Talk:User Mode of Production

Patrick Anderson

Continuing the debate in the discussion page regarding the IANG License, Patrick Anderson makes the following points:

"Patrick Godeau writes: >> I've come to think that the economy of copyleft should not be managed only by producers, but also by consumers.

Dmytri Kleiner writes: > all that which to employ the common stock must be free to do so, that is the very essence of a commons. > it's production that must have it's costs accounted for, else there is no common stock

Patrick Anderson writes: Are you saying workers must receive more than wage? If so, it will require the workers refuse the consumers from accessing the physical sources, otherwise the consumers can hire someone else that WILL work for wage only.

> Consumers must have rights to access the common stock, however consumption is not itself a contribution to production. Consumption is not a contribution, but it is (should be) the only reason for production.

>> However the most important thing is not who owns, but who decides, and the license already states that decisions about the work belong to all who contribute to this work.

If by 'own' you are speaking of information as though it were rivalrous property, then you will be outperformed by those that understand this to not be the case (those utilizing copyleft for example).

>> Also, the material work is not the creative work, and I don't see why for example the printing press operator should have a say in the story of the book, except if s-he is admitted in the creative project. But I agree that this operator should have a say in the economic project.

In the material sphere it is owners and ONLY owner who control. Many people find this objectionable, but there is no reason to change that relationship if we simply insure ownership 'flows' to the consumers by treating any profit they pay as their own investment in more physical sources; then we can leave it up to private property law and the whims of those collective owners to decide how to treat those physical sources as all costs will be internalized.

> The story of the book would be free for the press operator or anyone else to employ, modify, etc, in peer production in any way they want, and unfree for anyone to employ in capitalist production based on private property and wage labour. > > "decide" only makes since in the economic context, where the distribution of captured value must be distributed.

>> My view is that exchange value should not be captured at all, by no one, not even by work contributors.

Then where will the difference between price and cost go? Maybe you are saying that price will be held at cost so profit is zero?

Holding price at cost may seem like a good idea on the surface, but as Dmytri mentions below, profit is an inverse measure of competition, so it would be better to allow the consumer to pay it as his own investment so the collective ownership can grow at a rate that will slow as those consumers become physical source owners themselves.

Competition can be perfected (though rarely perfect) by treating the amount a consumer pays above cost as that consumer's investment in more physical sources. When an object consumer is also the source owner, profit happens to be 'undefined' since the payment of such would only be to pay himself.

>> I think that the market, which values competition and profit, is by nature opposed to copyleft, which values cooperation and giving.

> This is also confused, competition and profit are opposites, where you have perfect competition there is no profit, price is cost, and where you have perfect profit you have no competition (monopoly) and price is marginal utility.

Yes, but perfect competition would require the consumers (users) have control, not the workers. That control can be delivered as real controlling shares of collective private ownership in those productive physical sources (or toward the purchase of similar sources when there are no shares of the current factory or farm "up for sale").

>> I think that a big problem with the economy in general is that consumers have no control on it. Multinational companies rule the roost and reign over customers. For example, Stallman was motivated to create the GNU project because a printer manufacturer refused to give the source code of a driver. 25 years later, free drivers may exist for some printers, but the situation has not really improved, free software developers are often obliged to reverse-engineer printer protocols, and customers are forced to buy printers that break down just after the guarantee and can't be repaired, ink cartridges more expensive than the printer, etc.

> As I said, consumers and producers are not two separate classes, producers are property owners are.

RMS and Eben Moglen speak of "User Freedom" - worrying only about the consumer, never about the worker, developer, producer or owner.

For instance: "Three Minutes with Richard Stallman" http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137098-c,freeware/article.html "'With free software, the users are in control. Most of the time, users want interoperability, and when the software is free, they get what they want. With non-free software, the developer controls the users. The developer permits interoperability when that suits the developer; what the users want is beside the point.'"

>> Suppose for example that the patent system is abolished and all pharmaceutical companies are under workers' control. What would happen? Since we're in a market economy, these compagnies will probably continue to invest in the most profitable medicine at the expense of billions of people having unprofitable diseases, will continue to spend twice more on advertising than on research, etc.

> Right, which is why my focus on on material property relations and not intellectual property in isolation.

So which is it? Shall the drug factory be owned by workers seeking profit or by consumers seeking product?

Consumers as owners would cause price to approach cost and all labor could be safely automated of existence as it should.

Workers as owners would continue to use artificial scarcity in ways similar to what we already see, and profit would continue to take precedence over product."