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In the sandbox you can '''play''' with ''wiki syntax'' and more.
In the sandbox you can '''play''' with ''wiki syntax'' and more.


Following the relational typology of Alan Page Fiske, there are four intersubjective modes which have existed cross-culturally and historically: equality matching (gift economy), authority ranking (feudal-type structures), market pricing, and communal shareholding (according to us: P2P). Societies have always been a mix, but it can be argued that historically we have seen a succession of dominant forms: the gift economy in the tribal era, authority ranking in feudalism, market pricing in capitalism, and my hypothesis is that communal shareholding forms may dominate in a future 'P2P-oriented era'.
You answered (11jan09):


But if they have always co-existed, it may be illusory to aim for a stateless and marketless society, rather, we should expect states and markets to continue to exist in some form or other, but informed and trans-formed by P2P principles. A current example is fair trade http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Fair_Trade, a form of market that aims to become independent of pure power relations by negotiating with both producers and consumers.
"As free software moves from the margins to center stage, more and more


The open questions is therefore: can we have markets without the unsustainability of the capitalist format and its attendent biospheric destruction and social and psychic dislocation?
corporations adapt to the model, and pay programmers to do such parts of the
free software as needed for themselves, but they use the open licenses.
So these corporations compete, but also collaborate through the common
platform of free software.


In our wiki, we discuss some proposals related to non-capitalist markets http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Markets_without_Capitalism, for examples the approaches of Eric Olin Wright, and the very concrete proposals by Kevin Carson http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/04/strategic-green-libertarian-alliance.html (see also here http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/05/vulgar-libertarianism-watch-part-xvii.html)
For Linux, 75% of programmers are now paid by such corporations, which means
they have an increasing influence over the direction of development, have a
seat in the Foundations etc; (...)


Perhaps one thing we can do is learn from pre-capitalist markets?
The reality of the various projects is then strongly influenced by the governance model,
which can be controlled primarily by a community-oriented foundation, or by
a corporate-oriented format."


This is why I find the following passage by Robert Brenner http://www.metamute.org/en/content/mr_smith_goes_to_beijing_0 so interesting, because it explains the different place of the market in the non-capitalist forms of society that preceded ours.
Some remarks about the existence of "hybrid forms" and about the dynamics of these forms.


Mute summarizes Brenner's position:
The reality you describe is a hybrid social form of production, borrowing aspects from both systems, capitalism and P2P, or peer production. Using your definition of peer production (free and open input; free volunteering production; universally available output), one can say that there are hybrid aspects at the three moments of the process: 1. input, raw material is partly capitalistic as the computers, the offices, etc. are privately owned by the corporations (as IBM), but, for software production, free/open software is also a "raw material"; 2. production is not based on free volunteering, but some aspects of the production are new, non capitalistic, as the cooperation between programmers of antagonistic corporations; 3. the output can be oriented by corporations more towards their own needs (commercial management software, for example) but the output remains universally available.


"Exchange-based production existed in many pre-capitalist societies before taking root in early modern Europe.5 Because pre-capitalist societies are fundamentally agrarian, both exploiters and direct producers have access to their own means of subsistence. ‘As a result’, writes Brenner,
The "social networking" also generates hybrid forms. If you take MySpace or YouTube: 1. the input is partly capitalistic (the infrastructures and the financing by advertising), but for the rest most of the input (videos, blogs, etc.) are free and open; 2. the production process is based partially on capitalist wage relations for the infrastructure management, but the rest is based on free volunteering; 3. the output is supposed to be universally available but corporations impose limits and try to extend these limits, provoking open conflicts with users/producers. (See for example: http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2008/12/31/why-i-am-deleting-my-myspace-account-and-you-should-too/)


their survival and reproduction is not dependent on the sale of their products on the market; consequently they do not have to compete in terms of productive powers.
Hybrid forms also developed in the past transitions between modes of production. Between the 6th and the 10h century, many landlords, including the Church, had simultaneously slaves and serfs (or "coloni" which were the first form of serfs). Between the 12th century and the 19th century many hybrid forms developed especially in the cities where capitalism developed within feudal relationships.


Under these conditions, ‘the market exerts no pressure toward the continual revolution of the means of production’. According to Brenner, ‘[t]he increase of relative surplus labor cannot become a systematic feature of such modes of production’. Brenner also notes that there is a bias in pre-capitalist societies toward the realisation of ‘absolute’, as opposed to ‘relative’, surplus value. Because labour is compulsory for serfs and slaves, lords and masters tend to extract additional surplus labour by lengthening the working day or extending the corvée, rather than through technological innovation. As a result, there is little reason to invest profits in the development of productive forces. ‘Rather than being accumulated, economic surplus is here systematically diverted from reproduction to unreproductive labor’.
The evolution of these forms has been often slow, with periods of acceleration but also periods of recession. The example of the Arsenal of Venice, which in the early 16th century employed some 16,000 people and could produce almost a ship per day using production-lines, something not seen again after until the industrial revolution, illustrates how non-linear this evolution can be.


Brenner, following Marx, argues that capitalism emerges only when labourers are both free to sell their labour power on the market as a commodity, and compelled to do so in order to survive."
The dynamic of that evolution depends on many factors. The evolution of technologies is one of them, but it is far from explaining everything, as the Venetian Arsenal example shows. Here the social consciousness, the social and political conflicts play a crucial role. The European wars of religion after the 16th century and the bourgeois revolutions where indirect or direct expressions of the conflict between the old feudal logic and the raising capitalistic one.


So at the very least, we can see that markets have existed, and can exist, but subsumed to another dominant economic model, which is an important point to prove. Of course, as pointed out by Brenner, in a feudal model, its benefits will be used largely by the dominant class in that system.
In the conflict you refer to about the management of Free/open software foundations, between "community-oriented" and "corporate-oriented" formats, we are witnessing the same kind of conflict between the old logic and the new. Its dynamic depends and will depend not only on material-technological realities but also on social and "political" struggles, at micro and macro scales. And things should become harsher when peer production will pretend to extend to the realm of material production.


A market in a peer to peer society would of course have to be beneficial first of all to the peer producers themselves.


We do not really have a model for this, apart from fair trade, which benefits cooperative producers (and not peer producers), but the Linux economy shows us the emergent practice of benefit sharing, i.e. companies that benefit from the peer producing commons give back to it by sustaining the infrastructure of cooperation for that peer production to occur. This is good as far as it goes, as it does not by itself put an end to the biospheric destruction mechanism caused by the infinite growth mechanism that is contemporary capitalism. So much more thinking and practice is needed, i.e. the practical development of alternative ecologies of exchange, for such non-capitalist markets to emerge.
You also wrote:
 
"This is inevitable, as no free software project can survive in the long run
without a core of developers being paid."
 
Yes. As long as the material means of production (and thus the material means of consumption) remain under the capitalist logic governance, the peer production realities will be in a way or another limited.
(At a certain level, the problems to finance the 4th Oekonux Conference, or your personal difficulties to keep working the P2P Foundation while being obliged to work in order too feed your family are also materializations of that reality).
 
The development of the present economic crisis should make more visible at a social scale the need to overcome the dominant logic. The "invisible hand" is paralyzing an increasing share of the material means of production while workers are made redundant and unsatisfied material needs explode. Let's hope that this evidence will help to develop the consciousness of the urgency to extend peer production principles to the material sphere.

Latest revision as of 11:40, 29 January 2009

In the sandbox you can play with wiki syntax and more.

You answered (11jan09):

"As free software moves from the margins to center stage, more and more

corporations adapt to the model, and pay programmers to do such parts of the free software as needed for themselves, but they use the open licenses. So these corporations compete, but also collaborate through the common platform of free software.

For Linux, 75% of programmers are now paid by such corporations, which means they have an increasing influence over the direction of development, have a seat in the Foundations etc; (...)

The reality of the various projects is then strongly influenced by the governance model, which can be controlled primarily by a community-oriented foundation, or by a corporate-oriented format."

Some remarks about the existence of "hybrid forms" and about the dynamics of these forms.

The reality you describe is a hybrid social form of production, borrowing aspects from both systems, capitalism and P2P, or peer production. Using your definition of peer production (free and open input; free volunteering production; universally available output), one can say that there are hybrid aspects at the three moments of the process: 1. input, raw material is partly capitalistic as the computers, the offices, etc. are privately owned by the corporations (as IBM), but, for software production, free/open software is also a "raw material"; 2. production is not based on free volunteering, but some aspects of the production are new, non capitalistic, as the cooperation between programmers of antagonistic corporations; 3. the output can be oriented by corporations more towards their own needs (commercial management software, for example) but the output remains universally available.

The "social networking" also generates hybrid forms. If you take MySpace or YouTube: 1. the input is partly capitalistic (the infrastructures and the financing by advertising), but for the rest most of the input (videos, blogs, etc.) are free and open; 2. the production process is based partially on capitalist wage relations for the infrastructure management, but the rest is based on free volunteering; 3. the output is supposed to be universally available but corporations impose limits and try to extend these limits, provoking open conflicts with users/producers. (See for example: http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2008/12/31/why-i-am-deleting-my-myspace-account-and-you-should-too/)

Hybrid forms also developed in the past transitions between modes of production. Between the 6th and the 10h century, many landlords, including the Church, had simultaneously slaves and serfs (or "coloni" which were the first form of serfs). Between the 12th century and the 19th century many hybrid forms developed especially in the cities where capitalism developed within feudal relationships.

The evolution of these forms has been often slow, with periods of acceleration but also periods of recession. The example of the Arsenal of Venice, which in the early 16th century employed some 16,000 people and could produce almost a ship per day using production-lines, something not seen again after until the industrial revolution, illustrates how non-linear this evolution can be.

The dynamic of that evolution depends on many factors. The evolution of technologies is one of them, but it is far from explaining everything, as the Venetian Arsenal example shows. Here the social consciousness, the social and political conflicts play a crucial role. The European wars of religion after the 16th century and the bourgeois revolutions where indirect or direct expressions of the conflict between the old feudal logic and the raising capitalistic one.

In the conflict you refer to about the management of Free/open software foundations, between "community-oriented" and "corporate-oriented" formats, we are witnessing the same kind of conflict between the old logic and the new. Its dynamic depends and will depend not only on material-technological realities but also on social and "political" struggles, at micro and macro scales. And things should become harsher when peer production will pretend to extend to the realm of material production.


You also wrote:

"This is inevitable, as no free software project can survive in the long run without a core of developers being paid."

Yes. As long as the material means of production (and thus the material means of consumption) remain under the capitalist logic governance, the peer production realities will be in a way or another limited. (At a certain level, the problems to finance the 4th Oekonux Conference, or your personal difficulties to keep working the P2P Foundation while being obliged to work in order too feed your family are also materializations of that reality).

The development of the present economic crisis should make more visible at a social scale the need to overcome the dominant logic. The "invisible hand" is paralyzing an increasing share of the material means of production while workers are made redundant and unsatisfied material needs explode. Let's hope that this evidence will help to develop the consciousness of the urgency to extend peer production principles to the material sphere.

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