[A-List] Peer to Peer and Human Evolution

[nestorgoro at fibertel.com.ar]

Silvio Gesell was probably the single Argentinean who ever made a substantial contribution to economic thought. Prebisch certainly made none, his "theory of dependency" being at most a minor modification of the basic Keynesian schemata. Unfortunately, Gesell´s work is little known in Argentina. Neither are the contributions by the Utopian socialist Mariano Fragueiro, a man who around the late 1850s became head of the Treasury in the Argentinean Confederation (during those times, Buenos Aires had seceded and the country was split in two: Fragueiro was a minister in the Inland country section which was to be defeated by Buenos Aires -and imperialism- during a monstrous war during the 1860s). Fragueiro, whose work most probably was unknown for Gesell too, laboured more or less in the same sense. He explained why it was necessary that a weak and semicolonial country (not his words, of course) had a single banking institution, and this institution be state owned. Gesell wrote in m
ore affluent years, when Argentina believed it had taken off and was on its route towards a higher stage of civilization. 

Funnily enough, both Gesell and Piria, another critic of capitalism (this one across the River Plate) dedicated themeselves to ecology and mass tourism, too. Both founded bathing stations on the Atlantic, Piria founded Piriápolis (Piria´s city), and Gesell founded Villa Gesell, more or less by the same years. The River Plate semicolonial formations of the early 1900s were interesting indeed.

Néstor Gorojovsky

----- Mensaje original -----
De: Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org>
Fecha: Viernes, Abril 6, 2007 12:29 pm
Asunto: [A-List] Peer to Peer and Human Evolution

> I don't know whether this has been discussed here before. The author
> ,Michael Bauwens, wrote a wikipedia note on Sylvio Gesell's  Natural
> Economic Order and non-Marxist critique of capitalism. I'm 
> wondering about
> the related proposals to abolish interest on money lending and 
> reform of the
> finance system.
> 
> Charles
> 
> ^^^^^^
> 
> http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1
> 
> Peer to Peer and Human Evolution
> 
> On "the P2P relational dynamic" as the premise of the next 
> civilizationalstage
> Author: Michel Bauwens, michelsub2003 at yahoo.com
> The essay is an emanation of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, 
> Draft1.994, June 15, 2005; it was written after several months of 
> collaborationwith Remi Sussan.
> . a draft version is located at noosphere.cc; 
> . a PDF version here at NetworkCultures.org; 
> . a Wiki version is already available at noosphere.cc. 
> . an earlier draft version for the `integral discourse community' 
> is located
> at IntegralWorld.net 
> However, it's always best to ask me for the latest version by email
> attachment, since I tinker with the essay almost daily.
> A weekly newsletter, Pluralities/Integration, monitoring P2P 
> developments is
> also available from the same author, free by email request. See 
> the archive
> at IntegralVisioning.org.
> The foundation website-in-progress is at P2Pfoundation.net ; a 
> mailing list
> for the site's development is available at p2pf at yahoogroups.com /
> groups.yahoo.com/group/p2pf/join; a mailing list to discuss political
> strategy is available at strategic_p2p at googlegroups.com /
> groups.google.com.au/group/strategic_p2p
> 0. Executive Summary
> Peer to Peer is mostly known to technologically-oriented people as 
> P2P, the
> decentralized form of putting computers together for different 
> kind of
> cooperative endeavours, such as filesharing and music 
> distribution. But this
> is only a small example of what P2P is: it's in fact a template of 
> humanrelationships, a "relational dynamic" which is springing up 
> throughout the
> social fields. The aim of this essay is to describe and explain the
> emergence of this dynamic as it occurs, and to place it in an 
> evolutionaryframework of the evolution of modes of civilization. 
> We emit the hypothesis
> that it both the necessary infrastructure of the current phase of 
> 'cognitivecapitalism', but at the same time, significantly 
> transcends it thus pointing
> out the possibility of a new social formation that would be based 
> on it in
> an even more intense manner. In section one, you will find an initial
> definition, an explanation of our methodology for research, and some
> acknowledgements.
> After describing the emergence of P2P as the dominant mode, or 
> 'form', of
> our current technological infrastructure (section two), we then 
> describe its
> emergence in the economic sphere (section three), as a 'third mode of
> production', neither profit-driven nor centrally planned, but as a
> decentralized cooperative way of producing software (free software 
> and open
> source movements), and other immaterial products, based on the free
> cooperation of 'equipotential' participants. It uses copyright and
> intellectual propery rights to transcend the very limitations of 
> property,because in free software, if you use it, you have to give 
> at least the same
> rights to those who will use your modified version, and in open 
> sources, you
> have to give them equal access to the source code.
> Such commons-based peer production has other important 
> innovations, such as
> it taking place without the intervention of any manufacturer 
> whatsoever. In
> fact the growing importance of 'user innovation communities' (section
> 3.1.B), which are starting to surpass the role of corporate sponsored
> marketing and research divisions in their innovation capacities, 
> show that
> this formula is poised for expansion even in the world of material
> production, provided the design phase is separated from the production
> phase. It is already producing major cultural and economic 
> landmarks such as
> GNU/Linux, the Wikipedia encyclopedia, the Thinkcycle global 
> cooperativeresearch projects, and a Writeable Web/Participative 
> Internet/GlobalAlternative Communications infrastructure that can 
> be used by all, beyond
> the corporate stranglehold on mass media. Finally, CBPP 
> exemplifies a new
> work culture (section 3.1.C), that overturns many aspects of the 
> Protestantwork ethic as described by Max Weber. In the world of 
> development, it is
> exemplified by the emerging 'edge to edge development 
> partnerships' as
> theorized by Jock Gill. In section three, we also discuss the 
> evolution of
> forms of cooperation (3.4.A), and of collective intelligence 
> (3.4.B). It is
> also here that we are starting to address key analytical issues: 
> 1) what are
> the specific characteristics of the ideal-type of the P2P form 
> (3.4.C),namely de-institutionalisation (beyond fixed 
> organizational formats and
> fixed formal rules), de-monopolisation (avoid the emergence of 
> collectiveindividuals who monopolise power, such as nation-state 
> and corporation), and
> de-commodification (i.e. production for use-value, not exchange 
> value); 2)
> we then demonstrate that P2P cannot be explained by the gift 
> economy model
> of equal sharing and 'exchange of similar values', but rather by a 
> model of
> communal shareholding (section 3.4.D), i.e. the creation of a 
> Commons based
> on free participation both regarding input, and output (free usage 
> even by
> non-producers). We use Alan Page Fiske's fourfold model of 
> intersubjectiverelationships to ground this comparison; 3) we pay 
> attention to the current
> power structure of cognitive capitalism, with a discussion of the 
> thesis of
> McKenzie Wark's Hacher's Manifesto (section 3.4.E.).
> We then turn to its political manifestations, and describe how P2P is
> emerging as a new form of political organisation and sensibility, 
> alreadyexemplified in the workings of the alterglobalisation 
> movement (section
> 4.1.A.) which is a network of networks that refuses the principle of
> 'representation', i.e. that someone else can represent your 
> interests. In
> France,the recent social movements since 1995 were led by 
> "Coordinations"exemplifying exactly this sort of practice (section 
> 4.1.B). Thus the birth
> of new political conceptions such as those of 'absolute democracy' 
> (Negri et
> al.) or 'extreme democracy' (Tom Attlee et al.). A new field of 
> strugglearises (section 4.1.C), based on the defense and 
> development of an
> Information Commons, against the corporate strategies who are 
> trying to
> replace this 'free culture' (Lawrence Lessig) by a form of 
> 'informationfeudalism' (described by Jeremy Rifkin in The Age of 
> Access). We then
> examine the evolution of the monopolization of power (4.2.A.), the 
> relationsbetween the political ideals of freedom, equality, and 
> hierarchy, and their
> practice in P2P (4.2.B), and place this discussion in the context 
> of the
> general evolution of power and authority models (4.2.C)
> Section Five discusses the discovery of P2P principles at work in 
> physics,and in particularly in the physics of organisation, as 
> developed by network
> theory, and its concept of 'small worlds', and hierarchical vs. 
> egalitariannetworks.
> In Section Six, we turn our attention to the cultural sphere. We 
> claim and
> explain that the various expressions of P2P are a sympton of a 
> profoundcultural shift in the spheres of epistemology (ways of 
> knowing) and of
> ontology (ways of feeling and being), leading to a new 
> articulation between
> the individual and the collective (6.1.A), representing a true epochal
> shift. We then look at the spiritual field and how this affects 
> the dialogue
> of civilizations and religions away from euro- and other 
> exclusionist views
> in culture and religions (6.1.B); as well as to a critique of 
> spiritualauthoritarianism and the emergence of cooperative inquiry 
> groups and
> participatory spirituality conceptions (6.1.C), as theorized in 
> particularby John Heron and Jorge Ferrer. The new ideas related to 
> cosmology and
> metaphysics are explained in 6.1.D., centered aroud the demise of the
> subject-object paradigm in favour of partnership-based visions of our
> relationships with matter and nature.
> What does it all mean in terms of social change? In section 7 we 
> examine if
> all of the above is just a collection of perhaps unrelated 
> marginal trends,
> or rather, the view we espouse, represents the birth of a new and 
> coherentsocial formation (section 7.1.A). In section 7.1.B we 
> examine how P2P
> relates to the current system of cognitive capitalism (economics) 
> or 'post'
> or 'late modernity' (cultural sphere), concluding that it is both 
> within and
> beyond. Three scenarios are described (7.1.C): peaceful and 
> complementaryco-existence, the emergence of a cooperative 
> civilization, and the
> destruction of P2P in the context of information feudalism. All of 
> thisleads us to concluding remarks on possible political 
> strategies (7.1.D) to
> defend and expand P2P models, and to the principles behind the 
> launch of a
> Foundation for P2P Alternatives (section 8).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Table of Contents
> . 0. Executive Summary
> . 1. Introduction
> . 1.A. What this essay is about
> . 1.B. The use of an integral framework
> . 1.C. The Sociology of Form
> . 1.D. Some acknowledgments
> . 2. P2P as the Technological Framework of Cognitive Capitalism
> . 2.1.A. Defining P2P as the relational dynamic of distributed 
> networks. 2.1.B. The emergence of peer to peer as technological 
> infrastructure. 2.1.C. The construction of an alternative media 
> infrastructure. 2.2. Explaining the Emergence of P2P technology
> . 2.3.A. Placing P2P in the context of the evolution of technology
> . 2.3.B. P2P and Technological Determinism
> . 3. P2P in the Economic Sphere
> . 3.1.A. The third mode of production
> . 3.1.B. The Communism of Capital, or, the cooperative nature of 
> cognitivecapitalism
> . 3.1.C. The Hacker Ethic or `work as play'
> . 3.2 Explaining the Emergence of P2P Economics
> . 3.2.A. The superiority of the free software/open sources 
> production model
> . 3.3 Placing the P2P Era in an evolutionary framework
> . 3.3.A. The evolution of cooperation: from neutrality to synergetics
> . 3.3.B. The Evolution of Collective Intelligence
> . 3.3.C. Beyond Formalization, Institutionalization, Commodification
> . 3.3.D. The Evolution of Temporality: towards an Integral Time
> . 3.4 Placing P2P in an intersubjective typology
> . 3.4.A. P2P, The Gift Economy and Communal Shareholding
> . 3.4.B. P2P and the Market
> . 3.4.C. P2P and the Commons
> . 3.4.D. Who rules? Cognitive capitalists, the vectoral class, or 
> netocrats?. 3.4.E. The emergence of a netarchy
> . 4. P2P in the Political Sphere
> . 4.1.A. The Alterglobalisation Movement
> . 4.1.B. The `Coordination' format
> . 4.1.C. New conceptions of social and political struggle
> . 4.1.D. New lines of contention
> . 4.2.A. De-Monopolization of Power
> . 4.2.B. Equality, Hierarchy, Freedom
> . 4.3. Evolutionary Conceptions of Power and Hierarchy
> . 5. The Discovery of P2P principles in the Cosmic Sphere
> . 6. P2P in the Sphere of Culture and Self 
> . 6.1.A. A new articulation between the individual and the collective
> . 6.1.B. Towards `contributory' dialogues of civilizations and 
> religions. 6.1.C. Participative Spirituality and the Critique of 
> SpiritualAuthoritarianism
> . 6.1.D. Partnering with nature and the cosmos
> . 7. P2P and Social Change
> . 7.1.A. Marginal trend or premise of new civilization?
> . 7.1.B. P2P, Postmodernity, Cognitive Capitalism: within and beyond
> . 7.1.C. Three scenarios of co-existence
> . 7.1.D. Possible political strategies
> . 8. Launch of The Foundation for P2P Alternatives
> . Reactions to the Essay: Kudo's
> . BIBLIOGRAPHY
> 
> 
> 
>