Post on 02-Apr-2023
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Is Socialism Relevant in the “Networked Information Age”? A Critical Assessment of The Wealth of NetworksTony SmithIowa State University
The first question raised by Richard Schmitt in his
Introduction to the present volume could not be more basic: What
is Socialism? The most familiar answer to this question is that
socialism would be a new mode of production replacing
commodification, profit seeking, and the capital/wage labor
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relation with freely associated labor and the proliferation of
public goods. For most socialists the institutionalization of
such a mode of production would obviously require a radical break
from the present social order. More specifically, socialists
accuse of liberal egalitarians who believe that capitalist market
societies can operate in a normatively acceptable manner if only
the proper legislative and regulatory framework were in place of
internal incoherence. In the socialist view, liberal
egalitarians affirm core values and social relationships—
substantive freedom, a flourishing public sphere, a fair global
order, and so on (values and relationships socialists affirm as
well; see Callinicos 2000)—that are in principle incompatible
with the capitalism they also affirm.
Yochai Benkler has been called “the leading intellectual of
the information age.”1 His recent work, The Wealth of Networks: How
Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, is, I believe, one of the
most important attempts to vindicate a liberal egalitarian
perspective in recent decades.2 Unlike most other advocates of 1 The praise was bestowed by Lawrence Lessig on the back cover of Benkler 2005.2 Benkler himself refers to the position he defends as “liberalism” throughouthis book. But theorists in the “classical liberal” tradition with whom Benkler profoundly disagrees (such as Nozick and Hayek) have as legitimate a
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this position, however, Benkler does not remain on the level of
the abstract philosophical ideas. In Marxian terminology, he
presents what is in effect a historical materialist account of
the dialectical interactions of the forces of production and
production relations in the contemporary era. Benkler himself
does not refer to “socialism” once in his work. Nevertheless,
his account implicitly calls into question every element of the
familiar picture of socialism sketched above. A critical
analysis of The Wealth of Networks therefore provides an exceptional
opportunity to consider what, if anything, the socialist project
might mean in the present moment of world history.
COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION: A NEW MODE OF PRODUCTION?
Benkler’s central claim is that today “a new mode of
production [is] emerging in the middle of the most advanced
economies in the world—those that are the most fully computer
networked and for which information goods and services have come
to occupy the highest-valued roles” (Benkler 2006, 6).
“Information goods and services,” of course, have been an
claim to the mantle of “liberalism” as he does. In contemporary political philosophy Benkler’s viewpoint is standardly termed “liberal egalitarianism” (see Kymlicka 2001, Chapter 3).
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essential component of human life from its inception. The main
characteristic distinguishing them from other sorts of goods and
services has been well known for quite some time as well:
information is “non-rivalrous.” 3 There are, however, three
dimensions of the production and distribution of information
goods and services today that together constitute a new mode of
production in Benkler’s view.
Means of Production
The paradigmatic technologies throughout the industrial age
were large-scale single-purpose machines, requiring massive
investments in fixed capital. The scale of these investments led
to extensive centralized ownership and control of the means of
production through joint-stock companies. If satisfactory
returns on the investments were to be won, economies of scale had
to be obtained from extended runs of standardized products. In
this period, then, the economy was dominated by private firms
devoted to the sale of commodities in mass markets.
3 If there are two of us and one apple, every bite of the apple I take is a bite you cannot have. If there are two of us and one item of information, in contrast, I can possess the information fully and you can possess it no less fully at the same time.
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As in many other reconstructions of economic history, in
Benkler’s account the “industrial age” gives way to an era in
which in which “information, knowledge, and culture have become
the central high-value-added economic activities of the most
advanced economies” (Benkler 2006, 56). He gives this familiar
story a twist, however, asserting that two “information ages”
must be distinguished. The first, the industrial information age,
continued to employ means of production requiring large-scale
fixed capital investments:
The core distinguishing feature of communications,
information, and cultural production since the mid-
nineteenth century was that effective communication …
required ever-larger investment of physical capital. Large-
circulation mechanical presses, the telegraph system,
powerful radio and later television transmitters, cable and
satellite, and the mainframe computer became necessary to
make information and communicate it on scales that went
beyond the very local (Benkler 2006, 3-4).
A break from the industrial epoch is now taking place with the
emergence of the networked information age. Thanks to developments
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that have brought down the cost of computing power, a high
proportion of adults in relatively wealthy regions of the global
economy (and to an ever-increasing extent elsewhere as well) now
own personal computers, workstations, laptops, notebooks and pads
with considerable processing power and memory. Network
connections uniting these various devices with each other are
also affordable and close to ubiquitous. The radical newness of
this state of affairs should not be underestimated. Unlike the
means of production of the industrial epoch (including the
industrial information age) ownership of the characteristic means
of production of the networked information age is widely
dispersed.
Labor Relations
There have always been large numbers of people with the
psychological disposition to willingly cooperate with others in
the pursuit of shared ends outside the authority structures of
firms and without market rewards.4 What is different today is 4 Titmuss’ famous study of blood donors showed that offering to pay the marketprice for blood can result in there being fewer donors than appealing to the no-monetary values of potential contributors. Benkler generalizes the point: “Some resources can be mobilized by money. Social relations can mobilize others. For a wide range of reasons—institutional, cultural, and possibly technological—some resources are more readily capable of being mobilized by social relations than by money” (Benkler 2006, 95).
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that the technologies and associated economics of the “networked
economy” now make it possible to mobilize the creative energies
of such people on an unprecedented scale. In specific, those
engaged in the production and use of knowledge products can
communicate with each other almost instantaneously and costlessly
whenever and wherever they choose. If individuals have the time
and the disposition, they can freely choose to cooperate together
in the production of information goods or services on a scale
that was previously impossible.
Output Distribution
The immense fixed capital costs associated with the
industrial age and the industrial information age had to be
covered by the sale of mass produced commodities. The fact that
computing power is now relatively inexpensive removes this
pressure. Further, computers and electronic networks allow
additional units of knowledge products to be produced and
distributed at close to zero marginal cost. This enables
knowledge products, which function as both inputs and outputs in
the information economy, to be distributed as free public goods
on an unprecedented scale.
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Benkler terms the new mode of production defined by these
three elements commons-based peer production, a system of “cooperative
and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed,
nonmarket mechanisms that do not depend on proprietary
strategies” (Benkler 2005, 3). He does not believe that private
property, market transactions, or for-profit firms are about to
disappear. Nonetheless, he writes,
(N)ew patterns of production—nonmarket and radically
decentralized—will emerge, if permitted, at the core, rather
than the periphery of the most advanced economies. [This]
promises to enable social production and exchange to play a
much larger role, alongside property- and market-based
production, than they ever have in modern democracies
(Benkler 2006, 3).
There is in fact already overwhelming evidence that “nonmarket
behavior is becoming central to producing our information and
cultural environment” (Benkler 2006, 56). The successes of the
open software movement are an immensely important example:
Ideas like free Web-based e-mail, hosting services for
personal Web pages, instant messenger software, social
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networking sites, and well-designed search engines emerged
more from individuals or small groups of people wanting to
solve their own problems or try something neat than from
firms realizing there were profits to be gleaned (Zittrain,
2008, p. 85).
Encryption software, peer-to-peer file-sharing software, sound
and image editors, and many other examples can be added to this
list. “Indeed, it is difficult to find software not initiated by
amateurs” (Zittrain, 2008, p. 89). Individuals cooperating
outside firms and the system of market rewards have also
collectively produced and freely distributed encyclopedias that
have proven useful to millions, entirely new genres of music,
political commentary and information about events across the
globe, and so on.5
5 Besides Wikipedia “(t)here are 145 other wiki engines today, each one powering myriad sites that allow users to collaboratively write and edit material. Then there are status updates, map locations, half thoughts posted online. Add to this the six billion videos delivered by YouTube each month inthe United States alone and the millions of fan-created stories deposited on fan-fiction sites. … When individuals work together toward a large-scale goal,this effort produces results that emerge at the group level … (T)he whole group benefits at the same time that the individual benefits … Just look at any of hundreds of open-source software projects, such as Wikipedia. In theseendeavors, finely tuned communal tools generate high-quality products from thecoordinated work of thousands or tens of thousands of members. One study estimates that 60,000 man-years of work were poured into the release of the Fedora Linux 9 software. Altogether, roughly 460,000 people around the world are currently working on an amazing 430,000 different open-source projects.
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Commons-based peer production bears a close family
resemblance to the familiar vision of socialism sketched in the
first paragraph of this chapter. Socialists reject
commodification, the capital/wage labor relation, and the
sacrifice of all other social ends to private profits. In
commons-based peer production a critical mass of inputs, and all
outputs, are distributed within information networks as free
goods, rather than as commodities to be sold for profit by
capitalist firms. The power to labor does not take the form of a
commodity; purchased by capital; the living labor that transforms
inputs into final products is organized on the basis of free
association, outside the capital/wage labor relation. But this
“new mode of production” is not an anticipation of something in
the indefinite future, after a rupture from the present social
order has occurred. It is already emerging within this order, and
it does not replace capitalist production. As we shall see
below, in Benkler’s account commons-based peer production can
flourish alongside continuing capitalist market relations, as long
as the right legal framework is in place.
That’s almost twice the size of General Motors’ workforce, but without any bosses” (Kelly 2010, 314-15, 316).
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In all these respects commons-based peer production would
appear to undermine the familiar socialist view that the core
normative values of liberal egalitarianism cannot in principle be
adequately institutionalized within the present social order.
Liberal egalitarians evaluate social practices, institutions, and
entire social systems by the degree to which they further the
autonomy and flourishing of individuals, who each warrant equal
respect. Liberal theorists have long argued that market
societies in principle institutionalize the mutual recognition of
the equality and autonomy of individuals far better than command
economies. Individuals have the freedom to engage in trade of
goods and services whenever doing so can be foreseen to further
their life plans, and efficiencies resulting from the market
competition help provide individuals with access to the material
conditions for human flourishing. Benkler insists, however, that
a vibrant sphere of commons-based peer production results in a
much more thorough institutionalization of core liberal
egalitarian values than has previously been possible. He
discusses this transformation under three major headings.6
6 A fourth topic, the impact of the networked economy on culture, will not be discussed here.
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Autonomy
When production and distribution are organized within firms,
individuals participate in wage labor only if they are granted
permission to do so by the owners/controllers of those firms.
Permission will only be granted if they are willing to follow
directives issued by the owners and controllers. In common-based
peer production, in contrast, means of production are owned by
the producers themselves (their computers and network
connections), many other inputs into the production process are
available as free public goods, and the results of production can
be easily and inexpensively distributed over information
networks. Under these circumstances no one has to ask for
permission to participate in production and distribution
processes, and the form this participation takes does not depend
upon the decisions of others. One can simply decide to
contribute, and the form the contribution will take, on one’s
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own.7 By definition, such an arrangement significantly increases
substantive autonomy.
Public Discourse
In the liberal egalitarian framework governments are
required to protect individual rights, avoid unreasonable
concentrations of market power, ensure that all citizens have the
proper social minimum, provide public goods and avoid public
bads, and so on, all of which furthers substantive autonomy.
Unfortunately, the coercive powers of the state are also a
potential threat to the autonomy and flourishing of individuals,
a danger that is especially acute when political elites and
economic elites collude. Contemporary liberal egalitarian
theorists accordingly place great weight on a flourishing public
sphere, capable of monitoring exercises of power, checking abuses
of that power, and influencing legislation through public
discourse and social movements.
7 This does not, however, mean that activities devoted to these collective projects lack all structure: “these projects are based on a hierarchy of meritocratic respect, on social norms, and, to a great extent, on the mutual recognition by most players in this game that it is to everyone’s advantage tohave someone overlay a peer review system with some leadership” (Benkler 2006,105).
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The concentrated and centralized media of the industrial age
and of the industrial information age greatly limited the ability
of individuals to participate effectively in processes of
political will formation:
(T)hose who are on the inside of the media [are] able to
exert substantially greater influence over the agenda, the
shape of the conversation, and through these the outcomes of
public discourse, than other individuals or groups in
society. Moreover, for commercial organizations, this power
could be sold—and as a business model, one should expect it
to be … Second, issues of genuine public concern and
potential political contention are toned down and structured
as a performance between iconic representatives of large
bodies of opinion, in order to avoid alienating too much of
the audience (Benkler 2006, 204-5).
In the networked information age, in contrast, a far wider range
of individuals have the ability to contribute effectively to the
collective interpretation of events and policy proposals through
electronic forums organized as a form of commons-based peer
production. Individuals therefore have a far greater ability to
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gain access to a diversity of viewpoints regarding the
interpretation of events and policy proposals. The collective
process of sharing information and evaluations of issues of
public interest in many-to-many relationships outside the
structures of corporate owned (or state controlled) media
furthers the dynamism of the public sphere far more than the one-
to-many communication flows of industrial media ever could.
Global Justice
Billions of individuals in poor regions of the global
economy do not have access to basic nutrition or medicines. The
injustice of this state of affairs is undeniable for anyone like
Benkler committed to the values of liberal egalitarianism. Lack
of access to scientific-knowledge relevant to growing food and
producing medicines is one important causal factor underlying
this state of affairs. A global market system in which the needs
and wants of consumers with extensive disposable income have
first priority is another. The emergence of commons-based peer
production promises to improve matters greatly by making relevant
scientific-technological knowledge freely available in poorer
regions of the world market, aiding in the production of low-cost
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(or free) medical drugs to meet the most pressing health needs.
Turning to issie pf nutrition, public plant breeding programs
have a very impressive track record of developing seeds
appropriate to the climate and soil of specific regions. With
the rise of information networks such programs should be even
more effective in helping individuals in poor regions of the
global economy meet their nutritional needs (Benkler 2006,
Chapter 9).
Global justice requires that individuals throughout the
planet have access to the material preconditions for human
flourishing to the greatest feasible extent. Medical care and
adequate nutrition are two of the most important of these
preconditions. The potential for commons-based peer production
to generate and freely distribute the scientific-technological
knowledge regarding neglected and health and nutrition problems
of poor countries justifies Benkler’s conclusion that “this is
where freedom and justice coincide”:
The practical freedom of individuals to act and associate
freely—free from the constraints of proprietary endowment,
free from the constraints of formal relations of contract or
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stable organizations—allows individual action in ad hoc,
informal association to emerge as a new global mover. …
(I)t offers a new path, alongside those of the market and
formal government investment in public welfare, for
achieving definable and significant improvements in human
development throughout the world (Benkler 2006, 355).
The Political Project
It was not difficult for socialists to argue that industrial
capitalism could not in principle institutionalize the sort of
substantive autonomy, democratic will-formation, and global
justice that the liberal egalitarians advocated. Benkler,
however, has given strong reasons to doubt that the criticisms of
industrial capitalism (including what Benkler terms the
“industrial information age”) can be assumed to hold for the
networked information economy. If substantive autonomy, a
democratic public sphere, and global justice can in principle now
be institutionalized within the contemporary social order, the
familiar socialist case for undertaking a world historical break
from that order would be undermined to a considerable extent, if
not entirely. The world historical project of constructing a
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socialist alternative would have to be abandoned as well,
replaced by the quite different project of ensuring that commons-
based peer production could flourish alongside capitalist
sectors.
The latter is Benkler’s political project. He emphatically
rejects the technological determinist thesis that the development
of information technologies in itself automatically brings about
a society in which commons-based peer production plays a central
role. In many sectors of the contemporary economy there are
incumbents whose profits are directly threatened by commons-based
peer production. These incumbents have great resources to
influence the political and legal system in the hope of
maintaining (or even extending) their privileged positions.
Powerful cultural beliefs regarding the moral justification and
economic efficiency of private property and markets can be
mobilized to this end as well. Incumbents have won great
victories, as intellectual property rights have been extended in
both scope and enforcement (Benkler 2006, 57). The principle of
“net neutrality,” which Benkler considers an essential condition
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of the possibility of a flourishing commons-based peer production
sector, has come under increasing pressure.8
Fortunately, Benkler asserts, the stifling of commons-based
peer production is not inevitable either. Incumbents face strong
opposition from members of the open source movement, corporations
that provide tools and materials for commons-based peer
production, and the growing number of corporations that have
incorporated commons-based peer production in their long-term
business strategies (IBM is perhaps the leading example; Benkler
2006, 46; see notes 14 and 27 below). For Benkler, then, the
future prospects of commons-based peer production are open-ended.
We do not, then, have to choose between a for-profit capitalist
market sector, on the one hand, and commons-based peer
production, on the other. In principle, he asserts, it is
possible for capitalist market production and commons-based peer
production to complement each other, with each making its own
contribution to human autonomy and flourishing. Simplifying
somewhat, the former remains suitable in cases where the relevant
8 “The emergence of the networked information economy as described in this book depends on the continued existence of an open transport network” (Benkler, 2006, 397).
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means of production are too expensive to be owned by those
engaged in living labor, while the latter is appropriate when the
means of production are inexpensive enough to be owned by them.
All that is required is the political will to resist the
imposition of a legal and regulatory framework privileging the
short-sighted interests of incumbents:
(F)rom the beginning of legal responses to the Internet and
up to this writing … the primary role of law has been
reactive and reactionary. It has functioned as a point of
resistance to the emergence of the networked information
economy. It has been used to contain the risks posed by the
emerging capabilities of the networked information
environment. What the emerging networked information
economy therefore needs, in almost all cases, is not
regulatory protection, but regulatory abstinence (Benkler
2006, 393).
If these claims were correct, socialism would be a relic of
a by-gone age. The only relevant practical imperative would be a
twenty-first century variant of the traditional liberal
egalitarian project of ensuring the proper background conditions
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necessary for the economy to function in a normatively acceptable
manner.
I shall argue in the remainder of this chapter that the rise
of the “networked information economy” does not eliminate the
need to struggle for socialism. Nor does it remove the internal
contradiction within liberal egalitarianism of affirming the
value of an autonomous citizenry, a dynamic public sphere, and a
just global system, while simultaneously affirming a social order
that rules out their adequate institutionalization. The rise of
commons-based peer production does, however, provide grounds for
a new answer to the “What is socialism?” question: socialism is a
set of democratic social forms that allows the emancipatory
potential of commons-based peer production to be adequately
institutionalized, beyond the restrictions imposed by capitalism.
A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
I would like to begin by noting a tension at the heart of
Benkler’s analysis. Sometimes Benkler talks of the sphere of
commons-based peer production as being at the “core” of the
contemporary economy. Other times he pictures it as operating
“alongside” for-profit market production. At first glance his
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oft-hand remark that “someone needs to work for money, at least
some of the time, to pay the rent and put food on the table,”
appears compatible with both descriptions (Benkler 2006, 100).
Matters appear differently when we note his implicit admission
that the time devoted to commons-based peer production does not
come from a reduction in the time devoted to wage labor: instead
“the time can be drawn from the excess time we normally dedicate
to having fun and participating in social interactions” (Benkler
2006, 101). In other words, even after the rise of commons-based
peer production, the capital/wage labor relation provides the
central mechanism for social reproduction. And this implies that
of capitalist production remains the “core” of the economy.
Benkler insists that a social world including commons-based
peer production alongside for-profit capitalist production counts
as a significant advance over the industrial age and the
industrial information age from the standpoint of essential
liberal egalitarian values. He justifies this assertion by
arguing that commons-based peer production furthers individual
autonomy, deliberation and decision making in the public sphere,
and global justice. This line of thought is broadly correct.
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But it is only half the story. The relatively subordinate place
of commons-based peer production within capitalism imposes
systematic limits to the extent to which commons-based peer
production can contribute to autonomy, a flourishing public
sphere, and global justice in the present social order. It also
forces us to reconsider the future prospects of this new form of
production as long as the present social order remains in place.
Autonomy
Benkler’s discussion of autonomy is limited to a
consideration of the activities of those engaged in commons-based
peer production. Insofar as participants in this practice choose
what projects they contribute to, the parts of the project they
work on, how much of their free time they devote to the project,
and so on, it does indeed make sense to speak of autonomy here.
But the limits to these gains are significant, and should be
explicitly acknowledged as well.
1. Benkler treats money as one sort of psychological
motivation among others (Benkler 2006, 92 ff.). But the
acquisition of money remains an objective necessity in our world,
whatever our subjective dispositions might be. The use of money
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is not a matter of mere convenience. That may be true of societies
with markets. But in capitalist market societies individuals are compelled
to obtain access to money.9 To be without money is to be
literally outside this sort of society. The economic agents
Benkler discusses may own some means of production required for
commons-based peer production (their personal computers) and have
inexpensive access to others (the Internet). But they do not
have access to their means of subsistence as a matter of right.
Nor do they have access to the means of production required to
produce means of subsistence. Since means of subsistence
generally remain in the commodity form, these agents must acquire
monetary resources to obtain them. However autonomous they may
be while engaged in commons-based peer production, they, like
other agents who do not own or control capital, must sell their
labor power as a commodity in order to gain access to the money
required to purchase means of subsistence, a form of structural
coercion that remains even if overt violence or its threat is
absent. And since they, like other wage laborers, will not be
9 Money is here the center of the social universe, “the god among commodities”(Marx 1986, 154). “(E)ach individual … carries his social power, as well as his connection with society, in his pocket” (Marx 1986, 94).
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hired unless those who own and control capital foresee that their
(surplus) labor will create an amount of economic value exceeding
the value of their wages, we may also speak of them being coerced
into a situation of exploitation. Participants in commons-based
peer production may enjoy a significant degree of autonomy
outside the capital/wage labor relation. But, once again,
Benkler himself concedes that this is “time … drawn from the
excess time we normally dedicate to having fun and participating
in social interactions” (Benkler 2006, 101). Insofar as much of
their remaining waking time is subject to structural coercion and
exploitation inside the capital/wage labor relation, the
restrictions on their autonomy remain profound. Whatever other
changes the networked economy has brought, it has not made this
Marxian point irrelevant. 10
The most basic terms in which our society should be
conceptualized are at stake here. According to liberal doctrine,
10 “It is [not] a mere accident that capitalist and worker confront each otherin the market as buyer and seller. It is the alternating rhythm of the processitself which throws the worker back onto the market again and again as a seller of his labour-power and continually transforms his own product into a means by which another can purchase him. In reality, the worker belongs to capital before he has sold himself to the capitalist. His economic bondage isat once mediated through, and concealed by, the periodic renewal of the act bywhich he sells himself, his change of masters, and the oscillations in the market-price of his labour” (Marx 1976a, 724),
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liberal societies do not privilege a particular conception of the
good on the level of society as a whole. Each individual is free
to determine his or her own “conception of the good,” subject
only to the proviso that he or she respects the equal right of
other individuals to do the same. And “capital,” whether taken
as a physical thing used in production and distribution or as a
sum of money, is essentially a means to further the human ends
that embody the various conceptions of the good. But in
capitalism units of production undertake production privately,
and must then validate the social necessity of their endeavors
through sale of their products for money. Units of production
that do not relentlessly and successfully direct their endeavors
to valorization, that is, to appropriating monetary returns exceeding
the initial money invested, will over time necessarily tend to be
pushed to the margins of social life or eradicated altogether.
For these units,
Use-values must ... never be treated as [their] immediate
aim … nor must the profit on any single transaction. [The]
aim is rather the unceasing movement of profit-making …
(t)he ceaseless augmentation of value (Marx, 1976a, p. 254).
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“Capital” is first and foremost a totalizing drive to
valorization operating on the level of society as a whole. This
implies that, pace liberal doctrine, there is an end, a conception
of the good, holding on the level of society as a whole. But it
is not a human end, not a human good. It is capital’s good, “the
ceaseless augmentation of value” as an end-in-itself.
This does not mean that human agents are mere automatons,
puppets whose strings move in response to the needs of capital.
Human agents have causal powers emerging from processes of
natural and social evolution, and capital presupposes, rather
than creates, these powers. While these powers are shaped, and
new ones developed, under the capital form, the causal powers of
human agents remain their causal powers. Nonetheless, due to the
historically specific way in which social life is organized—the
separation of units of production from each other, the separation
of working men and women from (most) means of production and
subsistence, and the consequent subordination of living labor
under the valorization imperative— “capital … valorizes itself
through the appropriation of alien labour” (Marx, 1986, p. 233). When
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this occurs, the powers of living labor appear in the alien form
of powers of capital.11
In liberal egalitarian theory a Kantian “kingdom of ends,”
in which individuals mutually recognize each other as autonomous
ends in themselves, forms the normative standard for assessing
institutional frameworks. But when the “self-valorization of
value” is the dominant end on the level of society as a whole, it
is impossible for humans to be adequately treated as autonomous
ends in themselves in a substantive, as opposed to merely formal
sense, given the coercive pressures reducing them to means for
capital accumulation. This continues to hold for variants of
capitalism that include commons-based peer production.
2. The systematic limits on autonomy imposed by capital on
those engaged in commons-based peer production go beyond the time
11 “The social productive forces of labour, or the productive forces of directly social, socialized (i.e. collective) labour come into being through co-operation, divisions of labour within the workshop, the use of machinery, and ingeneral the transformation of production by the conscious use of the sciences, of mechanics, chemistry, etc. for specific ends, technology, etc., and similarly, through the enormous increase of scale corresponding to such developments … This entire development of the productive forces of socialized labour … and together with it the use of science (the general product of social development), in the immediate process of production, takes the form of the productive power of capital … The mystification implicit in the relations of capital as a whole is greatly intensified here“ Marx 1976b, 1024). “All the powers of labour project themselves as powers of capital” (Marx 1976a 755-6). “The development of the social productive forces of labour and the conditions of thatdevelopment come to appear as the achievement of capital” (Marx 1976b, 1055).
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they are forced to spend in wage labor. In this context it is
extremely important to recall that for Marx the powers of capital
are not limited to the expropriated powers of commodity-producing
living labor in the wage form. The powers of nature are also
appropriated by capital as its powers (Marx 1976a 757), as are
the heritage of pre-capitalist societies,12 the powers of
scientific and technological knowledge,13 and so on. Unpaid care
labor in households also provides a free service for capital in
so far as it contributes to the production and reproduction of
capital’s most important commodity, labor power. The “free
gifts” to capital provided by nature, history, scientific-
technical knowledge, and care labor are part of Marx’s value
theory. Marx fully recognized that the valorization process
would come to an immediate halt were it not for these gifts.14
12 “(T)he capital-relation arises out of an economic soil that is the product of a long process of development The existing productivity of labour, from which it proceeds as its basis, is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries” (Marx 1976a, 647).13 “Once discovered, the law of the deflection of a magnetic needle in the field of an electric current, or the law of the magnetization of iron, cost absolutely nothing … Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing, a fact that by no means prevents him from exploiting it … (I)t is clear at first glance that large-scale industry raises the productivity of labour to an extraordinary degree by incorporating into the production processboth the immense forces of nature and the results arrived at by natural science” (Marx 1976a, 508-9). 14 This point is missed by many contemporary theorists of “cognitive capitalism.” See Virno 2007 and Vercellone 2007, and the critical response to
30
Units of capital today are happy to appropriate the creative
achievements of social labor outside the capital/wage labor
relation as “free gifts.” Consider, for example, the millions of
lines of open software code used by corporations in their
processes of production and distribution, the manner in which
firms’ marketing and design have taken advantage of millions of
hours spent by consumers providing evaluations of and design
suggestions for commodities, or the new forms of commodities that
open software has helped produce.15 Insofar as commons-based
peer production is incorporated within capital circuits as a
“free gift,” those engaged in this form of production are in
effect working for capital for free. They are therefore
“exploited” by capital in a broad sense of the term. The fact
that they freely chose to engage in commons-based peer production
complicates this state of affairs without changing the essential their work in Smith 2010.15 Some examples: “As well as tapping a valuable new source of ideas, an open approach can also lead to savings in market research, as users act as focus groups, indicating what new features they would like (and then help to developthem). Going open-source may also help to keep customers ... ‘It builds a community that will buy our hardware’, says Sridhar Vaqjapey, who runs Sun’s Open SPARC program. ‘Is Sun making money on open-source hardware? Absolutely’” (Economist 2008, 31). “Since an army of programmers around the world work on developing Linux essentially at no cost, IBM now has an extremely cheap and robust operating system … Using open-source software savesIBM a whopping $400m a year, according to Paul Horn, until recently the company’s head of research” (Economist 2007a, 14).
31
matter.16 As long as capital reigns they are not free to free to
prevent their living labor from being transformed into a power of
capital in this way.
3. The systematic limits on autonomy imposed by capital
relevant to commons-based peer production go beyond those imposed
on individuals who participate in it. We can begin by reviewing
Marx’s general description of technology’s role in the
capital/wage labor relation, and then asking how the rise of
commons-based peer production might affect this account.
Regarding innovation in the labor process Marx wrote:
John Stuart Mill says …”It is questionable if all the
mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil
of any human being.” That is, however, by no means the aim
of the application of machinery under capitalism. Like
every other instrument for increasing the productivity of 16 In an analogous manner, those performing unpaid care labor in households outside the capital/wage labor relation can also be said to be “exploited” (ina broad sense of the term different from Marx’s technical sense) in so far as they provide a necessary service for capital. The fact that those engaged in care labor typically do so voluntarily, out of a sense of obligation, empathy,and love, does not make it less appropriate to use that category. A similar point can be made about scientists at publicly funded universities or government labs who engage in research that capital then appropriates as a free gift. They may freely choose to perform this research out of intellectual curiosity, personal ambition, a desire for peer recognition, or any other sort of motivation. Their living labor is subsumed under the capital accumulation process regardless.
32
labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities and, by
shortening the part of the working day in which the worker
works for himself, to lengthen the other part, the part he
gives to the capitalist for nothing. The machine is a means
for producing surplus-value (Marx 1976a, 492).
The ever-present danger that an investment in machinery will
become technologically outdated before satisfactory returns have
been appropriated (“moral obsolescence”) reinforces the tendency
for technological changes in the workplace to be associated with
an intensification of the labor process (Marx 1976a, 528 ff.).
In these circumstances it should be no surprise that machinery
and the scientific-technical knowledge upon which it is based are
experienced by individual workers as alien.17 Collective
organization can overcome this sense of powerlessness, but
collective organization is undermined by divisions within the
workforce, and technological change may foster such divisions in
17 “In no respect does the machine appear as the means of labour of the individual worker … (T)he machine, which possesses skill and power in contrastto the worker, is itself the virtuoso. It possesses a soul of its own in the laws of mechanics which determine its operation … Science, which compels the inanimate members of the machinery, by means of their design, to operate purposefully as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but acts upon him through the machine as an alien force, as the force of the machine itself” (Marx 1987, 82-3).
33
a variety of ways. Technologically-induced unemployment can set
those desperate for work against those desperate to retain their
jobs (Marx 1976a, Chapter 25). Technologies may also make the
threat of shifting investment from one group of workers to
another more effective. Technologies that that deskill those
enjoying relatively high levels of remuneration and control over
their labor process also shift the balance in power between
capital and labor in favor of the former (Marx 1976a, 549).
Technologies that undercut the effectiveness of strikes must be
mentioned in this context as well.18
It is important to stress that the social consequences of
technological innovation are not always foreseeable. The very
technologies introduced to divide the work force, deskill certain
categories of workers, or break strikes, may in certain contexts
contribute to worker unity, enhance the skills of other workers,
and help labor struggles succeed. Nonetheless, ownership and
control of capital grants its holders the power to initiate and 18 “(M)achinery does not just act as a superior competitor to the worker, always on the point of making him superfluous. It is a power inimical to him … It is the most powerful weapon for suppressing strikes, those periodic revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital … It would be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt” (Marx 1976a, 562-3).
34
direct the innovation process in the workplace. As long as this
power is in place, Marx thought, technological change will tend
to reinforce the structural coercion and exploitation at the
heart of the capital/wage labor relation, subordinating human
flourishing to the flourishing of capital.
What, if anything, in the above account needs to be revised
in light of the networked information economy? Benkler himself
implicitly acknowledges that wage labor remains and will remain
the dominant social form in which individuals gain access to the
means of subsistence (the number of wage laborers in the global
economy has in fact greatly increased in the past decades). And
so the key question is whether the use of information
technologies in offices and factories today corroborates the
continuing relevance of Marx’s account. It does, although there
is not space to document the point here (Head 2003, Huws 2003,
2007, 2008, Smith 2000, Basso 2003). The introduction of
advanced information technologies in capitalist workplaces has
been correlated with an intensification and extension of the
workday. Workers’ role in determining the design and use of
machinery in the labor process continues to be radically
35
restricted, despite all the rhetoric of worker “empowerment.” It
continues to be taken as “natural” that the introduction of
advanced machinery “causes” unemployment. Information
technologies have enabled cross-border production chains to
proliferate, making it much easier for workers in one region of
the globe to be played off against those of another. The process
of objectifying workers’ skills in machinery has if anything
accelerated, as has the use of technologies that enable
operations to continue during strikes. There have also been new
developments in capital/wage labor relations since Marx’s day
made possible by information technologies, such as electronic
monitoring of the workforce on a massive scale (Darlin 2009), and
the combination of extreme work process fragmentation with
extreme geographical dispersal of work fragments that
mathematical modeling of employees and consultants allows (Baker
2008). These developments can be easily accommodated within
Marx’s framework.
Insofar as the results of commons-based peer production have been
appropriated by capital as a free gift, we may assume that they have contributed to all
these phenomena. Insofar as these phenomena restrict the autonomy
36
of those trapped within the capital/wage labor relation,
participants in commons-based peer production have substantively
contributed to the erosion of their autonomy, even if they
themselves would not have chosen to have the fruits of their
labor used in this fashion.
Public Discourse
Commons-based peer production has enabled new forms of
active participation in public discourse, as Benkler rightly
emphasizes. If the question is whether participation in the
public sphere can be more extensive in the networked information
age than it was previously, the answer would clearly and
emphatically be yes. But the only question Benkler asks is not
the only question worth asking. Anyone who accepts active
participation in the public sphere as a core normative value
should also inquire whether there are systematic limits to the
extent to which commons-based peer production can foster this
value while capital continues to reign. Unfortunately, the
answer to this question is also “yes.” There are, I believe, two
main sets of limits, one imposed by the continuing
37
commodification imperative, the other by an artificial
restriction on what counts as a “political” matter.
There is in capitalism a necessary tendency for products
taking the commodity form to proliferate, since “the ceaseless
accumulation of value” requires the sale of commodities. As Guy
Debord so vividly described, the circulation of physical
commodities has been enveloped by an endless circulation of
images (“the spectacle”) designed to elicit desires to possess
and consume these commodities (Debord 2006). The networked
economy has intensified the proliferation of commodities in many
ways. It has brought with it new sorts of commodities such as
computer games (whose sales now exceed those of movies and music
combined). It has contributed to a significant compression of
the product cycles of commodities.19 Internet shopping has also
greatly expanded the set of commodities effectively available to
consumers; the net (among other things) is a sophisticated
mechanism for transmitting a heightened spectacle of commodities
on display (Hof 2009, 52-3). Clicking from one site of
19 “Gil Cloyd, chief technology officer at Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world’sbiggest consumer-products firm, studied the life cycle of consumer goods from 1992 to 2002 (before the internet’s full impact was felt), and found that it had fallen by half” (Economist 2007a, 8).
38
advertising to another in itself no more breaks the spectacle’s
dominance than using a remote control to switch from one TV
channel to another.
The internet does allow for consumers to act in new ways
beyond staring at overt and (increasingly) covert advertisements.
A significant amount of living labor outside (and sometimes
inside) the capitalist workplace is devoted to the active sharing
of information regarding the pros and con of various commodities.
Another chunk of time is devoted to customizing purchases,
directly shaping the production process as “prosumers,” in the
inimitable poetry of business jargon. These sorts of “leisure”
activities should also be conceptualized as “free gifts” to
capital. They represent new ways in which capital accomplishes
its very old objective of mobilizing the collective energies of
human subjects in order to further “the ceaseless augmentation of
value.”
Other forms of activity in the networked economy illustrate
the commodity imperative in a more indirect fashion. Debord has
taught us that moments of the spectacle that are not themselves
commodities or advertisements can still contribute to the
39
commodification of leisure. Much of the time spent on electronic
networks pursuing information about areas of personal interest
(sports, celebrities, etc.) fits under this heading. So too do
the various forms of role playing in virtual worlds, even if that
form of behavior is qualitatively distinct from the passive
reception of entertainment that typifies industrial media. After
all, immersion in the spectacle is more complete the more one
actively participates in its construction (Stallabrass 1993).
I argued above that a normative assessment of the extent to
which commons-based peer production furthers substantive autonomy
must take into account the way the results of commons-based peer
production have contributed to the exploitation of living labor
in the capitalist workplace. The point here is analogous. When
the results of commons-based peer production have been
appropriated as “free gifts” to capital, they will inevitably
contribute to the subordination of leisure time to capital
through the commodification of everyday life and its accompanying
spectacle. The greater the power of this spectacle, the greater
the systematic restriction on the flourishing of the public
sphere, as “flourishing” is defined by liberal egalitarian
40
values. To examine only how the networked economy might foster a
flourishing public sphere is to examine only part of the story.
What of the use of electronic networks to engage in
political discussion, the case Benkler himself clearly has in
mind? Much of what counts as “politics” in contemporary society
is itself part of the spectacle, as Debord observed. (Consider
gossip about the personalities of political elites and their
personal transgressions, or the extent to which campaign rhetoric
has little to do with policies actually pursued after an
election.) Benkler, however, describes several examples that
cannot be reduced to the circulation of gossip or ritualistic
slogans, examples of effective mass political mobilization on
substantive issues that mainstream media had ignored.20 No one 20 Benkler discusses two examples in detail (Benkler 2005, 224 ff.). The first reveals the capacity of the networked public sphere to respond effectively to abuses of mass media power. The Sinclair Corporation planned torun a documentary attacking John Kerry’s Vietnam War service the night before the 2004 presidential election. At the time it owned television stations thatreached one quarter of U.S. households. This documentary was a paradigmatic instance of the form of media manipulation that now known as “swiftboating.” While the program was almost certainly an illicit in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign, neither the Federal Elections Commission nor the Federal Communications Commission intervened. Within days, however, a handful of bloggers were able to organize a national boycott of advertisers, many of whomthen withdrew their sponsorship. The negative publicity also caused Sinclair’s stock price to fall significantly. Sinclair was forced to present a somewhat more balanced program, including arguments from the other side along with excerpts from the documentary. Benkler’s second example reflects how the networked public sphere possesses generative as well as reactive capacities. For years even the most prestigious mass media outlets in the
41
committed to social change should dismiss the emancipatory
promise of this dimension of commons-based peer production. Even
in these sorts of cases, however, another sort of systematic
restriction on the flourishing of the public sphere needs to be
explicitly confronted. It stems from the artificial separation
of political and the economic spheres that is both a defining
feature of capitalism and uncritically reflected in all variants
of liberal social theory, including liberal egalitarianism
(Rosenberg 1994).
In pre-capitalist class societies the appropriation of the
surplus product was inextricably intertwined with the political
relationship of rulers/ruled. In contrast, class relations in
capitalism are reproduced through transactions among (formally)
free and equal individuals for their mutual benefit, rather than
through the direct subjugation of slaves, serfs, or tribute-
paying independent producers. As a result there is a fundamental
split, with supposedly non-political economic relations assigned
to the realm of civil society, distinct from the explicitly U.S. ignored serious issues regarding the security and accuracy of electronic voting machines produced by Diebold Elections Systems. The dispersal of data on the workings of these machines on numerous internet sites, and the independent analysis of this data in blogs, forced these issues onto the public agenda for the first time.
42
political sphere of states and international institutions.
Liberal egalitarians then assign public discourse the task of
mediating between the particular and private interests of civil
society, on the one hand, and, the universal public interest that
officials in political institutions have an obligation to
institute, on the other. The class system, however, is no less
inherently a political matter in capitalism than in any previous
class society, even if it is reproduced through individual
contracts.21
It is also the case that the supposedly universal political
institutions of a class society are tied to the class system “all
the way down.” While the interests of capitalists and of state
elites are too heterogeneous for there to always be a direct one-
to-one correspondence between the two, any extended breakdown in
the capital accumulation process brings with it the danger of
political unrest. Also, the more the process of capital
21 “This form of mediation … perpetuates the relation between capital as the buyer and the worker as the seller of labour. Through the mediation of this sale and purchase it disguises the real transaction, and the perpetual dependence which is constantly renewed, by presenting it as no more than a financial relationship … The constant renewal of the relationship of sale and purchase merely ensures the perpetuation of the specific relationship of dependency, endowing it with the deceptive illusion of a transaction, of a contract between equally free and equally matched commodity owners” (Marx 1976a,1063-4).
43
accumulation slows, the more difficult it is to raise the tax
revenues required for domestic administration and foreign
affairs. And the more state policies diverge from the perceived
self-interest of investors in capital markets, the more onerous
are their terms for purchasing government bonds. As a result of
these (and many other) considerations, state officials will
necessarily tend to implement policies designed to encourage
capital investment and accumulation within the territory over
which they rule. It follows that the class interests of the
owners and controllers of capital will necessarily tend to have
priority over the interests of other individuals and group. Not
always, not everywhere, perhaps, but “proximately and for the
most part,” as Aristotle would say.
Information networks today provide new forums for
participating in discussions regarding public issues, and
establishes a potential for a public sphere of vastly expanded
scope and effectiveness. But the artificial restriction on what
counts as “political” systematically restricts discourse within
the public sphere by masking the inherently political nature of
class rule, and by making the specifically capitalist nature of
44
the capitalist state opaque. The rise of commons-based peer
production does not in itself reverse this artificial split.
Unless it is explicitly challenged more efficient forms of
communication will simply reproduce and reinforce the
restrictions on public discourse that arise “naturally” in
capitalist society. No full assessment of the normative
significance of commons-based peer production in contemporary
society can abstract from the way in which the restriction of
what counts as “political” systematically distorts the public
sphere.
Global Justice
Benkler is unquestionably correct to assert that global
justice requires that all individuals have access to basic
nutrition and medical care across the globe. A social world in
which scientific-technological knowledge underlying the
production of foods and medicines circulates freely in global
information networks would indeed be a tremendous advance.
Benkler’s call for a coalition against attempts to use
intellectual property rights to restrict such information flows
deserves strong support. But here too assessments of the
45
normative significance of commons-based peer production should
not examine it in isolation.
As long as commons-based peer production operates alongside
(and subordinate) to the capitalist sphere, its results will tend
to be appropriated by capital as “free gifts” whenever possible.
Certain tendencies necessarily follow. Scientific-technological
knowledge is one of the most important weapons in competition in
the capitalist world market. Units of capital operating at or
close to the scientific-technological frontier are generally able
to appropriate above average profits from innovations, enabling
them to operate at or close to that frontier in the future.22 In
contrast, units of production without access to advanced
scientific-technological knowledge necessarily tend to be trapped
in a vicious circle. Their inability to introduce significant
innovations prevents them from enjoying above average returns,
limiting their ability to participate in advanced R&D in the
succeeding period, and thus their future innovations and profit
opportunities. At present more than 95% of all research and
22 Benkler himself acknowledges the importance of such “firm-specific advantages” (see Benkler 2006, 45-6). He fails, however, to discuss their implications for global justice.
46
development is undertaken in the wealthy regions of the global
economy, granting units of capital based in these regions with
tremendous advantages in the world market (Helpman, 2004, 64).23
From this perspective, the growth of scientific-technological
knowledge is not the solution to severe inequality in the
capitalist world market. It is a major contributing cause.24
When the fruits of commons-based peer production are
appropriated as “free gifts” by the leading units of capital of
the Global North, and then combined with their proprietary
scientific-technical knowledge, the result can be a much greater
competitive advantage vis-à-vis producers in the Global South
than what they would otherwise enjoy. Commons-based peer
production undoubtedly has a tremendous potential to contribute
to the nutritional and medical needs of the world’s poor. But it
is no less true that in the existing global order this form of 23 These advantages would remain even if a higher proportion of global R&D were subcontracted to labs in poorer regions of the world economy, where scientific-technical labor is cheaper.24 In the words of a leading mainstream growth theorist: “(I)nvestment in innovation widens the gap between rich and poor countries. The output gains of the industrial countries exceed the output gains of the less-developed countries. We therefore conclude that investment in innovation in the industrial countries leads to divergence of income between the North and the South” (Helpman, 2004, 85). There are, of course, many other factors underlying uneven development in the world market (see Smith 2009, Chapter 5 and Patnaik 1997, Chapters 8 and 12).
47
production is likely to reproduce the systematic tendency to
uneven development underlying severe global inequality.
The Limits of Benkler’s Political Project
In Benkler’s view we are at a major crossroads today. As a
society we could choose to establish a legal framework enabling
commons-based peer production to flourish alongside for-profit
market production. Or we could chose to protect incumbents in
the for-profit sector threatened by commons-based peer
production, establishing a legal framework discouraging (or even
criminalizing) the open flow of knowledge products over
information networks. Which path we choose, he asserts, will
depend primarily on the balance of power between a coalition of
incumbents and a counter-coalition including activists in the
open source movement, manufacturers of the computers whose
capacity for aiding commons-based peer production is a marketing
advantage, and corporations that have made appropriation of the
products of commons-based peer production part of their business
plan. The future is open.
Recognition of the role of contingency and agency in history
should not come at the cost of ignoring the importance of social
48
forms. Unless and until the social forms of capital are directly
challenged the development of commons-based peer production will
necessarily tend to be severely restricted in three important
respects, the allocation of financial resources, the allocation
of labor, and the distribution of knowledge goods.
The first concerns the allocation of financial resources: investment
in commons-based peer production will necessarily tend to be
severely restricted in a social order that continues to be
dominated by the valorization imperative. The output of the
former is non-proprietary, while the latter demands profits from
the sale of proprietary products. It is true that as the costs
of computers and of communicating over information networks
radically declines, increasing numbers of people can afford to
purchase means of production required for commons-based peer
production. But in a capitalist society these investments will
invariably be dwarfed by the financial resources devoted to
investments in the production and distribution of commodities for
profit. This pattern cannot be adequately explained by choices
individuals make based on their conception of the good. Nor can
it be explained by saying that this allocation of resources
49
better furthers the core normative values of liberal
egalitarianism. The allocation is due to the simple fact that in
a capitalist order the production and circulation of commodities
will necessarily tend to be privileged.
As long as the development of commons-based peer production
is more or less complementary to the circulation of commodities,
providing a steady stream of “free gifts” to capital, no tensions
arise. There will be a more or less “peaceful coexistence” of
the two spheres, albeit one in which the capitalist sphere
remains hegemonic. But if the resources devoted to commons-based
peer production were ever to grow to the point where they
significantly threatened what Marx termed “total social capital,”
the economic system, based as it continues to be on “the
ceaseless augmentation of value,” would soon fall into crisis. In
the absence of a successful political movement to radically
transform the capitalist sector, investment in commons-based peer
production would inevitably be eroded, and investment in
commodity production and circulation extended.
The production and circulation of scientific-technical
knowledge is itself an illustration of this dynamic. While Marx
50
noted how scientific-technological knowledge developed outside
capital provides valuable “free gifts” to capital, he also
foresaw the increasing commercialization of scientific-technical
knowledge. Due to the competitive advantages it promises
“invention becomes a business, and the application of science to
immediate production itself becomes a factor determining and
soliciting science” (Marx 1987, 89-90). Insofar as “invention
becomes a business” it is directed towards profit from the sale
of proprietary products. As long as the capital form reigns,
this mode of scientific-technological knowledge will continue to
be privileged at the expense of scientific-technological
knowledge within commons-based peer production.
In the present context we should also remember that
investments in intra-firm networks, inter-firm networks
connecting for-profit enterprises with their suppliers and
distributors, and networks connecting manufacturers and
marketers, on the one hand, with consumers, on the other, have
been far more central to the “networked information economy” than
investments associated with commons-based peer production.
Further, the greatest non-governmental investment in information
51
technologies, the greatest concentration of knowledge workers,
and the highest rate of product innovation in the networked
information economy have been in the financial sector, not in
commons-based peer production. Why were relatively few resources
devoted to commons-based peer production relative to these
expenditures? The answer is surely not that these investments
furthered autonomy and human flourishing to a vastly greater
extent than the financial bubbles and global crisis that the
pathologies of the financial sector caused! The explanation is
instead that there is a systematic bias in the flow of investment
funds in capitalist societies that necessarily tends to severely
restrict investment in the development of commons-based peer
production, whatever the promise of the latter might be from the standpoint of
liberal egalitarian values.
The second point concerns the allocation of labor. To say that “a
billion people in advanced economies may have between two billion
and six billion spare hours among them, every day” to contribute
to commons-based peer production is both true and rhetorically
powerful (Benkler 2006, 55). But it is also undeniable that the
time and energy people have to participate in commons-based
52
production will be severely limited as long as most social agents
face unrelenting financial pressure to sell their labor power and
perform extensive surplus labor for capitalist firms.
One example should suffice to illustrate the point. Profit-
oriented pharmaceutical firms have not made the medical problems
afflicting individuals in poorer sections of the globe a high
priority, to put it mildly. In contrast, the potential for
commons-based peer production to effectively address these
problems is incalculably high, as Benkler correctly proclaims.
Whose living labor can be mobilized towards that end in
laboratories today? Benkler’s answer is sobering:
Most important by far are postdoctoral fellows. These are
the same characters who populate so many free software
projects, only geeks of a different feather. They are at a
similar life stage. They have the same hectic, overworked
lives, and yet the same capacity to work one more hour on
something else (Benkler 2006, 352).
When measured against the immensity of the social need, on the
one hand, and the immense potential of commons-based peer
53
production to meet that need, on the other, the utter inadequacy
of this answer should be immediately apparent.
The more convincingly Benkler establishes commons-based peer
production’s tremendous potential to contribute to human welfare,
the more implausible is his assumption that that this potential
can be adequately developed while the capital/wage labor relation
remains the dominant social relationship. The relatively limited
time available for the “free development” of commons-based peer
production due to the continuous pressure to engage in surplus
labor for capital is a striking illustration of Marx’s thesis
that “Since all free time is time for free development, the
capitalist usurps the free time created by workers for society”
(Marx, 1987, p. 22).25
The final issue to consider here is the distribution of knowledge
products. Commons-based peer production makes use of knowledge
goods as inputs, and produces knowledge goods as outputs. The
flourishing of this form of production therefore requires the
free flow of these knowledge goods. This is feasible in
25 The burden of unpaid care labor disproportionately borne by women limits the time available for free development as well. Few of the “geeks” Benkler refers to above have child care responsibilities.
54
principle, since additional units of knowledge goods can be
produced and distributed within information networks at close to
zero marginal cost. Many categories of products of the networked
economy (software, information, literary, scientific, and
cultural texts, music, videos, etc.) could in principle be
treated as public goods and distributed freely to whoever wanted
them. The potential for such free provision to bring the
satisfaction of human wants to new peaks is incalculable. As
long as capital reigns, however, the actualization of this
potential will be severely restricted.
The main problem is not providing incentives for people to
devote free time to the production of knowledge products
distributed as free public goods. As Benkler stresses, it has
already been empirically established that there are great numbers
of individuals willing to use their free time to cooperate in
collective projects that interest them, using their own computers
and taking advantage of inexpensive access to communication
networks.26 The real problem is that the commodification
26 Most scientific-technological workers today are forced to sign away future claims to intellectual property rights as a condition of employment. This tooundercuts the argument that without such rights no one would be motivated to engage in scientific-technological labor.
55
imperative and the valorization imperative continue to be the
main organizing principles of our social world. As we have
already seen, this implies that investment funds necessarily tend
to flow predominantly to commodity production, whatever the
potential of commons-based peer production to address human needs
and further human flourishing might be. And, as also noted, this
implies that labor engaged in production necessarily tends to be
trapped within the wage form most of the waking day, whatever the
potential for living labor outside the capital/wage labor
relation to further human ends might be. The same consideration
implies that there is a dominant tendency in any and all variants
of capitalism for knowledge products to take the commodity form.
Even worse, there is a systematic tendency for massive amounts of
monetary and human resources to be devoted to technologies whose
sole purpose is to create an artificial scarcity by restricting
flows of knowledge products that do not take the form of
privately appropriable commodities (Perelman, 1998).
Intellectual property rights do not come without cost to
capital. The greater the extension and enforcement of
intellectual property rights, the more resources must be devoted
56
to litigation, a paradigmatic form of non-productive expenditure
from capital’s standpoint. Extensive intellectual property
rights also discourage potentially innovative firms from
investigating promising paths due to the threat of expensive
litigation and the costs of gaining the permission of rights-
holders. And small patent holders, and speculators who purchase
patents with the sole intention of extracting payments from
wealthy firms, are an annoyance to large technology companies.
Nonetheless, the intellectual property rights regime is likely to
become ever-more central to the networked economy in the twenty-
first century in the absence of massive social movements against
capital. One of the most distinctive features of the global
capitalism today is the greater number of reasonably effective
national innovation systems in place.27
Suppose a new cluster of innovations with significant
commercial potential emerges. Research expenditures, tax breaks,
credit allocations, and a multitude of other direct and indirect
subsidies would then be mobilized in a number of regions more or 27 As of the fall of 2007 there were eight countries devoting over 2% of GDP per year to research and development (Economist 2007b, 113). This is, I believe, a low enough number to maintain uneven development in the global economy, while being large enough to generate the problem described in the following paragraph.
57
less simultaneously. The results are likely to further
technological dynamism in use-value terms. In value terms,
however, things are more complicated. Past “golden ages” of
capitalist development have occurred when high profits in
particular regions have been appropriated for extended periods as
a result of competitive advantages in the world market (Arrighi
1994). With the proliferation of national innovation systems,
however, the period in which high profits can be appropriated
from competitive technological advantages necessarily tends to be
drastically compressed. (In Marxian jargon, the time prior to
the outbreak of “overaccumulation” crises, manifested in
overcapacity and falling rates of profit, necessarily tends to
shorten.) This development leads to desperate attempts to
maintain profits through the heightened exploitation of wage
labor, increasingly reckless leveraging in financial assets, more
extensive predatory activities in vulnerable regions of the world
market, etc. The crucial point here, however, is that it leads
to the aggressive assertion of formal intellectual property
rights and pursuit of informal trade secrets, since intellectual
property rights and trade secrets enable above-average profits to continue to be
58
appropriated after effective national innovation systems have eroded other competitive
advantages from innovation.28 Benkler combines a deep appreciation of
how the expansion of intellectual property rights will stifle the
development of commons-based peer production with a complete
neglect of the increasing importance of the artificial scarcity
imposed by intellectual property rights for capital accumulation
in the networked economy.
CONCLUSION
Benkler’s political project is based on the assumption that
commons-based peer production could in principle flourish
alongside the present for-profit market sector. All that is
required is that we recognize how commons-based peer production
furthers the core normative values of liberal egalitarianism, and
28 Two (of countless) corroborating examples can be given here. “Since 2006 it [China] has pursued a deliberate policy of gathering as many patents as possible and developing home –grown-technologies—not least because Chinese companies pay around $2 billion a year in licensing and royalties to American firms alone … Chinese firms are also increasingly seeking patents abroad, a sign that they plan to protect their technology when exporting it to rich countries. They won 90 patents in American in 1999 but last year they received 1,225” (Economist 2009, 68). “IBM is another iconic firm that has jumped on the open-innovation bandwagon. The once-secretive company has done a sharp U-turn and embraced Linux, an open-source software language … However it also continues to take out patents at a record pace in other areas, such asadvanced materials, and in the process racks up some $1 billion a year in licensing fees. … Kenneth Morse, head of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Centre, scoffs at IBM’s claim to be an open company: ‘They’re open only in markets, like software, where they have the fallen behind. In hardware markets, where they have the lead, they are extremely closed’” (Economist 2007a, 13-14).
59
then institute the appropriate legislation and regulation (or,
rather, simply refrain from instituting the wrong sort of
legislation and regulation). In my view, this account of the
future prospects of commons-based peer production exemplifies the
shortcomings of Benkler’s liberalism. Lacking an adequate
concept of capital, he lacks an adequate appreciation of the
totalizing force of the commodification and valorization
imperatives. The full development of commons-based peer
production is incompatible with the property and production
relations of capital, and its future prospects will be severely
restricted unless there is a world historical break from those
relations. Without such a break those who do not own and control
capital, including the vast majority of those engaged in commons-
based peer production, will continue to be subject to the
structural coercion and exploitation of the capital/wage labor
relation. Further, many of the fruits of commons-based peer
production will still be appropriated by capital as “free gifts,”
and then used to further the structural exploitation and
exploitation of wage labor, the commodification of leisure, the
depolitization of inherently political matters, and uneven
60
development in the world market. Finally, the future development
of commons-based peer production will continue to be severely
restricted due to the vast material resources and living labor
that must be devoted to commodity production in a capitalist
economic order, and the increasing centrality of intellectual
property rights in that order.
We may conclude that an adequate institutionalization of the
liberal egalitarian values professed by Benkler cannot result
from a sphere devoted to commons-based peer production existing
alongside a dominant sphere devoted to for-profit capitalist
production. It would require a fundamental break from the
latter. It would require a democratic form of socialism
extending throughout production and distribution processes.
Imagine a world in which investment priorities are decided
by democratically-elected bodies on local, regional, national,
and perhaps global levels after a period of extensive public
discussion, with investment resources allocated by community
banks according to these priorities. A democratic consensus
could then emerge regarding the extent to which commons-based
peer production is likely to contribute to human flourishing, and
61
for resources to be allocated to support those engaged in this
form of production in accord with that consensus. There would be
no tendency to systematically privilege the commodification of
knowledge products in such a society. Any knowledge product that
would contribute to the satisfaction of wants and needs and could
be produced and distributed at (close to) zero marginal cost,
could be distributed freely.
Imagine further that in this world workplaces were organized
according to the democratic principle that the exercise of
authority should be subject to the consent of those over whom the
authority is exercised. In such a world there would not be a
dominant structural tendency for increases in productivity to
lead to greater output with no reduction in labor time. The
dominant tendency instead would be for productivity advances to
be tied systematically to less time spent in formal workplaces,
increasing the amount of time those motivated to contribute to
commons-based peer production could devote to that endeavor. The
systematic tendency for the results of commons-based peer
production to be used in a manner that furthers the structural
62
coercion and exploitation of the workforce would also be
eradicated.
Suppose also that in this world all forms of scientific-
technological knowledge were categorized as public goods.
Scientific-technological knowledge could then never be used as a
weapon to gain monopoly power in the world market. It would not
be possible to combine the fruits of commons-based peer
production with proprietary knowledge in a manner that reproduced
severe global inequality. And if funds for investment were
distributed according to the principle that every region has a
prima facie right to its per capita share, the tendency to uneven
development that besets global capitalism would be overcome.
This brief sketch of a feasible and normatively attractive
form of socialism no doubt needs to be developed and revised in
numerous ways (see Schweickart 1993, Ollman 1998, Smith 2000
Chapter 7 and Smith 2009 Chapter 8, as well as various papers in
this volume). It has been introduced simply to suggest the sort
of goal those who wish to nurture the “electronic commons” must
strive for. If some version of democratic socialism is not
instituted the emancipatory promise of the internet is doomed to
63
be broken, just as the emancipatory promises of earlier
revolutions in communications technologies were broken again and
again (Wu 2010). The immense emancipatory promise of commons-
based peer production will only be fulfilled after a fundamental
transformation of production relations throughout the economy.
While this goal seems very distant today, its objective and
subjective preconditions are being developed within contemporary
society. Among the most important objective preconditions for the
sort of democratic planning and social cooperation sketched above
are the technologies of the networked economy described by
Benkler. And commons-based peer production provides concrete and
collective experiences of democratic planning and social
cooperation, helping to form the subjective capacities that make
socialism an objective possibility rather than a utopian dream.
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