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Re: [ox-en] Re: The nature of apple trees



Hi Michel and all!

Last week (9 days ago) Michel Bauwens wrote:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
Of course. The change in the mode of production I see in peer
production is also a change in the protocol and design rules. However,
it's much more fundamental and - in the original sense of the word -
much more radical.

yes, but the evolution of peer production won't just be natural, it will
involve social struggle and policy and strategy

Certainly.

yes, right wing libertarians are still very strong, but there's also a
leftwing variety such as represented by kevin carson at mutualist.org, it's
quite an interesting tradition, but unknown in europe

I think I can imagine what mutualists are about. In German we have the
word "Gegenseitigkeit" and I remember that for some anarchist brands
this was quite important.

Still I think that this needs to be seen in the light of the *actually
existing peer production*. And then the quite personal oriented part
of mutualist thinking is at stake IMHO.

I agree. These are the Bonsais I talked about. Those Bonsais come up
when states retreat from their responsibilities, markets fail and
people fall into great need. I'm convinced that from this type of
great need there will come no alternative. In general you don't
develop sustainable alternatives when you fight for your life -
otherwise the poor countries on this planet would have developed these
alternatives long ago. No, the alternative is born in the upper middle
classes - just where peer production takes place.

well, that reveals something of your type of class analysis;

Well, I'm probably not a class struggler ;-) ...

I rather thing
that social change will be a combination of 1) innovation by knowledge
workers, by no means all upper middle class;

Well, may be not all but at least they are middle class.

2) social struggles by working
majorities;

That I consider an open question. I guess we will get back to this.

3) alliances with progressive elements of the ruling classes

Yes.

Well, the recent comments I read for Germany say that basically the
LETS movement is dead (once more).

I find that hard to believe in the context of sustained growth of the lets
movement and similar initiatives worldwide,

perhaps experts like George Pleger can shed some light?

Well, I read that recently in the newspaper CONTRASTE and they
regularly report about this movement since years. Also from some
friends who tried it I learned it just not works good enough.

I am saying we need integrated strategies for a pluralist economy, with peer
production at its core, but also surrounded in onion like fashion with
resource-based economics,  alssharing, gifting and also exchange modes; for
the latter, better-designed money is essential; so it is part of a
fundamental transformation; there are few things as radical as changing the
logic of money, which is so central

Well, in principal I'd agree to an integrated strategy. However, each
step of that strategy needs to point in the same direction. And we
certainly differ in the assessment for money trickery schemes here.

Though I agree that even inside the money based system it makes sense
to make life as comfortable as possible - which may make social
democrat type reforms make sense - in general I can not see how
exchange based steps can improve peer production - simply because they
are basically opposed to the openness of peer production.

I'm sorry but I don't know much about post-marxists.

well, you are one

I'm sorry, but I don't accept this label.

But what is more interesting is that you didn't answer this question:

All I know is that use and exchange value are two attributes of goods
which relate to completely different things. In the absence of
exchange value the only goal of production is creating use value. This
is done in peer production.

So what is your choice here?

IMHO that is the key question to understand what you are talking about
when you say value.

(Of course I think that it is the direct production of use value
without the interference of exchange value which makes the difference
- but this is only an abstract answer needing far more research.)

So I conclude that your point 3 is either capitalist or anarchist -
with the perfect mixture of "capitalist / free market anarchists".
Though I think it is important to know capitalism and anarchism it is
even more important to look at the reality of peer production and that
it matches neither capitalist nor anarchist thesises / preconditions
very well. Though this is yet another challenge for people I think it
is absolutely needed...

it's not ultimately capitalist, but it recognizes the existence of markets
and wants better and fair markets as long as they are inevitable forms for
exchange;

Ok and ok with me. But nothing which brings peer production about. Do
you agree?

it's not anarchist because I advocate a Partner State model, not
its forceful abolition

True that all anarchists are opposed to a state. Nonetheless the whole
spirit is very anarchist and you have to take care here to not fall
into ideological traps.

In addition as the maintainer of this project I'd like to sort out for
Oekonux what is on-topic and what is off-topic. IMHO Oekonux is about
aspects 1 and 2 above. People interested in these topics will find a
place where they can discuss and research this.

People who are also / more interested in points 3 and 4 above can move
to P2P Foundation or to other places where this is discussed since
decades and stop flooding this project with exchange based stuff.

I for one think we have done enough back and forth, but for sure the topic
of p2p money will rise again, and people will not take kindly to censorship,

Well, people *do* unsubscribe partly because of the traffic and at
least one also for the topics.

This mailing list is for peer production related issues and I think by
now it is clear that neither social democrat nor money trickery
reforms are such issues. I think the reason why people subscribed here
should be respected and subscribers should not be spammed. If they
want to discuss this they can easily move over to P2P Foundation
mailing lists and continue there.

I would appreciate if the traffic on this list goes down again so it
makes sense for instance to post the conference documentation here
step by step.


						Grüße

						Stefan
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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