Glossary

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Accumulation of the Commons
An 'accumulation of the commons‘ or 'commons accumulation' is the continued growth and creation of 'use value' in common pool resources.

Aggregated Distribution
In Aggregated Distribution, people can connect with each other and produce a common object as in peer production, or in the case of facebook or google, they only share and exchange (facebook and google are not the common object of value creation, but users use them to connect, collaborate and peer produce with each other.)

See also Disaggregated Distribution and Netarchical Capitalism.

Anarcho-Capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism (also referred to as free-market anarchism,[1] market anarchism,[2] private-property anarchism,[3] libertarian anarchism[4]) is a political philosophy which advocates the elimination of the state in favor of individual sovereignty, private property, and open markets. Anarcho-capitalists believe that in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[5][6] In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Artificial Scarcity
Artificial scarcity describes the scarcity of items even though the technology and production capacity exists to create an abundance. The term is aptly applied to non-rival resources, i.e. those that do not diminish due to one person's use, although there are other resources which could be categorized as artificially scarce. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by intellectual property rights or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Artificial_Scarcity

Artistic Voucher System
"The artistic freedom voucher (AFV) is an alternative mechanism for supporting creative and artistic work. It is designed to maximize the extent of individual choice, while taking full advantage of the potential created by new technology.

The AFV would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice, or to an intermediary who passes funds along to creative workers. Recipients of the AFV (creative workers and intermediaries) would be required to register with the government in the same way that religious or charitable organizations must now register for tax-exempt status. This registration is only for the purpose of preventing fraud - it does not involve any evaluation of the quality of the work being produced. http://p2pfoundation.net/Artistic_Freedom_Voucher

Austrian economics
The Austrian School believes that the subjective choices of individuals underlie all economic phenomena. Austrians seek to understand the observed economy by examining the social ramifications of such individual choice. This approach, termed methodological individualism, differs significantly from many other schools of economic thought, which have placed less importance on individual knowledge, time, expectation, and other subjective factors and focused instead on aggregate variables, equilibrium analysis, and the consideration of societal groups rather than individuals. Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School

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Civic
Civil society is the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens[1] Civil society includes the family and the private sphere, referred to as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society

Cognitive Capitalism
Cognitive Capitalism represents a third phase of capitalism, which follows the earlier phases of mercantile and industrial capitalism. Cognitive capitalism is centered around the accumulation of immaterial assets, especially related to the information core of products, which are protected through Intellectual Property Rights, i.e. legal means such as patents. These patents are used by brands, in sectors such as pharma, agribusiness and technology, then allow for the creation of a surplus value from monopolistic rents. The contradiction of cognitive capitalism is that the products themselves are generally cheap to produce, so they have to be kept in a state of Artificial Scarcity through IP protection. Cognitive capitalism is associated with the process of a private appropriation of the Knowledge Commons. See also Technology Regimes

http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism

Communism of Capital
If we consider the production of commons as embodiment of the communist maxim 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' then 'Communism of Capital' describes the process where by capitalist enterprises support the production commons. For example Google and Facebook among others provide social media platforms which users use to coordinate and work together for the production of common goods, such as free software or cultural works.

Commonalization or Commonification
Commonalization or Commonification is the transfer and conversion of privately or publicly (Government) managed resources to the Commons. As commodities, resources, such as land or water, for example, are valued primarily in terms of exchange value which is determined on open markets. Viewed solely in these terms resources are often traded without any consideration of their context, such as the relationship to the surrounding environment or the people who depend on them. The value of Commons by contrast is derived from their use value. Commonification of goods and services de-commodifies them, removing and in turn protecting them from the market, putting the sustainability of those resources in the hands of the communities they serve rather than in the hands of distant shareholders of private for-profit corporations.

To Commonify = procomunizar (recommended options: comunificar, commonificar)

See Also - http://p2pfoundation.net/Commonification_of_Public_Services

Commonification of Public Services
See - http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Glossary#Commonalization_or_Commonification

Commoner
A Commoner is a person who works with and helps sustain Commons also known as 'Commoning'. (Trabajador del procomún. Procomunero, Comunero).

Commons
The commons refers to any resource whose use is freely accessible to a defined community of users and which in turn, is managed by them by collective and democratic means. A commons is not owned in the conventional sense. It is the antithesis to enclosure of a resource for private benefit. Instead, a commons is based on the social ethics of interdependence and co-operation and the value of a commons is generated through the practice of resource sharing. Most importantly, a commons is the product of those social relationships that enable this use. There are many types of Commons though they can typically be divided into two distinct groups. Those of material commons such as natural resources, land, water, fisheries, forestry, which are by their nature limited and require careful management of access to ensure sustainability. These can be contrasted with immaterial commons, such as knowledge and information which can be easily reproduced and shared. In fact the value of knowledge commons increases when more people can access and contribute to them.

See Also - http://p2pfoundation.net/Commons

Commons Ventures
Are commons oriented enterprises invested in by Venture Communist firms.

Cooperative Accumulation
Today we have immaterial commons accumulation in the sphere of common knowledge, code, and design, through the contributions of volunteers, paid labor, and commons-supportive-for-profit-companies. However, it is impossible to socially reproduce oneself (read: ‘survive’) by contributing to the commons outside of the sphere of capital accumulation (read: you have to find a job at IBM to live from Linux code). It is therefore proposed that we need a intermediary sphere, whereby the commoners and peer producers create their own commons-friendly, ethical market entities, in order to engage in ‘cooperative accumulation’, which can serve to socially reproduce the commoners, and thereby guarantee the continued construction of commons. In other words, we need a convergence between the open (source) economy (peer production) and the cooperative economy (social and solidarity economy).

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/why-we-need-cooperative-accumulation/2013/10/13

Cooperative Economy
Cooperative Economy is an economy whose constituent firms are organised along cooperative principles. Cooperatives are democratically managed by and accountable to their members. Members can consist of workers, consumers and organisational stakholders. In essence Cooperative principles work for social benefit rather than for private profit.

Cloudfunding
In order to promote the investment and support of the commons, Cloudfunding is a feeder capital social investment pool with contributions from public institutions, businesses, other private institutions, in order to multiply the contributions made by citizens to crowdfunding projects. http://goteo.org/service/resources?lang=en

Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a means to building financial support for a project or product from diverse sources. [1]. Crowdfunding is a form of Crowdsourcing, applied to finance. Instead of venture capital, institutions, or direct philanthropy, an interest community is called on to support the project in a distributed, generative fashion. Some examples of crowdfunding sites are goteo.org/ and https://www.kickstarter.com for more information see http://p2pfoundation.net/Crowdfunding

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Distributed Capitalism
"While the fossil fuel-based First and Second Industrial Revolutions scaled vertically and favored centralized, top-down organizational structures operating in markets, the Third Industrial Revolution is organized nodally, scales laterally, and favors distributed and collaborative business practices that work most effectively in networks." Distributed Capitalism also represent 1 of 4 Technology Regimes http://p2pfoundation.net/Distributed_Capitalism

Disaggregated Distribution
'Disaggregated Distribution' refers to the productive model in crowdsourced marketplaces, where the worker/producers are isolated freelancers, competing without producing collective shared IP.

In Disaggregated Distribution, individuals are competing with each other without collaboration, or may be actively prevented from connecting to each other. For instance, think of a crowdsourced logo production: the crowdsourcing company will choose the best logo out of, say, 50 logos and the rest 49 will often go to trash. No production of common, shared value takes place. Another typical example could be the 'skills' marketplace TaskRabbit, where the workers cannot communicate with each other, but clients can. The producers are isolated as there is no connection between the supply and the demand side. The platform of the project is designed to favor the demand side, while the network is controlled by the owners of the platform.

See also Aggregated Distribution and Netarchical Capitalism.

DRM
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a class of technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to control the use of digital content and devices after sale; there are, however, many competing definitions. With First-generation DRM software, the intent is to control copying; With Second-generation DRM, the intent is to control executing, viewing, copying, printing and altering of works or devices. The term is also sometimes referred to as copy protection, copy prevention, and copy control, although the correctness of doing so is disputed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management http://p2pfoundation.net/Digital_Rights_Management

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Ethical Economy
Ethical Economy (Columbia University Press), written by Adam Arvidsson in collaboration with Nicolai Peitersen, introduces us to ethical economics and interprets the beginning of a new, radically different economic system in which production is mainly collaborative and social, and in which the value is based on the quality of social interactions and relationships rather than on the quantity of productive time. http://p2pfoundation.net/Ethical_Economy See Also Value Crisis

Ethical Entrepreneurial Coalitions
Ethical entrepreneurial coalitions are for-profit enterprises that benefit from commons by creating added value on top of the commons and selling this as products or services to the market. As such enterprises are dependent on the commons they also have an interest in supporting and sutaining those commons.

Extractive Ownership Models
The dominant ownership model today is extractive rather than generative for its focus is maximum physical and financial extraction. Our industrial age civilization has been powered by twin processes of extraction: extracting fossil fuels from the earth and extracting financial wealth from the economy. See Also http://p2pfoundation.net/Generative_vs._Extractive_Ownership

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Fair Use Economy
"The IT industry's US lobby group has released a report calculating the size of the "fair use economy" in the US -- all the businesses that rely on fair use, including web hosting companies, private schools, search engines and many others. The total for 2007 (the last year for which stats are available) is a whopping $4.7 trillion -- one sixth of US GDP -- with over 17 million people employed." (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/27/the-fair-use-economy.html) http://ccianet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FairUseStudy-Sep12.pdf http://p2pfoundation.net/Fair_Use_Economy

FLOSS Foundations
Is an informal group of 150 members representing over 50 different open source organizations and projects. http://p2pfoundation.net/FLOSS_Foundations

For-Benefit Associations
Are associations of enterprises where profits are directed towards a social goal (for example the multitude of Free/Libre Open Source Software Foundations)

Free Labour
Free Labour, with 'free' in this context meaning, at no cost to for-profit companies. The argument is that peer production, consumer interactivity are used by capitalism and for-profit firms to externalize costs. http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Labour

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Generative Ownership Models
Generative means the carrying on of life, and generative design is about the institutional framework for doing so. The generative economy is one whose fundamental architecture tends to create beneficial rather than harmful outcomes. It’s a living economy that has a builtin tendency to be socially fair and ecologically sustainable. The opposite to the generative being the extractive. See Also http://p2pfoundation.net/Generative_vs._Extractive_Ownership

Global Commons
Global Commons refer to the great natural heritage that sustains life on earth, this includes the air, the land and the seas. Global Commons can also include the collective body of knowledge commons that are shared and accessible globally. The Global Commons is also one of the 4 Technology Regimes

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Hyper-Productive
Peer Production can be described as hyper productive because it leverages the capacities of free and open knowledge commons and particpatory and collaborative digital platforms in ways so as to out-produce and out-compete traditional market entities whose production depends solely on their access to capital.

Hyper-Cooperative
Hyper Cooperative describes a situation where the capacity of people to communicate and cooperate is considerably enhanced through the use of participatory digital platforms such as social networks.

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Micro Factories
Micro Factories are small factories that leverege the benefits open design communities and new micro manufacturing technologies such as 3D printers. While they typically produce on a smaller scale, Micro Factories have some advantages over industrial scale manufacturing such as greater flexibility in their capacities to respond to customer demands for designer and custom built goods. http://p2pfoundation.net/Micro_Factories =N=

Neo-Feudalism
Neo-feudalism literally new feudalism refers to the theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy and public life reminiscent of those present in many feudal societies, such as unequal rights for common people and legal protections priviledging the wealthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism

Netarchical Capitalism
Netarchical Capitalism is a hypothesis about the emergence of a new segment of the capitalist class (the owners of financial or other capital), which is no longer dependent on the ownership of intellectual property rights (hypothesis of Cognitive Capitalism), nor on the control of the media vectors (hypothesis of MacKenzie Wark in his book The Hacker's Manifesto), but rather on the development and control of participatory platforms. Netarchical Capitalism also represents 1 quadrant of the 4 Technology Regimes http://p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism

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Open Book Accounting
"Open-Book Accounting is an aspiration, a set of ideals for the truly transparent corporation. Every ledger, every account, every transaction held or made by a transparent corporation should be open and auditable by the world. Commercial confidentiality be damned: we have a right to know." http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Book_Accounting

Open Business Models
From the Wikipedia [2]:

"Open business is in general the concept of doing business in a transparent way by intimately integrating an ecosystem of stake holders and abiding by a model of transparency. Often, small minorities harness the business benefits away at the cost of other stakeholders and `the market´. Open Business structures seek to rectify this. They activate personal productivity like no other organization can by simply redirecting the returns to those that produced them, and by their nature, the individuals themselves play a central role.

A more strict definition is inspired by free software movement, open standards, open source and open content, which implies that an open business, is a business whose business model is run on open standards, "free software"and "open source" software and open content principles, and focuses on creating `open´ products and services. This approach would guarantee that the business is run for the benefit of all, and not just for one group or stakeholders, whether shareheolders, personnel, government etc. Also the strict application of open principles will guarantee that bankruptcy of a specific open business, will not result in the loss of the fruits of its knowledge." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_business)

Open Company Formats
While fair markets are an acceptable mechanism to regulate supply and demand for certain scarce goods, unregulated capitalism has become an infinite-growth, scarcity engineering mechanism, which is incompatible with the long-term survival of humanity and the biosphere. More specifically, profit-maximising companies are engineered to ignore natural and social externalities, are legally obligated to maximally enrich their shareholders, and can only be regulated from the outside. When this outside is weak, the dominant corporate form lacks self-regulating mechanisms to respect natural limits and social justice.

However, open design and production communities have no compulsion to create artificial scarcity, and entrepreneurial coalitions that align themselves to such commons will have more sustainable practices. This sustainable practice can be strengthened even more through the choice of legal and institutional formats that regulate corporate entities 'from the inside', by creating a social and natural context for eventual profit making (and not 'profit-maximising'). Ideally, peer producers and contributors to commons of knowledge, software, and design could create their own ethical structures and network each other in ecologies of solidarity around the commons from which they derive their value.

So, at the core we have shared innovation commons, and the for-benefit associations which maintain them. These commons are surrounded by an entrepreneurial coalition of ethical companies, who use relocalized, open, and distributed manufacturing; but are organized in global material networks that are specifically designed to sustain their commons, i.e. Phyles. http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Open_Company_Formats

Open Supply Chains
Open Supply Chains allow consumers and businesses access to information regarding the sourcing of goods and their components parts to their point of origin. http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Supply_Chain

Open Value Accounting
Is a value accounting system for distributing income equally where the work has been produced in collaborative and distributed fashion. http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Value_Accounting

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Partner State
The Partner State is the concept whereby public authorities play a sustaining role in the 'direct creation of value by civil society', i.e. sustains and promotes commons-based Peer Production. http://p2pfoundation.net/Partner_State

Peer to Peer Marketplaces
Are online platforms that helps people to communicate with each other about exchanging their real-life assets -- the things they own and the skills they have -- with other people in a peer-to-peer fashion, with or without using money and without middlemen. http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-to-create-a-lively-peer-to-peer-marketplace

Phyles
Phyles "are not companies linked to a community, but transnational communities that have acquired enterprises in order to gain continuity in time and robustness. http://p2pfoundation.net/Phyles

Pseudo Abundance
Pseudo Abundance refers to situations where goods or services that are presented to unsuspecting publics as offering benefits can often in reality be a poisoned pill of ills and bads that actually undermine real abundance and create or reinforce artificial scarcity. For example Terminator Seeds are genetically modified variety of seeds often sold to farmers on the premise that the crops they produce are more resistant to pests or harsh climates, a benefit for many no doubt, however terminator seeds are designed so that they cannot reproduce and so the farmer is unable to harvest seed from the crops to plant the following season, rather the farmer is forced into a situation of dependency where they must continue to buy new seed each season from a corporate supplier. - http://p2pfoundation.net/Pseudo_Abundance

Public Social Partnerships
"Public Social Partnerships (PSPs) are strategic partnering arrangements, based on a co-planning approach, through which the public sector can connect with third sector organisations (voluntary, charity and social enterprise organisations) to share responsibility for designing services based around service user needs. Once designed and trialed, such services can then be commissioned for the longer term through a competitive tendering process." (http://readyforbusiness.org/programme-offering/public-social-partnerships/) http://p2pfoundation.net/Public_Social_Partnerships

Public Commons Partnerships
The Public-Commons Partnership is a concept proposed by Tommaso Fattori, Italian commons activist, to replace the concepts of: - public-private partnership and public-public partnership. Commons and commoning can become a means for transforming public sector and public services (often bureaucracy-bound and used to pursue the private interests of lobby groups): a means for their commonification (or commonalization). Indeed, there are many possible virtuous crossovers between the traditional public realm and the realm of Commons. http://p2pfoundation.net/Public-Commons_Partnership

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Rentier Capitalism
Rentier capitalism is a term currently used to describe economic practices of parasitic monopolization of access to any (physical, financial, intellectual, etc.) kind of property and gaining significant amount of profit without contribution to society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism

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Scarcity Engineering Mechanism
Capitalism itself is a scarcity engineering mechanism. Through the process of commodification and for the purpose of profit, capitalism aims to make scarce that which might be otherwise abundant. One example of scarcity engineering can be seen in the pharmaceutical industry where medicines that are cheap to produce are sold at a premium in rich countries while people in poorer countries are left to suffer simply to satisfy profit maximisation for shareholders. The most well-known case is of course the controversy around AIDS treatments, where millions of patients died unnecessarily because they were not allowed access to generic drugs.

Sharing Economy
The Sharing Economy is used for business models whereby users are sharing creative content, but using a proprietary platform which sells their aggregated attention to advertizers, such as on Facebook. It can be contrasted with full commons-oriented Peer Production, and with Crowdsourcing. - http://p2pfoundation.net/Sharing_Economy

Social Economy
"The term “social economy” has been used to cover a wide range of economic forms. Sometimes it is simply identified with the “non-profit sector”; other times it includes co-operative enterprises even if they produce for markets and compete with capitalist firms. Sometimes the social economy is defined in strictly negative terms as non-state and non-market enterprises. - http://p2pfoundation.net/Social_Economy

Solidarity Cooperatives for Social Care
“Solidarity Co-operatives have been developed as a unique multi-stakeholder Co-operative system since the 1980s. They are unique because co-production members include paid workers, volunteers, service users and social investors. In Italy they provide social care, health services and educational services for local communities. There are now over 14,000 of these Co-ops across Italy providing services to 5 million. The Solidarity Co-op movement has spread in Europe to France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Poland. They have been developed in Quebec and in the UK there is early work underway to develop them in England and Wales.” - Pat Conaty http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/pat-conaty-on-solidarity-cooperatives-and-the-cooperative-commonwealth/2014/01/28

Solidarity Economy
"The Solidarity Economy is an alternative development framework that is grounded in practice and the in the principles of: solidarity, mutualism, and cooperation; equity in all dimensions (race/ethnicity/ nationality, class, gender, LGBTQ); social well-being over profit and the unfettered rule of the market; sustainability; social and economic democracy; and pluralism, allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change and driven from the bottom-up." - http://p2pfoundation.net/Solidarity_Economy

Solidarity Franchising
By Ludovic Collin "The concept of solidarity franchising represents a pragmatic solution. Following the model of commercial franchises, a successful organization spins out sister organizations to carry on its work in other regions. This is where the similarity ends, however. Based on a legally binding franchising agreement and compliance with an ethical system of references, the franchisor supports franchisees, whatever their legal status, to achieve a social purpose and not purely financial goals as followed in a commercial franchise. This model allows social businesses to quickly expand their structure and further the development of effective activities. Solidarity franchising also enables ethical and sustainable economic sectors to develop more quickly in order to effectively meet unfulfilled social needs on a systemic scale." (http://www.socialinnovationeurope.eu/node/2228) http://p2pfoundation.net/Solidarity_Franchising

Stigmergy
Stigmergy is a term used in biology to describe environmental mechanisms for coordinating the work of independent actors (for example, ants use pheromones to create trails and people use weblog links to establish information paths, for others to follow). "The World-Wide Web is the first stigmergic communication medium for humans. The telephone and email don't count as stigmeric communication since they are only readable by the people on either end of the phone call, or the e-mail. In order for an environment to support stigmeric communcation, the messages must be readable by everyone. Radio and TV don't count, as they are a read-only medium as far as most people are concerned. In order for an environment to support stigmergy, everyone has to be able to not only read it, but to be able to write into it also. http://p2pfoundation.net/Stigmergy

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Technology Regimes
Technology Regimes refers to the idea that technologies are not neutral, that they can represent different values and can be put in the service of material reproduction of those values. - http://p2pfoundation.net/Technology_Regimes http://p2pfoundation.net/Michel_Bauwens_Explains_the_FLOK_Transition_Project_to_an_Integral_Theory_Conference#Part_4:_Technological_Regimes

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Value Crisis
A crisis of value occurs when more and more use value is created in society for example as commons, but only a small part of it is monetized. This creates an imbalance in society, where companies are profiting from social innovation, but there is no return mechanism to fund and sutain the proper reproduction of the commons. http://p2pfoundation.net/Crisis_of_Value_and_the_Ethical_Economy

Value Regimes
There are different types of “value regimes” for producing and allocating wealth. See Cognitive Capitalism and Netarchical Capitalism. http://p2pfoundation.net/Michel_Bauwens_Explains_the_FLOK_Transition_Project_to_an_Integral_Theory_Conference#Part_III:_Value_regimes

Vectoral Capitalism
Vectoral Capitalism is a form of Capitalism where the vectors of information ie. the means of information distribution and production such as mass media are tightly controlled by the owners, the Vectoral Class. Where as in Vectoral Capitalism the means of production and distribution are tightly controlled, Netarchical Capitalism, argues that because of the distribution of the means of production ie. the networked computer, which undermines both the Vectoral Class (through the distributed nature of the internet) and the monopolies of Cognitive Capitalists (through the creation of an Information Commons), that this is paving the way for Netarchical Capitalists, who by enabling, but also owning, the participatory platforms directly exploit human cooperation.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Vectoral_Class

Venture Communism
A Venture Commune is a joint stock corporation, much like its capitalist competitor, the Venture Capital Fund. Like a Venture Capital Fund, a Venture Commune invests in Enterprises (Commons Ventures rather than Capital Ventures) in order to provide income for its shareholders. Both of them are essentially mutualization structures. However they embody fundamentally different concepts in how wealth should be shared and how capital should be controlled. A Venture Commune is designed as an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary entity and therefore has three distinct properties.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Venture_Communism