Abstract
This chapter focuses the analysis on the systemic level and the conceptions Wikipedians have of Wikipedia’s relation to capitalism. The analysis centres on five different dimensions in relation to capitalism: the various forms of crowdsourcing, the monetary, informational, and organisational relationships between businesses and Wikipedia, and peer production as an alternative to capitalism. Within these dimensions ideas about Wikipedia as a complement, revitalisation or alternative to capitalism are highlighted.
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- 1.
The donations are not yet influenced negatively by the commercialisation of Wikipedia in the form of wage labour within or outside of editing; no breaking point has yet been discovered. It would be interesting to know, if such a point exists, and whether it matters if the employer is WMF or an outside institution; if the employees are active within editing or not, or if different specific combinations are better or worse for the project’s financing by donations.
- 2.
The category of Wikipedian wage labourers employed by WMF is increasing. Wikimedia Sverige planned at the time of the interviews to have seven employees at the end of 2012. WMF had 150 employees in 2013, and one year later 215. In the fiscal year of 2014–15, as already has been pointed out in Chap. 3, an additional 49 staff members were hired, adding up to 240 employees (Lund and Venäläinen 2016, pp. 83–84). The funds raised by the North American foundation are beginning to be distributed to the local chapters, which imply a continuously increasing number of employees within the Wikimedia community.
- 3.
Dulong de Rosnay and Musian create a typology of peer production using the parameter of centralisation and decentralisation, but in contrast to this study they include “crowdsourced, user-generated content ‘enclosed’ by corporations” in the concept of peer production. They focus on five features of the system: ownership of the means of production, technical architecture/design, social organisation/governance of work patterns, ownership of the peer-produced resource, and value of the output (Dulong de Rosnay and Musiani 2015).
- 4.
Wikipedia’s use of templates in articles telling people what has to be done cannot be compared with the clear command structure of the media company according to Patrik (Patrik 2012). It is also the community that uses and decides about the templates.
- 5.
Important questions of how people then should make their livelihood in the system are not addressed. Such questions would have the potential to bring the questions of wage labour for all, or the total abolishment of wage labour for all, up on the agenda.
- 6.
Seen from Raymond William’s perspective of coexisting modes of production (emerging, dominating and residual), Karl’s political-economic vision, irrespective of whether characterised by conflict or coexistence, implies greater influence for peer production as an emerging mode of production. From a Marxist perspective on historical change, with both alliances and conflicts between different interests (Heller 2011, pp. 12–13, 23–28), a continuously shrinking commercial sector and a continuously growing (“parasitic”) non-profit sector, based on peer production, will sooner or later find themselves having conflicts of interests. This will force citizens and Wikipedians to make political choices.
- 7.
The amount of money that Kåre refers to is denominated in Swedish Crowns.
- 8.
It is not a new phenomenon that companies sponsor non-profit events of different sorts, but it is new that companies sponsor alternative modes of production that can compete with the capitalist production. If Wikipedia is exploited in companies’ goodwill activities, what name should we then use to characterise Wikipedia’s drawing on companies donations for its reproduction? New concepts have to be invented to describe the relations around the donations from the commons-based peer production’s point of view.
- 9.
Creative Commons is an umbrella name for different licenses that remove some economic rights from copyright. Wikipedia uses the copyleft license CC-BY-SA.
- 10.
Copyright is not the same as private ownership. The latter is in place until it is divested, the former is time-limited with a part that, at least in Swedish law, cannot be divested (the so-called moral rights). At the same time, the protection time under copyright is becoming longer and longer. In this study, copyright has been equated with a form of ownership. But the form of ownership and distribution appears differently in Wikipedia which uses the copyleft license, than in a capitalist company which is using the traditional copyright.
- 11.
This theme was also discussed in Chap. 5. The analysis here is, however, of the assertions based on what they say about the relationship between commercial and non-profit actors at a superordinate social level, rather than at the encyclopaedia’s micro level. This theme was also discussed when the economic relationship between Wikipedia and companies was reviewed above.
- 12.
“Avoid writing about yourself, your employer or an association you are a member in /…/ If you still write about a subject where you have own interests, such as your company, you should be open with who you are and also careful to be objective and use credible sources /…/ Write from a neutral viewpoint, do not add advertising and do not erase criticism” (Wikipedia-bidragsgivare 2014, author’s translation).
- 13.
The alternative, that a claim of relative truth results in fewer misunderstandings, as this perspective fosters greater tolerance, suffers from the same weakness as the idea that knowledge leads to fewer misunderstandings: the lack of a foundation in a social context characterised by social hierarchies and political power inequalities that a view of knowledge cannot change.
- 14.
The question of advertising was missed in the interviews with informants from the project core.
- 15.
The competition took place in spring and autumn 2013, within a cooperation between WMF Sverige, the Centre for Business History, AGI and The Swedish Association of Communication Professionals as part of the Swedish Publishing Award, which created a new category this year: “best company article in Wikipedia”. The following year, 2014, a course was advertised in writing Wikipedia articles, run by the Swedish Association of Communication Professionals, which could be a sign that the competition will be a reoccurring event. The course aimed to be “a way to learn more about to write an article … in order to be approved by other wikipedians” (Centrum för Näringslivshistoria [Centre for business history] 2013, 2014, n.d.).
- 16.
Unfortunately, the interviews with informants from the periphery did not include the question about the importance of the license. It is possible from the material, which has already been shown, to deduce above all that Paul, and to a lesser extent Per, stress openness in free access to the material, but nothing is said and no questions are asked in these interviews about the importance of monitoring openness in the commercial modifications and adaptations.
- 17.
“Free speech, not free beer” is a motto coined by Richard Stallman. The importance of the motto could be seen in that freedom of expression is key, not gratis use and exchange values.
- 18.
Microsoft’s then CEO Steve Ballmer thought that the copyleft license had the character of a virus (Greene 2001).
- 19.
Political advocates of “freedom” are sometimes labelled libertarians to stress a political, social and economic federalism from below, or, as in the last three decades, to stress a right-wing and economic laissez-faire attitude with anti-state sentiments. Peter Krapotkin’s ideological position is usually characterised as libertarian communism or communist anarchism. He studied among other things the mutual aid that exists in the animal kingdom, and also in different social institutions through history. The libertarian socialism was later developed by Rudolf Rocker in the 1920s as a reaction to the authoritarian socialism developed within the framework for the Russian revolution. Revolutionary syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism are related concepts (Lund 2001, pp. 15–69). In recent decades, a libertarian right-wing ideology or right-wing anarchism has been developed, primarily in the USA, which has acted as an ideological force behind the expanding neo-liberalism during the 1980s and onwards. The identified position in the empirical material is more inclined to this latter form of “libertarianism”.
- 20.
We are here facing an example of how difficult it can be to differentiate between productive forces and the social relations of production. Sometimes, they become indistinguishable.
- 21.
The relationship between the two modes of production can be understood in an analogy with Raymond Williams’ argument about emerging practices and cultural forms, which in uneven processes are threatened with incorporation into the dominant culture the more they appear to be in opposition, rather than to be complementary (Williams 1977, pp. 124–26). With its relatively conflict-free attitude that does not focus on a critique of ideas but the production of a use value that is in line with political liberalism, Wikipedia can—in line with Williams’ perspective—possibly pass under capitalism’s radar. Williams also asserts that the distance between oppositional and complementary is drastically reduced within advanced capitalism when this penetrates a larger proportion of social life than earlier modes of production (Williams 1977, pp. 124–26). It is unclear whether this reduced distance leads to only a faster incorporation into capitalism or whether the complementary can also be a threat to capitalism.
- 22.
Openness can also be an internal problem for peer production. There is a traditional fear of forks within the emerging mode of production. Forks are created because of conflicts in the project. The reason Wikipedians are afraid of forks is that Wikipedia’s existence is based on accumulating a critical mass of voluntary participants. A fork means volunteers are divided between several different projects (Guldbrandsson 2008). The division results in competition for the voluntary participants and threatens to divide the participant group. Peer production appears to need a monopoly in this context. Paul disagrees though; the participant group does not always need to be united. He refers to the project forks within free software and claims that something new and better can be created by forking, or it encourages the old to become better. Nor are monopolies necessary for him. It is “not impossible at all” with two free and public encyclopaedias. (Paul 2012). Paul’s toning down of the need for a unified participant group is in contrast to Krister’s report of a conflict about an image filter that caused strong emotions, but where it was never a question of forking as Wikipedians understood that they would never again be able to create such a productive community (Krister 2012).
- 23.
Libertarianism is a more specified and qualified adaptation of the concept freedom. I here use the latter, more general and unspecified, concept. The rationale for this is that one of the following ideological positions (disorganised cooperation and isolation) does not work well with the concept of libertarianism, but also to enable new interpretations that are not by definition connected to the traditional and specific political connotations, even if the identified ideological positions of course are influenced by them in the end (see footnote 19).
- 24.
Karl’s position and Kristin’s call for more cooperation are both open for thoughts similar to the autonomist Marxist Franco Berardi’s description of the autonomist movement’s goals: “What we want is to apply, totally and coherently, the energies and the potential that exists for a socialized intelligence, for a general intellect. We want to make possible a general reduction in working time and we want to transform the organization of work in such a way that an autonomous organization of sectors of productive experimental organization may become possible” (Bifo 2007, pp. 157–58).
- 25.
In order to challenge capital then, peer production must voluntarily be able to produce “just-in-time”, in a way that is seen as socially necessary.
- 26.
This perspective is close to Richard Barbrook who historically and critically has studied how we have viewed the new within information technology with either too pessimistic or too optimistic eyes in recent centuries (Barbrook 2006).
- 27.
Judging by the argument, it does not appear to be important that all software can be seen as a form of knowledge that should be spread more efficiently than permitted by the commodity form.
- 28.
Moderates (Moderaterna) is the traditional right-wing party in Sweden.
- 29.
Fleischer states that Sven-Eric Liedman in a Swedish context has translated this text from Marx Grundrisse incorrectly. In Fleischer’s translation: “Capital is itself the processing contradiction, as it strives to reduce working hours to a minimum, while on the other hand it sees working hours as the only measure and source of wealth.” This compares with Liedman who writes about the “increasing contradiction” and that capital “obstructs the reduction of working hours to a minimum”. Fleischer states that “processing” has been incorrectly translated as increasing, which suggests that the circulation of capital would act independently of the specified contradiction and that there has been an earlier historical period when capital was less contradictory. The entire point of the text is also lost with the incorrect translation of what capital wants to do to working hours. Capital strives to reduce working hours to a minimum, but we still work 40 hours per week as work is the only way to create value (Fleischer 2011b).
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Lund, A. (2017). Complement or Alternative to the Commons’ Outside?. In: Wikipedia, Work and Capitalism. Dynamics of Virtual Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50690-6_6
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