Schlagwort: arbeitskritik

[This is part of an debate regarding parecon and peercommony between Michael Albert and me. It is a repy to Michael Albert’s Considering Peercommony. All articles can be found on the debate overview page – more will follow.]

Michael formulates various concerns and objections, many of whom are not new to me. I can’t address all of them fully, for lack of space and because many seem to ask for a blueprint of a future, non-capitalist society, which is not something I can or want to give. The meta-rule of all peer/commons-based institutions is that “you have to find your own rules.” Any successful peer project has a history of trial and error. Finding solutions that work for you is an essential part of the game.

But while I cannot describe the exact institutional mechanisms Michael asks me to describe, I’ll give my reasons why I think that people will be able to find and implement them. (mehr …)

[This is part of an debate regarding parecon and peercommony between Michael Albert and me. It is a repy to Michael Albert’s Summarizing Participatory Economics. All articles can be found on the debate overview page – more will follow.]

While I like the goals of the Parecon, one thing that confuses me is that Parecon, while intended to overcome capitalism, still resembles it in an essential aspect. Society still revolves about paid labor: everybody is forced to work for money in order to be able to buy the things they need to live. Why is that so? Do we really must forever force people to work because otherwise they wouldn’t?

A typical proponent of capitalism would probably respond: “Yes, humans are just lazy bastards. Without coercion, nobody would work and humanity would perish.” Michael Albert argues a bit smarter, but essentially in the same way:

If we disconnect work and income, … people will typically choose to work too little for the social good to be optimally met, and people will choose to take too much for the system to even work because the available output will fall well short of available demands for income.

So, everybody it still a bit too lazy and a bit too greedy for society to work without coercion, it seems. But is that claim as self-evident as Albert puts it? Moreover, if the mismatch between “available output” and “available demands” was real, could Parecon avoid it? I doubt both points.

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Das ist Teil 5 einer Serie wöchentlich erscheinender Artikel, deren englische Fassung im Journal of Peer Production erscheinen soll. In den Artikeln versuche ich zehn Diskursfiguren zu beschreiben, wie sie im Oekonux-Projekt in über zehn Jahren der Analyse Freier Software und commons-basierter Peer-Produktion entwickelt wurden. Mehr zum Hintergrund im einleitenden Teil. Bisher erschienene Teile: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Diskursfigur 5: Jenseits der Arbeit

[English]

Freie Software und Commons im allgemeinen sind jenseits von Arbeit. (mehr …)

[Previous article in series: Why not just pay someone when needed?]

Michel Bauwens challenged my claim that markets are totalitarian:

well, this is absolutely factually and historically incorrect … even in tribal times, there have always been a multitude of exchange and reciprocity mechanisms, except for perhaps really small bands who had no contact with outsiders […]. market mechanisms were used with strangers and enemies in tribal societies …

Which however missed the point of my remark, since actually I had written:

Market production is totalitarian: if some goods (e.g. health care in your example) are only available on the market (by paying for them), then everybody must remain a market producer (engaging in some form of paid work or else living from the work of others), since otherwise how would they get the necessary money?

Clearly, reciprocity (possibly in the form of generalized reciprocity) exists in every society, as I pointed out before. (mehr …)

This continues the discussion on required vs. facilitated reciprocity that took place on the jox mailing list. Michel Bauwens remained skeptical that stigmergic self-organization is the way to go; he inquired:

what makes you believe that faced with healthcare issues, I will find with certainty a right doctor and equipment willing to take care of me … since I’m facing this kind of issues right now as a peer producer without health insurance, I’d be more than happy to follow your instructions …

As I understand it, his reasoning goes like this: (mehr …)

The following post is based on two mails I wrote as part of a discussion on the jox mailing list (a relict of the short-lived [DE] CSPP journal) at the end of March. I try to explain why I have changed my position compared to the suggestions formulated in the book From Exchange to Contributions, but also why the change is not as radical as some people seem to think.

While in my book I describe what could be characterized as “open sharing communities requiring reciprocity” (you are required to contribute in order to benefit), my more recent work is about “open sharing communities facilitating reciprocity” – where contributing in some ways is easy and encouraged, but it is not required in order to benefit. When we look at existing successful peer communities, we see that they tend to follow the latter model, hence the change.

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[Fortsetzung des Interviews mit George Dafermos: Teil 1, Teil 2, Teil 3, Teil 4, Teil 5]

Neal Gorenflo: Was könnten ortsgebundene Communities, die nach einer Peer-Ökonomie streben, von den Communities lernen, die Software mittels Peer-Produktion herstellen? Welche Hindernisse siehst du bei der Übertragung der Online-Ökonomie in einen Offline-Kontext wie eine Stadt?

Die Communities der Peer-Produktion lehren uns, dass es unterschiedliche Wege gibt, menschliche Arbeit – und allgemeiner: menschliche Aktivitäten – zu organisieren. Peer-Produktion organisiert Enthusiasmus, nicht Gehorsam. Es zeigt sich, dass Manager_innen und Aufseher_innen nicht erforderlich sind. Auch wenn Hunderte von Personen teilnehmen, können diese in einem nicht-hierarchischen Rahmen koordiniert werden. In der Tat gibt es kaum ein Prinzip des traditionellen Business-Mangements, dem das lebende Beispiel der Peer-Produktions-Projekte nicht widerspricht.

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Lothar Galow-Bergemann hat am passenden Ort (im Karl-Marx-Haus in Trier) einen Vortrag gehalten, der den Titel trägt »Warum kann die Politik die Misere der Wirtschaft nicht stoppen?« Zwar geht der Referent auch auf »die Politik« ein, aber das eigentlich nur am Rande. Der größte Teil des Vortrag ist eine sehr verständliche Einführung in die Marktwirtschaft (aka Kapitalismus).

Hier anhören (54:36 Minuten):

[audio:http://freie-radios.net/mp3/20111029-warumkannd-43934.mp3]

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Commons-based peer production braucht ein Commoning, also eine Form von Selbstorganisierung um Gemeingüter nicht-kommerziell und bedarfsgerecht zu verwalten. Dieser Artikel möchte einen Beitrag leisten zur Erkundung wie diese Organisierung konkret aussehen könnte: Eine Reflektion über ein Experiment „Solidarischer Landwirtschaft“. Der Artikel findet sich auch in der aktuellen Ausgabe der „Streifzüge“ und dem soeben erschienenden Büchlein „Herrschaftsfrei Wirtschaften“.

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This is part 5 of a weekly series of articles to appear in the journal Critical Studies in Peer Production (CSPP). In the series I try to describe analytical patterns developed by the Oekonux Project since over ten years of research on Free Software and commons-based peer production. Please visit the introducing part for the background. Already released patterns: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Pattern 5: Beyond Labor

Free Software and commons in general is beyond labor. (mehr …)