Raoul Victor has written a long reply to a theoretical text (draft) by Stefan Merten and Stefan Meretz on peer production and its potential to become embedded not just in the production of informational goods, but as the dominant system for material production as well.

We are serializing this reply in three parts.

Raoul Victor:

1- The possibility of applying the peer production principles to the “material sphere”.

In part 1, the text reads: “Whether or not the principles of peer production can be transferred to the material sphere or what that even means is an open research question.”

Michel Bauwens commented:

“It is not just a research question, there are some general things that can be said, apart from already observing existing open design communities.” (1/4/08)

I agree with Michel that this is not “just” an “open research question”. Especially for Oekonux whose main fundamental idea is summarized in the 3d part of the text: “We claim that peer production is a germ form of a new society based on a mode of production beyond exchange, market and money.”

Such a claim would be a sheer piece of wishful thinking if “exchange, market and money” could not be eradicated from most of the production (and distribution) of material goods. A “new society” would not be really “new” if pp principles remained restricted to numerical goods.

The main argument the text gives to explain the doubts about the possibility of material peer production is based on the idea that, contrary to numerical-information goods, material goods are “rival”.

Part 4 reads: “Material goods, however, differ significantly from information goods. Information can be easily copied while material goods have to be produced piece by piece. The use of material goods is rival while use of information is non-rival. Material goods are used up while information is spread when shared.”

It is true that information-numerical goods are “non-rival”, “by nature”, ie. they “may be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by others.” (Wikipedia). As they can be copied without (or insignificant) cost they are potentially abundant. It is also true that material goods do not possess that capacity. But that does not mean that they can not be abundant, non-rival. Water is a material good, it cannot be “copied”, but it may be a non-rival good in places where it is abundant.

Rivalry is a concept that expresses (and, for ideological reasons, insists on) the old reality that scarcity of a good tends to generate rivalry between people wanting to have it. But, as such, it is a very relative concept. It depends on the relation between two quantities: the quantity of the good and the number of people desiring that good. Even sea water, if taken in small quantity and considered in a place where it is scarce (a bottle of sea water in the Sahara, for example) may become rival. Two apples for 200 persons are rival, but 200 apples for two people are not.

Material goods cannot be freely reproduced, but most of them, those that are commonly produced by humans, may be made abundant, enough to satisfy the human needs/desires, (if the will and the power to do it exists – as it may in a “peer society”) and become non-rival goods.

Of course, some material goods cannot be made abundant: a Van Gogh painting or an exceptional geographical site, for example. Also, products requiring very naturally scarce material, at least for some time, (the time to invent a way to produce them in a different manner or to find substitutes). How to deal with goods that remain rival in a new (peer) society is indeed an “open research question”. But, it is not the same for all the goods that can be made abundant. And these are the overwhelming majority of the goods commonly needed by humans. (In addition, human needs/desires in a society not based on the absurd commercial-profit logic of capitalism will be different from present ones).

To say that “the use of material goods is rival” is not correct. Even from a strict neoclassical approach, some material products can be non-rival, public. But, above all, it ignores the fact that most of material products can be made abundant, thus non-rival.

This is not a secondary question when considering the possibility to apply peer production principles to material production. Whatever serious definition of peer production principles you take, their application to material production requires the abundance, the non-rivalry, the free/open/gratis reality of most of material means of production and consumption. If we take, for example, the Michel Bauwens’ definition of peer-production principles, (which, as he noted, correspond “using other words” to Christian Siefkes’ ones) they all relay on that requirement.

Michel Bauwens writes:

“peer production needs to include the input (open raw material), the process (voluntary self-aggregation) and the output (universal availability).” (5 apr 08)

Christian Siefkes:

“1. Peer production is based on contributions (not on exchange). 2. Peer production is based on free cooperation (not on coercion or command). 3. Peer production is based on commons and possession (not on property).” ( 7 apr 08)

“Open raw material”, “universal availability”, “no exchange”, “commons and possession, not property” require free/gratis access to material means of production and consumption. “Voluntary free aggregation” and “free cooperation” require (if universalized) free/gratis access to material means of consumption.

How to reach that level of abundance? What may the transition process be? These may be “open research questions”. But it must be said clearly that the material abundance is a real possibility. The scarcity of material goods which makes today the majority of the wold-population to live in misery is not natural, but induced by the capitalist logic. The ecological problems are not the consequence of natural limits but of capitalist management of the planet resources. If we can escape the capitalist logic, we are still very far from reaching “natural limits”. We only use 1/10 000 of the energy we permanently receive from the sun; experts say that there is enough spring water for many times the present human population, if we only can use it in rational ways, especially by a transformation of methods of agriculture.