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The Open Source e-Economy; or How to Be a Venture Communist



PQ is cooking something up.


Opening Quotes

PQ: "I am in favor of markets, but not ones based on profit, status, hierarchy or power. We need to create an anti-capitalism within capitalism, one capable of triggering snowballing sequences of events that get collective subjectivity into a 'trippy' space."

PQ: "Form is never simply form. To begin a break, one must have first a 'formal' break. The idea that form follows content is complete BS. Emancipation requires emancipatory institutions...You must do something, then build on it."

PQ: "The Left must take hold of the economy, of currency, of exchange, and wrestle with it. And this should not be simply like the famous line from Beckett -- 'Fail again, but fail better.'. There is a certain Leftist romaticism around that kind of thing: 'We were all in the struggle together... how wonderful we were...' But then things went back to normal."

PQ: "Marx thought that when knowledge becomes the center of agency, of generating social wealth, then the capitalist logic of exploiting labor, following the labor theory of value, becomes meaningless and no longer works. But that sounds today like some kind of a technological determinist, where he says that capitalism becomes meaningless, because the time of labor is no longer the source of value."






The inspiration for writing this article, aside from wanting to continue examining the kinds of ideas quoted above, comes from real life as much as it arises from a long-standing fascination with the possibilities for alternative economic structures within the New World.

One relatively small event that occurred within the Zuccotti Park milieu during the height of the Occupy Wall Street encampment captures this interesting intersection between New World play and this kind of real world play.

A group of organic farmers from Vermont had joined the Wall Street Occupiers and offered to provide free food to everyone. This geneorus gesture was met with dismay by local street vendors, who tended to be primarily poor, working-class immigrants. The general council of occupiers, sympathetic to both parties, considered the problem and created the Occupy Wall Street Vendor Project, which raised funds to buy food from the vendors. It was neither a market nor a non-market solution.

In general, the Occupy encampments considered their economies as a provisioning system, and it was the "citizens", organised into self-generating autonomous working groups, who decided which particular provisioning system was appropriate given their ethical values and particular local conditions.





The Left is Dead

Along with many other "e-socialists", "e-communists" and "e-revolutionaries", I have long been critical of the built-in default capitalist mode of production that is hard-coded into the game. Not "critical" in the sense of "Admin is a Bad Man", but critical in the sense of "What actions can be taken, within the constraints of the software model, to circumvent and outwit this system for the benefit of all players?"

After a fairly long and convoluted road of experimentation and observation, full of both highs and lows, I have arrived at a few self-critical conjectures relevant to deepening a critique of eRep political economy:

As in real life, the socialist road in eRepublik is marked primarily by a tendency to recreate capitalist forms wrapped in either a red flag or a red-tinged nationalism.

As in real life, the spontaneous development of large-scale "e-socialist" or "e-communist" economies in Republik tends invevitably towards forming command-and-control political structures that reinforce elitist, hierarchical and anti-democratic practices. Such structures benefit a small "vanguard" group -- often of a military character -- rather than a small elite of the richest capitalists, but the net effect is the same as traditionally seen in capitalist modes of development, including those directed by so-called "Communist" parties in the rWorld.

The low-wage commune system is the e-Left's greatest contribution to the game, and also its greatest error. In much the same way that the western Enlightenment in real life paved the way for both freedom and democracy, as well as fascism, the widespread adoption of the low-wage commune has provided tremendous economic leverage, but at the same time created a new foundation for suppressing innovation. While it aims at -- and succeeds to a point -- in extending the commonwealth, it also has the effect of constraining and enclosing the commons.

By enhancing the military command-and-control of nations more than contributing to the emancipatory project, such systems have contributed to the suppression and elimination of so-called "rogue" and neutral e-states. In the international eRep context, they contribute to the expansion rather than contracting the level of unemployment understood as that class of players who have no country, those who are left to wander the New World, as well as those who flee to other realms in disgust.





Oh, the turmoil and excess of Rock and Roll!


On that very last point, I will acknowledge that finding ways to encourage people to leave the game altogether can -- and has -- been promoted as a revolutionary act in and of itself. I am not entirely unsympathetic to such a perspective, particularly when it is done in the liberatory psychological context of a "will to disappearance" that aims to challenge reflexive conditioning or, in a more political context, as a criticism of that type of leftist opportunism that places in-game politics above real life politics, which is a form of abandoning the emancipatory subject.

But I would further observe that encouraging folks to leave this game to play other versions of it, while often an expression of a desire for a "more perfect simulation" -- and understandable on an emotional level for that reason -- often lacks some degree critical depth. It is something like switching dealers in a search for a cleaner "high"; it doesn't address the fundamental challenge of rethinking political economy within such simulations.





Long Live the Left!

Based on these realizations, I have already taken the step of moving my paper away from being a mouthpiece for "the e-socialist movement" or for the Socialist Freedom Party (SFP).

As for the eInternationale and similar undertakings, in my estimation, the "international Left" in eRepublik -- although it has made and continues to make interesting contributions to this worldwide e-community -- is incapable of carrying through with a liberation practice as long as it clings to not only the vestiges of failed RL so-called socialism (i.e., Leninism, Stalinism, etc. and its symbols) but, perhaps more importantly, as long as it fails to carry through with a penetrating critique of eRep political economy and fails to offer alternative institutions and practices to build on.

I would add that the SFP has a long and delightful history, full of great players who have demonstrated the spirit of critical thinking and innovation time and again. I still love this party and believe it is capable of great things.

But the SFP, like other groups who have embraced a half-baked "e-socialism", has also tripped and stumbled over the roadblocks outlined above. (Aside: The critique of e-leftism should include a discussion on the language of "anti-imperialism" as well, but that would divert me from the topic at hand so I won't go into that here except to say that, again, as in real life, "anti-imperialist" rhetoric often becomes a substitute for critical thinking and in fact can quite easily turn into a rationale for supporting various forms of barbarism.)

For the reasons outlined above, but even more so for the reasons outlined below, I would like to publically recommend to my friends, colleagues and comrades in the SFP that the Party consider making a small, but significant, change to its name and become the Social Freedom Party. (Thanks to TheNorm for this suggestion.)

Although I have always like the challenging cachet associated with the "Socialist" moniker, and agreed that it helps to filter out those who are not up to challenge of taking on "the dominant social paradigm", as we used to say -- and now I can feel the ghosts of Osmany Ramon and Mark Valshannar glowering at me from beyond the e-grave for suggesting this -- I now believe it has both out-lived its usefulness and fails to denominate the true spirit of this party in a clear way.




The Wealth of Networks
(see: Yochai Benkler wiki)


Broken Loops and Wonky Beats



My starting point is to ponder the "broken" feedback loop (from a capitalist perspective) between the productive publics who create exponentially increasing use value, and those who capture this value through social media - but do not return these income streams to the value "producers".

For those who may not have been paying close attention, I am referencing the point from The Grundrisse noted in the opening remarks, i.e., does a "knowledge economy" in and of itself break down the capitalist logic of exploitation? Was Marx a "technological determinist"? In the rWorld, this is no ivory tower discussion; it is at the heart of our current technological and economic development.

In other words, the current so-called "knowledge economy" is a sham and a pipe dream because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. Occupy, with its "peers producing their political commons", exemplified new business and value practices that are, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software as well as in the open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence, nor is it irrelevant to the question at hand regarding the e-economy.

At the center of the Occupy phenomena was a productive public, reaching consensus through the General Assembly and offering all kinds of templates ("Mic Check", "Protest Camping", "Working Groups", et cetera) which, in a true open-source way, could be copied and practiced by similar communities the world over, but also modified to suit local needs.

This community had all kinds of needs: physical needs, such as food, shelter and healthcare. Did they resort to either the market economy (or to a command-and-control "vanguard" structure) for this?

The answer wasn't a simple yes or no. It was quite a bit more interesting than that.



An Ethical Economy




OWS created a well-functioning ethical economy that included a market dynamic, but that also functioned in harmony with the value system of the occupiers. What is crucial here is that it was the citizens who decided on the most appropriate provisioning system - and neither the property and money owners nor a group of "revolutionary leaders" directing an economy divorced from ethical values and social networking.

In commons-oriented peer production, core value creation occurs through contributors to a shared innovation pool, a commons of knowledge, software or design. The contributors may be volunteers or paid employees. Important to note: even paid contributors add to the common pool. Why?

Shared innovation makes an enormous difference in costs (give a brick, get a house), and it is also hyper-competitive. In software development, more open projects do much better in the long-run than more closed projects. In other words, it makes sound business sense: open businesses tend to drive out business models based on proprietary IT work. It doesn't matter whether you are a "commonist" free software developer, or a capitalist shareholder of IBM. Both sides benefit and they outcompete or "outcooperate" traditional proprietary competitors.

Some of the most successful players in open-source software production are non-profits who produce totally free (open source and no cost to consumer), such as the Apache, Gnome, Eclipse, Perl Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation. They neither manage nor "command and control" the production process, but enable it. In other words, they maintain the infrastructure of co-operation, just as the provisioning Working Groups at the Occupy camps enabled the occupations to continue to operate.

Successful open-source software projects create an economy of players that create added value on top of the commons, through all kinds of derivative services, which create monetary exchange value on the marketplace. They sell their labor and consulting prowess, training and integration.



The Linux Conundrum



The corporatisation of Linux, for example, has not changed its underlying organisational model.

What matters is the way open-source projects are organised internally. In a traditional software project, there's a project manager who decides what features the product will have and allocates employees to work on various features. In contrast, there's nobody directing the overall development of the Linux kernel. Yes, Linus Torvalds and his lieutenants decide which patches will ultimately make it into the kernel, but the Red Hat, IBM and Novell employees who work on the Linux kernel don't take their orders from them. They work on whatever they (and their respective clients) think is most important, and Torvalds's only authority is deciding whether the patches they submit are good enough to make it into the kernel.

The community's value creation is still at the core of the process for Linux. The entrepreneurial coalition, to a substantial degree, already follows this new business logic we saw emerging onto the streets with the Occupy movement - in which the community is primary and business secondary.


Breaking Down the Social Reproduction of Capital With Wisdom




In the present RL political economy -- and very much so in our eRep political economy -- a key problem persists.

Though the commons create core value, it cannot reproduce itself, apart from commoners becoming either entrepreneurs or wage laborers for for-profit companies or, effectively, slave-labor in military communes. In other words, the commons remains dependent on the social reproduction of capital. But at least here there is a form of payment and funding occurring, so that the value "producers" do indeed generate an income. Here, in this model, to a substantial degree, the feedback loop has been restored (though perhaps insufficiently).

To put it bluntly, commune workers do get goodies. So there.

But why don't we see this happening on a much broader scale in eRepublik? (In the real world, the problem -- that is, the broken part of the loop -- is most evident in the realm of social media -- which, of course, is what eRepublik is.)

The answer derives from the network logic of how peers are associating themselves. In social media -- and in eRepublik as an expression of that -- we are here as individuals, sharing our creative expression. There are weak links amongst ourselves and as a result, we need third-party platforms to create infrastructures for us.



How does a wheel obtain value?

In the free software world, however, and in Wikipedia, we create joint objects of value that bind us together, and so make us into a community. These communities then create their own sovereign associations to which associated entrepreneurs are beholden. Furthermore, for-profit companies with shareholders always have to contend with an interior struggle between their "inner dolphin" (which wants to engage in "co-opetition" with the commons), and their "inner shark" (which wants to exploit or enclose the commons). These contradictory behaviours are well-documented in the open-source software world.

To improve the situation in the social media-like space of eRepublik economics, we need peer-producing communities to create their own economic infrastructure - just as Occupy is now undertaking with its ambitious Global Square project, whose aim is to ultimately replace Facebook with a civic network.

In peer production, we need a further hack as well. Instead of associating with shareholding companies (or Stalinist communes), why not create our own entities: ethical company structures, in which the commons values are embedded within its legal structure, and do not have to be imposed from the outside? In other words, where the "invisible hand" needs not be theorised as an outside force, but is a clearly active "visible hand" that drives each individual, but commons-oriented, enterprise?

A "venture communist" might agree to a "peer production" license, which would open up the commons to ethical companies and other commoners - but not to for-profits, who would need to pay. This would create a self-sustaining feedback loop in an emerging commons-oriented counter-economy. A slight variation on the these would be mutualist "phyles": community-oriented, global co-operatives, operating much like the Venetian and Florentine guilds during the Renaissance.


The Democratic Civic Sphere for Economy


A new e-reality is possible.


Today, we assume that value is created by for-profit companies and conceive of eRep civil society as a "remainder" category: it's what we do after our paid or "communal" work. This system as a whole is ultimately managed by a state, a kind of corporate-welfare state, in which the gains are privatised and the losses socialised. In other words, the state has simply become an extension of the corporation (even when it calls itself a "commune") and is less and less a servant of the citizenry.

Occupy and open-source models illuminate a new possible e-reality, in which the democratic civic sphere, productive commons and a vibrant market can co-exist for mutual benefit:

At the core of value creation are various commons, where innovations are open for all to share and to build upon;
These commons are protected through non-profit civic associations, which empower that social production;

Around the commons emerges a vibrant commons-oriented economy comprised of ethical companies, whose legal structures tie them to the values and goals of the commons communities, not to creating private profit.

Where these three circles intersect, citizens decide on the optimal shape of their provisioning systems.

This model can exist as a submodel within eRep capitalism, just at it already does to some extent in the present rWorld economic system, as the open-source software business ecology. It could also become, with some necessary hacks, the core logic of a New Civilisation in the New World.

Occupy has not just shown us prefigurative politics, but prefigurative economics as well.



Three Cheers for Social Freedom! Now start hacking...

To this end, I am devoting some time to working on a prototype for a donations-based, alternative-currency communications and trading system that works within the ethical and legal framework of the game model, but provides the means to occupy a common space for such economics.

Wish me luck. Ideas welcome.



XXX,
PQ