Comments on: Michel Bauwens responds to Nadia El-Imam’s open letter after the Ouishare Fest https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/ Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:39:31 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.17 By: Bob Haugen https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-541022 Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:39:31 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-541022 “…the salary is at the same time a conquest of the labor movement, insuring security. By removing these securities, crowdsourcing and other peer-related labor forms are endangering these conquests. A big question is: should we defend the salary form, or is this impossible or even negative. In that case, what type of security could replace it?”

Guaranteed income would work better than salary. (In the US, Social Security and Medicare for all.) But I guess, good luck getting that to happen…although advocates exist.

Beyond that, “to each according to needs”. (And good luck with that, too. Although it might work to some extent in a local network.)

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By: H Luce https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540818 Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:55:08 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540818 In a horizontalist P2P society, the question “Should we defend the salary form, or is this impossible or even negative” would most probably be answered in the negative. Individuals – or the group in consensus – could decide to put some of their earnings or surplus into the common pool available to any and all, or to such uses as the group might decide on, but wage labor implicitly creates a hierarchy of payer and payee – and the inevitable conflict arising therefrom, with both sides in a battle to maximize their perceived share of the income.

The question “In that case, what type of security could replace it?” presupposes that wage labor is not going to be a part of the system, and the answer here is simple – each partner gets a share, equal to the others, share and share alike. As an aside, I think the dynamics of the group – in groups that last – would only allow members to slack off in reasonable amounts, there’d have to be a level of work expected that would neither allow free riders, nor work all of the partners into burn-out. It might be a good idea to work this out at the beginning…

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By: H Luce https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540817 Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:44:39 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540817 “… in the new format, they automatically produce value for the rest of humanity as well.” This works out fine, as long as the people who supply you with food, drink, shelter, clothing, and medical care have the same ethic. Many Indian tribes managed their societies on this basis for hundreds of years, if not millennia, so it *has* been done. The trick is to do it in modern society – and I think you’d have to have some sort of self-sufficient tribal localism to make a success of it.

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By: Michel Bauwens https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540789 Mon, 08 Jul 2013 12:35:46 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540789 In reply to H Luce.

Waged labor is a form of alienation, as it turns labor power into a commodity. But the salary is at the same time a conquest of the labor movement, insuring security. By removing these securities, crowdsourcing and other peer-related labor forms are endangering these conquests. A big question is: should we defend the salary form, or is this impossible or even negative. In that case, what type of security could replace it?

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By: Michel Bauwens https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540788 Mon, 08 Jul 2013 12:31:07 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540788 In reply to H Luce.

I think what you are describing is a cooperative, one partner, one man one vote. And of course, I am very supportive of this democratic format. However, we define peer production quite differently in the P2P Foundation, as a production process which is participatory, open to contributions, and universally available. The convergence between the two would give you something like open cooperatives, in which the immaterial value is shared with the whole of humanity, and the material rival goods are produced by coops. Today, coops are operating within the existing marketplace, with the benefits of their members as the aim; in the new format, they automatically produce value for the rest of humanity as well.

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By: H Luce https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540591 Sat, 06 Jul 2013 17:18:51 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540591 If you conceive of a P2P enterprise as a partnership, where each person, after a certain probationary period, becomes a full partner with full voting rights, somewhat along the lines of the Mondragon enterprises (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_Cooperative_Corporation), this potential for lower growth may not necessarily exist. Note that Mondragon exists and competes in a capitalist economy externally, but internally seems to be a P2P setup from macro to micro scales: “According to the Statement, a co-operative is defined as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.” Co-operatives “are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of co-operative founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_on_the_Co-operative_Identity

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By: H Luce https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/michel-bauwens-responds-to-nadia-el-imams-open-letter-after-the-ouishare-fest/comment-page-1/#comment-540590 Sat, 06 Jul 2013 17:08:13 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=31926#comment-540590 One of the parts of capitalism which might be absent in a P2P enterprise is the concept of waged labor (“wage slavery”) where workers, whose labor is used to transform raw materials into finished goods, receive only a fraction of the value of that labor (“productivity per worker”). In order to maximize profit, there is a legal and societal imperative to minimize the percentage of value given back to the worker (“cost of labor”), and this naturally sets up a conflict between labor and management. This conflict tends to lower the efficiency of the enterprise, with workers constantly seeking to increase the amount of money they earn, from not working as much or as effectively as they could, to outright theft of raw materials, finished goods, or both – and management constantly seeking to minimize the cost of labor, from imposing surveillance and scientific management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management) to the outright theft of labor by refusing to pay all wages earned while still employing the worker. In contrast, in a P2P setup, where each worker has the possibility to realize the full value of their labor, this labor/management conflict has less chance of arising – the worker has a definite incentive to work more efficiently and the enterprise profits therefrom.

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