The P2P Movements as an integrative political movement
Starting point of this thoughtpiece is a review by Brian Martin of a book by David Hess, Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry .
David Hess categorizes political and social movements in a fourfold typology: opposition movements, construction of alternatives, localism, and access movements. See the quote below, what strikes me is how the peer to peer movements potentially includes all four strategies.
We quote:
“Given that powerful interests shape the “pathways” for science and technology, social movements can respond in several ways. One is to oppose damaging developments, in what Hess calls 1)industrial opposition movements.” The anti-nuclear-power movement is a prominent example. Another response is 2) to promote development of alternatives, filling in the gaps of undone science. Hess calls these “technology- and product-oriented movements.” The promotion of renewable energy is one of these.
Hess also describes two other pathway alternatives. 3) One is localism, which promotes local provision of goods and services, such as energy and food. The other is 4) access, which promotes fair distribution. “
As a reminder, under P2P movements I consider to belong the movements that are inspired by the 3 main paradigms: 1) open and free inputs; 2) participatory processes; 3) commons-oriented outputs
1) The P2P movement as an opposition movement.
The movement arose out of an opposition against the enclosure of the public domain and the extension of “intellectual property rights”. Framed positively, this also makes it an access movement, as the open access movement for scholarly publications, free software to insure access to the source code, freeding access to government data, etc…
2) The P2P movement as a constructive movement
Whoever makes free software, creates an artifact that has an independent existence and changes the social relationships that take place through it. But this is also through for the open access movement, which creates new publicly available science, the open textbooks, w hich creates new textbooks, the Wikipedia, etc… This construction also affects physical production and material processes, especially through the open design movements
3) The P2P movement enables both global coordination and accessability, but also the local enactment and production of alternatives.
An open design for the production of renewable solar energy can be built in any local space, and can lead to a relocalization of many social processes.
4) The P2P movement stands for universal access to immaterial goods.
Peer production, using commons-oriented property licenses, is universally available by definition; open and free content/software/design insures access to all, even to those who would not have access in the market place.
The above indicates the integrative strength of the P2P movements, which can bring together strategies and tactics that were previously separated, but now find a natural unity in the broader paradigm which indicates: 1) not to make scarce what is naturally abundant, i.e. the sphere of immaterial cooperation: 2) not to deplete what is finite, i.e. the works and benefits of nature.
While we oppose enclosures, we at the same time create the new, and insure that the newly created artefacts are universally accessible to those with access to the network, for global or local implementation in the physical world, while continuing our efforts to address the various digital divides.