Counter-commodification: The economy of contribution in the digital commons

Abstract

This is an article about digital production and the crisis of capitalism. It is about production in the digital commons and its implications for the building of alternatives to a commodified world. As digital production is at the very heart of cognitive capitalism, the digital commons is not just any other disruption of the process of commodification. This is the field of a fierce struggle over the future of the Internet and the future of capitalism itself. It is potentially the moment which moves back the frontiers of measurement, value and quantification towards qualities, values and an expansion of the gift economy. For this potential to unfold, it is vital that those who are giving, sharing, and contributing for the benefit of humanity are supported by global policies that enable them to do so. They have to be supported because their gifts are not based on reciprocity and the obligation to return the gift. This is an argument about the future of digital labour. The article concludes that this could be achieved through a global basic income scheme.

Keywords:

• political economy
• gift
• digital commons
• digital technologies
• labour
• commodification

Notes

For a more detailed review of literature on what Williams calls ‘the commodification thesis’, see Williams (2005, 13–30). However the body of literature reviewed by Williams does not correspond a great deal with the literature listed in this paragraph.

In the German context the term parasite, especially when used with reference to capital and finance, is even more sensitive, as this can invite associations with a long history of anti-Semitism, culminating in a fascist ideology that happily equated Jews with parasites. For a lengthy and rather heated debate (in English language) on the appropriateness of the term parasite with respect to capitalism and the digital commons see a thread on the Oekonux mailing list in 2008 with a total of 69 messages: http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04265.html.

Negri (1999) has made a very similar argument.