[P2P-F] P2P Scenarios for Future Transitions

[Michel Bauwens]

This was written as a response to an Invitation to respond to “Global
MegaCrisis<http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/global-megacrisis-four>:
Four Scenarios on the Future of Progress”, for a Special Issue, Journal of
Futures Studies, Dec 2011

Michel Bauwens:


“The world today is confronting not one crisis, but possibly several at the
same time. Each crisis has different temporal aspects, but all are involved
in different subphases of development.

The most evident crisis is the crisis of one form of the capitalist system,
which I would like to correlate with the Kondratieff cycles. As outlined in
Carlota Perez’ book, TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS AND FINANCIAL CAPITAL,
Kondratieff cycles have a positive and productive high-growth phase, and a
financialized, predatory, non-productive phase of decline and slow growth,
with the totality of these two subphases ending with a “Sudden Systemic
Shock”. Examples of such crisis were 1873, 1929, and 2008. What we witnessed
was the end of one such Kondratieff cycle, which means that the old synergy
of productive elements cannot possibly work in the next phase. Typically,
Sudden System Shocks are followed by on average 15 years of dislocation,
delveraging, social crisis and chaos, until they are superseded with a new
constellation of productive elements, forming a new logic of accumulation.
Such a scenario would mean that we have entered such a period of chaos, but
that we may get out of it after a certain period of pain.

The second crisis is a crisis of capitalism itself, and this crisis has many
different aspects. One aspects is a growing energy crisis, i.e. Peak Oil
which was reached in 2006, with competing opinions of whether renewable
energies are able to compensate for declining fossil fuels in time to
relaunch a new form of productive capitalism. It has been questioned whether
industrial capitalism can cope with ever increasing prices of energy, and
whether it can reformulate itself around some form of green capitalism. The
second aspect of the crisis of capitalism is the emergence of a new
hyperproductive system of value production, i.e. peer production. As Marx
posited, a system of production will likely be replaced, if it has exhausted
its possibilities and a more productive alternative is on the horizon. These
two conditions are now fullfilled, albeit in seed form. This brings us to
the issue of temporality. Both the energy crisis and the emergence of an
alternative, are only in a emergent stage. The positive hypothesis then
becomes: if we assume that capitalism finds both an answer to the energy
crisis (green capitalism), and some form of adaptation to the new productive
system (not unlikely, as both the Roman system and the feudal system
susccessfully composed with proto-elements of their successor systems for at
least two centuries). Then we may see emerge, after the period of chaos
described above, some Kondratieff wave in a renewed form of capitalism,
which would have green and p2p elements as part of the new mix.

However, there is a third aspect of the crisis which may derail the above
possibility in the mid-term (say maximum three decades). Indeed, if we take
a pessimistic view of the energy crisis (no answer to Peak Oil as renewables
cannot replace lost fossil fuels), coupled with the emerging severity of the
biospheric crisis, and with the inability of the current financial predatory
class to solve any of the issues at hand; then, in that case, a fundamental
and successful re-orientation of the capitalist system would be impossible.
In this case, the current period of inter-Kondratieff chaos, eventually
followed by a rather short capitalist green-p2p accomodation; would be
followed by a severe crisis of civilization, i.e. of its current industrial
and capitalist form, and a fundamental reorientation to a new civilization
and political economy.

Here we have to outline two possible subscenarios:

1)the high road scenario, the development of a new globalism under peer
production, preserving the best elements of industrial-capitalist
civilization, and finding sustainable ways to maintain relatively high
living standards;

2)a low road scenario, in which the dislocation is of such depth, and of
such duration, that the p2p phase transition can only occur in a context of
intensive relocalization and breakdown of globality; though substantial
aspects of a global cultural commons of cooperation may subsist, if we are
able to save the essential aspects of the inter-networks. As a historical
analogy, think the end of the Roman empire and the long time needed for the
new feudal system to reach some stable point of take-off.

So here is the timeline that we propose:

1) a period of chaos and dislocation following 2008, which may possibly lead
to a revival (2020) of social movements, and two a structural reform of
capitalism to a green/p2p upswing with capitalism; after two-three decades
this (2040-2050) adaptation is superseded by the deepening biospheric and
social crises related to Peak Oil and Climate Change, and the stage is
prepared for a phase transition, in ‘high road’ or ‘low road’ mode, of a
p2p-commons centered civiilzation; or failing that, a breakdown of
civilization into nightmarish realities

2) if capitalist adaptation fails, we go straight from the
end-of-Kondratieff to the end-of-capitalism and end-of-industrial
civilization chaos; but the possibilities to high-road/low-road/dislocation
transition remain; However, a failure of capitalism to integrate green/p2p
elements would in my view make the transition more painful.”


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