[P2P-F] the common as a mode of production, a must-read for peers and commoners

Michel Bauwens michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 12 09:05:33 CEST 2018


see http://www.generation-online.org/c/fc_rent14.htm

quotes

via Carlo Vercellone
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carlo-Vercellone/102563563135748?fref=mentions&hc_location=group>

"To the temptations of a naturalist approach it is necessary to oppose the
theoretical and political need for a materialist approach to the Common, as
it alone can, in our view, comprehend the reasons for its current
popularity and organise its potential. According to this approach, the
Common is always a social and political construct, whether it refers to a
mode of organising or a set of criteria to ascribe the status of common
goods to a set of resources, goods or services. The ontological foundation,
determined historically, of the current position of the Common, cannot be
ascribed to the intrinsic nature of goods, but to the ability of labour to
self-organise, an ability that in contemporary capitalism relies on the
potential autonomy of the cooperation of cognitive labour.

For those who approach the Common in the singular, the Common is neither a
predetermined set of goods, nor a third intruder between State and the
market, but a general principle of organisation for society. As Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri claim (2012), the “common” is not an object, a
substance that precedes and transcends human existence; the “common” is a
socially and historically determinate activity that continuously produces
new institutions, and these are at the same time the conditions and the
product of the “common” itself. Compared to economic theories of common
goods, this results in a double reversal in theoretical and methodological
terms."


 "It is therefore the very approach of the theory of public and common
goods that must be overturned. We must not start from an abstract typology
of goods, but from the concrete, historic forms of work that produce the
goods themselves. In short, it is the ability of work to cooperate and
organise itself differently compared to the logic of private and public
that ultimately determines the propensity of a series of goods or resources
to be managed according to the principles of the Common. Now, in
post-Fordist societies, this growing ability of labour to self-organise
depends on the development of a diffused intellectuality and forms of
cognitive organisation of labour that break away from the logic of the
division of labour typical of industrial capitalism. The social diffusion
of knowledge and the re-composition of the work of design and execution
form the necessary preconditions for a powerful return of the Common and
its ontological foundation on the scene of contemporary capitalism."
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Michel Bauwens*You and 7 others manage the membership, moderators,
settings, and posts for P2P.*
<https://www.facebook.com/mbauwens?fref=gc&dti=145538675490320> "In
contrast to both the capitalist system and real socialism, therefore,
ideally, the Common as a mode of production, makes democracy re-descend
into the same sphere as the economy and the strategic decisions regarding
questions concerning: how to produce, what to produce, for who and to
satisfy which needs. More precisely, extending the apt definition that
Benkler uses for common information goods to all goods, we can assert that
production is based on the common when "no one uses exclusive rights to
organise effort or capture its value, and when cooperation is achieved
through social mechanisms other than price signals or managerial
directions" (Benkler 2004, 1110). "


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