July 2015 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Re: [P2P-F] [Debate-List] Paul Mason in The Guardian: ICT - the end of capitalism has begun
by Orsan 18 Jul '15

18 Jul '15

As coincidence was doing a re-reading of the first chapter of Laclau-Mouffe's hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democracy. Doing so, in the light of crisis and failure of Syriza, and on the backdrop of Paul's account of post-capitalsm, it gets clear why and how the destiny of good people or good actions fails like they are doomed like the destiny is in evils hands... of all orthodox-revisionist-reformist-revolutionary-thirdwordist-nationalist-liberal-internationalist-academic versions of Marxisms, solely cognitive-theory-affect-immaterial labour-policy-culture- led class war or compromise, or corporative forms (by organiser-party-academic-activist etc.) and versions of the left -which are not or well interested in building, earth, labour, creating something concrete for themselves and others etc. Seems like capitalism wins all the time but wtf is its secret, it is definitely not a hidden invisible hand mechanism. It is, but, those practical analytic and organizational characters of capitalist intra-class struggle that allow the survival of the fittest version of it, they oppress and exploit better, that is superior and more dominant at structural level wins intra and inter class rivalries all the time. Paul puts all the discussion nicely in news format. there is behind in the story a capitalist like (skills wise) class emerging with a world vision, executive cognitive skills and information. That is why this time capitalist is in trouble; hard to culturally, mentally, subjectively subordinate the emergent... It has to deal with it and comprise at the systemic level. So it is not only BRICs and geopolitical tectonic shift what is happening. Wether the new classes of informational transnational capitalism (hackers, ITC giants, entrepreneur cadre on one side knowledge workers, deskilled automated designers, creative low wage labour, etc. on the other as parts). It is important to understand what the given bracket segments of these classes are capable of, their world visions are, yet it is clear that the Labourer segments are able to combine their arm and brain power as skillful as their capitalist counterparts, if not better sometimes. with a broader universal vision, transforming such potentially structural advantage into reality survival of the capitalist and industrial capitalist will be depend on its approach and level of for compromise in order to keep the system as capitalism as possible. Otherwise new class forces of informationalists will swallow capitalist order and mould it into new system somewhere soon. This new system can be more exploitative or oppressive then capitalism, or more emancipatory and freeing; that will be decided out of conscious struggles that are already being given. the way Paul draws the story here sounds very similar to me, to the way Laclau and Mouffe evaluated Bersntein's vision of emerging late 19.cc electricity and telegram based industrial capitalism, and their own vision of globalization of the 80s and 90s; as well as their Own political vision put forward in the book as re-revisionism. Which overlooks, imo. and exclude the power of dialectical, or with Alexander Bogdanov's words, tektological interrelationships between higher level structural complexes (wholes) and lower level ones (pieces). I think the secret of capitals win overs, and labour's defeats; or ruler's winnings and loses of the ruled in general lies here. Why we have stayed behind of the right, is because a missing link. In theory and practice. A big time loss of chance to develop an understanding and methodology of organization of relationships between pieces and wholes, structures and agencies, dialectic between and within things and minds; both in terms or making of the natural and the social. Main reason, imo, behind this was an historical kick given by no one else then Lenin to his rival out of political greed. That was Bogdanov who was eliminated by Lenin in 1908 but still shaped his own world view, understanding of the world, classes, dialectics, and imperialism. Bogdanov's thoughts, scientific, political and philosophical innovations and work thrown in basement through the 20th century but influenced Lenin, Bukharin, Galiev, and Trosky amongst others. I like to suggest McKenzie Wark's Molecular Red, that I had been waiting long to come out, yet sort of disappointed after reading. Although brilliant in terms of new insights and valorization of Bogdanov's ideas and work, what is missing in Wark's own point of view in my opinion the impact Bodganov made on those names like Wiener, Bertallanfy, Hayek, Misses, Piaget, Lazlo, Veblen, etc. who saved and refaced capitalism from itself throughout the last century Who Bogdanov's vision did not only influence and determine these letters success individually, but allowed organic intellectuals of capital to develop the Panopticon powers of capital, especially during the second war and in its aftermath. While left system analysis, left structuralism, left post structuralism, post modernism, post Marxism, revisionisms, reformisms all suffer based on system analysis, cybernetics, chaos and network modeling, behavioral and informatics control capitalism empowered and emerged as immortal vampire because while we all lost Bogdanov they did find and exploited his ideas and vision. Here is Bogdanov library: http://monoskop.org/Alexander_Bogdanov Red Star - first Bolshevik sci-fie utopia by Bogdanov: http://monoskop.org/images/4/48/Bogdanov_Alexander_Red_Star_The_First_Bolsh… Wark's book and reader: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1886-molecular-red Zizek on Wark's book: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2007-ecology-against-mother-nature-slavoj-z… Orsan Sent from my iPad > On 18 jul. 2015, at 10:17, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Like the end of the U.S. Empire, the 'pronouncement' is a premature. This is the most revolutionary system yet encountered... And will do its stuff for A bit yet... > > ...,... > >> On 18 Jul 2015, at 10:36 AM, peter waterman <peterwaterman1936(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> The Guardian >> home >> › culture >> › books >> art & design >> stage >> classical >> film >> tv & radio >> music >> games >> home >> UK >> world >> politics >> sport >> football >> opinion >> culture selected >> business >> lifestyle >> fashion >> environment >> tech >> travel >> all >> Economics >> The end of capitalism has begun >> >> Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian >> >> >> Welcome to an age of sharing. Illustration by Joe Magee >> >> Paul Mason >> >> @paulmasonnews >> Friday 17 July 2015 11.00 BST Last modified on Saturday 18 July 2015 00.01 BST >> >> Share on Facebook >> Share on Twitter >> Share via Email >> Share on Pinterest >> Share on LinkedIn >> Share on Google+ >> Shares >> >> 82,793 >> Comments >> >> 2,176 >> The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse. >> >> Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did. >> >> If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism. >> >> As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started. >> >> Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all. >> >> Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely. >> >> >> British capitalism is broken. Here’s how to fix it >> >> Read more >> Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue. >> >> Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm. Parallel currencies, time banks, cooperatives and self-managed spaces have proliferated, barely noticed by the economics profession, and often as a direct result of the shattering of the old structures in the post-2008 crisis. >> >> You only find this new economy if you look hard for it. In Greece, when a grassroots NGO mapped the country’s food co-ops, alternative producers, parallel currencies and local exchange systems they found more than 70 substantive projects and hundreds of smaller initiatives ranging from squats to carpools to free kindergartens. To mainstream economics such things seem barely to qualify as economic activity – but that’s the point. They exist because they trade, however haltingly and inefficiently, in the currency of postcapitalism: free time, networked activity and free stuff. It seems a meagre and unofficial and even dangerous thing from which to craft an entire alternative to a global system, but so did money and credit in the age of Edward III. >> >> >> Facebook Twitter Pinterest >> Sharing the fruits of our labour. Illustration by Joe Magee >> New forms of ownership, new forms of lending, new legal contracts: a whole business subculture has emerged over the past 10 years, which the media has dubbed the “sharing economy”. Buzzwords such as the “commons” and “peer-production” are thrown around, but few have bothered to ask what this development means for capitalism itself. >> >> I believe it offers an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected by a fundamental change in what governments do. And this must be driven by a change in our thinking – about technology, ownership and work. So that, when we create the elements of the new system, we can say to ourselves, and to others: “This is no longer simply my survival mechanism, my bolt hole from the neoliberal world; this is a new way of living in the process of formation.” >> >> ... >> >> The 2008 crash wiped 13% off global production and 20% off global trade. Global growth became negative – on a scale where anything below +3% is counted as a recession. It produced, in the west, a depression phase longer than in 1929-33, and even now, amid a pallid recovery, has left mainstream economists terrified about the prospect of long-term stagnation. The aftershocks in Europe are tearing the continent apart. >> >> The solutions have been austerity plus monetary excess. But they are not working. In the worst-hit countries, the pension system has been destroyed, the retirement age is being hiked to 70, and education is being privatised so that graduates now face a lifetime of high debt. Services are being dismantled and infrastructure projects put on hold. >> >> Even now many people fail to grasp the true meaning of the word “austerity”. Austerity is not eight years of spending cuts, as in the UK, or even the social catastrophe inflicted on Greece. It means driving the wages, social wages and living standards in the west down for decades until they meet those of the middle class in China and India on the way up. >> >> Meanwhile in the absence of any alternative model, the conditions for another crisis are being assembled. Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant in Japan, the southern Eurozone, the US and UK. The shadow banking system has been reassembled, and is now bigger than it was in 2008. New rules demanding banks hold more reserves have been watered down or delayed. Meanwhile, flushed with free money, the 1% has got richer. >> >> Neoliberalism, then, has morphed into a system programmed to inflict recurrent catastrophic failures. Worse than that, it has broken the 200-year pattern of industrial capitalism wherein an economic crisis spurs new forms of technological innovation that benefit everybody. >> >> That is because neoliberalism was the first economic model in 200 years the upswing of which was premised on the suppression of wages and smashing the social power and resilience of the working class. If we review the take-off periods studied by long-cycle theorists – the 1850s in Europe, the 1900s and 1950s across the globe – it was the strength of organised labour that forced entrepreneurs and corporations to stop trying to revive outdated business models through wage cuts, and to innovate their way to a new form of capitalism. >> >> The result is that, in each upswing, we find a synthesis of automation, higher wages and higher-value consumption. Today there is no pressure from the workforce, and the technology at the centre of this innovation wave does not demand the creation of higher-consumer spending, or the re‑employment of the old workforce in new jobs. Information is a machine for grinding the price of things lower and slashing the work time needed to support life on the planet. >> >> >> Occupy was right: capitalism has failed the world >> >> Read more >> As a result, large parts of the business class have become neo-luddites. Faced with the possibility of creating gene-sequencing labs, they instead start coffee shops, nail bars and contract cleaning firms: the banking system, the planning system and late neoliberal culture reward above all the creator of low-value, long-hours jobs. >> >> Innovation is happening but it has not, so far, triggered the fifth long upswing for capitalism that long-cycle theory would expect. The reasons lie in the specific nature of information technology. >> >> ... >> >> We’re surrounded not just by intelligent machines but by a new layer of reality centred on information. Consider an airliner: a computer flies it; it has been designed, stress-tested and “virtually manufactured” millions of times; it is firing back real-time information to its manufacturers. On board are people squinting at screens connected, in some lucky countries, to the internet. >> >> Seen from the ground it is the same white metal bird as in the James Bond era. But it is now both an intelligent machine and a node on a network. It has an information content and is adding “information value” as well as physical value to the world. On a packed business flight, when everyone’s peering at Excel or Powerpoint, the passenger cabin is best understood as an information factory. >> >> >> Facebook Twitter Pinterest >> Is it utopian to believe we’re on the verge of an evolution beyond capitalism? Illustration by Joe Magee >> But what is all this information worth? You won’t find an answer in the accounts: intellectual property is valued in modern accounting standards by guesswork. A study for the SAS Institute in 2013 found that, in order to put a value on data, neither the cost of gathering it, nor the market value or the future income from it could be adequately calculated. Only through a form of accounting that included non-economic benefits, and risks, could companies actually explain to their shareholders what their data was really worth. Something is broken in the logic we use to value the most important thing in the modern world. >> >> The great technological advance of the early 21st century consists not only of new objects and processes, but of old ones made intelligent. The knowledge content of products is becoming more valuable than the physical things that are used to produce them. But it is a value measured as usefulness, not exchange or asset value. In the 1990s economists and technologists began to have the same thought at once: that this new role for information was creating a new, “third” kind of capitalism – as different from industrial capitalism as industrial capitalism was to the merchant and slave capitalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. But they have struggled to describe the dynamics of the new “cognitive” capitalism. And for a reason. Its dynamics are profoundly non-capitalist. >> >> During and right after the second world war, economists viewed information simply as a “public good”. The US government even decreed that no profit should be made out of patents, only from the production process itself. Then we began to understand intellectual property. In 1962, Kenneth Arrow, the guru of mainstream economics, said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights. He noted: “precisely to the extent that it is successful there is an underutilisation of information.” >> >> You can observe the truth of this in every e-business model ever constructed: monopolise and protect data, capture the free social data generated by user interaction, push commercial forces into areas of data production that were non-commercial before, mine the existing data for predictive value – always and everywhere ensuring nobody but the corporation can utilise the results. >> >> If we restate Arrow’s principle in reverse, its revolutionary implications are obvious: if a free market economy plus intellectual property leads to the “underutilisation of information”, then an economy based on the full utilisation of information cannot tolerate the free market or absolute intellectual property rights. The business models of all our modern digital giants are designed to prevent the abundance of information. >> >> Yet information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made, it can be copied/pasted infinitely. A music track or the giant database you use to build an airliner has a production cost; but its cost of reproduction falls towards zero. Therefore, if the normal price mechanism of capitalism prevails over time, its price will fall towards zero, too. >> >> For the past 25 years economics has been wrestling with this problem: all mainstream economics proceeds from a condition of scarcity, yet the most dynamic force in our modern world is abundant and, as hippy genius Stewart Brand once put it, “wants to be free”. >> >> There is, alongside the world of monopolised information and surveillance created by corporations and governments, a different dynamic growing up around information: information as a social good, free at the point of use, incapable of being owned or exploited or priced. I’ve surveyed the attempts by economists and business gurus to build a framework to understand the dynamics of an economy based on abundant, socially-held information. But it was actually imagined by one 19th-century economist in the era of the telegraph and the steam engine. His name? Karl Marx. >> >> ... >> >> The scene is Kentish Town, London, February 1858, sometime around 4am. Marx is a wanted man in Germany and is hard at work scribbling thought-experiments and notes-to-self. When they finally get to see what Marx is writing on this night, the left intellectuals of the 1960s will admit that it “challenges every serious interpretation of Marx yet conceived”. It is called “The Fragment on Machines”. >> >> In the “Fragment” Marx imagines an economy in which the main role of machines is to produce, and the main role of people is to supervise them. He was clear that, in such an economy, the main productive force would be information. The productive power of such machines as the automated cotton-spinning machine, the telegraph and the steam locomotive did not depend on the amount of labour it took to produce them but on the state of social knowledge. Organisation and knowledge, in other words, made a bigger contribution to productive power than the work of making and running the machines. >> >> Given what Marxism was to become – a theory of exploitation based on the theft of labour time – this is a revolutionary statement. It suggests that, once knowledge becomes a productive force in its own right, outweighing the actual labour spent creating a machine, the big question becomes not one of “wages versus profits” but who controls what Marx called the “power of knowledge”. >> >> In an economy where machines do most of the work, the nature of the knowledge locked inside the machines must, he writes, be “social”. In a final late-night thought experiment Marx imagined the end point of this trajectory: the creation of an “ideal machine”, which lasts forever and costs nothing. A machine that could be built for nothing would, he said, add no value at all to the production process and rapidly, over several accounting periods, reduce the price, profit and labour costs of everything else it touched. >> >> Once you understand that information is physical, and that software is a machine, and that storage, bandwidth and processing power are collapsing in price at exponential rates, the value of Marx’s thinking becomes clear. We are surrounded by machines that cost nothing and could, if we wanted them to, last forever. >> >> In these musings, not published until the mid-20th century, Marx imagined information coming to be stored and shared in something called a “general intellect” – which was the mind of everybody on Earth connected by social knowledge, in which every upgrade benefits everybody. In short, he had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high”. >> >> Marx imagined something close to our information economy. He wrote its existence would blow capitalism sky high >> >> ... >> >> With the terrain changed, the old path beyond capitalism imagined by the left of the 20th century is lost. >> >> But a different path has opened up. Collaborative production, using network technology to produce goods and services that only work when they are free, or shared, defines the route beyond the market system. It will need the state to create the framework – just as it created the framework for factory labour, sound currencies and free trade in the early 19th century. The postcapitalist sector is likely to coexist with the market sector for decades, but major change is happening. >> >> Networks restore “granularity” to the postcapitalist project. That is, they can be the basis of a non-market system that replicates itself, which does not need to be created afresh every morning on the computer screen of a commissar. >> >> The transition will involve the state, the market and collaborative production beyond the market. But to make it happen, the entire project of the left, from protest groups to the mainstream social democratic and liberal parties, will have to be reconfigured. In fact, once people understand the logic of the postcapitalist transition, such ideas will no longer be the property of the left – but of a much wider movement, for which we will need new labels. >> >> Who can make this happen? In the old left project it was the industrial working class. More than 200 years ago, the radical journalist John Thelwall warned the men who built the English factories that they had created a new and dangerous form of democracy: “Every large workshop and manufactory is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence, and no magistrate disperse.” >> >> Today the whole of society is a factory. We all participate in the creation and recreation of the brands, norms and institutions that surround us. At the same time the communication grids vital for everyday work and profit are buzzing with shared knowledge and discontent. Today it is the network – like the workshop 200 years ago – that they “cannot silence or disperse”. >> >> 0:00 >> / >> 4:19 >> Facebook Twitter Pinterest >> Manuel Castells: how modern political movements straddle urban space and cyberspace >> True, states can shut down Facebook, Twitter, even the entire internet and mobile network in times of crisis, paralysing the economy in the process. And they can store and monitor every kilobyte of information we produce. But they cannot reimpose the hierarchical, propaganda-driven and ignorant society of 50 years ago, except – as in China, North Korea or Iran – by opting out of key parts of modern life. It would be, as sociologist Manuel Castells put it, like trying to de-electrify a country. >> >> By creating millions of networked people, financially exploited but with the whole of human intelligence one thumb-swipe away, info-capitalism has created a new agent of change in history: the educated and connected human being. >> >> ... >> >> This will be more than just an economic transition. There are, of course, the parallel and urgent tasks of decarbonising the world and dealing with demographic and fiscal timebombs. But I’m concentrating on the economic transition triggered by information because, up to now, it has been sidelined. Peer-to-peer has become pigeonholed as a niche obsession for visionaries, while the “big boys” of leftwing economics get on with critiquing austerity. >> >> >> Facebook Twitter Pinterest >> Information wants to be free. Illustration by Joe Magee >> In fact, on the ground in places such as Greece, resistance to austerity and the creation of “networks you can’t default on” – as one activist put it to me – go hand in hand. Above all, postcapitalism as a concept is about new forms of human behaviour that conventional economics would hardly recognise as relevant. >> >> So how do we visualise the transition ahead? The only coherent parallel we have is the replacement of feudalism by capitalism – and thanks to the work of epidemiologists, geneticists and data analysts, we know a lot more about that transition than we did 50 years ago when it was “owned” by social science. The first thing we have to recognise is: different modes of production are structured around different things. Feudalism was an economic system structured by customs and laws about “obligation”. Capitalism was structured by something purely economic: the market. We can predict, from this, that postcapitalism – whose precondition is abundance – will not simply be a modified form of a complex market society. But we can only begin to grasp at a positive vision of what it will be like. >> >> I don’t mean this as a way to avoid the question: the general economic parameters of a postcapitalist society by, for example, the year 2075, can be outlined. But if such a society is structured around human liberation, not economics, unpredictable things will begin to shape it. >> >> For example, the most obvious thing to Shakespeare, writing in 1600, was that the market had called forth new kinds of behaviour and morality. By analogy, the most obvious “economic” thing to the Shakespeare of 2075 will be the total upheaval in gender relationships, or sexuality, or health. Perhaps there will not even be any playwrights: perhaps the very nature of the media we use to tell stories will change – just as it changed in Elizabethan London when the first public theatres were built. >> >> Think of the difference between, say, Horatio in Hamlet and a character such as Daniel Doyce in Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Both carry around with them a characteristic obsession of their age – Horatio is obsessed with humanist philosophy; Doyce is obsessed with patenting his invention. There can be no character like Doyce in Shakespeare; he would, at best, get a bit part as a working-class comic figure. Yet, by the time Dickens described Doyce, most of his readers knew somebody like him. Just as Shakespeare could not have imagined Doyce, so we too cannot imagine the kind of human beings society will produce once economics is no longer central to life. But we can see their prefigurative forms in the lives of young people all over the world breaking down 20th-century barriers around sexuality, work, creativity and the self. >> >> The feudal model of agriculture collided, first, with environmental limits and then with a massive external shock – the Black Death. After that, there was a demographic shock: too few workers for the land, which raised their wages and made the old feudal obligation system impossible to enforce. The labour shortage also forced technological innovation. The new technologies that underpinned the rise of merchant capitalism were the ones that stimulated commerce (printing and accountancy), the creation of tradeable wealth (mining, the compass and fast ships) and productivity (mathematics and the scientific method). >> >> Present throughout the whole process was something that looks incidental to the old system – money and credit – but which was actually destined to become the basis of the new system. In feudalism, many laws and customs were actually shaped around ignoring money; credit was, in high feudalism, seen as sinful. So when money and credit burst through the boundaries to create a market system, it felt like a revolution. Then, what gave the new system its energy was the discovery of a virtually unlimited source of free wealth in the Americas. >> >> A combination of all these factors took a set of people who had been marginalised under feudalism – humanists, scientists, craftsmen, lawyers, radical preachers and bohemian playwrights such as Shakespeare – and put them at the head of a social transformation. At key moments, though tentatively at first, the state switched from hindering the change to promoting it. >> >> Today, the thing that is corroding capitalism, barely rationalised by mainstream economics, is information. Most laws concerning information define the right of corporations to hoard it and the right of states to access it, irrespective of the human rights of citizens. The equivalent of the printing press and the scientific method is information technology and its spillover into all other technologies, from genetics to healthcare to agriculture to the movies, where it is quickly reducing costs. >> >> >> David Graeber interview: ‘So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary’ >> >> Read more >> The modern equivalent of the long stagnation of late feudalism is the stalled take-off of the third industrial revolution, where instead of rapidly automating work out of existence, we are reduced to creating what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” on low pay. And many economies are stagnating. >> >> The equivalent of the new source of free wealth? It’s not exactly wealth: it’s the “externalities” – the free stuff and wellbeing generated by networked interaction. It is the rise of non-market production, of unownable information, of peer networks and unmanaged enterprises. The internet, French economist Yann Moulier-Boutang says, is “both the ship and the ocean” when it comes to the modern equivalent of the discovery of the new world. In fact, it is the ship, the compass, the ocean and the gold. >> >> The modern day external shocks are clear: energy depletion, climate change, ageing populations and migration. They are altering the dynamics of capitalism and making it unworkable in the long term. They have not yet had the same impact as the Black Death – but as we saw in New Orleans in 2005, it does not take the bubonic plague to destroy social order and functional infrastructure in a financially complex and impoverished society. >> >> Once you understand the transition in this way, the need is not for a supercomputed Five Year Plan – but a project, the aim of which should be to expand those technologies, business models and behaviours that dissolve market forces, socialise knowledge, eradicate the need for work and push the economy towards abundance. I call it Project Zero – because its aims are a zero-carbon-energy system; the production of machines, products and services with zero marginal costs; and the reduction of necessary work time as close as possible to zero. >> >> Most 20th-century leftists believed that they did not have the luxury of a managed transition: it was an article of faith for them that nothing of the coming system could exist within the old one – though the working class always attempted to create an alternative life within and “despite” capitalism. As a result, once the possibility of a Soviet-style transition disappeared, the modern left became preoccupied simply with opposing things: the privatisation of healthcare, anti-union laws, fracking – the list goes on. >> >> If I am right, the logical focus for supporters of postcapitalism is to build alternatives within the system; to use governmental power in a radical and disruptive way; and to direct all actions towards the transition – not the defence of random elements of the old system. We have to learn what’s urgent, and what’s important, and that sometimes they do not coincide. >> >> ... >> >> The power of imagination will become critical. In an information society, no thought, debate or dream is wasted – whether conceived in a tent camp, prison cell or the table football space of a startup company. >> >> As with virtual manufacturing, in the transition to postcapitalism the work done at the design stage can reduce mistakes in the implementation stage. And the design of the postcapitalist world, as with software, can be modular. Different people can work on it in different places, at different speeds, with relative autonomy from each other. If I could summon one thing into existence for free it would be a global institution that modelled capitalism correctly: an open source model of the whole economy; official, grey and black. Every experiment run through it would enrich it; it would be open source and with as many datapoints as the most complex climate models. >> >> The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information; and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the hierarchy: between old forms of society moulded around capitalism and new forms of society that prefigure what comes next. >> >> ... >> >> Is it utopian to believe we’re on the verge of an evolution beyond capitalism? We live in a world in which gay men and women can marry, and in which contraception has, within the space of 50 years, made the average working-class woman freer than the craziest libertine of the Bloomsbury era. Why do we, then, find it so hard to imagine economic freedom? >> >> It is the elites, cut off in their dark-limo world, whose project looks forlorn >> >> It is the elites – cut off in their dark-limo world – whose project looks as forlorn as that of the millennial sects of the 19th century. The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago. >> >> All readings of human history have to allow for the possibility of a negative outcome. It haunts us in the zombie movie, the disaster movie, in the post-apocalytic wasteland of films such as The Road or Elysium. But why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages? >> >> Millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver. Their response is anger – and retreat towards national forms of capitalism that can only tear the world apart. Watching these emerge, from the pro-Grexit left factions in Syriza to the Front National and the isolationism of the American right has been like watching the nightmares we had during the Lehman Brothers crisis come true. >> >> We need more than just a bunch of utopian dreams and small-scale horizontal projects. We need a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet. And we need to get on with it. >> >> Postcapitalism is published by Allen Lane on 30 July. Paul Mason will be asking whether capitalism has had its day at a sold-out Guardian Live event on 22 July. Let us know your thoughts beforehand at theguardian.com/membership. >> >> -- >> Recent publications >> >> 1. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist. http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/ (Free). 2. 2014. Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social Movement Internationalisms'. (Free).3. 2014. with Laurence Cox, ‘Movement Internationalism/s’, Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. (Editorial), Vol. 6 (2), pp. 1–12. 4. 2014. ‘The International Labour Movement in, Against and Beyond, the Globalized and Informatized Cage of Capitalism and Bureaucracy. (Interview). Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. Vol. 6 (2), pp. 35-58. 5. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of Movements: Struggles for Other Worlds (Part I). (10 Euros). 6. 2015. Waterman, Peter. ‘Beyond Labourism, Development and Decent Work’. Global Labour Journal, 2015, 6(2), pp. 246-50. >> >> More publications, click [////] >> -- >> To view previous posts, create a Google account with your current email and log in using gmail to access the archives. >> https://accounts.google.com/newaccount?hl=en >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "debate-list(a)fahamu.org" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to debate-list+unsubscribe(a)fahamu.org. >> To post to this group, send email to debate-list(a)fahamu.org. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/fahamu.org/group/debate-list/. > -- > To view previous posts, create a Google account with your current email and log in using gmail to access the archives. > https://accounts.google.com/newaccount?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "debate-list(a)fahamu.org" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to debate-list+unsubscribe(a)fahamu.org. > To post to this group, send email to debate-list(a)fahamu.org. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/fahamu.org/group/debate-list/.

1 0

The end of capitalism has begun
by Kevin Flanagan 17 Jul '15

17 Jul '15

Paul Mason writing about P2P and the Commons in the Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitali… -- For P2P Foundation related messages please contact me at kevin(a)p2pfoundation.net http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/ https://twitter.com/flgnk Skype: kev.flanagan Phone: +353 87 743 5660

1 0

Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [AkG_Offene-Liste] WG: CfP 'Where have all the classes gone?', Kassel, 3-4 Dec 2015
by Michel Bauwens 17 Jul '15

17 Jul '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Martin Mair <mm(a)mediaweb.at> Date: Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 12:22 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [AkG_Offene-Liste] WG: CfP 'Where have all the classes gone?', Kassel, 3-4 Dec 2015 To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org -------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht -------- Betreff: [AkG_Offene-Liste] WG: CfP 'Where have all the classes gone?',Kassel, 3-4 Dec 2015 Datum: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 13:43:48 +0200 Von: Christian Möllmann <moellmann(a)uni-kassel.de> <moellmann(a)uni-kassel.de> An: AkG(a)listi.jpberlin.de z.K. ----- Weitergeleitet von Christian Möllmann/ICDD/Uni-Kassel am 15.07.2015 13:38 ----- *Call for Papers* *Where have all the classes gone? Collective action and social struggles in a global context* *ICDD Workshop at the University of Kassel (Germany), 3-4 December 2015* The so-called new social movements (NSM) have emerged in Western countries from the 1960s and 1970s. The apparent novelty of their struggles was the rupture with class politics and labor movement struggles. Since then, a vast majority of analyses and theoretical contributions have moved away from class struggle analysis and labor-capital antagonisms. In order to make sense of diverse and novel forms of resistance, social movements theories focused on particular aspects such as the institutionalization of political opportunities, the formation of identities or the ways of bringing the protests into public debate. Despite the strength of these approaches in understanding different elements of collective action, the question concerning the role of class politics and the political economy in collective action still remains. Collective forms of resistance continue to be diverse and stem from different contexts. Their demands range from the right to housing to calls against modern violence and slavery, gender equality or access to land and environmental protection. In an increasingly globalizing world, social movements and resistance are formed even in virtual campaigns against global trade agreements that benefit corporations, urban-rural movements against rising poverty, and localized political movements challenging neoliberal policies in their countries. What do all these struggles have in common? How does the global political economy affect them, even those which are apparently not connected to economic issues? Is class still a valid category for understanding resistance? These are some of the questions that the workshop intends to address. The space for exchanging insights is offered to academic contributions from different disciplines and activists. Hence, we especially encourage junior scientists and activists as well to submit their abstracts in this context. Topics of interest can include, albeit by no means limited to, studies that focus on: 1) Actors: Studies focusing on protests and social movements emerging and revolving around class and non-class identities such as migrants, peasants, women, LGBTIH, and youth. 2) Context or process-tracing: Research tracing processes or focusing on historical conjunctures from which collective action and struggles surface, i.e., neoliberal expansion in the Global South. 3) Aims and issue-based demands: Studies that examine political, economic or social issues and problems highlighting the demands from which the protests and discontent arises such as right to city spaces, housing, water struggles, free education, and health and rural movements arising against land-grabbing. 4) Types of conflict: Studies could also explore the features and characters of conflicts whether long term, emerging or recent popular uprisings varying from Brazil, Hong Kong, China, Turkey or Ukraine. Applications are to be sent to *2015workshop(a)icdd.uni-kassel.de* <2015workshop(a)icdd.uni-kassel.de> with an abstract of not more than 300 words *by* *August 30, 2015* at the latest. The successful participants will be notified by September 30, 2015. The submission of full papers is requested by November 15, 2015. The workshop, organized by the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD), will take place at the University of Kassel, Germany. *Confirmed Keynote Speakers*: Cenk Saracoglu (University of Ankara), Emma Dowling (Middlesex University) *Contact:* *2015workshop(a)icdd.uni-kassel.de* <2015workshop(a)icdd.uni-kassel.de> *Organizing Committee: *Jorge Forero, Aishah Namukasa, Halyna Semenyshyn *Program Committee:* Joaquin Bernaldez, Oksana Balashova, Alexander Gallas, Ismail Doga Karatepe, Verna Dinah Viajar _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup
by Michel Bauwens 17 Jul '15

17 Jul '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jonathan Latham <jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org> Date: Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 8:11 PM Subject: Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup To: bsr-PROJECT-ELIST1(a)gn.apc.org Dear Friends and Colleagues Published today (Friday 17th July) on *Independent Science News*: Title: *Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup* by Evaggelos Vallianatos http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/ruthless-power-and-delete… *Synopsis:* The modern controversy over Roundup (glyphosate) and the documentation of its effects on humans, animals and soils, has much in common with that over DDT fifty years ago. In particular, it recapitulates attempts to sideline critics and the ongoing delusion of control of the natural world that informs modern agricultural practices. The author, Evaggelos Vallianatos, is a former EPA analyst. Please enjoy and share. Yours sincerely Jonathan Jonathan Latham, PhD Executive Director The Bioscience Resource Project Ithaca, NY 14850 USA www.independentsciencenews.org and www.bioscienceresource.org jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org Skype: jonathanlatham2 Tel: 1-607-319-0279 “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward Bernays, Propaganda _______________________________________________ BSR-project-elist1 mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/bsr-project-elist1 To unsubscribe, email bsr-project-elist1-unsubscribe(a)gn.apc.org -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Gindin and Panitch (from Athens): A Real Plan B
by Michel Bauwens 17 Jul '15

17 Jul '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 4:04 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Gindin and Panitch (from Athens): A Real Plan B To: gina vargas <ginvargas(a)gmail.com>, WSFDiscuss List < WorldSocialForum-Discuss(a)openspaceforum.net>, " CRITICAL-LABOUR-STUDIES(a)jiscmail.ac.uk" < CRITICAL-LABOUR-STUDIES(a)jiscmail.ac.uk>, "< networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>" <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>, p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation(a)lists.ourproject.org> [image: Socialist Project - home] <http://www.socialistproject.ca/> *The B u l l e t* <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/> Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 1145 July 17, 2015 [image: Socialist Project - home] <http://www.socialistproject.ca/> The Real Plan B: The New Greek Marathon Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch In the face of being excluded from desperately needed funds and the threat of being kicked out of the European Union, the Greek parliament has now voted to accept the Troika memorandum <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/07/12-euro-summ…>. The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras acknowledged – unlike social democrats *choosing* to implement neoliberalism as part of their ‘modernization‘ – that this was ‘a bad deal’ forced on the Greeks. Syriza's MPs were divided although three quarters of them followed Tsipras and voted yes. Outside in Syntagma Square thousands of angry demonstrators gathered and then marched through downtown Athens, this time the ‘NO’ being reserved for rejecting the memorandum. There is a strong current of dissent in the Syriza party Central Committee, which has yet to meet. Yet there is also a general sense we get from party members and supporters at all levels we have talked with here that the government should be supported and continue in office. In the face of these divisions and frustrations, what if anything might be done to revive and continue Syriza's struggle against neoliberalism? And since neoliberalism is what capitalism *is* today – there is no other kind – what can be done to lay the basis for ending capitalism? This is not just a question for Greeks, though crucial aspects of this dilemma are of course specific to Greece, but for how the left everywhere thinks about and responds to the challenges of coming to power in a hostile environment to try to protect people from the worst depredations of neoliberalism, and tries to embark on ‘really-existing transitions’ to a more egalitarian, solidaristic, substantively more democratic world. Sections of the Greek left and a good part of the international left have argued that the deal should have been rejected, and Grexit embraced instead. This opens up a number of scenarios but the most likely would be the government resigning, calling new elections, and Syriza running on a program that reversed its former support for staying in the eurozone. Whether or not the party would win its credibility would, according to this argument, be maintained and it would at least live to fight another day. Exiting the Euro, Leaving the State We would not dismiss the above argument out of hand. It reflects legitimate emotional sentiments and strategic orientations. Until recently, however, three of four Greeks opposed Grexit, and even if this has shifted dramatically with the referendum and its aftermath, there is no clear and deep consensus on leaving. Tsipras and a good part of the leadership is, in this regard, not simply ‘tailing’ the public but deeply committed to Europe on both economic and cultural grounds. For those of us who have long argued that eventual exit is essential, especially from a socialist perspective, the challenge is not so much to condemn this but to ask: When is the right moment to take this on? What practical steps, ideological and in terms of state capacities, might be argued for now to move the party and its base toward a consensus? As for counselling Syriza to risk losing its governing status, it needs to be noted that Syriza already faced this question in the run up to the 2012 elections, and concluded that the responsible decision was to enter the state and do everything it could to restrain the neoliberal assault from *within* the state. Its electoral breakthrough that year was based on Tsipras's declaration that Syriza was not just campaigning to register a higher percentage of the vote but determined to form a government with any others who would join with it in stopping the economic torture while remaining within Europe. It was only when it came close to winning on this basis, that Syriza vaunted to the forefront of the international left's attention, and by the following summer, Tsipras was chosen by the European Left Parties to lead their campaign in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Syriza's subsequent clear victory in Greece in this election foretold its victory in the Greek national election of January 2015, when it became the first and only one of all the European left parties to challenge neoliberalism and win national office. Even apart from the humanitarian measures it immediately introduced without allowing the Troika's representatives to vet the legislation, the very attempt by the new government to challenge the Troika has helped expose the neoliberal essence of the EU and to generate discussions on what alternatives, however difficult to imagine, might be. It strikes us as premature to conclude from the denouement to this five month challenge that was finally reached this week, however sobering it has been, that it is better for Syriza to leave the state to its bourgeois opponents. It seems better to move beyond outrage and protest, let alone resignation, and instead struggle with what kinds of changes remain possible in the state to support the needs of the majority of Greek people who voted OXI in the referendum and to contribute to the much-needed further development of their already powerfully demonstrated capacities for solidarity and innovation. Without this a productive path out of the eurozone, and perhaps even the EU, to escape neoliberalism would be inconceivable. It is this, not just surreptitiously making plans for a new currency, that properly preparing for Grexit would really need to be about. Those advocating an exit from the euro acknowledge that there will be costs. Yet they also tend to understate, sometimes rather glibly, the chaos this would entail especially for a state steeped in two centuries of clientalist practices. Along with this comes an exaggeration of what exiting the euro would, in itself, achieve. The economics of a new devalued currency are sure to lead to high inflation and further dramatic reductions in living standards, nor can it of itself produce new competitive industries. Where the depth of the crisis is as severe as it is in Greece and partly rooted in the very restructuring of its economy that came with its deeper integration into Europe, changes in the currency are unlikely to restore old industries or develop new ones. It is worth remembering how many states with their own currencies are unable to withstand the ravages of neoliberalism. That the options open to the Syriza government are even more limited by the way the new memorandum is structured to cruelly discipline Greece's integration into neoliberal Europe is obvious enough. It should also be increasingly obvious to those in the party whose commitment to the EU was foundational that staying in the eurozone is inconsistent with restraining neoliberalism's negative impact on most Greeks. It is much to be hoped that Syriza, and the European Left Parties in general, will abandon the notion that an even more centralized transnational European state would be more progressive. But it does not follow from any of this that it would be correct for Syriza to lead a Grexit right now, without a much deeper preparation for dealing with the consequences. What about resigning from office to free itself from administering the memorandum? It would be highly irresponsible, having entered the state in the first place promising to try to at least ameliorate the effects of neoliberalism in Greece, to step down now after what has been imposed on the Syriza government for its anti-neoliberal orientation and its democratic temerity in calling the referendum. This only deepens its responsibility to do all it still can to restrain the impact of neoliberalism. To do otherwise would be to acquiesce in the goal of those who tried to use the negotiations as a way to bring this government down. Toward a Real Plan B The point we are getting at is that framing the issue in terms of an exhausted Plan A (negotiating with Europe) and a rejection of the euro (Plan B) is too limited a way to frame the dilemmas confronting Syriza. What the deeper preparation for leaving the eurozone and possibly also the EU, actually entails is *to build on the solidarity networks that have developed in society to cope with the crisis as the basis for starting to transform social relations within Greece*. That is the real plan B, the terrain on which both Syriza and the social movements might re-invigorate now. What, more concretely, might this mean? The recent years of struggle have developed the famous grassroots solidarity movement that began – as all organizing must – by addressing the needs of people. Out of this grew the some 400 solidarity groups <http://www.solidarity4all.gr/> all across Greece addressing basic community needs through self-organized democratically run collectives which provide support for people's health, food, housing and other needs. Syriza members were among those deeply involved in establishing and maintaining the solidarity networks and its MPs elected in 2012 contributed 20 per cent of their salaries to them. But since the Syriza government was elected this year it has done very little to change and use the state so as to sustain and broaden this remarkable movement. Two leaders of the ‘Solidarity for All’ assembly of these groups told us how frustrated they were that they could not even get from the Ministry of Agriculture the information they need on the locations of specific crops so they might approach a broader range of farmers and develop more direct links between them and people in need. Only 12 people in total are employed in working for Solidarity for All – their numbers should be multiplied with the state's help. The military trucks sitting idle between demonstrations could be used to facilitate the distribution of food through the solidarity networks as a way of offsetting some of the cuts to the poorest pensioners, and of compensating for the increased VAT on food imposed by the latest memorandum. Various state departments could be engaged in identifying idle land – of which there is plenty in the countryside and in light of the crisis also in urban areas – which could be be given over to community co-ops to create work in growing food, and coordinating this across sub-regions. The Ministry of Education should be actively engaged in promoting the use of schools as community hubs that provide spaces for the social movements organizing around food and health services, and also to provide technical education appropriate to this. We talked with many students who were clearly enthusiastic about working in the community but were also quick to admit that while they were adept at competing in student union elections and good at distributing pamphlets and organizing demonstrations, their skills for longer-term community organizing were very limited. The Ministry of Education could help overcome this by setting up special programs to prepare students to spend periods of time in communities, contributing to adult education and working on community projects. Similarly, the privatizations forced on the Greek state should be accompanied by requirements that the new owners make a compensating commitment to establish industrial parks where new jobs might be created. Privatized firms might be required to source inputs inside Greece, while the state's own purchases of furniture, materials and supplies (including for schools and hospitals) might be sourced from new production units set up his way. With so many structures standing idle and under-used (like the Olympic sports facilities), all manners of co-ops and small businesses should be supported in setting up operations in them, aided by groups of young architects and engineers recruited to reconfigure these spaces. The U.S. New Deal Work Projects Administration <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration> could serve as an example not only in this respect, but especially in respect to the broad range of artistic, theatrical and cultural activities in which so many unemployed young people are already engaged. We do not want to overstate this. These experiments would not themselves be 'solutions’. And they would no doubt lead to objections that they negate the intent of the new memorandum's structural adjustment demands. But seen strategically, they invite a constructive approach to linking the state to communities in new ways that would offset the black and grey markets which might otherwise overwhelm an economy that moved out of the eurozone. And it helps lay the foundation for a new stage in addressing the domestic barriers imposed by the inequalities of wealth and private property, and concretizes the need for investment planning and public ownership so as circulate society's social surplus to local, regional and sectoral institutions. Conclusion: Leadership of a New Kind The Syriza government currently retains a store of good will, even if this has been damaged by the memorandum. To prevent the further erosion of that popular support it will need to concretely counter the Troika-imposed legislation. For every negative bill it puts forth it should creatively put forth a positive bill that confirms its continuing commitment to the fight against neoliberalism. Syriza's ministers must never depart from treating the negative impositions as something positive, and indeed be expected to act as socialist educators, helping people grasp the barriers to improving their lives and raising rather than lowering long term expectations by continuing to attack neoliberalism and speak to a socialist vision of solidarity and democracy. And it is this that should inspire and guide the transformation of state structures away from the old clientalism. None of this can happen unless Syriza as a party develops the orientation and capacities to lead the Greek state and society in this direction. We have met with people in the party and social movements, as well as the state, who are concerned that Syriza falls well short in this respect. Among the various reasons for being critical of Syriza, this is the most significant. • Sam Gindin is adjunct professor and Leo Panitch is distinguished research professor at York University, Canada. They co-authored The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire <http://www.versobooks.com/books/1145-the-making-of-global-capitalism> (Verso). Both are currently in Athens, Greece. « Previous <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1144.php> Home <http://www.socialistproject.ca/> Today <http://www.socialistproject.ca/today/> Next <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/> » Comments *Be the first to post a comment: * Display Name: E-mail: Subject: Comment: enter your comment here... What is this text?: [image: Prove you're not a robot] : « Previous <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1144.php> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( The B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ • ISSN 1923-7871 • Next » <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/> Share: [image: Delicious] <http://delicious.com/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistproject.ca%2Fbullet…> [image: Digg] <http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistproject.ca%2Fbullet%2F…> [image: Facebook] <http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistproject.ca%2…> [image: Google bookmark] <http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialist…> [image: MySpace] <http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistpr…> [image: Reddit] <http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistproject.ca%2Fbullet%…> [image: StumbleUpon] <http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistproject.ca%…> [image: Twitter] <http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Currently+reading+Bullet+No.+1145+abou…> [image: UnionBook] <http://www.unionbook.org/profiles/blog/new?post_title=Bullet+No.+1145+The%2…> [image: RSS] <http://www.socialistproject.ca/rss> ^ Back to Top ^ <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1145.php#top> -- *Recent publications* 1. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist. http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/ (Free). 2. 2014. Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social Movement Internationalisms'. (Free).3. 2014. with Laurence Cox, ‘Movement Internationalism/s’, Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. (Editorial), Vol. 6 (2), pp. 1–12. 4. 2014. ‘The International Labour Movement in, Against and Beyond, the Globalized and Informatized Cage of Capitalism and Bureaucracy. (Interview). Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements. Vol. 6 (2), pp. 35-58. 5. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of Movements: Struggles for Other Worlds (Part I). (10 Euros). 6. 2015. Waterman, Peter. ‘Beyond Labourism, Development and Decent Work’. <https://escarpmentpress.org/globallabour/article/download/2338/2433> Global Labour Journal, 2015, 6(2), pp. 246-50. *More publications, click [////]* _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [members] Fw: P2P value - casos: reputación usuarios de plataforma ereuse y reputación de plataformas de ereuse
by Michel Bauwens 17 Jul '15

17 Jul '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <drozas(a)surrey.ac.uk> Date: 2015-07-17 17:31 GMT+07:00 Subject: [members] Fw: P2P value - casos: reputación usuarios de plataforma ereuse y reputación de plataformas de ereuse To: members(a)lists.p2pvalue.eu Dear all, Please find below an e-mail (in Spanish) from members of the E-reuse project (http://www.ereuse.org/) who Samer and I met during the past CAPS event. E-reuse is a project which proposes "a model and a set of open-source technologies for reusing digital devices. The background and foreground Intellectual Property follows an open model (unrestricted), as the goal is to bootstrap the reuse process, generate local efficiencies, guarantee final recycling and ensure traceability." I forward this in case you think it could be of interest for future collaboration with regard to the systems of reputation. Best, David ----------------- Hola David, Antes de nada, disculpa por el retraso en la respuesta. Respecto al paper de OpenSym ( http://www.opensym.org/2015/07/13/measuring-the-crowd-a-preliminary-taxonom…) simplemente aclarar que ninguno de los autores está en P2Pvalue. Simplemente me llegó la notificación del abstract, y me pareció muy interesante porque puede que conecte bien con las conversaciones contigo, Samer (UCM) y María (Goteo) que tuvimos en CAPS. Estaré pendiente cuando se publique el full paper. Respecto al estudio de los sistemas de reputación en E-Reuse, creo que es un caso de estudio muy interesante; pero que, como Samer comentaba en el taxi de vuelta, encaja mucho mejor en el caso del proyecto LOVE. He agregado a Samer, porque el conoce mucho mejor que yo este proyecto en cualquier caso; e igualmente he reenviado tu e-mail a la lista de correo de P2Pvalue. Un saludo y mucha suerte con tan interesante proyecto, David --- David Rozas Domingo PhD candidate Centre for Research in Social Simulation (26AD03) Department of Sociology Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)1483 683961 Personal website: http://www.davidrozas.com <http://www.davidrozas.com/> ------------------------------ *From:* David Franquesa <d.franquesa(a)ereuse.org> *Sent:* 13 July 2015 17:24 *To:* Rozas D Mr (PG/R - Social Sciences) *Cc:* Leandro Navarro; Santiago Lamora; Xavier Bustamante *Subject:* P2P value - casos: reputación usuarios de plataforma ereuse y reputación de plataformas de ereuse Hola David!, Interesante charla durante la conferencia de CAPS y gracias por tu interés en saber más de eReuse. Comentas que estáis presentando un paper en opensys <http://www.opensym.org/2015/07/13/measuring-the-crowd-a-preliminary-taxonom…> , sólo dinos como podemos ayudar y contribuir. De manera resumida, nosotros trataríamos dos casos de reputación: 1) la reputación de las plataformas sociales de reutilización tipo reutilitza.cat, que usan la plataforma social de ereuse.org y en donde el criterio de asignación de equipos a receptores depende de la reputación social del receptor (entre otros) 2) la reputación de las plataformas de reutilización que reportan a ereuse.org, ya sean las de plataforma social (reutilitza.cat) o las existentes/variantes ( tipo labdoo.org) que usan parte de las herramientas de ereuse. En el caso 1, plataformas sociales de ereuse, hay que redistribuir equipos informáticos que dónan las empresas y administración pública a proyectos sociales. La donación es directa, los equipos los entrega en mano el donante al receptor, y sólo hay una intermediación desde quien gestiona reutilitza.cat, la de proponer la asignación que sea en conjunto beneficie más al común (los usuarios que la usan, el territorio donde está ubicada, etc...). Nos gustaría que el algoritmo de asignación de número de equipos a proyectos sea: - transparente y entendible - repetible y demostrable - versionable - consensuado entre todas las plataformas reutilitza.cat que se replicaran por el mundo - versionable y demostrable: Poder - que incorpore una voluntad política del donante, el que dona tiene que estar de acuerdo (por ejemplo, te imaginas la Caixa donando a Barcelona en comú <https://www.reutilitza.cat/project/barcelona-en-com%C3%BA> !!!!, seguro que no repite!!). - que tenga en cuento el apoyo social que reciben los usuarios de la plataforma, por ejemplo, un proyecto que recibe votos es un proyecto demandado por los usuarios - que fomente la donación local - que premie usuarios receptores comprometidos con open data, reciclaje, promoción de la plataforma, búsqueda de nuevos donantes,.... - etc... en este apartado <https://www.reutilitza.cat/about> hay un borrador (hay que visualizarlo en catalán para ver la versión completa). En el caso 2, de ereuse.org, ereuse trabaja con la reputación de a las plataformas y no a los usuarios, ereuse.org no tiene datos a nivel de usuario (por privacidad), es la plataforma quien debe solucionarlo, por ejemplo, alguien comunica a ereuse que en un rio de Ghana hay un ordenador contaminando. eReuse sabe qué plataforma lo gestiono y comunica a la plataforma el problema, la plataforma aplica correcciones y comunica a ereuse la solución. Aún no sabemos para que utilizar la reputación de las plataformas,... ya se nos ocurrirá :-) Cualquier cosa sólo dinos, si quieres que lo desarrollemos más, encuesta, etc... Saludos y hasta pronto!!! David -- David Franquesa Griso Investigador: eReuse.org - Electronic Reuse <http://www.ereuse.org> twitter: @ereuseOrg <https://twitter.com/ereuseorg> research: http://upc.academia.edu/DavidFranquesa linkedin: http://es.linkedin.com/pub/david-franquesa-griso/12/46b/14 -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Re: [P2P-F] [tapas] [NetworkedLabour] [commoning] support appreciated for Plan C, a commons transition plan for greek civil movements
by Michel Bauwens 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

apologies, I forgot to attach the promised article, On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Pat Conaty < pat.commonfutures(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > Hi Michel, George and Stacco > > You asked for more info Michel. Greece has so many self-employed workers > and so do more and more countries in the UK as the state services are > decimated by austerity. So what do trade unions and co-ops and social > finance organisations do to respond to the growing precariat and right > across Europe from east to west. > > I talked yesterday of Gandian horizontal organising methods. This is > democratic practical socialism in action if it is understood for its > potency. There is a superb example - the WIEGO network for the supporting > the precariat. You can have a look at their website. > > Supported by the Textile workers union (that Gandhi helped found after > World War I, these horizontal methodologies for economic democracy grew out > of work in India with SEWA bank. Indeed as part of the integrated strategy > their movement has combined since the late 1970s trade union, co-op > solutions, mutual savings and loans and solidarity economy politics. > > In India the network membership is now 1.7 million and WEiGO promotes the > model internationally. They began with a gender focus but now organise > empowerment for women and men. > > This summary report attached gives you the their street wise and > sophisticated strategy. They are now working in Eastern Europe, Latin > America and other parts of Asia. > > Their work is changing ILO policy because it is so successful and some > trade unions are showing more interest and some co-op networks also. > > We have a conference tomorrow in London on the precariat and new models of > social union organising and WIEGO are speaking at the event that the Trade > Union Congress are hosting. > > Pat > > > > > > On 16 Jul 2015, at 08:27, Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Pat Conaty < > pat.commonfutures(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > >> Hence the argument for a partner state that is not on top but on tap in >> its support for new forms of Co-operative Economic Democracy to secure >> co-operative commonwealth. >> >> Great Michel to see you setting out the framework for a Plan C (for >> co-operative commons). We need collaborative work to flesh this out but you >> have made a flying start. >> > > would be great if you could add material here: > http://p2pfoundation.net/Plan_C_for_Advancing_the_Commons_Transition_in_Gre… > > > -- > Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: > http://commonstransition.org > > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens > > #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/ > > > > -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Re: [P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] [tapas] [commoning] support appreciated for Plan C, a commons transition plan for greek civil movements
by Michel Bauwens 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

dear Apostolis, here is a google doc version, which I will update now with the latest version from the wiki version, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UXd5R3W09RwryXebN5eqDt4OAvdm9ttseLj3Q0g… On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis < xekoukou(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Michell and all, wouldn't it be better if you created a google doc that we > could all add content to? > I could share it to the OVN group and we could all create a plan C > together. > > Some solutions might contradict each other, but each person/group can > write his proposals under his/its name. > > We could also comment on each other's proposals. John Restakis for example > explains on some interesting challenges for the commonification of > state-property. I would like to explain in more detail the OVN proposal so > that some of them may be removed. The OVN model is different that the > cooperative model. > > Keep in mind that there was already some interest to create such a > non-profit organization in Heraklion Crete but it halted because of the > absence of legal advice/expertise. > > > > 2015-07-16 10:27 GMT+03:00 Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net>: > >> >> On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Pat Conaty < >> pat.commonfutures(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: >> >>> Hence the argument for a partner state that is not on top but on tap in >>> its support for new forms of Co-operative Economic Democracy to secure >>> co-operative commonwealth. >>> >>> Great Michel to see you setting out the framework for a Plan C (for >>> co-operative commons). We need collaborative work to flesh this out but you >>> have made a flying start. >>> >> >> would be great if you could add material here: >> http://p2pfoundation.net/Plan_C_for_Advancing_the_Commons_Transition_in_Gre… >> >> >> -- >> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: >> http://commonstransition.org >> >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net >> >> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens >> >> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> NetworkedLabour mailing list >> NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org >> http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour >> >> > > > -- > > > , > > Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis > > -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 1

Re: [P2P-F] [tapas] [NetworkedLabour] [commoning] support appreciated for Plan C, a commons transition plan for greek civil movements
by Michel Bauwens 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

thank you Pat, will look at WIEGO with interest, Michel On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Pat Conaty < pat.commonfutures(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > Hi Michel, George and Stacco > > You asked for more info Michel. Greece has so many self-employed workers > and so do more and more countries in the UK as the state services are > decimated by austerity. So what do trade unions and co-ops and social > finance organisations do to respond to the growing precariat and right > across Europe from east to west. > > I talked yesterday of Gandian horizontal organising methods. This is > democratic practical socialism in action if it is understood for its > potency. There is a superb example - the WIEGO network for the supporting > the precariat. You can have a look at their website. > > Supported by the Textile workers union (that Gandhi helped found after > World War I, these horizontal methodologies for economic democracy grew out > of work in India with SEWA bank. Indeed as part of the integrated strategy > their movement has combined since the late 1970s trade union, co-op > solutions, mutual savings and loans and solidarity economy politics. > > In India the network membership is now 1.7 million and WEiGO promotes the > model internationally. They began with a gender focus but now organise > empowerment for women and men. > > This summary report attached gives you the their street wise and > sophisticated strategy. They are now working in Eastern Europe, Latin > America and other parts of Asia. > > Their work is changing ILO policy because it is so successful and some > trade unions are showing more interest and some co-op networks also. > > We have a conference tomorrow in London on the precariat and new models of > social union organising and WIEGO are speaking at the event that the Trade > Union Congress are hosting. > > Pat > > > > > > On 16 Jul 2015, at 08:27, Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Pat Conaty < > pat.commonfutures(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > >> Hence the argument for a partner state that is not on top but on tap in >> its support for new forms of Co-operative Economic Democracy to secure >> co-operative commonwealth. >> >> Great Michel to see you setting out the framework for a Plan C (for >> co-operative commons). We need collaborative work to flesh this out but you >> have made a flying start. >> > > would be great if you could add material here: > http://p2pfoundation.net/Plan_C_for_Advancing_the_Commons_Transition_in_Gre… > > > -- > Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: > http://commonstransition.org > > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens > > #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/ > > > > -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] New issue -- Journal of Peer Production #7: Policies for the Commons
by Michel Bauwens 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: george dafermos <georgedafermos(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 7:35 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] New issue -- Journal of Peer Production #7: Policies for the Commons To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org Dear friends and colleagues, It is our great pleasure to announce the public release of Issue #7 of the Journal of Peer Production! This issue, which has been edited by me and Vasilis Kostakis, features several articles which explore how the principles of the commons, of peer production and of the social economy can form the basis for a paradigm shift in society. We are hoping you will enjoy them and find them useful! Best, George and Vasilis *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* New issue -- Journal of Peer Production #7: Policies for the Commons <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/> *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* A spectre is haunting the world - the spectre of the Commons. Without a doubt, the world system is in a crisis of such magnitude that the existing state of affairs cannot possibly be maintained for much longer. At the same time, models based on the collective management of common goods and the social economy have sprung up amidst this state of permanent crisis, which suggest that another world is possible. Taking the policy proposals originally developed by the FLOK Society project in Ecuador as a starting point, this JoPP issue explores how the principles of the Commons, of peer production, of free software and of the social economy can constitute the basis for the development of appropriate policies enabling the transition to alternative, post-capitalist social and economic models. The articles collected in this issue address some crucial aspects of this transformation: the transition process from a capitalist knowledge economy towards a social knowledge economy; the transformation of the secondary sector of the economy, with an emphasis on manufacturing and energy; and the reconfiguration of the state and the commonification of public services in the direction of a "Partner State" in which the resources and functions of the state are primarily used to enable and empower autonomous social production. +=================================================+ | T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S | +=================================================+ +-----Editorial section---------------------------------------------------------------------+ Editorial notes: Public policy proposals for a society of the commons <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/editorial…> by George Dafermos and Vasilis Kostakis The FLOK doctrine <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/the-flok-…> by David Vila-Viñas and Xabier Barandiaran +-----Peer-reviewed papers-------------------------------------------------------------+ Transforming the productive base of the economy through the open design commons and distributed manufacturing <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-revi…> by George Dafermos Transforming the energy matrix: Transition policies for the development of the distributed energy model <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-revi…> by George Dafermos, Panos Kotsampopoulos, Kostas Latoufis, Ioannis Margaris, Beatriz Rivela, Fausto Paulino Washima, Pere Ariza-Montobbio and Jesús López Public policy for a social economy <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-revi…> by John Restakis ICT, open government and civil society <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-revi…> by John Restakis, Daniel Araya, Maria José Calderon and Robin Murray Towards a new configuration between the state, civil society and the market <http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-revi…> by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0