The Winter 2004 of Capital and Class had an interesting article by Jim Shorthose and Gerard Strange about the intersection of the new autonomous culture and the economy, which should be worth reading.
It’s entitled “The new cultural economy, the artist and the social configuration of autonomy”..
See the quote from page 4, to see surprising similarities with the free software open source communities.
Here’s the article’s abstract:
“There are three basic elements to our analysis in this article. First, we explore some of the conceptual and methodological issues raised by the emergence of the new economy. We argue that the new economy gives rise to significant questions regarding the subjective meanings, values and objectives that artists and other creative producers bring to a world in which traditional boundaries between work and life have broken down. We suggest that orthodox economics-with its narrow focus on the motivations of ‘economic man’, operating in an environment of abstract markets in which social relations are reduced to price signals-is ill-equipped to analyse culturally-embedded economies. We argue that this creates a significant blindspot in orthodox economics, which in turn leads to a fundamental undervaluation of the contribution made by the new economy’s work-life nexus to general economic welfare, the quality of life and social wellbeing.
Secondly, we examine the nature and cultural location of the artistic work that often develops within informal creative communities. These social, cultural and economic interactions are exemplars of the transformations in work and social life associated with the new economy. Within these creative communities, there is often a micro-and mezzolevel expression of the radically different, socially- and culturally-embedded forms of economic motivation and exchange. At the micro level, we identify and examine the emergence of a relatively autonomous work-life nexus, which we define as ‘creative ecology’. We argue that this, in turn, gives rise to a new socio-economic resource at the mezzo level-namely, a form of social capital which we label the ‘cultural commons’.
Finally, we reflect on the precarious nature of the spaces for autonomy opened up by the new economy, given the wider structural context in which an orthodox economic rationality is imposed by the social dominance of capital and the imperatives of accumulation. Taking into account Andre Gorz’s critical analysis of the contradictory nature of the new economy under capitalism, we foreground the need for a politics of autonomy and macro-level policy interventions-governance for autonomy-to support emerging autonomous micro spaces within artistic communities.”
On the cultural commons and it potential for autonomy:
“Such non-economic motivations, coupled with an underlying creative rationale for, and ethic of, the cooperative sharing of resources, regularly leads to collaborators becoming friends as much as professional colleagues. Thus, another crucial feature of artistic labour within the creative ecology is the tendency for distinctions between interior artistic life, work life, social life and friendship to blur. These tendencies signal a social context for de-alienated labour, as cultural meanings and bonds are intimately intertwined with productive activities. Consciousness of these relationships between artistic labour and life-quality maximisation contrasts with the stricter separation of work and life in much of the capitalist sector, where instrumentalism tends to be the dominant motivation.
As the term suggests, one of the most important features of the creative ecology is its self-sustainability, which in turn reflects its voluntary, cooperative, localised and communitylike nature. Such ‘eco-cooperation’ marks out the creative ecology from the formal and anonymous money-based, commodity economy. It is common to find socio-economic relationships underscored by trust-based, gift and other nonfinancial exchanges that are, at most, only minimally underpinned by formal economic rationality.
The motivations that underpin this ecology routinely transcend traditional economic motivations, since many of the people engaged in mutual artistic labour do so primarily for reasons of group re-affirmation, and a sense of satisfaction gained from the creativity itself, rather than for personal economic gain.
The value of artistic labour is difficult to quantify or measure because of its collective, intangible nature and its independence from formal market exchange, where prices provide an index (however misleading and distorted) of social value. However, clearly the artistic and cultural labour of the creative ecology makes a substantial contribution to the general welfare of society and its communities. Such artistic labour, social reciprocity and trust-based exchange contribute substantially to the quality of life of its producers and consumers. It is the host of positive externalities and (inter)subjective intangibles associated with collective cooperation, collaboration and sharing that constitutes the essence of the social and economic value contributed by the creative ecology. Mutual artistic labour, the independence of collaborative networks and the creative ecology potentially form a new social resource. In our view, this new collective resource may usefully be labelled the ‘creative’ or ‘cultural commons’. Following Putnam (1991, 2000), the cultural commons can be regarded as a form of ‘social capital’ that exists at a mezzo-structural level, as a consequence of the flow of the individually contingent, yet collectively constant, cooperative micro-relations within the creative ecology. It is fundamentally important to an understanding of the radical potential of the new economy since, as a collective resource rooted in voluntary microassociations in civil society, it exists independently of, and often in opposition to capital, providing a mezzo-level structural defence for autonomous artistic labour, and a politics of autonomy within and beyond the commodified cultural sector.”