We conclude our excerpts from the Oekonux text positing a five step transition from capitalism to a peer to peer society.

In this concluding piece, we focus on the pitfalls interpreting too positively the stage already reached.

Stefan Meretz and Stefan Merten:

“The well known tendencies in contemporary capitalism, generally known as as neo-liberalism, support the potential to overcome capitalism–for the first time in history. This sometimes sounds weird to the traditional left, and it seems, that not much of them are able to see the germ forms of the new. The potential has to be analysed carefully, because there are many traps. One trap is to interpret all the different new phenomenons completely in the framework of neo-liberalism. Then this sometimes gets the form of a »conspiracy«–behind every development seems to be a plan to suppress and subordinate the working class. This view neglects the inner dynamics and dialectics of the ongoing process including the germ forms which contain the potential for something beyond capitalism.

Another trap is to overestimate the new potential at the current step of its unfolding. There is an expectation, that the germ form is already a developed final form representing all the properties we want to have. This view is often accompanied with the assumption or expectation of having »good people« with high level of consciousness within peer production projects like Free Software. However, this is neither true nor are »good people« necessary. It is the strength of peer production, that there are no preconditions before joining a common effort of a peer production project. Normal people can participate.

The third trap is to expect, that the new is free of contradictions. The new has to occur in a pure and innocent form. However, using the five-step model, we can understand, that a qualitatively new form never emerges completely isolated from the old without any useful function for it. In the contrary, the new must have a useful function for the old, because otherwise it can not grow. At the same time it has to contain the potential for a entirely new mode of production–and this is the case with peer production.

Looking on current commons-based peer projects as Free Software, it can be learned, that peer production is not only a question of technical means, but it also changes the social means of production. The maintainer model mentioned above for instance can be viewed as a common governance model beyond democracy–commonly named meritocracy. It bases on reputation and responsibility.

Maintainer and project members are inclusively bound together. While the maintainer is interested in many and good skilled project members, those, on the other hand, are interested in having a good and communicative maintainer integrating all different individuals in the project and organising consensual decisions. A consensus is reached if nobody must object. If a maintainer tend to ignore needs of project members, then they can leave or »fork« the project. A »fork« is a split of a projects by taking all of the given results into a new project, because they are free. However, a fork is always a risk, because it also means the separation of human resources weakening the possibility to reach the intended goal. Thus, all opponents in a conflict have to clearly think about the chances and risks of a fork, and the chances and risks of a consensus, which drives the dynamics of conflict regulation.

This differs significantly from »democratic conflict regulation« by voting and representation. All goals and needs come from the people within the project, and they are focussed around the goal or product to be produced. Alienated influences are absent. Well, this is the ideal situation of a doubly free project. While in a singly free project only the product is free–mostly covered by a free license. Additionally, in a doubly free project the production itself is free. This is the case, when money and alienated goals are completely kept out of the project and all tasks are freely done.

This new type of post-democratic regulation gives us an impression on how to organise a whole society according to the needs of the people. Not only peer production projects with specific productive goals can be done this way, but also infrastructural tasks or meta-projects can be organised this way. This, however, is a quite different transition image than old style types of conqueroring the power to control the (old) means of production. The new conception of a transition bases on changing the productive basis by establishing new social relationship, which are originally free of valorisation and alienation. It is not about taking the old power, but building a new one, which then cooperates-out the old one. This is the fundamental change of the perspective of emancipation the five-step model brought to us.”