Prophets and Advocates of Peer Production

* Article: Prophets and Advocates of Peer Production. By George Dafermos. Chapter 7: The Handbook of Peer Production. Wiley, 2020

URL = http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Chapter-07_Prophets-and-Advocates-of-Peer-Production.pdf [1]

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George Dafermos:

"Since the beginning of the 21st century, peer production has been theorized by various thinkers as an alternative model of production, governance and property which can antagonize and subvert capitalism. And without doubt it has come a long way since then: from being a theory that only a handful of academics and intellectuals were interested in twenty years ago, it has managed to find mainstream appeal, becoming a material force for social, economic and political change. It is important to realize that this did not happen automatically by itself. Various actors played a decisive role: scholars such as Yochai Benkler helped to popularize the notion in the academic world, while intellectuals-cumactivists such as Michel Bauwens were pivotal in framing it in ways that appealed to activists, progressive entrepreneurs and policy makers around the world. If one were to write a history of peer production theory, these actors would figure prominently in it as the key advocates of peer production in the beginning of the 21st century and as the “prophets,” so to speak, of a new mode of production founded on its principles.

This chapter of the Handbook retraces the history of these attempts at theorizing and disseminating peer production. It looks at how the theory spread through the advocacy work of its leading proponents and discusses the differences in their approaches. In parallel, it explores the effect they have had so far on the academic, economic and political world." (http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Chapter-07_Prophets-and-Advocates-of-Peer-Production.pdf)

Excerpts

Section 3. 2000s: Emergence of Peer Production Theory

George Dafermos:

"The theory of peer production emerged in the new millennium. Israeli-American law scholar Yochai Benkler has been commonly credited with coining the term, which is first introduced in a paper he published in the Yale Law Journal in 2002. In that paper, titled “Coase’s Penguin or Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” Benkler detects in the development model of Linux the emergence of a “third mode of production” on the Internet, which is distinct from both markets and firms, as neither the motivation of participants, nor the coordination of their work, is achieved through “market prices or managerial commands.” Here, Benkler argues for the first time that the development of free and open source software (F/OSS) projects like Linux cannot be accounted for by financial incentives: the majority of participants are volunteers, who are mobilized, above all, by intrinsic motivations such as creativity and self-fulfillment at work. The other main point that he makes in this article concerns the anti-hierarchical organizational structure of these projects. For Benkler, the reason why Linux is paradigmatic of the model of “peer production” is precisely because its developers self-select the tasks they perform and coordinate their work without bureaucrats and bosses. Benkler continued to work on these ideas and four years later he published his magnum opus, The Wealth of Networks (2006), in which he expanded on his definition of peer production, clarifying its characteristics and analyzing its various types and forms. The influence of the Wealth of Networks was enormous: it remains to this day the most influential writing on peer production.

It established Benkler as a leading theorist of commons-oriented peer production and played an important role in establishing peer production, distributed networks and the digital commons as a promising research field in the social sciences, thereby giving many academic researchers an incentive to engage with the subject. However, Benkler was not the only prominent figure in the early years of the development of the theory. Equally influential was the work of Belgian intellectual Michel Bauwens on the other side of the Atlantic, who had already from the early 2000s began to theorize “peer-to-peer” as a new template for society, economy and politics (see, for example, Bauwens, 2002). The views of those two thinkers had much in common. Bauwens’ theories were based on a similar analysis of Linux and F/OSS as an alternative mode of production, governance and property (Bauwens, 2002, 2005). Like Benkler, Bauwens argued that peer production is a mode of production that is neither directed to market exchange, nor governed by bureaucrats and managers. He, too, emphasized that it is inseparable from a commons-based property regime.

The only substantial point on which his views differed from Benkler’s was with regard to peer production's transcendent character: they shared the conviction that the phenomenon of peer production was bound to spread beyond the confines of the software industry, but Bauwens went even further, arguing that peer production has “the potential to succeed capitalism as the core value and organizational model of a post-capitalist society” (Bauwens, 2012). Aside from this crucial point, the differences between their theories do not so much lie in their content, as in their “targeting” and mode of diffusion. Benkler’s work was very well-received by the academic community, but Bauwens’ discourse appealed to a different audience. As an Internet-age intellectual, Bauwens was an active participant in online mailing lists and discussion forums related to peer production theory. His passionate and provocative contributions to these debates influenced many “netizens” much more than Benkler’s dense academic prose."T (http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Chapter-07_Prophets-and-Advocates-of-Peer-Production.pdf)

The P2P Foundation

George Dafermos:

"In 2005, Bauwens founded the P2P Foundation (P2PF). In the beginning, this basically consisted in an online mailing list devoted to the discussion of peer production. It became very popular and attracted a lot of sympathizers and followers from all over the world. Within a short time, Bauwens added a wiki, which he and his numerous online collaborators began to develop into an all-encompassing online repository of knowledge on the topic of peer production. Bauwens’ collaborative style and his open-source approach towards the documentation and development of peer production theory appealed to many researchers and thinkers who formed, in a sense, an online research group around him and the P2PF. Much of the work of that group had an activist bent, attracting many radicals who were interested in exploring peer production as a weapon in the struggle against the capitalist system. Reflecting the aspirations of the actors in its network, the P2PF soon began to evolve into a think-tank for the theory of peer production, advocating social, economic and political change. In the context of its advocacy, it also began to get involved in the organization of events and conferences. The first one was in 2007 when Bauwens co-organized a workshop with Andreas Wittel, out of which came the inspiration for a special issue of Capital & Class titled “Parallel Visions of Peer Production.” Based on the contributions of the participants of this workshop, it was published in 2009 (Moore & Karatzogianni, 2009). This was the first time that an established scientific periodical had devoted an entire issue to peer production." (http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Chapter-07_Prophets-and-Advocates-of-Peer-Production.pdf)

Oekonux

George Dafermos:

"The P2PF was not alone in theorizing peer production from a radical perspective at the time. A project that was heavily involved throughout this period in the development of peer production theory was Oekonux. The project was launched in 1999 in Germany by Stefan Merten and a small group of activists and intellectuals who were interested in exploring the subversive potential of this model. Its main thesis was that the development of Linux and F/OSS is prefigurative of a mode of production without the alienation that is characteristic of wage labor, which can transcend capitalism, leading to a free “society beyond labor, money, exchange” (Merten interviewed in Richardson, 2001). In this “GPL society,” there would be no coercion and people would engage in productive projects out of intrinsic motivation: this would allow their “self-unfolding”, while benefiting society as a whole. Based on an analysis of peer production’s transcendent potential that was largely influenced by the work of Karl Marx, Oekonux theorized peer production as a “germ form,” thus hypothesizing that the peer production model could gradually become hegemonic, superseding capitalism (for a more extensive discussion of Oekonux theories, see Merten, 2000, 2009; Merten & Meretz, 2009; Meretz, 2012; Richardson, 2001; Euler, 2016) Oekonux members interacted mainly through two mailing lists: one for German speakers and another for discussions in English. In the beginning, most of the members of the group were from Germany, but because of the open and outward-looking character of the project, that soon changed. From 2001 until 2009, Oekonux organized four important international conferences: in 2001 in Dortmund, in 2002 in Berlin, in 2004 in Vienna and in 2009 in Manchester.10 These conferences were unique in that they were the first (and only) ones to focus exclusively on the exploration of F/OSS and peer production as a mode of production for the transition to post-capitalism. Their unique character attracted thinkers from all over the world, such as Graham Seaman (2003; 2004), Christian Siefkes (2007; 2009), Johan Söderberg (2008), and Raoul Victor (2003; 2004; 2009) who made significant contributions to the project. Michel Bauwens was also involved in the project and as a longtime member of the mailing list, he played an active role in the Oekonux debates. In fact, the ideas of Oekonux resonated so well with his own that in 2009 he co-organized the fourth and final Oekonux conference on “Free Software and Beyond: The World of Peer Production” in Manchester, highlighting the affinity between the theories and aspirations of the P2PF and Oekonux. This synergy between the two projects attracted the interest of many people from the network of the P2PF, thereby helping the propagation of Oekonux theories." (http://peerproduction.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Chapter-07_Prophets-and-Advocates-of-Peer-Production.pdf)