Open AccessFrom the Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons: Towards an Open Co-operativism
Author(s) -
Michel Bauwens,
Vasilis Kostakis
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
triplec
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.564
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 1726-670X
DOI - 10.31269/triplec.v12i1.561
Subject(s) - commons , multinational corporation , license , solidarity , capital (architecture) , communism , peer production , economic system , production (economics) , social capital , humanity , business , political science , political economy , economics , law and economics , market economy , management , law , microeconomics , archaeology , politics , history
Two prominent social progressive movements are faced with a few contradictions and a paradox. On the one side, we have a re-emergence of the co-operative movement and worker-owned enterprises which suffer from certain structural weaknesses. On the other, we have an emergent field of open and Commons-oriented peer production initiatives which create common pools of knowledge for the whole of humanity, but are dominated by start-ups and large multinational enterprises using the same Commons. Thus we have a paradox: the more communist the sharing license used in the peer production of free software or open hardware, the more capitalist the practice. To tackle this paradox and the aforementioned contradictions, we tentatively suggest a new convergence that would combine both Commons-oriented open peer production models with common ownership and governance models, such as those of the co-operatives and the solidarity economic models.