The peer-to-peer revolution.
| Author | Bauwens, Michel |
| Position | Features |
Peer-to-peer social processes are bottom-up processes whereby agents in a distributed network can freely engage in common pursuits, without external coercion. It is important to realise that distributed systems differ from decentralised systems, essentially because in the latter, the hubs are obligatory, while in the former, they are the result of voluntary choices. Distributed networks do have constraints--internal coercion--that are the conditions for the group to operate, and they may be embedded in the technical infrastructure, the social norms, or legal rules. Despite these caveats, we have here a remarkable social dynamic, which is based on voluntary participation in the creation of common goods, which are made universally available to all.
Peer-to-peer processes are emerging in literally every cranny of social life, and have been extensively documentation in the five-thousand-plus pages of documentation at the Foundation for Peer-to-peer Alternatives, and many other places on the Web. Peer-to-peer social processes more precisely engender 1) peer-production: wherever a group of peers decided to engage in the production of a common resource; 2) peer-governance: the means they choose to govern themselves while they engage in such pursuit; and 3) peer property: the institutional and legal framework they choose to guard against the private appropriation of this common work. This usually takes the form of non-exclusionary forms of universal common property, as defined through the General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), some forms of the Creative Commons licenses (http://creativecommons.org/), or similar derivatives.
These new property forms have at least three characteristics: 1) they are aimed against the private appropriation of the commonly created value; 2) they are aimed at creating the widest possible usage, i.e. they are universal common property regimes; 3) they keep the sovereignty with the individual. The third aspect is why peer property fundamentally differs both from private property and collective property. Private property is individual but is exclusionary, it says: what is mine is not yours. But state or collective property is also exclusionary, but in another sense--it says: it is ours, but it means that you no longer have the sovereignty. It's from us, regulated by a bureaucracy or representative democracy, but it is not really yours. The collective has taken over from the individual, and more often than not, coercion is involved. But the General Public License, or the Creative Commons licenses are different. Common property is not collective property. Using them, the individual gets full attribution, i.e. the recognition of his personal property. You are freely sharing your sovereignty with others. This is especially clear in the Creative Commons licensing schemes, where the individual gets a whole gamut of options for sharing. You remain fully in control, i.e. 'sovereign', and there is no coercion involved.
It is important to note that peer-production is a form of 'generalised', or non-reciprocal, exchange. It is not a gift economy, based on direct exchange or obligation. So peer-production is not to be equated with co-operative production for the market: participation has to be voluntary, there is no direct reward (but many indirect rewards) in the form of monetary compensation. The process itself is participative. And the outcome is similarly free, in the sense that anyone can access and use the common resource. In reality, most peer-production projects are intertwined with a smaller core of people who may get paid, and use finances to create an infrastructure so that the peer-production may occur.
The conditions for peer-production to emerge are essentially: abundance and distribution. Abundance refers to the abundance of intellect or surplus creativity, or to the possibility of owning means of production with similar excess capacity. Distribution is the accessibility of such abundant resources in fine-grained implements, what Yochai Benkler has called 'modularity' or 'granularity' (Benkler, 2005). Again we could talk about the distribution of intellect, of the infrastructure of production, of financial capital.
It is important to distinguish two spheres. In one sphere, our digitally-enabled co-operation, reproduction of non-rival knowledge goods, such as software, content, open designs, takes place at marginal costs, and there is only no loss by sharing, but actually a gain, through network effects. Such free co-operation can only be hindered 'artificially', either through legal means (Intellectual Property regimes) or through technical restrictions such as Digital Rights Management, which essentially hinder the social innovation that can take place. In this sphere, a non-reciprocal mode of production becomes dominant, since resources are non-rival, and you're not losing, but gaining, through giving. In the sphere of material production, where the costs of production are higher, and we have rival goods, we still require regimes of exchange, or regimes of reciprocity. Notice that in a sphere of virtual abundance, where copying is trivial, there is no tension between supply and demand, and hence no market.
Peer-production, though embedded in the current political economy and essential for the survival of the cognitive forms of capitalism, is therefore essentially post-capitalist. Essentially because it is outside wage-dependency, outside the control of a corporate hierarchy, and does not allocate resources according to any pricing or market mechanism.
Peer-governance is post-democratic, because it is a form of governance that does not rely on representation, but where participants directly co-decide; and because it is not limited to the political field, but can be used in any social field. Peer-governance is non-representational, and this is essentially so because what the networked communication affords us, is the global coordination of small groups, and therefore, the peer-to-peer logic of small groups can operate on a global scale. Hierarchies, the market, and even representative democracy, are all but means to allocated scarce resources, and do not apply in the context where abundant resources are allocate directly through the social process of co-operation. However, since the pure peer-to-peer logic only fully functions in the sphere of abundance, it will always have to insert itself in the forms that are responsible for the allocation of resources in the sphere of material scarcity. Peer-governance-based leadership seems a combination of invitational leadership, i.e. the capacity to inspire voluntary co-operation, and a posteriori arbitrage based on the reputational capital thus obtained. However, the process of production itself is an emergent property of the co-operating networks.
Peer property is a post-capitalist form of property because it is non-exclusionary, and it creates a commons with marginal reproduction costs. There are two main forms of peer property. One is based on the individual sharing of creative expression, and is dominated by the Creative Commons option which allows an individual to determine the level of sharing. The other is applied to commons-based peer-production, and takes the form of the General Public License or its derivatives or alternatives, and requires that any change to the common, also belongs to the common.
The conditions for the expansion of peer-production
Peer-production naturally occurs in the sphere of immaterial production. In this sphere, access to distributed resources is relatively easy. Large sections of the population in Western countries are educated, and can have a computer at their disposal. And the costs of reproduction are marginal.
The expansion of peer-production is dependent on cultural/legal conditions. It requires open and free raw cultural material to use; participative structures to process it; and commons-based property forms to protect the results from private appropriation. Hence is a 'circulation of the common' obtained, through which peer-production virally expands (the concept is from Dyer-Witheford, 1999).
However, peer-production is not limited to the sphere of immaterial production. Physical resources can be shared, if they are available in a distributed format. For example: computers and their files and processing power. Cars can be pooled. Money can be...
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