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Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto
Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a more profound transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is peer to peer. What is peer to peer? Why is it essential for building a commons-centric future? How could this happen? These are the questions this book tries to answer. Peer to peer is a type of social relations in human networks, as well as a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible. Thus, peer to peer enables a new mode of production and creates the potential for a transition to a commons-oriented economy.
102 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 4, 2021
Reimagining a new structural organization of society around common interests rather than personal interests.
This book outlines the philosophy of gifting value through generative efforts rather than extractive efforts in capitalism. In the book, there are examples of commons on organizational, a municipal level that shows how the future aims to transform the exchange of value between people.
It was a valuable read.
P2P could lead to a model where civil society becomes productive through the participation of citizens in the collaborative creation of value through commons. In this pluralistic commonwealth, multiple forms of value creation and distribution will co-exist, but most likely around the universal attractor that is the commons
The P2P capacity to relate to each other over the Internet entails the emergence of what Yochai Benkler (2006) has called ‘commons-based peer production’ (CBPP). CBPP is a new pathway of value creation and distribution, through which P2P infrastructures allow individuals to communicate, self-organize and, ultimately, co-create non-rivalrous use-value, in the form of digital commons of knowledge, software, and design
CBPP is fundamentally different from the incumbent models of value creation under industrial capitalism. In the latter, the owners of the means of production hire workers, direct the work process and sell products for profit maximization. Such production is organized by allocating resources through price signals, or through hierarchical command.
In the realm of P2P, value is attributed to contributions as a shared effort among peers, and is reflected in the shared significance of those contributions as recognized by those peers.
When enough people get on board, a collaborative process of design and planning begins where they contribute under various roles
Technology is thus a terrain of struggle, in which different interests and values strive for supremacy
In the case of the Internet, at least three capacities have been created: 1. A capacity for many-to-many communication using all other forms of previous media as these are all integrated and included in a universal digital medium. 2. A capacity for self-organization that is the result of that permissionless communication. 3. A capacity to create and distribute value in new ways, i.e. self-organization can be put to use in the sphere of production.
The core emancipatory feature of the Internet lies in its capacity to massively scale up many-to-many communication, and therefore, in its capacity to lower the cost of self-organization and create and distribute value in radically new ways.
At a local level, the challenge is to develop economic systems that can draw from local supply chains: what is light (non-rivalrous; e.g. knowledge) becomes global and what is heavy (rival; e.g. manufacturing equipment) remains local. We can thus design global and manufacture local (Kostakis et al., 2016; 2017). Decentralized open resources for designs can be used for a wide variety of things, medicines, furniture, prosthetic devices, farm tools, machinery and so on
Under capitalism, the market mechanism is dominant and infects all the other modalities – everything tends to be commodified. Capitalism is an extractive, profit-maximizing relationship. It exploits workers and now extracts profits from the free labour of free and open-source software and open design workers or from communication on social media
This book outlines the philosophy of gifting value through generative efforts rather than extractive efforts in capitalism. In the book, there are examples of commons on organizational, a municipal level that shows how the future aims to transform the exchange of value between people.
It was a valuable read.
P2P could lead to a model where civil society becomes productive through the participation of citizens in the collaborative creation of value through commons. In this pluralistic commonwealth, multiple forms of value creation and distribution will co-exist, but most likely around the universal attractor that is the commons
The P2P capacity to relate to each other over the Internet entails the emergence of what Yochai Benkler (2006) has called ‘commons-based peer production’ (CBPP). CBPP is a new pathway of value creation and distribution, through which P2P infrastructures allow individuals to communicate, self-organize and, ultimately, co-create non-rivalrous use-value, in the form of digital commons of knowledge, software, and design
CBPP is fundamentally different from the incumbent models of value creation under industrial capitalism. In the latter, the owners of the means of production hire workers, direct the work process and sell products for profit maximization. Such production is organized by allocating resources through price signals, or through hierarchical command.
In the realm of P2P, value is attributed to contributions as a shared effort among peers, and is reflected in the shared significance of those contributions as recognized by those peers.
When enough people get on board, a collaborative process of design and planning begins where they contribute under various roles
Technology is thus a terrain of struggle, in which different interests and values strive for supremacy
In the case of the Internet, at least three capacities have been created: 1. A capacity for many-to-many communication using all other forms of previous media as these are all integrated and included in a universal digital medium. 2. A capacity for self-organization that is the result of that permissionless communication. 3. A capacity to create and distribute value in new ways, i.e. self-organization can be put to use in the sphere of production.
The core emancipatory feature of the Internet lies in its capacity to massively scale up many-to-many communication, and therefore, in its capacity to lower the cost of self-organization and create and distribute value in radically new ways.
At a local level, the challenge is to develop economic systems that can draw from local supply chains: what is light (non-rivalrous; e.g. knowledge) becomes global and what is heavy (rival; e.g. manufacturing equipment) remains local. We can thus design global and manufacture local (Kostakis et al., 2016; 2017). Decentralized open resources for designs can be used for a wide variety of things, medicines, furniture, prosthetic devices, farm tools, machinery and so on
Under capitalism, the market mechanism is dominant and infects all the other modalities – everything tends to be commodified. Capitalism is an extractive, profit-maximizing relationship. It exploits workers and now extracts profits from the free labour of free and open-source software and open design workers or from communication on social media
July 15, 2025
A pragmatic and realistic approach to post-capitalist alternatives, grounded in real-world practices rather than abstract ideals. The Common offers hope — not through grand theories, but through concrete action. At times, it gets a bit repetitive and could benefit from tighter editing, but its message remains timely and inspiring.
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February 13, 2020Nice to see many of my ideas in print.
December 2, 2022
Visionary, bold, inspired and inspiring. Definitely the way forward. Presented succinctly and visually. A type of "Red Book" for metamodern times and thereafter.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews