The amount of volunteer time workers can sustainably divert from working is just as fixed an amount as the amount of money can sustainable divert from consumption.

Thus, this volunteer driven forms of production are also fixed in potential size by the structure of wealth, just as much a mutually financed ones.

The point is that within a capitalist mode there is a fixed limit on the workers ability to engage in “un-productive” consumption, that is consumption that does not reproduce capital, or even “destructive” consumption, that is consumption that displaces productive consumption. Productive consumption is the kind that does reproduce capital.

What’s more, this limit is driven towards zero by the function of the labour market, and is only kept above zero by the level of social power workers can mobilize to struggle against capital.

Wether this working capital is applied to making “free factories” like wikipedia or tries to make a “million startups bloom,” the total, combined economic size of potential investment in what could be called an autonomist or mutualist or “p2p” economy is limited by the structure of wealth, and only expandable (at its base, we’ve not yet addressed leverage) by political stuggles that expand wages and benefits.