Over the past thirty years, the idea of what a community is has been largely redefined by the emergence of a new type of communities on the Internet. In doing so, commons-producing cyber communities are the paradigm of a new mode of production, which digital commons theorists define as “commons-based peer production.” The main argument in this report, in a sense, reflects the developmental trajectory of the digital commons literature over time.
To get closer to this thesis, the report reviews the development of the literature on the digital common areas over time. This, as the report clearly shows, is basically an analysis of the transformative effects of distributed networks and peer production on the economy. They both share the same interest in the persuasive argument advanced in the digital commons literature about the transformative potential of peer production.
It brings to light the historical setting in which the development of this stream of literature is embedded. That is, the theories of the digital communities and peer production discussed in this study were evaluated based on their potential to expand the realm of human freedom and autonomy.
Digital commons
Paradigm shift
- Introduction: the rise of the digital commons
- The emergence of a new mode of production in cyberspace
- The germ of a post-capitalist society
- The form of the economic struggle of peer producers
The premise of Benkler's argument is the recognition that "the most advanced economies in the world today" are "networked information economies." On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, no one has delved deeper into the subject of peer production than the group of critical theorists associated with the so-called Project Oekonux. It could deepen one's understanding of FOSS and peer production by illustrating the clash between the new productive forces and the old social relations of production within the fold of the software industry.
The illumination of the subversive edge of FOSS is to this day the most recognizable contribution of Oekonux to the development of the theory of peer production (Söderberg & O'Neil 2014: 3). Admittedly, Oekonux was home to one of the most interesting and theoretically rich policy analyzes of FOSS and peer production. However, the political nature of the analysis of P2PF theorists does not consist solely in the distinction between allies and enemies.
Their role in this struggle is not merely theoretical in the traditional sense of the term. In fact, the involvement of peer production theorists is more akin to the intellectual vanguard of a movement focused on “the development of tactics and strategy” (Bauwens 2005).
The coming hegemony of peer production
- Introduction
- The traditional model of technology firms
- Crowdsourcing and open innovation
- Cognitive Capitalism
- The new phase of cognitive capitalism
- Platform cooperativism
- From platform cooperatives to open cooperatives
- Distributed Capitalism
- Summing up: Antagonisms and the struggle for hegemony
According to them, this model is synonymous with the inclusion of the digital commons and implies the co-optation of the subversive side of peer production. Ultimately, the adoption of crowdsourcing and open innovation models makes these economic actors a potential ally of commoners and peer producers in the fight against extractive modes of production. According to the theorists of the digital commons, the effect of this model on innovation is undoubtedly negative (Kostakis & Bauwens 2014, Benkler.
The new phase of cognitive capitalism is inextricably linked to the so-called 'sharing economy.' The concept has been very fashionable since the dawn of the new millennium. The process is controlled by the owners of the platforms, who extract value (rent or fees) from these processes. Up to this point, the analysis underlying the digital commons theorists' critique of the sharing economy is largely the same.
They do not share their profits with users, nor are the latter involved in the platform's management process. In short, platform cooperatives can be instrumentalized as agents for the new paradigm of value creation, which is constituted by commons-based peer production. As Bauwens and his colleagues clarify, a negative feature of traditional cooperatives is that they are not actively engaged in the production of the commons (Bauwens & Kostakis 2014, Pazaitis et al. 2017a).
Therefore, peer production theorists insist on the importance of the common in the context of the development of platform cooperatives. By moving platform cooperatives on the path of common goods, they strive to create favorable conditions for the spread of equivalent production and the expansion of the economy based on common goods. As Kostakis and Bauwens explain, “this new iteration of capitalism conforms to the characteristics of the network age” as it “uses P2P [i.e.
Instead, the validation process of the transactions is distributed to the entire network of signed-in miners. That rise in the price of Bitcoin is of course an indication of the degree of speculation in the bitcoin economy. They highlight several cases in which such systems have supported the development of community-based peer production projects.
That is, in a nutshell, how peer production's potential to become hegemonic in the area of the information economy has been theorized in the literature. From the early 2010s onwards, the work of peer production theorists, as we shall see, has been characterized by an acute awareness of the strategic role.
The struggle for political power and the hegemonic strategy of the commoners
- Introduction
- Autonomous institutions
- Hacking the State
- The Partner State #1: The FLOK Society Project
- The Partner State #2: Barcelona en Comú and the Bologna Regulation
- Recuperating systemic institutions from below
- The political turn of peer production theory
- The hegemonic strategy of the commoners
- Summing up
- Introduction
- The struggle of the commoners in the realm of the economy
- The political struggle of the commoners’ movement
This common ground, according to peer production theorists, makes 'Pirates' a visible ally of ordinary people in their struggle against cognitive capitalists (Bauwens et al. 2019). Recently published by Bauwens et al. Peer-to-Peer: The Commons Manifesto (2019) is paradigmatic of this concept of the state. The concept of the Partner State assumed central importance in the work of P2PF-related theorists in the last decade.
However, that does not mean that he or his associates have given up on the idea of the partner state. At the same time, it is an example of a partnership model between the institutions of local government and the commoners in the context of the commonification of urban resources. The escalation of the commoners' struggle therefore depends on the formation of alliances with other actors.
More specifically, ordinary people build their own autonomous institutions of governance, such as the Houses and Assemblies of Communes. The power of citizen platforms lies in their ability to mobilize a wide spectrum of actors in support of the commons. For the sake of clarity, let us first look at the issues raised by that strategy in the field of economics.
Let us recall the key elements of the ordinary people's strategy in the field of the economy. As they argue, by actively engaging in the production of the commons, cooperatives become part of the commons ecosystem (Bauwens et al. 2019). On an immediate and practical level, their production process therefore leads to the expansion of the common sphere.
In order to support themselves and engage in the production of the common people, peer producers have. On the contrary, in the last few years ordinary people have begun to develop a perception of the state as a particularly important terrain for social antagonism. According to this view (which is heavily influenced by Nicos Poulantzas' theory of the state [1978]), the state is the crystallization of a correlation of forces between rival classes (Bollier 2016, Linera 2015).
Criticism of oligarchic management of the commons by the state confirms this conclusion. What is missing from partner country theory and strategy is a reflection on the limitations of the strategy itself.
