The Handbook of Peer Production

This new form of capital directly exploits networked social cooperation that often consists of unpaid activities that can be captured and financialized by proprietary “network” platforms. It lives from the positive externalities created through human cooperation and the commons. If previous versions of capitalism were hostile to the commons and tried to destroy it, this new version has learned, at least provisionally, to “tame” the commons. Nevertheless, this also means that it has become parasitic and rent‐seeking. Netarchical capitalism is rent‐seeking capital that has shifted its control mechanisms to control the whole network itself and functions one step away from real production. For example, social media platforms like Facebook almost exclusively capture the value of their members’ social exchange, by monetizing the data and selling the “attention” of their users to advertisers. Crowdsourcing models are based on distributed labor tending to reduce the average income of the producers (for an overview of crowdsourcing’s labor markets and the dark side of digital labor in general, see the books edited by Scholz, 2012, and Casilli, 2017). There is no creation of commons by communities, but rather a competition between workers and producers, to get clients on the demand side. Uber, Airbnb, Kickstarter, and TaskRabbit are also examples of the netarchical model.

The support given by major digital economy companies to open source development is another point of reference. The general business model seems to be that business “surfs” on the P2P infrastructure, and creates surplus value through services, which can be packaged for exchange value. The massive use of free and open source software in business, enthusiastically supported by venture capital and large companies such as IBM, is creating new business models. Such business models go “beyond” products and focus instead on services associated with the nominally free and open source software model. Industries are gradually transforming to incorporate user‐generated innovation and content. Several knowledge workers are choosing non‐corporate paths and becoming mini‐entrepreneurs, relying on an increasingly sophisticated participatory infrastructure, a kind of digital corporate commons.

Thus, capitalist forces mostly use partial implementations of peer production. The tactical and instrumental use of P2P infrastructure is only part of the story. Contemporary capitalism's dependence on P2P is systemic. As the whole underlying infrastructure of capitalism becomes distributed, it generates peer production practices and becomes dependent on them.

The for‐profit forces that are building and enabling these new platforms of participation represent a new subclass, the “netarchical” (Bauwens, 2009) or “vectoral” (Wark, 2004) class. These new capitalists prosper from the enablement and exploitation of participatory networks. In addition to the examples above, see also Amazon that built itself around user reviews, eBay that lives on a platform of worldwide distributed auctions, and Google that builds on user‐generated content.

More broadly, netarchical capitalism is a brand of capital that embraces peer production. It is the force behind the immanence of peer production. Opposed to it, though linked to it in a temporary alliance, are the forces of commoning, those that put their faith in the transcendence of commons‐based peer production, in a reform of the political economy beyond the domination of the market.

Indeed, peer production has transcendent aspects that go beyond the limitations set by the for‐profit‐maximization economy. Historically, though forces of higher productivity may be temporarily embedded in the old productive system, they ultimately lead to deep upheavals and reconstitutions of the political economy. The emergence of capitalist modes within the feudal system is a case in point.

Peer production can become the vehicle of new configurations of production and exchange, no longer dominated by capital and state. This is the “transcendent” aspect of peer production as it creates a new overall system that can subsume the other forms (Bauwens, 2009). One scenario is that capital and state subsume the commons under their direction and domination, leading to a new type of “commons‐centric” capitalism. In a second scenario, the commons, its communities, and institutions become dominant and, thus, may adapt state and market forms to their interests.

At a time when the very success of the capitalist mode of production endangers the biosphere and causes increasing psychic (and physical) damage to the population, the emergence of such an alternative is particularly appealing, and corresponds to the new cultural needs of large numbers of the population. It stands as a permanent alternative to the status quo, and the expression of the rising of a new social force: the knowledge workers.

The aim of P2P theory is, therefore, to give a theoretical underpinning to the transformative practices of peer production. It aims to understand how a new kind of society, based on the centrality of the commons and within a reformed market and state, is possible. Such a theory has to explain not only the dynamics of peer production, but also their fit with other inter‐subjective dynamics. For example, how peer production molds reciprocity modes, market modes, and hierarchy modes; on what ontological, epistemological, and axiological transformations this evolution is resting; and what a possible peer production ethos can be. A crucial element of such a P2P theory would be the development of tactics and strategy for such a transformative practice.

A transformative practice has to acknowledge and address systemic social unfairness and environmental degradation. Yet peer production does not solve many of these problems, especially those involving race and gender. Nor does it directly address the hidden environmental and social costs of digital technologies, which are energy‐intensive throughout their life‐cycle. Moreover, low‐wage laborers (often including children) work under inhumane circumstances so that ever more people in the advanced economies have access to cheap digital technologies. However, P2P theory and practices discuss and introduce new paradigmatic ways of value creation that have the potential to be more radically inclusive and sustainable.

Vasilis Kostakis acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 802512).

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