I agree with some of your points, but not all. So here my reactions:

1) I agree with your understanding of left-right dynamics, though only a portion of the right is for freedom, the other is actually for authority. I’m not against the left, I consider myself squarely on the left, but the P2P Foundation itself is pluralist, i.e. seeks to work with all who agree pragmatically with the construction of concrete p2p projects and world-building as a focus. Concerning the left, I like a left which is thoroughly cognizant and self-reflexive of its historical relationship with the industrial system and era.

My marriage analogy does not imply reformism, on the contrary, I’m saying that even when the focus is total resistance, it is still focused on the ‘enemy’ and paradoxically feeds his existence. So I would insist that resistance (unavoidable when you’re under constant attack) is always coupled with alternative-world-construction and already living the maximum amount of relations and ethos and value production of the world we want and see possible.

2. Regarding capitalism as dying. I agree this is contentious. My conviction is, almost per definition, that an infinite growth system is logically and physically impossible, and that, if no p2p emerges, other oppressive systems will emerge. See what happened after WW I, and the death of that hyper-liberal wave, you had fascism, communism, and profound state control in the other countries. Pure capitalism was nearly dead and no social forces really believed in its survival. Now, some people believe that green capitalism can integrate externalities, but I think it suffers from huge contradictions that are only a temporary solution. I could be run. But geo-engineering I do not regard in any way as practical in any real sense. It’s a pipe dream, and I can’t imagine that humanity will tolerate such grand risks.

3. Regarding the proper place of p2p. Nothing in our literature would suggest that p2p is nothing but emergent. We are in the situation of Marx who witnessed a few thousand workers in Manchester, yet had the intuition that this was the new logic of society. In other words, there are empirical signs that the very DNA of our economy and politics is changing, in the direction of p2p. This is observable and the 10,000 wiki pages and 30,000 tags are empirical confirmation. The question is therefore indeed whether is it just a subsystem, easily integrated in capitalism, as most analysts think, such as Benkler and Lessig say, or whether the post-capitalist logic inherent in the p2p dynamic, will go from seed form to parity to dominance. The latter evolution is the ‘bet’ of the P2P Foundation, but of course, we can’t prove that future, and I fully accept a different scenario, i.e. a different post-capitalist scenario that is oppressive and possible worse than capitalism. However, my insistence of p2p ‘transcendence’ in no way obviates the need for political action and for a unified political movement. If you read our statement of principles, this is one of the key goals, a unifying of social forces that support more equality and justice, and hence, an interconnection of the free culture movements, worker and farmers movements, and “socialized enterpreneurs” that help sustain our commons.

Now if you have the funds for me, we nevertheless gladly produce such a statistical study, and we have collected a sizeable number of statistics and metrics confirming p2p growth. Barring funding, you could go through the appropriate tagged material on the topic.

4. If you disagree that market relations can co-exist with p2p and a commons structure, you would be forced to deny that the free software and open hardware models exist, since currently, they can’t exist without those market relations, no alternative value system is able to sustain them at present. No Linux, no Arduino, with their market ecologies. Perhaps Wikipedia, but it is patronage driven and therefore also indirectly relies on the market structure. However, imagining a commons that does NOT rely on such market ecology is theoretically possible, is possible, and it is my expectation that in a political economy where p2p has effectively become the dominant core, it will evolve in that direction. For now, FS/OH projects are not long term sustainable, and they have nearly all chosen for the combination of commons/community, FLOSS/OH Foundation governance, and enterpreneurial coalitions linked to the market. We could work as open communities to create coalitions adopting formats, such as coops, that are much more inline with p2p values, and this is one of the priority planks at the P2P Foundation. However, signs of such evolution are extremely weak still.

Michel

1. Partly, we’re just dealing here with definitions. Personally, I would define the Left as that political position and constituency whose highest value is social justice. (The Right’s would be freedom, I suppose). As such it obviously always remains around, just waxes or wanes empirically. But even on that empirical ground, it seems to me that with your ‘marriage’ analogy you are DEFINING the trad. Left as (to get out the old terms) reformists. But that’s only ONE strand, even in the labour movement.

2. I would caution against being convinced that capital is dying. I see no logical nor physical impossibility in the perpetuation of the basic relations of capitalism. The state of the biosphere is no limit – it can be incorporated, via geoengineering. And I am not at all sure that, even in the most radical visions of techno-futurism (except where we become a single Borg-like organism, which defines the problem away), power-differentials exploited economically (what capitalism basically is) will simply dissolve.

3. For all the imagination and exciting work that is occurring, under the broad heading of P2P/post-capitalism, my sense is that we are still talking about a relatively minor portion of the economy. The trend may be upward; we may be talking about structually important sectors where there are P2P relations. But it is seriously misleading to over-emphasise this, or to see it pointing inevitably toward the future.

As soon as you countenance other trajectories, a unified political movement in a stronger sense starts to seem more important.

I propose a challenge to the P2P foundation: To display, unambiguously, with statistics to back it up, the portion of world GDP (or, you can choose different measures if you think GDP misses what is important) currently under P2P relations; and to ground firmly projections into, say, the next 5 years.

4. I STRONGLY disagree (though I know I’m in a minority here) that market relations are compatible with P2P/a ‘commons’ structure. And equally, I think divorcing the market from capitalism is not coherent (I will argue this with all comers). That doesn’t imply that private firms producing, say, a Reprap can’t be part of the wider movement. But we must be lucid and clear – fuzziness is the precondition of cooptation.