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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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