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Re: [jox] A response to Michel and Jakob



Hi Jakob,

Am 15.03.2012 12:17, schrieb Jakob Rigi:
Actually from the users point of view both google and facebook are
commons, but from the point of view of their owners, they are
instruments of extractio ofn rent. IBM contributes to p2p to extract
rent too.

A very shortcut perception. From the inner logic of capitalism google, facebook, amazon, ebay etc. are new players within an emerging new group of capitalists centered around a new area of technology and their "huge rents" are nothing else than profits (to express it in marxistic terminology) from investments. The very volume of those profits says nothing else as that there is a regrouping of forces within the capitalist class. From a reproductional point of view this is the capitalistic mechanism to collect money for development of an upspring new area in the cultural-technological environment build up by mankind, in the last 500 years by those mechanisms.

All this is in no way mysterious, happened (within different areas of technology) several times in history - see, e.g., Marx' detailed studies about the "big industries" emerging in those times - and can very well explained in terms of a sound labour value theory, if you avoid several of Marx' shortcuts (in particular, if you understand the role of labour value factors and that "profit rate" is a special kind of such factors, see my paper http://hg-graebe.de/EigeneTexte/nf-11.pdf for a _very_ short explanation).

But, as I mentioned before this does not erase the non/capitalist
logic of p2p. P2p is a new mode of production and it is our task to
discovers its regimes of value. Marx definition of communism and his
Anthroplogy in which he equated human nature with productive creative
activity (and this is not labor) can help us to some extent.

I just took the german http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_%28Philosophie%29 (where Marx' "extended" notion of labour that you probably addressed is discussed), pressed "English translation" and ended up with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_action and a quotation

Karl Marx used instrumental action in connection to the philosophy of
labor. Marx reduced the process of reflection to the level of
instrumental action. By doing this Marx reduces the self-positing of
the absolute ego down to more physical productive activity (Habermas,
1968). Marx also connects instrumental action to his concept of
Versachlichung. This is because of the idea that "communicative
social relations can and are being replaced by objectified and
externalized relations between things" (Scott p. 571).

A very nice demonstration of the great variety of perceptions what "Marx' Anthropology" means for different people (and probably Marx himself had no permanent notion about that topic).

The value that facebook appropriates is produced by wage labores
outside it.

Since facebook has almost no operative business at all, I do not understand that proposition. facebook has investment costs (offering a service on "foreign common needs") and hence in capitalistic terms gets "paid back" the "same" amount of "abstract labour" (to use your term) on its own reproductional needs. Of course the origin of the payback is "wage labores outside it", the same as for _any_ exchange.

So much for the moment.

hgg

--

  Dr. Hans-Gert Graebe, apl. Prof., Inst. Informatik, Univ. Leipzig
  postal address: Postfach 10 09 20, D-04009 Leipzig
  Hausanschrift: Johannisgasse 26, 04103 Leipzig, Raum 5-18	
  tel. : [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]
  email: graebe informatik.uni-leipzig.de
  Home Page: http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~graebe

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