No subject

ask where the tiping point is, i.e where does the economy become immesurabl=
e. How much free and precarious labour must be built up in the economy in o=
rder to reverse the order of the system? It bears to be said, however, that=
 wage labour has not become marginal in relation to the total biomass of la=
bour (?) in recent years. One can safely guess that peasants and household =
work and hospitality in general always has out-numbered wage labour in abso=
lute numbers. Still, somehow, capital has managed to impose the image of wa=
ge labour as the only existing form of labour (with good help from trade un=
ions, to be sure).=20

Michel:
>how does it explain IP subversion, including the one's of capitalist group=
s themselves, such as the very pragmatic >embrace of netarchical capitalist=
s like Google, YouTube et al, >which are basing their whole value creation =
strategies on >the lack of IP

I believe it is misleading to draw a too strong demarcation line between fi=
rms that openly support the IP regime and those that publicly campaign agai=
nst it (to begin with, it is in risk of mirroring a good-guys/bad guys rhet=
oric). Firms are not obliged to be consequent in their political outlook. B=
ertelsmann investing 80 million dollar in Napster at the same time as the m=
usik company was prosecuting the filesharing enterprise is a case in point.=
 Firms like Google are quite eager to cannibalise on failures in the proper=
ty machine, while introducing other limitations (their algorithms for insta=
nce). Marx made a note in Kapital on joint-stock ownership that it was an e=
xample of the abolition of the capitalist mode upon capitalism's own princi=
ples. The same paradox might be  noticed in the oscillation between extende=
d copyright protection and collective rights organisation, expanded patent =
rights and the surge of patent pools, etc. Nevertheless, I cannot imagine c=
apitalism without (intellectual) property, since capital when push comes to=
 shovel is a property relation. But of course property is a flexible concep=
t that can be bent to look in many different ways, some worse (software pat=
ents) some less bad (CC).

Finally, let me say that by this I do not mean to throw out the baby with t=
he bathwater and claim that there is no radical potential in p2p. The argum=
ent that points at the profits made from volunteer labour as a proof of tha=
t no radical potential exist in FOSS is not very convincing to me. Again, a=
ccording to my Marxist-centred view upon the world, it is the fact that wag=
e labourers produce surplus value for capital that render them such a threa=
t to the capitalist system, the same might be said about volunteer (audienc=
e) communities.=20

sincerely
Johan