[P2P-F] a marxist critique of peer production strategies

[Michel Bauwens]

I found this article to be of interest, though not specially fun to read,

http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-10-peer-production-and-work/peer-reviewed-papers/a-critical-political-economic-framework-for-peer-productions-relation-to-capitalism/

see at the botttom, 'discussion' for my take on a mis-interpretation of our
positioning

also , I selected 3 concepts i find of interest:

  Dynamic Coexistence of Modes of Productions
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Dynamic_Coexistence_of_Modes_of_Productions>‎
(diff | hist
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Dynamic_Coexistence_of_Modes_of_Productions&curid=37411&action=history>
) . . *(+1,665)*‎ . . Mbauwens
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/User:Mbauwens> (Talk
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/User_talk:Mbauwens> | contribs
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Special:Contributions/Mbauwens> | block
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Special:Block/Mbauwens>)(Created page with
" =Discussion= Arwin Lund: "New emerging and anticipatory modes of
production can exist outside and in parallel with a hegemonic mode of
production. History has shown us that...")
N    13:41  Tendential Fall of Capital’s Control of the Division of Labor
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Tendential_Fall_of_Capital%E2%80%99s_Control_of_the_Division_of_Labor>‎
(diff | hist
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Tendential_Fall_of_Capital%E2%80%99s_Control_of_the_Division_of_Labor&curid=37410&action=history>
) . . *(+2,914)*‎ . . Mbauwens
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/User:Mbauwens> (Talk
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/User_talk:Mbauwens> | contribs
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Special:Contributions/Mbauwens> | block
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Special:Block/Mbauwens>) (Created page with
" =Discussion= By Arwin Lund: "The interesting thing about autonomist
Marxism is that the tradition turns the understanding of the capital
relation upside down. It is no long...")
N    13:36  Non-Dependent Natural Economies
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Non-Dependent_Natural_Economies>‎



** A Critical Political Economic Framework for Peer Production’s Relation
to Capitalism. By Arwin Lund. Journal of Peer Production, Issue #10: Peer
Production and Work, February 2017*

URL =
http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-10-peer-production-and-work/peer-reviewed-papers/a-critical-political-economic-framework-for-peer-productions-relation-to-capitalism/


Contents [hide
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#>
]

   - 1 Contextual Citation
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Contextual_Citation>
   - 2 Abstract
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Abstract>
   - 3 Excerpts
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Excerpts>
      - 3.1 Dynamic Coexistence of Modes of Productions
      <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Dynamic_Coexistence_of_Modes_of_Productions>
      - 3.2 Tendential Fall of Capital’s Control of the Division of Labor
      <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Tendential_Fall_of_Capital.E2.80.99s_Control_of_the_Division_of_Labor>
      - 3.3 Non-Dependent Natural Economies
      <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Non-Dependent_Natural_Economies>
   - 4 Discussion
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism#Discussion>

Contextual Citation[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=1>
]

Arwin Lund:

"We are, therefore, confronted with a situation where peer production’s
relation to a crises-prone capitalism could lead to conflicts, and
necessarily will do so if an actual transition period is embarked upon, but
where, simultaneously, not all struggles are progressive in their results.
Here, time is of crucial importance. The P2P movement’s downplaying of
antagonism could hold some strategic value in the short run, especially as
long as capital’s co-optation processes cannot be counteracted. But
Marxism’s more antagonistic view, on the relation between capitalism’s
inside and outside, will likely be of crucial importance in the medium and
long run of things. The political tactic and strategy would also have to
adapt to different PPPs in different sectors of the political economy."


Abstract[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=2>
]

"This article examines the relation between peer production and capitalism
on a systemic and theoretical level. One problem with understanding peer
production as an alternative and potentially competing mode of production
in relation to capitalism is that the main bulk of economic theory deals
only with capitalism. Alternative economic theories from an emerging
theoretical P2P movement have done important pioneer work on commons-based
peer production, and in discussing its sustainability as a mode of
production both on a systemic and individual level (for the peer producers)
within capitalism. This article argues that the disadvantages of the P2P
movement’s theoretical framework, compared to a Marxist one, have their
roots in an evolutionist motif, and the article aims to situate peer
production more clearly in relation to the workings of capital, and in
relation to a Marxist understanding of the potential for political agencies
and counter-powers to emerge from capital’s outside."
Excerpts[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=3>
]Dynamic Coexistence of Modes of Productions[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=4>
]

Arwin Lund:

"New emerging and anticipatory modes of production can exist outside and in
parallel with a hegemonic mode of production. History has shown us that the
outside’s modes of production can expand at the expense of the hegemonic
mode of production. Mihailo Markovic stresses that the bourgeois revolution
that overthrew the aristocracy from political power did so after a long
period of capitalist expansion and growth within the feudal economic sector
(Markovic, 1991: 542).

There exists a dynamic coexistence of modes of productions before, during
and after historical transition processes between different hegemonic modes
of production. Raymond Williams saw emerging, dominant and residual
cultural systems coexisting in such a dynamic and historical interplay
(Williams, 1977: 121–127). These cultural systems or modes of production
are in different stages of their development and, therefore, have different
forms of influence and power over the totality. Fredric Jameson holds that
no historical society has existed in the form of a pure mode of production.
Old and residual modes of production have been relegated to dependent
positions within the new hegemonic mode of production, together with
“anticipatory tendencies which are potentially inconsistent with the
existing system but have not yet generated an autonomous space of their
own” (Jameson, 1989: 80)."
Tendential Fall of Capital’s Control of the Division of Labor[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=5>
]

By Arwin Lund:

"The interesting thing about autonomist Marxism is that the tradition turns
the understanding of the capital relation upside down. It is no longer
capital that is the main actor, but rather the working class within cycles
of struggles. Desire, play and class composition explain the historical
changes of the working class (Negri, 1988: 209–210, 212–214, 218, 220). The
cycle of struggle theory gains relevance from the last decade’s
developments in cognitive capitalism. Carlo Vercellone maintains that
capitalist production’s dependency on the general intellect signals a third
step in the history of the division of labour, and enables a direct
transition to communism (Vercellone, 2007: 15). The qualitative change in
capital’s organic composition due to the general intellect of the social
brain turns the subordination of living labour under dead labour (constant
capital) upside down. Vercellone calls this “the tendential fall of the
capital’s control of the division of labour” (Vercellone, 2007: 18). When
intellectual and scientific work becomes the dominant productive force,
knowledge re-socialises everything, which eventually becomes an
unsustainable problem for capital. The cognitive social worker is still
dependent on the wage, but has an autonomy in the immediate labour process
that resembles that of the craftsman under an earlier period of labour’s
formal subsumption under capital. As a consequence, capitalism can be
expected to become more brutal and extra-economic in its operations to
maintain control over an increasingly autonomous immediate labour process
(Vercellone, 2007: 20–22, 31–32).

The rising independence and strength of some privileged parts of the social
worker have consequences for PPPs. It seems plausible that the cognitive
type of social worker is drawn to peer production, and that the social
worker as peer producer only is indirectly connected to the class system of
capitalism. The political-awareness processes within peer production not
only stem from capitalism’s class relations, but also from productive
activities outside of capitalism. Vercellone’s argument implies an
increasingly strengthened position for peer production, as capital becomes
more dependent on more independent social workers, free software, open
knowledge and open data for its production. Successful PPPs can force
capital to find new niches for its value production, but these niches are
increasingly found within the activities connected to the general
intellect, and are increasingly populated by the cognitive social worker,
and could therefore be increasingly harder to control for capital."
Non-Dependent Natural Economies[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=6>
]

Arwid Lund:

"Liberal economic doctrines idealise a constant expansion of market logic;
neo-classic theory ultimately sees the outside to capitalism as an
externality and market failure (without value). The outside is caused by
the market, rather than already existing. Fleischer contends instead, based
in the Marxist tradition of Wertkritik, that capitalism can never be total
in its character (Fleischer, 2012: 25; Lehdonvirta and Castronova, 2014:
143).

Rosa Luxemburg stressed that capitalism needed a “non-capitalist social
strata as a market for its surplus value, as a source of supply for its
means of production and as a reservoir of labour power for its wage
system”, but because of that, all “forms of production based upon a natural
economy are of no use to capital” (Luxemburg, 1951: 368). Dependent
outsides, rather than independent ones, could serve capital’s purposes. The
natural economies that Luxemburg spoke of were self-sufficient and focused
on the internal needs of the communities and, thus, did not produce
surpluses of any kind. The problem with them from capital’s perspective was
the lack of demand for external products and that they were not poised to
work in ways that made it possible to acquire them in any reasonable scale.
“Capitalism must therefore always and everywhere fight a battle of
annihilation against every historical form of natural economy” (Luxemburg,
1951: 368–369).

Capital’s need to transform and shape its outside according to its needs
leads to different forms of violence and sometimes (when capital needs an
outside to be an inside) to a continuously and ongoing form of what Marx
called primitive accumulation. De Angelis and others claims that primitive
accumulation has a contemporary and ongoing role where the dissociation of
people from the means of production can take many forms (De Angelis, 2008:
28–31). In recent times, David Harvey has pointed out that capital needs
new realms of accumulation to ride out its own crises (Fuchs, 2014: 166).

During the 20th Century, the outside to capital gradually became
politically empowered. State regulations grew in importance after the Great
Depression of the 1930s, the fundamental role of ecology was articulated by
the environmental movement in the 1960s, and feminism focused on unpaid
reproductive work and its importance for capitalism. Bio-politics and the
connected bio-economy are today given more importance in academia than
yesterday. Contemporary Marxism is informed by the experiences of these
social struggles. But neo-liberal restoration has succeeded, through
re-negotiations and struggles around value, non-value, exchange and use
value, in creating new demarcation lines between the substantial and formal
economy. Markets with their conflict-ridden and crises-prone developments
have expanded, and earlier outsides have been manipulated and transformed
into insides.

Luxemburg’s notion of non-dependent natural economies outside of capital
provides a more dynamic perspective on peer production than the externality
perspective of neoclassical theory. Scholz and Luxemburg enable an
understanding of the potential for different political agencies and
counter-powers to emerge from the outside of capital. From Scholz’s
theories we can take away the importance of expanding the norms of what is
not exchangeable, from 20th-Century history we can take the importance of
peer production developing strategic alliances with the state, and from
Luxemburg the insight that peer production threatens capitalism according
to its degree of self-sufficiency as natural economy."


Discussion[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Marxist_Framework_for_Peer_Production%27s_Relation_to_Capitalism&action=edit&section=7>
]

Michel Bauwens:

"Marxist authors often misunderstand us, because the P2P Foundation uses a
socially reconstructive approach, rather than a critical approach, and
subsumes conflict to reconstruction. It absolutely does NOT mean we ignore
or deny conflict, but rather that we play a specialized role accompagnying
the reconstructive moment, which will always co-exist with the conflictual
forces that resist or demand things from capital and state. For us, working
on the concrete expansion of peer production and its ethical livelihoods,
is what determines what conflicts are necessary in this specific context;
but life and struggles are not reduced to peer production, it just happens
to be our strategic focus."


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