Comments on: Stefan Merten on Peer Production and the monetary economy https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/stefan-merten-on-peer-production-and-the-monetary-economy/2006/10/31 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:27:47 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Dmytri Kleiner https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/stefan-merten-on-peer-production-and-the-monetary-economy/2006/10/31/comment-page-1#comment-6970 Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:25:25 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=574#comment-6970 With Appologies Stefen I thank you for your comments, but they betray a lack of understanding of even the basics of political economy.

Socialism is not a means “of distributing work” but an analysis of the means by which the product of labour is justly or injustly appropriated, calling for worker-control (rather than “capitalist” control) of means of production. In otherwords “commons based production.” (wether peer production or collectivist production dependends on the particular tendency of socialism)

This lack of understanding renders the rest of the response incomprehensible. The statement that “capitalism is the best exchange based economy we can think of” illustrates clearly that Stefan, sadly, is unfamiliar with the even meaning of the term “Capitalism”, or the economic fact that capital can not, in the context of a free market, capture any return that is greater than its cost, thus “capitalism” depends and can only depend on capture of the surplus value of forcibly alienated labour and private capture of community created value by way of economic rents. In otherwords, a Capitalist class can only exist as far as it supported by violence. That has been the meaning of the word “Capitalism” since it was introduced into political discususion by Thomas Hodgskin. Capitalism doesn’t, as Stefan seems to believe, refer to free market exchange, and is actually incompatible with it.

The portions of Stefan’s response that are not undermined by misunderstanding of economic concepts, seem to address a complete misunderstanding of what I am proposing, I should correct this, but that will have to wait for another time.

I am sorry for the terse response, if I had more time I would try and explain a little more, but frankly I am a little surprised that I would need to start with economics 101 in responding to someone like Stefan Merten who apparently has been inlvovled in the subject for quite some time and should have an understanding of the basics by now. Perhaps that is a cop-out, and maybe in the future I will explain at more length. Thanks once again to both Stefan and Michel for responding to my arguments. No doubt we will interact more in the future.

Incase anyone is interested, Deutschlandradio Kultur will be airing a short feature on Venture Communism and Telekommunisten tomorrow (Nov 1st) at around 8:15am Berlin Time (CET), which would be 2:15am Toronto/ Montreal time (in otherwords late tonight for those in EST).

An Internet Stream can be accessed here:

ogg: http://www.dradio.de/wir/ogg/
mp3: http://www.dradio.de/streaming/dkultur.m3u
flash: http://www.dradio.de/aod/?station=3&stream=3&

Radio Frequency in Berlin is 89.6 (ukw) or 990 (mw) for other locations please check http://www.dradio.de

Regards,
Dmytri.

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