about such a necessity. It is again a major issue and indeed related to the previous issue. Whether the transformation to peer production will happen though a gradual evolutionist path or a social revolution is an open question. But I tend to think that without a social revolution the overthrow of capitalism is impossible. Knowledge can be transformed to commons without a social revolution but land and strategic natural resources which are the basis of any production are already monopolized by private capitalists and their right are protected by state apparatuses of violence. We cannot establish a peer production society without transferring the strategic natural resources into commons. For this we confront the private ownership over nature and the violence of state. Hence, the necessity of social revolution. I may be wrong, again this can be a fertile ground for an open debate. After a social revolution we may need a historical period for overcoming national claims on strategic natural resources. But we do not market and money for this.
By communism, I mean a form of social relations in which the state and division of labor have vanished. The division between manual and intellectual labor has vanished too. Moreover, there is no difference between the fulfilling individual?s desires and performing social duties. You serve others by doing things that gives you pleasure and develop your own individuality. Social individual, to borrow a term from Marx, or social individualism is the corner stone of communism. Communism means the proliferation of singular individualities. This is what is already happening, though in embryonic form, in peer production.
This is also Marx’s original understanding of communism. Stalinism has given bad associations to the name communism. Whether we shall invent a new name or keep the name but wash the Stalinist stain is an open question. In the absence of any better name I still use it. Others seem to do the same thing, for example Richard Barbrook, Eben Moglen, and Dimytri Kleiner.
I think both peer production and Occupy Wall Street have a communist core to the extent they promote social individuality. Capitalistic individuality is atomistic and egoistic. Communism is the voluntary cooperation among individuals for both social good and for their own pleasure and development. Indeed capitalism and Stalinism both atomize the individual; Communism creates and manifests true and singular individualities. So it is far from being totalitarian. It dissolves both Stalinist and capitalist form of totalitarianism. Market, in spite of its appearance, and semblance of choice is the most effective totalitarian force history has ever seen. It levels all differences to money. In the market?s view all different qualities are reduced to same substance abstract value and its manifestation money. From the market point of view the objects, and this applies to people too, because people are objectified, are different only to the extent that they are different quantities of the same things, namely money.
All the best Stalinist totalitarianism was more transparent while the market hides its totalitarianism behind a mask of choice and diversity.
Jakob
Ps: As our exchange put forward some key theoretical problems of p2p I suggest it will not be a bad idea, if you post, of course if you agree, please my initial posting, your response and my response on p2p Website.

Orsan Senalp’s comment (27.02)
Great discussion! Would be very useful in my opinion to carry this on on the Marxism-P2P debate, with the hope it might take this necessary discussion further.
In this nexus, I want to remind the major attention paid to the recent important contributions from Badiou ‘The Communist Hypothesis’, and among his other books the edited volume of Zizek [with someone else] ‘The idea of Communism’ -in which Michel Heart had wrote ‘The Commons in Communism’ which directly touches the p2p. So commons – communes nexus is a natural extension of the discussion i think.
Strategically, we need something in between ‘the separation of the entire market and money from the system now!’ and ‘embedding the market and fictitious commodities [of Polanyi] into the societies’ in order to bring about, so to speak, a ‘counter hegemonic concept’ or discourse, so hold as much progressive forces as possible together around it -if possible at all, and realize the transition peacefully.
First demand can make many in lower segments of the middle class, dispossessed knowledge workers so on push away from the global movement, while the second would do the same to not satisfied more traditional workers without job and property. One can see in Occupy/Indignados both commonist and communist tendencies can be linked these analytically categories.
The movement is in the phase of a strong, clearly formulated, accessible, and powerful models that can answer both concerns. To me such discourse needs to be based on p2p mode of production -as in marx’ so a combination of forces and relations of production (ownership, production and distribution relations) and commons.
I always find Austria Marxists’ approach to hold progressive vectors in contact and exchange in order to stay strong, so wider alliance towards radical change would remain possible. At the end they failed and chose the side of social democracy/revisionism, claimed to be ‘turned’ reformist by Lenin. This was happening when Bolsheviks gaining power in Russia, Although politically Lenin attacked them very harshly, I believe he always took them very serious politically as well as theoretically. In the absence of an alternative mode of production like peer production, revolution happened in Russia, and evolved as it did. The communist movement got fragmented into pieces, and Stalin, and other examples gave a bad name to a good hypothesis.
I think Jakob’s points -in his forthcoming article on the p2p mode of
production- catches the core of the beautiful relationship between Marx’ advanced communism ideas, and peer production/commons based society ideas of today. We need to explore this further.
And it is very important to keep in mind that first and second industrial revolutions could have happened with the help of progressive revolutionary waves in 1848 and 1917; while 1871 and 1968 waves were only mediating a shift in power within capital forces.
[I think proposals like Jeremy Rifkin
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppw5O-Vtxcs], targeting a shift towards a peer capitalism is aware of this situation. His proposal can sound attractive to half of the occupy activists for instance. While he would clearly be hoping to back up a similar revolution for the sake of the rising cognitive capitalists class fraction getting powerful within the transnational capitalist class. In such alternative the higher educated knowledge workers can be seeing more opportunities and co-opted.]
So in order to avoid similar situation and just helping one fraction of powerful to rise over other, and probably continue to destroy the commons, we might benefit from such discussion launched on commons/communes, p2p/maxism and think of a better solution for all
thanks all who contribute to such discussion!
Hasta la vistoria, siempre!

Bauwen’s reactions embedded in Rigi’s previous reaction (28.02.2012):

Hi Michel,
Thanks for the reply. Actually, our difference is a difference on the nature of money and commodity, i.e, the theory of value. I hold to Max’s theory of value, in which money is the universal form which expresses the abstract labor congealed in commodities. Trade is the exchange of these values in the market by means of money. If commons (the products of peer production), will replace the commodity form, then money, trade and market will have no relevance.
Hi Jacob, I’m partial to, but ultimately agnostic to Marx’ value theory, because whatever its truth, it is not necessary to adhere to it to reject capitalism. I agree with the statement, ‘if the commons replaces the commodity form, money will have no relevance’…. But if commons is communism, and it is, do you really think that one day we will wake up with commonism? If you are a marxist, then you know that Marx himself, and all important marxists after him, all agreed to the necessity of transition, the one they called socialism … and as long as not everything is 100% commons, then you need reciprocity, and means to account for the reciprocity … this does not have to be capitalist money, nor capitalist market, but certain forms of trade and exchange are very likely to be part of the mix. And the existence of non-capitalist markets, both in the past and in the present, are well documented, and recognized by people like David Graeber, Kleiner and many others. This is why the debate to transform money, in myriad ways, is important, because we will need practical implementation of such alternatives to accompany non-capitalist practices. The transition will be impossible if we retain capitalist money as it is designed now. Please also note that the revolutionary regimes after WWI, such as in Hungary, did exactly that, and perhaps you know more about this than me. Otherwise, I think you will benefit from studying Allan Butcher’s detailed studies of communal economics and how intentional communities have dealth with reciprocity-based arrangements without the use of classic money. Seep2pfoundation.net/Category:Community_Economics
Now we have people like Keith Hart (see his Memory Bank) who claim that money and market can be decoupled from capitalism and articulated to a new mode of production. Actually Dimtri Kleiner in his Manifesto seems to have a similar theory of money, though he does not spell it out clearly. Now Hart’s theory of money comes from Keynes, not Marx. I think the fact that commons have put the revisiting of the theory of value/money on theoretical agenda is a great thing, and I hope we will be able to open a constructive debate on this matter. I really look forward to debating this with you. Perhaps we will propose to JOPP to devote a special issue to this matter.Concerning the transition period, although its necessity seems logical, I have strong doubt about such a necessity. It is again a major issue and indeed related to the previous issue. Whether the transformation to peer production will happen though a gradual evolutionist path or a social revolution is an open question. But I tend to think that without a social revolution the overthrow of capitalism is impossible.
I agree about the social revolution, but that doesn’t mean it will irrupt tomorrow and immediality install a fully functioning 100% commons regime. So we need to live, resist, and construct living alternatives that can create the structures that will be able to flower more rapidly after the social revolution. This was the tactic and strategy of the labor movement which along with parties and unions created a vast ecology of life forms for social reproduction … yes they were ultimately incorporated in the welfare state, but that was also because the capitalist ‘could’ do this … A coopted solution within capitalism is increasingly unlikely. And my proposition does not concern such cooptation but rather the strengthening of autonomous institutions within the actual world and the creation of integrated logics for a counter-economy that can exist alongside the social movements.
Knowledge can be transformed to commons without a social revolution but land and strategic natural resources which are the basis of any production are already monopolized by private capitalists and their right are protected by state apparatuses of violence. We cannot establish a peer production society without transferring the strategic natural resources into commons. For this we confront the private ownership over nature and the violence of state. Hence, the necessity of social revolution. I may be wrong, again this can be a fertile ground for an open debate. After a social revolution we may need a historical period for overcoming national claims on strategic natural resources. But we do not market and money for this.
Again agreed in theory. The phase transition will be necessity involve a fundamental change in power. But this is not a all or nothing proposition. In the meantime, do you just remain a wage worker and acquisce with the dominant logic, or do you create the seeds of the future in the present. Though the power over these resources is tremendous, it is never absolute, and the emerging distributed infrastructures can and should be used to create counter-economic institutions and counter-power.
By communism, I mean a form of social relations in which the state and division of labor have vanished. The division between manual and intellectual labor has vanished too. Moreover, there is no difference between the fulfilling individual?s desires and performing social duties. You serve others by doing things that gives you pleasure and develop your own individuality. Social individual, to borrow a term from Marx, or social individualism is the corner stone of communism. Communism means the proliferation of singular individualities. This is what is already happening, though in embryonic form, in peer production.
Yes, and it is what marx saw occuring both at the beginning of human history, and at the end of it. It is not something he surmised would happen fully fledged after a hypothetical red dawn. So my proposition is this: create real counter-practices in the actually existing world, and seek to strenghten them; deal realistically with a largely hostile institutional world; 2) when the possibility arises, create the true democratic structures that abolish the hostility of the institutions; 3) with the new institutions in place, and relying on the social force of the counter world which is now the mainstream world, establish the path forward. Most likely, this will take the form of civic institutions which will decide democratically on the most appropriate provisioning systems that marry maximum freedom with progress towards social equality.
This is also Marx’s original understanding of communism. Stalinism has given bad associations to the name communism. Whether we shall invent a new name or keep the name but wash the Stalinist stain is an open question. In the absence of any better name I still use it. Others seem to do the same thing, for example Richard Barbrook, Eben Moglen, and Dimytri Kleiner.
Yes, t his is appropriate, though I choose the path of a new vocabulary which can more precisely reflect current conditions.
I think both peer production and Occupy Wall Street have a communist core to the extent they promote social individuality. Capitalistic individuality is atomistic and egoistic. Communism is the voluntary cooperation among individuals for both social good and for their own pleasure and development. Indeed capitalism and Stalinism both atomize the individual; Communism creates and manifests true and singular individualities. So it is far from being totalitarian. It dissolves both Stalinist and capitalist form of totalitarianism. Market, in spite of its appearance, and semblance of choice is the most effective totalitarian force history has ever seen. It levels all differences to money. In the market?s view all different qualities are reduced to same substance abstract value and its manifestation money. From the market point of view the objects, and this applies to people too, because people are objectified, are different only to the extent that they are different quantities of the same things, namely money.
What you say about markets is not necessarily true. Pre-capitalist market forms, such as those in western medieval times, used ‘just price’ governance, and the same was true in the Hindu villages.
Here is a possible transition scenario. You have a world of increasing commons construction. These commons use peer production licenses which share with other commons institutions, but make for-profit firms pay. The commons workers create physical commons stock phyles based on worker equality and the socialist principles of to each according to his contribution, and use cooperative, nonprofit, low profit and other open company formats. These phyles use integral open book management and open supply chains, increasingly rending moot the necessity of market mechanisms to regulate supply and demand mechanics.
This world co-exist with democratic civic governance institutions which decide which provisioning system is the most acceptable. Imagine three concentric circles, the commons sphere, the private mutualist phyle sphere, the governance sphere .. where they intersect you have the civic sphere which determines the overall structure of society …
In this scenario you have a expanding ‘communist’ sphere, co-existing with a gradually declining reciprocity/exchange sphere and a gradually declining common governance sphere. The key is that generalized non-reciprocity cannot be imposed by any top-down force, however benign, but must by necessity mature in the real society as people can gradually move towards it as sufficiency and abundance replace scarcity dynamics.
All the best Stalinist totalitarianism was more transparent while the market hides its totalitarianism behind a mask of choice and diversity.Jakob Ps: As our exchange put forward some key theoretical problems of p2p I suggest it will not be a bad idea, if you post, of course if you agree, please my initial posting, your response and my response on p2p Website.

The P2P – Marxism Debate Takes Off
Posted on February 24, 2012 snuproject.wordpress.com/author/orsans/

As an intro to a recent post ‘And the Debate Begins… Peer-to-Peer and Marxism: analogies and differences‘ we have said:
“We are posting a critically timed and very important interview on P2P-Marxism nexus. Conducted by Jean Lievens with the founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives Michel Bauwens on some aspects of his P2P theory and Marxist theory, the interview might be the opening of the greatest debate of coming years. While the rising ‘mode of P2P Production’ and new P2P political processes have obviously overdetermined the massive social change process that came about in 2011, with the contribution of such productive debate we would be able to get much clearer projections
on real alternatives to capitalism, and how to make these alternatives happen. In the aftermath of the death of the ‘postmodern condition’ and with the return of the ‘class warfare’ , such debate would level the field for a constructive engagement between marxist, anarchist, and post-marxist critical traditions.”
The debate has been recently took off with impulses coming from a short article by Bohm and Land, and Jakob Rigi’s response to them. We reproduce the email exchange below. The debate will likely continue here and/or here. In order to join the debate on the first link you will need to register P2P Foundation’s social network on Ning first.

link to discussion on P2P Foundation ning

p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pe...rce=msg_com_blogpost