[P2P-F] Fwd: Planning, re-planning and coordination (michel at p2pfoundation.net)

Sun Aug 10 14:25:05 CEST 2014

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
Date: Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: Planning, re-planning and coordination (
michel at p2pfoundation.net)
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/1Ewf9k1H7mBJEd8wjL0ZIJWU4dkoqLyDJVqhf3L1R3Fo/edit
)

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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) <
jdcusin at gmail.com> 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/
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