How the Iron Law of Oligarchy Extends to Peer Production

Paper: Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production. By Aaron Shaw, Benjamin Mako Hill. Computers and Society (cs.CY); Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Report number: ci-2014/96 

Abstract
“Peer production projects like Wikipedia have inspired voluntary associations, collectives, social movements, and scholars to embrace open online collaboration as a model of democratic organization. However, many peer production projects exhibit entrenched leadership and deep inequalities, suggesting that they may not fulfill democratic ideals. Instead, peer production projects may conform to Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy,” which proposes that democratic membership organizations become increasingly oligarchic as they grow. Using exhaustive data of internal processes from a sample of 683 wikis, we construct empirical measures of participation and test for increases in oligarchy associated with growth. In contrast to previous studies, we find support for Michels’ iron law and conclude that peer production entails oligarchic organizational forms.P2P Foundation

How the Iron Law of Oligarchy Extends to Peer ProductionMichel Bauwens

The causal mechanism behind the "iron law of oligarchy" as democratic organizations grow is that the organization tends to become hierarchical above a certain number owing to the transaction cost of consensus decision making. Hierarchical organization, along with power relationships and structure, is simply more efficient, as Peter F. Drucker has convincingly argued about the development of the firm.

This is a reason that subsequent to the hunter-gather stage at which a sparse humanity could function more or less on consensus-building, the agricultural stage and then the industrial stages led to increasing organization and power relationship and structure, especially after the development of the ancient city-state as a political institution. This was a natural and evolutionary development in accordance with the law of least action, otherwise known as "water runs downhill."

This is the dilemma facing humanity since the advent of liberalism in the Enlightenment. There is an inherent tension between popular, participatory democracy and efficient organization. The social, political and economic challenge is to work out tradeoffs that enable humanity to recapture the liberty and dignity of Rousseau's noble savage"while also harnessing the advantage of modern organization and management.

David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus

There has been a flurry of discussion around process in OWS of late. This can only be a good thing. Atrophy and complacency are the death of movements. Any viable experiment in freedom is pretty much going to have to constantly re-examine itself, see what's working and what isn't—partly because situations keep changing, partly because we're trying to invent a culture of democracy in a society where almost no one really has any experience in democratic decision-making, and most have been told for most of their lives that it would be impossible, and partly just because it's all an experiment, and it's in the nature of experiments that sometimes they don't work.

A lot of this debate has centered around the role of consensus. This is healthy too, because there seem to be a lot of misconceptions floating around about what consensus is and is supposed to be about. Some of these misconceptions are so basic, though, I must admit I find them a bit startling.

Occupy Wall Street News
David Graeber: Some Remarks on Consensus
OccupyWallSt

I think that two distinctions are in order. First, that between hierarchical organization and consensus decision making. Hierarchical decision making is the military model of organization that was promulgated in the West through the Roman Empire. Consensus decision making is characteristic of tribal organization in which leadership is natural and based on trust.

The second distinction is between institutional arrangements based on rules and cultural and social rituals based on values, values being expressed in principles if expressed explicitly at all.

Hierarchical organization is based on institutional arrangements set forth as rules. It is used in the military and business in that it is ruthlessly efficient and effective in achieving given objectives. That is the temptation to use it, and why it is not compatible with direct popular democracy, where objectives are not given but are emergent. And being top down, it is antithetical to exploring options.

Consensus decision making is based on cultural and social rituals that rest on shared values, especially voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit, mutuality, reciprocity, fairness, and most importantly treating everyone as intrinsically valuable as a person.

Consensus decision making is neither efficient and effective at achieving objectives because objectives are not given. They are emergent. The process of allowing them to emerge embues them with power instead of coercion.

Consensus decision making is foundational for a complex social system in which the focus of the group is directed onto emergent challenges in a flexible format that allows for exploration of options. This increases the adaptability rate and amplifies return on coordination through crowd sourcing. It's a biological principle that fosters life.

Potentially adaptive systems that do not follow this pattern of distributed decision making that is conducive to exploring alternatives end up in evolutionary dead ends due over-centralization that encourages premature focus and crystallization.

This is how an apparently weaker force can beat a stronger force, even militarily, as guerilla warfare has shown. It's also the basis of the internal martial arts that use circular motion rather than linear, that is, apparently yielding in order to turn the force the opponent against him by putting him off balance.

Occupy Wall Street — On Consensus

All groups run up against Dunbar's number as "the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships." Overcoming this limitation is the primary challenge to consensual decision-making as groups grow. This presents a challenge to emergent protest organization and coordination that are confronting hierarchical organization and coordination based on the military model. The solution usually lies thorough adopting asymmetry, decentralization, local control, and avoidance of direct confrontation. Occupy is now debating this.

The post also contains a brief history of consensual societies.

Occupy Wall Street
On Consensus

Richard Wolff — Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism

There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism.

Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?

I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?

Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible....

Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.

Read the rest at The Guardian (UK)

Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism
by Richard Wolff

In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs.

Interestingly, a very similar distinction is manifest in religious denominations — between "low" churches that are congregational and "high" churches that are hierarchical. In the congregational modle the congregation chooses the minister, and in the hierarchical model, authority is centralized and imposed from the top, with parishioners required to be subservient and to conform.

Anarchism explained

Anarchism conjures up all sort of stereotypes. Nathan Schneider sets the record straight.

At its core, anarchism isn’t simply a negative political philosophy, or an excuse for window-breaking, as most people tend to assume it is. Even while calling for an end to the rule of coercive states backed by military bases, prison industries and subjugation, anarchists and other autonomists try to build a culture in which people can take care of themselves and each other through healthy, sustainable communities. Many are resolutely nonviolent. Drawing on modes of organizing as radical as they are ancient, they insist on using forms of participatory direct democracy that naturally resist corruption by money, status and privilege. Everyone’s basic needs should take precedence over anyone’s greed. 

Through the Occupy movement, these assemblies have helped open tremendous space in American political discourse. They’ve started new conversations about what people really want for their communities, conversations that amazingly still haven’t been hijacked, as they might otherwise might be, by charismatic celebrities or special interests.

Read it at The Nation

Thank You Anarchists
by Nathan Schneider