Thinking of Peer Production and the Transnationalization of Production Together

Discussion

Orsan Senalp:

"Since the previous global crisis, that had started in the late 60s, there have been major contributions made from critical perspectives to our understanding of the expanding of capitalist mode of production and the formation of the world market. Much of the insights were developed by political economy theorists from the West/Center. The first and second generation classics written were those of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, Vladimir I. Lenin, Bukharin, Karl Polanyi, Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci. The third generation classical works has arrived in this period. Althusser, Balibar, Miliband, Poulantzas, Palloix, Murray, Hymer, Wallerstein, Amin, Arrighi, Baran, Sweezy, Breverman among others have reopened and expanded the analysis of the state, classes, capitalism. In this post-war and New-Left era, both Gramsci and Polanyi had been rediscovered and their work stimulated -especially via Poulantzas’ analysis- the development of the analysis of the transnational dimension of the changing capitalism.

The fourth generation spent precious attention spent on the TNCs, and internationalization of the capital, state and classes. Within this generation theorists the work of Robert W. Cox was the one who could actually successfully synthesized the first, second and third generation theories while revaluing Gramsci -as well as Poulantzas’ way of thinking of power and counterpower- in developing a transnational and trans-level analysis. After serving long time as an ILO expert, Cox became an academic in Colombia University and delivered his seminal articles which introduced the ‘Gramscian turn’ in IR academic discussion, These first articles published in Millenium Journal of International Studies in the early 80s, in a way opened a way also open the way for the ‘globalisation of political economy’. These articles were successfully translating the basic concepts of Gramsci (like hegemony, historic bloc) to the international level. Such innovation broke a ground in realist IR dominated 'discipline'. Production, Power and World Orders: Social Forces in the Making of History came out in 1987. Cox has developed his original concepts like state-society complex, internationalisation of production, internationalisation of state, and international class formation, The implementation of historical materialist method to the analysis of transnational relations in the book has been a great contribution to the major debates on the state, classes and globalisation. Cox work has later developed by theorists like Kees van der Pijl, Stephen Gill, Henk Overbeek, Otto Holman. This strand is known today as Neo-Gramscian global political economy perspective. Neo-Gramscian theorists have based their analysis of internationalisation or transnationalization of production on the earlier and current theories of 'post-fordism' inspired by regulation school (Aglietta, Boyer, Lipietz, Jessop).

On the other hand, there has also been important analyses made by critical social theorists -most can be named as post-Marxist- like Habermas, Touraine, Castells, Gorz, Hist & Thompson etc., and Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition, on the new developments in forces and relations of production, like the impact of communication and transportation technologies, networks, informalisation, TNCs so on. Based on this latter strand fInally Hardt and Negri had been delivering their magnum opus: ‘Empire’, which can be tagged as a comprehensive postdisciplinary global political economy analysis. The Empire, when argues on production successfully identified the link between the new productive forces, rising networked relationships within the production processes, power structures and the new world order. However the work of Hardt and Negri was actually achieving what Cox could have done, without being informed by the accumulated work in the global political economy field. Thus it has included very limited empirical analysis of the relationship between networks and transnationalization of production. The ‘Empire’ however has accelerated an intriguing theorisation of peer production, p2p relationships and networks; This theorisation we think, sheds much better perspective on the post fordist, cognitive capitalism. How informatics has been transforming the key relationships of capitalist mode mode of production, from production to ownership, from distribution to consumption. That provides deeper understanding (than Post-fordism based theories) of how informatics based structural power of transnational capital, via global financial architecture, subordinated agriculture, trade, industry and services in every localities and regions in the world. Yet empirically thin understanding of global political economy in this front, or a historical and materialist understanding of transnational social relations, especially those of related to production, creates an important gap.

Thus global political economy theory started with Cox, and p2p theory would benefit from a fruitful exchange. Potentially a p2p update on the understanding of the 'transnationalization of production', which as process overlaps with the informatization of economy, networkisation of societies, and neoliberal globalisation offensive, or vice versa; a global political economy upgrade for p2p theory, in my opinion is necessary. Such an exchange would provide much more clear understanding of global power structures, the capital and state elite partnerships that creates divisions & scarcities among masses in order to rule and take advantage of the societies, and possibilities to build up more efficient alternatives and counter strategies that would eventually diminish all sort of alienations in and between societies and favour the people globally." (Networked Labour mailing list, December 2014)