Ownership and means of production (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: List of questions)

Hi Patrick and all!

Here comes another late reply.

15 months (475 days) ago Patrick Anderson wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Stefan Merten<[email protected]> wrote:
>> I really think that if you set this dynamic of automation free in the
>> rest of the world you will come to similar results.
> 
> Who do you envision owning the Means of Production at that time?

IMHO far more important than who owns is what ownership / property
actually means at that time.

Steven Weber's book was very interesting in this regard because it
claimed that in Free Software we see a different meaning of ownership.
You can find some quotes on my `Wiki page`_ about the book. The
important one is

  Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right
  to distribute, not the right to exclude.

  -- Steven Weber, The Success of Open Source, p.16

.. _Wiki page: http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Research/SuccessOfOpenSource#chapter-1-property-and-the-problem-of-software

> If the owners are not the very same humans that are in need of the
> output, then automation will only cause massive and devastating
> unemployment.

This envisions a world where you still have to sell your labor for the
right to get products in exchange. This assumes that property is most
of all still the right to make alienated use of the property - as it
is in capitalism. Typically this is exercised as the right to exclude
- as Steven Weber emphasizes.

Such a notion of property of course immediately raises the question of
who is the owner. Because only if you are the owner yourself you are
not at the mercy of others.

Unfortunately unless everyone owns the whole set of means of
production you are always at the mercy of others. Your concept is that
you build groups - probably by silently assuming that in a group you
are not at the mercy of others. Well, how wrong can you be?

If, however, you envision property as a right to distribute, a right
to share, a right to make the best of the respective property then the
picture is a completely differnt one.

Of course in such a vision all the stuff from exchange based stuff
won't work any more. If you own means of production it would be
forbidden to let someone work for you and then sell the products of
this work. You also would not be allowed to withhold the products from
someone who needs them unless you possess them (i.e. need them
yourself). Look at Free Software and Wikipedia and see how this works!

And don't think that the configuration of property we know so well
today is eternal. Not too long ago in many regions of the world it was
good practice and perfectly legal to own humans (aka slaves). As you
can see that the notion of property has changed since then. Why not
look forward for another such shift?

> Automating production within Capitalism is very dangerous because it
> concentrates wealth even further into the hands of the current owners
> while leaving the bulk of the population without any means of
> sustenance.

Absolutely. That is of course the reason why otherwise progressive
social groups like unions need to be structurally against automation.
That is one of the points I meant with my initial quote above.

> We each must have enough ownership in the Material Means of Production
> required for the production of the outputs we each need, for when that
> is the case, automation and unemployment (leisure) are helpful and
> good.

It is not ownership what is needed. What is needed is more or less the
same as today: The means needed for a decent life need to flow to me.
Under an exchange based regime this only works by exchange. As peer
production shows under a regime not based on exchange exchange is not
needed for this flow and thus property has a completely different
meaning.

> But I get the impression there are many here and on the P2P list that
> believe part of Capitalism must remain intact - in that it is proposed
> or simply assumed that ownership of the MOP must be strictly limited
> to those who happen to have the skills needed to operate them (and how
> are those skills 'proved', by the way?  How does one get into the
> 'club' in a worker-owned society?).

IMHO that is a different - and valid - problem. However, I'm pretty
sure the abuse of means of production by unskilled people will be
small compared to those uses where skilled people use the means they
way they should.

Again look at Free Software. Usually you have maintainers there who
make the final decisions of what goes into a project and what has to
stay outside. This is a model of regulation I'd expect to scale.

I don't know enough about Wikipedia but my latest impressions from the
CPOV in Amsterdam were that it is quite similar there. It seemed to me
that there are more or less page maintainers who deal with a certain
page. I'm in Leipzig this weekend on the German CPOV and may be I can
check more whether this assumption is valid.

> If that were the case, then why does RMS always talk about *user*
> freedom instead of *developer* freedom?

IMHO it's especially hard to read RMS' mind...

> It is because the profound
> dynamic of Free Software occurs when every consumer is able to "go
> around" any worker that would otherwise be able to stifle competition
> to get paid more than he is worth by disallowing access to the MOP
> (source code) so that consumer cannot hire another or even try to
> learn how to do it himself.

External openness has many advantages. Namely it has the advantage
that it is part of a positive feedback cycle making peer production so
powerful. The advantage you name is only one part of it and exactly
targets the right to exclude.


						Grüße

						Stefan

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