As Featured in Belonging Again (Part II)
Considering the Value-Form and the P2P Foundation
X
‘[A]the beginning of Capital, Marx describes a capitalist economy as an accumulation of commodities, and he records the dialectical unfolding through which commodity becomes capital. But he should have shown how the commodity included capital within itself from the beginning. If capital was already included in the commodity as the logical beginning, the development from commodity to share capital would be dialectical in the Hegelian sense. Then Capital could have been the narrative of the self-realization of capital-as-spirit.’¹¹¹
I agree with Karatani, but at the same time my hope has been to show that there is “room” in Marx for this “situational understanding,” in trying to argue that the term “labor” is necessarily a term that implies “exchange”; furthermore, I don’t think Marx would disagree with this understanding of his work, and in fact agree it was all there all along (even if perhaps not explicit enough). The moment we discuss a thing as “a commodity,” we discuss it within the logic of Capital, which is to say that a commodity doesn’t “become” Capital, but rather a commodity is “always already” Capital. The term “commodity” makes sense within Capitalism, and so Capital is “realized” in things (according to the labor-quantifier) more than things become Capital. In this way, we might say Capital is more “a matter of seeing” than it is “a matter of becoming,” for a cup is first valuable as a commodity due to interpretation before I might begin asking about its value, which I likely try to quantify according to labor. Labor-quantification is primarily retrospective, as “rationality” comes after “nonrational truth.” Yes, if labor doesn’t exist to provide labor-quantification, then when I change in the “retrospective act,” I will fail to justify my valuation and so it will crumble, but the fact labor-quantification come later, not initially, suggests that “the abstract idea of labor” more primarily than actual labor itself. I consider a thing under Capital relative to its exchangeability, value, and price, and then might seek to justify that e-valuation with reference to labor-time. If no system of exchange existed, this second step would likely never occur (except if I was perhaps a private collector or something — a hypothetical which isn’t enough to sustain a social order).
It would seem that nearly all relations of humans to one another or nature can be considered as ‘one of intercourse or exchange’ (as Karatani discusses in light of Moses Hess), and so to discuss “changing exchange” is to possibly discuss changing the quality of all possible relations and “ways of seeing” (for, again, “the commodity” is “a way of seeing,” speaking, thinking, and relating).¹¹² This point can be missed in Capital since Marx ‘focused exclusively on research into one form of intercourse, that of the capitalist economy that was established with the expansion of trade (commodity exchanges) between communities,’ and we see in Karatani an effort to ‘extend[] the work Marx carried out […] into the domains of state and nation.’¹¹³ Seeing everything in terms of exchange can also be missed where we think of “labor as value,” for then only labor acts are seen in terms of value, and since value is linked with exchange, exchange as a mode of thinking is then limited to realms of labor. This mistake can be avoided though if we understand that labor and production are not all good or “valuable,” that they are ‘inevitably accompanied by the generation of waste products and waste heart’ (for example).¹¹⁴ Hence, “labor as value” is tragic (“a trade-off of competing goods,” following Martha Nussbaum), which means it enables “tragic exchange,” and since everything in life is tragic, it becomes possible to think of “tragic exchange” as applying to everything. The tragic fits with the tragic
Anyway, possible “modes of exchange” are determined and limited by possible ‘abstract norm[s]’ which can be found in a social order, and since “abstract norms” cannot be found in facticity, it’s almost something like magic that is needed to bring them into existence.¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶ Capitalism is like the magician and “the equal sign” (“=”) the magic trick, and the trick is that Capitalism convinces us to believe “the equal sign” is authoritative and object-ive (and thus it “is”). This “magic” has causal impacts on the world, but does “the magic” come and then a change in material condition or vice-vera? Obviously it varies, but Karatani suggests we often underestimate how often “magic” happens and then changes in materiality, which is to say changes in exchange often happen before changes in means of production, not the other way around (hence his adamancy that ‘we cannot conclude that the state form arose out of agriculture. If anything, the reverse is true: agriculture began from the state’) (this is a point with which I think Deirdre McCloskey would agree).¹¹⁷ This should give us hope, I think, for it means a change in ideas (through a change of “social imagination”) could change the society in profound and material ways, versus us have to focus on changing materiality broadly (which seems much more difficult and even requiring violence).¹¹⁸ For example, ‘[t]he unbroken continuity of the bureaucracy in China depended more than anything on its emphasis on writing and literature,’ which suggests that “a medium condition” of writing allowed a kind of thinking and continuation of thinking — all “a means of exchange” — that allowed a form of State and hence “material condition” which otherwise would have not been possible.¹¹⁹ Yes, writing is material and a means of production, but introducing something like writing to change the world is much more feasible and possible than saying overthrowing all economic and political forms and replacing them with something else which is functional. Writing as a “medium condition” is so powerful because it makes ways of thinking possible which otherwise were not possible, and as a result the entire world could change (which is important since ‘exchanges between different communities’ is more important than just ‘exchanges between individuals’).¹²⁰
Writing is more “a means of exchange” in my view than “a means of production” (though obviously both), and in such a technology we glimpse how changes in exchange can lead to changes in production. In this way, spreading the internet might change the world more than directly opposing the commodity-form, for spreading the internet seems more likely to “change the conditions of possibility,” assuming we use the internet to “orbit” a new “abstract norm” than say “the equal sign” of Capital. The “equal sign” helped us deal with ‘[t]rade […] carried out between different communities,’ but now something else is needed, a new abstract basis for trade, seeing as trade is always needed since ‘[n]o [(especially sedentary)] community can be completely self-sufficient,’ which please note by extension means a State is needed to manage, organize, and defend that trade.¹²¹ A State is also needed to supply ‘the appearance of the money-form,’ which is needed for ‘a single shared yardstick’ (by which to measure value) and to expand the influence and reach of “the abstract idea of labor-form” (as we already discussed).¹²² Without the State, there would be no way to ‘determin[e] and guarantee[] the weight of precious metal used in coins’ (for example), which means money could have no stable exchange rate, which means ‘trade would in effect be impossible.’¹²³ And so “The Capital-Nature-State” forms and solidifies, all part of “the base”…
“Abstract social norms” are necessary to bring together people who do not share facticity, who are bound and limited by their facticity, and the like. If all we had at hand to “bring many into one” was what was given to us in materiality, there would always be profound limits to any unity we might achieve. At the same time, if we established connection on grounds that made everyone “the same” (a self-effacing impossibility), this could prove totalitarian and oppressive. How then might many diverse people be brought into relation without erasing their differences, while at the same time making them intelligible enough to one another that meaningful relationship could prove possible? Well, some “abstract basis” which all people shared would prove necessary, and for Heidegger that looked like “death.” Heidegger orbited his philosophy around death (though his philosophy certainly couldn’t be reduced to that), which is an experience that everyone will experience, and yet at the same time “only you can die your death”: there is thus unity yet also individuation. Others have tried to use race, personal experience, sexual identity, occupation, and other means to help turn a people of “many into one,” but as discussed in “Deconstructing Common Life” by O.G. Rose, there are problems with all “abstracts basis” for community and collective identity. How did nations in the past accomplish this goal? A main way was through religion (or so it seems to me), the loss of which we could say Heidegger presented “death” as a new “abstract norm” to replace. However, Capital had already stepped in to play that replacement role (and still is with “the loss of givens”), but that “solution” is one that seems to set us up to end up at “The End (of) True History.” Land waits.
‘A third characteristic of empires is that they possess a world religion,’ Karatani tells us, for ‘[w]orld empires are formed through the unification of multiple tribes and states; for this to happen, there needs to be a universal religion that can transcend all of the logical religions in those states and communities.’¹²⁴ Religion is part of the world but also not of it, just like Capital, and so it is able to establish “abstract norms” which can bring people together in an authoritative and non-arbitrary way (at least to the believers), without which people find themselves trying to relate on grounds of facticity, which cannot actually provide a “meaningful basis” for this relating (for “things don’t tell you what they mean,” suggesting “autonomous empiricism” is not possible, as discussed in (Re)constructing “A Is A”). Where there is no religion, an “abstract norm” is still needed, and for us today Capital plays that role, and now Capital has a “practical monopoly” on “abstract social norms,” for it is able to function as if it was still “given” (“practically”), even though it is “technically not given” at all (such is the power of the fetish and “real fiction”). In the past, religion against economics could make possible “a competition of abstract norms,” as economics could prove the same against religion, and in this way, there was also “a competition of values.” There were market spaces and spaces outside the market, both of which entailed authoritative “abstract norms” that could bring people together in different ways. Now, there is mainly Capital, “a monopoly on abstract norms,” which likely means Discourse prevails over Rhetoric and we slowly devolve into autocannibalism. The stakes are high.
State and religion share an interesting, sometimes hostile, other times corporative, relationship, and Karatani notes that “Exchange D” (what he seeks and emphasizes) ‘has frequently been manifested in actual social movements that took the form of religious heresies’ (during times when religion and State more so collaborated, we might say).¹²⁵ Furthermore, ‘the influence of mode of exchange D […] can be seen in other ways as well: the state, which introduced universal religions in an attempt to shore up its own grounding, ended up engaging in a kind of self-regulation by adopting the ‘law’ that was disclosed by universal religion.’¹²⁶ But perhaps God doesn’t exist? Perhaps all the religions are misguided? Perhaps so, but ‘we cannot ignore the moment of mode of exchange D, even though it never actually exists.’¹²⁷ Does Capitalism need “the equal sign” to actually exist in nature? Not at all: “the unfolding of history” in a world with humans need not be limited by materiality. In fact, it likely never is, for ‘people cannot help but find an end or purpose to history.’¹²⁸
Overall, what we are suggesting is that “a change in means of exchange” requires “a change in abstract norms,” and from the abstract norm of “the equal sign,” to what abstract norm might be transition into? Beauty. Lack. Topics which have concerned us throughout O.G. Rose. We have often spoken of “clearing” and “intrinsic motivation,” and furthermore suggested that all of these are “intersuppositional,” which is to say they are relational (see The Absolute Choice). “The equal sign” is also fundamentally relational, for it sets the “abstract terms” by which we relate to phenomena in the world. Without it, “labor” couldn’t be meaningfully defined from general “work,” and Capitalism would not prove possible. Ultimately, some new, “abstract social norm” seems to be the only way to address “the problem of scale” without falling into a pathology, which is to say a capital-X (as discussed in Belonging Again (Part I)).¹²⁹
Michel Bauwens and I discussed “spirit” and how Karatani himself is working on a book about “spirits,” which I would associate with “social imaginations” and “horizons” by which we can experience and interpret reality (“Sources of P2P Theory (Ep #1)”). Capital is a “spirit,” we could say, a way of being and way of experiencing the world, and what is being suggested in this work is that the Capital-Nation-State can only be negated/sublated “all at once” via a change in “spirit” versus say direct revolution against the State, then the Nation, then Capital, or something similar. The Capital-Nation-State will continue to march us toward “The End of (True) History” day by day, and anything short of a simultaneous address of the whole Capital-Nation-State will likely not succeed (even if WWIII were to occur, if we still think according to “the logic of Capita,” everything will eventually return back to the way it was). No, a shift from Capital to “lack” will not happen literally “all at once” (which is to say that it is not literally the case that everyone on the planet will suddenly change their thinking), but it is a growing and widening change in spirit that will till the soil for the possibility of people even being able to think according to a different logic from A/A, Discourse, and Capital to A/B, Rhetoric, and Lack. If people can’t even think outside A/A, no negation/sublation of the Capital-Nation-State will prove possible.
To speak of Capital is to speak of “a totality,” an entire “social horizon,” for ‘the value of labor power is determined within the total system of relationships of all commodities.’¹³⁰ So it goes with Lack, and since commodities relate through exchange, “the value of labor power” is determinable because it is situated in a mode of exchange. To overlook exchange in favor of labor can be to overlook what makes labor possible and valuable. It is to overlook the role of “abstract social norms,” which means we overlook what must be changed to change societies. Changing “the modes of production” can only do so much in a world where “the abstract social norm” (say of Capital) remains the same, which is to say that where a “situation” doesn’t change, nothing likely changes: to change only “things” is to change no-things (algebra can protect geometry). That said, it will not suffice for us to “top-down force” Lack upon everyone (which I will capitalize here to contrast it with “Capital”); that would require a Capital-Nation-State in its own right, and furthermore people would likely resist Lack, not understand it, and fail to participate in the hoped negation/sublation of Capital. Lack must compete with Capital and gradually and slowly prove itself more able to help us address Nick Land and negate/sublate into Absolute History. But how can Lack compete with Capital if the average person can’t even think or experience Lack as intelligible? Not easily, which suggests that a change in “the medium condition” is required, as are needed “common spaces” in which new “modes of being” can even be considered and imagined so that “A Competition of Spirits” might prove imaginable and possible — a point which brings us into considering Michel Bauwens.
XI
Michel Bauwens is a great mind and a delight to know and speak with, and I strongly appreciate his incredibly concrete work at the P2P Foundation, which focuses on possibility of ‘a commons-centric future.’¹³¹ P2P focuses on ‘social relations,’ ‘technological infrastructure,’ ‘a new mode of production and property,’ and ultimately ‘a transition to an economy that can be generative towards people and nature.’¹³² ‘[A] new ecosystem of value creation’ is sought in ‘implementing P2P technologies and practices,’ which by extension would make possible “a competition, experimentation, and testing” of different value-forms.¹³³ The details of how can be found at the P2P Foundation and in their literature; here, we will focus on the idea of “an ecosystem of value creation,” which ultimately orbits the possibility of using P2P technologies to make possible ‘small-group dynamics […] at the global level.’¹³⁴ This is a powerful vision which might address the concerns of a Leopold Kohr without ending up in the isolationism or bifurcation suggested in Dugin’s “Fourth Political Theory,” which argues that “global relationship” has mostly been to make everyone Neoliberal and under Capital. Diversity is erased, hence Dugin’s rebellion, but in P2P we see another way.
Religion in the past, distinct from economics, could make possible “a competition of abstract norms,” and in this way there was also “a competition of values.” There were say “Christian Values” and “Market Values” (along with say “Democratic Values”), and citizens found themselves developing creatively in the space between these values. In this, we can see a variety of value-forms which exist in tension and even competition with one another, which suggests an overall “situation” that is more A/B than A/A. I personally want a multitude of value-forms, which is to say I want people to find many different ways of valuing things in the world, not just according to beauty or market or character or goodness but all these things (there should be no monopoly, only diversity). Though I’m ultimately not sure, I hesitate to deconstruct “value” entirely, for this could suggest that “markets” are bad or dirty, when I do not think that: markets are a very important technology that have helped us undergo “The Great Enrichment” of McCloskey, as well as provide a means for “a market test” by which we can better determine which products, services, solutions, and ideas actually add value versus only seem to do so. Rather, the problem is when there is a “monopoly of a value-form,” which unfortunately tends to happen under Capitalism according to “the logic of Capital.” To speak of many value-forms is to speak of many “modes of exchange” and relating, and if a change in “modes of exchange” is what is required for the negation/sublation into Absolute History, then we must speak of changing and diversifying value-forms.
There is a history for why we have restricted the value-form to Capital, even though there could be many value-forms say in gifting or beauty. ‘Value was,’ for most of history since Aristotle, ‘defined by the desire or need for the products of human labor (things or actions). Exchange was all but an institution crystallizing this interaction.’¹³⁵ Overtime, ‘theoretical discussion on value gradually abated, and the concept became almost interchangeable with the market price.’¹³⁶ At the P2P Foundation, we see an effort to revitalize the discussion on value, because it is through a “negation/sublation of (value as) Capital” that we might find the possibility of an overcoming of “The Capital-Nation-State” — all other means seem doomed to only address on part of the trinity, thus dooming the effort to failure. Instead of benefit Capital, Bauwens argues that ‘in the commons economy, exchange serves the circulation of the commons. The commons thus rationalize new types of social relations, along with the institutions that make the accompany value forms perceptible’ (“transparency” becomes a big part of how a new “mode of exchange” might prove possible without a reliance on wage hierarchy, but that must be elaborated on later).¹³⁷ ‘Not all exchange of value [must be] capitalist exchange-value.’¹³⁸
‘There is of course no constant definition of value in different societies and times. Value as a term has no concrete meaning, but it is to be interpreted within a broader social whole.’¹³⁹ On this point, we might consider Time, Labor, and Social Domination by Moishe Postone (as brought to my attention by Theory Underground), where it is argued:
‘that the Marxian category of value should not be understood merely as expressing the market-mediated form of the distribution of wealth […] his category of value should be examined as a form of wealth whose specificity is related to its temporal determination. An adequate reinterpretation of value must demonstrate the significance of the temporal determination of value for Marx’s critique and for the question of the historical dynamic of capitalism.’¹⁴⁰
What does this mean? In my view, Postone is suggesting the value-form formulates differently throughout history, and that understanding value requires understanding the whole historic paradigm and situation: it will not suffice to only understand “the mode of production” (or only one part of the Capital-Nation-State). Postone is critiquing views that would place social relations ‘extrinsic to labor itself’; alternatively, Postone would like for us to think of labor ‘as possessing a socially determinate character specific to the capitalist social formation,’ which is to say that Postone will ‘show that the process of production incorporates both the ‘forces’ and ‘relations’ of production, and does not merely embody the forces of production alone.’¹⁴¹ Postone resists a “transhistorical reading of production,” which is to say he wants to argue that Marx is making an argument about labor in Capitalism versus in general; perhaps something like “the value-form,” meaning “the human need to see (motivating) value,” is transhistorical, but the particular manifestation of the value-form in and through labor (as its quantifier) is historically particular and unique. ‘[L]abor must be seen as possessing a socially determinate character specific to the capitalist social formation,’ and ultimately we must see Capitalist ‘value as a historically specific form of wealth and of social relations, and to show that the process of production incorporates both the ‘forces’ and ‘relations’ of production, and does not merely embody the forces of production alone’ (there is a whole “situation” at play).¹⁴² What Postone hopes to accomplish is not merely to ‘critique […] labor’s exploitation and mode of social distribution,’ but to instead highlight a ‘fundamental contradiction of the capitalist totality [which is] intrinsic to the realm of production itself’; in other words, he hopes to ‘grasp the core of the social totality as contradictory.’¹⁴³ For me, we might think of this as the way Capitalism increases sociability through a reductionism that makes everyone “flat” and “a personification of labor” to one another, how Capitalism works through an “equal sign,” which doesn’t exist in facticity, as something which is “object-ively real” (via sociological “plausibility structures”), and so on — not that this is exactly how Postone thinks, but I think he would agree that we need to critique Capitalism sociologically, not just economically. If we critique Capitalism as “economically not functioning” for some reason, I don’t think this argument alone will accomplish much (after all, it could still our best address to “the problem of scale” following Hayek’s “Knowledge Problem” and defense of the pricing system); on the other hand, if we critique how Capitalism socially organizes us “toward” one another, and argue that we need to negate/sublate the “social abstract norm” of Capital into something else, like Lack, which could then positively negate/sublate Capitalism as a whole (into Rhetoric and Enrichment from Discourse and Stagnation), then we might be onto something.
‘Capitalism is a system of abstract, impersonal domination. Relative to earlier social forms, people appear to be independent; but they actually are subject to a system of social domination that seems not social but ‘objective.’ ’¹⁴⁴ Capitalism makes us “toward” the world in terms of Capital, like the camera makes us “toward” the world as “potential photographs” (as discussed in “Representing Beauty” by O.G. Rose), for ‘social labor is not only the object of domination and exploitation but is itself the essential ground of domination.’¹⁴⁵ We can associate “toward-ness” with “abstract domination,” which is for Postone ‘the form of domination that characterizes capitalism […] [and] does not refer simply to the market-mediated way in which class domination is effected in capitalism. Such a market-centered interpretation assumes that the invariable ground of social domination is class domination,’ which of course isn’t all wrong, but we could remove all the classes and not erase that “toward-ness” itself (we could make sure everyone is equally paid as photographers, for example, but not in this change how everyone, because of the camera, is “toward” everything as a potential photograph — which isn’t necessarily bad, please note).¹⁴⁶ To speak of Capital and Lack is to be speak of “toward-ness,” which is deeper than class (for it suggests a ‘sociohistorical concretization of alienation as self-generated domination’).¹⁴⁷
‘[C]lass domination is not the ultimate ground of social domination […] but itself becomes a function of a superordinate, ‘abstract’ form of domination,’ mainly “the toward-ness of Capital.”¹⁴⁸ Since no one is directly forcing us to “see the world in terms of Capital,” it doesn’t seem like we are controlled. But this is how Kafkaesque Discourse work: we are controlled in terms of “toward-ness,” and in that process we lose the capacity to even imagine or consider alternatives. And perhaps most of the time this is not only fine but good, precisely because humans without a socially-gifted or mediated “toward-ness” can suffer “existential anxiety” and respond poorly (as admonished by Philip Rieff and throughout Belonging Again (Part I)). Unfortunately, as we have argued, Capitalism under (natural) Discourse can fall into “The Great Stagnation,” leads to a collapse of birthrates, spread a culturally neolithic Neoliberalism that is “flattening,” and set us up for an “End of (True) History” via Artificial Intelligence. For these reasons, we must consider alternatives and the possibility of regaining Rhetoric through a change in “abstract social norms” — hence our line of inquiry.
Alright, but what does Postone have to do with Bauwens? It would suggest that a total change of “the value-form” is needed, but also that it is possible. If value as manifest in the Capital-Nation-State was transhistorical and not historically situated, we might have little hope of liberating value from the Capital-Nation-State and making it our own (I might prefer discussing “liberating valuation” versus “liberating the means of production,” though it depends on what we mean). ‘How abstract domination is understood […] is closely tied to how the category of value is interpretated,’ Postone tells us, which suggests why we need “a commons of competing value-forms” so that we don’t find ourselves stuck within a single “social imagination” (monopolistic).¹⁴⁹ Postone will also argue that ‘the categories with which Marx begins his analysis are indeed critical and do imply a historical dynamic,’ which is to say Marx starts assuming ‘the existence of capitalism [in and with] the unfolding of the categories; each category presupposes those which follow’ (which is to say labor doesn’t lead to exchange which leads to money and then capital; rather, we are “always already” dealing with labor/exchange/money/capital, per se — more “situational” and geometrical than one point leading and connecting to another point, leading and connecting to another point…).¹⁵⁰ ¹⁵¹ This right here suggests, similar to Karatani, that what we need is an entire change “all at once” of the very “grounds of intelligibility” by which we understand and are “toward” the world, for that is precisely what Capital has accomplishment. Thus, for me, this would mean we need to prioritize “a spread of the conditions of Childhood and Lack” versus “liberate the means of production,” for such a liberation does not guarantee a change in “the toward-ness of Capital.”
I have appreciated Postone’s work and am glad Theory Underground brought it to my attention; for a fuller treatment of Postone, I highly suggest his book (and find myself personally struggling to not include a consideration of everything and everyone in Belonging Again — I cannot say I always know the right balance). But to now return to Bauwens, and considering what Postone has suggested in the power of changing a society by changing its relation to the value-form (which is both ‘historically determinate [and] also historically determining’), for Bauwens, a commons could be a place in which value-forms are considered, moved between, and even set to compete.¹⁵² As he writes with Kostakis and Pazaitis:
‘Hence, value for us is self-determined by communities as contributions. The labour theory of value indeed rules capitalism, yet it co-exists with various forms of value in non-capitalist modes. Therefore, the aim is not a shift from one monolithic value regime to another one, excluding all previous activities. We make the case for value sovereignty, that is enabling communities and societies to self-determine value for themselves and develop accounting practices to allow this recognition to take place.
‘In a transition period, there is value competition: a dominant form of value operates under the capitalist logic, and a new social logic of value is emerging in seed forms. Additionally, there is the environmental underpinning of value, integrating a critical recognition of both ecological and social value. Positive and negative externalities have to be re-integrated in our economic system. Hence, recognition of different forms of value is necessary.’¹⁵³
“Value competition” and the notion of “a multitude of values” aligns with my own thinking, and I think different values require different “modes of exchange,” and so in a “value competition” we can see “an exchange competition” (taking us back to Karatani). We need not just a decentralization of “modes of production” or even “modes of exchange” too directly, but “modes of valuation,” which could lead to changes in both production and exchange. Where the value-form changes so freedom can increase (or decrease), but increases in freedom require increases in human capacity to handle that freedom (like Childhood). ‘Associationism (Mode D [in Karatani])’ (for example), which is ‘a mode of allocation,’ requires subjects who can handle Associationism, which means they can handle living without Capital helping them “itch” their anxieties.¹⁵⁴ Is this possible? Time will tell, but again a fundamental transformation is required, or else the whole Capital-Nation-State will likely not be negated/sublate (‘the nation [(for example)] (that is the community of the nation-state)’ will always come to its rescue).¹⁵⁵
‘Contemporary politics should no longer be only about the balance in the trinity of capital-nature-state […] Contemporary politics should [also] be about post-capitalist, commons-orientated construction and struggles.’¹⁵⁶ The details of this case can be found at the P2P Foundation, but overall we should highlight how for P2P ‘eroding capitalism points to the necessity of creating a prefigured commons-centric economy within existing capitalism’ (which to me sounds Hegelian).¹⁵⁷ ‘The market, however, would continue to exist in a commons-orientated society. The market would shift [though] from being predominately extractive to predominately generative’ (A/A to A/B, Discourse to Rhetoric).¹⁵⁸ Creation is Revolution, and Bauwens encourages us to create the conditions for Rhetoric and Childhood within Discourse versus more in opposition to Discourse, which though is easily harder. If we oppose the Capital-Nation-State, it will likely prevail, but if we create within it and Capital (A/A) the conditions for Lack and Childhood (A/B), there could be hope, especially if when Capitalism as a result becomes more Non-Zero Sum, creative, generative, and the like (returning us to Capitalism as described by McCloskey). At this point, Capitalism as we presently know it will not be the same even if we still call it “Capitalism” — it will have undergone negation/sublate. The old will be contained in the new, but the new will not be reducible to the old.
‘Capitalism has demonstrated a capacity to overcome its challenges,’ so rather then challenge it we will work to transform the quality of its capacity from Capital to Lack, Discourse to Rhetoric.¹⁵⁹ At the end of the day, I strongly associate “the problem of scale and spread” with “the problem of a Global Commons,” and hope to explore those connections as we progress. There is hope realizing this, for ‘[t]he commoners are already here; [as] are the commons and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime.’¹⁶⁰ Self-entrapment need not be our fate.
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Notes
¹¹¹Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 200.
¹¹²Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 15.
¹¹³Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 16.
¹¹⁴Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 18.
¹¹⁵Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 44.
¹¹⁶Indeed, anthropologically, we should note that magic had a big role in changing how people related to nature in a world where nature was seen as full of spirits that each should be treated as a Thou versus an It (alluding to Martin Buber, as Karatani does). ‘Magic made it possible to objectify nature as an It by despiritualizing it by means of the gift. For this reason, we can say that magicians were the first scientists.’¹
¹Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 53.
¹¹⁷Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 59.
¹¹⁸Karatani would like to stress ‘that it is not easy to transform persons who carry out traditions of hunter-gatherer peoples into an agricultural people,’ so how does it happen?¹ Well, it seems to require a change in how people think, but if this is done too directly they will likely rebel. And so the shift has to be subtle and feel like it was “chosen” by the people, which is possible where the categories according to which people think are changed and organized for them by institutions — as Mary Douglas teaches us on.
¹Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 116.
¹¹⁹Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 80.
¹²⁰Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 81.
¹²¹Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 81.
¹²²Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 91.
¹²³Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 92.
¹²⁴Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 105.
¹²⁵Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 150.
¹²⁶Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 150.
¹²⁷Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 150.
¹²⁸Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 232.
¹²⁹To the degree we will prove able to maintain this “abstract social norm,” for in being abstract means there will inevitably be misinterpretations and disagreements, is to the degree we might learn to “forgive” one another, as discussed in II.1 — hence why that subject ended in II.1.
¹³⁰Karatani, Kojin. The Structure of World History. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Durham and London. Duke University Press, 2014: 192.
¹³¹Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 1.
¹³²Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 1.
¹³³Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 1.
¹³⁴Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 3.
¹³⁵Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 13.
¹³⁶Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 13.
¹³⁷Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 14.
¹³⁸Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 15.
¹³⁹Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 15.
¹⁴⁰Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 123.
¹⁴¹Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 124.
¹⁴²Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 124.
¹⁴³Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 124.
¹⁴⁴Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 125.
¹⁴⁵Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 125.
¹⁴⁶Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 126.
¹⁴⁷Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 126.
¹⁴⁸Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 126.
¹⁴⁹Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 127.
¹⁵⁰Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 127.
¹⁵¹Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 128.
¹⁵²Postone, Moise. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 129.
¹⁵³Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 15.
¹⁵⁴Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 49.
¹⁵⁵Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 50.
¹⁵⁶Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 51.
¹⁵⁷Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 55.
¹⁵⁸Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 64.
¹⁵⁹Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 68.
¹⁶⁰Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. London. University of Westminster Press, 2019: 70.
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