[ox-en] Kleiner-Bauwens debate about Benkler, part 1
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:53:05 +0200
Hi, from Michel's Blog I picked the three parts of a debate between
Dmytri Kleiner and him, Michael Bauwens, about Yochai Benkler’s
conception of Social Production. Quite interesting:-)
Dmytri Kleiner’s critique of Yochai Benkler
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=494
...D. Kleiner offers a critique of Benkler’s theory of commons-based
peer production being limited to the immaterial sphere. He writes:
»Yochai Benkler’s conception of Social Production, where a network of
peers apply their labour to a common stock for mutual and individual
benefit, certainly resonates with age-old proposed socialist modes of
production, particularly in the libertarian socialist tendencies, where
a class-less community of workers (”peers”) produce collaboratively
within a property-less (”commons-based”) society. Clearly, even Marx
would agree that the ideal of Communism was commons-based peer
production. The novelty of Social Production as understood by Benkler
is that the property in the commons is entirely non-rivalrous property:
Intellectual property and network transferable or accessible resources.
Property with virtually no reproduction costs. There is no denying that
Benkler’s wealthy network has creating astounding amounts of wealth.
The use-value of this information commons is fantastic, as evident by
the use-value of Free Software, of Wikipedia, of online communications
and social networking tools, etc. However, if commons-based
peer-production is limited exclusively to a commons made of digital
property with virtual no reproduction costs then how can the use-value
produced be translated into exchange-value? Something with no
reproduction costs can have no exchange-value in a context of free
exchange. Further, unless it can be converted into exchange-value, how
can the peer producers be able to acquire the material needs for their
own subsistence? The wealthy network exists within a context of a poor
planet. The root of the problem of poverty does not lay in a lack of
culture or information (though both are factors), but of direct
exploitation of the producing class by the property owning classes. The
source of poverty is not reproduction costs, but rather extracted
economic rents, forcing the producers to accept less than the full
product of their labour as their wage by denying them independent
access to the means of production. So long as commons-based
peer-production is applied narrowly to only an information commons,
while the capitalist mode of production still dominates the production
of material wealth, owners of material property, namely land and
capital, will continue to capture the marginal wealth created as a
result of the productivity of the information commons.
Whatever exchange value is derived from the information commons will
always be captured by owners of real property, which lays outside the
commons.
For Social Production to have any effect on general material wealth it
has to operate within the context of a total system of goods and
services, where the physical means of production and the virtual means
of production are both available in the commons for peer production.
By establishing the idea of commons-based peer-production in the context
of an information-only commons, Benkler is giving the peer-to-peer
economy, or the competitive sector, yet anther way to create wealth for
appropriation by the property privilege economy, or the monopoly
sectors.«
Commentary (Michel Bauwens):
I essentially agree with D. Kleiner, that it is reductive to restrict
peer production to the immaterial sector.
However, his argument about sustainability of peer production may rest
on a confusion. Peer production is essentially non-reciprocal
or ‘doubly free’: the freedom to contribute, and the freedom to use.
Thus a direct connection between an income, in exchange for an
engagement, is not peer production, but belongs to the exchange
economy.
Nevertheless, peer production, already sustainable on a collective level
because there is always a critical mass of collaborators, despite
individuals being added or leaving the project, must be sustainable in
some way. And the only way to make it collectively sustainable, is to
introduce a basic income, where by definition there is no connection
between work and output, as it is unconditional.
In my vision, this gives a society which has a core of non-reciprocal
peer production, responsible for the most valuable cultural,
intellectual and spiritual ‘use-value’ creation, BUT, this needs to be
coupled to a pluralistic economy, that consists of a mixture of a
reinforced gift economies for services and surviving traditional
economies, and a reformed, peer-informed, non-capitalist market.
But indeed, peer production need not be confined to the immaterial
sphere.
It’s expansion in the physical sphere is dependent on 3 factors:
1) the possibility of an abundance or a distribution of resources (this
is already the case for computing resources)
2) the possibility of separating immaterial design processes from
physical production; in such cases, the first process can be
peer-produced; and the second can be much more distributed through P2P
exchanges
3) the interlinking of physical, logical (licences), and digital
resources, so that we can create physical commons of public goods that
are protected from abuse (the tragedy of the commons).
But in any case, such extension can only be partial, as we will still
need an exchange-based economy for scarce goods. But, such an exchange
economy need not be capitalist.
I’m also particularly puzzled by Kleiner’s argument that the portion of
the commons-created use value that can be monetized, can only be
appropriated by the owners of property. I have explained elsewhere that
peer production need not pass through vectoral capitalists, who own the
vectors of information, but that this can now be done by the organizers
of the participatory platforms themselves, the netarchical capitalists.
But there is no iron law that this must be so. Peer producers can, and
perhaps should, create their own vehicles to monetize the commonly
created value.
So to conclude: it makes no sense to argue for a full extension of peer
production to the physical sphere, because non-reciprocal producton is
predicated on abudance. For scarce rival goods, we need different and
appropropriate approaches.
--
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