[OPE] Peer production and abundance

In the orthodox soviet presentation of communism it depended on
abbundance --
Kruschevs Goulash communism: “What sort of communism is it that cannot
produce sausage?”
The general idea was that under communism goods would be distributed free
and thus the top priority was to develop industrial production to the
level that would support this free distribution of goods.

I have grave doubts about the practicality of being able to do this with
goods that require a substantial marginal labour input for their
production. If the marginal input is significant, then some sort of
pricing -- preferably by labour coupons seems inevitable.

However for information goods that is not the case, here abundance and
free distribution already exist on the internet, and would exist on a
larger scale were it not for legally imposed monopolies and copyright
legislation.

There is a school of thought - heavily influenced by Marx that claims that
the production of open source software ( which they call peer production )
is the germform (Keimform) of a new mode of production growing up within
the capitalist system. That implies that the transition to communism is
thought more in terms of the transition from feudalism to capitalism with
the Keimform of the new mode of production arising within the body of the
old.

This school is represented on the Oekonux mailing list.

Have other list members read these ideas before, and what do they think of
them.

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Received on Thu Jan 7 05:12:09 2010