HGG.P2P

Schnipsel aus einer Diskussion auf der jox-Liste im März 2012

The starting point of these notes is http://www.oekonux.org/journal/list/archive/msg00849.html

• MB: Michel Bauwens
• HGG: Hans-Gert Gräbe
• SMz: Stefan Meretz
• JR: Jakob Rigi
• CS: Christian Siefkes

About the core of a sound P2P economic theory and its relation to Marx' value theory

MB 2012-02-28

Hi Jacob, I'm partial to, but ultimately agnostic to Marx' value theory,

HGG 2012-03-05 - see below

because whatever its truth, it is not necessary to adhere to it to reject capitalism. I agree with the statement, 'if the commons replaces the commodity form, money will have no relevance'.... But if commons is communism, and it is, do you really think that one day we will wake up with commonism? If you are a marxist, then you know that Marx himself, and all important marxists after him, all agreed to the necessity of transition, the one they called socialism ... and as long as not everything is 100% commons,

HGG 2012-03-07 - see below

then you need reciprocity, and means to account for the reciprocity ... this does not have to be capitalist money, nor capitalist market, but certain forms of trade and exchange are very likely to be part of the mix. And the existence of non-capitalist markets, both in the past and in the present, are well documented, and recognized by people like David Graeber, Kleiner and many others. This is why the debate to transform money, in myriad ways, is important, because we will need practical implementation of such alternatives to accompany non-capitalist practices. The transition will be impossible if we retain capitalist money as it is designed now. Please also note that the revolutionary regimes after WWI, such as in Hungary, did exactly that, and perhaps you know more about this than me. Otherwise, I think you will benefit from studying Allan Butcher's detailed studies of communal economics and how intentional communities have dealth with reciprocity-based arrangements without the use of classic money. See http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Community_Economics

HGG 2012-03-05

I'm partial to, but ultimately agnostic to Marx' value theory,

I think, that there is a big difference between Marxian and marxistic theory in general and value theory in particular. The former refers to the work of a great thinker, the latter to a religoiusly charged mass perception of the former in the 20th century (there was a very instructive paper on that topic in german by Michael Wendl in "Sozialismus 2/2011", as far as I see, not online available).

Being "ultimately agnostic" to the former is in the good, negatively turned tradition of the latter and, in my opinion, a sign of cultural ignorance. Nothing at all to notice about in ignorant times but ...

I see the main difference ... just there: Aiming at studying the new experiences without any theoretical background, or aiming at "critical studies" in the same sense as Marx wrote a "critics of political economy". Both are respectable underpinnings (in particular the p2p foundation activities) but a thorough economy theoretic analysis of PP beyond religoiusly charged perceptions did not yet start and - my strong feeling - will not start being "ultimately agnostic to Marxian value theory".

Since from that point of view it becomes very soon clear that P2P was all the time in the core of capitalistic economics (free market), but since capitalistic economics and capitalistic practice (monopoly tendency) are in a permanent struggle a capitalistic economical theory cannot be a steady state theory (as assumed not only by Marx) but only a state transition theory.

I.e. transition is in the inner core of the capitalistic society itself (as already observed in the Communist Manifesto) and speaking about transitions requires to explain, why and how far those remain within capitalistic frames and where they go beyond those frames (moving frames!).

I think, this should be the core of a sound P2P economic theory. I've not seen even the beginning of such a theory yet.

JR 2012-03-05

I agree with your distinction between Marxian and Marxistic. But disagree that all Marxistic trends of 20th century were a religious distortion of the former, though many were, particularly the stalinist and social democratic ones. Troskists had their own shre in this business, though some of them like E. Mandel produce very original work. But, we also had very original Marxian thinkers who truely went beyond Marx.

HGG 2012-03-07 - I completely agree that there is an undigged heritage - nevertheless it is hard to approach that in nowaday's discussions, since - in the religious perception of traditional marxism - those are haeretics and hence punished even today. Starting from the sentence that "the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class" in the last 10 years I learned much about the mechanisms of the "ruling ideology of the oppressed class" ("die wirklich linken Dinger" to express it in a German play on words) and I think we should not charge our debates with that (beyond the unconscious charge that is present anyway).

In my view the work of original Marxist thinkers of 20th century is and will remain among the most precious treasures of human thought . Broadly speaking Marx's paradigm had the following pillars:

1. A theory of Mode of production.
2. A Theory of capitalist mode of production: The laws of value and surplus value, the forms and movement of value and, surplus value, different forms of their expressions ( absolute and relative surplus value, price, wage, profit, interest and rent) and crisis.
3. A theory of class struggle. The theory of class struggle existed before Marx and Engels. they rearticulated it.
4. Materialist and dialectical Epistemology.

Of these 4 pillars 1, 4 are still relevant for the study of p2p. The 2, namely the theory of value is not relevant for describing and analysing the inner logic of p2p.

The Marxian law of value is totally absent from the inner logic of p2p.

HGG 2012-03-07 - I strongly disagree with that. More precisely, it depends on your definition, what p2p is. If p2p is a mode of re(!)production where you have enough volunteers that really do "the right job", then you can rule social interactions indeed by "rough consensus and running code". If not, the accountig starts. A mode of reproduction in the former sense, in my opinion, it will never be a dominant social interaction form. For the moment I will not explain that in more detail.

Hence p2p is a new mode of production. But Marx theory of rent which is a particular component of his theory of value explains the ways in which particular capitalists use p2p to extract rent from other capitalists by approriating larger shares of the total surplus value which is produced outside p2p by wage labor which is exchanged with capital. The fact that p2p is used by some capitalists to extract rent does not erase its none capitalist inner logic. Here, we need a dialectical imagination to distinguish between the appearence (p2p as a means of extraction of rent) and the essence (P2p having a non-capitalistic inner logic).

Marx theory of rent is also very relevant for explaining the political economy of google, Facebook and much of knowlege economy. Unfortunately I am not familiar with Oekenox discussions. I would love to go through its archives, if they exist, and I am given the permission to do so. But I agree with the statement that the true study of p2p, like any other study, is a critical, i.e, materialist and dialectical, one, hence the continuing relavance of the 4. I am not familiar with process of fork. But I think a journal which is deveoted to critical studies should also occasinally publish good and original work which are not critical. For example a Marxian journal of political economy must publish oroginal criticism of Marx by neo-Rcardian economists.

HGG 2012-03-07

and as long as not everything is 100% commons ... The transition will be impossible if we retain capitalist money

as it is designed now.

I have no idea what that means "100% commons" - is this a world without contradictions, what are the ways to resolve conflicts about the use of "the commons" etc.? The point are not the "commons" but the reproduction modes of the "commons". Division of labour in the last 10.000 years went only into one direction, the direction of refinement. Nowadays we are faced even with special languages to communicate about reproductional needs and ways of particular reproduction modes of parts of the "commons". Capitalist money was not "designed" and cannot be "redesigned" in an easy way without a clear understanding of the multiple social functions that are transported with accounting.

Money is only the tip of the iceberg, a very formalized way to realize accounting. Christian Siefkes had developed plenty of ideas in his book http://peerconomy.org/wiki/Main_Page how to "transform accounting" (e.g., autions of unloved duties). My objection that even his mathematical formulas (see appendix A) are just the same as in Leontieff based modeling of capitalistic economy left unnoticed upto now.

Commons and money theory

JR 2012-02-27

Now we have people like Keith Hart (see his Memory Bank) who claim that money and market can be decoupled from capitalism and articulated to a new mode of production. Actually Dimtri Kleiner in his Manifesto seems to have a similar theory of money, though he does not spell it out clearly. Now Hart's theory of money comes from Keynes, not Marx. I think the fact that commons have put the revisiting of the theory of value/money on theoretical agenda is a great thing, and I hope we will be able to open a constructive debate on this matter. I really look forward to debating this with you.

Ideas about the transition to a commons regime as major production mode

JR 2012-02-27

Concerning the transition period, although its necessity seems logical, I have strong doubt about such a necessity. It is again a major issue and indeed related to the previous issue. Whether the transformation to peer production will happen though a gradual evolutionist path or a social revolution is an open question. But I tend to think that without a social revolution the overthrow of capitalism is impossible.

MB 2012-02-28

I agree about the social revolution, but that doesn't mean it will irrupt tomorrow and immediality install a fully functioning 100% commons regime. So we need to live, resist, and construct living alternatives that can create the structures that will be able to flower more rapidly after the social revolution. This was the tactic and strategy of the labor movement which along with parties and unions created a vast ecology of life forms for social reproduction ... yes they were ultimately incorporated in the welfare state, but that was also because the capitalist 'could' do this ... A coopted solution within capitalism is increasingly unlikely. And my proposition does not concern such cooptation but rather the strengthening of autonomous institutions within the actual world and the creation of integrated logics for a counter-economy that can exist alongside the social movements.

SMz 2012-03-05

Instead of an "organic completion" we (i.e. the Oekonux community - HGG) have always discussed in terms of "contradictions". The most condensed form is the five step model: http://keimform.de/2011/pattern-10-germ-form/

MB 2012-03-05

Actually, even in your whole series about the aspects of peer production, your 'beyond' series, I also got an impression that they are described separate from their embeddedness in the overall political economy. For example, you can say peer production is beyond labour, but at the same time, people who have no access to income, cannot sustain such activity, and hence there is a deep interpenetration between the continuation of peer production projects and the need to work with for-profit enterprises ...

To my mind, you cannot discuss one without the other, and you need specific counter-proposals and a counter-strategy. But in the years I was participating in Oekonux, I have never heard much attention paid on such counterstrategy. For example, take Christian Siefkes excellent work, it is a brillant description how things could be in an integral p2p society, but I do not get any sense of how to get from 'here' to 'there'.

SMz 2012-03-05

You are absolutely right. I had to condense over 10 years of Oekonux development in a short (even too long) text. And you know, that I am completely aware of the necessity to reproduce our daily lives within the old structures. You may remenber, that we had some really serious debates about the role of money in the process of transition, where you took the position of creating alternative currencies, which I could criticize as some kind of "evolutionary illusion". So I could simply slam the ball back. From a standpoint above these positions one could judge, that both positions represent valid aspects of the overall contradictions we are confronted with, which necessarily emerge from social practicies.

All we we are doing on http://keimform.de (mainly oriented to the german audience) as one of the Oekonux spin-offs is nothing but that: trying to learn how we can get from here to there. And you may know: It is not that simple.

MB 2012-03-05

Idealtypes abstractions are always useful, as long as we the return to the contradictions of the real, and it was an excellent summary of the social logic of peer production considered separately from its embeddedness. Regarding money, I regard both the exclusive retention of capitalist money, and the total abolition by fiat of any currency, as respective illusions and unworkable.

Commons and Knowledge Commons

JR 2012-02-27

Knowledge can be transformed to commons without a social revolution but land and strategic natural resources which are the basis of any production are already monopolized by private capitalists and their right are protected by state apparatuses of violence. We cannot establish a peer production society without transferring the strategic natural resources into commons. For this we confront the private ownership over nature and the violence of state. Hence, the necessity of social revolution. I may be wrong, again this can be a fertile ground for an open debate. After a social revolution we may need a historical period for overcoming national claims on strategic natural resources. But we do not market and money for this.

MB 2012-02-28

Again agreed in theory. The phase transition will be necessity involve a fundamental change in power. But this is not a all or nothing proposition. In the meantime, do you just remain a wage worker and acquisce with the dominant logic, or do you create the seeds of the future in the present. Though the power over these resources is tremendous, it is never absolute, and the emerging distributed infrastructures can and should be used to create counter-economic institutions and counter-power.

The relation between p2p and the ideas about communism

Is communism social individualism?

JR 2012-02-27

By communism, I mean a form of social relations in which the state and division of labor have vanished. The division between manual and intellectual labor has vanished too. Moreover, there is no difference between the fulfilling individual's desires and performing social duties. You serve others by doing things that gives you pleasure and develop your own individuality. Social individual, to borrow a term from Marx, or social individualism is the corner stone of communism. Communism means the proliferation of singular individualities. This is what is already happening, though in embryonic form, in peer production.

HGG 2012-03-07

I see no base for a claim "division of labor will vanish". No, the main challenge of the future is to cope with the babylonian jumble of special languages, to establish a culture of translations, transmission etc. I very well understand what are "individual's desires" but as Max Stirner I have no idea what that is beyond ideology - "social duties".

No, "social individualism" is by no means borrowed from Marx, since his vision about communism is "an association (!), in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

Communism and the civic world

MB 2012-02-28

Yes, and it is what marx saw occuring both at the beginning of human history, and at the end of it. It is not something he surmised would happen fully fledged after a hypothetical red dawn. So my proposition is this: create real counter-practices in the actually existing world, and seek to strenghten them; deal realistically with a largely hostile institutional world; 2) when the possibility arises, create the true democratic structures that abolish the hostility of the institutions; 3) with the new institutions in place, and relying on the social force of the counter world which is now the mainstream world, establish the path forward. Most likely, this will take the form of civic institutions which will decide democratically on the most appropriate provisioning systems that marry maximum freedom with progress towards social equality.

Communism and the voluntary cooperation among individuals

JR 2012-02-27

I think both peer production and Occupy Wall Street have a communist core to the extent they promote social individuality. Capitalistic individuality is atomistic and egoistic. Communism is the voluntary cooperation among individuals for both social good and for their own pleasure and development. Indeed capitalism and Stalinism both atomize the individual; Communism creates and manifests true and singular individualities. So it is far from being totalitarian. It dissolves both Stalinist and capitalist form of totalitarianism. Market, in spite of its appearance, and semblance of choice is the most effective totalitarian force history has ever seen. It levels all differences to money. In the market?s view all different qualities are reduced to same substance abstract value and its manifestation money. From the market point of view the objects, and this applies to people too, because people are objectified, are different only to the extent that they are different quantities of the same things, namely money.

HGG 2012-03-07

For me the main goal of human doing was and is and will be the "cooperative shaping of the private living circumstances". In the Oekonux context we had a long debate on "Kooperenz" http://www.freie-gesellschaft.de/wiki/Kooperenz - a two-word concatenation of cooperation and the German "Konkurrenz", that translates as "competition", but is connotated with concurrency that sheds a very special light on competition.

Communism was all the time an utopia. Marx punished the old french socialists as "utopians" and claimed, his way of understanding communism is a "scientific" one. If you follow up the history then you see, that each new round of technically triggered reconstruction of the capitalist society is accompanied with a "new communism" that developes a new utopia of dreams of desired social consequences of the new technical means. p2p is obviously _also_ in that tradition. The first such dream was that on Cockaigne. So I have the strong feeling that communistic ideas are not very helpful for a dry analysis of the nowadays circumstances of living and changes of living. But I think that communism has much to do with Blochs "principle hope" as the very inner driving force of the world (including a hypothetic "communistic one").

What's about market?

MB 2012-02-28

What you say about markets is not necessarily true. Pre-capitalist market forms, such as those in western medieval times, used 'just price' governance, and the same was true in the Hindu villages.

Here is a possible transition scenario. You have a world of increasing commons construction. These commons use peer production licenses which share with other commons institutions, but make for-profit firms pay. The commons workers create physical commons stock phyles based on worker equality and the socialist principles of to each according to his contribution, and use cooperative, nonprofit, low profit and other open company formats. These phyles use integral open book management and open supply chains, increasingly rending moot the necessity of market mechanisms to regulate supply and demand mechanics.

This world co-exist with democratic civic governance institutions which decide which provisioning system is the most acceptable. Imagine three concentric circles, the commons sphere, the private mutualist phyle sphere, the governance sphere .. where they intersect you have the civic sphere which determines the overall structure of society ...

In this scenario you have a expanding 'communist' sphere, co-existing with a gradually declining reciprocity/exchange sphere and a gradually declining common governance sphere. The key is that generalized non-reciprocity cannot be imposed by any top-down force, however benign, but must by necessity mature in the real society as people can gradually move towards it as sufficiency and abundance replace scarcity dynamics.