This article seeks to respond to an important issue that arises a lot in the conversations and spaces in which I participate. Moreover, I think it is timely and important in relation to the divisiveness made apparent by the recent election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

There is a general usage in our language (which doesn’t necessarily indicate a cognitive consensus) that cooperation and competition are opposites or mutually exclusive. More importantly, there is a conviction that competition and cooperation are somehow ontologically “real,” which is to say that they exist, i.e. that they are a property of the system being observed, rather than a property of the observer.

An alternative viewpoint, however, and one that I find crucial, is that the presence of cooperation or competition is in the eye of the beholder.

We will look at three examples:

1. Predator/Prey interactions
2. Sports
3. The Nation-State system

Predator/Prey

An example from complex systems is illustrative. Take an ecology of predators and prey with complex systems dynamics between, say, wolves, sheep, and grass. There are several competitions happening here.

• sheep compete for grass
• wolves compete to eat sheep
• sheep compete to not be eaten by wolves
• grass competes to not be eaten by sheep

However, out of this complex system we get Lotka-Volterra cycles of the rise and fall of populations. An increase in grass can feed an increase in sheep which, in turn, can feed an increase in wolves. An increase in wolves results in less sheep, which takes pressure off of the grass, but subsequently puts more pressure on the wolf population as food becomes scarce. Populations rise and fall over time, a dance across time. These dynamics have been extended to any system containing resources and consumers of those resources, such as economics. The parts of a systems are always cooperating to maintain the system as a whole in the midst of larger systems and dynamics.

Sports

Another useful example is the dynamic between sports teams in competitive sports. Certainly we are all familiar with the arena in which one sports team competes against another in a match where there is only one winner and one loser. Beneath the surface however there are other complex dynamics occurring.

The resources for both teams are not infinite: financial resources, time, attention, etc. Many resources are in scarce supply. The ecology of sports teams and individual players seeks to maintain its popularity and importance inside larger systems. Sports desires our attention; it requires our resources, and it takes actions in order to achieve those goals, e.g. to keep sponsorships alive, and to keep salaries high. Even when competing, sports teams strive to bolster and sustain the network. Even a simple chess game between friends, while seeming competitive, may serve broader goals of companionship and time spent. When we zoom out from a limited viewpoint, we can see that competitions serve cooperative ends.

The Nation-State System

Another place where competition and cooperation occur simultaneously is in the nation-state system, i.e the realm of international politics. This does not refer to competition and cooperation between states, however. Instead we are talking about a level of understanding that shows that even when states are apparently competing (even when they are at war), their activity, seen through another lens, is fundamentally one of cooperation.

A quote from Hedley Bull is instructive:

“[States’] goal [is] the preservation of the system and society of states itself. Whatever the divisions among them, modern states have been united in the belief that they are the principal actors in world politics and the chief bearers of rights and duties within it. The society of states has sought to ensure that it will remain the prevailing form of universal political organisation, in fact and in right.”

— Hedley Bull, “The Anarchical Society,” 1977, p. 16

For some scholars, this is demonstrably evident with regard to the 1936 anarchist revolution in Spain. Foreign powers, both capitalists and communists, many of whom were already in direct conflict, cooperated to eliminate the success of Spanish anarchism because it was not merely a threat to individual states themselves but, more importantly, a threat to the entire nation-state system’s validity as the dominant means of managing peoples (internally) and international order (externally).

Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently

The crucial consequence of the perspective that I have attempted to illustrate above is this.

Even when we are in conflict with an opponent, there is some cooperative dynamic that is occurring by our acting in relation to that opponent.

For example, in society and politics, when social groups oppose each other with hatred and violence, there are those who benefit. The media and the arms industry supply us with both the pens AND the swords for us to keep the merry-go-round revolving. In addition, the larger system that defines the terms of participation, benefits whenever players slip themselves into predefined slots that the system knows how to handle: predator; prey.

The solution then is neither to disavow competition in favor of cooperation, nor disavow cooperation in favor of competition, but, instead, to realize that:

Competition and Cooperation have no independent existence, i.e. they are not objective properties of the world. Competition and Cooperation are called-forth into being, into the world, only as a function of the way in which we choose to observe a domain.

Consequently, the challenge for us all is to be more cognizant, open and aware, of the contexts in which competition and cooperation are highlighted by our choices. The responsibility lies squarely in ourselves.

In other words:

Competition is Cooperation: See Differently

To engage with the original please go to Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently by Paul B. Hartzog

The post Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently appeared first on P2P Foundation.

* PhD Thesis: Making Sense of Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution: Towards a Collaborative Age. McAllum, Michael J C. Thesis submitted to The University of the Sunshine Coast. Under the supervision of Dr. Sohail Inayatullah & Dr. Marcus Bussey. Submitted: June 7, 2016

* Situating the Post Capitalist Proposition

Michael McAllum writes:

Rifkin, in his latest work The , extends his earlier argument that capitalism will move from a vertical to lateral orientation to assert:

[T]he Capitalist era is passing and although the indicators are still soft and largely anecdotal, the Collaborative Commons is ascendant and by 2050 it will most likely settle in as the primary arbiter of economic life.

He contends there are essentially three reasons for this.

Firstly, with the use of network technologies the capitalist system is increasingly able to produce constructs of simplification and efficiency (competitive advantage) that enable near zero marginal cost and “if that were to happen the lifeblood of capitalism [margins] would dry up”6. This proposition suggests that this drive for competitive advantage is inherent in the system and, as each new advantage is obtained, the margins available reduce. Logically, this will reach a point when there is no margin left and the system is at its limits. When that occurs, then the only option is to expand the market into areas of what were considered societal responsibilities (e.g. prisons, health, security) 700 until the same point in the process occurs again.

Secondly, the entropic bill for industrial capitalism has arrived, because the economic model and its related energy system see environmental effects as unaccountable externalities. Consequently, the energy systems on which capitalism depends must rapidly change if Collapse is to be averted, thus “throwing the whole economic model into question”.

Thirdly, Rifkin proposes the emerging Collaborative economy is developing as a viable, perhaps even preferred, alternative to a capitalist model that is, by design, systemically inequitable.

While some of Rifkin’s propositions are still evolving, a prime concern of this thesis (as has been stated) is to determine if there is also a contemporary body of literature that supports his fundamental proposition that the system is at is limits. An exploration of Rifkin and Transformist contentions is important because an understanding of the outcomes (not proof!) to these propositions has implications for mentality, philosophy and narratives of engagement with a global community who currently do not see any viable alternative to a mythology that argues (in a rephrasing of a Churchillian quote on democracy) “as a system, capitalism is not perfect but it is far better than the alternatives”. However, it should be noted that, to date, the use of ‘alternative’ has always been contained within the boundaries of the contemporary discourse (capitalism v socialism). ‘Alternative’ as it is used here describes a transformational imperative, one that stands outside of contemporariness because either the system is at immanent limits, or a better option is in prospect.

* The Post Capitalist Option

As Rifkin’s articulation of his current (evolutionary) understanding of post capitalism architecture has been detailed earlier in this thesis, what remains unresolved is the support that it has. Two issues in particular serve as useful points of reference for considering this support: changes in the dynamics of economic and power relationships, and a repurposing of markets from accumulation to exchange.

Rifkin contends that a reconstitution of the relationships between the actors is central to the post capitalist proposition of how value is created and captured. In post capitalist literature there is explicit support for the proposition that in the current market accumulation model the emphasis is hierarchical, one of control of labour and capital, whereas in the post capitalist system the emphasis is on participation and sharing. This is what Rifkin terms privileging of collaboration over competition. Kostakis and Bauwens describe it as “a model where the relations of production will not be in contradiction with the evolution of the mode of production”. This is now possible because network technologies enable socio-technological arrangements that are not only able to compete (and often outperform), in terms of transaction costs with hierarchical entities, but by design they create a framework for social as well as personal benefit.

The explicit rejection of the mechanistic model permits the development of relationship webs that are unconstrained by previous modes of control as “there is a structural connection between the key defining properties of commons-based peer production and the possibility of engagement in creative, autonomous, benevolent and public spirited undertakings”. The viability of such networks also provides for the development of alternatives for those Dussel describes as they who are not.

It allows:

…an internal exodus by which the autonomous production of social life is made increasingly possible (with non cooperation with the dominant capitalist model) and an outer movement that can muster resistance and strike at the heart of power.

This different arrangement also reconfigures the investor-producer-consumer relationship; what Rifkin terms prosumers. These are either citizens or consumers who have an active role in more than one aspect of the value creation process (hence prosumer) whereas typically, involvement has been only at the point of purchase. Depending on the nature of the value creation process this relationship may focus on how work is done (as exemplified in 3D printing), where and how consumers can give as well as receive (evident in smart grid power production), or in decision making (e.g. by investing and then buying particular types of music they like). It is also encouraging a radical rethink in how services like health are delivered. “The consequence is a new decentralisation of organisation whose base will, in chosen and spontaneous groups, fulfil certain functions and whose membership will be overlapping and not exclusive”. The attractiveness of the ‘prosumer’ archetype is near-zero information sharing costs; little fixed cost prior to production; the ability to customise rather than prototype; no waste, ‘just in time’ production; and the development of relationships that encourage innovation. In essence it is a disruptive logic that redefines value creation in ways that privilege economies of one over scale; can be conceptualised as a ‘space of flows’ across a multitude of public good and private interactions; and distributes control among the actors in a manner that encourages collaboration rather than advantage. Finally, the significance of this technology-relationship congruence in a post capitalist model is that it provides a platform, consistent with Rifkin’s theorising, through which critical environmental, social and economic issues might be addressed.

One of the dearly held mythologies of the capitalist model is that the market is a neutral, non-value driven ‘invisible hand.’ Proponents of markets for exchange, not accumulation, differ. They argue current markets are capricious, ownership-centric and exhibit all the system tensions described above. Instead they propose new models of cooperation (microfinance, co-operative infrastructure, decentralised energy) that operate in pseudomorphic-like arrangements within the existing system as prototypes of market commons. These Commons, manifestations of lateral power, are potentially spaces that “provide opportunities for virtuous behaviour, ones that are more relevant to virtuous individuals and (therefore) the practice of effective virtuous behaviour may lead to more people adopting these virtues as their own”. These are, as Wallenstein suggests, one of the alternatives for a world in a period of structural chaos. They point to a future where the rights of the group, as well as those of the individual, are a permanent feature of society. This evolution of post capitalism is not simply the adaptive evolution of capitalism as propounded by Kaletsky, Picketty and Bryjolfsson, and one that Rifkin in earlier works termed distributed capitalism. Rather, it represents a systemic break, an acceptance that the model has little adaptive capacity left. It makes available through access models what previously could only be owned, be that physical property or knowledge. What emerges, Mason describes as “new forms of society that (through networks) prefigure what comes next”, and Rifkin characterises as ‘ zero marginal cost society’ that can take the human race from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance over the course of the first half of the twenty-first century”.

* Conditions for success of a Post-Capitalist Transformation

However, using a macrohistorical framing, this thesis has deconstructed Rifkin’s narratives into seven theories using CLA as a framework for that deconstruction. It asserts that each of these theories, acting in ways that reinforce the others, provides a logical and coherent, but linear, narrative. It also suggests that these theories (of limits, discontinuous change, stages of history, empathic consciousness, leadership, post capitalism and transformation) explore layers of reality that, while concentrating the gaze on the near future, require consideration of reality that is ‘beyond the litany’ of that gaze. It is postulated that these considerations reveal a range of challenges and tensions that significantly impact both the transition and transformation Rifkin is proposing.

These include the following:

o The entropic effects (the environmental crisis) of the industrial economy cannot be resolved inside an economic system that privileges ‘growth’ and ‘quantity of life’ as prime drivers of society.

o New energy and communication technologies, acting as ‘infrastructure’, are nomothetic in their nature and influence. As such, they challenge the continuation of mechanism and vertical power, and they privilege post-carbon futures, ecological thinking and collaboration.

o At the core of the (theory of) revolution is a reconception of time, form and space that will have three effects. The first is a contest between competing senses of reality in the short term (mechanism v collaboration). The second is to actualise the design of transformed social, economic and institutional fabric so that it does not recreate the issues that created the ‘crisis of limits’ in the first place. The third will include in that design an accommodation and acceptance of multiple senses of time in a way that no one sense of time is more important than any other, but also in a way that any given sense of time does not imperialise itself at the expense of these others.

o If a shift in the nature of empathic consciousness is fundamental to the success of both transition and transformation—that is, from a psychological (individualistic) sense to a planetary level—then it needs to be complemented by philosophical approaches that are ‘beyond the horizon’ of modernity: a way of thinking that does not put the Western episteme, nor the role of humans as masters-of-nature, at the center of the discourse. This reconstitution of identity requires a rethinking of ‘presence’ or being-ness.

Given these challenges, the success of any transition and transformation will consequently be conditional on three dynamics: new kinds of leadership; a different economic model; and the speed of transition.

Therefore:

o As a result of the shift from vertical to lateral power, leadership will necessarily become distributed in scope, and both networked and collaborative in nature (a new cosmopolitanism that can be localised). By definition it will privilege partnership over dominator models, and because of the nature of partnership, it will have many forms.

o The future will require the development of ‘post-capitalist’ economic models that replace a contemporary system that cannot either confront the (unsustainable) limits it has created, nor the consequences of zero margins that many technologies now enable. This will see markets of accumulation replaced with ‘post-growth’ markets of exchange; self-reliant models developing in a revitalised civic sector; and ownership models giving way to ‘access and use’ models.

o The success, though, of this transition will be conditional on its speed. If it fails to occur in a timely fashion, the entropic effects will rapidly overwhelm whatever progress has been made towards a new Collaborative Age.

Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution is therefore conditional. It is an argument that, whilst focused on the near-term future, is binary in its options (Transform or Collapse). Consequently, one of the benefits of placing this narrative within the wider macrohistorical discourse has been to identify other possibilities that might be between, or even outside of, the spectrum Rifkin describes.”

More and fuller excerpts here.

Photo by Donald Lee Pardue

The post What to think of Rifkin’s Post-Capitalist Approach? (part two) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

* PhD Thesis: Making Sense of Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution: Towards a Collaborative Age. McAllum, Michael J C. Thesis submitted to The University of the Sunshine Coast. Under the supervision of Dr. Sohail Inayatullah & Dr. Marcus Bussey. Submitted: June 7, 2016

McAllum first distills the theoretical underpinnings of Jeremy Rifkin’s way of thinking:

“In summary these theories are:

1. A Theory of Limits.

An argument about the entropic effects of current socioeconomic arrangements.

2. A Theory of Discontinuous Change.

Causes of change based on the proposition that significant changes in energy form and use, together with different communication technologies, have disruptive and radical effects on the societies where such changes are realised and expressed.

3. A Theory of History.

The framing of the history of these discontinuities as a series of identifiable and sequential revolutions have culminated in the Third Industrial Revolution and thus might be described as ‘Stages of History’.

4. A Theory of Empathic Consciousness.

Advocacy of the view that humanity’s biophysically determined sense of empathic consciousness frames as our collective sense of time and space and is reframed by our individual metaphysical choices.

5. A Theory of Leadership.

The development of a number of concepts that interwoven create a ‘sinew of leadership’; a social code that enables networks to act appropriately and synergistically in ways that can be widely shared and accessed by many actors in multiple locations. These actors through choice, not positional power, embed this social code through agency in their activities, products and services across the civil and private spectrum. Over time those who understand the need for transformation become widely distributed within and beyond the established order. They include key policy makers required to create the frameworks for future infrastructure, scientists and technologists who are providing the enabling mechanisms, and finally, ‘prosumers’ who are taking advantage of emergent transformational effects.

6. A Theory of Post Capitalism.

This argues that the current system is at its limits. Further that discourses which privilege the Khunian view of mechanistic organisation and the US senses of individualism as the basic unit of society are both incompatible with, and insufficient for, the emerging collaborative society, as well as the perpetuation of the capitalist model, upon which the current system rests. If these discourses and the hegemony they have created (mythology) are prolonged, there is no exit from cumulative entropic effects. On the other hand the development of a new kind of infrastructure (the Internet of Things) together with a post capitalist collaborative economy provides the basis for escape.

7. A Theory of Transformation.

Only two possible future scenarios are available as future options. These are either Transform or Collapse, on the proviso that the former occurs in a timely manner.

However, a sense of coherence needs to go beyond a litany of applied or empirical explanations. It requires an understanding of the systemic changes that are either explicit or implicit in these theories; the worldviews that are privileged in those systems; and identification of the mythologies, metonymies and metaphors that underpin those worldviews. For instance, the central role of mythology and the use of the metonymic ‘hydraulic civilisation’ allusion is better understood if one accepts, as Rifkin believes, significant shifts in the mastery of energy and communication technology reframe our sense of space and time, and that they have been and are, as a consequence, transformative in nature.”

The author then introduces Jeremy Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism:

“Two of Rifkin’s most important contentions—the effects of entropy on the global environmental system and the effect of energy efficiencies as drivers of growth—are largely neglected in conventional economic theory. While his early work, for the most part, sets out the logic and evidence for these propositions, his later works articulate potential responses to the challenges these contentions raise. The evolution of this ‘challenge and response’ process has lead him to a point where he has declared that the essence of the current economic system (capitalism) “is passing, not quickly but inevitably and that in its place a new economic paradigm, the Collaborative Commons is in the ascendant”.

Substantiation of this declaration requires Rifkin to: theorise about systemic limits and new options as alternatives to the current model; identify worldviews alternative to those that underpin the capitalist ethic; and at least proffer some possibilities for future metaphors and mythologies.

At the outset it should be noted that, while some would regard Rifkin’s views as ‘of the left’, he is not a Marxist economist, in the accepted sense of that term. For the Marxists, the question is not about whether or not to ‘exploit, grown and own,’ rather the issue is about who controls or has the right to ‘exploit, grow and own.’ In contrast, Rifkin questions the concept of production and its entropic effects per se. As such, he might be more accurately characterised as an ‘individualist’ in the European sensibility, where “the emphasis is on inclusivity, diversity, quality of life, sustainability, deep play, universal human rights and the rights of nature”393. It is within this context that, in the Zero Marginal Cost Economy, he notes mixed feelings about the passing of the capitalist era, and is somewhat surprised that an economic system organised around scarcity and profit could almost counter intuitively spawn a system of nearly free goods, services and abundance, that will see its demise. For Rifkin, the emergence of the Collaborative Era that in earlier works he has described as distributed capitalism and lateral power, provides the opportunity to reframe world views that if they were to continue would (and still do) provide the greatest challenge to “the survival of our species in recorded history”.

The strands of Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism litany are several. Firstly, as was explained in an exploration of his Theory of Limits, he argues that Adam Smith’s economic model is flawed in two important ways. These include the Newtonian view on which it is based, and the lack of regard it has for the entropic effects that are consequential to the growth-and-accumulation imperative inherent in the model. Secondly, he argues that this same model has reached the outer limits of how far it can extend growth aspirations, within an economic system deeply dependent on oil and other fossil fuels. He then posits that the emergence of a new energy and communications infrastructure will reinvent the way the world does business. By design, in the manufacturing realm, it will shift the way of life from highly capitalised, giant, centralised factories, equipped with heavy machines, to economic models that are distributed, modular and personalised in their relationships between buyer and seller. Most importantly, through the way it is designed and constructed, this process must occur with fewer entropic effects.

This realignment of how economic activity occurs also alters the dynamics of relationships and the exercise of power. It favours lateral ventures both in the social commons and in the market place on the assumption that mutual interest pursued jointly is the best route to sustainable economic development. This is a different kind of capitalism; one that is distributed in its nature and which fundamentally reconfigures the temporal and spatial orientation of society. It changes the nature and cost of transactions and offers the possibility of new ways to organise and manage economic activity. As an economic model, it is systemically different in its modality and therefore, it requires a different kind of theorising. Moreover, it must be asked: can an economic system, which is systemically different, be understood through the same lens used to theorise the existing system?

If it is to be considered through the lens of the current system, then it differs in three important ways.

The first is that the logic of a system, contingent on substantive margins on both the supply and the demand sides—what we call profits or accumulations—cannot be sustained if those margins are almost zero.

The consequence in Rifkin’s view will be that:

…capitalist markets will continue to shrink into narrow niches where profit-making enterprises survive only at the edges of the economy…relying on very specialized products and services.

The second is that the nature of the market function, however that is expressed, changes from an opportunity for accumulation to an opportunity for exchange. In this model, capitalism is ‘distributed’, premised on the idea that everybody can trade and exchange, without the controls that exist in the current proprietary models. In this reformulated future, and given that markets are, at least in part, an extension of socio-economic identity, we can assume that an understanding of economic identity for both individuals and communities is reframed as well. In a real-time, near-term, future world existing market mechanisms are too slow and “a new economic system will be as different from market capitalism as the latter was from the feudal economy of an earlier era”.

Thirdly, with less opportunity for capital accumulation, the ability to ‘own’ property is less available; ‘mine versus thine’ becomes harder to sustain and the focus shifts to an interest in access to shareable goods and services.
In Rifkin’s later works, the shift from ‘property ownership’ to ‘access’ to goods and services is a tangible expression of the challenge the Third Industrial Revolution poses to a highly embedded pattern of economic thought: a worldview integral to the concepts of capitalism. Nothing, he argues, is more sacrosanct to an economist than property relations, for these are an explicit representation of a commitment to economic growth.

If the possibility is considered that the idea of property accumulation will be gradually set aside, this new Age will “bring with it very different conceptions of human drives and the assumptions that govern human economic activity”. These contemplations of what will constitute economy are deeply problematic in the current order, yet to limit their characterisation to being simply components of an economic revolution is too narrow a lens through which to understand what is, or what might, occur. This is because their impact is and will be a reflection of different motivations and constitutions of identity.

While having traced the rise and establishment of the private property rights, and the consequences of those rights, in some detail, in all his works since The European Dream (for it was not always that way), he contends that, in a collaborative future, social capital plays an increasingly important role. This is because the accumulation of social capital enables increased access, rather than ownership, to networks where the cost of participation is plummeting as communications technologies become cheaper. The consequence of this rebalancing of capital is “a shift in emphasis from the quantity and worth of one’s possessions to the quality of one’s relationships [and] requires both a change in spatial and temporal orientation”406. As such, it is likely to play a far more significant role in economic life that will increasingly take place in a Collaborative Commons.

From the systemic shift, and a worldview that reconstitutes property rights as a process of access not ownership, what emerges is a new series of case studies and metaphors about collaboration and commonality that reflect the swing from a scarcity to an abundance mentality. This new mentality is not the kind of abundance that, as Gandhi observed, provides for every human’s [sic] greed, rather it is an abundance that, anchored in our ecological footprint, provides enough to satisfy every human’s [sic] need.408 Therefore, it is a step away from a materialist ethos to one of sustainability and stewardship, where nature becomes a community to preserve, rather than a resource to exploit409. Rifkin contends that the absence of the fear of scarcity mitigates against the desire to over consume, hoard and over indulge, and while not quickly removing the dark side of human nature, encourages the development of a new cultural social code. This he sees emerging in at least a portion of younger generations who have “grown up in a new world mediated by distributed, collaborative, peer-to-peer networks”.

Rifkin therefore argues his Theory of Post Capitalism from three premises.

The first is that the system conditions that already exist in the present growth-focused construct make its continuation impossible. In this sense, these conditions are a reflection of Sorokin’s principle of immanent change. He also posits that the attributes and ubiquity of the new infrastructure, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), by design and structure undermines core principles on which the present capitalist model is based.

Secondly, he asserts that these networked, lateral and distributed arrangements privilege relationships over ownership, thereby creating conditions for economic activity and social arrangements that are systemically incompatible with the culture and ethos of the contemporary economy. In this way, the forces that have been unleashed are “both disruptive and liberating and are unlikely to be curtailed and reversed”.

Thirdly he submits that economic systems are situated within larger human systems and therefore, when an economic system changes, so do philosophies, institutions that exist within those systems, and ultimately social and cultural conventions. In this way Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism steps beyond the disciplinary boundaries in which economic theory is normally considered and it links to the other transdiciplinary (and perhaps uni-disciplinary) theorising critical to the Third Industrial Revolution contention.

McAllum then offers Macrohistorical Commentary:

The unsustainability of economic systems and their role in civilisational change have preoccupied all macrohistorians and many contemporary transformational theorists. Unlike Marx and Gramsci, who theorised over the ownership arrangements of the capitalist system, perhaps only Sarkar, among the macrohistorians, comes closest to offering an alternative economic model that is ‘distributed by design’. For Sarkar, like Rifkin, unabated accumulation and misuse of wealth is a central problem. The goal, in his narrative, is for a good society to provide all individuals with the basic requirements of life in the way that Ghandi’s ‘Swadeshi’ defines them, and to ensure that in the process, wealth is used for benefit and not hoarded. However, for Sarkar, economy and economic growth has a subordinated role as it only exists “to provide physical security such that women and men can pursue intellectual and spiritual development”. Spengler also rails against ‘money thought’: “the grand legacy of the Faustian Soul”. He maintains that little attention has been paid to the presumptions that underpin the thinking of Hume and Adam Smith: that its privileging of materialism ignores the soul that is at the heart of culture.

The consequence is that “the heroic and the saintly withdraw into narrower and narrower circles and the cool bourgeois take their place. [Thus] in the frictions of the city, the stream of being loses its rich form” and the culture inevitably declines. The only way out of this crisis is for “power to be overthrown by another power”. The question this assertion poses is: is a change in system conditions, as described by Rifkin, sufficiently powerful to effect the revolution Spengler prescribes, or will some other more explicit agency be required? The linkage or otherwise of economy to ‘soul’ also preoccupied Toynbee.

He argued:

– Western humanity [sic] has bought themselves [sic] into danger of losing their souls through their concentration on a sensationally successful endeavor to increase material well being. If they [sic] were to find salvation they [sic] would only find it only in sharing the results of material achievement with the less materially successful majority of the Human Race.

This was not an argument by Toynbee for some kind of socialism; indeed to the contrary. Rather it is questioning ‘where to next?’ for the ‘psychic energy’ that has been capitalism’s driving force and which fashioned the industrial revolution, for as Schumpeter suggests “stabilized capitalism is a contradiction in terms”.

Similar themes to those expressed in Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism are emerging among some modern transformational theorists. They have, of course, the advantage of contemplating the contemporary condition in ways that earlier macrohistorians could not. While their views, in relation to understanding Rifkin, will be explored in some detail later in this thesis, a number do contemplate the end of capitalism, the emergence of the distributed or collaborative economy and a future of access, not ownership. This suggests that Rifkin’s Theory of Post Capitalism has both intellectual precedent and contemporary support.”

The post What to think of Rifkin’s Post-Capitalist Approach? (part one) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Our first inspiration was Alan Page Fiske’s relational grammar. This year, we discovered Kojin Karatani’s Structure of World History, which gives a very strong coherence to a historical understanding based on such a multi-modal approach.

Yesterday, I discovered the work of Dave Elder-Vass who talks about a ‘complex of appropriative practices’. But we are also inspired by the work of Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb, who formulated a similar approach, but which we did not fully understand until recently.

Part One: Dave Elder-Vass on Complex of Appropriative Practices

Dave Elder Vass writes:

“Wage labour alone is not enough to give us canonical capitalism, since people may work for wages in a variety of non-capitalist contexts such as government deparments. Nor is commodity production enough to give us canonical capitalism, since commodities may also be produced by individuals working alone, in family businesses that do not pay wages, or in co-operatives (Gibson-Graham, 2006b, p. 263; Sayer, 1995, p. 181). We may even have both wage labour and commodity production without canonical capitalism, notably in state-run enterprises. Canonical capitalism is thus defined by a certain complex of appropriative practices rather than by any specific appropriative practice.

This concept of a complex of appropriative practices, I argue, has several advantages over competing understandings of economic form.

Both the neoclassical orientation to markets as the only significant economic form, and the monolithic conception of a mode of production are inadequate for theorising the range of economic forms in diverse economies. This section will examine some of the ways in which the concept of complexes of appropriative practices allows us to theorise social relations more flexibly.

The first is that there is no difficulty in theorising the coexistence of multiple economic forms. There is no longer a conflict, for example, between the belief that capitalism is an important element of the contemporary economy and the recognition that it governs only a minority of productive processes, and thus there is no longer a need to obscure the significance of the gift economy or indeed of other non-capitalist economic forms that coexist relatively stably alongside capitalism. Given this, we can reject the attempt to reduce all contemporary class relations to capitalist appropriation of the product of wage labour that is characteristic of the most vulgar Marxism, and start to theorise the social relations and practices of appropriation that characterise these other complexes. We need not, for example, ignore the appropriation of caring services by children in households because Marxism implies that this would make children exploiters of their parents, but rather examine the complex of processes in which this occurs as an economic form in its own right. We can escape from the hidebound pigeonholing of all social relations into what Folbre and Hartmann have called ‘a formulaic set of class processes’ (1994, p. 59) – those few patterns that Marxists believe have dominated epochs.

As well as examining the coexistence of multiple complexes of appropriative practices within the economy we now have the tools to examine such coexistence within specific sites or social entities. The fact that commercial firms are the site of capitalist practices is no longer a theoretical obstacle to recognising that they may also be the site of other forms of appropriative practice. Nor is the argument that households are the site of gift-forms of appropriative practice compromised by recognising that they may also be the site of wage labour, whether it is capitalist (e.g. when an agency supplies cleaning staff) or not (e.g. when a self-employed cleaner contracts to provide a service). The household, in this perspective, becomes the site of moments of appropriation that operate within the frames of a variety of different complexes of appropriative practices. It is, we may say, a mixed economy of practices in its own right. Struggles within the household over the division and control of domestic labour may then also be theorised as struggles over the mix, struggles over which complex of appropriative practices is to prevail in which circumstances.

Relaxing the requirement that an economic form must correspond to the dominant form of an epoch also makes it easier to theorise varieties of a form.

…

It may also be useful to think of some complexes of appropriative practices as hybrid forms … To get hybridity, we need other types of economic form as well as the capitalist type. Although I have questioned whether there are other coherently identifiable modes of production than capitalism, there can still be other types of complex of appropriative practices. One candidate is suggested by the idea of the gift economy: there is a wide variety of complexes of appropriative practice in which voluntary transfers of goods or services are made without any expectation or obligation to make a return transfer. Some complexes are hybrids of both capitalism and the gift economy because they include both the practice of capital accumulation and the practice of making transfers of goods or services as gifts. Such hybrids are decisively capitalist and yet simultaneously the sites of more progressive practices.”

Part Two: Dmytri Kleiner’s (Telekommunisten) Intermodal Approach

Dmytri Kleiner writes:

“We often say we live in a Capitalist society, but yet this does not mean that all forms of producing and sharing that occur within our society are Capitalist. This is more than evident when looking at social relations in family and personal life, in intentional communities of various kinds, within co-ops and other non-capitalist organizations, the charity and profit sectors, and, of course, the emerging world of peer-production including free software, free culture, etc. It’s quite clear there is a lot more going on than just Capitalism. When we say we live in a Capitalist society what we mean is that Capitalism is the dominant mode of production, and as such, it is able to apply the greatest amount of wealth towards its own expansion and the enforcement of its interests. As a result, our private and public institutions, including our law making and financial institutions are set up according to the interest of this dominant mode.

We can not change our society, neither the public or private institutions that make it up, nor the laws and financial constraints that are imposed without first building the capacity to overcome the capacity of those who resist such change.

Only when the commons based economy exceeds the market based economy can we achieve a society that is organized around the interests of creating wealth for the many instead of creating profit for the few.

Starting with the Kaleckian model, Y = Cw + Cp + I that introduces classes on the consumption side, by dividing consumption into consumption of workers (Cw) and consumption of capital (Cp), Kalecki is able to isolate profit as P = Cp + I. Reasoning that Cw = W, In other words, reasoning that workers spend whatever they earn. This assumption is of course true within capitalism. However, if we understand that Capitalism itself, while dominant, exists among several other modes occurring simultaneously, we need to take this into a different direction. If the commons-based economy must become the dominant economic mode, then instead of understanding the level of profit within the capitalist sector, we need look at relative growth between the capitalist and communist sector, in other words between the sectors that produce for private profit and the sectors that produce for public wealth, the predatory sector and the co-operative sector.

To do so, we move Kalecki’s class division to the investment side, since with capitalism, workers spend everything they earn, but in the more complex social context that capitalism exists within worker’s also invest. So our starting point becomes Y = C + Ip + Iw. With Ip representing Capital’s capacity to invest, and Iw representing workers’ capacity to invest, as result as both classes have the capacity to invest in production.

We now divide C, not on classes, but on mode, creating Cm and Cc, market based consumption that returns profit to it’s investors privately, and Cc, commons based consumption that does not capture profit privately, and returns wealth to society collectively. This gives us Y = Cm + Cc + Iw + Ip.

This now allows to us divide these two sectors as Capitalism, Ym = Cm + Ip and Yp and Communism, Yc = Cc + Iw. So, from a macroeconomic view, you could say that the revolutionary aspiration of May 1 is to make Yc > Ym, and thereby overcome the dominance of Capital on our society.

In order to understand how this might be possible, we need to look at the flows of value between the two modes. We can not assume that workers will only invest in the commons and consume from it, nor can we assume that Capital will only consume and invest inversely.
We started to include this last week by drawing on the way import and export between nations is included in macroeconomic identities, adding “net imports” to the model, so to expand what we have above with N, Ym = Cm + Ip + Nm and Yc = Cc + Ow + Nc. Nm and Nc representing the net relative imports of each mode. Being net imports, Nm + Nc would equal zero as these would balance out by definition.

If, in balance, workers consumed the products of capitalist controlled production more than capitalists consumed the products of workers controlled production, then they would have a trade deficit with the capitalist sector and thus have relative reduced economic power as a result, capital would increase it’s dominance, conversely, if worker’s could create a intermodal trade surplus with capital, then then would decrease, and perhaps eventually overcome the dominance of capital.

Likewise, investment can also flow between the sectors, for instance workers buy shares on the stock market, and capitalists may, for instance, finance the development of free software.

It’s hard to identify such intermodal capital flows as investment, since from a class perspective they don’t directly reproduce the wealth that was used, as returns aren’t recaptured according to the relative mode, thus such investment is not directly “valorized.”
Production in capitalism is driven by exchange value, a capitalist commodity can not properly be considered produced until it consumed in such a way that creates more capital. As Capitalism is not directly concerned with producing things because they are useful, but because it is profitable. When the commodity is just given away the “productivity” of the producers who made it is calculated as zero, since zero capital was recaptured.

Therefore, I propose to call such capital flows “Sustentation,” where value creation within one mode is sustained by inflows from another. Individual capitalists may benefit from such sustentation, and often do, such as the capital cost reduction that free software provides to business that use it. However despite the benefit to some specific businesses, such flows represent a drainage of capital from the point of view of the class as whole, as this expenditure is not directly valorized, and even replaces potential valorized consumption, such as expenditures on commercial software made unneeded by using free software.

Likewise, workers’ using their retained earnings to buy stocks can be be understood as a similar sustentation. This drains wealth from the commons-based economy as to sustain capital finance, even though individual workers may privately benefit, by essentially becoming tiny capitalists.

We can add net sustentation to the model as follows. Ym = Cm + Ip + Nm + Sm and Yc = Cc + Iw + Nc + Sc. Excluding taxation, which is not intermodal, so activity in both modes is subject to the same government, we have a complete macroeconomic picture of class struggle and can start discussing how venture communism, counterpolitics and insurrectionist finance can be employed in the struggle.”

The post Introduction to multi-modal approaches to social change (p2p theory) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Brilliant explanation by Dmytri Kleiner on the ‘transvestment‘ approach, i.e. how to transfer value from the system of capital to the system of peer production.

Kleiner explains for example why federated systems, depending on servers and investments, can’t compete with centralized technologies, because they cost money as they grow, but true ‘end to end’ systems grow in resources as they add users, with their existing resources.

Learn also why we need, ‘counter-anti-disintermediation’.

Watch the video here:

Photo by transmediale

The post “You can’t code away their wealth”: Dmytri Kleiner explains why the construction of P2P alternatives is conflictual appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Different historians and anthropologists have posited the existence of dominant social forms, which evolve over time, though should not necessarily be seen as a univocal evolution.

For example, David Ronfeldt has developed TIMN theory, which sees a succession of social forms that are the locus of power, respectively Tribes (T+), Institutions (I+), Markets (M+) and Networks (N+). See this graph for more details, as well as other overview graphs here.

Alan Page Fiske, in his book ‘The Structures of Social Life’, has described a relational grammar consisting of four types of relationships, related to the allocation of resources in society, which have existed in most times and regions, but with different relations of dominance amongst them. In his relational model he distinguishes Communal Shareholding (pooling with a totality), Equality Matching (the gift economy based on reciprocity), Authority Ranking (allocation according to rank) and Market Pricing.

Kojin Karatani distinguishes four modes of exchange:

• mode A, which consists of the reciprocity of the gift; but he distinguishes the pooling of nomadic bands and the reciprocity-based gift economy of tribal systems;

• mode B, which consists of ruling and protection;

• mode C, which consists of commodity exchange; and

• mode D, which transcends the other three.

So, there seems to be a more or less broad agreement that:

• we have (had) societies based on small nomadic bands and the pooling of resources (Communal Shareholding);

• we have (had) tribal societies (T+) based on reciprocity, existing in more or less localized mini-systems in which tribes relate to other tribes (and other forms in their margin);

• we have state-based, tributary, Authority-Ranking systems based on rule and protect, plunder and redistribute principles (I+), existing in a broader system of interlocking world-empires (and other forms in their margin);

• we have market-based ‘capitalist’ societies (M+), consisting of a trinity of an interlocking Capital-Nation-State, based on Market Pricing for exchange, and existing in a global world-market (i.e. world capital-nation-state system)

Historically, we can already discern:

• a shift from nomadic pooling (Communal Shareholding) societies to tribal, sedentary reciprocity-based gift economy societies;

• a shift of tribal societies to Empires, i.e. state-based class societies; and

• a shift of the latter to capitalist societies.

Today, we see the emergence of the network form (N+), and in our hypothesis a new phase shift towards a system of world-networks, which will reconfigure the other modalities that always also exist, but in a new configuration. David Ronfeld sees the emergence of N+, and Karatani sees the emergence of Mode D.

P2P Theory therefore, tries to answer the more modest question: What institutions arise in the phase shift from market domination to network domination, to use the TIMN language, i.e. from M+ to N+; in Fiske’s language, a society based again on Communal Shareholding as the dominant form; for Karatani, the shift from Mode C to Mode D.

We expect this type of network society, Karatani’s Mode D, to be ‘dominated’ by the institutional form of the Commons, based on peer to peer relational dynamics (i.e. Communal Shareholding), but also that it ‘transcends and include’ the older forms in a new configuration. Just as capitalism consists of Capital-Nation-State under the domination of the capitalist market logic as the main mode of exchange, so we posit the Productive Commons Community, the generative Entrepreneurial Coalition, and the For-Benefit Association as the seed form for a society that consists of a Productive Commons-Centric Civil Society, a Ethical Economy, and a Partner State, but under the dominant exchange form of the Commons.

Yochai Benkler has described the emergence of commons-based peer production as a subset of today’s capitalist society, but lately, authors like Jeremy Rifkin in the Zero Marginal Cost Society, and Paul Mason in PostCapitalism have started joining our hypothesis that the new modalities are not just subforms of capitalism, but have the capacity to subsume capitalism. None of these authors however, has collated the amount of data on the actual occurence of the shift, and while Karatani brings a wealth of historical and anthropological findings to bear on the previous shift, the documentation on the emergence of an actual Mode D remains scarce.

Based on ten years of observation and analysis, allowing a much more ‘thick’ description of the already occurring phase shift, we believe the broad outlines of such a new social form have become visible:

1) the key network institution is the Commons, i.e. shared resources, their productive communities of contributors, and their shared norms and regulations. The key social form is the networked productive community practising Communal Shareholding, through which all citizens can produce shared value, through open contributory system, that create shared commons, and using ‘mutual coordination’ (stigmergy) as their main modality of cooperation and coordination.

2) the key market institution in a society dominated by the network form, i.e. based on networked commons as explained above, is the ‘ethical market entity’ or generative entrepreneurial coalition, which creates value and livelihoods around these commons; these market entities in other words, are not the dominant form, but serve the commons and their communities through generative practices (in contrast with traditional capitalist firms which ignore negative externalities, or netarchical capitalist forms which directly extract value from the commons without adequate return) that are beneficial for both the human and nature. P2P market entities infuse the market form with reciprocity based requirements at least within the coalitions itself, and are reciprocial towards the commons and nature. The ethical market institutions are not-for-profit (not for private profit, but also not necessarily non-profit).

3) the key governance institution (I+) form in this era of N+, is the for-benefit association, which exists alongside nearly all p2p productive communities and commons-centric entrepreneurial coalitions, i.e. these institutions, usually non-profit, create and maintain the infrastructures of cooperation needed by the commons and its actors (think of the role of the Wikimedia Foundation, which does not direct the work on the Wikipedia, but makes it possible)

So, in the emergent form, in N+, the M+ and I+ are subsumed under the logic of the accumulation of the commons ; my hypothesis is that this emerging micro-logic of peer production, is prefigurative of the new social form that is emerging for the N+ era, to use the language and TIMN theory. Thus our thesis that the new commons-centric society or post-civilization, will consists of 1) productive civil society, consisting of citizens contributing to the commons of their choice 2) ethical entrepreneurial associations, which respond to social need and create livelihoods for the commoners 3) a partner state form, which creates the meta-conditions for personal and social autonomy and the capacity building that citizens need to have equipotential rights of participation in the new society.

The post A Synthesis of the Findings of P2P Theory: Ten Years After appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Karatani, in The Structures of World History, makes a key argument that the key underlying structure is less the mode of production, than the ‘mode of exchange’. The mode of exchange point of view, allows him to talk about the Capital-Nation-State nexus, instead of believing that state and nation are epiphenomena (superstructures). For example, this shift in the understanding of structures and their evolution, helps to explain the contradictory nature of capitalism, by stressing the innovation in the field of exchange, based on the invention of neutral exchange and mutual interest, above the naked exploitation of the labor condition, and its continued hierarchical subordination.

Karatani distinguishes four ‘modes of exchange’:

* mode A, which consists of the reciprocity of the gift ;

* mode B, which consists of ruling and protection;

* mode C, which consists of commodity exchange; and

* mode D, which transcends the other three.

The transcend and include aspect of Mode D helps to see how it is:

* Related to the nomadic condition which is entirely about communal shareholding

* Related to the gift economy aspect of the clan societies

* Related to the distributed aspect of the medieval structures

* Honours the advantages of the market and even capitalism Helps us disentangle mode of production and mode of exchange aspects of commons-based peer production

Kojin Karatani in his book, The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. Duke University Press, 2014, makes an important theoretical innovation that echoes what we have done in P2P Theory in 2005-6.

In P2P Theory, we use the relational grammar of Alan Page Fiske, which are modes of allocation, i.e. modes of exchange, and what we claimed is that though all four modes exist in most societies at nearly all times, their relative dominance change over time.

Does we have Equality Matching, the gift economy, in tribal societies, but we mentioned that Communal Shareholding was the likely primary mode in small groups; Then we have Authority Ranking in pre-capitalist class societies, Market Pricing under capitalism, and as we argued, Communal Shareholding is slated to become dominant again due to all the changes we see around peer to peer technologies, relational dynamics and peer production. It is the very basic central claim of the work of the P2P Foundation, and what distinguishes us from many others which recognize p2p without recognizing its emerging centrality.

Karatani makes a similar move, by arguing that modes of production do not adequately explain changes in society, but modes of exchange do.

He recognizes

* Mode A, pre-capitalist, pre-class tribal societies,
* Mode B, rule and protection,
* Mode C, capitalism,
* and Mode D, a return to the reciprocity logic of Mode A, but which also transcends and includes features of all previous modes.

This is very close to your own use of integral theory.

Nevertheless, Karatani’s approach solves and illuminates a number of issues.

First of all, he stresses the mistake by Marx of not seeing the difference between the nomadic structures, with the freedom to move and without accumulation of property but with pooling of resources, and the clan-based tribal societies, which use organized direct reciprocity, which binds people to their societies. Thus nomadic societies are in the ‘pure gift’ of pooling (i.e. the Communal Shareholding of Fiske) while the larger and sedentary tribal societies use Equality Matching. In this context, Fiske allows more clarity in distinguish both, than lumping them together in one simple Mode A.

There are a huge number of advantages in more clearly distinguishing the mode of production from the mode of exchange.

For example, in the evolutionary account of cooperation, derived from Edward Haskell, we stress the evolution from adversarial modes (pure class domination through coerced labor), to neutral modes (the markets), to synergistic modes (peer to peer). Obviously as a mode of production, capitalism is still a mode of pure class domination, based on the blackmail of selling one’s labor to a owner of capital, and being in a dependent and subordinated position. But when we look at the mode of exchange, it is impossible not to recognize this innovation and how this profoundly changes the subjectivity of participants, including workers, who must sell their own labor as commodity. It is much more easy to explain to some sceptical left audiences, who don’t want to hear anything remotely positive about markets and capitalism, when one can so usefully distinguish modes of exchange and modes of production, and how how it is actually the motivation from the former, which influences the behaviour in the latter. I think this is a great theoretical advance from Karatani, which we can use. It will also helps us to do the same for peer production itself, what are its ‘mode of production’ aspects, and what are its mode of exchange aspects ? Though I use Fiske’s allocation theory, I mostly talk about peer production as a mode of production, and I believe we can rethink this presentation by differentiating its various aspects.

Another great point from Karatani is that Mode D does not simply go back to Mode A, but actively transcends elements of all three preceding modes; this is crucial, and we have to systematize this insight.

For example,

Related to the nomadic condition which is entirely about communal shareholding Related to the gift economy aspect of the clan societies Related to the distributed aspect of the medieval structures

It is hard to miss that one of the essential features of peer to peer technologies is the ‘liberation from the limitations of time and space’, in other words, it enables and facilitates a universal nomadic existence. This does not mean that everyone will travel everywhere all the time, of course not, but that a ever larger number of people is not bound to their territory, which includes territory in the virtual sense, i.e. “organisation”, and this is now true both for immaterial and material production. As Karatani very precisely links the pooling of resources to the nomadic condition, this re-inforces our original argument about the return of Communal Shareholding as the core mechanism for allocation.

Communal Shareholding in the language of Karatani, is ‘pure gift’, i.e. without the direct reciprocity requirements of the gift economy. Yet, along with CS, we also see a strong revival of gift economy practices. In a pluralistic understanding of Mode D, this makes a lot more sense than in the expectation of a simple return to Communal Shareholding.

Similarly, when Douglas Rushkoff makes the point that the Renaissance which came out of the Middle Ages, looked to the centralization of the Roman Empire as its ideal, and undertook to recreate centralized structures for the next 400 years; but that the Digital Renaissance, looks at, and re-introduces, a lot of the practices and forms of ‘distributed’ and ‘local-oriented’ medieval times, this makes a lot more sense if we see Mode D in this integrative mode.

More importantly, it gives additional justification to our triarchical model of productive commons-organized civil society, cooperative marketspace, and enabling ‘partner’ state models (which we did not invent, but deduce from the actual institution-building of p2p communities all over the world). If Mode D is integrative, it makes a stronger argument that market dynamics AND advantages cannot just be denied and abolished, but can be used in a new context. Pooling based market forms, like Community-Supported Agriculture models, described and defended by Silke Helfrich for example, also make a lot more sense. But also the continued existence of the state.

Karatani says the capital-nation-state trinity is so strong, because each will always come to support when the other ones are threatened. He sees the return of Mode D as the realization of Kant’s dream of a world republic, the only model that avoid new world wars by regional blocs fighting for scarce resources.

P2P shows the key role that trans-local, trans-national productive communities, including the global ethical entrepreneurial coalitions that are emerging, can play in a trans-national scenario, as I don’t believe personally that a merely inter-national republic can work. Faced with the strength of that trinity, the focus on both the local-urban level, and the transnational level, makes a lot of sense as a transitional strategy, since the attempts to change the capitalist nation-state, seem so impossible today. Karatani makes the strong and in my view realistic point, that the community integrating functions of the nation are not likely to disappear, nor the redistribution functions of the state.”

Photo by perceptions (off)

The post The Evolution of Modes of Exchange in the Context of P2P Theory appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The post P2P Lectures in Australia 2: Peer to Peer Design, Open Source Collaboration & the Sharing Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.