> Now to the substance of your argument. While your argument is essentially
> on the right track, it fails to address the organization of economic
> activities, which is to a large extent determined by the nature of the tasks
> themselves.
Capitalism is not a mode of organization, but of production.
> However, to run, say, a
> railroad, you need a large fairly hierarchical structure - cottage industry
> simply will not do.
Your preconceptions regarding the potential size or scale of commons-based production are unsubstantiated.
> The alternatives to vertical integration have been extensively addressed in
> various organizational theories.
Among which "Capitalism" is not one. Capitalism not being an organizational theory.
> The bottom line of this argument is that the network provides for the
> deficiencies that small producers cannot effectively address themselves:
> access to capital-intensive technologies, access to distribution networks,
> and reduction of transaction costs.
What distinguishes Capitalism is private property in Capital.
Commons-based producers are not by definition small-scale, however without the need to centralize production for the sake of the alienation of the product and control of the means, commons-based production can find it's own equilibrium scale through interaction with the market.
> However, I still remain skeptical as to whether networks can maintain and
> regulate themselves, or whether they need a still larger regulatory
> environment, such as the state or the banking system. I am inclined toward
> the latter, since there are important national and global considerations
> that affect economic activities of producers, yet cannot be effectively
> addressed by networks alone. But I am willing to entertain arguments to the
> contrary.
THE state and THE banking system exist only to maximize the accumulation of private capital.
Conflating any possible system of collective organization or any possible system collective financial service with actually existing ones specifically and lucidly criticized by socialist theory will need only to fruitless equivocation.
My point was not a simplistic big=bad/small=good, but that Capitalism is essentially the practice of creating scarcity rents on Capital by withholding it from production; that is, denying worker's independent access to Capital.
Any suggestions that the practice of withholding Capital from labour has increased production is self-evidently nonsensical.
-- Dmytri Kleiner, robotnik Telekommunisten, Berlin.
dk at telekommunisten.net http://www.telekommunisten.net freenode/#telnik