* Book: FROM CAPITAL TO COMMONS Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. Hannes Gerhardt. Bristol University Press, 2023.

URL = https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/capital-to-commons

Description

"The chapters following this introduction are an exposition of the compeerist idea and movement outlined thus far. They seek to tap into the strengths and address the weaknesses of existing commons-oriented theorizations, while drawing lessons from the experiences of actual commons-aligned actions and mobilizations. As a whole, the aim is to address, and find possible responses to, the four major hindrances facing a commons-based, post-capitalist trajectory summarized earlier.

In the first part of the book, the digital revolution and the subsequent establishment of a post-Fordist economy is explored in terms of affording new openings for counter-capitalist, commons-based forms of production.

Chapter 1 commences by laying out the theoretical foundation on which the rest of the book relies, presenting a capitalism that is turning increasingly to ‘engineered scarcity’ to ensure profits (Kostakis and Bauwens, 2014). The chapter then turns to the question of possible systemic change. The compeerism framework is here shown to be aligned with, but also distinct from, the nascent ‘P2P approach’, with the major difference being compeerism’s supplemental incorporation of autonomist Marxists’ theorization of capitalism. As such, the prototypical compeerist outlook presented both embraces Hardt and Negri’s call for a bottom-up ‘exodus’ out of capital, while also recognizing the need to engage ‘the market’ and ‘the state’ if capital is ever to be fully overcome. The role of digital technologies is presented here as an important tool that nonetheless only affords certain possibilities; nothing is predetermined.

Chapter 2 then delves into the question of how, given capital’s cooptation of the digital revolution, the expansion of commons-based digital value production can nonetheless progress and lay the foundation for a knowledgebased commons sector that could eventually outcompete capital, as per Marx in Grundrisse. Non-capitalist forms of digital commons contributions are presented, including from government, non-profits, and cooperatives. The cooperative framework and movement, with its commitment to devolving ownership and management to a set of localized and relevant stakeholders, is shown to be particularly aligned with compeerism, a recurring theme throughout the book. The key takeaway from Chapter 2, however, is the need for commons-based digital value producers to engage in greater solidarity, or ‘boundary commoning’, in order to significantly boost the expansion of the digital commons (De Angelis, 2017b). Especially important here is the establishment of a peer-property regime that can protect commons-sourced digital value from unwanted exploitation, thus enabling the producers of this value to challenge capital in a market context.

Chapter 3 then goes on to study the various options to exit and overcome the organization of the current internet, that is, a transactional cyberspace that has given rise to an increasingly powerful and all-consuming platform capitalism and an emerging ‘data colonialism’ (Couldry and Mejias, 2019). The chapter considers the promise and challenges involved in ‘taking back’ the internet via ‘platform cooperatives’ and a movement to reclaim private and commons-sourced data. This includes efforts to establish a ‘self-sovereign id’ and the creation of a data commons. Within these efforts the important role of the state, and especially municipalities, comes to the fore. The next part of the book moves on from the digitally based economy to tackle the challenge of translating compeerism to the material realm.

Chapter 4 focuses on the electricity and information technology (IT) infrastructures on which the digital economy depends. Immediate forms of exit such as opting out of the electrical or internet ‘macrogrid’ are considered, before possible longer-term options for decapitalizing critical infrastructure are explored. Compeerism here seeks alternatives to the top-down, centralized arrangement prevalent in the delivery of IT and electricity services by promoting localized, smaller operators and ‘prosumers’ (individuals participating in production) that would enable greater community autonomy and control. At the same time, limits to localization are identified, pointing to the need for state engagement to pursue a decapitalization of larger-scaled infrastructural assets. The creation of networked and highly democratized stakeholder cooperatives are presented as the most promising organizational approach to commonifying the trans-local, material basis of our electricity and internet delivery systems.

Chapter 5 continues the consideration of the material economy by looking at the organization of manufacturing. The focus here falls on the ‘design global, manufacture local’ (DG-ML) model espoused by some P2P theorists as a way to achieve a greater democratization of the means of production (Kostakis et al, 2015). The blossoming of open-source design, open-hardware, and versatile makerspaces and fab labs are taken up first as short-term, localized forms of exit. The analysis then moves on to the challenges and potentials inherent in a larger scaled, integrated network of community oriented, democratized small-scale factories. Possible management arrangements for such commons-oriented facilities are then assessed and compared, ranging from state-run to various cooperative/ collaborative forms of organization. Next, Chapter 6 delves into the foundational basis of any economy, that is, the renewable and non-renewable resource sectors and the underlying natural planetary systems to which they are bound. This chapter therefore deals with the overarching challenge of establishing a more resilient and environmentally sustainable economy within a broader commons-based governance regime. The DG-ML model is here shown to be particularly suited for the needed shift to a truly circular economy. The chapter also focuses on agriculture as a quintessential case of renewable resource management, and a design global, farm local (DG-FL) model is proposed and explored as part of the broader aim of achieving a compeerist approach to feeding the world. In each of the previous three chapters, the argument is made that greater inter-commons solidarity and commons-friendly state policies are essential if capital’s decisive control over the material economy is to be overcome. It is also recognized, assuming the desirability of maintaining advanced and materially prosperous societies, that complete localization is untenable as some upscaling would still be called for in the pursuit of efficiencies and comparative advantages. This would, then, also mean a continuation of some longer distance trade. Finding a compeerist-aligned approach to trans-local interactions thus becomes critical, especially when it comes to the postcolonial, exploitative exchanges that continue to define MinorityMajority World connections. This challenge is taken up explicitly in

Chapter 6, with emphasis placed on the need to localize the control and governance of material assets/resources in the Majority World while simultaneously empowering their communities via access to a vibrant, expansive digital commons.

After the first six chapters, it becomes clear that compeerist efforts to boost the commons are fundamentally bogged down by market-based money’s monopolization of all value designation, a defining feature of capitalism.

This condition calls forth two essential factors required for a compeerist trajectory to go forward. First and foremost, in order to fund themselves, compeerist-aligned actors must adapt to the current, exchange-value centred economic environment without ‘selling out’. Yet, a second, more long-term imperative entails challenging and ultimately fully overcoming the current system of valuation altogether, replacing it with one that is more in line with compeerist values.

Part III considers both of these efforts.

Chapter 7 begins by making the case that there currently is no real exit for the commons from a certain dependency on money. Consequently, various adaptation strategies by commons-oriented actors are explored, including the pursuit of exit from capital through collaborative consumption, dependency on gifting from the populace and government, and lastly, by engaging markets. The case is then made that the only way to truly challenge capital is via the latter, market-focused strategy. As such, various mechanisms are reviewed that could be adopted to assure corruption in such an approach is avoided. Additionally, two monetary/finance specific efforts are considered that could assist commons-based producers in going toe-to-toe with capital.

One centres on finding savings and credit arrangements that could internalize the circulation of money within the commons, and the other deals with the use of alternative cryptocurrencies to help build, manage, and facilitate engagement with the commons-based ‘subeconomy’.

Chapter 8, in turn, focuses on the broader compeerist task of fully replacing the current organization of money creation and distribution. The need for such a move is highlighted by the fact that the banks’ control over the issuing of debt-based money, conjured out of thin air, has led to the funnelling of investments into exploitative and unsustainable commercial endeavours while governments are left unable to address the increasing dysfunctions precipitated by their economies. By taking up emergent, unorthodox approaches to monetary theory, the argument is made for the state to reclaim its sovereign position as money creator and distributor. Such a shift, especially if matched with a greater commitment to commons-friendly policies, would be a crucial coup for the compeerist project. However, given that states may not be willing to go down such a path, the chapter ends by also considering macroscaled efforts and potentials to use commons-controlled, crypto-based monies as a way to help establish sizable, autonomous, noncapitalist economies.

Lastly, the final part of the book turns to the political mobilization and organization that would be called for to truly achieve a post-capitalist trajectory along compeerist lines.

Chapter 9 thus proceeds by making the case that such a political-economic upheaval would depend on the emergence of an intentional, commoner consciousness that could inspire a mass political ‘movement of movements’. Yet for such a movement to outcompete other, more destructive discourses and mobilizations that are likely to emerge as capitalism’s failings mount, will depend on being able to deliver actual benefits from the commons and commoning. Harnessing a mass mobilization to compeerist ends is thus presented as necessitating both bottom-up forms of exit and targeted ‘hit-and-run’ demands on the state. This latter focus on the state is based on a long-term commitment to improve the chances of localized, compeerist initiatives to form and coalesce to the point where they can effectively challenge capital.

After having remained squarely focused throughout the book on a presentation of compeerism within the context of the current capitalist mode of production, Chapter 10 concludes by looking at what a fullyfledged compeerist economy, released from the fetters of capital dominance, could look like. Importantly, no universal prescriptions are offered, seeing that a compeerist economy and society can have multiple configurations. Nevertheless, the chapter offers a basic outline of the major issues involved in pursuing a commons-oriented governance of the market, money, and property. Then, to offer a bit more tangibility, the chapter proceeds to lay out just one case of a hypothetical compeerist society. Careful consideration is here given to the interconnected and mutually reinforcing organization of both the economic and political spheres of society.

As the book comes to an end, the reader should be left with a better understanding of the compeerist promise and its challenges. The focus will primarily have been on the techno-economic dimensions of what a commons-based transition out of capitalism would involve, with some attention also given to the political breakthroughs that would be required. As such, the book will have addressed the fundamental question of whether a post-capitalist future is possible that is not only prosperous but also just and sustainable. The answer to this question is, in the end, a conditional but insistent ‘yes’, if societies can find the needed motivation and method to put the various pieces of the compeerist puzzle together."

Excerpts

From the introduction

By Hannes Gerhardt:

"This book builds on these approaches while also addressing their current shortcomings by providing a more holistic analysis of the many technological, economic, and political shifts that would necessarily be involved in a commons-centred trajectory out of capitalism. Hence, the starting point for this endeavour is to home in on the four most fundamental and difficult to crack obstacles that stand in the way of such a commons-based transition.

These are:

1) capital’s cooptation and subsequent prevention of a fully freed, digitally empowered general intellect;

2) capital’s continued control and exploitation of the material basis of the economy;

3) the difficulty of establishing commons-based social relations and forms of production given that value is monopolized by markets and money; and

4) the lack of a coherent political framework and mobilization that could succeed in bringing about positive systemic change.

It is worth reviewing these, and the perceived inability of current commonsbased theorizations to deal with them, before summarizing compeerism’s own particular positionality.

The hurdles facing a capital to commons trajectory:

To begin, the digital revolution’s promise of liberating a turbocharged, commons-based general intellect must be acknowledged as far from inevitable. In fact, while the abundance associated with crowdsourced and freely accessible digital knowledge/code/data poses a potential threat to the mediation of scarcity on which capitalism largely depends, it appears that capital as a whole has effectively adapted to the new technological environment and, indeed, has turned it to its benefit. This coup has been achieved in a variety of ways.

For one, capital has engaged in a fierce battle to keep its own digital productions artificially scarce through intellectual-property protections while increasingly making use of the digital commons for free, valuable content and inspiration. Additionally, capital has managed to corral digitized, proprietary and volunteered material through internet platforms that act as rent-seeking gatekeepers. These platforms, furthermore, have become a critical source of data extraction, offering an entirely new realm of highly profitable marketing information. Not least, the decentralization and modularization of work enabled by digital networks, heralded as a way to foster geographically distributed collaboration, has been tapped by capital to acquire a pliable and easily exploitable pool of labour, as is well documented in the so-called gig economy (Woodcock, 2021).

Looking to the future, capital is already engaged in shaping and subverting the next wave of digital technologies to open further profit frontiers. This is most clearly seen in the embrace of encrypted ledger technologies, such as blockchain, which enable secure and theoretically infallible digitally-logged records of ownership and transactions. Blockchain can hence be used to digitally capture and monetize activities and productions that were previously outside the reach of commodification (Swan, 2015). One example is the proliferation of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which allow for the secure marketization of a broad range of digital media by making these into artificially scarce ‘property’ managed on the blockchain. Thus, in short, while the digital revolution may have changed the way capitalism works, it has not made it weaker – if anything, the opposite appears to be true.

The second major obstruction to a digitally-empowered usurpation of capitalism pertains to the fact that the underlying materiality of the economy is still primarily in private, profit-seeking hands. Hence, even if a liberated general intellect mediated through the digital commons is accepted as a possible challenge to capital in some areas, it is fair to doubt that this would be enough to precipitate the demise of the entire capitalist ‘mode of production’, that is, the overarching organization of our labour and resources (Marx and Engels, 1965). This is because the assumption of potential abundance linked to digital value, which is the cornerstone of the argument that commons-based peer production maintains an advantage over capital, does not apply to the material realm, which is characterized by clear physical limitations and, indeed, scarcity.

In the absence of a commons-oriented takeover of material assets and resources, therefore, these will go on being employed in the pursuit of extractive and exploitative profits. In the digital economy, this means capital will resume leveraging its ownership of the undergirding material infrastructure to control and limit access to what could theoretically be infinitely reproducible information/knowledge. Capital will also retain control over the physical resources and added value entailed in the unending amount of material things we want and need, from food and clothing to all the electronic devices that enable and harness the internet’s value. Not least, due to this control, capitalist actors and their interests will continue to define humanity’s currently dysfunctional relationship to the environment. The overarching question when faced with these realities, then, is how commonsbased rationales and values could break through and become dominant not only within the digital realm, but also in areas such as infrastructure, manufacturing, and resource/environmental management.

This brings us to the third foundational challenge, which gets to the very heart of why both the digital and material commons struggle to assert themselves, namely, capitalism’s ability to reduce almost everything of value to a market-based, money-denominated good or service. With money here becoming a stand-in for value, it also becomes the de facto means for accessing almost anything tangible that is worth having. In other words, as long as access to the goods and services required for living are denominated in tokens that can generally only be acquired through work, people will continue to depend on remunerated (paid) employment to live. Indeed, this is how labour is so easily coopted and exploited by capital, and, subsequently, disallowed from significantly contributing to the commons. For instance, in terms of the promise of freeing digital abundance (the general intellect), we are reminded of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s well-known statement at the first Hacker Conference of 1984, where he opined that ‘information should be free but your time should not’ (Brand, 1985, p 49). In other words, digital producers also want to be paid (and software companies want to make profits).

Faced with the underlying reality of the monopolization of marketcentred value, a natural conclusion could be that actors seeking to expand the commons and commons-forms of governance have no choice but to engage markets in order to fund the labour and resources needed for their activities. This approach, however, comes with a host of additional difficulties and conundrums, such as dealing with the apparent contradiction involved in striving to provide something as a commons-based good that is, at the same time, intended to generate revenue. Additionally, the commonsoriented entrepreneur must compete within a price-oriented marketplace that can clash with their adopted principles of production, such as sharing innovations, investing in the community, and worker-empowerment. Some even argue that engaging in commodity exchange and money leads to an inevitable condition in which the worth of resources and labour can only be understood through the lens of markets, hence making a path out of capitalist rationales and actions impossible (Pitts, 2018a).

Lastly, turning to the final major obstacle facing a capital-to-commons trajectory, there is the overarching question of what political action would be required for the needed shift in social relations to become dominant, and if successful whether the subsequent governance regimes would be preferable to what is being replaced. Regarding this latter issue, for instance, critics like to point out the haphazard and sometimes autocratic managerial cultures evident in the production of the digital commons (Pentzold, 2021). Additionally, and focusing on commons-based peer production in particular, some scholars have pointed to the lack of intentional, bureaucratic governance structures in these endeavours, making them unqualified for handling complex, long-term and inherently political projects involving multiple external stakeholders (Kreiss et al, 2010). In other words, it is one thing to crowdsource an encyclopedia for the commons, but it is a very different thing , for example, to organize universal access to the internet. Even if an effective and just commons-centred form of governance can be achieved at scale and across economic sectors, however, we are still left with the question of how to get there. In other words, how would a mass, commons-based transition out of capitalism unfold politically, and, more to the point, what role would the state, as a bulwark of the current mode of production, play in such a process? The question of a countercapitalist movement’s relation to the state finds multiple, divergent answers by proponents of a commons-centred systemic transition, ranging on a spectrum from calls to ignore, engage, and capture the state. Neither of these, however, has proven to be broadly convincing for the politically left-leaning populace as a whole."

From Peer Production To Compeerism

Hannes Gerhardt:

"We can begin by first noting that the terminology of ‘commons-based peer production’ (or just ‘peer production’), still widely embraced by P2P theorists, is inadequate in capturing the proposal actually being offered. The main issue here is that it is unclear whether the concept refers to a supplement to capitalism, as per Benkler, or to an upstart form of production challenging capital, as posited in the P2P approach. Homing in on the second of these meanings, the term ‘compeerism’ is offered as a related yet still distinct outlook, ultimately consisting of an amalgamation and finessing of existing theorizations of a commons-based transition out of capitalism.

The label of compeerism is apt as it combines the commons and the ‘peer to peer’ focus into one, while adding a dimension of political intentionality by making the term an ‘ism’. Compeerism also encapsulates and puts an emphasis on the commons/community and implies sharing in the word ‘peer’, reflecting a commitment to counter-capitalist ‘commonification’, that is, the process of shifting critical assets into the commons realm (Broumas, 2020). Furthermore, the actual word ‘compeer’ is defined as ‘an equal’ or ‘peer’, with the archaic verb meaning ‘to be equal to’. This connotation is fitting as it points to the need to enable equitable opportunities to produce, access, govern, and collaboratively use the commons.

Lastly, compeerism, as a word, is succinct and evocative, and hence more likely to inspire a call to action than the rather stale label of ‘commons-based peer production’, or even worse its commonly used acronym ‘CBPP’. Consider, for instance, this adaptation of Hélder Câmara’s famous quote: “When we purchase goods for the poor, they call us saints; when we ask why the commons aren’t used to eliminate poverty, they call us compeerists!”. If we were here to substitute ‘compeerists’ with ‘commons-based peer producers’, the quote would clearly lose its force. Moving forward, the term compeerism explored and advanced in this book denotes two interrelated conceptualizations. On the one hand, it references a broad theoretical framework to make sense of the current and potential future relationship between the state, capital, and the commons.

This assessment pays special attention to how capital has been, is being, or could be exited and replaced with commons-oriented forms of production and governance. On the other hand, compeerism also designates a political-economic positionality that embraces specific, non-capitalist values. Indeed, the compeerist proposition is not just about theorizing a technologically enabled reworking of how production is organized, as per Benkler, but rather how a completely new organization of society could come about, and, critically, why such a transition is worth pursuing.

The conception of value and values inherent in compeerism, broadly shared by the counter-capitalist approaches from which it is inspired, goes a long way in illuminating its underlying drive and fundamental clash with capital (De Angelis, 2007; Arvidsson and Peitersen, 2016)."

From Capital To Commons

Contents

Description

Contents

ToC

PART I Contemporary Capitalism and the Promise of the Digital Revolution

PART II The Material Economy and Commons

PART III Money and Value

PART IV In Pursuit of a Post-Capitalist Future

The argument

Excerpts

From the introduction

From Peer Production To Compeerism

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