November 2018 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 04 Nov '18

04 Nov '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 4:33 PM Subject: Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future (GTN Discussion) To: <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> >From Victor Wallis <zendive(a)aol.com> ------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues and friends, Michael Löwy's voice has long been an important one in these discussions. I agree entirely with his basic statement here, and am glad that he specifically recognizes the capitalist roots of productivism and the condemnation of productivism by Marx. In terms of Paul's question as to whether the concept of ecosocialism is sufficiently all-encompassing, this is a topic that I take up at length in my book Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism ( www.politicalanimalmagazine.com/political-animal-press/) My discussion includes a chapter on potential pro-ecological constituencies, in which I focus on the links between ecological demands and the interests of the various sectors that have suffered from -- or whose suffering has been amplified and/or institutionalized by -- the workings of capital. Another chapter (originally written for a collection on intersectionality that appeared in December 2015 in New Political Science) discusses the history and theoretical considerations behind efforts to bring together all these constituencies. My basic argument is that if we want to build a political force that can implement our vision, it's not enough to add more and more prefixes to our core concept. We must instead seek to understand how our central concept fully valorizes and honors all the specific concerns that may motivate people's activism. So far as the term ecosocialism is concerned, I argue that the basic principles of ecology and of socialism converge, in that both reject the structure in which decisions about production are made on the basis of profit calculations. In this sense, the prefix "eco-" might be considered redundant. However, I accept the term partly in recognition of the separate intellectual histories of its two strands and partly because the ecological dimension uniquely underscores the urgency of a socialist transformation. (See my recent remarks on this point here: www.mronline.org/2018/11/01/a-sound-ecological-policy-cannot-be-achieved-wi… ). Returning to Michael Löwy's essay, I also fully share his emphasis on the participatory nature of the necessary planning processes. This is of course an aspect that needs to be spelled out in greater detail. Michael advocates what he calls "Internet-enabled direct democracy" (p. 4), but this seems to apply mainly to the expression of broad preferences. It leaves open the actual process by which specific measures will be hammered out. Here the long-standing limitations of plebiscitary rule will need to be overcome. Structures for informed discussion will need to be put in place, so that the merits of a given approach will be tested not simply by the percentage of the population that finds it appealing, but will rather emerge from a deliberative process in which all the relevant considerations -- both social and technological -- are taken into account. In this connection, Michael speaks of free time as "a condition for the participation of working people in the democratic discussion and management of economy and of society" (p. 3). This has long been recognized as a problematic matter, given the common tendency of people to recoil at the idea of having to attend an endless succession of meetings. Admittedly, this tendency reflects in part the negative conditioning they have experienced under capitalism, but the point is that the problem needs to be confronted directly, and the conditions created in which such reactions will no longer stand in the way of necessary participation. An initial step in this direction would be to define the participation as being in part an aspect of people's work-responsibilities and therefore as an activity for which they would be compensated under the heading of work-time. Additional requirements for facilitating the necessary quality of participation will readily come to mind, but they need to be integral to the vision we put forward. One of the biggest tasks will be to establish guidelines for distinguishing between the wasteful and the necessary lines of production that Michael refers to (p. 5) (and which I address in Chapter 1 of my book). Discussion on this point can readily raise fundamental philosophical questions about what is of value in human existence. Weaning people away from certain tastes/addictions fostered by capitalist society will not be easy. One can hope that the "eco-" framework -- i.e., recognition of the emergency faced by our entire species -- will help spur the necessary collective introspection. I would also like to respond to a few points from Herman Daly’s comment as well: 1. I think that Daly’s allusions to the complexity of the necessary planning process are on target. The difficulties he evokes are what I have in mind when I refer (above) to the need to go beyond merely plebiscitary expressions of preference and to instead establish clearly defined structures for discussion and accountability at every level. 2. I believe that Marxists have learned from the negative aspects of the 20th-century experiences of socialism. Efforts at delineating democratic approaches to planning are an indication of this (see Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work, 2012), and there is indeed widespread agreement on the need to redefine the objectives of economic policy away from an emphasis on growth (see continuing coverage of ecological issues in Monthly Review). It is certainly possible to criticize existing models of planning while retaining a socialist framework (see Michael Lebowitz, The Contradictions of Real Socialism, 2012). The politically important point, though, is that the supposed “Marxist” pursuit of growth, to the extent that it has prevailed, is in fact a reflection of the persistent impact of capitalism, whether in the form of competitive or military pressure from imperialist powers or in the form of an internalization of capitalist values, as currently embodied in the Chinese case. (The Chinese government’s allegiance to Marxism may be fruitfully compared with the US government’s allegiance to democracy.) 3. Regarding the issue of social equality, the point is not to prescribe multiples of difference between top and bottom incomes, but rather to assure that there is no dominant *class*. The size of individual incomes becomes less vital to the extent that an increasing share of necessary goods and services is provided independently of the market. The irrationality of market indicators for such necessities as healthcare is widely recognized. In light of ecological considerations, it should be clear that this also applies to the use of land and energy resources, among other things. One should not let the shortcomings of previous attempts at socialism get in the way of seeing that a socialist framework is necessary to addressing ecological issues on the scale that they require. Whatever residual role markets may play for allocating items of immediate personal consumption, they have no legitimate role in determining the overall utilization of space. The prerogative of an individual or a corporation to “own” land and thereby have a “right” to have all the trees on it cut down can have no place in an ecological vision. But it remains a possibility in the context of capitalism. Victor Wallis www.victorwallis.com *************************************************************************************** Friday, November 2, 2018 >From Herman Daly <hdaly(a)umd.edu> ----- Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War know that it was basically a contest between Socialism and Capitalism to see who could grow faster, and thereby accumulate more wealth and military power. The audience was the uncommitted countries of the world who would supposedly adopt the economic system of the winner of the growth race. What happened? Basically, Socialism collapsed, and Capitalism won by default. The losers (Russia, China, Eastern Europe) got back in the growth race by adopting State Capitalism, and China has become the growth champion. The present system of world growthism, in the broadly capitalist mode, is triumphant. But growthism itself has turned out to be a false god because growth in our finite and entropic world now increases ecological and social costs faster than production benefits, making us poorer, not richer (except for the top few percent). Recognition of this reversal is obscured by the fact that our national accounts (GDP), do not subtract the costs of growth, but effectively add them by counting the expenditures incurred to defend ourselves from the un-subtracted costs of growth. Even more egregiously, GDP counts the consumption of natural capital as income. Growthism is consuming the life support capacity of the ecosystem for the benefit of a small minority of the present generation, while shifting the real but uncounted costs on to the poor, future generations, and other species. (see www.greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world ) Ecosocialists, ably represented by the distinguished scholar Michael Lowy, seem to recognize this disaster, so environmentalists and ecological economists are inclined to be glad of their help in opposing rampant growthist capitalism. We certainly need help. But how much help in developing a workable green economy are red ecosocialists likely to be? Maybe not much, for reasons suggested below. Marx himself was overwhelmingly a perceptive critic of capitalism, and hardly at all an architect of socialism, which remained for him a vague prophetic vision. Marxist socialist states have an impressive historical record of economic failure, political oppression, and abuse of human rights and religious freedom. The net flow of refugees was decidedly away from, not toward, socialist countries. How does Lowy deal with this well-documented and very negative historical experience? First by frankly recognizing it, and then by asking us to simply ignore the "*actually existing socialisms of the twentieth century*" and focus on Marxist *theory* instead. This reminds me of the growth economists who ask us to focus on the elegance of neoclassical optimization theory and downplay the massive external costs and monopoly concentration of wealth and power of actual corporate capitalism. Theory is always neater than reality---for both capitalism and socialism. While Scandinavian socialism is an example we can benefit from, Marxist socialist economies no longer exist (except for North Korea). Our given starting point for reform is rampant growthist capitalism. If socialism had won the disastrous growth Race, then we would be starting our reforms from socialist initial conditions, and Marxist theory would have been more relevant. But that did not happen, however much Marxists may regret the fact. If one believes that Marxist theory is nevertheless true, then it would be worth starting over on that basis. But it contains basic errors that would likely lead to a repeated failure. Marxists have been very slow to recognize the reality of limits to growth, in spite of Marx's now oft-quoted prescient paragraph about "metabolic rift"---a paragraph certainly worth building on. Furthermore, there are some basic reasons for Marxists' unwillingness to identify growth as the core problem. Marx dismissed any appeal to morality or sharing as "utopian socialism.” The "new socialist man" would emerge from his bourgeois greed only on the basis of overwhelming material abundance, emerging under historically determined scientific socialism, "guided" by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Overwhelming abundance requires growth to the point that scarcity is objectively overcome, and therefore the moral demands for sharing scarce goods, emphasized by the "utopian" socialists, become unnecessary in "scientific" socialism. Lowy has a section on growth, in which he opines that, "*The issue is not excessive consumption in the abstract, but the prevalent type of consumption*" dominated by fashion and advertising. I agree with his criticism of advertising, but the basic problem is the actual, not abstract, level of per capita resource consumption, mainly of the wealthy, not just the frivolous things they consume. And of course the number of consumers. There is no discussion of limiting resource consumption, much less limiting population growth, the latter a topic which Marxists, as well as the capitalist cheap-labor lobby, go far out of their way to avoid. With the exception of post-Maoist China, Marxist regimes have generally thought that more people are better than fewer, a view that environmentalists would actually agree with, as long as the people are not all alive at the same time! Marx's hatred for Malthus and his dismissal of overpopulation are well known, and continue to mute Marxist attention to limits to growth. Lowy, and Marxists in general, take a very dim view of markets and a very rosy view of central planning. There is plenty of need for both markets and planning, depending on the type of good in question. Goods are either physically rival or non-rival, and either legally excludable or non-excludable. My shirt is a rival good--if I am wearing it, you can't wear it at the same time; it is also excludable because I have the right to keep you from wearing it, or to allow you to. Goods that are both rival and excludable are market goods that can be, and usually are, allocated by markets. Goods that are non-rival and non-excludable are pure public goods, like a just legal and ethical code or the Pythagorean Theorem, for which there can be no market. Goods that are rival but non-excludable, like fish caught on the high seas or water pumped from an aquifer, are subject to the tragedy of the open-access commons and require collective action to avoid overexploitation. Goods that are non-rival but excludable, like patented knowledge or information, are inefficiently allocated and the revenue from their artificial price is unjustly distributed by markets. For the last three categories, markets work poorly or not at all, and consequently, collective planning is necessary. That should provide plenty of opportunity for ecosocialists' contributions! For market goods, a large category including the basics of food, clothing, and shelter, market allocation usually works better than planning, if governments can limit or regulate monopoly. Since three of the four categories require government planning, it is doubly important to avoid overloading government capacity for needed collective planning by unnecessarily imposing it on the large first category as well. However, Lowy, and Marxists generally, have an ideological antipathy to markets---to supply and demand, and prices, and especially to profit. They prefer central planning, or as Lowy calls it robust "*democratic ecological planning*." How did *economic* planning become *ecological* planning? Do ecosocialists really intend to centrally plan the ecosystem as well as the economy? Perhaps they mean economic planning in the light of ecological limits---but then we would need more discussion of limits. The historical failure of War Communism with its direct physical requisitioning of goods was corrected by Lenin's New Economic Policy, which reinstated considerable reliance on markets. That socialist lesson seems to be ignored. Likewise ignored are the theoretical criticisms of even socialist economists, such as Oskar Lange, who in his On the Economic Theory of Socialism demonstrates how markets can efficiently serve socialism as well as capitalism. Lowy dismisses criticism of central planning as "conservative fearmongering". Instead he tells us that "*the core of ecosocialism is the concept of democratic ecological planning, wherein the population itself, not “the market” or a Politburo, make the main decisions about the economy*." Imagine the consequences of market goods (food, clothing, and shelter plus a whole lot more) being "*freely distributed, according to the will of the citizens*." The democratic will of the citizens is to be expressed by voting. How much steel shall we produce? Citizens vote. How much of that steel will go to the production of, say, wood screws, for example? The citizens vote again. Of the wood screws how many will be round head, how many flat head countersunk, slot head, or Phillips head? How many cadmium-plated; how many chrome-plated? And some screws are made of brass or aluminum, not steel. And how many of each length and diameter, etc.? And who shall receive how many of each type? The citizens robustly and democratically vote again and again as conditions change, although most have no idea of the myriad special uses of different types of screw, and may not even know which end of a screwdriver to hold. Meanwhile those people who actually use screws and know their uses are not able to "vote" with their money in markets and thereby convey reliable information to producers about what mix of the nearly infinitely many types of screw is most needed, and would be most profitable to produce. Instead we have all citizens spending absurd amounts of their time "democratically" voting, mostly about things they don't understand, while those with the most information about actual use-values of screws are "disenfranchised" by the absence of markets. Yet Lowy claims that in a planned ecosocialist economy, "*use-value would be the only criteria for the production of goods and services*." Use-value as judged mostly by non-users---what could possibly go wrong? With so much effort wasted on attempting to plan the allocation of market goods there will be little capacity left to plan the use of true public goods, to avoid the tragedy of the commons, and the larcenous market enclosure of non-rival goods. Of course, the humble wood screw is only one of millions of market goods that would be grossly misallocated by "democratic ecological planning". If one thinks my example of the wood screw is too trivial, then ask the same questions about a more complex commodity of your choice. Lowy expects that, "*as the ecosocialist transition moves forward, more products and services critical for meeting fundamental human needs would be freely distributed, according to the will of the citizens*." Overwhelming material abundance and the "new socialist man" will apparently have arrived, along with the abolition of scarcity. But with little discussion of growth or its costs. Without markets (supply and demand, prices, and yes, profit), there could be no self-employment. Everyone would be a salaried employee of the state, giving the state monopsony power in the labor market. No one could identify a needed good or service and make a living by providing it. Happily, Lowy at least would allow small shops and artisan enterprises to escape the planner. Ecosocialism aspires to be egalitarian and ecologically sustainable. But nothing is said in this essay about proper limits to the range of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. Should the richest citizen be four times as wealthy as the poorest, as Plato thought? Ten times? A thousand times? And what do ecosocialists think about macro limits to growth of resource throughput? Many of the ecosocialists' objections to market allocation would disappear if the underlying degree of inequality of wealth and income distribution were more formally and tightly limited, and if the aggregate scale of throughput of energy and materials were restricted to some level of ecological sustainability. Instead of correcting excessive throughput scale, and excessive distributional inequality, which of course are reflected in market prices and allocation, ecosocialists just attack market allocation itself, as if underlying scale and distribution problems could be solved by breaking the mirror that reflects them. What are ecosocialists' policies for directly limiting throughput scale and distributional inequality? Voting is indeed required at this point, but there must be some policy to vote on. And in the three categories where planning has long been recognized as necessary, what policies are recommended for providing and financing public goods, for avoiding overexploitation of the commons, and for protecting non-rival goods from illicit privatization? I realize that not everything could be considered in a brief essay. But I hope that these omitted policy questions, as well as ecosocialist laxity in recognizing both limits to growth and historical failures of socialism, will be explored in the ensuing discussion. Herman Daly ****************************************************************************************** Thursday, November 1, 2018 Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future (GTN Discussion) >From Paul Raskin <praskin(a)tellus.org> ----- Dear GTN, Is the Great Transition a post-capitalist project? Yes: its core values and aims—human solidarity, quality of life, ecological resilience—contradict the individualism, consumerism, and abuse of nature fostered by societies that grant primacy to the profit motive. But post-capitalism is mere negation. Can what-we-are-for be boiled down to a single “ism”? Not easily, since a systemic transition invites a pluralistic praxis that weaves a whole cloth from myriad threads. GTN’s November discussion considers the twining of two cardinal “isms”—socialism and environmentalism. In the past, the green and the red have tended to snub or excoriate one another. Now, however, Michael Löwy argues in “Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future,” environmentalists need to be socialists, and socialists need to be environmentalists. The essay sets the challenge in historic context, makes the case for a red-green synthesis, and sketches the contours of an ecosocialist future. Michael gives us much to chew on and build on. Yet, I’m left wondering: Is ecosocialism the best formulation in the current context? Or should we be stressing a larger synthesis that encircles not only red and green, but all the colors of our rainbow movement? And to build that movement, shouldn’t our vision accommodate plural solutions to post-capitalist societies? For example, my “report from the future” depicts a regionally-diverse global civilization that includes Michael’s ecosocialist vision, but not exclusively.* I hope you’ll read Michael’s essay at www.greattransition.org/publication/why-ecosocialism-red-green-future, and weigh in. Comments are welcome through Friday, NOVEMBER 30. Over to you, Paul GTI Director *See Journey to Earthland, pp. 71-108, www.greattransition.org/publication/journey-to-earthland. ----- Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network Read all comments (or reply) at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/208-why-ecosocialism-for-a-re… Note: Expect a delay between posting and receiving your comment Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network Read all comments (or reply) at https://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/208-why-ecosocialism-for-… Note: Expect a delay between posting and receiving your comment Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: How America Can Free Itself from Wall Street
by Michel Bauwens 03 Nov '18

03 Nov '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Ellen Brown <Ellen.Brown(a)publicbankinginstitute.org> Date: Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 11:53 PM Subject: How America Can Free Itself from Wall Street To: <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Hi, here is my latest article, posted on Truthdig.com -- Trump's War on the Fed <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> Best wishes, Ellen http://EllenBrown.com <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> http://PublicBankingInstitute.org <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> P.S. to Los Angeles voters: Vote Yes on Charter Amendment B for a City-owned Bank! See Introductory Video here <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> by PublicBankLA <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> Unsubscribe <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1…> michel(a)p2pfoundation.net from this list. Update your profile <https://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1a9&i…> -- 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/

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Fwd: [Networked-Labour] #Googlewalkout employee interviews | Vox
by Michel Bauwens 03 Nov '18

03 Nov '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 12:06 AM Subject: [Networked-Labour] #Googlewalkout employee interviews | Vox To: Networked Labour <networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc> https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/googlewalkout-employee-intervie… Nearly 17,000 Google employees walked off the job yesterday. The Google walkout was about sexual harassment as well as a lack of transparency and accountability at the company, employees said. Google employees in Cambridge, Massachusetts, join a worldwide walkout in protest of company policies on sexual harassment.Lane Turner/Boston Globe via Getty Images Nearly 17,000 Google employees walked off the job yesterday as part of a massive, worldwide protest against the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment cases. The walkout, which was organized by seven Google employees, was a response to a New York Times report on the multimillion-dollar payouts offered to high-level employees who had been accused of sexual misconduct. Some protesters carried signs that read, “Happy to quit for $90m,” a reference to the exit package Google gave Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, who was forced to leave the company in 2014 after an employee accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him. “What do I do at Google? I work hard every day so the company can afford $90,000,000 payouts to execs who sexually harass my coworkers,” read another. It was also an opportunity for Google employees — who have repeatedly clashed with senior management on a number of topics, from censorship in China to the company’s role in government projects — to put forth a vision for a better, more equitable company. “A company is nothing without its workers,” the organizers wrote in a piece for the Cut. “From the moment we start at Google, we’re told that we aren’t just employees; we’re owners. Every person who walked out today is an owner, and the owners say: Time’s up.” Some of the employees who chose to speak with me about why they protested asked to be referred to by a pseudonym and to not specify which campus they work at, but felt that it was important to come forward. Two of the three people who agreed to speak with me are men, as are nearly 70 percent of all Google employees, according to the company’s annual diversity report. All of them emphasized that despite enjoying their jobs, they felt responsible for creating an environment where anyone could thrive, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity, and where no one was afraid to report harassment or assault. They also referred to past Google controversies, like the sexual harassment reported by former Google software engineer Kelly Ellis, who quit the company in 2014 because of its “sexist culture”; and the fact that internal company communications, including a video from an all-hands meeting, were leaked to the right-wing website Breitbart. Despite the massive size of the protests and the fact that Google sanctioned the walkout, support for it wasn’t universal. One employee told me that there were “people in the company who are against the walkout” and disagree with the organizers’ demands. (It’s worth noting that James Damore, the author of an “anti-diversity” manifesto who was fired in 2017, had plenty of ideological allies at the company.) Those who did participate in the walkout, though, view it as a necessary step in the ongoing fight toward equity and transparency at one of the world’s biggest companies. Their responses have been condensed and edited for clarity. Ashley*, a major US campus that isn’t Mountain View I’ve worked here for 11 years. I’m now a manager with around two people in my group. I have never experienced direct gender-based discrimination at Google, which I count myself lucky for. I have heard many other people’s stories, however — enough to make me sure that there’s an overall problem. I decided to participate because I wanted the execs to get the message that this is something a lot of people care about. Whether I participated was going to be visible to the people in my office, because there are literally five women at my site at this level. “I’ve been seeing more and more of a rift between the top-level execs and the rest of the company” We need to end forced arbitration in case of harassment and discrimination. I would also like a real commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity. I would be okay with starting with pay, which is easier. Transparent data on gender, race, and ethnicity compensation across all levels — accessible to all Google employees — would be really nice. This is something the US Department of Labor asked Google for, and [Google claims] it’s too expensive to provide while also claiming there is no gap. That doesn’t make sense to me or a lot of other people. I’ve been seeing more and more of a rift between the top-level execs and the rest of the company, and I’ve seen it growing slowly over time. It seems like some people are actively trying to make it worse. We have a real problem with [people] leaking internal communications, especially to right-wing sites, in a way that’s extremely divisive [and] corrosive to the idea of trust and open communication within the company, which is something that we really used to rely on. Google used to have this weekly meeting where the execs would take all kinds of hard questions from the employees, and they would field them pretty honestly and transparently. That was great. Without that kind of channel, it’s been pretty tough. I’ve been working in the tech industry for about 20 years, and this is the most concerted effort I’ve seen by engineers in the tech sector [to address these issues]. Today was really astonishing. Frankly, there were more men than women walking out — that’s the demographics [at Google]. But it’s great to have allies. I didn’t say anything either way to my team, because I didn’t want there to be social pressure to do it or not do it. But at 11:08, my entire team stood up simultaneously around me and I got shivers. I got up too, and we all walked out together. Jacob*, a West Coast campus I participated to show solidarity and support for my co-workers. I’m a guy; it’s so much easier to shoot the shit with other guys, and stuff like that helps [professionally]. But I don’t think that’s what this walkout is about. This walkout dealt with things that are a lot more severe. I had heard stories regarding Kelly Ellis. That was the first Google [sexual harassment] story that broke out a few years ago. What’s most important is getting rid of [forced] arbitration. Uber got rid of it after their big scandal, and I think Google needs to follow suit. We need accountability, transparency, and making sure it’s easier for people to report harassment. I’ve never reported harassment, but from what I’ve heard from my friends, it is not fun. It’s scary as hell. [The person you’re reporting] might not be your boss but your boss’s boss. They have all the power over your career. If they do a shitty thing, we should be empowering employees to say, “Hey, stop that.” That’s what I think the demands are trying to cover. Alex, Mountain View campus I’ve heard too many stories from friends, some co-workers, about being sexually harassed or assaulted at Google, but also in other parts of the tech industry or more generally. I work with several women engineers, and I really think it’s important for them to feel safe and to actually be safe at work and in general. I don’t want these people to be in a position where they have to be constantly worrying about that sort of thing. “I have worked with an overwhelming majority of men. That, in and of itself, leads me to think that the fact that I am male-identified and male-presenting makes things easier for me.” I have worked with an overwhelming majority of men. That, in and of itself, leads me to think that the fact that I am male-identified and male-presenting makes things easier for me. It’s been mostly subtle things, like [women] being interrupted more often [or] ending up in all note-taking responsibilities for meetings. Sometimes managers and team members are good at trying to fix [that], but those more subtle things are not always very obvious. It’s the nature of privilege that as a man, some of these things I just don’t see and I’m just used to, unfortunately. We need more employee representation and more ability for employees to [raise concerns with] people who are actually on their side. I think there’s not much trust in human resources to do the right thing for employees. There’s a lot of trust that they’re going to do the right thing for the company, which is sometimes the same thing, but sometimes it’s not. I also think there’s a dearth of transparency about compensation. Several of us have asked, in the past, for the company to release salary data, so we could look at it ourselves and say, “Well, it looks like this is biased toward a particular demographic.” Management has been reluctant to do that, claiming it would put them at a competitive disadvantage, which I frankly don’t buy. Transparency and letting employees have a seat at the table are two things that would be most impactful in letting us address these issues, not just in terms of gender but also race. I like my job, but everybody has concerns. If you participated in the Google walkout and want to talk about your experience at the company, you can contact me by email here. *Names have been changed. original post: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/2/18056390/google-walkout-employee-in… _______________________________________________ Networked-labour_igopnet mailing list Networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc http://grups.pangea.org/mailman/listinfo/networked-labour_igopnet -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: [Networked-Labour] Against the Logistics of Exploitation (Stockholm Meeting, Nov 23-25) | Transnational Social Strike Platform
by Michel Bauwens 03 Nov '18

03 Nov '18

innovative labor thinking: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 12:41 PM Subject: [Networked-Labour] Against the Logistics of Exploitation (Stockholm Meeting, Nov 23-25) | Transnational Social Strike Platform To: Networked Labour <networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc> https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/against-the-logistics-of-exploi… Against the Logistics of Exploitation (Stockholm Meeting, Nov 23-25) | Transnational Social Strike Platform Read the first program outline: https://www.transnational-strike.info/2018/10/26/against-the-logistics-of-e… Unions and collectives from Sweden, UK, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Spain, Norway, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czech Republic have confirmed their presence. Please in order to take part in the meeting fill in this registration form: https://goo.gl/forms/MKJnOiKzRZA3GqMI2 Read the call out in several languages: https://www.transnational-strike.info/2018/05/24/against-the-logistics-of-e… Check out the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/342866613135963/ Presentation: Against the Logistics of Exploitation: Notes from the TSS Platform Over the weekend of November 23rd-25th, 2018, the Transnational Social Strike Platform (TSS) calls workers, union members and activists from across Europe and beyond to meet in Stockholm to discuss how to organize against logistical command over labor. We call logistical command a set of transformations that interests the whole world, changing economies, political geographies and the functioning of society and institutions. As logistics is one of the main forces that affects the capacity of workers and migrants to organize and win, a new assessment of the situation in which we act is needed in order to increase the capacity of our struggles: logistics is a battlefield we need to understand and practice if we want to reverse today’s power relations. Two are the intertwined dimensions of this logistical command we want to focus on. The first one concerns the material connections that tie together production sites across the globe: what happens in one spot of the chains of production and distribution affects the other spots. Multinational companies, international subcontracting, posting of workers, outsourcing, privatizations of formerly public enterprises: all these processes place each workplace, factory, warehouse, construction site into a wider and interconnected network. Moreover, the development of international infrastructural projects such as The New Silk Road, creating material, economic and political links between China and Europe throughout Central Asia, pushes us to come to terms with the coexistence of a wildly differentiated situation in terms of working conditions and organizing practices. The second one concerns the fact that such transformations are strictly connected to a politics of regulations of labor and government of mobility that affects every place, albeit in different ways, producing both interdependency and fragmentation. Logistics is first and foremost the transnational organization of labor we need to confront. This organization has produced in the last years new seedbeds of struggles: sensible points to be disrupted, new concentration of labor force in strategic nodes, new strike waves and connections between migrant and native workers. At the same time, logistics responds to conflict by isolating, fragmenting and weakening the possibility for a collective rebellion against exploitation and its conditions. We thus need to elaborate a clear picture of the ways in which the logistical management of labor acts in order not to make our struggles be just temporary, isolated and predictable setbacks in the gears of this transnational engine. While struggles are too often confined to single industrial categories and based at the national level, company and bosses benefit from different national labor laws and wage differentials and “delocalization” effects are played out in each locality through outsourcing, the multiplication of employment forms and the hiring of blackmailed precarious and migrant labor. At the same time, an increasing mobility of workers across labor sectors and borders reveals a workers’ use of this very mobility against the pretension of logistical command. We witness a reality of widespread but scattered forms of insubordination to logistical command, which shows the possibility of its rejection. But all this calls for new forms of organization and requires overcoming the narrowness of sectorial disputes and the limits of the present forms of union organizing and activist solidarity, especially in terms of transnational connections and efficacy of the strikes: while nationalist discourses divide workers leaving capital’s rule undisturbed, we need to surpass the idea that a national dimension of struggle can keep up with the attack of logistical command. The case of this summer’s Amazon strike launched from Spain and then taken up by warehouses across Europe, is a concrete example of the necessity to build on existing insubordinations to develop struggles that are transnational from their start. But the impact of logistical command does not simply concern the way in which labor is organized across the borders. The reorganization of production has been paired everywhere with reforms and policies that cut welfare benefits, erase previous conquests, govern the mobility of migrants from within and without the EU. Reforms such as Hartz IV in Germany, the Jobs Act in Italy, the Loi Travail and Ordonnances in France, regulations against the right to strike and to cut welfare benefits are good examples in this regard. Even the heralded “social” and “anti-European” measures taken up by right-wing governments throughout Europe – as in the case of Italy – are only apparently against this flow and both reinforce logistical command, the conditions of subordination of workers and foster fragmentation. Our hypothesis is that the logistical transformation only works if it is supported by certain kinds of policies, by now widespread throughout the globe, that have the general effect to constrain workers to work at whatever condition, to fragment them and to weaken their capacity to advance any collective claim. Sweden – where we decided to hold our next meeting – is emblematic in this regard: the recent law proposal intending to make most forms of strike illegal, cripples workers’ influence in a way that is unmatched in Swedish history. The restriction of the right to strike is directly aimed against workers in the logistics sector, crucial for a strongly internationalized economy as the Swedish one. Even in a country where the social democratic compromise seemed strong and stable, the impact of logistics and neoliberal policies is hitting hard. In response to this attack, the Strike Back movement has successfully been launched, producing a strong convergence of energies. While the law might be anyhow enforced, the challenge is now to elaborate new strategies to counteract its effects. As already in the movement against the loi travail in France, one of such strategies is the recognition and establishment of transnational connections and a re-centering of transnational solidarity and wider political connections in the conflict practices of domestic workers. Connected to this, we think that the outburst of institutional racism and of the bloody legislations on migration has only apparently the sole aim of keeping migrants outside the borders of the EU or specific countries: on the contrary, it is also aimed at setting up a space where workers can move regularly only when they are required to and are available to work no matter how and under the blackmail of institutional racism. The recent agreement in Germany for a new selective immigration law is a stark example in this regard. But institutional racism takes different forms across Europe, from pro-European policies to violent nationalism : if the first follows the logistical fantasy of a fully governed mobility, the latter reinforces exploitation through the criminalization of migrants. It is important to recognize that both options are violent answers to the widespread rise of social insecurity and the forms of insubordination of workers and migrants. Moreover, despite these attempts the massive movements of migrants are what in principle puts the logistics management of labor into crisis, because it is uncontrollable, it doesn’t fit in the gears. The mass migrants’ caravan crossing Mexico directed to the United States and the never ending strike against the borders along the so called Balkan route are two visible examples of the global struggle of migrants against logistical command. But this struggle emerges everywhere migrants fight against institutional racism and the attempt of making them politically silent, such as in the case of the Afghans’ strike in Sweden. Confronted with all of this we believe that the possibility to reclaim national governments to fight against logistical command on the side of workers is out of time. This poses the crucial questions of what kind of political claims we can fight for in this situation, and what kind of political dimension we need to consider if we want to be effective. As TSS, we insist that the transnational dimension is the only viable option. This has to do both with the existence of global supply chains, and the existence of global conditions in each and every place. We do not deny that positive examples have been able to obtain partial victories. But we think the times requires a radical reinvention of forms of organization, discourses and aims in order to point towards a transformation of the present. The question is in front of us of how do we build connections that turn differences in a collective and transnational political force against the fragmentation produced by logistical command. Our meeting has thus a practical political aim: to materialize connections both in spatial and political terms. We want to overcome the idea that labor disputes, migrant struggles and struggle over welfare and social benefits are separated fields, and to imagine unprecedented connections recognizing the fact that nationalism and racism against migrants are directly used by logistics to produce hierarchies, organize labor and make higher profits. For this reason, we seek to bring together those who have taken part in disputes against logistical command across and beyond the European space. We are aware of the profound imbalances on which logistical networks feed: we see the difference of conditions between, say, places such as Sweden or Georgia, Italy or Poland. However, inspired by the global women’s strike that in the last two years has unleashed the potential and the novelty of a global practice of the strike, we want to focus on how to cope with these differences and how to lift the obstacles we meet when imagining the possibility of connecting existing struggles and organizing wider ones confronting the logistics of exploitation. We take up the challenge of rooting our strategies from within these different landscapes of existing and potential insubordination, in order to develop a political infrastructure that does not privilege certain models of labor organizing over others, eventually reproducing those same hierarchies we seek to fight. For these reasons, our meeting proposes to be a space of encounter of different realities from which to continue and enlarge a process of confrontation and composition of demands and actions against the logistics of exploitation. The meeting in Stockholm will be a crucial step in the construction, independently from any kind of connection with institutional politics, of the political infrastructure we need. Source: https://www.transnational-strike.info/2018/10/26/against-the-logistics-of-e… _______________________________________________ Networked-labour_igopnet mailing list Networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc http://grups.pangea.org/mailman/listinfo/networked-labour_igopnet -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: Blockchain and commons governance
by Michel Bauwens 03 Nov '18

03 Nov '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Google Scholar Alerts <scholaralerts-noreply(a)google.com> Date: Σάβ, 3 Νοε 2018 - 12:36 μμ Subject: New citations to my articles To: <alex.pazaitis(a)gmail.com> [PDF] When Ostrom Meets Blockchain: Exploring the Potentials of Blockchain for Commons Governance <http://scholar.google.gr/scholar_url?url=https://www.researchgate.net/profi…> D Rozas, A Tenorio-Fornés Abstract Blockchain technologies have generated excitement, yet their potential to enable new forms of governance remains largely unexplored. Two confronting standpoints dominate the emergent debate around blockchain-based … [image: Twitter] <http://scholar.google.gr/scholar_share?hl=en&oi=scholaralrt&ss=tw&url=https…> [image: Facebook] <http://scholar.google.gr/scholar_share?hl=en&oi=scholaralrt&ss=fb&url=https…> List my alerts <http://scholar.google.gr/scholar_alerts?view_op=list_alerts&email_for_op=al…> Cancel alert <http://scholar.google.gr/scholar_alerts?view_op=cancel_alert_options&email_…> This alert is sent by Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a service by Google. -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Tech & Social Good: Help Me Build a Collection of Online Resources
by Yosem Companys 01 Nov '18

01 Nov '18

Hi All, Does anyone know whether there's a collection of all syllabi and readings on technology and social good (or public good or social change)? If such a collection doesn't exist, could you help me create one? The readings can be from any discipline, seminal or not, and academic or not. For the Stanford Program for Liberation Technology, I once made a list of all the topics on social good that I found on Twitter that intersected with technology. These included the following: - Accountability, Corruption, Openness, and Transparency (e.g., Open Data, Freedom of Information - FOI) - Activism, Protests, and Movements (e.g., Occupy, Anonymous, Hacktivism) - Agriculture, Farming, and Food Security (e.g., eAgri, Fishing, Mariculture, Aquaponics, Aquaculture) - Censorship, Repression, and Freedom (e.g., Freedom of Expression - FoE, Free Speech, NetFreedom, Right to Information - RTI) - Construction, Housing, and Real Estate (e.g., Smart Homes, Internet of Things) - Democracy, Politics, Elections, and Voting (e.g., Netroots, Tea Party, eVoting) - Development (e.g., Information and Communication Technologies for Development - ICT4D, Tech for Development - Tech4Dev, Global Development - GlobalDev) - Economics (e.g., Participatory Economy, Peer-to-Peer Economy, Commons) - Education (e.g., Information and Communication Technologies for Education - ICT4E, Open Education, eLearning, MOOCs) - Energy and Power (e.g., Microgrids) - Entrepreneurship (e.g., Social Entrepreneurship - socent, Social Innovation) - Environment (e.g., Brownfields, Landfills, Superfund Sites, Climate Change, and Land, Water, and Air Preservation) - Finance (e.g., Microfinance, FinTech, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies) - Governance (e.g., eGovernance - eGov, Open Governance - OpenGov, Governance 2.0 - gov20) - Health (e.g., eHealth, mHealth, Telemedicine) - Human rights - Manufacturing (e.g., Additive Technologies, 3D Printing, Do-It-Yourself - DIY, Robotics) - Media (e.g., Journalism, Social Media) - Organizing and Organizations (e.g., Nonprofits, Community-Based Organizations, Cooperatives, Labor Unions) - Physical Spaces and Locations (e.g., Libraries, Coworking Spaces, Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, Fab Labs, Tool Sharing Libraries, Smart Cities, Mapping) - Policy and Law (e.g., Policy Innovations, Legal Innovations) - Privacy (e.g., Rules, Regulations, Laws, Frameworks) - Resilience During Conflicts, Natural Disasters, and Other Crises (e.g., Crisis Mapping; Robotics) - Security, Physical or Cyber - Social Science (e.g., Impact of Technology on Society) - Transportation and Supply Chain on Land, Water, and Air (e.g., Hyperloop, Autonomous Vehicles, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Drones, Smart Roads) - Volunteering (e.g., Crowdsourcing, Participatory Mapping) - Water Security (e.g., Watersheds, Water Purification) The list above isn't meant to be exhaustive, so please feel free to suggest other forms of grouping topics or let me know if I missed an important topic or hashtag. I truly appreciate your help and advice, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks, Yosem

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