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On 01/04/2012 13:47, Michel Bauwens wrote:
I think the question is whether the nation-state is still the dominant force, or has it become a globally distributed system of power, as argued in Empire, which thwarts any attempt by nation-states to control it
Although at the time Empire was a timely and inspiring book, i believe that there is so much evidence that nation-states have enormous (but far from total) control over own destinies, that it is the wrong question to ask. Yes, productivity of external production and external capital seeking profit significantly limits what economic units within national economies can produce and at which price. Yes, the list of limits is long (rating agencies, individual states, groups of states, supra-state/national organizations, funding bodies like Paris Club, IMF). Regardless of all that, i believe that the right question is: what kind of international competition and international interaction and power struggle exist that limit the nation-state power, and how do those limits operate in practice.
For p2p production to develop widely, we have to account for it. Whether the accounting occurs through use of money, or through other means, it has to be done, and it has to be made commensurable with commodities whose value is determined through monetary exchange and as such accounted for in GDP and in other upcoming measures of national economies (new indexes created by sustainable and green economists - ISEW/GPI, A.Sen's capabilities approach, EU's Beyond GDP project).
P2p production is not alone in facing this problem. State services and goods which do not take the form of commodity (education, health, housing, infrastructure, institutions necessary for complex societies to operate) face the same problem. Pro-capitalist efforts, like Atkins report in UK (2005), are an attempt to account for state production within the logic of capitalist for profit production. The task of us believing in post-capitalist, egalitarian and directly democratic (both in "real" production and in political work as another site of production) is to come up with alternative measures, both on micro (money/price) and macro (regional, national accounting, and beyond) levels.
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