3.3 Placing the P2P Era in an evolutionary framework

3.3 Placing the P2P Era in an evolutionary framework

3.3.A. The evolution of cooperation: from neutrality to synergetics

3.3.B. The Evolution of Collective Intelligence

3.3.C. Beyond Formalization, Institutionalization, Commodification

3.3.D. The Evolution of Temporality: towards an Integral Time

3.3.A. The evolution of cooperation: from neutrality to synergetics

In this section, we want to look at the basic characteristics of the evolution of the mode of production , and in particular, how this different forms tackle cooperation. It is perhaps useful to distinguish the general concept of coordination , which does not involve people cooperating together, but people working individidually in a chain, being coordination through hierarchy or technology. With cooperation we mean: working together and the following is an attempted history of the modalities of such 'working together'.

The primary economy is based on reciprocity, which derives from common ancestry or lineage. It is based on families, clans, tribes and exchange mostly operates through gifts which create further obligation. The division of labor is minimal and most often related to gender and age. The key question is 'to belong or not to belong'. Social groups are based and bounded by real or symbolic lineage. Wants are defined by the community. Leadership is in the hands of the lineage leadership.

The secondary economy arises together with power monopolies which engender coercion as a means to force cooperation. We enter the domain of class societies, and production is organized by the elite in power, which holds together through the symbolic power which transforms power into allegiance. Respect for power, in the form of tribute, taxes, etc.. is normative. Distribution depends on your place in this chain of symbolic power. Wants are defined by the symbolic power with symbolic markers monopolized. The key question is: 'to deserve power or to deserve subjection'. Social groups are bound by allegiance to power. Leadership is political and religious. Relationships, i.e. allegiance, is highly personal.

The tertiary economy arises with the entrepreneur and capitalism. It is based on 'equivalent', i.e. 'fair' exchange, which is normative. Power arises from relative productivity, relative monopoly over a needed good, and from the wage relationship which creates dependence. Social groups are loose, and wants are determined by advertising and mimetic desire. Cooperation is no longer correlated to belonging. Relationships are impersonal.

The quaternary economy, based on peer to peer processes, is based on 'ideological leaders' which can frame common goals and common belonging and is based on membership and contribution. Contributing to the best of one's ability to common goals is normative and the key question becomes: to follow an existing group or to create one's own, i.e. to convince or be convinced. Contributions to many groups can overlap. Power is dependent on the power to convince.

How do these different formats tackle cooperation?

The earliest economic systems were based on the principle of reciprocity, which was normative, but within the limits of kin groups such as the family, the clan or the tribe. The so-called gift economy, operated in a context of abundance (this counter-intuitive analysis is well explained by anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins (Sahlins, 1972), who showed that tribal peoples only needed to work a few hours per day for their physical survival needs), created a circle of obligations. Cooperation was therefore not free, but an obligation associated to belonging. Moreover, the cooperation engendered by reciprocity was balanced by a competition for prestige, that took the form of giving, and very often, of the destruction of goods in gift-giving festivals. It seems therefore correct to say that the surplus was not re-invested, did not create permanent classes, and was not geared on enhancing productivity.

After the breakdown of the tribal gift economies, we can see that premodern imperial and feudal forms of human cooperation where based on the use of force (the transition from egalitarian Neolithic villages to class-based Sumerian cities such as Akkad took place in the 4th millennium B.C.).

Using Edward Haskell’s triune categorization of human cooperation (adversarial, neutral, synergetic, Haskell, 1972): It was a win-lose game, which inevitably led to the monopolization of power (either in land and military forces in precapitalist formations, or in the commercial sphere, as in capitalism). Tribute was exacted from losers in a battle (or freely offered by the weak seeking protection), labor and produce from slaves and serfs. In forced, adversarial cooperation, in this win-loose game, cooperative surplus is less than optimal, it is in fact negative: 1 + 1 is less than two. Productivity and motivation are relatively low. Nevertheless, the ability to commandeer and organize vast resources, and a further division of labor, increased the productivity of such societies, as compared with the tribal economies, and they could sustain a class society with a vast army of warriors and spiritual leaders. But the competitive game was not geared on increasing the productivity of existing resources, but on the control of a bigger scope of resources, i.e. land and people, through military conquest.

In capitalist society, neutral cooperation is introduced. In theory, free workers exchange their labor for a fair salary and producers and consumers exchange products for a ‘fair’ amount of money. In neutral cooperation, the result of the cooperation is average. Participants give just their money’s worth. Neither participant in a neutral exchange gets better, 1 plus 1 equals 2. We can interpret this negatively or positively. Negatively, capitalist theory is rarely matched in practice, where fair exchange is always predicated on monopolization and power relationships, not in the form of direct coercion (except in the phase of 'primitive accumulation' of capital, in the 16th and 17th century, where coerced power was still very prevalent). The situation is therefore much darker, more adversarial and less neutral, than the theory would suggest. Nevertheless, compared to the earlier feudal models, marked by constant warfare, the monopoly of violence exercised by the capitalist state model, limits internal armed conflicts, and adversarial relationships are relegated to the sphere of commerce, or 'externalized'.

The system has proven very productive, and coupled with the distributive nature of the welfare state which was imposed on it, has dramatically expanded living standards in certain areas of the world. Seen in the most positive light, a positive feedback loop may be created in which both partners feel they are winning, thus it can sometimes be seen as a win-win model. But what it cannot do, due to its inherent competitive nature, is transform itself into a win-win-win model (or in the formulation of Timothy Wilken of synearth.net, a win-win-win-win model, with the biosphere as fourth partner). A capitalist relationship cannot freely care for the wider environment, only forced to care. (This is the rationale for regulation, as self-regulation generally proves even more unsatisfactory in terms of the general interest of the wider public and the survival of the biosphere)

Here peer to peer can be again defined as a clear evolutionary breakthrough. It is based on free cooperation. Parties to the process all get better from it: In Wilken's formulation: 1 plus 1 gives a lot more than 2. By definition, peer to peer processes are mobilized for common projects that are of greater use value to the wider community (since monetized exchange value falls away). True and authentic P2P therefore logically transforms into a win-win-win model, whereby not only the parties gain, but the wider community and social field as well. It is, in Edward Haskell’s definition, a true synergetic cooperation. It is very important to see the ‘energetic’ effects of these different forms of cooperation, as I indicated above: 1) forced cooperation yields very low quality contributions; 2) the neutral cooperation format of the marketplace generates average quality contributions; 3) but freely given synergistic cooperation generates passion. Participants are automatically drawn to what they do best, at the moments at which they are most passionate and energetic about it. This is one of the fundamental reasons of the superior quality which is eventually, over time, created through open source projects.

Arthur Coulter, author of a book on synergetics (Coulter, 1976), adds a further twist explaining the superiority of P2P. He adds to the objective definition of Haskell, the subjective definition of ‘rapport’ based on the attitudes of the participants. Rapport is the state of a persons who are in full agreement, and is determined by synergy, empathy, and communication. Synergy refers to interactions that promote the goals and efforts of the participants; empathy to the mutual understanding of the goals; and communication to the effective interchange of the data. His “Principle of Equivalenceâ€? states that the flow of S + E + C are optimal when they have equivalent status to each other. If we distinguish Acting Superior, Acting Inferior on one axis and Acting Supportively and Acting with Hostility on another axis, then the optimal flow arises when one treats the other as ‘somewhat superior’ and with ‘some support’. Thus an egalitarian-supportive attitude is congenial to the success of P2P.

Above we have focused on the means of cooperation, but another important aspect is the 'scope' of cooperation, or the amount or 'volume' of what can be shared, in both relative and absolute terms.

This is how Kim Veltman, a Dutch academic, echoed by evolutionary psychologist John Steward puts it:

“Major advances in civilization typically entail a change in medium, which increases greatly the scope of what can be shared. Havelock noted that the shift from oral to written culture entailed a dramatic increase in the amount of knowledge shared and led to a re-organization of knowledge. McLuhan and Giesecke explored what happened when Gutenberg introduced print culture in Europe. The development of printing went hand in hand with the rise of early modern science. In the sixteenth century, the rise of vernacular printing helped spread new knowledge. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards this again increased as learned correspondence became the basis for a new category of learned journals (Journal des savants, Journal of the Royal Society, Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeiger etc.), whence expressions such as the "world of letters. The advent of Internet marks a radical increase in this trend towards sharing. “(http://erste.oekonux-konferenz.de/dokumentation/texte/veltman.html)

In a similar vein, a French philosopher, Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux (Sagot-Duvauroux, 1995), who wrote the book, “Pour la Gratuiteâ€?, stresses that many spheres of life are not dominated by state or capital, that these are all based on free and equal exchange, and that the extension of these spheres is synonymous with civilization-building . The very fact that the cooperation takes place in the sphere of free and non-monetary exchange of the Information Commons, is a sign of civilisational advance. By contrast, the 'monetarisation of everything' (commodification) that is a hallmark of cognitive capitalism, is a sign of de-civilization .

Recent developments concerning the participatory culture on the internet have stimulated the discipline of cooperation studies , which study how to promote human cooperation. For example, they are trying to determine the maximum number to obtain efficient non-hierarchically cooperating groups, beyond which centralization and hierarchy sets in.