Dmytri Kleiner’s critique of Yochai Benkler

In the same article that we discussed yesterday, D. Kleiner offers a critique of Benkler’s theory of commons-based peer production being limited to the immaterial sphere. He writes:

Yochai Benkler’s conception of Social Production, where a network of peers apply their labour to a common stock for mutual and individual benefit, certainly resonates with age-old proposed socialist modes of production, particularly in the libertarian socialist tendencies, where a class-less community of workers (“peers”) produce collaboratively within a property-less (“commons-based”) society. Clearly, even Marx would agree that the ideal of Communism was commons-based peer production. The novelty of Social Production as understood by Benkler is that the property in the commons is entirely non-rivalrous property: Intellectual property and network transferable or accessible resources. Property with virtually no reproduction costs. There is no denying that Benkler’s wealthy network has creating astounding amounts of wealth. The use-value of this information commons is fantastic, as evident by the use-value of Free Software, of Wikipedia, of online communications and social networking tools, etc. However, if commons-based peer-production is limited exclusively to a commons made of digital property with virtual no reproduction costs then how can the use-value produced be translated into exchange-value? Something with no reproduction costs can have no exchange-value in a context of free exchange. Further, unless it can be converted into exchange-value, how can the peer producers be able to acquire the material needs for their own subsistence? The wealthy network exists within a context of a poor planet. The root of the problem of poverty does not lay in a lack of culture or information (though both are factors), but of direct exploitation of the producing class by the property owning classes. The source of poverty is not reproduction costs, but rather extracted economic rents, forcing the producers to accept less than the full product of their labour as their wage by denying them independent access to the means of production. So long as commons-based peer-production is applied narrowly to only an information commons, while the capitalist mode of production still dominates the production of material wealth, owners of material property, namely land and capital, will continue to capture the marginal wealth created as a result of the productivity of the information commons.

Whatever exchange value is derived from the information commons will always be captured by owners of real property, which lays outside the commons.

For Social Production to have any effect on general material wealth it has to operate within the context of a total system of goods and services, where the physical means of production and the virtual means of production are both available in the commons for peer production.

By establishing the idea of commons-based peer-production in the context of an information-only commons, Benkler is giving the peer-to-peer economy, or the competitive sector, yet anther way to create wealth for appropriation by the property privilege economy, or the monopoly sectors.”

Commentary (Michel Bauwens):

I essentially agree with D. Kleiner, that it is reductive to restrict peer production to the immaterial sector.

However, his argument about sustainability of peer production may rest on a confusion. Peer production is essentially non-reciprocal or ‘doubly free’: the freedom to contribute, and the freedom to use. Thus a direct connection between an income, in exchange for an engagement, is not peer production, but belongs to the exchange economy.

Nevertheless, peer production, already sustainable on a collective level because there is always a critical mass of collaborators, despite individuals being added or leaving the project, must be sustainable in some way. And the only way to make it collectively sustainable, is to introduce a basic income, where by definition there is no connection between work and output, as it is unconditional.

In my vision, this gives a society which has a core of non-reciprocal peer production, responsible for the most valuable cultural, intellectual and spiritual ‘use-value’ creation, BUT, this needs to be coupled to a pluralistic economy, that consists of a mixture of a reinforced gift economies for services and surviving traditional economies, and a reformed, peer-informed, non-capitalist market.

But indeed, peer production need not be confined to the immaterial sphere.

It’s expansion in the physical sphere is dependent on 3 factors:

1) the possibility of an abundance or a distribution of resources (this is already the case for computing resources)

2) the possibility of separating immaterial design processes from physical production; in such cases, the first process can be peer-produced; and the second can be much more distributed through P2P exchanges

3) the interlinking of physical, logical (licences), and digital resources, so that we can create physical commons of public goods that are protected from abuse (the tragedy of the commons).

But in any case, such extension can only be partial, as we will still need an exchange-based economy for scarce goods. But, such an exchange economy need not be capitalist.

I’m also particularly puzzled by Kleiner’s argument that the portion of the commons-created use value that can be monetized, can only be appropriated by the owners of property. I have explained elsewhere that peer production need not pass through vectoral capitalists, who own the vectors of information, but that this can now be done by the organizers of the participatory platforms themselves, the netarchical capitalists. But there is no iron law that this must be so. Peer producers can, and perhaps should, create their own vehicles to monetize the commonly created value.
So to conclude: it makes no sense to argue for a full extension of peer production to the physical sphere, because non-reciprocal producton is predicated on abudance. For scarce rival goods, we need different and appropropriate approaches.

(picture via Refugees Emancipation)

2 Comments Dmytri Kleiner’s critique of Yochai Benkler

  1. AvatarSam Rose

    I think that capitalist markets can co-exist with non-capitalist markets in ways that don’t have the capitalist market crowding out all other markets. I think that once people have a way to deal with trust metrics, and with intangible value metrics, and network value metrics, that financial bottom lines will take their place among many other bottom lines, instead of being the most important.

    This is part of the “pull” economy models. “Pull” models can handle hybrid networks of companies and peer-producers.

    I see many simultaneous arrangements emerging.

    As you mention:

    “expansion in the physical sphere is dependent on 3 factors:

    1) the possibility of an abundance or a distribution of resources (this is already the case for computing resources)

    2) the possibility of separating immaterial design processes from physical production; in such cases, the first process can be peer-produced; and the second can be much more distributed through P2P exchanges

    3) the interlinking of physical, logical (licences), and digital resources, so that we can create physical commons of public goods that are protected from abuse (the tragedy of the commons).”

    Private companies will very likely emerge emerge to try and capitalize off of enthusiams that emerge around Open Design and online peer production of designs intended for physical production. Already, we see this in the rapid prototyping/personal fabrication spheres with businesses like http://emachineshop.com/ and suppliers like https://www.barebonespcb.com/!BB1.asp, and http://www.makezine.com/ This is a hobbyist area now mostly, but will increasingly move into smaller and larger business realms.

    Plus, there are many exchanges that take place in networks, such as barters of knowledge and time, that can be measured and optimized in a p2p way to create new barter economies that inform and add value. People can voluntarily offer this data about themselves, and systems can be set up to monitor individual impact, and network value. These networks can consist of groups of peer producers, and organizations that partner with them. They can all be organized around a core commons of peer produced designs that are then built upon and produced to meet local and cutomized demands. These “pull” model networks are based primarily around trust/trusted relationships.

  2. AvatarMichel Bauwens

    Hi Sam:

    perhaps, we have some differences of semantics. I’m not sure there is such a thing as capitalist markets, I’d rather call them anti-markets. First, 1) because all sectors have private monopolies; 2) because these could not exist without extensive corporate welfare policies; 3) because it treats nature as an externality and 4) because it is based on the historical and continuing expropriation of the real producers to the benefit of centralized propietors. So together with Fernand Braudel, Manuel de Landa, and Kevin Carson, I will tend to call them anti-markets. Point 3 is now the most serious, since our very biosphere is under threat.

    So we need reforms that avoid permanent accumulation and externalisation, i.e. we need true costing. Private companies are not wrong, but the system as a whole, which optimizes one subsystem at the expense of the whole is. Now, semantics aside, concepts like natural capitalism or living companies, or ‘real producer-based free markets’ .. are fine with me.

    Of course, we have to work within the existing framework and start the change from where we are now.

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