list-en oekonux.org writes:
The final issue which came up during the P2P workshop I want to
present here was: Who and where is the enemy?
If we think that peer production is subversive to capitalism then who
is protecting capitalism? Classicaly this was a task for the state.
However, nowadays at least in the EU the states are quite in favor of
Free Software and things like OpenAccess.
Michel thinks that hacking is not antagonistic to anything but a new
life practice and therefore there is no enemy. I tend to agree on the
"not-antagonistic" part but to me this doesn't explain why resistance
is low. Or do we still not yet saw the maximum resistance?
May be someone here has answers or interesting ideas?
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very interesting question. It is astounding to me that you give that
diagnosis of the situation as it is, and that you do not mention or try to
conceive the expansion of the Intellectual Property Regime in the last
decades.
according to the thesis of Group Krisis the regular "productive" way of
accumulatingcapital has lost its significance for the growth of capital.
Its so ubiquitous that you cant generate high profit margins by simply
material "supply". The Quartz Part of a watch is as cheap as the mineral
sand where Silicone might come from. (dont take me as an expert on that)
Productivity gains destroy the value - generating capabilitries of
industries.
That is where the increasing importance of intellectual property comes in.
Its more lucrative to forbid and allow activitities and to receive an
"information rent". There is a growing market for lucrative impediments of
human activities. Thats unique and new in history.
So here is the enemy: capital that seeks to grow and chooses methods that
impede human self-reliance. In order to maintain its growth it is ready to
create constraints. Its an everyday phenomenon. "Customer satisfaction"
has turned to "customer binding", Its gardly difficult to see more and
more aggressive structural business practises taking place, and one of
these is to impede autonomy of work.
On the other side, the opposite trend exists too: the prosuming use of
user activity, even user innovation and user production. I think that Eric
von Hippel has done groundbreaking research on this.
Its a situation like at the end of feudalism, where one side of the old
ruling class wants to go to the extreme of the old domination system
("absolutism") while on the other side the other faction wants to grab new
opportunities.
In this context the question of the "enemy" can be posed and answered.
Also the question of the "allies".