[ox-en] Re: Peer production manifesto?

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Hi Stefan,

these are political theses, not to be confused with the P2PRG project, which
is scientific/academic in nature ... I haven't formulated any of those
principles yet, though I should,

Michel

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 2:23 AM, Stefan Merten <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi list!
>
> I find Michel's text below interesting - though it needs perhaps a lot
> of improvement. He formulated it for the P2P Research Group. The text
> gave me the idea to try something like a peer production manifesto
> [1]_. What do you think?
>
> .. [1] I consciously started a new thread for this.
>
>
>                                                Grüße
>
>                                                Stefan
>
> Last month (36 days ago) Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > Appendix 1: *: Summary theses on the emergence of the peer to peer
> > civilization and political economy*
> >
> > 1. Our current world system is marked by a profoundly counterproductive
> > logic of social organization:
> >
> > a) it is based on a false concept of abundance in the limited material
> > world; it has created a system based on infinite growth, within the
> confines
> > of finite resources
> >
> > b) it is based on a false concept of scarcity in the infinite immaterial
> > world; instead of allowing continuous experimental social innovation, it
> > purposely erects legal and technical barriers to disallow free
> cooperation
> > through copyright, patents, etc...
> >
> > 2. Therefore, the number one priority for a sustainable civilization is
> > overturning these principles into their opposite:
> >
> > a) we need to base our physical economy on a recognition of the finitude
> of
> > natural resources, and achieve a sustainable steady-state economy
> >
> > b) we need to facilitate free and creative cooperation and lower the
> > barriers to such exchange by reforming the copyright and other
> restrictive
> > regimes
> >
> > 3. Hierarchy, markets, and even democracy are means to allocate scarce
> > resources through authority, pricing, and negotiation; they are not
> > necessary in the realm of the creation and free exchange of immaterial
> > value, which will be marked by bottom-up forms of peer governance
> >
> > 4. Markets, as means to to manage scarce physical resources, are but one
> of
> > the means to achieve such allocation, and need to be divorced from the
> idea
> > of capitalism, which is a system of infinite growth.
> >
> > 5. The creation of immaterial value, which again needs to become dominant
> in
> > a post-material world which recognized the finiteness of the material
> world,
> > will be characterized by the further emergence of non-reciprocal peer
> > production.
> >
> > 6. Peer production is a more productive system for producing immaterial
> > value than the for-profit mode, and in cases of the asymmetric
> competition
> > between for-profit companies and for-benefit institutions and
> communities,
> > the latter will tend to emerge
> >
> > 7. Peer production produces more social happiness, because 1) it is based
> on
> > the highest from of individual motivation, nl. intrinsic positive
> > motivation; 2) it is based on the highest form of collective cooperation,
> > nl. synergestic cooperation characterized by four wins (both the
> > participants in the exchange , the community, and the universal system)
> >
> > 8. Peer governance, the bottom-up mode of participative decision-making
> > (only those who participate get to decide) which emerges in peer projects
> is
> > politically more productive than representative democracy, and will tend
> to
> > emerge in immaterial production. However, it can only replace
> representative
> > modes in the realm of non-scarcity, and will be a complementary mode in
> the
> > political realm. What we need are political structures that create a
> > convergence between individual and collective interests.
> >
> > 9. Peer property, the legal and institutional means for the social
> > reproduction of peer projects, are inherently more distributive than both
> > public property and private exclusionary property; it will tend to become
> > the dominant form in the world of immaterial production (which includes
> all
> > design of physical products).
> >
> > 10. Peer to peer as the relational dynamic of free agents in distributed
> > networks will likely become the dominant mode for the production of
> > immaterial value; however, in the realm of scarcity, the peer to peer
> logic
> > will tend to reinforce peer-informed market modes, such as fair trade;
> and
> > in the realm of the scarcity based politics of group negotiation, will
> lead
> > to reinforce the peer-informed state forms such as multistakeholdership
> > forms of governance.
> >
> > 11. The role of the state must evolve from the protector of dominant
> > interests and arbiter between public regulation and privatized corporate
> > modes (an eternal and improductive binary choice), towards being the
> arbiter
> > between a triarchy of public regulation, private markets, and the direct
> > social production of value. In the latter capacity, it must evolve from
> the
> > welfare state model, to the partner state model, as involved in enabling
> and
> > empowering the direct social creation of value.
> >
> > 12. The world of physical production needs to be characterized by:
> >
> > a) sustainable forms of peer-informed market exchange (fair trade,
> etc..);
> >
> > b) reinvigorated forms of reciprocity and the gift economy;
> >
> > c) a world based on social innovation and open designs, available for
> > physical production anywhere in the world.
> >
> > 13. The best guarantor of the spread of the peer to peer logic to the
> world
> > of physical production, is the distribution of everything, i.e. of the
> means
> > of production in the hands of individuals and communities, so that they
> can
> > engage in social cooperation. While the immaterial world will be
> > characterized by a peer to peer logic on non-reciprocal generalized
> > exchange, the peer informed world of material exchange will be
> characterized
> > by evolving forms of reciprocity and neutral exchange.
> >
> > 14. We need to move from empty and ineffective anti-capitalist rhetoric,
> to
> > constructive post-capitalist construction. Peer to peer theory, as the
> > attempt to create a theory to understand peer production, governance and
> > property, and the attendant paradigms and value systems of the open/free,
> > participatory, and commons oriented social movements, is in a unique
> > position to marry the priority values of the right, individual freedom,
> and
> > the priority values of the left, equality. In the peer to peer logic, one
> is
> > the condition of the other, and cooperative individualism marries
> > equipotentiality and freedom in a context of non-coercion.
> >
> > 15. We need to become politically sensitive to invisible architectures of
> > power. In distributed systems, where there is no overt hierarchy, power
> is a
> > function of design. One such system, perhaps the most important of all,
> is
> > the monetary system, whose interest-bearing design requires the market to
> be
> > linked to a system of infinite growth, and this link needs to be broken.
> A
> > global reform of the monetary system, or the spread of new means of
> direct
> > social production of money, are necessary conditions for such a break.
> >
> > 16. This is the truth of the peer to peer logical of social
> relationships:
> > 1) together we have everything; 2) together we know everything.
> Therefore,
> > the conditions for dignified material and spiritual living are in our
> hands,
> > bound with our capacity to relate and form community. The emancipatory
> peer
> > to peer theory does not offer new solutions for global problems, but most
> of
> > all new means to tackle them, by relying on the collective intelligence
> of
> > humankind. We are witnessing the rapid emergence of peer to peer
> toolboxes
> > for the virtual world, and facilitation techniques of the physical world
> of
> > face to face encounters, both are needed to assist in the necessary
> change
> > of consciousness that needs to be midwifed. It is up to us to use them.
> >
> > 17. At present, the world of corporate production is benefiting from the
> > positive externalities of widespread social innovation (innovation as an
> > emerging property of the network itself, not as an internal
> characteristic
> > of any entity), but there is no return mecachism, leading to the problem
> of
> > precarity. Now that the productivity of the social is beyond doubt, we
> need
> > solutions that allow the state and for-profit corporation to create
> return
> > mechanisms, such as forms of income that are no longer directly related
> to
> > the private production of wealth, but reward the social production of
> > wealth.
> >
> >
> > Appendix 3: A legal and regulatory framework for the participative
> society
> >
> >
> > 1) In the immaterial sphere
> >
> > a)      diminish artificial scarcities in the informational field so that
> > immense social value can be created, and immaterial conviviality can
> replace
> > the deadly logic of material accumulation.
> >
> > b)      Public authorities adapt Partner State policies that enable and
> > empower the direct creation of social value
> >
> >
> >
> > 2)  In the sphere of materiality
> >
> > a) introduce true costing in the material field so that the market no
> longer
> > creates negative exernalities in the natural environment; dissociate the
> > marketplace from the system of infinite material growth
> >
> >
> > 3) create more distributed access to the means of production (peer-based
> > financing, distributed energy production, etc...) so that the peer to
> peer
> > dynamic can be introduced in the sphere of material production as well.
>



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