[iDC] P2P conversation with Tiziana Terranova

[Michael Bauwens]

Dear friends,

this is the english version of an italian interview which appeared in Il Manifesto, at http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/05-Novembre-2008/art49.html

I realize that many of you are familiar with the main ideas, but this conversation is a little more specifically political than older ones,

The other difference is that Tiziana, of free labour fame, really knows the issue and therefore her interventions and questions are much more stimulating,

Michel


text:


Interview:

Tiziana: Michel, you started the Foundation for
P2P alternatives some years ago to create a ‘pluralist network to
document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives.’ How would
you define such peer alternatives? How do you reconstruct the emergence
and the various meanings assigned to it?

MB: The key moment for me, I was then an internet entrepreneur and
strategist for a large corporation, where the few months after the
dotcom bust in April 2001. What seemed very clear to me then (and I
have since read the moment was also pivotal for Clay Shirky in setting
him up to writing Here Comes Everybody), was that internet innovation,
instead of slowing down after the exit of capital, was instead speeding
up. This was a great paradox, as we usually think of innovation as an
entrepreneurial activity, and of entrepreneurial activity as
capitalist. But here we could witness a form of social entrepreneurship
that was only loosely tied to the need for capital. So, I had to ask
myself the question, what is happening here, what is driving this
social innovation? And my answer was: it’s the peer to peer
self-aggregation of individuals around projects for common value
creation, using their access to the internet as affordances, and
entering into ‘permissionless’ modes of production. For me, this
ability for self-aggregation immediately struck me as having an
extraordinary radical potential for changing the logics of our economy
and civilization. I started to see peer to peer ‘isomorphically’ as the
underlying common form, an intuition later confirmed by reading Alan
Page Fiske’s fourfold categorization of the grammar of social
relationships, and his notion of non-reciprocal ‘communal
shareholding’, that exists alongside hierarchical allocation, market
exchange, and the gift economy.

Of course at the time, peer to peer was used almost exclusively for
filesharing, occasionally is was extended as a definition for point to
point technical architectures. I recall that in the November 2006
Re-activism conference in Budapest, even an eminent movement leader as
Lawrence Lessig had no concept of peer to peer outside of filesharing.
What I want to stress is that my concept of peer to peer is not
technological, it is rather the the underlying social form, which
primarily is a human logic, enabled only by technology. Peer to peer
occurs whenever we can self-aggregate and produce value without
permission or dependence on obligatory hubs.

For example, we can have very imperfect technical p2p
implementations, as the internet and the web undoubtedly are, but
socially, they still enable this self-aggregation to occur, and this is
the essential core of what I monitor and try to understand. What’s peer
to peer shifts to the sphere of human (inter)subjectivity and desire,
it can use even very imperfect (even the total absence of technological
empowerment) p2p infrastructures, for its own benefit. Where I live in
Thailand, I now see the emergence of p2p-learning efforts amongst
farming communities, that have almost no access to the internet for
example. Another example are the oversized effects of only intermittent
internet access for the working conditions and resistance capabilities
of migrant workers in southern China.


Tiziana: So you are saying that the 2001
dot.com crash was enlightening in as much as it showed to you, an
internet entrepreneur and consultant, that social production and
innovation does not necessarily need capital to produce value, neither
to fund it nor to organize it. You are also saying that p2p production
is an anthropological capacity of the human species which technological
infrastructures enable to occur, but which can occur independently of
it. There are several important implications in your argument which we
can discuss during this dialogue. But first I would like to ask you
what, in your opinion, triggers the p2p ‘logic’ to occur, that is what
are the conditions that enable a p2p logic to emerge and persist. You
seem to imply that the emergence or appearance of p2p does not even
need what neoliberal economists would call a certain level of ‘human
capital’ (technical skills for example) or what Marxists would call a
high level of autonomous socialization of labor such as you would find
in the most advanced sectors of the economy (as in open source with
software programmers for example). Why p2p now, then, and under what
conditions?

MB: Let me unpack some of your summaries, in order to clarify what I’m trying to say.

-	social production and innovation does not necessarily need capital to produce value

Yes, that is the tendency that I’m trying to pinpoint. I’m suggesting
that many phases of innovation, because they are ‘immaterial’, in the
sense of cooperating brains, can use the existing communal capital base
for the design and invention phases. For example, Bittorrent and many
other internet inventions seem to have been developed with only limited
or no formal capital. It is only when these projects are successful
that capital influx is needed, if you do not want your servers to crash
for example. So capital is intervening a posteriori, and is no longer a
priori convention for the innovation to occur. On the other hand, such
occurrence needs a high level of generally available social and
technical capital, a common infrastructure if you like. I also believe
that free software, open design, or peer production generally, will be
more sustainable in the long run, if they can successfully associate
with an ecology of businesses. Almost all maintainers/committers in
free software projects need to be paid at some point. So the whole
process is not entirely divorced from capitalism and private
enterprise, but is nevertheless a radical reformulation of the
relationship between community, corporation, and public authorities,
and furthermore, nothing prevents us from wishing and thinking about
alternative modes of linkage between open design and physical
production.


- p2p production is an anthropological capacity of the human species
which technological infrastructures enable to occur, but which can
occur independently of it.

Communal shareholding, i.e. voluntary participation and
non-selective availability, has always existed, but very much limited
in space and dealing with physical resources. Whenever a certain level
of complexity occurred in the social structure, I’m thinking of the
Dunbar number which basically says human egalitarian relations break
down over 120 people, human organization seems to switch to
hierarchical modes of allocation. But what if coordination and
transaction costs diminish to such an extent, that people can aggregate
in small groups on a global scale, and coordinate such activities
without central allocation of resources. I think this is precisely what
distributed technologies enable: the global coordination of small
groups. This is what I suggest is happening. The next step is that
humanity, which sees this possibility, then starts desiring it without
having necessarily access to the whole technical infrastructure, and
finds creative ways of organizing in that way, despite physical
limitations. But of course there are limits to that. Hierachy, markets,
and democracy are three ways to allocate scarce resources, which can be
‘designed away’ through instantiating abundance to the self-aggregation
of distributed resources. Of course, not everything is non-rival, so
this value-conscious design must learn to distinguish where we need
self-aggregation, and where we need democratic allocation of rival
goods.

I don’t know if that makes my argument subtle or befuddled? But
essentially, I want to escape any technologically determinist
explanation. Every technology, before it comes into existence, already
has to exist in the social imaginary of at least a minority, but, once
a particular type of affordances gets broader usage, it starts
affecting human consciousness of much larger groups. So of course, I do
not dispute the necessity for human capital, but don’t want to reduce
the whole phenomena to it either.

If you ask me what triggers it, it is the ‘taste’ of unalienated
working, of intrinsic motivation, of passionate engagement and of
collective meaning making outside of authoritarian structures. Once you
have tasted it as a realizable human mode, it’s hard to accept the
ordinary limitations and frustrations of authoritarian structures.

In terms of conditions, I would like to posit some general rules. I
do personally believe there are structural developmental phases in both
individuals and societies; at the same time, there are also cultural
DNA systems which are different. These phases are mixtures of objective
social structures, and of subjective social mentalities. Full ‘peer to
peer’ systems may only be able to emergen and used to full advantage in
certain sectors of society; they may act as chaotic attractor of the
ideals of a much larger group, and finally, they act as an underlying
constitutional code, a crystallization of values that will influence
even those least ready to accept the whole system in its totality. In
addition, the history of technological diffusion and the resulting
social revolutions show that while advanced technologies are ‘invented’
in the core countries of the dominant system, it is in the periphery
that the greatest relative advantage is obtained, and where it is most
likely to expect radical social reorganizations that are able to
harness the new potential. The merchant capitalist revolutions did not
take place in Spain or Portugal, and neither did the workers
revolutions take place in the advanced western countries.

For the moment, in the emerging phase, p2p can fully flower in the
‘advanced’ countries; but this is a temporary state of affairs. It is
not in the West that I expect to see the full flowering of open design
communities with relocalized production, but outside of it, as they
have so much more to gain from hyperproductive peer production and
dramatically lower investment requirements for distributed physical
infrastructures.


Tiziana: It seems to me a very pragmatic
position. It opens up a number of interesting issues, as well. The
first one is obviously its relation to existing economic structures,
such as business and its various means to measure economic value. What
happens, in your experience, when a p2p project meets/needs capital
influx, even a posteriori? Does such encounter induces any changes in
the p2p modality of organization? Or, on the other hand, does the
encounter between capital and p2p causes any substantial changes in the
way capital itself operates? I am thinking for example of the rhetoric
of Web 2.0 business speak, as in Tim O’Reilly’s web 2.0 manifesto,
where he insistently uses the word ‘harnessing’ to describe the nature
of the operation that a web 2.0 business needs to perform on the power
of social networks in order to produce economic value. O’Reilly for
example maintains the importance of maintaining control (which means
intellectual property) over core data generated by users of web 2.0
platforms….


MB: If we examine the modalities of mutual adaptation between peer
projects and business entities, I think we can distinguish various
models already. The first and most ‘capitalist’one is crowdsourcing. In
this scenario, a platform is created by a business entity, which uses
voluntary contributions that are offered to the market. In these
scenarios, the process remains under the overall control of the
platform owner, the voluntary contributors are weaker because they are
motivated by their own individual financial gain. This ressembles most
to the critiques of simple digital sharecropping as the risk is
externalized to the free agents, who may or may not, be able their
monetize their contribution. Nevertheless, because the contributor
communities are nevertheless collaborating over open platforms, they
have a common informational power. The issue of exploitation is
nevertheless tempered because such free agency is often a deliberate
and useful lifestyle choice for many participants.

The second format, the sharing economy, sees individuals creating
for their own creative expression, for aesthetic use value if you like,
and are not primarily motivated by monetary gain. In this scenario, the
proprietary platforms sell their attention to the advertizers. The
issue of exploitation is more complex here, because there is no
expectation of monetary gain by participants, who see the platforms as
enablers of the sharing. But of course a price is paid, because while
openness creates value, it is the various enclosures that create
marketable scarcity, and participants lose control over their data etc…

The third format is peer production proper. This occurs where there
is a common intention to create a social artifact, and because such
communities have stronger links within, they are often able to create
their own infrastructures of cooperation. What we have here is often a
triune structure between self-governing community, a for-benefit
association managing the infrastructure of cooperation, and an ecology
of business profiting but also contributing to the commons through
benefit-sharing. Businesses can either create added value for the
marketplace, but often contribute directly through the commons because
it benefits them strategically. What are the effects when a majority of
peer producers start to get paid? The record so far, is that the open
development process and values of the community are being preserved,
though of course the corporate influence will determine more of the
direction of the efforts. This third format, most independent of the
corporate role because its relies on stronger communities with their
own infrastructure, can face different issues, such as the power
struggles within Wikipedia for example.

I’m still hesitating to add a fourth category, the adventure
economy, which takes place entirely through non-monetary means, like
for example hospitality exchange.

What does all of this accomplish? On the one hand a strengthening of
peer production and non-monetary logics, and on the other hand an
integration in capitalist logics, both at the same time. The issue of
peer producers is how to preserve their interests, i.e. the community
vs. platform owner replaces the worker vs. capital owner logic; and how
to invent and promote social forms that can create more autonomous
space for peer production?

So I invite people to look at this neither as a process that gives
victory to one party over another, but rather as a mutual adaptation,
just as new capitalist forms where originally integrated in a society
dominated by feudal forms. What we see is a mutual reconfiguration of
classes: all workers will gradually increase the peer production
aspects of their lives, with some knowledge workers achieving a full
logic of peer production (for example through forms of patronage, which
can be corporate, public, or through cooperative work arrangements); at
the same time, sections of the existing elite are reconfiguring
themselves into a position of netarchical capitalism, become enablers
of the new participatory modes, because it benefits them. Such
netarchical capital no longer has to rely on intellectual property and
is compatible with open, participatory and commons-oriented modalities,
even as it seeks to control and harness them.

Let’s not just give agency to capital, who wants to harness
participation, but also to the peer producers, who are striving to
create common value through passionate production. Netarchical capital
has some common interests with the peer producing communities, as they
are co-creating the infrastructure of cooperation, and has differential
interests as it tries to unilaterally profit from that value creation.
I think that Eben Moglen was right on target when he said that free
software, and we can extend this to peer production generally, was the
wet dream of both capitalists and communists!

I want to add a provocative thesis here: that peer production is
hyperproductive, especially when it can rely on a triune combination of
self-governing community, for-benefit association, and business
ecology. And second, that this model will increasingly morph into
physical production, where open communities can combine not just with
built-only capitalism, but eventually with new cooperative modes of
physical production.


Tiziana: All of this sounds very appealing,
smooth and almost inevitable! I am going to play devil’s advocate and
ask about some possible issues hindering the affirmation of an economy
whereby peer-to-peer would be the dominant economic ethos. Obviously, I
consider such affirmation as very desirable, but, in the first place,
considering the active role played by governments, international
financial actors such as the IMF or World Bank, etc in imposing an
economic model which tends to promote further accumulation of capital
even by means of permanent warfare if necessary, do you expect the
peer-2-peer economy to be smoothly accepted? What for example if a
government decided to promote at all costs the construction of enormous
nuclear power stations rather than a p2p solar power network, actively
boycotting the public appeal, funding and sustainability of the latter
so that the first might be built (as it is happening in Italy)? Another
example is the push in Naples to build huge, expensive incinerators to
solve the rubbish problem. In order to do that the construction of
cheaper, decentralized networks of cooperatives engaged in door to door
rubbish collection and recycling is actively boycotted in a number of
ways (from the media to the actual policy-making bodies to organized
crime). It seems to me that when it comes to the real big money, the
p2p solution tends to be actively obstructed in order to favour an
old-style economy of large profits. I am not resigned to that, of
course, but I wonder about how, when faced with such obstructive and
repressive tactics, a p2p network might find the political strength to
impose its model.

Furthermore, I always wondered about the degree of sociality involved
in a p2p network. The literature on p2p tends to stress a kind of
spontaneous sociality emerging among abstract cooperating individuals.
You place the desire for a different mode of production, of life
really, at the heart of the drive to build p2p networks. But sociality
can be something very turbulent, involving relationships of affinity
and belonging as well as conflict and antagonism between cultures,
perspectives, ways of living, interests, histories, even identities.
Cooperatives and groups of all kinds often fall apart because of all
kinds of issues among their members. How do you account for the
conflictuality and partiality of human sociality in p2p networks?


MB: I understand there are two issues in your question, so will
reply to them separately. The first is whether the p2p ethos is going
to be embraced smoothly and you cite many examples where they are being
actively combated and sidestepped.

I completely agree with you that this is likely to happen. In fact,
it is precisely the situation today. Today, we have on the one had a
thriving scene of peer to peer cooperation and innovation, see for
example the underlying principle of the site wordchanging.org, and its
continuous reporting of social and technological innovations that offer
real solutions to our pressing problems. But we can clearly see the
problem you describe. They are only being used marginally, they are
being ignored, and they don’t scale for lack of any support, leading
many inventors to live lives of scarcity.

But I see this denial as being a first stage reaction. I presume
that the Roman leadership at first neglected the Christians. The
problem with denial is that the present social logic has become
hyperdestructive for the survival of the biosphere. The elite camp will
therefore be divided into two camps. On the one hand those that want to
actively oppose the new mode of production and sociality, and we can
see this at work in the generalized war against filesharing. The
question is: of course they can win battles, but can they ultimately
win the war? The worst case scenario of this mentality we have already
scene with the Bush administration. It represents those privileged that
hope that even amongst general chaos and dislocation, they can survive
as an elite, and they are furiously buying up real estate in the
regions of the world they think will escape catastrophe. A good
historical example I think is again Rome, where the elite never
accepted to compromise with the Roman population, and preferred
destruction of the Empire above compromise. But I’m presuming another
type of reaction, as currently visible in the opinions of Gore, Soros,
Stern and others. This segment of the elite sees clearly that there is
no future, and that the global structure of Empire needs deep reform:
they want a combination of global Keynesianism, a green capitalism.
They will naturally gravitate towards the new netarchical capitalists
and green investors. For the latter, an alliance with the peer to peer
forces is a natural necessity. Yes, they want the market to prevail and
retains its dominance, yes they want to control participation and
integrate into their own value chains, but they also know that
participation is essential for sustainability. So the choice here is
descent into biospheric destruction and financial collapse, or a global
reform of capitalism. I believe we have a real chance of achieving
this, and that we are in a new period of social history, where the
dislocations of global capitalism will give rise to massive social
movements that will challenge the present status quo and give a chance
for that global compact to emerge. For me, this is where peer to peer
transforms itself from a germ form, to an essential part of the new
system, but to which it is as yet subsumed. Let’s call it the parity
phase, because participation will inevitable become a central part of
the new type of political economy.

So we arrive at stage three, which centers around the question: will
green capitalism ultimately work? If the answer is negative, then we
have to envisage an ultimate turnaround to peer to peer becoming the
mainstay of society, with the market subsumed as a specialized system
for non-essential rival goods.
This is the positive scenario. The negative one is the one you can
glean in the blog of John Robb of Global Guerillas. In this scenario,
the ruling classes do not compromise, the system inevitably breaks
down, and what you get is some new kind of chaos centered around the
survival of strong cities and their hinterlands, co-existing with
global ideological networks and weak states. But even in this scenario,
he predicts the surviving communities will be those that achieve what
he calls ‘resiliency’ and this can only happen by the incorporation of
substantial elements of the peer to peer logic.

Now to your challenge concerning conflicting socialities. I think
that peer to peer offers ways of dealing with conflict. First of all,
the big innovation is to distinguish the non-reciprocal
self-aggregation from the management of scarcity. This has never been
done before. It was always the case that those who controlled the
infrastructure of scarcity, also controlled the productive processes.
This is no longer the case, we now distinguish between the processes of
production, with a posteriori control and permission-less production of
the abundant immaterial goods, and the management of the scarce
infrastructure of cooperation, under the form of either for-benefit
institutions (usually ‘Foundations’), or proprietary platform owners.
This gives many different conflictualities: 1) between peer producers
and the core leadership, usually taken the form of ‘benevolent
dictators’ being balanced by exit-based empowerment; 2) democratic
conflict within the for-benefit institutions; 3) social conflict
between users and platform owners. Cultural conflict is in my view
solved not internally, but through differentiation. This means that the
affinity principles avoids conflict through the specialization of
initiatives. I also believe that peer to peer is an object-centered
sociality and that it is the object which is the disciplinary factor
which cuts across culture. The meritocracy trumps cultural identities
that are not related to the object, or, different cultural
sensitivities create different objects and peer projects. It is around
the object that different p2p projects develop their immune systems
against disruption.

Peer to peer does not solve cultural difference or conflict, but
‘routes around them’ where possible, and where it cannot, it is subject
to the same kind of disruption as other modes. Peer governance does not
replace democracy, but creates a sphere of self-aggregation and
autonomy wherever abundance is possible, leaving democracy or hierarchy
to deal with the remaining conflicts around scarcity.