From a three-part exchange between Anthony Barnett and Gerry Hassan in Open Democracy, on the future of the British left, comes an interesting passage by Anthony Barnett, which in essence offers a class theory for the p2p movement:

“Today, the next technological and productive wave offers the chance of what might be called an artisan class, hugely productive, not marginal, and very widespread, with an interest in creating a market society that is not dominated by capital. ‘Self-determinations’ would fit well with its interests. One hint of it is in what Carlotta Perez describes as the switch from closed hierarchies to open networks, from employees as resources to “employees as creative capital”.

The Sloanist period of capitalism, still expanding of course in the developing world, gave the wealth (and debts) to its employees. From cars to labour saving devices such as washing machines (incredibly important for women), this transformed their lives. But they remained objects of consumption and the fruits of equal citizenship were primarily experienced in consumer ownership.

The question now is whether the micro-chip and computers are bringing about the publics ownership and control of the instruments of production. For sure digital technology is dissolving the massed industrial labour force of the Sloanist period. While we are seeing the huge growth of ‘knowledge workers’ of all kinds (Research from the Work Foundation claims that such workers now comprise 42 per cent of the total and are rising).

Are we witnessing is the transformation of the workforce into the shared owners and controllers of capital? If so, can we through the organisation of our productive power create a networked market society, which is capable of displacing the privatised rule of capital on the basis of your self-determinations?

There are two sets of evidence pointing in this direction. The increasing rise of what can be seen as the rise of an artisan class of producers of all kinds enabled by digital technology. Often running small, interconnected businesses with high skills and a vested interest in openness rather than oligopoly. The current fashion for and interest in 18th century enlightenment issues and republicanism is associated with this shift, I feel. Second, there is the increasing interest in mutualism, cooperatives and other forms of self-governing businesses. There is a rapidly growing body of research and advocacy about this too (see, for example, Robin Murray of NESTA and the Young Foundation on “the new social economy” or the work of the New Economics Foundation).

Linked to this is what could prove to be an extraordinarily important shift in language that is also fundamental challenge to the measurement of a return on investment: from profit “maximisation” to revenue “optimisation”. See Will Davies here in OurKingdom.

Tony Judt has written powerfully about the need for a new language for the left if we are to see a renew challenge to existing power structures. The notion of optimisation as against maximisation, with its inclusion of the whole environment of human planetary needs into its calculus underpins an argument for self-determinations. It gives it a different kind of political economy.”