by Jeff Shantz
On the Commons: Common Resources, Common Struggles
The notion of the commons refers to the collective lands and resources upon which humans have depended for survival (along with other species) over the course of generations (or life on this planet as we know it). The commons suffered a range of enclosures (by twin mechanisms of law and force) as capitalism has spread from the late-feudal period to the twenty-first century.
The struggle over the commons has been an ongoing feature of capitalist societies from the inception. It might be understood that in the contemporary context the commons expresses the possibility of collective ownership in three primary social domains (Dyer-Witheford 2010, 106). These are ecological commons (water, lands, forests, atmosphere); social commons (welfare, health, education, housing); and communications commons (publications, internet, social media, mobile technologies). Cyber disobedients fight largely in the domain of communications commons, but they are often engaged in actions to defend the other commons simultaneously (in defense of ecology, against corporate and military despoilers) or social commons (in defense of intellectual freedom and education or housing and health care).
The spheres of human life—the commons—intersect and reinforce. The social commons sustains the communication commons, allowing for the educational infrastructures, health, and shelter necessary for development of the web and equitable access to it. At the same time, the communication commons—human connectivity or solidarity—provides the basis for collective defense of the other commons. Dyer-Witheford offers an example of the circulation of flows through the commons: “Let’s suppose that a publicly-funded education institution (social commons) produces software and networks that are available to an open source collective (networked commons), which creates free software used by an agricultural cooperative to track its use of water and electricity (ecological commons). This is a micro model of the circulation of the common” (2010, 110). The elements circulating within these commons are not commodities. They are produced primarily as specific use values. Neither are the exchanged for profit. The basis of distribution is more one of mutual aid or simply the free interchange of knowledge.
Capitalism is a system based on the production of commodities for exchange and profit. The commodity privileges exchange value (profitability) over use value (human need). Within a commonist society, the emphasis is restored to use values and human needs. The basis for this is the commons—the sharing of resources. This is a collective process—the commons enlarges connectivities and collectivities. It does not assume private ownership and enclosure of resources (by those who seek to gain profit in unequal exchange).
In the web, as in society, the forces of commodity and commons are thrown into ongoing conflict (a conflict that has always been at the dialectical heart of the capitalist mode of production). These conflicts have, despite, general understandings, marked the web from the very beginning of personal computerized networks. Nick Dyer Witheford describes the dual aspects of the struggle over the communications commons as follows: “Capital is attempting to repress these developments—through incessant anti-piracy sweeps and intellectual property (IP) battles—or co-opt them. But alternatives beyond what it will allow are expressed in ‘creative commons’, ‘free cooperation’ and ‘open cultures’ movements contesting the intellectual property regime of the world market” (2010, 108). This is the proper context for understanding cyber disobedience. Popular accounts tend to provide this struggle, what might be called a dialectical one, in a one-sided fashion.
Cyber anarchists seek the extension of the communication commons, through shared production and distribution. The web is viewed by cyber anarchists as a form of common wealth. It also provides important—one might even say necessary—means for preserving and restoring social and ecological commons—through knowledge sharing, research, collaboration and problem solving. The collective use of resources allows for the defense of the ecological commons and lessens the impact on the environment caused by the large scale production of technology for privatized or individualized use. At the same time:
A network commons in turn circulates information about the condition of both ecological and social commons (monitoring global environmental conditions, tracking epidemics, enabling exchanges between health workers, labour activists or disaster relief teams). Networks also provide the channels for planning ecological and social commons—organising them, resolving problems, considering alternative proposals. (2010, 110).
Cyber anarchists affirm the commons in face of attempts by states and capital to enclose or privatize the shared labors of the web, to throw up fences and borders dissecting, or managing, connectivity and free circulation (of ideas, practices, resources). The commons is based on openness. For cyber anarchists, the defense of openness speaks beyond the communication commons. Openness is a more extensive political position against enclosure and borders. Thus, many cyber anarchists work on behalf of, as part of, broader struggles against borders and the flow of people from place to place. They target statist systems of control and closure, surveillance, regulation, and restriction in defense of the mobility of the working classes and the poor. If, in a supposedly global age, capital is free to circulate globally, why not labor, they ask.
DIY Production: Challenging Capital
Autonomist Marxist theorist Antonio Negri notes that the model for postmodern production is linguistic cooperation—it is communication (2008, 161). Negri points out that contemporary machines cooperate through language and via language original forms of cooperation are ever emerging between and among individuals. Linguistic cooperation is a necessarily productive cooperation, for Negri (2008, 161). Thus, we need always to ask, what is the articulation of command within these flows. For cyber disobedients this is the crucial question. How can the multitude (or the working class from another perspective) be a constitutive force within this? How can it articulate commons against property? There are differences between the activities and desires of the manager and the worker. For Negri, that which distinguishes is the common. He states:
This is what enables us to divide the manager from the worker: in fact it is only the affirmation of the ‘common’ which permits us to understand the flows of production from within and to separate the (alienating) capitalist flows from the flows that are recompositional of knowledge and freedom. The problem will thus be resolved through a break at the level of practice, one which can reaffirm the centrality of common practice. (2008, 162)
The do-it-yourself (DIY) networks of the web have raised possibilities beyond those of distribution. They raise, fundamentally, issues of the reorganization of production along lines of control by workers themselves. For Dyer-Witheford: “Peer-to-peer networks and free and open source software movements have taken advantage of the possibilities for the reproduction of non-rivalrous goods and collaborative production to generate networked culture whose logic contradicts commercial axioms” (2010, 108). This brings the activities of the communication commons close to the heart of capitalism, and raises the possibility of a real struggle to end or surpass the capitalist mode of production. Here is a fundamental contradiction, as suggested by Marx, between the means of production and relations of production constrained within an obsolete productive structure that constrains social development.
For Nick Dyer-Witheford, the failure of the market in network domains appears as the inability of capital to adequately use the new technological resources (2010, 108). As Dyer-Witheford argues: “Networks show the market’s inability to accommodate its own positive externalities, that is, to allow the full benefits of innovations when they overflow price mechanisms” (2010, 109). The innovations of the web—and growing capacities for immediate circulation of knowledge and communication have been developed outside of the market (2010, 108). As Dyer-Witheford suggests: “Capital’s contribution has been to try and stuff these innovations back within the commodity form, realising their powers only within the boundaries of information property and market pr
icing. But digital innovation has persistently over-spilled these limits” (2010, 108). These contradictions, and the inefficiency of capital’s efforts at enclosure, show the strains in capitalist social development and suggest the early stages of transformations to a new social arrangement. New connectivity and innovating relations of production, and rapidly developing means of production, strain against the limits and constraints of capitalist ownership and control.
Not only does this raise issues of ownership and control of production. More pressingly it actively poses the challenge, and possibility, of workers’ control once again. For Summer and Halpin: “The logic of autonomy allows the components of the system to optimise their own connections, and so connect to people, materials, passions, and places in manners that takes [sic] optimal advantage of material and energy flows. Production is linked to a logic, not of growth, but of satisfying needs through ‘commons’” (2010, 119). There is political potential of freedom of the multitude in these processes. It is only potential, however, an undecided outcome. For Negri:
This is very much an open question, and it means that we have to elaborate new ideas, and in particular analyse the mechanisms of cooperation which are formed within, and extended via, the networks. Do forms of productive cooperation exist, in terms of freedom (and hence a cooperation which has no boss and does not have the necessity of transferring the ability to produce onto some capacity for command. (2010, 103)
Recently there has been a resurgence of efforts to pursue some of the productive potential of the web. As Dyer-Witheford suggests: “Increasingly, however, free and open source software and P2P constitute an electronic fabric of production, equipping people with a variety of digital tools for everything from radio broadcasts to micro-manufacturing” (2010, 108). One might reflect again on the struggles of Cody Wilson and his 3-D gun.
One ongoing outcome involves transformations at the level of the state. For Negri: “In matters of culture, language and media too, the nation-state no longer enjoys centrality, because it is continuously traversed by antagonistic currents and by a multi-verse of linguistic and cultural inputs that deprive it of the possibility of asserting itself as hegemonic and as exercising command over the cultural process” (2008, 4–5). There is an interconnection between a revolution in production and a linguistic revolution (Negri 2008, 103). Negri notes that meaning is born from linguistic cooperation (2008, 103).
As suggested above, the common is constructed in processes of antagonism. Knowledge and action converge in figures of militancy (Negri 2008, 162). This implies, as discussed in the “Introduction,” that movements must break from the confines of legality and taken for granted assumptions about political action (and proper forms and sites of action).
Cyber anarchists confront a new composition of labor (and the working class). This is based in the new connectivities of (re)production and circulation in the Net Age. This (re)composition is in flux as an expression of struggle. Enclosure and the commons. Commodity and communication.
Current crises, especially of global environments and the natural world, show the insufficiency and incompetence of the so-called “free market” as a means of social planning (Dyer-Witheford 2010, 107). The response required to address ecological crises (from instant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, to transportation changes, to de-militarization and production changes) cannot be achieved through mechanisms that privilege profit over ecological (including human) needs.
Future Possibilities/Potenza?: Complexity, Networks, and Change
For certain cyber anarchists there is some engagement with complexity theories and a sense that capitalism, rather than a uniform technological system (a la the Unabomber) is actually governed by non-linearities. Different parts are linked in dynamic networks (and flows).
As Summer and Halpin note: “This means that sometimes a small event causes a small reaction in the system, but at other times a similar event can have a massive effect” (2010, 113). The non-linearity of capitalism is reflected in the various crises that wreck the system so frequently, if irregularly. Some are caused by relatively routine or minor actions (such as mortgage lending practices or investment decisions) which would otherwise have little impact—and may occur comparatively quite frequently. This all leaves cyber anarchists with a certain degree of optimism that the capitalist system is not as monolithic or as persistent, and resistant to anti-capitalist change, as it often appears.
Some cyber anarchists would suggest that the massive increase in energy and materials in the global internet age coincide with deepening ecological crises, and that these together (and extended rapidly over space and time) suggest conditions that could mean the end of capitalism as it is known. They are quick to point out however that nothing is assured. There will certainly be, as there have already been, attempts to preserve capitalism (private ownership and exploitation) through various schemes of “green capitalism.”
Regenerating complex systems, like the internet, are open and require new inputs of energy and materials (Summer and Halpin 2010, 114). As Summer and Halpin suggest: “For the internet to be maintained, for example, broken computers must be replaced—materials and energy need to flow—otherwise it decomposes and stops being a complex system” (2010, 114). For cyber anarchists:
The internet is more than a collection of computers. This is because the configuration of the connections is important. Complex systems involve many connections between components that form loops of interaction. This contrasts with many hierarchical systems where the interactions between the various components are deliberately minimised. It is the feedback loops involving these connections that can change the system as a whole. So-called negative feedback loops tend to keep the system in its current state, while positive feedback loops may push a system to a new state, or new type of system. (Summer and Halpin 2010, 114–115).
The notion of commons changes rapidly as connections and flows increase, new intersections emerge, and networked connectivities expand over space and time. This is perhaps especially so in the context of technological infrastructure like the internet and the emergence of mobile technologies with which the net has merged (Summer and Halpin 2010, 118). These are imaginal and ideational as well as practical and physical connections.
As conditions change, the regular(ized) purposes to which the technologies are used and networks initiated change. As Summer and Halpin suggest:
In periods of stability people use such technologies to do the things they normally do in stable situations: flirting, say, but via text messaging. But when our very survival is at stake, or when we catch a glimpse of a much better future, people can use these technologies for extraordinary goals, to mobilize globally in a sophisticated manner never before seen in history. (2010, 118)
Cyber anarchists seek to extend the participatory, decentralized, and collaborative configurations such that resources can flow in a way that is freely exchanged and engaged. Their view is one of a tech commons based on the free movement of knowledge and the self-determined labor of tech producers. This is an impetus against and beyond privatization and the state capitalist control of the web.
Control Matters
The anti-technology/anti-civilization approach fails to analyze capitalist forms of ownership, control, and scarcity. Conversely, for cyber anarchists, if resources taken from the useless production of exchange values were simply left alone or used solely for positive technological purposes and procedures then some aspects could be preserved and others transformed or abandoned entirely in a way that would be resource conservators or energy savers.
The section covering paragraphs 111 to 113 of the Unabomber Manifesto is titled “Industrial-Technological Society Cannot Be Reformed.” Freedom, in his view, cannot be rescued without sacrificing the benefits of technology. The section covering paragraphs 121 to 123 clarifies further. That section is titled “The ‘Bad’ Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated From The ‘Good’ Parts.” For the Unabomber, but not for cyber anarchi
sts, modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on and reflect one another integrally.
In the view of the Unabomber, the technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. But anarchists counter that the aspiration for freedom is really thwarted by capitalist forms of ownership and control of technology (and land, water, resources, necessities). Even the issue of what technology is produced is a matter of ownership and control—of decision-making authority—not technology per se.
Against Authoritarianism
The current period of crises, expressing the confluence of massive energy and material expenditures and natural ecological limits suggests a period of necessary transformation. It does not suggest what form the transformations will take—better or worse.
This could be a period of transitions to new system(s)—new society (Summer and Halpin 2010, 119). In such periods there is always the possibility for convergence around an authoritarian response. Some form of fascism may re-emerge as an attempt by elites to extend systems of surveillance, command, and control over resources and populations. Some aspects of this option can already be glimpsed.
Cyber anarchists (in some cases alone) are aware of an active against these authoritarian extensions. Indeed, they have been at the forefront of the struggles to assert or defend a commons against the expansion of authoritarian reach and attempts to enclose public resources and networks—human connectivity. In the face of corporate privatization and neoliberal government policy initiatives against the socialization of technology, cyber anarchists mobilize. Acts of cyber disobedience are at the front lines of struggles over emergent systemic formations. While techno-fascism seeks to reduce, break, and/or control connections, cyber anarchism is based on the extension, expansion, and strengthening of connectivity.
