Peer Production and Capitalism
Title: PEER PRODUCTION AS EMERGING MODE OF PRODUCTION: PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF COMMONS AS THE ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITALISM
(alternative proposed by GD: 'The emergence of peer production: the production and distribution of the commons as an alternative to capitalism'.)
(alternative proposed by OS: Commons based peer production: The emerging alternative to the capitalist mode)
(alternative proposed by SMz: Peer Production: Out-cooperating Capitalism)
(mb: Peer Production : an alternative to capitalism?)
Rationale
Themes
This book deals with some major aspects of what has become known as peer production. In this production, producers produce goods collectively through voluntary cooperation in de-centered networks. Each volunteer chooses the tasks she performs, the amount of time she devotes to the collective production; and the place and time of her productive activity. In terms of distribution, the digitally reproducible goods are made available for free on the net. The rules of the distribution of material goods are more complex and still emerging. This form of production emerged first in the realm of digital production of knowledge-information (Free Software, Wikipedia, etc.). Now, there is also a growing movement, shaped recently, for the peer production of hardware. Robots, particularly the 3 Dimensional Printers (3DP) will facilitate the extension of peer production into the realm of manufacturing. Peer production methods are also used in the realms of cultural production, public sphere and civil society. We argue peer production represent is the germ of a new emerging mode of production can be an alternative to capitalism. This book aims at analyzing some of the main aspects of peer production, such as its inner dynamics, its relation with market and money, its forms of authority and governance, its form of public sphere and the ways it redefine the society.
Why is it needed?
The historical significance and necessity of peer production are underlined by two major facts. First, knowledge, information, and internet which are paradigmatic productive forces of our time contradict the capitalist relations of production. By nature, they are universal commons but are coercively fenced in within a capitalist framework. Peer production provides the required social form for freeing these forces of production from the capitalist social forms. And, indeed, there is a growing movement of peer producers who consciously pursue the production of commons. Second, the recent anti-capitalist movements have organized themselves on peer to peer basis and aim at creation and expansion of commons in order to combat capitalism. Despite these growing peer to peer practices, peer production has not been sufficiently described and theorized. Therefore this book will fill an important gap of knowledge for academic and activist communities and general learned public who have become increasingly attentive to peer production.
Originality and Marketability
The originality of the book is evident from the facts that peer production as a novel historical phenomenon has not yet been studied sufficiently. This volume is specifically original, because it brings together the most imaginative researchers in the field who have created innovative hypothesis on different features of peer production. By combining these various original vintage the book offers a uniquely synthetic perspective of the peer production. The market for the book will be students, professors, activists and the learned general public globally.
Why is it suitable for Pluto List?
The book is a good fit for Pluto’s new series on digital politics, or other series.
Synopsis
The book consists of four parts and each part consists of 2-3 chapters. Part one deals with the unfolding of existing peer production in the contexts of market and money, and its predicaments and possible solutions. While Bauwens give a historically informed of the emergence and expansion of peer production Victor focuses on its relation with monez. Part two argues that emergence of peer production has necessitated a paridigm shift in social theory and empistomology and aims at formulating new epistimological and theoretical grounds. While Meretz and Siefkes argue for a break with existing traditions Rigi argues that Marx’s views on anthropology and communism within the frame of his broader theory of historical-dialectical materialism offers an adequate starting point for the formulation of a new paradigm. Part three deals with the application of peer production to manufacturing. The use of 3 D printers is central to this part. Söderberg traces and analyzes the similarities between 3DP engineering with political engineering. Kostakis also focusing on 3DP explores the impacts of state and civil society policies on peer production. Part four is on the political aspects of peer productions. Dafermos explores the form of authority in peer production by examining the governance structure of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which, since its inception in 1986, has spearheaded the development and promotion of open Internet standards. ONeil deals with difficulties and problems that hardware peer production and external institutions pose on and modify the peer governance. Senlap and Senlap deal with peer forms of public sphere and civil society.
TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
1)Description of Peer Production and its History . 2) Synthesizing the chapters.
PART ONE: MARKET, MONEY AND PEER PRODUCTION
Chapter 1
Michel Bauwens
Value , Market and Peer Production: A Synthetic Approach to peer Production
Michel Bauwens, author of a seminal 2005 essay on Political Economy of Peer Production, looks at what we have learned from the institutional emergences around the peer production for common value creation in knowledge, code and design. The chapter will look at the possibilities of generalizing the workings of the micro-economy around it, to its generalizing as a commons-oriented social model that could and would replace the current political economy of capital. Of particular interest will be the political strategies and hacks that are necessary to disembed the current 'proto' mode of production, which cannot yet fully sustain itself through a 'circulation of the common', from the capitalist economy, to a full mode of production, so that it can be transformed to a socially and environmentally sustainable mode of production, society and civilisation, to which market dynamics can be subsumed. What are the conditions for peer production to function as a true alternative to capitalism?
Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives which researches and promotes peer production practices and lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Chapter 2
Raoul Victor
Money and Peer Production
This chapter deals with the question of the relations between money and Peer Production.. What are these relations today and what they might be in the future? Especially if one thinks that Peer Production is a germ of the future society. Money and Peer Production relay on mutually antagonistic principles. Money is based on symmetric exchange. I give you something and you give me something of equivalent value. Money, as an universal equivalent of value, mediates exchange, measures and preserves value. Peer production is not based on symmetrical exchange of equivalents. An individual`s share of the social product has nothing to do with her contribution to the production. The chapter deals with three specific moments: 1st. within the framework of dominant capitalism; 2d. in a period "transition" defined by the fact that Peer Production has started to extend to the material (non digital) domain; 3d. in a fully developed Peer Society. It argues that in the first phase money subjugate the logic of peer production. In the second phase also money is not the dominant feature the logic of equivalence though in a transformed form will be predominant. In third this logic alongside the money disappears altogether.
Raoul Victor has been a "left-communist" Marxist (considering that the USSR and the other Stalinist regimes had nothing to do with true communism) since the mid 60s. As from 2003 he has been participating to Oekonux. He lives in Paris.
PART TWO: THEORIES AND EPISTOMOLOGIES OF PEER PRODUCTION
Chapter 3
Stefan Meretz
Epistemological Principals of Peer Production
The Oekonux project seeks to analyze a new emerging historical social form of production, namely: the peer production, which is radically different from capitalism. The participants have discussed this mode of production for ten years. Free Software, being the first expression of this mode of production, is also the germ form of this new mode of production. This chapter argues that the adequate understanding of this new phenomenon requires new epistemological patterns. This chapter presents ten such patterns which I have extracted from the debates of the Oekonux Project. They offer an analytical framework which goes beyond traditional affirmative and oppositional or “leftist” patterns of analysis.
Stefan Meretz (PhD) is an engineer and computer scientist working for a union in Berlin/Germany. He is blogging about commons-based peer production on keimform.de.
Chapter 4
Christian Siefkes Working Title: The Joint Production of Plenty for All, by All Who Care
While Stefan Meretz’ contribution analyzes peer production as a new mode of production, this chapter explores how peer production starts to grow beyond the digital sphere into the sphere of physical production. Essential elements of commons-based, peer-productive infrastructures are described, referring to examples that already exist. To understand the potential of physical peer production, it’s essential to distinguish between scarcity and limitedness–natural resources are always limited, but not necessarily scarce. While scarcity results as a necessary side effect of capitalist production, peer production can deal with limitedness in ways that minimize their effect. While the logic of commons-based peer production is fundamentally incompatible with capitalist logic, the preconditions of its emergence are created by capitalism itself. Indeed, the paradoxical relationship of capitalism to human labor spurs developments that might make the concept of labor (as we know it today) obsolete, and with it capitalism itself.
Chapter 5
Jakob Rigi
Karl Marx and Knowledge-Based Peer Production
The aim of this chapter is to outline a Marxian framework for understanding of peer production. Knowledge has become the hegemonic force of production and the hegemonic form of wealth of our time. The fact that knowledge can be reproduced at zero cost by digital technology has made the law of value (discovered by classical economics) irrelevant to the knowledge economy. Therefore, knowledge economy and knowledge-based peer production considered in isolation from the rest of economy, negate Marx`s theory of value and surplus value. However, this chapter argues that the knowledge economy and knowledge-based production reaffirm Marx`s broader theories in the realms of historical materialism, anthropology, and communism. Marx theory of value is also still the only theory that can why and how capitalism fences in knowledge to extract rent and tributes. The chapter attempts to outline a materialist theory of peer production on the basis of Marxian anthropology.
Jakob Rigi is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Central European University
PART THREE: P2P MANUFACTURING
Chapter 6
Johan Soderberg
Abstract
The concept "revolution" has two siblings, historically related but today often facing each other as opponents. One is the political revolution, the other is the industrial/technical one. This chapter proposes to trace the history of these two, interrelated but separate, ideas of how the present world can be transcended. The argument takes as a stepping stone the claims for social change that have been made on behalf of a self-replicating 3d printer developed by a community of hobby-engineers. Those ideas shares some familiar traits with a much older tradition of politicised engineering, dating all the way back to the French revolution.
Johan Soderberg is a researcher at LATTS/IFRIS at Paris-Est/Écoles des Ponts, France.
Chapter 7
Vasilis Kostakis
At the turning point of the current techno-economic paradigm: Commons-based peer production, desktop manufacturing and the role of civil society in the new economy
Abstract: This chapter, following the theory of techno-economic paradigm (TEP) shifts, calls attention to the phenomenon of Commons-based peer production (CBPP). It argues that, in the context of the current TEP, civil society can play an important role in creating favourable conditions for a sustainable global knowledge society. Approaching tentatively the ways in which 3D printing and other desktop manufacturing technologies can be used in CBPP, it also explores the ways in which the partnership with the state may provide a supportive innovative institutional basis for taking the maximum advantage of the emerging synergies.
Keywords: techno-economic paradigms; commons-based peer production; 3d printing; civil society; desktop manufacturing; partner state
Vasilis Kostakis (PhD, MA, MSc) is a research fellow at Tallinn University of Technology and a collaborator of P2P Foundation. His current research focuses on the synergies of desktop manufacturing with Commons-based peer production.
PART FOUR: AUTHORITY, GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC SPHERE
Chapter 8
George Dafermos
Probing peer production: a case study of the IETF model of Internet governance*
This chapter examines the articulation of authority in peer production projects based on a case study of the governance structure of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which, since its inception in 1986, has spearheaded the development and promotion of open Internet standards. The IETF is an association of volunteers organised into more than a hundred working groups, which propose standards through an open publication process. Formal membership is not required and active participation in IETF activities takes place through IETF mailing lists and quarterly meetings held at alternate locations around the world, which anyone can attend. To make decisions, the IETF has evolved a collectivist governance system based on a direct-democratic, consensus-oriented decision making process known as 'rough consensus and running code'. Such a model of decision making is not only reckoned to be congenial to the evolutionary and decentralised character of Internet development but, most importantly, is designed to ensure that IETF's actions will not contravene some of the most distinctive values of hacker culture, such as those that emphasise the importance of individual autonomy of action.
George Dafermos is a researcher at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the governance of free and open source software development communities.
Chapter 9
Matheiu ONeil
Commons -oriented online collective action and the struggle for distributed regulation
mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au
The challenges posed by Internet-based collective action to traditional governance are often framed in organisational terms. Models described as distributed, democratic, and horizontal are typically contrasted to their polar opposites, defined as centralised, bureaucratic, and vertical. While this distinction has merit, it fails to account for the hybridity of institutional arrangements, roles and practices. In addition, the impact of the twin pillars of commons-oriented online collective action - peer production and the ideology of transparency - extends beyond the organisational level. If regulation is conceived not as the result of negotiation between elites but as the result of the actions of people, then the emergence of institutions and mechanisms such as free software and open sources licenses, free knowledge repositories, whistleblower sites, and novel state / civil society joint initiatives such as open data projects represent a new stage in the battle for the regulation of the information society. Questions addressed in this chapter will include the extent to which infrastructure and hardware controls enable or restrict distributed regulation, and whether outside actors such as international organisations can be expected to concretely aid its development.
Mathieu ONeil is….
Chapter 10
Orsan Senalp & Mehmet G Senalp
Contemporary Political Activism, and the Creation of P2P based Public Spheres, Civil Societies, and Politico-Cultural Commons
Abstract
After the eruption of 2007-08 organic crisis, transnational political activism by communities such as Pirate Party, Anonymous, Zeitgeist, Wikileaks, 15M and Occupy movements have acquired a new prominence. All these organizations in one or another way have relied on the P2P pattern of cooperation for mobilizing people against the ruling elites. By doing so they have created de-centered and horizontally linked forms of public spheres, civil society and politico-cultural commons. The aim of this chapter is to analyze this activism and corresponding social, economic and cultural forms from the point of view peer production. We suggest that peer productions and these forms might be supplementary germs of a new society.
Orsan Senalp is
Mehmet G Senalp is
Conclusions
Format
The book will be up to 80000 words.
Delivery The book will be delivered by December 1, 2012.
Market
Primary and: Market: Academics, Activists, and the General Learned Public. The book is good for a wide range of courses on digital political economy, media studies, political science, social movements, anthropology, development and sociology. The size of the market is around 2000 -2500 copies. Main National Markets: The USA, THE UK, Germany, India, South Africa and Australia. Subjectsare: Digital Political Economy, Media Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology. The level of readership. The arguments are complex and advanced but the language will be accessible to a broad range of readers.
Competing books
To our knowledge there are no competing books for this book. There are books on hacking, Wikipedia, Free and Open Source Software which deal with overlapping topics which overlap with some topics of this book but non deal with peer production in an integrative style. The close to this book is perhaps The Wealth of Network , by Y. Benkler, Yale UP, 2006. Although a very innovative contribution, Benkler books remains within the liberal paradigm of thought and cannot see the transforming potentials of peer production. He does not see peer production as an alternative to capitalism. Our book offers a much more radical and transformative view. It tries to offer new paradigms both in the realm thought and practice and probes the ways that peer production can be extended to manufacturing.
Editors:
Michel Bauwens is the founder of Peer to Peer (P2P) Foundation. Jakob Rigi is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Central European University.
REMARKS
Mathieu
I think Johan's book offered a "critical" (and specifically marxist) view of P2P/hacking so it is a significant precedent as this is the one of the claims of this proposal, if I understand correctly (as opposed to "liberalism" of Benkler).
What should be emphasised in contrast to Johan then is:
- the diversity of viewpoints (ie Michel does not have the same analysis as Stefan or Jakob) re P2P/capitalism, transition scenarios, etc - the fact that some of the participants are activists/practitionners is important (see the editorial in JoPP 1 - you can use some ideas if you like) - the fact that case studies are more diverse now (Johan's book - I think - focused on FLOSS) whereas now there is Wikipedia, hardware, open data, etc etc
Finally the editors should contextualise more the contributions (for example for the presentation of meretz/oekonux - once again - see editorial in JoPP 1)
Possible Additions