Marxist Framework for Peer Production's Relation to Capitalism
* A Critical Political Economic Framework for Peer Production’s Relation to Capitalism. By Arwin Lund. Journal of Peer Production, Issue #10: Peer Production and Work, February 2017
Contextual Citation
Arwin Lund:
"We are, therefore, confronted with a situation where peer production’s relation to a crises-prone capitalism could lead to conflicts, and necessarily will do so if an actual transition period is embarked upon, but where, simultaneously, not all struggles are progressive in their results. Here, time is of crucial importance. The P2P movement’s downplaying of antagonism could hold some strategic value in the short run, especially as long as capital’s co-optation processes cannot be counteracted. But Marxism’s more antagonistic view, on the relation between capitalism’s inside and outside, will likely be of crucial importance in the medium and long run of things. The political tactic and strategy would also have to adapt to different PPPs in different sectors of the political economy."
Abstract
"This article examines the relation between peer production and capitalism on a systemic and theoretical level. One problem with understanding peer production as an alternative and potentially competing mode of production in relation to capitalism is that the main bulk of economic theory deals only with capitalism. Alternative economic theories from an emerging theoretical P2P movement have done important pioneer work on commons-based peer production, and in discussing its sustainability as a mode of production both on a systemic and individual level (for the peer producers) within capitalism. This article argues that the disadvantages of the P2P movement’s theoretical framework, compared to a Marxist one, have their roots in an evolutionist motif, and the article aims to situate peer production more clearly in relation to the workings of capital, and in relation to a Marxist understanding of the potential for political agencies and counter-powers to emerge from capital’s outside."
Excerpts
Dynamic Coexistence of Modes of Productions
Arwin Lund:
"New emerging and anticipatory modes of production can exist outside and in parallel with a hegemonic mode of production. History has shown us that the outside’s modes of production can expand at the expense of the hegemonic mode of production. Mihailo Markovic stresses that the bourgeois revolution that overthrew the aristocracy from political power did so after a long period of capitalist expansion and growth within the feudal economic sector (Markovic, 1991: 542).
There exists a dynamic coexistence of modes of productions before, during and after historical transition processes between different hegemonic modes of production. Raymond Williams saw emerging, dominant and residual cultural systems coexisting in such a dynamic and historical interplay (Williams, 1977: 121–127). These cultural systems or modes of production are in different stages of their development and, therefore, have different forms of influence and power over the totality. Fredric Jameson holds that no historical society has existed in the form of a pure mode of production. Old and residual modes of production have been relegated to dependent positions within the new hegemonic mode of production, together with “anticipatory tendencies which are potentially inconsistent with the existing system but have not yet generated an autonomous space of their own” (Jameson, 1989: 80)."
Tendential Fall of Capital’s Control of the Division of Labor
By Arwin Lund:
"The interesting thing about autonomist Marxism is that the tradition turns the understanding of the capital relation upside down. It is no longer capital that is the main actor, but rather the working class within cycles of struggles. Desire, play and class composition explain the historical changes of the working class (Negri, 1988: 209–210, 212–214, 218, 220). The cycle of struggle theory gains relevance from the last decade’s developments in cognitive capitalism. Carlo Vercellone maintains that capitalist production’s dependency on the general intellect signals a third step in the history of the division of labour, and enables a direct transition to communism (Vercellone, 2007: 15). The qualitative change in capital’s organic composition due to the general intellect of the social brain turns the subordination of living labour under dead labour (constant capital) upside down. Vercellone calls this “the tendential fall of the capital’s control of the division of labour” (Vercellone, 2007: 18). When intellectual and scientific work becomes the dominant productive force, knowledge re-socialises everything, which eventually becomes an unsustainable problem for capital. The cognitive social worker is still dependent on the wage, but has an autonomy in the immediate labour process that resembles that of the craftsman under an earlier period of labour’s formal subsumption under capital. As a consequence, capitalism can be expected to become more brutal and extra-economic in its operations to maintain control over an increasingly autonomous immediate labour process (Vercellone, 2007: 20–22, 31–32).
The rising independence and strength of some privileged parts of the social worker have consequences for PPPs. It seems plausible that the cognitive type of social worker is drawn to peer production, and that the social worker as peer producer only is indirectly connected to the class system of capitalism. The political-awareness processes within peer production not only stem from capitalism’s class relations, but also from productive activities outside of capitalism. Vercellone’s argument implies an increasingly strengthened position for peer production, as capital becomes more dependent on more independent social workers, free software, open knowledge and open data for its production. Successful PPPs can force capital to find new niches for its value production, but these niches are increasingly found within the activities connected to the general intellect, and are increasingly populated by the cognitive social worker, and could therefore be increasingly harder to control for capital."
Non-Dependent Natural Economies
Arwid Lund:
"Liberal economic doctrines idealise a constant expansion of market logic; neo-classic theory ultimately sees the outside to capitalism as an externality and market failure (without value). The outside is caused by the market, rather than already existing. Fleischer contends instead, based in the Marxist tradition of Wertkritik, that capitalism can never be total in its character (Fleischer, 2012: 25; Lehdonvirta and Castronova, 2014: 143).
Rosa Luxemburg stressed that capitalism needed a “non-capitalist social strata as a market for its surplus value, as a source of supply for its means of production and as a reservoir of labour power for its wage system”, but because of that, all “forms of production based upon a natural economy are of no use to capital” (Luxemburg, 1951: 368). Dependent outsides, rather than independent ones, could serve capital’s purposes. The natural economies that Luxemburg spoke of were self-sufficient and focused on the internal needs of the communities and, thus, did not produce surpluses of any kind. The problem with them from capital’s perspective was the lack of demand for external products and that they were not poised to work in ways that made it possible to acquire them in any reasonable scale. “Capitalism must therefore always and everywhere fight a battle of annihilation against every historical form of natural economy” (Luxemburg, 1951: 368–369).
Capital’s need to transform and shape its outside according to its needs leads to different forms of violence and sometimes (when capital needs an outside to be an inside) to a continuously and ongoing form of what Marx called primitive accumulation. De Angelis and others claims that primitive accumulation has a contemporary and ongoing role where the dissociation of people from the means of production can take many forms (De Angelis, 2008: 28–31). In recent times, David Harvey has pointed out that capital needs new realms of accumulation to ride out its own crises (Fuchs, 2014: 166).
During the 20th Century, the outside to capital gradually became politically empowered. State regulations grew in importance after the Great Depression of the 1930s, the fundamental role of ecology was articulated by the environmental movement in the 1960s, and feminism focused on unpaid reproductive work and its importance for capitalism. Bio-politics and the connected bio-economy are today given more importance in academia than yesterday. Contemporary Marxism is informed by the experiences of these social struggles. But neo-liberal restoration has succeeded, through re-negotiations and struggles around value, non-value, exchange and use value, in creating new demarcation lines between the substantial and formal economy. Markets with their conflict-ridden and crises-prone developments have expanded, and earlier outsides have been manipulated and transformed into insides.
Luxemburg’s notion of non-dependent natural economies outside of capital provides a more dynamic perspective on peer production than the externality perspective of neoclassical theory. Scholz and Luxemburg enable an understanding of the potential for different political agencies and counter-powers to emerge from the outside of capital. From Scholz’s theories we can take away the importance of expanding the norms of what is not exchangeable, from 20th-Century history we can take the importance of peer production developing strategic alliances with the state, and from Luxemburg the insight that peer production threatens capitalism according to its degree of self-sufficiency as natural economy."
Discussion
Michel Bauwens:
"Marxist authors often misunderstand us, because the P2P Foundation uses a socially reconstructive approach, rather than a critical approach, and subsumes conflict to reconstruction. It absolutely does NOT mean we ignore or deny conflict, but rather that we play a specialized role accompagnying the reconstructive moment, which will always co-exist with the conflictual forces that resist or demand things from capital and state. For us, working on the concrete expansion of peer production and its ethical livelihoods, is what determines what conflicts are necessary in this specific context; but life and struggles are not reduced to peer production, it just happens to be our strategic focus."