[P2P-F] Key essay on the history of the market-commons relationships

Sun Sep 8 14:42:50 CEST 2019

I very strongly recommend ths as a absolute must-read.

It is entirely aligned with my own conclusions and consistent with the
books and essays I have read on this part of medieval history:

** Article: Capitalism and the Commons. By Adam Arvidsson.Theory, Culture &
Society, 2019*

URL = https://www.academia.edu/40231280/CAPITALISM_AND_THE_COMMONS?
Contents [hide <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capitalism_and_the_Commons#>
]

   - 1 Abstract
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capitalism_and_the_Commons#Abstract>
   - 2 Contents
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capitalism_and_the_Commons#Contents>
   - 3 Excerpts
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capitalism_and_the_Commons#Excerpts>
      - 3.1 Author's Summary
      <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capitalism_and_the_Commons#Author.27s_Summary>

Abstract[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Capitalism_and_the_Commons&action=edit&section=1>
]

"This article investigates the potential role of the commons in the future
transformation of digital capitalism by comparing it to the role of the
commons in the transition to capitalism. In medieval and early modern
Europe the commons supported gradual social and technological innovation as
well as a new civil society organized around the combination of
commons-based petty production and new ideals of freedom and equality.
Today the new commons generated by the global real subsumption of ordinary
life processes are supporting similar forms of commons-based petty
production. After positioning the new petty producers within the framework
of the crisis of digital capitalism, the article concludes by extrapolating
a number of hypothetical scenarios for their role in its future
transformation."
Contents[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Capitalism_and_the_Commons&action=edit&section=2>
]

"The paper divides in four sections.

   - After some background and a preliminary definition of key concepts
   (like ‘capitalism’ and ‘commons’),

   - I revisit the role of the commons in the development and crisis of
   European feudalism.

   - The following section seeks to untangle the complicated relation
   between modern capitalism and the commons, and identify the specific role
   of the commons in contemporary digital capitalism.

   - The fourth section suggests that the socialized nature of the digital
   commons is driving a revitalization of forms of commons- based petty
   production similar to those that contributed to undermining the feudal
   order in the 13th and 14th centuries, and draws up a number of hypothetical
   scenarios for the possible future transformation of digital capitalism that
   might result from this."

Excerpts[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Capitalism_and_the_Commons&action=edit&section=3>
]

See:

   1. Medieval Commons <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Medieval_Commons>
   2. Markets and Commons
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Markets_and_Commons>
   3. Anti-Markets <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Anti-Markets>
   4. Markets without Capitalism‎
   <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Markets_without_Capitalism>

Author's Summary[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Capitalism_and_the_Commons&action=edit&section=4>
]

Adam Arvidsson:

" What is the role of the commons in the future of digital capitalism? What
scenarios do the growing economic and cultural significance of digital
commons like Free an Open Source Software, Commons Based Peer Production
and, lately, blockchain technologies entail? This essay suggest that as
well as a significant source of resistance to capitalism, the digital
commons also support new forms of market oriented ‘petty production’ (to
use Marx’ term). In many ways, this is similar to the role that the commons
- rural and urban - played in the crisis of feudalism in the European Late
Middle Ages. Then as now, the commons were a powerful source of alternative
lifestyles and social movements. They were also crucial to the development
of a new market society that became a source of significant technological,
institutional and cultural innovation, laying the foundation for a new
capitalist mode of production. In the last section of the paper, I
speculate on whether the digital commons can support a similar process of
market-driven social transformation, and on how this might change the
nature of digital capitalism in the decades to come. *I have chosen the
experience of European feudalism in the 12th to 14th centuries as my main
point of comparison*, rather than the ‘original accumulation’ of the long
sixteenth century, and the Polanyian Great Transformation of the industrial
revolution, which have been the most important historical references for
contemporary scholarship on the anti-capitalist commons. This is not to
suggest that we are in a new Middle Age, as Umberto Eco famously did in the
1970s (Eco, 1977), but rather to highlight the possible role of
commons-based market actors in driving social change."

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