2007 - The Peer to Peer Manifesto: The Emergence of P2P Civilization and Political Economy - Michel Bauwens

Texto

Our current political economy is based on a fundamental mistake. It is based on the assumption that natural resources are unlimited, and that it is an endless sink. This false assumption creates artificial scarcity for potentially abundant cultural resources. This combination of quasi-abundance and quasi-scarcity destroys the biosphere and hampers the expansion of social innovation and a free culture.

In a P2P-based society, this situation is reversed: the limits of natural resources are recognized, and the abundance of immaterial resources becomes the core operating principle. The vision of P2P theory is the following:

1. the core intellectual, cultural and spiritual value will be produced through non-reciprocal peer production;

2.it is surrounded by a reformed, peer-inspired, sphere of material exchange;

3. it is globally managed by a peer-inspired and reformed state and governance system.

Because of these characteristics, peer to peer can be said to be the core logic of the successor civilization, and is a answer and solution to the structural crisis of contemporary capitalism.

Markets may be changing from a logic of pure capitalism (making commodities for exchange, so as to increase capital), to logics where the logic of exchange is subsumed to the logic of partnership.

There is now a thriving field of social cooperation, which some call the adventure economy, emerging for the sharing of physical goods.

Today, the Internet offers a remarkable social dynamic completely based on voluntary participation in the creation of common goods made universally available to all.

Peer production, governance and property are more productive economically, politically, and in terms of distribution, than their governmental and for-profit counterparts, because they filter out all the less productive forms of motivation and cooperation, and retain only passionate production and intrinsic motivation.

The social media sharing platforms you see today blooming all around you survive from selling your reader's attention span, NOT the use value you have created yourself.

"The realization that contemporary workers are moving not just from job to job, but also from jobs to non-jobs, and that in fact, what is most useful and meaningful for them (and the market, and society) are not the paid jobs for the market, but the episodes of passionate production."

Peer to peer governance, if supported by new socio-economic regulations, including a universal subsidy to all could be the means by which individuals would be able to govern themselves while engaging in the pursuit of their best interests and passions.

The Emergence Of The Peer To Peer Civilization And Political Economy.

1. Our current world system is marked by a profoundly counterproductive logic of social organization:

a. it is based on a false concept of abundance in the limited material world; it has created a system based on infinite growth, within the confines of finite resources

b. it is based on a false concept of scarcity in the infinite immaterial world; instead of allowing continuous experimental social innovation, it purposely erects legal and technical barriers to disallow free cooperation through copyright, patents, etc...

2. Therefore, the number one priority for a sustainable civilization is overturning these principles into their opposite:

Archivo

Archivo:The Peer To Peer Manifesto- The Emergence of P2P Civilization and Political Economy.pdf

Enlaces

URL: http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/11/03/the_peer_to_peer_manifesto.htm

Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20161130191847/http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/11/03/the_peer_to_peer_manifesto.htm