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MICHEL BAUWENS

 

The Political Economy of Peer Production or “Who Owns the Wisdom of Crowds”

 

by Michel Bauwens

 

Summary: Distributed networks, which differ from decentralized networks because the former's hubs are voluntary and not obligatory, are emerging as a dominant form of organization in technology, organizations, and online knowledge exchange. Such networks are characterized by a peer to peer intersubjective logic and associated processes of peer production, peer governance, and non-exclusionary forms of peer property. The characteristics of this third mode of production, governance and property will be described, as well as how immanent or transcendent they are in relation to the capitalist political economy in which they are embedded.

 

This paper takes the point of view that peer processes significantly transcend capitalism and can be the basis of a renewed strategy for social and political change. The class characteristics differ both from the logic of industrial capitalism, from the logic of cognitive capitalism, based on monopoly rents derived from the informational core of commodities, and from the logic of vectoral capitalism as described by MacKenzie Wark, because, through the distribution of fixed capital, the means of production are moving towards being owned by the producers themselves. A new hypothesis, of netarchical capitalism based on the key issue of 'who owns the wisdom of crowds' will be presented.

 

CV: The author, Michel Bauwens, has played a major role in the digital revolution of his home country Belgium, where he is known as an internet pioneer. He created two dot.com companies, was (eBusiness) strategic director for the telecommunications company Belgacom, and 'European Manager of Thought Leadership' for the U.S. webconsultancy MarchFIRST. He co-produced the 3-hour TV documentary 'TechnoCalyps: the metaphysics of technology and the end of man', and co-edited two French-language books on the 'Anthropology of Digital Society', and was editor in chief of the Flemish digital magazine Wave. He now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he created the Foundation for P2P Alternatives. He taught the Anthropology of Digital Society for postgraduate students at ICHEC/St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium and related courses to Payap University and Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

 

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