---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 7:23 PM Subject: Re: Planning, re-planning and coordination ( [email protected]) To: "Jean-Daniel Cusin Copy of debate with Jean-Daniel and a number of cooperativists: an amazing overview you have done here ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ewf9k1H7mBJEd8wjL0ZIJWU4dkoqLyDJVqhf3L1R... ) of course, it's gonna take some time to read it and take it all in but you have one section which directly addresses p2p, so I'm going to do a first reaction of that section you write <This debate between Michel and Michael Albert about the differences between Parecon and P2P <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.p2pfoundation.net%2Fdebating-parecon-4-final-response-to-parecons-challenge-to-p2p-theory%2F2009%2F05%2F24&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFbBUDiOgptU7CUSH4K2yPnt3-H5w> might also apply to the head design above. I agree with Bauwens about some things, and Albert on some others. I agree with Bauwens that Parecon is a utopian idea about a total design for society that, like my ideas above, will not happen the way Albert or I think they will. Society evolves through people exploring adjacent possibilities. I agree with Bauwens that P2P networks are happening that way. As Bauwens writes in this other response to Parecon <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fzcomm.org%2Fznetarticle%2Fsecond-reaction-to-parecon-by-michel-bauwens%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGQqQAV7z9slA8STMrNZfrlw68a0Q> , P2P is a really existing practice, and indeed, most practitioners do not really care about the larger social context, or at least do not see it as necessarily directly connected to their p2p practice. They adhere to various philosophical and ideological paradigms, even as they are engaging in free software, open design, etc.. Paradoxically, I see this as a strength rather than a weakness, since it means that the practice is not growing because they think it is a ‘ethically nice thing to do’, but rather as a practical necessity that delivers results. And this is precisely why I think it will grow, beyond my or your wishes. I propose a next step, which is the one you call for, i.e. I connect this really existing practice, with the overall necessity for social change towards more equitable and sustainable society. The question is: will those proposals and that vision will be taken up, and that is indeed an open question. But I see many signs of such socialization and politicalization of the projects.> MB Response: In this context,what is important is this. For more than 15 years now, peer production communities , have proven that it is possible to produce highly complex social artifacts (in the form of global shareable commons) through mutual coordination and stigmery, by scaling up small group dynamics (average team of linux is 4 people), and without using command and control hierarchies nor market pricing. This is the reality. And my conclusion is: what market pricing is to the market and planning is to the state, mutual coordination is to the commons. The question now becomes: can we also introduce these dynamics to coordination of material production. And the answer is yes, because material production can't happen without information coordination and stigmergic coordination can be applied to that level, 'informing production decisions' in the material field. Hence the proposal to create ethical enterpreneurial coalitions consisting of open coops that accept to use open accounting and supply chains, so that all members of the coalition can mutually adapt their production to real needs and realities, without necessarily planning or market price signals. In cases of conflicts, the second level of negotiated coordination emerges, where democratic decisions can be made. And as the culture of cooperation matures, it is likely that democratic planning processes will emerge to avoid recurring issues. <I agree with Parecon about democratic planning based on needs, with production organizations responding to those needs. P2P networks tend to be composed of individualists who want to do whatever they want. > MB: This is a very caricuturing vision of peer production in my opinion. First of all the willingness to produce for a shareable common good is a very high form of social consciousness, since it is the first one that unlike the market nor the gift, does not require direct reciprocity. It requires high capacities for autonomy (the capacity to work without command) and cooperation (the capacity to work amongst equals without coercion) and demonstrably emerges into societies that have reached post-materialist consciousness (see the work of ronald inglehart, susan-cook greuter, paul ray etc ..). The fact that people in peer production are free to contribute does not at all mean that they follow selfish motivations, on the contrary, gifting your time, energy and skills to projects that do not guarantee a reward is a sign of going beyond the self. True peer production is motivation agnostic, but the projects are neither win-loose nor win-win projects (like the market), but by definition projects that serve a social good and are designed to be shareable by all people, not just the contributors. <Heaven forbid they should have to get a job! (I understand, nobody wants a job. But still.) Many of them do not feel any responsibility to satisfy social needs: they got their own ideas. So there’s a bunch of PB libertarian thinking in those networks, and they will not like democratic planning telling them what to do.> MB: 75% of Linux programmers have a job, in some countries of latin america, 100% of free software developers have a job, there are just not the kind of command and control jobs we have been used to in the industrial era. I answered the idea that peer producers are a bunch of libertarians just above. This is not to say there are zero percent libertarians in peer production, but they are part of a very diverse and pluralistic bunch. In fact, if you would look at a random sample of coworking spaces, fablabs, hackerspaces, you would discover that the majority are in fact motivated to be there by a social good logic. But why impose planning, democratic or not, where it is not necessary? This is the great social innovation of peer production, i.e. to allow the majority of decisions to be made by self-allocation, and to keep democratic negotiation, and planning, at the levels where they are necessary. This is a huge step forward given the repeated failures of so-called democratic planning. The autogestion movement floundered on it, and political assemblies last no more than 3 months. This is the reality of democratic planning. Most people don't want to spend time in endless conflictual meetings that tend to be dominated in the end by the most committed, forming a new elite. So in peer production, democracy is built on top of a reality of maximally free choice at the individual level, but that individual choice level is informed through stigmergy and the needs of the whole system. It is also important to realize that peer production is a demand-driven and not a supply-driven economy, i.e. there is no incentive for permanent overproduction, it starts from social needs from the very beginning, and the design in open communities is naturally sustainable, again because there is no incentive for artificial scarcities (this practice needs of course to be systematized to create true effectiveness) <I don’t know how to combine P2P libertarian tendencies with an economy driven by human and ecological needs. I think I see it evolving as people’s consciousness evolves, but that is more of a faith-based than fact-based answer. Bauwens also thinks social consciousness will evolve out of P2P networks. I sure hope so.> Being determines consciousness (and consciousness then changes being, in an integral loop). So, that there is a change in consciousness is not only to be expected, but it is already occuring on a large scale. The class consciousness of peer producers is already different from capital and labour, and the changes in civic consciousness have already been documented by the Edelman Trust Barometer, with a huge shift from authority to peer trust documented in 2007, and a week ago, the Global Innovation Barometer showed a huge shift towards collaboration, in just one year, in the heart of the business class itself. But this does not mean of course a political consciousness. This is what the political struggle is about, just as it was in the 19th century, when the labour movement worked to create a 'consciousness-fur-sich'. It is not different today, the new social condition is subject to ideological struggles. This is our responsibility, there will be nothing automatic about it. And the whole reason of being of the p2p foundation is about this (a survey of the 50 coworking spaces in barcelona 2 years ago showed the p2p foundation to be the prime ideological influence amongst coworking participants) <But I think the reorganization required to be driven by human and ecological needs will need political organization and institutions at least at the level of analysis. I don’t know what territory such institutions will need to cover: whether this is Bauwens’ concept of a Partner State, or ecological region, or historically evolved community. I don’t think the needs can be decided purely by the production organizations, unless the production organization and the political community and the reproduction of life are unified in some way. If they were, that’s where I want to live. I think I’d like it to be a bioregional state <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fp2pfoundation.net%2FToward_a_Bioregional_State&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFQbiwoVLO9re_OoWj6I4KOleWYzA>. (But I know I will get what evolves from the current situation and the forces at work. I’d just like to be part of the forces pushing in this direction.)> MB: we agree here, I have proposed the dual self-organisation of a civic assembly of the commons, and a production-based chamber of the commons, which both produce a social charter and re-organized social and political forces around the commons and the agreement around the charter. With the CIC next spring, we will work directly on the creation of civic institutions which enable and empower autonomous social production. <Another angle: some things <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fp2pfoundation.net%2FThoughts_on_P2P_production_and_deployment_of_physical_objects&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHJG_stkICsaZnWADK9DlYfPwOPEw> don’t actually work decentralized, at least yet, and probably for the foreseeable future.> MB: agreed here, but the principle of subsidarity is a good guide here, i.e. a preference for the lowest AND most appropriate level <Bauwens worries about coercion but also wants to retain a market. I don’t, although I understand the need for transitions. Money is coercive. Those who do not understand that have never been poor. The need for money coerces people to do something to make money, which usually means, get a job that they do not want. Or it could be criminal activity, which has a lot of attractions for the participants, although not the victims. When my oldest son went to high school in a poor neighborhood in Chicago, the top two ambitions, in order of preference, were to deal drugs or join the military. Both can get you killed.> MB: if you agree that money can't be simply abolished, then the important freedom is to make sure everyone has access to it, but that does not mean that everything needs to be monetized and commodified; and this is of course what peer production does, it recreates a massive field of direct use value creation that is outside the monetary economy; but it creates a crisis of livelyhood if there is no alternative means to have access to resources; democratizing and equalizing access to income and ownership, seems a realistic way to achieve this; if you want to abolish the freedom to autonomously produce( and sell), you will need an extraordinary amount of coercion, likely more than what we now have in our monetized and democratic societies. The record of such attempts (the bolcheviks before the NEP, Pol Pot, the prison system), is not exactly good; the record of democratizing income (the welfare state), are much better. The first consequence of outlawing the market would be of course to outlaw Jean-Daniel's own project in Haiti. The abolition of money does not mean the abolition and may mean more coercion , were the serfs in the middle ages free because they had no access to money, not likely. So I think the answer is to create possibilities to create and share value outside of the monetary sphere, by the creation of immaterial and material commons and to gradually overcome the need for money. I believe this is what the CIC does with its integral revolution and I fully support such processes. This is also what peer production can achieve by moving gradually to resource-based economic exchange. An open and transparent production system would gradually remove the need to resort to pricing signals. I do believe that ethical, non-capitalist markets are part of the transition, until that time as people no longer want to operate in this way. Like with the state, this requires that working alternatives gradually come into place, they can't be coerced out of existence. <My favorite transitional idea that is actually on the table here and there, is the basic income guarantee (BIG), which I think Bauwens likes as well. (Dyer-Witheford thinks it is reformist, which of course is true, but it would be a good reform and I think would enable more transformative ideas.) And I would be even happier with the New Socialism ideas of non-circulating labor certificates or Parecon’s ideas of wages for socially necessary work. But all three of those are good ideas that will not happen in the current social-political climate. BIG is the closest to possible.> MB: I like the basic income, but I think it is revolutionary proposal and this is why it may not work. The reasoning is simple: capitalism is based on the creation of labor as a commodity, and Polanyi has great chapters on how the smithian system was predicated on the total destruction of the existing basic income of the 17th cy, but a BIG makes labour into a commons again, and thereby upends the very basis of the current political economy. It therefore necessitates revolutionary social power to achieve, but if you have it, why stop with the BIG. This makes me conclude that the BIG is not a transitional proposal, but something that can only be achieved after a phase transition. This is why I support the transition income instead ( http://p2pfoundation.net/Introducing_an_Economic_Transition_Income) <However, I do think this head design is compatible in some ways with both Albert’s and Bauwens’ visions. For Bauwens, I see this evolving now from P2P networks that want to use our system and other similar systems to organize their economic activity, and then internetwork with each other. For Albert, I think social needs will become part of that picture, and will be decided democratically. Could use Castoriadis’ idea of multiple plans (at what I called the analysis level) and Dyer-Witheford’s agents and bots to make the participatory decisions more tractable.> All these proposals require a social force willing to implement them. Peer producers , and their livelyhood organisations, are the only ones that can realistically achieve any proposal. There will be no phase transition without the prior establishment of a proto-mode of production and a social subject that is willing to construct and fight for such alternatives. I personally believe that 'labour-within-capital" can no longer be that subject, but the people who are actively constructing a new mode of value creation and distribution, can. This is why we need coops that do not function within capital, but within the accumulation of the commons. On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 5:31 AM, Jean-Daniel Cusin (via Google Docs) < [email protected]> wrote:
I've shared an item with you.
This is to give you edit access to the document.
[image: Document] Planning, re-planning and coordination <https://docs.google.com/a/p2pfoundation.net/document/d/1Ewf9k1H7mBJEd8wjL0ZIJWU4dkoqLyDJVqhf3L1R3Fo/edit?usp=sharing_eil> Google Docs: Create and edit documents online. [image: Logo for Google Docs] <https://drive.google.com>
-- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/ -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/