Message 03872 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT03736 Message: 19/31 L11 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

[ox-en] Re: transition from slavery to feudalism, mirror for transition from capitalism to peer society



a recent thoughtpiece:

To avoid misunderstandings at the outset, let me
clearly state that I distinguish markets from the
system of infinite accumulation of capital that we
call capitalism. Markets have always existed, and are
a mechanism to deal with and allocate scarce rival
resources through the mechanism of price. Under
capitalism this mode of exchange has become dominant,
but has also been coupled to something else, a system
that is based on continuous growth.
This system is now facing serious barriers that are a
function of the finiteness of the natural resource
base that is our planet, and global warming is one
example of it. One of the meanings of global warming,
coupled with the general trend of globalization, is
that our growth-system now covers the whole planet,
there is no more outside. What this means is that the
limits of an extensive development are being reached.
If China and India would reach the current level of
the West, we would need four planets instead of the
two we are already using up, and this seems a logical
impossibility.
This is no trivial affair, as the failure of extensive
development is what brought down earlier civilizations
and modes of production. For example, slavery was not
only marked by low productivity, but could not extend
this productivity as that would require making the
slaves more autonomous, so slave-based empires had to
grow in space, but at a certain point in that growth,
the cost of expansion exceeded the benefits. This is
why feudalism finally emerged, a system which
refocused on the local, and allowed productivity
growth as serfs had a self-interest in growing and
ameliorating the tools of production.
The alternative to extensive development is intensive
development, as happened in the transition from
slavery to feudalism. But notice that to do this, the
system had to change, the core logic was no longer the
same. The dream of  our current economy is therefore
one of intensive development, to grow in the
immaterial field, and this is basically what the
experience economy means. The hope that it expresses
is that business can simply continue to grow in the
immaterial field of experience.
But is that really so? I have a set of arguments and
observations that argue against that hope. First of
all, in the field of the immaterial, we are no longer
dealing with scarce goods, but with marginal
reproduction costs and non-rival goods. With such
goods, sharing does not diminish the enjoyment of the
good, since all parties retain their ability to use
them. The emergence of peer production shows a new
form of creating value, that is in fundamental aspects
?outside the market?. Typically, in commons-based
production we have a common pool, accessible to
everyone (Linux, Wikipedia), around which an ecology
of business can form to create and sell scarcities
(usually services and experiences). In
sharing-oriented production (YouTube, Google
documents), we have proprietary platforms that enable
and empower the sharing, but at the same time, sell
the aggregated attention (a scarcity), to the
advertising market. Finally, in the third
crowdsourcing mode, companies try to integrate
participation in their own value chain and framework.
So the good news is that indeed business is possible.
But I would like the readers to entertain the
following proposition, nl. That:
1)	The creation of non-monetary value is exponential
2)	The monetization of such value is linear
In other words, we have a growing discrepancy between
the direct creation of use value through social
relationships and collective intelligence (open
platforms create near infinite value through the
operations of the laws of Metcalfe and Reed), but only
a fraction of that value can actually be captured by
business and money. Innovation is becoming social and
diffuse, an emergent property of the networks rather
than an internal R & D affair within corporations;
capital is becoming an a posteriori intervention in
the realization of innovation, rather than a condition
for its occurrence; more and more positive
externalizations are created from the social field.
What this announces is a crisis of value, most such
value is ?beyond measure?, but also essentially a
crisis of accumulation of capital. Furthermore, we
lack a mechanism for the existing institutional world
to re-fund what it receives from the social world. So
on top of all of that, we have a crisis of social
reproduction: peer production is collective
sustainable, but not individually.
For all of this, we will need new policies, major
reforms and restructurations in our economy and
society.
But one thing is sure: we will have markets, but the
core logic of the emerging experience economy,
operating as it does in the world of non-rival
exchange, is unlikely to have capitalism as its core
logic.
It can no longer grow extensively, but it cannot
replace it by intensive growth. The history of slave
empires and their transition to feudal structures is
about to repeat itself, but in a different form.

--- Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Raoul and all!

This is of course meant as an invitation to join in
:-) .

4 days ago Raoul wrote:
Wednesday, August 22, 2007, you wrote:

Today I at least checked what we have so far.
Fortunately it is not so
bad. I'd say I'll try to prepare a presentation
of 20-30 minutes
meaning 7-10 slides. I'd probably prepare one
half for
"Selbstentfaltung" and the other half for
"Authorship in Free
Software". Hmm... may be a one or two fundamental
slides about Oekonux
would also be useful.

Well, did you change your mind since your initial
proposal ?
You had said:
"For this I'd think it would make sense to have
two parts: In the first
part we explain some central Oekonux ideas. I
think this is necessary
because only then we can assume some common
understanding among the
participants. In a second part we then discuss how
these ideas can relate to
art."



(http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/StefanMerten/KLab9Worksheet)

My original proposal was tailored for an hour of
presentation and
three hours of workshop. Now that we have only two
hours of workshop
in total we need to cut further. Question is where
to cut.

I thought it would make more sense for our own
Selbstentfaltung ;-) to
discuss with the audience and therefore reduce
presentation. On the
other hand too much reduction gives too little to
dicuss :-/ . We need
to find a balance somewhere.

You seem to see reduced the part dedicated to
Oekonux (a third small half?)
I thought that your idea to begin by taking the
necessary time to introduce
Oekonux central ideas was good... and I still
think it is. KLab is supposed
to be a place gathering people looking for ways
and means to overcome
capitalism. They should be naturally interested by
the Oekonux idea that the
free software spirit/practices are germs (also
active germs) of a
non-capitalist society.

True.

I think it would be useful, for example, to use
the
Stefan Meretz's image of the three "shells" of the
onion: software, culture
and societal material production, where the new
(non capitalist) forms of
production, after developing within the first
shell (software), are
developing into the second one, culture.

Good idea. However, from the top of my head I have
no idea how the
reasoning goes here.

@StefanMz: Could you help me? [...browsing...] Ah, I
think I got the
reference. From

http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Research/ImpressionsWOS4#impressions-by-stefan-meretz:

  If one imagines this as a model of an "onion"
consisting of
  "shells", then with free culture we reached the
second "shell" after
  the first "shell" (or core) being free software.
The third "shell"
  of the onion - witch had become clear at different
points - will be
  the core of societal production, following my
rampant thesis :-) .

May be we could put some more meat to this thesis?
For instance: Is it
possible to make a point that it starts with
software and then
continues to culture to later reach societal
production?

Art is part of culture, and indeed, in some
domains of art (music, videos,
photos, literature, etc) we see clear and
accelerated expansion of
non-market practices (creating art products for
own and others pleasure and
not for wage and sell/profit).

Yeah that's true. Probably most (visible) in Brazil
but also refer to
the Jamendo project mentioned on

http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Research/ImpressionsWOS4#panel-business-and-the-commons

But if you follow Lawrence Lessig as StefanMz
referred to above and I
refer to at

http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/Research/ImpressionsWOS4#talk-the-read-write-society
then creation of culture for others always has been
a common activity
- - especially for music I guess.

This reality concerns, for the moment, mostly
digital goods produced mostly with digital means.
("Internet art", "Software
art", "Browser out", game design, etc.)

But hasn't been playing music for the sake of a good
concert, for the
fans always been a big motivator? Beyond money which
for most amateur
bands is not worth saying? Well, now I'm probably in
the realm of art
being *directly* done for the own Selbstentfaltung
as well as for
others Selbstentfaltung. Music is the best example I
can think of.
Other examples?

But it may expand (partially) into
material goods since Free Software may be used to
drive tools, machines. If
designing cars can be considered as containing
some artistic aspects, the
case of Oscar is an example.

This would be probably something like industrial
design or so.
Certainly this has aspects of "useful art".

In any case, I think it would be worth to take
sufficient time for the
presentation of Oekonux's dynamic way to see
things and situate art in this
dynamic. But, after all, maybe this can be done
with one or two slides...

May be we should gather points and then check what
seems most
important.

On [ox-de] some time ago we had some debates on
that topic - also with
artists. I should check the archive for these
threads. What I remember
was a strong wish to keep the work "untouched". I
know this feeling
from programming, too, though nowadays something
like code ownership
vanishes more and more - especially as it seems
to me in Free Software
projects.

For digital goods, you can always keep an
"untouched" version of the
original product. This may not be the case for
material products... But we
know that all the possibilities with digital goods
cannot be found with
material goods. Nevertheless, the irreversible
process of introduction of
"digital substance" into almost all forms of
artistic creation should also
have an influence in the way "artists" see their
activity and the
"untouchability" of their products...

Well, aren't many artworks most of all information?
At least in our
age where they can be reproduced and copied easily?
Isn't a song much
more than information which needs to be performed?
Isn't a text
anything else than information?


=== message truncated ===


The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p 

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at  http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html; video interview, at http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/29/network_collaboration_peer_to_peer.htm


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect.  Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7 

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT03736 Message: 19/31 L11 [In index]
Message 03872 [Homepage] [Navigation]