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P2P as Intersubjective Process: Definition In this essay, the author will define “peer to peer” in relational terms, i.e. as any system which allows agents to freely and permissionlessly interact with each other. Peer pro duction is then any process whereby people can freely aggregate around the creation of common value. The interpretations below are from the author only, but are based on a continuous dialogue with the research community through the P2P Foundation ecology o f resources. The R elational G rammar of P eer P roduction Helpful in analysing the type of relationality that emerges in p2p systems is the Relational Typology developed by the anthropologist Alan Page Fiske 1 . Below, I will attempt to match the four relational logics as described by Fiske, with my own observ a- tions. Paraphrasing and shortening a longer quote from Fiske, here are the four modes of intersubjectivity that he recognizes, and which he claims, in his book 'Structures of Social Life', 2 are pr esent in all cultures and at all times (though some may appear later than others in the development of social forms): 1 Fiske, Alan P.: Human Sociality. 2 Fiske , Alan P: Structures of Social Life.  Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or group as equivalent and undifferentiated with respect to the so cial domain in question. (Example: people using a commons.)  In Authority Ranking (AR) people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral respons ibility for subordinates. (Example: military hierarchies.)  In Equality Matching (EM) relationships people keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance. (Example: turn - taking.)  Market Pricing relationships are oriented to socially meaningful ratios or rates such as prices, wages, interest, rents, tithes, or cost - benefit analyses (Example: property that can be bought, sold, or treated as investment capital). 3 Though Fiske does not make such inf erence himself, it is possible to posit a historical succession of modes of dominance. In such a hypothesis, it could be argued that early tribal society starts with a dominance of Communal Shareholding, augmented with Equally Matching as soon as tribal so ciety becomes more complex, the subject of the well - known work of Marcel Mauss on the gift economy 4 . With the birth of class society comes the dominance of Authority Ranking, while Market Pricing becomes the dominant modality only under capitalism. The P2P Foundation's main hypothesis is that there is a social evolution towards Communal Shareholding but this is outside of the scope of this paper. It is important to state that all the different intersu b- jective modalties co - exist at any given time, but that t hey are generally influenced by the dominant mode. An interesting take on the co - existence of various modalities under capitalism is the work of the neo - institutional school. 5 The crucial debate is 3 Fiske, Alan P: Human sociality. 4 Mauss , M: The Gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. 5 For example, Colin Crouch writes: “ ... a firm embedded in community within a market economy is not engaged in a subsistence economy, but reaches out through its community IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Michel Bauwens: Understanding Peer to Peer as a Relational Dynamics 43 whether Communal Shareholding, now existing within the bro ader institutional framework of the capitalist economy, can only be subsumed to the dominance of Market Pricing, or whether it can become an autonomous and eventually even a dominant mode, which can eventually subsume Market Pricing at some future point in time. My own views on the possible subsumption of Market Pricing under a regime of Communal Shar e- holding are expressed in the founding essay of the P2P Foundation. 6 A critical perspective on the incorporation of Co m- munal Shareholding under capitalism is o ffered in the work of Christian Fuchs. For example, Fuchs writes that: " Wikinomics shows how mass collaboration and digital gifts can be subsumed under capitalist logic. The difference between my own approach and the authors’ is that the latter welcomes this development, whereas I consider it from a neo - Marxist perspective as the extens ion and intens i- fication of alienation and exploitation , yet I re c- ognize that, at the same time, it bears certain potentials for alternative developments.” 7 This complex debate about the 'immanent' (within the system) vs. transcendent (beyond the system) aspects of Communal Shareholding and commons - based peer production provides a crucial context for any hypothesis about the present and future i m- portance of Communal Shareholding within the relational mix. One of the aims of the first part of the essay is t o allow the readers to make a more informed judgment about this issue by looking in some more detail into the relational mix. The Ethics A ssociated with P2P 8 Each of the above intersubjective dynamics has its own relational ethics. In Communal Shareholdin g, to a marke t.“ Crouch, Colin: Capi talist Diversity and Change: Recombinant Governance and Institutional Entrepreneurs. 121 6 Bauwens, Michel: The Political Economy of Peer Production. 7 Fuchs, Christian: Wikinomics. See in particular his concept of the Gift Commodity Internet Economy, at http://p2pfoundation.net/Gift_Commodity_Internet_Economy , retrieved July 25, 2011. 8 Himanen, P. The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Info r- mation Age. the individual is both receiving and gifting with a community and he/she is judged by the level of contributions to the common project, as well as assistance to the maintenance and social reprodu c- tion of the project as a whole. In Authority Ranking, a k ey value is obedience and respect for authority as the 'giver' of benefits, on which the individual is dependent and the individual must ideally be seen as showing loyalty. Market Pricing favours 'neutral' human relationships, but nevertheless, values both personal and impersonal trustworthiness. The key value of Equality Matching is the capacity for rec i- procity. Is it possible to posit any ethical hierarchy of prefe r- ence in these different modalities — a question also asked by Benkler and Nissenbaum 9 and by Julian Fox 10 ? Among the more popular answers to this question are the ‘Emergent, Cyclical, Levels of Existence’ point of view of Clare W. Graves 11 , and its popularisation in the system of Spiral Dynamics 12 . Such a hierarchical and preferential ordering of di fferent ethical modalities would be consistent from an increasing flow of literature interpreting the history of nature and human civilisation as one marked by increased levels of cooperation (Bar - Yam 13

Stewart

14 ) as well as with those proposing a neurologi cal (Olson 15

de Waal

16 ) or cultural - evolutionary basis (Henrich 17 ). Here is the argument and hypothesis that we use to justify the preferential attention to peer to peer dynamics:  Authority Ranking is a win - lose exchange, since the lower in the hierarchy, th e less you receive in the interaction with someone higher up. Inequality is the highest in the AR mode. However, it is assumed to operate 9 Benkler, Yochai. and Niss enbaum, Helen: Commons - based Peer Production and Virtue. 10 Fox, Julian: Virtue. 11 General documentation at http://www.clarewgraves.com/

retrieved July 25, 2011 12 General documentation at http://www.clarewgraves.com/

Retrieved July 25, 2011 13 Bar - Yam, Y. Complexity Rising. 14 Stewart, John.: The Future Evolution of Consciousness. 15 Olson, Gary: We Empathize, Therefore We Are. 16 de Waal. The Age of Empathy. 17 Henrich, Natalie and Joseph: Why Humans Cooperate. IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Michel Bauwens: Understanding Peer to Peer as a Relational Dynamics 44 for the greater good, as hierarchy is spiritually justified. 18  In the Market Pricing Mode, there is at least in theory a win - win model, since the exchange is presumed to be one of equal value. However, individuals engaged in MP do not take into account the wider community, exchanges are impersonal, and at least under capitalism, are assumed to be motivated by self - interest  In the Equality Matching mode, there is a stronger reciprocity, as well as generally speaking a motivation that takes into account the wider community, in the context of a culture based on widespread reciprocity. Self - interest is not culturally assumed. Furthermore, it is based on an ethic of giving, actually a competition of givers, in which prestige is obtained through the gift.  In the Communal Shareholding mode, the individual gives to a whole, and indirectly receives from the whole; independently of t he motivation of the individual, which may be selfish, the 'commons' itself makes this a win - win - win mode of reciprocity, since the commons is assumed to be of universal benefit (the third win) in a direct way. It could be argued that giving without the ex pectation of a clear and direct return, is ethically superior to the three other modalities. CS, as expressed in the emerging digital commons based on peer production, is a mode that aligns individual and collective purpose towards mutual alignment. See th e contribution on the latter by Atlee 19 and Zubizaretta 20 . I conclude from the above that while there may not be a universally agreed way to hierarchize the ethics of the various modes, there is an argument that can be made for the free engagement around com mon value, to be of a high ethical value, and that the CS 18 A good explanation of such spiritual justifications is provided by the 'primordial debt' theories, summarized at http://p2pfoundation.net/ Primordial_Debt_Theory . The e x- cerpts are from the draft manuscript of a forthcoming book by David Graeber: Debt, The First 5,000 Years. 19 Atlee, Tom: Strategic synergy between individual and collective. 20 Zubizarreta, Rosa: Primary vs Secondary Individual - Group Mentality. mode is therefore worthy to be at least considered as a preferable variant of human action. P2P as P rimarily D efined by Communal Shareholding What dynamic is at play in peer production? Nick Dyer - Whiteford's definition of the cycle of accumulation in peer production 21 is useful here (he calls it the Circulation of the Common by analogy with the Circulation of Capital). He distinguishes an input phase necessitating freely given contributions through open and free raw material; participatory governance which is the result of free association; and a commons - oriented output which guarantees the continuation of the process by constituting open and free raw material to be used in next iterations. The domin ant process active in peer production is undoubtedly what Fiske describes as Communal Shareholding. Indeed, many of the licenses used by the production of open knowledge, free software, and shared design (i.e. the three main forms of peer production), such as the GNU General Public L i- cense, ensure that anybody who respects the l i- cense can contribute knowledge, code and design to the common project. On the input side, an individual that contributes to such a common project, does not exchange with a particula r other person, does not work in a command and control hierarchy, but adds his/her contribution to the whole. Because of the obligations imposed by the sharing license, once the code is released, it can be used freely by other users, even those who did not contribute to the project. This would certainly be the case in projects that are entirely run by volunteer contributors. However, in reality, the situation is a bit more complicated. Let's look on the input side.  Contributors may be paid employees of a co rporation, in an Authority Ranking (AR) relationship with their corporate hierarchy, who may be giving them directives concerning their contributions  Contributors may be freelancers, who have sold their work, and are therefore in a Market Pricing (MP) rela tionship with their clients. 21 Dyer - Witheford Nick: The Circulation of the Common. IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Michel Bauwens: Understanding Peer to Peer as a Relational Dynamics 45  Some contributors may have an obligation to other participants in the community, and see their contribution in a Equality Matching (EM) context towards them. Indeed, within the core group of contributors, i.e. the people who kn ow each other and who judge each other partially through their contributions, interpersonal relations market by Equality Matching dynamics are important. For example, within the P2P Foundation's own experience of building a knowledge commons, the fact of a ssisting people often creates some type of ethical obligation to return the favour by some other contribution.  The essential freedom to contribute may be tempered by AR dynamics; for example, in Linux, maintainers control the acceptance of patches to the o fficial version of Linux; in Debian, there is a process of socialization into the community, led by the more experienced developers already active in the community. However, this hybridity does not in fact violate the core logic of Communal Shareholding, a s the license does ensure that the contributions by both waged employees and freelancers are still added to the common code base and are available for general usage. Similarly neither the AR nor the EM aspects of the hybrid participatory peer governance pr o- cesses undoe the constituted commons. On the output side, it is true that corporations can sell the software itself (which in theory, could also be freely copied, but perhaps without all the added services and guarantees added by open source companies). C ompanies generally sell services that enhance the common code base, and further insure its workability in the enterprise. More often, the associated corporations sell goods and services on top of the commons. The greatest dangers to the commons would be th e enclosure and privatisation of commonly produced material. However, such total enclosure would also kill future value creation by the commons. There is real tension here between the rules and norms of the community, motivated by a defense of the common p roduction, and the desire of corpor a- tions to enclose and capture value. However, in the context of free software, full enclosures and privat i- sation's of previous code commons are quite rare; rather, corporations create added layers of privately produced an d protected software, which may in time make simple usage of the 'pure' commons version of the code base problematic. But such moves are always contested and fought by free software communities. Despite these contradictions and tensions, from the point of view of the common resource and its parti c- ipants, it can be said that all contributions, even by people in an AR relationship within their emplo y- ment, are seen as voluntary and freely shared, as enforced by the license rules. I could say that the commoner s 'are agnostic' on how precisely common code has been added. In conclusion, I would argue that the core value creation takes place in the commons, i.e. by adding to the common knowledge/code/design base, but that both use and exchange value can be enhance d (but also 'exploited') by market - oriented products and services.