HOW DO WE ACHIEVE COMMONS-ORIENTED PHASE TRANSITION ?
HOW DO WE ACHIEVE COMMONS-ORIENTED PHASE TRANSITION ? thanks for reading this: today we have a paradox, the more communistic the sharing license we use, the more capitalistic the practice, with the Linux commons becoming a corporate commons enriching IBM and the like ... it works in a certain way, and seems acceptable to most free software developers, but is it the only way. Hence, an alternative, having the choice not just for non-reciprocal communist licenses such as the GPL, but introducing a median choice of socialist licenses, based on reciprocity. This is the choice of http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License<http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fp2pfoundation.net%2FPeer_Production_License&h=1AQGOu0GL&enc=AZPXQutseGhZBABdiiL_fzEqZyd8sYkiqOs7H1T5nS52n1xRgyn_H4U4bomFXAAFTdHgJNnZRiHEgmeO_vSLFweSiDgTpF34uco-4NneeLJafsh22SwQPfmdEwfgr0_uF1y5eUiSdjhFCbA_VAZmx07E&s=1>; it is not to be confused with the cc non commercial, as the logic is different; this is not to offer protection to individuals reluctant to share, but to enable and empower a counter-hegemonic reciprocal economy that combines commons that are open to all that contribute, while charging a license fee for the the forprofit companies who want to use without contributing. The PPL was originally designed by 'venture communist' dmytri kleiner and you can find it discussed at http://p2pfoundation.net/Bauwens,_Kleiner,_Restakis_on_Cooperative,_Commons-Based_Venture_Funding<http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fp2pfoundation.net%2FBauwens%2C_Kleiner%2C_Restakis_on_Cooperative%2C_Commons-Based_Venture_Funding&h=HAQGzU4_p&enc=AZO3pDEigJrDGTt8c718vfduoK2paDfCVfPHKvv49co6hnkdQ3ZdbSF3GZs-KE8RBU2QgdonMyu4FVm-PldnYimOOMlUcxKneKhHu9fRcjzk_Ks3rDm5z-U2GBB-HR0mFs3svE4SYdJMzokFgeYVqFzx&s=1> (ful ltranscript now available) The PPL is used experimentally by Guerilla Translations! and perhaps a few others. It links the commons to a enterpreneurial coalition of ethical market entitities (coops and other models) and keeps the surplus value entirely within the sphere of commoners/cooperators instead of leaking out to the multinations. As this is the key contradiction of the liberal licenses (though they use the communist logic of from each according to their free contributions, to all according to need) which subsume free software to for-profit dynamics, i.e. that the only way to sustain livelyhoods, remains the selling of labour for capital accumulation; the PPL changes this, as it allows commoners to create their own market entities, keeping the surplus value into the commons sphere, thereby allowing a proto-mode of production (peer production) to become a fully autonomous mode of commons oriented peer production. It creates a counter-economy that can be the basis for reconstituting a 'counter-hegemony' with a for-benefit circulation of value, which allied to pro-commons social movements, could be the basis of the political and social transformation of the political economy. Moreover, inside the ethical economy, the application of open book accounting and open supply chains, would allow a different value circulation, whereby the stigmergic mutual coordinationt that already works at scale for immaterial cooperation and production, would move to the coordination of physical production, creating post-market dynamics of allocation in the physical sphere. Finally, this can be strengthened by creating commoms-based venture funding, so as to create material commons, as proposed by Dmytri Kleiner. In this way, the machine park itself is taken out of the sphere of capital accumulation. Hence, as this process strengthens, and is accompanied by the growth of social and political power, the circulation of capital is replaced by a full circulation of the commons. The phase transition has effectively occured. -- 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/
(Given the recent attacks on Michel's communications, I have a hard time believing that Michele wrote this, but will proceed anyway) On Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
HOW DO WE ACHIEVE COMMONS-ORIENTED PHASE TRANSITION ? [...] today we have a paradox, the more communistic the sharing license we use, the more capitalistic the practice, with the Linux commons becoming a corporate commons enriching IBM and the like ...
I don't think the Linux commons should be compared at all to "becoming a corporate commons" -- like democracy, f/oss is only a facilitator. It's up to the people to derive the value from it or ignore that value. The problem that you're noticing really is that people are just to spoiled with the comforts of capitalism, so they don't rise up and create the alternatives or look for the people who already have them. You and much of the p2p crowd are way ahead of the curve, which suffered an enormous blow with the defeat of Napster. There seems to be only a few of us "diehards" who know that the Internet is the last hope for humanity to create a balanced governmental model for the globe and an alternative to industrialism for the Creative Classes. But that is just half of the problem (people understanding that the internet offers hope for better world). The other half (like alluded to in the first paragraph) is that people are really trained to be dumb. They simply don't know that they don't have to work at all. This is where Charles Eisenstein and such have been speaking well upon. The Earth grows food for free. Yet people throw away this enormous gift of independence and freedom for materialism. I guess the Earth doesn't have billion-dollar marketing departments, and the current chrematistical system is all too quick to distract them to the next fad -- keeping the cycle of dependence and self-destruction active. The GPL remains one of the most high-minded contracts in existence and you should really study the philosophy behind it (Steven Levy's "Hackers" is a good start). Other than that, the problem is not finding the right technique or protocol -- it is either waking the people up with revolution or creating our little enclave of "new world" alternatives to demonstrate the proof-of-concept and wait for people to come to us. I've tried both, but my attempt to create a revolution failed, so hackerlabs/makerspaces represents the best way forward to me. I've re-written the front page of the pangaia project as my consciousness has recovered from the failure trying to create the "revolution" (brought about because both of a misunderstanding of how many people understood the power of the U.S. Constitution to act on their behalf and an overestimation of just how many people within the system were with me for the Internet revolution. (Where's John P. Barlow who penned the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, for example -- did he sell out?)) Anyway, this message is getting too long. MarkJ
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Mark Janssen -
Michel Bauwens