David Laibman’s Deep History, which has already inspired me to a previous editorial comparing the peer to peer transition to that from slavery to feudalism, offers an innovative interpretation into the stadial (= by stages) evolution of capitalism. It is an abstract theory, but compatible with the historical record. I will first describe his vision, then inquire into its compatibility with our vision on the peer to peer transformation.
I urge anyone interested in peer to peer theory to read the following carefully, as I see it as a major new integrative moment and achievement in the understanding of the change dynamics of the coming era.
David Laibman’s theory goes like this, and my apologies for the simplifications.
He distinguishes two axes with each two polarities, which gives four quandrants. The logic of evolution, goes per column, from the top down (this gives: top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right).
The vertical axis divides up diffusion vs. accumulation. Accumulation is the well-known process of adding up capital through intensive development, i.e. “locallyâ€. Diffusion is the lesser known process of the extensive spread of capitalist relations in a precapitalist environment, say the McDonaldisation of the Third World.
The horizontal access divides internally oriented phases, from external oriented phases. This gives four quadrants, i.e. four phases, and three transitions between them.
DL also importantly distinguishes low-interventionist ‘passive states’ and ‘high-interventionist’ active state forms.
He also introduces ‘long cycles of balance of social power’, with an upswing of workers power, and a long period of downswing. I’ll leave this mostly out of the picture, but it is not difficult to see the downswing starting in the 1980’s and picking up speed after 1989.
I. Explaining the phases of capitalism
Let’s start.
Phase 1: internal diffusion of capitalist relations.
This is the first mercantile phase of capitalism, marked by the enclosures and forced proletarianisation of the English peasants, and outside the process was fed through the colonial expansion, slave trade, etc… The era is marked by active absolutist monarchies.
Transition I: nation-state start to coalesce, and passive states emerge.
Phase 2: internal accumulation with passive state: the liberal era of the 19th century.
Intensive but ‘spontaneous’ accumulation within nation states, is combined with a fairly passive “laisser faire†state approach.
Transition II: capital starts to transgress national boundaries, but national capital starts demanding protection from their states, while emerging social movements start making their demands.
Phase 3: external diffusion, active national states
The imperialist era which is marked by a formation of a world market, and the hardening of strong states, both for international competition, and for internal regulation and responding to the demands of social movements. DL divides up this ‘long 20th’ century, into a pre-Soviet era of classic imperialism; 2) the Soviet interregnum period marked by American hegemony; 3) the post Soviet era marked by an erosion of that central power of the U.S. and increasing problems leading to a transition to the fourth stage of globalism.
Transition III: capital starts transcending national boundaries but in a way that can no longer be contained by nation-states; diffusion completes but at the same times also fails to go very deep, causing deep cultural strains in the developing world; lack of global state power renders inoperable any solution to deep social divisions
Phase 4: external accumulation with a global passive state
(of course in this stage, external becomes internal, because it becomes the whole world, or in other words, the internal/external distinction looses currency)
This phase of globalism, of which we are already observing many signs in this transition period, would mean a full realization of global accumulation on a world scale; the key problem of a global passive state is that there is no internal/external contradiction that can create a “weâ€, and therefore, says DL, it will be marked by a hole in the hegemony layer.
In other words, we are now in a dysfunctional ‘transitional’ phase of proto-globalism, and need to transit to a full-blown form which needs its own state form.
II. Comments
A few initial comments:
1) I think this scenario is believable on the whole, and one of its implications is that capitalism has not yet fulfilled its full role, that it still has to initiate and complete this full fourth cycle. Concluding to its obsoleteness or even ‘death’ may be premature.
2) In his story, though I’m still missing the last chapters of the book, there is very little recognition of the key role of ecological disasters, and resource depletion; he also ignores everything we are talking about in our blog. (that of course doesn’t mean the author ignores these but they are not very prominent in the book at all).
What kind of problems does his vision create for peer to peer theory:
1) His theory highlights the question of timing. Before we may see a shift to a successor civilization that is geared around the peer to peer logic, we may first expect a global strengthening of the capitalist system on a world scale
2) It poses the question of what kinds of structural reforms are needed to achieve this fourth stage
According to DL it is only this fourth stage that will create a global abstract citizenry with a global consciousness. (as a socialist he calls this a global proletariat).
Some possible conclusions:
1) Many of the peer to peer developments that we describe and try to integrate in our theory are indeed emergent and small, they will take decades to play out, especially the expansion to the physical field
2) Carrying out the reforms that the rise of p2p-participatory movements (openness, commons-orientation) and the sustainability movements suggests are part of the key reforms which may make such a transformation to globalism possible; it is pretty clear that neither neoliberalism nor neoconservatism can successfully solve the transition problems
3) It gives sense to many of the reforms-within-capitalism movement that we see arising such as sustainability, social entrepreneurship, base-of-the-pyramid approaches, blended value; indeed, we see at present no serious social force calling for its abolition, while at the same time many of its main principles are contested. I suspect that the new social compact will have elements of a kind of global Keynesianism as proposed by Soros, and also reflect many participative developments; what we describe as the forces of netarchical capitalism may play a great role in it. Note that a key issue in this transition is solving the ecology/sustainability issues without which the transition is not possible.
A global passive state might appear strong compared to the weak global institutions that are operating now, but it is correct to call it passive as it would have relatively limited powers.
4) But this emergent globalism will then itself set the stage for a further transition to a full peer to peer mode, as more and more world citizens have the skills and consciousness and access to technology that makes a peer to peer style of social relationship a natural thing to do. The present minority of peer-ready knowledge workers need to become a massive social phenomena in the whole world.
So the above gives us a clear view of the ….
III. The Stadiality of Peer to Peer
Crucial is the question of timing: do we have the time to go through two such transitions (the global and the P2P one), before the ecological “sh..t†hits the fan? It is likely that we do as all of the different problems and trends will take several decades to fully play out.
This gives us the following stadiality for peer to peer:
1) The current emergent phase, where all new realities are emerging as seeds
2) The phase were participation becomes a highly visible part of a new global compact. The society is capitalist, but it has integrated the major reforms without which it cannot endure
3) This allows participation to become mainstream and to become the main alternative solution for a system which cannot structurally solve the problems of nature and equity.
Again we find the double and contradictory conclusion that P2P is both immanent and transcendent to the present system. It is the very condition of its survival and reform, and it is the seed of its overcoming, AT THE SAME TIME.
(for comparison purposes: the absolutist monarchy was needed for the next stage of what was still in many ways a precapitalist regime, combining both mercantile-capitalist and strong feudal elements, but at the same time, it planted the seeds for its own overcoming by parliamentary democracies in the hands of the new emerging class which it allowed to strengthen; similarly, the new global regime will be capitalist, but with very strong participative features that are the seed of a new dominant production/governance and property mode that will eventually overcome it)
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From Raoul Victor, via email:
You wrote:
“I think this (Laibman’s) scenario is believable on the whole, and one of its implications is that capitalism has not yet fulfilled its full role, that it still has to initiate and complete this full fourth cycle. Concluding to its obsoleteness or even “death” may be premature.”
I shall not deal here with Laibman’s scenario, which raises too many questions. Just some comments on your comment.
You refer to a “role” of capitalism. By these times of dark confused pessimism that concept if frequently questioned. But I agree with the Marxist idea that capitalism, as most historical economic systems of the past, has a historical “role” to “fulfill”, which means also that there is a moment in history, a point of reference where it becomes “obsolete” because it has fulfilled its role. That does not mean “dead”. As long as there is not a social alternative, a new mode of production which appears able to reorganize the social production and a social force to build it, society may rot indefinitely under the weight of a crippled and decadent capitalism.
The question is: what is the content of that “role”? and thus, when can be said that capitalism’s role has been fulfilled?
“The formation of the world market”, the extension of capitalism to the whole planet has been since Marx usually been accepted by Marxists as the main historical “role” of capitalism. And I also agree with that. But the question remains: what does that mean? Marx thought at one moment (1858) (Engels went back over that later) that that was realized, “at least in its broad outlines”, with the colonization of California and Australia and the “opening” of China and Japan.. Later, the revolutionary Marxists thought that the First World War, provoked by imperial colonial rivalries, gave evidence that the world was definitely divided into empires and thus totally submitted to capitalism. But creating capitalist trading-posts on the coasts of a territory does not means that all or even an important share of the population of that territory has been integrated into capitalist relations of production. Even in the heart of the continental European countries, the agricultural sector has been really integrated into capitalism only after the second world war.
Revolutionaries have always a subjective tendency to overestimate the maturity of the conditions for the upheaval of their dreams.
My feeling (being aware of that tendency) is that the integration (still partial) of China and India (but also other parts of East Asia) into the world capitalist production during the last decades represents a major step in the process of the “world market” formation. Something really new is happening. Even conservative economists emphasize the fact that the present economic crisis is the FIRST really-worldwide crisis of capitalism.
Is this “the end” of the “role” of capitalism? I don’t think so. But it might be the “beginning of the end”, in the sense that a qualitative step is being realized. After this crisis, the next ones will also be crisis of the “world market”.
The nature of capitalism’s limits/contradictions
You say that capitalism is a “system which cannot structurally solve the problems of nature and equity”. I agree in the sense that capitalism is a system whose goal is profit, and only profit. But you seem to mean that nature/ecology and equity are the main limits to capitalism development.
I think that a distinction must be made between two kind of limits (one could say contradictions) of capitalism. One kind is relative to the consequences of capitalism’s existence over the population, especially (but not only) over the huge majority of exploited and poor population. These limits are drawn by the capacity of the population to endure theses consequences and finally to revolt against their structural cause. As such these limits relay on subjective factors and on social/political relations of force. They do not affect systematically the capitalist growth.
The second kind of limits is more “objective”, or at least more “internal” to capitalism’s mechanisms. The limits of that kind result mainly from the consequences of the development of the labor productivity, which tends to push the rate of profit downwards and permanently imposes the need for new markets. When the rate of profit falls too much, when the new markets become insufficient, capitalist growth declines and becomes negative, independently of any subjective factor.
I would say that the two limits you refer to (nature, equity) belong to the first kind of limits/contradictions.
The present reality can illustrate the difference between these two kind of limits. What we are seeing now, a major economic recession, with thousands of factories closing and millions of redundancies all over the world, is not a consequence of limited natural resources, nor of excess of poisonous garbages or polluted rivers, nor of excess of inequity. Capitalism has always lived with a most destructive attitude towards “nature” and “equity”, and most of the time that is a condition for its development. The kind of limits/contradictions it is confronting now is “internal”, “objective”. It is this kind of contradiction that will signal the end of its historical “role”.
Just a word about the limits of natural resources. Capitalism can manage to develop new sources of energy and new methods of production, as far as that allows it to make business… and it is doing it. Gore did not get the Nobel Peace Prize by coincidence. You probably read the famous quotation of Tomas Edison (a great inventor but also a very successful business man) telling to Henri Ford, in 1931: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
The need of time for peer principles to become “natural”
You wrote:
“Many of the peer to peer developments that we describe and try to integrate in our theory are indeed emergent and small, they will take decades to play out, especially the expansion to the physical field.”
(…)
“this emergent globalism will then itself set the stage for a further transition to a full peer to peer mode, as more and more world citizens have the skills and consciousness and access to technology that makes a peer to peer style of social relationship a natural thing to do. The present minority of peer-ready knowledge workers need to become a massive social phenomena in the whole world.”
Yes, I agree. It will take time, maybe decades. It also depends on the effects the economic crisis may have on social life, on capitalist economic needs, on social mobilizations, etc. Crisis are generally periods of acceleration of history.
I like your formulation: “that makes a peer to peer style of social relationship a natural thing to do”. The effects of a technological revolution do not affect only the material production process. They concern most of the social life aspects, even intimate ones. The development of the printing press, for example, had much more consequences than changing the way to reproduce documents. Protestantism, for instance, as a new way to see the relations between individuals and God, would have been impossible without the possibility to reproduce more easily the Bible.
In two of the most important recent social movements in Europe, the movement against the CPE (professional contract for young people) in France 2006, and the Greek movement of last December, most journalist were surprised and disturbed by the fact that there were no “chiefs”, no “representatives”, and the official unions/parties had no control over the movement. Especially in 2006, the movement lasted more than a month and was very well organized at a national scale. I am convinced that that was a product not only of the natural distrust towards institutions which have proved many times their total integration in the capitalist logic, but also of the habit to use Internet and have access to multiform peer practices, where it is “natural” that chiefs and representatives are almost absent or understood in a completely different way.
In both movements the main protagonists were students, (even if in the Greek movement the participation of young workers was significant). They have access to and are familiar with Internet. But unfortunately, students as such have no “power” on the social life, especially on the material production of social life. Thus their movements, if they do not spread to other social classes, can hardly give a hint of what a new society could be. Things will probably be different when the protagonists will be the generations of material production workers become familiar with the new peer practices.
Globally I agree with the main lines of what you wrote on the last part of the text about the “stadiality of Peer to Peer”.
.
Finally, a remark about many Marxists’ ignorance of peer production.
You wrote:
“In his (Laibman’s) story, (…) he also ignores everything we are talking about in our blog.”
The ignorance by most Marxists of the peer-production reality is astonishing, since the development of peer production is a spectacular confirmation of many deep aspects of the Marxist theory. I think the reason is that “classical” Marxists can not accept that something close to communist relationships, as peer production, can exist within the capitalist framework. Many of them do not even accept that there has been a new technological revolution. I hope they will change their minds before “decades”.
Raoul
18jan09
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