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The parallel visions proposed by the contributing authors to this issue areintended to challenge the dominant themes of capitalist organisation and production through an in-depth look at peer-to-peer production and thedevelopment of software and sharing a movement which, the authorsargue, is based on new visions for value systems, ethics and governance. Wehave organised their contributions into sections based on the relevant aspectsof these economies in order to look into the politics of how these networks are governed, the likelihood of new avenues for worker organisation, and thepossibilities for entirely new models of economies that can be classified out-side the hegemony of contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

This special issue engages with the work of academics andpractitioners working in the areas of new media, politics, theglobal political economy, business, international copyright law,

information technology and computer science, digital media,

sociology and cybercultural movements, as well as with the newforms of organisations and discussions emerging in organisational-theory-related fields. The peer-to-peer politicoeconomic model ofproduction is currently having a great impact on business, media andglobal politics to the extent that social-democratic movements havetaken notice of the potential of the new technoscape for socialchange, just as governments are engaging more and more with thefinancial benefits, challenges and threats of these informalcommunities and skills-development environments. Specifically, and

relating to the title of this issue, the peer-to-peer model is aboutpassionate production. One of the most relevant examples of peer-to-peer production is constituted by the open-source

Parallel visions of peerproductionPhoebe Moore and Athina Karatzogianni

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(www.opensource.prg) and free software movements (www.fsf.org).These forms of egoless programming facilitate and enablecommunities to build on each others code, software and applicationswith remarkable results that can be used freely and improved upon

by anyone. The networked environment through which thesecommunities operate enables the development of technology thatcompetes with that of multinational corporations like Microsoft.Distributed using a powerful, simple organisational model, freesoftware facilitates local economies, harnessing innovation andallocating scarce resources in a sustainable fashion.

A range of new economies can be theorised through the lens ofpeer-to-peer production networks, which are becomingincreasingly influential in their defiance of the status quo in marketbased economies. In his piece The ethical economy, AdamArvidsson notes a new economy that has been taking an ethicaldimension, in particular in the realm of informational capitalism,and looks into the way in which resistance to capital emerges fromnew forms of cooperation within capitalist organisation,provocatively asking, who decides whether ethics can exist withincapitalism? Arvidsson looks at Marxs concept of the generalintellect, or the idea that as capitalism develops, cooperationexpands simultaneously with the expansion of capitalism in thesubsumption of everyday lives, and cooperation becomes a sourceof value in itself. This shared sense of value could lead to the re-politicisation of capitalism.

In the subsequent piece, Knowledge-based society, peerproduction and the common good, Cosma Orsi looks at the neweconomy of reciprocity in his account of its alternative approach

to production and distribution. Beyond merely accepting the logicof having to correct market failures, as a liberal egalitarian welfaremodel proposes, Orsi claims that the primary aim of the politicaleconomy of reciprocity is to bring the notions of mutualcooperation for the common good back into the very heart ofeconomic rationality. Orsi calls for a model of developmentaccording to which a more fundamental role should be given tocivil society, rather than its being geared around the marketstatepair. Such a model entails the existence of a market economy

within which profit-oriented enterprises operate; a non-marketeconomy, within which governmental agencies have the mandate tofairly redistribute both social power and material resources; and

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finally, an economic domain of reciprocal solidarity which is socialand associative. Apparently, in order to implement such anapproach to wealth creation, it will be necessary that political,social and economic institutions should not assign the prius logico

to utilitarian economic rationality. Rather, they should endorse amodel of development for which concepts such as economicefficiency, profit and competitiveness would cease to be the soleguiding stars of economic activity.

This section looks at the people involved in peer-to-peer and open-source software. George Dafermos and Johan Soderberg, in theirpiece The hacker movement as a continuation of labour struggle,make an inquiry into peer production based on large free/open-source software projects such as GNU/Linux, Apache, Mozilla andFreeBSD. Not only are free software developers producingcomputer technology, but in the process they are also constructingan alternative model for labour organisation. The authors arguethat this practice has the potential to abolish the theoretical as wellas the historical basis of alienated work.

Steffen Boehm and Chris Land capture this argument in Nomeasure for culture? Value in the new economy through anexploration of the articulation of the value of investment inculture and the arts, through a critical discourse analysis of policydocuments, reports and commentary since . They argue that, inthis period, discourses around the value of culture have movedfrom a focus on the direct economic contributions of the cultureindustries to their indirect economic benefits. Indirect benefits arediscussed under three main headings: creativity and innovation,employability, and social inclusion. These in turn are analysed interms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The

paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift throughthe lens of an autonomist Marxist concern with the labour ofsocial reproduction.

In the final article of the section, Phoebe Moore and Paul A.Taylor look at the potential for open source to become analternative arena for production one that overcomes valuesinherent in post-Fordist capitalism, in particular those thatproselytise individual self-improvement as being linked toemployability and learning. In their piece, Exploitation of the self

in community-based software production: Workers freedoms orfirm foundations?, Moore and Taylor ask whether the specificingredients of peer-to-peer production lead to worker organisation

Introduction

Organisation and labour struggle?

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in ways that challenge dominant paradigms of capital. Using aseries of interviews with programmers, they demonstrate thatpeer-to-peer production does not overcome the restrictiveelements of capitalism, such as competition and exploitation of

the surplus value of labour, since although many peer-to-peerprogrammers participate in peer-to-peer communities for noremuneration at all, they may do so for the sake of re-entry into thelabour market as employed programmers, often within themainstream monopoly, Microsoft.

In his paper Class and capital in peer production, MichaelBauwens engages with the meaning of peer-to-peer for socialchange, new life practices and post-capitalist/post-democraticpolitics in relation to the emerging ethical economy. Following areview of the basic concepts, Bauwens addresses the politicalimplications of peer production, in particular in terms of class andwhat it means in terms of social change strategies. Can the forcesassociated with the new life and economic practices of peerproduction, governance and property be the motor of a changetowards a post-capitalist, post-democratic and post-ownership-based form of political economy and human civilisation? The essayalso examines how the emerging ethical economy of esteem isrelated to monetisation strategies, thereby creating a crisis of value.

In Cyberconflict at the edge of chaos: Cryptohierarchies andself-organisation in the open-source movement, AthinaKaratzogianni and George Michaelides argue that open source andpeer-to-peer technologies, by encouraging personalised free accessand the production of news, information and more software for theuser, citizen and consumer, are creating the impression that anotherdirect, networked, empowered and democratic society is possible.

Nevertheless, despite significant efforts and progress towardsproprietary systems, the claims for the revolutionary potential ofthese practices that have been made in the broader global politicallandscape by political theorists and activists alike, ought to belooked at more soberly. This paper examines open source and peer-to-peer environments, looking at issues of cryptohierarchies,conflict, control and group polarisation in an effort to understandwhether equality, direct participation, decentralisation andautonomy are part of the actual everyday life of these

communities, or just part of their organisational philosophies.In the same vein, in A definition and criticism of

cybercommunism, Tere Vadn and Juha Suoranta discuss the

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conditions of restraint and freedom in open-source communitiesand provide empirical examples to support their thesis that newethics or modes of knowledge production have initiated but alsoreasserted the very old-fashioned trends of profit-making and the

colonialisation of knowledge. Whether celebrators of flux orprophets of cybercommunism, hackers still need to eat, and theyneed electricity for their machines of immaterial labour. If weanalyse the current trends in some of the crown jewels of thefree/open-source movement, such as GNU/Linux developmentand Wikipedia, we quickly notice that not only is a new ethics ormode of knowledge production initiated but also very old-fashioned trends of profit-making and the colonialisation ofknowledge are reasserted. Consequently, for a more full definitionand a more precise critique of cybercommunism, we need to payattention to the various levels of freedom with which self-organising knowledge is conditioned.

Introduction