The Social Value of the Intellectual Commons: Commons-Based and Monetary Value Dialectics

What are the characteristics and manifestations of the intellectual commons? This chapter investigates the dialectics between commons-based and monetary values, in an effort to specify the mutual influences between them and to answer this question. It proceeds with an analysis of the dialectics between commons-based and monetary values, as recorded in the study. It also deals with the comparison of value circulation between the offline and online communities of the sample. Its key finding is that commons-based value circuits are in constant contestation with monetary values in communities of the intellectual commons. Furthermore, the chapter offers a view of the actual forms that such contestation takes and its impact on the evolution of the intellectual commons. As a corollary, the current chapter on commons-based and monetary value dialectics reveals that communities of the intellectual commons formulate their own specific modes of value circulation and value pooling, which come into contentious interrelation with the corresponding mode of commodity and capital circulation and accumulation. Such a confrontation at the core of this dialectic permeates and frames the communities of the intellectual commons that are suppressed by the dominant value system of commodity markets and its universal equivalent of value in the form of money. Such pressure, may even lead to the extinction of intellectual commons communities, comes into contradiction with the overall conclusion regarding their social value and potential. Yet communities of the intellectual commons contain and emanate a wealth of social values, which ought to be protected through legal means.