P2P Foundation

Hi Vasilis,

yesterday I lost my commentary, so I’m putting it in email first
Here are a few comments as a response to Vasilis Kostakis, who questions whether p2p is “left”, arguing that it just is.

P2P Theory has 3 levels. The first one is just observing that the p2p dynamic is emerging, analysing its characteristics, and in this context, indeed p2p “just is”

However, the second level of evaluation already implies a framework of values. We usually argue that peer production is ‘better’, i.e. more productive than the for-profit mode, that it’s political framework of peer governance is more participative, and that its property formats are more distributive.

Finally, we conclude from this a practical stance. If it is indeed better, and represents an advance for humanity, then it is worth promoting.

P2P Theory also aims to be integrative or meta-paradigmatic. This means that we do not feel obliged to chose from previous ideological or mono-paradigmatic interpretations but aim to take useful concepts and re-integrate them in a higher more complex unity. But integration is an always ongoing process, never anything fixed or final. This means that the new synthesis is itself part of a variety of interpretations, and can therefore be politically situated. My hunch is therefore that interpretations of the ‘informational society’ will also have left-right polarities.

As far as I can see, the right means the following. 1) conservative, i.e. defending an existing stratification, 2) liberal, accepting new meritocratic stratifications, 3) radical, re-instituting new stratifications (think of the Nazis or the neoliberal redistribution of wealth from poor to rich). Further distinctions are between authoritarian and libertarian, in terms of how to get from one situation to another. The latter strand, stresses freedom over equality.

In contrast, the left has always been about overcoming stratification, about extending participation. Of course, it can have the practical effect of creating new stratifications, but never in its ideal. Also, in its own authoritarian forms, it would choose equality over freedom.

My belief is that this opposition between freedom and equality is overcome through the equipotentiality of peer production, that it is the voluntary (free) participation which is the condition of equipotential participation (equality), and vice versa. This is why there is a historic opportunity to find common ground between those who favour freedom and those favouring equality.

But nevertheless, it seems to me to be an essentially emancipatory effort to overcome stratification, and that I believe makes it also a renewal of the tradition of the left.

But I would qualify that. Today is not an era of abstract utopias, but of concretely identifying best practices and interconnecting them. This makes any approach experimental and pluralist. Hence, I always have maintained that the P2P Foundation stands for a society that is re-orientated around the p2p logic, that this is a good thing, but that arriving there is entirely a matter of pluralist approaches, which can find common ground in the mutual goal. Hence, it is a bridge between various political approaches and choices.