Three Critiques of the Digital Commons

By Michel Bauwens

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In Silvia Federici's latest essay, Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, http://www.commoner.org.uk/?p=113, otherwise a fine essay about the role of gender and women in the political economy as well as the struggle for and leadership of the commons, she also adds an instant critique of Toni Negri and Michael Hard'ts trilogy, i.e. Empire – Multitude – Commonwealth.

Here is what she writes:

“The appeal of this theory is that it does not separate the formation of “the common” from the organization of work and production but sees it immanent to it. Its limit is that its picture of the common absolutizes the work of a minority possessing skills not available to most of the world population. It also ignores that this work produces commodities for the market, and it overlooks the fact that online communication/production depends on economic activities – mining, microchip and rare earth production—that, as presently organized, are extremely destructive, socially and ecologically. Moreover, with its emphasis on knowledge and information, this theory skirts the question of the reproduction of everyday life.”

My own feeling having read Empire and the larger parts of both Multitude and Commonwealth, this is an unfair critique that can only be based on a skimpy reading.

However, reformulated, the following critique could lead to a constructive debate, i.e.

the commons theory of Negri/Hardt exagerate the role of a minority of digital commoners, it pays insufficient attention to value capture by capitalism, as well as to the destructive material bases of the digital commons.

I'm not going to answer these for Negri and Hardt, but since the P2P Foundation's approach is broadly in the same family of approaches, I want to answer them from our own point of view. The reason this is important is that this kind of critique is often used to create divisiveness between digital and other commoners, and undermines the realization of a powerful global alliance of the commons.

So, let's deal with three possible critiques addressed to the approach of the P2P Foundation:

1.Digital commons theorists exaggerate the role of such privileged commons-friendly segments of the population

First of all, let's recognize the part of truth in these critiques. Though knowledge workers are a majority group in the Western world (42% in the UK), this is not so worldwide, where industrial workers and farmers form the majority. However, the key argument here is that no social or political approach can ignore the importance of such a large group present in core countries; and that both labour aristocracies and intellectuals have always been very important to the construction and victories of social movements. Digital commons are one of the main means of socialization and cooperation of contemporary knowledge workers, so their culture, values, and ways of conceiving of politics and social change cannot be ignored. They are an objective factor and must be allies of any successful transformative social movement.

The second argument is that digital information is absolute crucial for the organisation of a capitalist economy and that no one, even people largely involved in physical production, can escape its logic.

In our own approach, we stress the following: the use of digital commons is equally crucial in the transformation towards a post-capitalist economy. A system is not replaced until it has exhausted its productive potential and can be replaced by a more productive social system. Commons-based peer production is exactly that, it points towards a new mode of production that is economically, politically, and socially more productive than the current capitalist political economy.

Second, it socializes its participants in sharing and cooperative work practices, belies neoliberal ideology and the daily practices that it induces, and its immaterial aspects operate outside the sphere of commodification, even though they are still embedded in the larger system and value is captured by the owners of capital.

Finally, digital commons are an indispensable tool of social and political organisation, used fully by privileged classes, and which cannot be left on the wayside, but on the contrary form a powerful tool in social change.

So what is the right approach. It is the recognize that though digital commoners are in a minority, they are a crucial minority, and that digital commons are a vital tool for social change, in cooperation and alliance with those social forces, for whom access is more problematic.

At the P2P Foundation we of course go even further, by stressing the use of digital commons and peer production as a sine qua non condition, the crucial factor in our eventual victory and the success of deep social transformation.

2.Value capture by netarchical capitalism

In our case, this aspect has gotten constant and core attention, so certainly the critique that we ignore value capture is not relevant.

What we want to stress is the following:

• that the logic of the reproduction of the common has already created a different logic that is valuable in and by itself

• that what is crucial is the control of surplus value, in other words, we do not advocate passivity in the context of this value capture, but an active attitude towards benefit-sharing, (sometimes revenue-sharing), the ethical prefernce to work with commons-friendly entities, and the creation of new cooperative entities that capture value for the commoners themselves

• that the prime logic must be the reproduction of the commons and the sustainability of the work of the commoners, i.e. the realistic quest for maximum sustainable autonomy

So, either you critique from a defeatist position, i.e. the commons will be coopted, or you actively construct and fight to create alternatives that reproduce the common; or in any case, this critique must be associated with a possibility for alternate action.

An important corollary is: what do think of 'capitalist commons', i.e. commons that actually reinforce the continued existence of the system.

My attitude here is the following;

in the short term it is inevitable, but that does not make it a wholly negative phenomena. My question is the following: could the feudal system have organized itself and become dominant, without the prior existence of coloni (protos-serfs), within the slave-based Roman Empire; would capitalism have become dominant, without the prior existence of proto-capitalist practices within the feudal system. The even stronger thesis: is it not precisely because both coloni and proto-capitalist practices served the continued existence of the previous crisis-ridden system, that they could grow and eventually become dominant?

This then is the thesis regarding the capture of value of digital commons by netarchical capitalism, that it paradoxically paves the way for the dominance of the commons.

This is of course not a passive attitude, the role of the conscious commoners is to increase their own autonomy within that process, such as the capital class used the deterioration of feudalism to create its own social basis. So it is not a simple question of acquiecsing with capitalist commons, but of strategically using this trend to our own advantage.

Free software only became a reality because it was adopted by capital, which makes the commons sustainable, and guarantees the subsistence of the labour aristocracy of developers. It is not enough, we must push forward towards the creation of free software 'phyles', but nevertheless, it is better to have such a capitalist commons, than to continue with the totally privatized proprietary software system.

The same argument is valid for open knowledge, open design and open hardware communities.

In many sectors, the situation will be substantially similar and hence, capitalist cooptation should be used productively by commoners, as ways to advance their own interest.

In these cases, we are faced with 3 alternatives:

• a return to the pre-commons wage-based alternative based on the privatization of knowledge and the absence of a commons-based

• the co-existence of a commons with value capture by netarchical capitalism

• the existence of a sustainable commons where surplus value remains within the control of the commoners

Three is better than two, but two is better than one. This is in a nutshell, our position.

Metaphysically, this may be linked to a tragic view of human existence. As much as we may deplore the existence of the current system, we may not have the power to transform it in the short run; therefore a better capitalism with an improved social contract, may be preferable to a worse one. The key for commoners is for me the question: how do we improve the conditions for sustainable autonomy, and in this we are guided not by a hatred of the enemy, but by a careful consideration of our own interests.

Of course, if one believes that liberation is just around the corner, then this may be viewed as a unnecessary compromise, but I believe ours is a defendable, realistic positioning, that combines a hope for a radical transformation, with concrete daily advancements in the construction of real commons and real livelihoods.

3.The digital commons rests on a destructive material basis

Undoubtedly, the material infrastructure of the internet, the basis of our digital commons, rests on human exploitation, but, so does everything else that we do. In our current system, nothing escapes this conditionality. And just as we need to eat and drink, lodge ourselves, use transportation mechanisms, we often do this outside of our control. The internet is not different.

But this is not the responsibility of the commoners, though it is our responsibility to do something about it; and in no way would this justify an abandonment of the digital commons as locus for commoning and strategy for social change.

But in fact, we can make a much stronger argument: commons-based peer production has no incentive towards unsustainability and is inherently sustainable, as peer communities have no motivationt to create unsustainable products.

As a civilization, to achieve a phase transformation to a sustainable, post-capitalist economy, we need to re-organize our processes around the commons, and redesign cradle to cradle production systems.

Assuming that the present system is in deep, likely unredeemable crisis, if we simply go back to localization, or do not change the production processes but simply change their ownership, we cannot achieve higher productivity (economic, social, political productivity), but only regression.

It is the relocalization of production, coupled with the global innovation of open design communities, and the existence of a system of economic entities which control their own surplus value for the commons (phyles), that guarantees a sustainable future, and the continued use and existence and development of digital commons are a condition sine qua non for this to happen. What we need is smart organic agriculture networks, distributed sustainable manufacturing networks, open source rice platforms based on sharing local farmers knowledge, etc … All initiatives in which digital commons are a crucial factor. And for those who have no access, the solution is not to ourselves give up on access, but to fight for broader access, just as our forefathers and foremothers did in the labour movement, when they understood how crucial literacy and the printing press were for their own struggles.

So, we cannot ignore the material basis of the commons, including the exploitation of workers in the South, and the necessity for a green and sustainable network infrastructure, but each of these goals are actually helped by the existence of a digital commons. Exploitation won't cease to exist if we simple leave the networks to our enemies; green computing won't be developed without the co-creation of open design communities; and the struggles of workers won't succeed without the assistance of global solidarity using digital commons as a way of organizing and diffusion.