[P2P-F] [Networkedlabour] Socialist Licences

[Michel Bauwens]

I published the critique on my blog as well, and promised to answer,

so here is a first attempt

see inline


On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 6:52 PM, peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Peter says:
>
> I can more or less understand what is at issue here, but as 'thru a glass,
> darkly'. In other words, I am out my depth here. But I certainly welcome
> informed and civil dialogue on a matter rather more central to global
> social emancipation than the regurgitation of sterile debates that mark the
> theologically-inclined Left.
>
> May the exchange continue, civilly and fruitfully.
>
> PeterW
>
>
> keimform.de
> Auf der Suche nach dem Neuen im Alten
>   [image: Artikel drucken]<http://keimform.de/2014/socialist-licenses/print/>
> Socialist Licenses?
>
> *Von* Stefan Meretz
>
> [Diesen Text gibt es auch auf deutsch<http://keimform.de/2014/sozialistische-lizenzen/>
> ]
>
> Michel Bauwens has made a proposal for a "median choice of socialist
> licenses"<http://keimform.de/2014/wie-erreichen-wir-eine-commons-orientierte-transformation/>which is based on the
> Copyfarleft-License <http://keimform.de/2008/copyfarleft-a-critique/> of
> Dymtri Kleiner. In this post I try to critically analyze his proposal.
>
> At the beginning Bauwens' thesis is: "the more communistic the sharing
> license we use, the more capitalistic the practice". Being a prominent
> example the GNU GPL<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License>is called a "communist license". Is there something in that?
>
> At first one has to understand the nature licenses have under the given
> conditions. Licenses are permissions, thus contracts, "granted by a party
> ('licensor') to another party ('licensee') as an element of an agreement
> between those parties". It bases on the precondition of excluding all other
> people by the "rightholder". The power of exclusion given by law can be
> converted into a "permission for all" by way of tricky constructions
> combined with the obligation to put derived works under the GPL as well (
> copyleft <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft> principle).
>
> Herein is nothing communist. The logic of exclusion is partially reversed
> and therefore new spaces of commons oriented practices can be created.
> Better than nothing. The license itself only protects these practices
> against proprietary destructions. From my point of view this can not be
> more under the given conditions. The outer world is ruled by the logics of
> valuation and exclusion, and every free zone to self-determine other
> practices has to be wrested from these dominant logics. Embryonic forms,
> precisely.
>

This first critique is rather weak. Indeed, I am not talking about the
legal, contractual basis of the GPL and similar licenses, but on the social
logic that they enable, which is: it allows anybody to contribute, and it
allows anybody to use. This is both consistent with Marx's defintion of
communism, and with the definition I use, that of communal shareholding by
Alan Page Fiske. This logic of course only exists in the realm of abundant
digital information, and exists within the political economy of capital.




> The second part of the thesis "...the more capitalistic the practice" fails
> as well. There is no comparative of "capitalistic". If you replace
> "capitalistic" with "commodity-based", then is becomes even clearer:
> Something is a commodity or not. Free software, for instance, isn't a
> commodity. It can be appropriated and used by everyone, even by big
> corporations. However, they cannot transform the free software into a
> commodity, since this is prevented by the GPL. But they can use the
> software in order to realize their business models in another fields. This
> free use is a thorn in Bauwens side. He wants the commons to only be
> commercially used by those who have contributed beforehand.
>


This is also very weak, since I am not saying and never said, that the GPL
turns free sofrware into a commodity. But what I'm saying, and what nobody
can deny, is that non-commodified free software is subsumed to the
capitalist economy that uses it. 75% of Linux developers are paid by
commercial companies operating in the capitalist marketplace.


> From my perspective the presentation of the GPL as "communist" is wrong,
> but this attribution has the function to propagate a milder license variant
> which then is called "socialist": the PPL (Peer-Production-License)<http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License>.
> This license only grants external access to the resources to those who are
> using them non-commercially, while internally unlimited exploitation is
> allowed. The divide intern/extern usually refers to a firm. If external
> parties want to use the resources commercially, then they have to pay a
> license fee or make other contributions.
>

The GPL effectively enables a social logic of unlimited use, including by
multinational companies. The peer production license resticts it. Let me
point out that I do not take the PPL as perfect, but as a new kind of
Commons-Based Reciprocity Licenses. Such licenses fully allow commercial
exploitation, but ask for reciprocity. Think of a traditional indigenous
community using a GPL of similar. This means any commercial entity can use
the knowledge and commercialize it, without any benefit or profit-sharing
with the creators of the knowledge. A CBRL would simply ask for reciprocity




> *Is only exchange reciprocal?*
>
> In order to justify the PPL the argument of reciprocity is claimed. The
> "communist" GPL is non-reciprocal, while the "socialist" PPL demands
> reciprocity. The word reciprocity nicely blurs what is actually meant:
> *exchange*. In fact, the GPL breaks the logic of exchange, while the PPL
> requires and enforces it -- namely not only the exchange logic itself, but
> the societally valid form of *equivalent exchange*. Someone who wants to
> keep "the surplus value into the commons sphere" has to act that way,
> whereby "commons sphere" is a euphemism for an ordinary company.
>

This is the first valid critique. Indeed, the PPL / CBRL would indeed limit
the non-reciprocity for for-profit entities, but no, Stefan is wrong, it
does not demand equivalent exchange, but some form of negotiated
reciprocity. The important aspect is to generate a flow of realized value,
necessary for social reproduction, from the sphere of capital accumulation
to the sphere of the commons.

> The notion of reciprocity is misused in an ideologically blurring way.
> Licenses are never reciprocal, only people can behave that way. Thus, the
> question can only be whether licenses encourage reciprocity between people
> or not, and if so, in what way. Then the evaluation of GPL and PPL looks
> completely different.
>
> The GPL creates and promotes *direct* reciprocity between people, because
> no exchange and also no compelled contribution stands between people.
>

This is absolutely wrong, the GPL doesn't demand nor create direct
reciprocity between people. It is entirelhy possible to use GPL material
without any reciprocity, as the overwhelming majority of its users actually
do. But the GPL requires what anthropologist call 'general reciprocity',
i.e. at the collective level, a minimum of contributions is needed to
sustain the system. But there is absolutely no requirement for direct
reciprocity. The reciprocity is between the individual and the system as a
whole. A coder or wikipedia contributor cannot expect any return from any
particular individual.



> By contrast, the PPL limits direct reciprocity by putting exchange or
> compulsory contributions between people if they want to use resources
> commercially. But what is commercial? It is the same discussion which has
> taken place around the NC module of the Creative Commons<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons>Licenses. There the insight is: The NC module undermines sharing, and the
> same applies to the PPL (although trying to dissociate from the CC-NC).
>

The PPL only limits non-recicprocal use by for-profit companies. It does
not prohibit commercial exploitation but actually encourages it, while the
Non-Commercial CC license actually prohibits it. The NC does not undermine
sharing, but commercialisation. The PPL encourages and allows both sharing
and commercialisation.

> To sharpen the point: Both licenses support reciprocal behavior of people.
> With respect to GPL it is *positive reciprocity*, because in this case it
> only counts how people behave socially and which rules they agree upon in a
> self-determined way, in order to *bring all participants together*.
> Concerning the PPL it is *negative reciprocity*, since a portion of
> people are subjugated to the alien form of exchange of equivalents (money)
> and are *excluded* from the cooperation to this end. Thus, the GPL is
> rather in accordance with the commons idea of self-determining own rules
> than the PPL.
>