P2P Foundation

Excerpt from an analysis of the Obama approach by Naomi Klein:

“Obama has gone much further, turning the White House into a kind of never-ending reality show starring the lovable Obama clan. This too can be traced to the mid-90s branding craze, when marketers grew tired of the limitations of traditional advertising and began creating three-dimensional “experiences” – branded temples where shoppers could crawl inside the personality of their favourite brands. The problem is not that Obama is using the same tricks and tools as the superbrands; anyone wanting to move the culture these days pretty much has to do that. The problem is that, as with so many other lifestyle brands before him, his actions do not come close to living up to the hopes he has raised.

Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti-war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two-party ­monopoly through dogged organisation and donations gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swallowed the Democratic party establishment in one gulp after defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued “bipartisanship” with crazed Republicans once in the White House.”

(the title of this entry is inspired by John Robb)

Bibliography of one of the three main paradigms constituting the P2P ethos: open and free input, participatory processes of value creation, and commons oriented output.

See:

* Bibliography: Understanding participation: A literature review.

Pathways through Participation explains:

“Our project looks at participation in a very broad way, and covers a wide range of participatory activities that are often viewed in isolation. This broad approach to participation has informed our literature review, which is now available for download.

The review brings together different bodies of literature on participation, including literature on community development, volunteering, public participation, social movements, everyday politics and ethical consumption. It looks at the historical and current drivers of participation, the activities and actors of participation and different theoretical approaches that contribute to a better understanding of participation. It closes with our emerging ‘participation framework’ that we aim to further develop and refine in the subsequent stages of the project.”

We have opened the door on the notion 1) that the state could participate in the new networks as a legitimate actor, or 2) that the state could decentralize to the point of being a network itself. Certainly states participate in networks already, but for many global networks the impetus to their formation is the failure of the state to adequately address their interests. The result is a general antipathy toward the state, a resistance to its inclusion, and an oppositional attitude. On the second point, the primary characteristic of statehood is an embrace of hierarchy (at least one), i.e. that the state is the supreme legitimate representative of the collective will and that all others must be ultimately subject to it. This fundamentally at odds with the “plurilateralist” nature of networks. Therefore, in both instances, it may be that for the state to continue to participate effectively it would have to overcome its own nature, or state-ness, and in so doing would no longer be a state in any real sense.

The above quote is from Paul Hartzog’s master essay on Panarchy:

* Panarchy: Governance in the Network Age

It has a definite relation with our own concept of Partner State.

My conviction regarding the state is that:

1) it is a current inevitability

2) in the long term, we do need an expression of general interests that is separate from a mere federation of private interests, even if these are expressed by peer governed civil society networks

But it is important to realize that the current form of a class-based state, which needs to balance 1) the interests of the dominant factions; 2) the social balance of forces and the interest of the whole system; 3) and its own interests as a separate entity …

is not an eternal form of that general interest.

Our notion of the Partner State is a transitional concept, that would allow the state to evolve from its current corporate welfare orientation, to one where it both becomes an enabler and servant of civil society and its peer networks, and a arbiter in charge of meta-governance between public, private and common/civil functions.

What I’m predicting is that 1) many new functions will progressively replace state functions as they are made progressively redundant; and 2) that for the remaining functions, the very nature of the state as an oppressive entity will change.

It is my understanding that Paul Hartzog’s approach, as evidenced in the quote above, is quite congruent with that.

As he writes, in what could be an alternative definition of the Partner State concept:

it may be that for the state to continue to participate effectively it would have to overcome its own nature, or state-ness, and in so doing would no longer be a state in any real sense.

A very interesting take on the crisis of value by Rob Horning, focusing on its dark side of also weakening worker’s bargaining power and well-being.

The original article has links and ends with a more extensive analysis of Apple and the iPad as example of netarchical strategies.

Rob Horning:

“What Anderson seems to miss in all his glee is the erosion of labor’s bargaining power. Since we’ll all be small-scale manufacturers, he seems to assume, there will be no laborers, per se. Or they will all be in China, at any rate, and who cares about them? The reality of crowdsourcing is that it is a good way to find someone to do any given piece of work the cheapest. And there are always people out there who underestimate the value of their abilities.

But that won’t happen without a fight. Bauwens recognizes that the information infrastructure will remain in the control of capitalists and could close off the liberating potential of new technology. “A new capitalist class is emerging,” he writes, “the forces which both ‘enable’ and exploit the participatory networks arising in the peer to peer era.” He adds, “Although the large netarchical corporations do enable participatory networks, their for-profit nature makes them dangerous trustees of commons-favorable protocols.” He lists some examples of netarchical capitalists, but no better example exists than Apple, whose new tablet device is clearly an attempt to toll the flow of information and reinstate the prerogatives of private intellectual property in the face of an emerging commons.”

Excerpted from John Robb:

“The Tea Party movement in the US is an open source political protest. It emerged due to a substantial loss of government legitimacy (primarily from the mishandling of the global financial crisis) and continues to percolate as legitimacy continues to drain away from the government (health care, banking reform, unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy, deficit, etc.). Here’s what open source means in this context:

Traditionally, a failure by the government would result in a gain by the opposition party. However, the peculiar dynamics of the two party system in the US works against this. The two parties have converged into a single dominant party with roughly similar agendas. Further, these parties have rigged the system to prevent third party formation. As a result, there isn’t a structured process to absorb this movement into the political system. ”

Capitalist Realism itself, is basically the cultural condition in which, with Marx, we stare with clear eyes at “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (4) but yet…keep calm and carry on. We are not unmoved exactly; but yet still we do nothing. The details of why and how, and the ramifications in various domains, are the object of the book.

The following excerpt comes from a stimulating review of a book by Mark Fischer, “Capitalist Realism”, positively estimated by the author of the fascinating and stimulating Angel Economics blog, which is quite aligned to our thinking at the P2P Foundation.

Here he responds to one of the observations of the author:

Thesis by Mark Fischer:

“For most people under twenty in Europe and North America, the lack of alternatives to capitalism is no longer even an issue”

Response by Angel Economics:

“To some degree this is true. However, a closer look would reveal that throughout this stratum, within numerous subgroups - each in their different ways - there are explorations taking place of ways of doing things which go beyond capitalism. Most do not explicitly or self-consciously see things in those terms of course – to provide that awareness of the wider context and meaning, is the role of a movement (see below). But still. Thriving knitting groups; shared amateur photography (with a high degree of editing skill and artistic vision); open-source software; filesharing (the engine for this comes from the young, and many take this source of acquiring data simply as axiomatic); all sorts of geeky DIY, from biotechnology, pharmacology, permaculture, health analysis and augmentation, robotics; binraiding (shops throw out great stuff); swapping and ‘freecycling’ consumer goods; etc etc. There is a homebrew industrial revolution, and the young are often on its leading edge.”

This discussion is followed up by another one, about the extraordinary power of capital to coopt resistance. It does this either by creating a split between thinking and acting, it doesn’t care what you think, as long as you don’t take action (for example it can rejoice in the anticapitalist Avatar bringing in $500m or more, as long as it is not associated with concrete action); or, by interpreting your resistance as a spectacular performance which it can capitalize on.

Citing Fisher:

Capitalism does not merely appropriate but actually sets about producing cultural artifacts with pre-packed anti-capitalism in them. Taking a recent example, Fisher notes that “[a] film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity”

This leads AE to call for a more explicit anticapitalism as an answer against cooptation:

“All it would take for artistic works to become un-commodifiable in a stronger sense, would be the existence of a genuine anticapitalist political movement to which they could attach themselves. If there were such a movement which threatened capital, and it was generally known that some work expressed its aspirations, you can be sure it would become indigestible by MTV, the Wellcome Trust, or any other 400ft disembodied capitalist throat.

Putting this in other words: insofar as anti-capitalism is merely expressed or performed or displayed, it is not, truly, anti-capitalism.”

He concludes that:

“A proper political movement needs to be constituted with the basic aim of fundamentally restructuring socioeconomic relations.” (and even mentions current plans to create a ‘fifth international‘)

And yet he must concede (as does this other blog author):

“The hard Left is peculiar at the moment. Popular discontent with the social status quo runs extremely deep and wide, and, in fact, is even often very clear about the identity or cause of its problems, viz. capitalism. And yet the hard Left virtually never seems able to tap into this.”

I would suggest that this condition is terminal, because the left as we understand it, is a movement of resistance against, but also co-evolving with industrial capitalism. While it can be proud of having achieved a redistributive welfare state (only partially dismantled under neoliberalism), it has a very long and consistent record of failure as anti-capitalist movement.

I would suggest the analogy with marriage, in order to explain the different feeling-tone of the P2P Foundation’s attempt to create a new type of peer to peer social movement, that is substantially different from the approach of the traditional left.

Think about a forced marriage, which nevertheless was acceptable because both partners benefitted (capital and labour). The relationship is fundamentally contradictory and conflictual, but fighting occurs only as long as the partners see a future in the relationship. As long as you fight against, but within the framework posed by capital as the dominant system, it actually means you are still attached to it. This is for me what anticapitalism signifies, beyond the radical but powerless demands to mouth a total opposition to the system of capital (in this, the radical left ressembles the catholic church and its demand to accept the credo first and above all). It is not only rather powerless and has a record of failure, but actually signifies a taking serious of capital as the central issue of life. Paradoxically, it feeds the beast that it wants to bring down.

Post-capitalism though is different. It is already profoundly convinced that the system of capital is dying, because it knows that an infinite growth machine is a logical and physical impossibility in a finite worth that is now seriously subject to biospheric destruction. But it also knows that empty radical stances are powerless. And it knows from the record of history, that whenever new hyperproductive alternatives of value production occured, as it now does with peer production, governance and property, they were at first used by the previously dominant but dying core system, before replacing it. So, we essentially do not worry that forces of capital use open, participative, and commons oriented modalities to strengthen themselves, because by doing so they actually strengthen the post-capitalist alternatives. What matters most is not the fear of cooptation, but rather the protection of the autonomy of the post-capitalist peer to peer logics that we apply amongst ourselves as peer producers. If we live this core relationship in the core of the value production modality, and the market players use the commons to create added value for the market, this is acceptable to us to the degree that the core functioning remains possible. Only when market players use their dominance to subvert the core logic, say by creating ‘fake distorted commons’ (as explained by Massimo de Angelis), do we worry and fight back.

Therefore as post-capitalists, we know that we have to build and construct alternatives, but the core of our consciousness is not directed against a powerful enemy (because we know the Emperor is already naked), but rather to insure the conditions for the survival and thriving of the human race, in the period of terminal transition. We also know that demanding acceptance of a credo, is counterproductive and isolating, though we do have social charters, that state clearly the minimal demands for operating in a commons. We just ask that you behave in that equipotential way, not that you sign up to a anticapitalist credo. Rather we work with everyone which agrees in the positivity of the alternative, and do not care that they may say they support capitalism, as this can means so many different things to so many different people. In fact, since we are able to divorce the market from capitalism, we know that many market players are natural allies, as they themselves already subverting the core logic of accumulation of capital. Fair trade, socially responsible investments, social enterpreneurs and the like, are already subsuming the forms of capital, to logics which are no longer about accumulation but about the production of social goods. These enterpreneurs are not the enemies of peer producing communities, but allies. They are groping towards the chaotic attractor that is the peer to peer logic of partnership in the creation of value. As peer producing communities we must choose to preferentially treat with those market forces that respect our autonomy, and have formats that are maximally aligned with our own ethos, but we accept all those that respect our autonomy and core functioning as a commons. This in my view can create a much wider alliance of social forces, than a mere anti-capitalist alliance, which is in the current configuration, usually a marginal affair of true believers.

The importance is to maximize those type of social relations, in my view ‘peer to peer’, which go beyond the greed and mere exchange of the capitalist marketplace, and make us live today, the social logic which we want to become the core of the new society and civilization of tomorrow. Post-capitalism means living our values today, and creating the institutions to strengthen and defend it, without waiting for capitalism to die. As previous systems which had become parasitic, and were faced with a more socially productive alternative, invariably did. This does emphatically not mean a passeist or non-political attitude, just a more judicious management of our transformative energies. The wounded beast has outlived its usefullness, let’s move on.

To conclude, another challenge to the traditional left strategy, by John Robb:

It’s …

dated nostalgia for populist movements and progressive government reform — that legacy thinking is utterly useless, as a strategy for success, given the rise of a dominant and sovereign global system that doesn’t have any governing body to appeal to

What do you think?

“In this book we attempt to articulate what constitutes a collaboration. We argue that rules for participation, established guidelines for attribution, organizational structure and leadership, and clear goals are necessary for collaboration. In most cases, when we think of these attributes, we think of manifestos of artist and activist groups, attempts to govern attribution by formal licenses like the Free Culture and Free Software licenses, Debian’s formal decision making process, or Eric Raymond’s notion of a Benevolent Dictator that characterizes Linus Torvald’s governance over Linux.”

Book: Collaborative Futures. Floss Manuals, 2010.

FLOSS Manuals publishes how-to books on free software for users and developers, following an open and free book publishing model.

This time though, they innovated doubly by publishing a book with a non-technical theme, which is also not a manual, and was produced through the book sprint method of rapid collaborative writing. The book is an extented meditation on various collaborative governance methods that are emerging around peer production and what the conditions would be for a even more collaborative future.

The first excerpt outlines the Book Sprint methodology, and is followed by a sample page to give you a taste of their approach.

1. Book Sprints

“The Book Sprint concept was devised by Tomas Krag. Tomas conceived of book production as a collaborative activity involving substantial donations of volunteer time.

As a result we have a book, a vastly improved (free) software platform, happy participants, and clear ideas on what new methods worked and what didn’t. We look forward to your thoughts and contributions…”

2. A Sample Page

“Participation and Process

Our conceptions of what constitutes fair treatment vary according to context, as do our reactions to being treated unfairly. If someone jumps the queue in front of us in a shop, it’s annoying but is quickly forgotten. But if we contribute time or money to establishing a collective enterprise, and instead it is subverted for other ends, then we feel angry, betrayed.

Higher user status allows the individual greater power over the technical tools that co-ordinate the system, and require confidence on the part of others that access will not abused. This threat is higher in software projects where hostile infiltration poses a real security risk given that the code will be publicly distributed. A variety of methods for vouching for each other are thus cultivated, new developers may require sponsors. In the case of Debian physical encounters between developers are used to sign each others’ encryption keys, which are then used to authenticate the package management process, adding a further layer of robustness.”

“In my view few green people or transitioners recognise the huge distinction here between trying to reform consumer-capitalist society and trying to replace its major structures and systems. The Simpler Way contradicts the core systems of the present society and cannot be built unless we replace them. Consumer-capitalist society cannot be fixed; it cannot be reformed to not create the alarming global problems we face while still being about the pursuit of affluence and growth etc.”

Interesting challenge by Ted Trainer (via Nicholas Roberts):

(excerpts only, the source article is much longer, both on the alternative ‘Simpler Way” and in its detailed critique)

Ted Trainer:

“The only way the global sustainability and justice predicament can be solved is via something like the inspiring Transition Towns movement. However unless the movement radically alters its vision and goals I do not think it will make a significant contribution to solving our problems.

Given this analysis of our situation it is not possible to solve the problems without transition to a very different kind of society, one not based on globalisation, market forces, the profit motive, centralisation, representative democracy, or competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness. Above all it must be a zero-growth economy, with a far lower GDP than at present, and most difficult of all, it cannot be an affluent society.”

So, what needs to be done?

“What do we have to do in order to eventually achieve such huge and radical changes? The answer goes far beyond the things that green/transition people are doing now, such as setting up community gardens, food co-ops, recycling centres, Permaculture groups, skill banks, home-craft courses, commons, volunteering, downshifting, etc. Yes all these are the kinds of institutions and practices we will have in the new sustainable and just world so it is understandable that many people within the Eco-village, Transition Towns and green movements assume that if we just work at establishing more and more of these things then in time this will have created the new society. I think this is a serious mistake.

Secondly, the most crucial institutions for transition are not in the list above, are not being set up, and will not be set up by the thinking motivating the many good green people now establishing the gardens and recycling centres. If the global vision sketched above is valid then we ordinary people in our towns and suburbs eventually have to establish our own local Economy B, take control of it and relegate the market to a very minor role, identify local needs and work out how to meet them, get rid of unemployment, work out how to cut town imports, etc. …and grope towards the practices which enable us to collectively self-govern the town. In other words we have to deliberately come together to replace core consumer-capitalist ways in our town. This requires thinking about goals that are at an utterly different level to just initiating some good green practices within present society. It requires coming together to organise collective economic systems and political action. The town must ask itself what are we going to get together to do to solve our problems; what arrangements and institutions do we need to set up to make sure everyone around here is provided for? Such big picture thinking is rarely encountered in current green or transition movements.”

Therefore, Ted Trainer concludes:

Not surprisingly, at present the Transition Towns movement is reformist. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. Its implicit rationale is that it is sufficient to create more community gardens, recycling centres, skill banks, cycle paths, seed sharing, poultry coops, etc. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. (Some people within the movement say or think they are working for change from consumer-capitalist society but my point is that in fact the things they are doing will not have that effect, and will only bring about changes within it.)

In the following interview, Cahn explains the basic principles behind timebanks:

For more documentation, go to the Shareable article.

Privacy isn’t a technological binary that you turn off and on. Privacy is about having control of a situation. It’s about controlling what information flows where and adjusting measures of trust when things flow in unexpected ways. It’s about creating certainty so that we can act appropriately. People still care about privacy because they care about control. Sure, many teens repeatedly tell me “public by default, private when necessary” but this doesn’t suggest that privacy is declining; it suggests that publicity has value and, more importantly, that folks are very conscious about when something is private and want it to remain so. When the default is private, you have to think about making something public. When the default is public, you become very aware of privacy. And thus, I would suspect, people are more conscious of privacy now than ever. Because not everyone wants to share everything to everyone else all the time.

Excerpted from a brilliant analysis by Danah Boyd on the contradictions of maintaining privacy control in a corporate platform:

“Let’s take this scenario for a moment. Bob trust Alice. Bob tells Alice something that he doesn’t want anyone else to know and he tells her not to tell anyone. Alice tells everyone at school because she believes she can gain social stature from it. Bob is hurt and embarrassed. His trust in Alice diminishes. Bob now has two choices. He can break up with Alice, tell the world that Alice is evil, and be perpetually horribly hurt. Or he can take what he learned and manipulate Alice. Next time something bugs him, he’ll tell Alice precisely because he wants everyone to know. And if he wants to guarantee that it’ll spread, he’ll tell her not to tell anyone.

Public-ness has always been a privilege. For a long time, only a few chosen few got to be public figures. Now we’ve changed the equation and anyone can theoretically be public, can theoretically be seen by millions. So it mustn’t be a privilege anymore, eh? Not quite. There are still huge social costs to being public, social costs that geeks in Silicon Valley don’t have to account for. Not everyone gets to show up to work whenever they feel like it wearing whatever they’d like and expect a phatty paycheck. Not everyone has the opportunity to be whoever they want in public and demand that everyone else just cope. I know there are lots of folks out there who think that we should force everyone into the public so that we can create a culture where that IS the norm. Not only do I think that this is unreasonable, but I don’t think that this is truly what we want. The same Silicon Valley tycoons who want to push everyone into the public don’t want their kids to know that their teachers are sexual beings, even when their sexuality is as vanilla as it gets. Should we even begin to talk about the marginalized populations out there?”