Re: [ox-en] Labor contradictions
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:47:45 +0200
Hi Michel and all!
I'm reformatting this mail to make the quoting structure
comprehensible.
9 months (275 days) ago Michael Bauwens wrote:
Don't you think that this link is a key element to achieve the
"triple-free peer production", defined by Tere Vaden (23.11.2007) as
including "the ownership [not the best term] of the means
of
production
down to the level of electricity, the physical infra, etc."?
No, I don't think this link is crucial.
I'm very interested in an elaboration of your thoughts on this: why
is ownership not crucial.
It is very interesting to read my own thoughts 9 months later - now in
the context of a different debate about the importance of the means of
production ;-) .
I had to re-read the context of this. The context was the following:
Raoul wrote:
At a smaller scale, but in a more recent scope, (May 2007, would you say
the same for the fight of the Buenos Aires subway workers who, as a
reaction against the accord signed by the union and the concessionary
company, allowed passengers to travel free, without paying?
It is true that it is very difficult for workers fights to escape the
capitalistic logic and legality. Not only because of the
coercion/repression system which makes "illegal" any step outside that
framework, (the Buenos-Aires-subway corporation has immediately lodged a
penal complaint against the workers who animated the free travel
action), but also, and I would say mainly, because it is not easy to see
the possibility of an alternative framework.
Don't you think that it is at this level - the possibility of developing
a non-capitalist logic - that a connection between "peer production" and
the workers fights can develop? Even if, for the moment, things are only
at a germ level?
In other words: Workers struggle and peer production. I rethought what
I wrote then but I still think it is true - though today I'd say it in
a more detailed way.
Eben Moglen says we for the first time have the opportunity to
change the world without violent expropriation of the means of
production, but I'm not aware of the underlying principles of this
conviction.
The core question to me is what you do with the means of production
once you have acquired them. If you use them to do the same as before
- i.e. no Selbstentfaltung but abstract labor - then you simply repeat
the history of those attempts in capitalism.
If, however, you acquire means of production because you need them for
your Selbstentfaltung then it is a different thing.
So the question for social movements IMHO would be what they do with
their acquirement. And what the acquirement allows to do with it. The
abstract labor is often deeply embedded in the industrial means of
production capitalism developed. I think the Soviet Union showed this
quite nicely: Soviet Union labor was as alienated as capitalist labor.
If you like it is an historical pity that the so called real socialist
countries were not able to head for Selbstentfaltung.
A peer production based attempt to acquire means of production would
mean to acquire the most advanced means of production available - like
industrial robots and the like. These are the means of production you
can Selbstentfalt with by playfully working with them and doing useful
things at the same time.
I believe that I largely share them, 'intuitively', but also would
have trouble formulating why. I think that largely it is best to
avoid violence, which not only produces backlash but also changes
the practices of those using them; and that there is a lot we can do
'routing around' the obstacle of formal property. I notice also that
the great tactical advances of GPL and CC are using property in a
jiu jitsu way ...
Probably everyone wants to avoid violence. However, in changes of eras
this is not always possible. I think the best way here is to have a
new mode of production being so convincing to everyone that there is
little resistance.
A reply to another mail in the same thread:
9 months (275 days) ago Michael Bauwens wrote:
From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
The core question to me here is: Could peer production modes help
social struggles? In Germany for instance where we have high
unemployment and poorness on the rise I can not see where peer
production modes are adopted by those (also marginal) social
struggles. IMHO the reason for this is: Peer production has no special
appeal to the unemployed.
Is that really so? I know the world and practice of NGO's,
philanthropy etc.. has known significant changes, as does political
practice in general, as we can see in the US election ... of course
not a dominant role in a totally different logic yet, but a
significant factor of change nevertheless. Lazzarato has described
the changes in style of social movements in France (the
'coordination' format).
I remember times when the Green movement in Germany - as the best
known example - hated computers. Meanwhile they use them. But a few
weeks back in Hiddinghausen I learned once again how big the
technophobia still is in this domain. But that's indeed not workers
movement.
Well, if the workers movement would support peer production then
classical workers movement institution probably should support the 4th
Oekonux Conference. However, the people I asked for contacts all were
quite sceptical about such support.
Also the peer production revolution mainly happens in the white collar
section of the workers. I think the blud collar section is still far
stronger in th workers movement.
No, from what I see in Germany I can not set see anything I'd call
support. There are a few bright individuals which see the potential of
peer production but the general movement is far from that. But that
applies to all types of convictions probably.
Grüße
Stefan
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