Kevin Carson reacts to our entry on Peer Property
We recently augmented our P2P Foundation Encyclopedia entry on Kevin Carson sent us the following reaction:
“It’s a great article. One thing that struck me: two of the alleged advantages of capitalism, at least in the “actually existing” sense of absentee ownership and wage labor, are really points against capitalism. The older capitalism of small-scale producers exchanging goods in a largely
competitive market, admittedly, really did have the advantages of distributed knowledge and self-interest.
But the dominant institution of today’s capitalism–the large, bureaucratic, hierarchical corporation–is almost as bad, if not as bad, as the old Soviet bloc planned economies in its information and incentive problems. In the corporation, any distributed knowledge of how to improve productivity must be aggregated within a hierarchy, with transaction costs probably higher than any benefits from productivity increases. Not only do the workers lack authority to translate their understanding directly into practice, but they have no rational interest in doing so. Any productivity increases that result from their knowledge of the process will be appropriated by the managers and owners, and all the workers will get out of it is downsizings
and speedups.
On the other hand, a free market of small and cooperatively-owned firms would have all the advantages claimed for capitalism: those making production decisions would be those with direct knowledge of the process, and would likewise be the same people who would internalize all the costs and benefits of their decisions.”
