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

Fwd: [Authoritarian-working-group] Who needs democracy when you have data?
by Michel Bauwens 08 Sep '18

08 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Nick Buxton <nick(a)tni.org> Date: Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 10:43 PM Subject: [Authoritarian-working-group] Who needs democracy when you have data? To: <authoritarian-working-group(a)lists.tni.org>, <associates(a)lists.tni.org> Cc: Stephanie Olinga-Shannon <s.olingashannon(a)tni.org> A disturbing read that sounds like a sci-fi novel but is already here - in China clearly but in various forms everywhere. Ironically I suspect the focus on China is because they are more open about this surveillance of citizens than many in the West are. Watching the film Snowden this week reminds you of that. But China is clearly a prominent testing ground for a new arena of not just authoritarianism but digital totalitarianism Who needs democracy when you have data? Here’s how China rules using data, AI, and internet surveillance. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611815/who-needs-democracy-when-you-have… - by Christina Larson <https://www.technologyreview.com/profile/christina-larson/> In 1955, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story about an experiment in “electronic democracy,” in which a single citizen, selected to represent an entire population, responded to questions generated by a computer named Multivac. The machine took this data and calculated the results of an election that therefore never needed to happen. Asimov’s story was set in Bloomington, Indiana, but today an approximation of Multivac is being built in China. For any authoritarian regime, “there is a basic problem for the center of figuring out what’s going on at lower levels and across society,” says Deborah Seligsohn, a political scientist and China expert at Villanova University in Philadelphia. How do you effectively govern a country that’s home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society, if you don’t allow public debate, civil activism, and electoral feedback? How do you gather enough information to actually make decisions? And how does a government that doesn’t invite its citizens to participate still engender trust and bend public behavior without putting police on every doorstep? Hu Jintao, China’s leader from 2002 to 2012, had attempted to solve these problems by permitting a modest democratic thaw, allowing avenues for grievances to reach the ruling class. His successor, Xi Jinping, has reversed that trend. Instead, his strategy for understanding and responding to what is going on in a nation of 1.4 billion relies on a combination of surveillance, AI, and big data to monitor people’s lives and behavior in minute detail. It helps that a tumultuous couple of years in the world’s democracies have made the Chinese political elite feel increasingly justified in shutting out voters. Developments such as Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, the rise of far-right parties across Europe, and Rodrigo Duterte’s reign of terror in the Philippines underscore what many critics see as the problems inherent in democracy, especially populism, instability, and precariously personalized leadership. Since becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi has laid out a raft of ambitious plans for the country, many of them rooted in technology—including a goal to become the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. Xi has called for “cyber sovereignty” to enhance censorship and assert full control over the domestic internet. In May, he told a meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that technology was the key to achieving “the great goal of building a socialist and modernized nation.” In January, when he addressed the nation on television, the bookshelves on either side of him contained both classic titles such as Das Kapital and a few new additions, including two books about artificial intelligence: Pedro Domingos’s *The Master Algorithm *and Brett King’s* Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane*. “No government has a more ambitious and far-reaching plan to harness the power of data to change the way it governs than the Chinese government,” says Martin Chorzempa of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. Even some foreign observers, watching from afar, may be tempted to wonder if such data-driven governance offers a viable alternative to the increasingly dysfunctionallooking electoral model. But over-relying on the wisdom of technology and data carries its own risks. *Data instead of dialogue* Chinese leaders have long wanted to tap public sentiment without opening the door to heated debate and criticism of the authorities. For most of imperial and modern Chinese history, there has been a tradition of disgruntled people from the countryside traveling to Beijing and staging small demonstrations as public “petitioners.” The thinking was that if local authorities didn’t understand or care about their grievances, the emperor might show better judgment. Under Hu Jintao, some members of the Communist Party saw a limited openness as a possible way to expose and fix certain kinds of problems. Blogs, anticorruption journalists, human-rights lawyers, and online critics spotlighting local corruption drove public debate toward the end of Hu’s reign. Early in his term, Xi received a daily briefing of public concerns and disturbances scraped from social media, according to a former US official with knowledge of the matter. In recent years, petitioners have come to the capital to draw attention to scandals such as illegal land seizures by local authorities and contaminated milk powder. But police are increasingly stopping petitioners from ever reaching Beijing. “Now trains require national IDs to purchase tickets, which makes it easy for the authorities to identify potential ‘troublemakers’ such as those who have protested against the government in the past,” says Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Several petitioners told us they have been stopped at train platforms.” The bloggers, activists, and lawyers are also being systematically silenced or imprisoned, as if data can give the government the same information without any of the fiddly problems of freedom. [image: Photo of a facial recognition software applied to video footage of shoppers.] A Shanghai startup’s demo of its system for facial recognition. The idea of using networked technology as a tool of governance in China goes back to at least the mid-1980s. As Harvard historian Julian Gewirtz explains, “When the Chinese government saw that information technology was becoming a part of daily life, it realized it would have a powerful new tool for both gathering information and controlling culture, for making Chinese people more ‘modern’ and more ‘governable’—which have been perennial obsessions of the leadership.” Subsequent advances, including progress in AI and faster processors, have brought that vision closer. As far as we know, there is no single master blueprint linking technology and governance in China. But there are several initiatives that share a common strategy of harvesting data about people and companies to inform decision-making and create systems of incentives and punishments to influence behavior. These initiatives include the State Council’s 2014 “Social Credit System,” the 2016 Cybersecurity Law, various local-level and private-enterprise experiments in “social credit,” “smart city” plans, and technology-driven policing in the western region of Xinjiang. Often they involve partnerships between the government and China’s tech companies. The most far-reaching is the Social Credit System, though a better translation in English might be the “trust” or “reputation” system. The government plan, which covers both people and businesses, lists among its goals the “construction of sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, and judicial credibility.” (“Everybody in China has an auntie who’s been swindled. There is a legitimate need to address a breakdown in public trust,” says Paul Triolo, head of the geotechnology practice at the consultancy Eurasia Group.) To date, it’s a work in progress, though various pilots preview how it might work in 2020, when it is supposed to be fully implemented. The algorithm is thought to highlight suspicious behaviors such as visiting a mosque or owning too many books. Blacklists are the system’s first tool. For the past five years, China’s court system has published the names of people who haven’t paid fines or complied with judgments. Under new social-credit regulations, this list is shared with various businesses and government agencies. People on the list have found themselves blocked from borrowing money, booking flights, and staying at luxury hotels. China’s national transport companies have created additional blacklists, to punish riders for behavior like blocking train doors or picking fights during a journey; offenders are barred from future ticket purchases for six or 12 months. Earlier this year, Beijing debuted a series of blacklists to prohibit “dishonest” enterprises from being awarded future government contracts or land grants. A few local governments have experimented with social-credit “scores,” though it’s not clear if they will be part of the national plan. The northern city of Rongcheng, for example, assigns a score to each of its 740,000 residents, Foreign Policy reported. Everyone begins with 1,000 points. If you donate to a charity or win a government award, you gain points; if you violate a traffic law, such as by driving drunk or speeding through a crosswalk, you lose points. People with good scores can earn discounts on winter heating supplies or get better terms on mortgages; those with bad scores may lose access to bank loans or promotions in government jobs. City Hall showcases posters of local role models, who have exhibited “virtue” and earned high scores. “The idea of social credit is to monitor and manage how people and institutions behave,” says Samantha Hoffman of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. “Once a violation is recorded in one part of the system, it can trigger responses in other parts of the system. It’s a concept designed to support both economic development and social management, and it’s inherently political.” Some parallels to parts of China’s blueprint already exist in the US: a bad credit score can prevent you from taking out a home loan, while a felony conviction suspends or annuls your right to vote, for example. “But they’re not all connected in the same way—there’s no overarching plan,” Hoffman points out. One of the biggest concerns is that because China lacks an independent judiciary, citizens have no recourse for disputing false or inaccurate allegations. Some have found their names added to travel blacklists without notification after a court decision. Petitioners and investigative journalists are monitored according to another system, and people who’ve entered drug rehab are watched by yet a different monitoring system. “Theoretically the drug-user databases are supposed to erase names after five or seven years, but I’ve seen lots of cases where that didn’t happen,” says Wang of Human Rights Watch. “It’s immensely difficult to ever take yourself off any of these lists.” Occasional bursts of rage online point to public resentment. News that a student had been turned down by a college because of her father’s inclusion on a credit blacklist recently lit a wildfire of online anger. The college’s decision hadn’t been officially sanctioned or ordered by the government. Rather, in their enthusiasm to support the new policies, school administrators had simply taken them to what they saw as the logical conclusion. The opacity of the system makes it difficult to evaluate how effective experiments like Rongcheng’s are. The party has squeezed out almost all critical voices since 2012, and the risks of challenging the system—even in relatively small ways—have grown. What information is available is deeply flawed; systematic falsification of data on everything from GDP growth to hydropower use pervades Chinese government statistics. Australian National University researcher Borge Bakken estimates that official crime figures, which the government has a clear incentive to downplay, may represent as little as 2.5 percent of all criminal behavior. In theory, data-driven governance could help fix these issues—circumventing distortions to allow the central government to gather information directly. That’s been the idea behind, for instance, introducing air-quality monitors that send data back to central authorities rather than relying on local officials who may be in the pocket of polluting industries. But many aspects of good governance are too complicated to allow that kind of direct monitoring and instead rely on data entered by those same local officials. However, the Chinese government rarely releases performance data that outsiders might use to evaluate these systems. Take the cameras that are used to identify and shame jaywalkers in some cities by projecting their faces on public billboards, as well as to track the prayer habits of Muslims in western China. Their accuracy remains in question: in particular, how well can facial-recognition software trained on Han Chinese faces recognize members of Eurasian minority groups? Moreover, even if the data collection is accurate, how will the government use such information to direct or thwart future behavior? Police algorithms that predict who is likely to become a criminal are not open to public scrutiny, nor are statistics that would show whether crime or terrorism has grown or diminished. (For example, in the western region of Xinjiang, the available information shows only that the number of people taken into police custody has shot up dramatically, rising 731 percent from 2016 to 2017.) [image: Photo of a large monitor in a busy intersection showing images of a suspect.] In the city of Xiangyang, cameras linked to face-recognition technology project photos of jaywalkers, with names and ID numbers, on a billboard. “It’s not the technology that created the policies, but technology greatly expands the kinds of data that the Chinese government can collect on individuals,” says Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute and the author of *The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers*. “The internet in China acts as a real-time, privately run digital intelligence service.” *Algorithmic policing* Writing in the *Washington Post* earlier this year, Xiao Qiang, a professor of communications at the University of California, Berkeley, dubbed China’s data-enhanced governance “a digital totalitarian state.” The dystopian aspects are most obviously on display in western China. Xinjiang (“New Territory”) is the traditional home of a Chinese Muslim minority known as Uighurs. As large numbers of Han Chinese migrants have settled in—some say “colonized”—the region, the work and religious opportunities afforded to the local Uighur population have diminished. One result has been an uptick in violence in which both Han and Uighur have been targeted, including a 2009 riot in the capital city of Urumqi, when a reported 200 people died. The government’s response to rising tensions has not been to hold public forums to solicit views or policy advice. Instead, the state is using data collection and algorithms to determine who is “likely” to commit future acts of violence or defiance. The Xinjiang government employed a private company to design the predictive algorithms that assess various data streams. There’s no public record or accountability for how these calculations are built or weighted. “The people living under this system generally don’t even know what the rules are,” says Rian Thum, an anthropologist at Loyola University who studies Xinjiang and who has seen government procurement notices that were issued in building the system. In the western city of Kashgar, many of the family homes and shops on main streets are now boarded up, and the public squares are empty. When I visited in 2013, it was clear that Kashgar was already a segregated city—the Han and Uighur populations lived and worked in distinct sections of town. But in the evenings, it was also a lively and often noisy place, where the sounds of the call to prayer intermingled with dance music from local clubs and the conversations of old men sitting out late in plastic chairs on patios. Today the city is eerily quiet; neighborhood public life has virtually vanished. Emily Feng, a journalist for the *Financial Times*, visited Kashgar in June and posted photos on Twitter of the newly vacant streets. The reason is that by some estimates more than one in 10 Uighur and Kazakh adults in Xinjiang have been sent to barbed-wire-ringed “reeducation camps”—and those who remain at large are fearful. In the last two years thousands of checkpoints have been set up at which passersby must present both their face and their national ID card to proceed on a highway, enter a mosque, or visit a shopping mall. Uighurs are required to install government-designed tracking apps on their smartphones, which monitor their online contacts and the web pages they’ve visited. Police officers visit local homes regularly to collect further data on things like how many people live in the household, what their relationships with their neighbors are like, how many times people pray daily, whether they have traveled abroad, and what books they have. All these data streams are fed into Xinjiang’s public security system, along with other records capturing information on everything from banking history to family planning. “The computer program aggregates all the data from these different sources and flags those who might become ‘a threat’ to authorities,” says Wang. Though the precise algorithm is unknown, it’s believed that it may highlight behaviors such as visiting a particular mosque, owning a lot of books, buying a large quantity of gasoline, or receiving phone calls or email from contacts abroad. People it flags are visited by police, who may take them into custody and put them in prison or in reeducation camps without any formal charges. [image: Photo of people tapping ID cards on a device before entering a building.] Visitors to Tiananmen Square in Beijing scan their IDs at a checkpoint. Adrian Zenz, a political scientist at the European School of Culture and Theology in Korntal, Germany, calculates that the internment rate for minorities in Xinjiang may be as high as 11.5 percent of the adult population. These camps are designed to instill patriotism and make people unlearn religious beliefs. (New procurement notices for cremation security guards seem to indicate that the government is also trying to stamp out traditional Muslim burial practices in the region.) While Xinjiang represents one draconian extreme, elsewhere in China citizens are beginning to push back against some kinds of surveillance. An internet company that streamed closed-circuit TV footage online shut down those broadcasts after a public outcry. The city of Shanghai recently issued regulations to allow people to dispute incorrect information used to compile social-credit records. “There are rising demands for privacy from Chinese internet users,” says Samm Sacks, a senior fellow in the Technology Policy Program at CSIS in New York. “It’s not quite the free-for-all that it’s made out to be.” *Christina Larson is an award-winning foreign correspondent and science journalist, writing mostly about China and Asia.* -- ----------------------------------------------------- NICK BUXTON Futures Lab/Communications/Online Learning m: +1 530 902 3772 e: nick(a)tni.org twitter: @nickbuxton skype: nickbuxton w: www.tni.org ----------------------------------------------------- Read my latest book, The Secure and the Dispossessed (November 2015)www.climatesecurityagenda.org CONNECT WITH TNI - Sign up to TNI's e-newsletters: http://www.tni.org/subscribe - TNI on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TransnationalInstitute - TNI on twitter: https://twitter.com/TNInstitute _______________________________________________ Authoritarian-working-group mailing list Authoritarian-working-group(a)lists.tni.org https://lists.tni.org/mailman/listinfo/authoritarian-working-group -- 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: Taking Climate Action To The Next Level
by Michel Bauwens 07 Sep '18

07 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: The Next System Project <nextsystem(a)democracycollaborative.org> Date: Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 7:01 PM Subject: Taking Climate Action To The Next Level To: <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Our latest report on the climate crisis suggests groundbreaking interventions in the power structures at the heart of the crisis The latest from The Next System Project *Taking Climate Action to the Next Level* The latest report from The Next System Project, released in advance of the Global Climate Change Summit in San Francisco, lays out a bold agenda for what "real climate change leadership" looks like. "Taking Climate Action to the Next Level" <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> details three groundbreaking and complementary interventions that could start transforming the power structures that promote and enable our problematic energy and political economic systems: quantitative easing for the planet, public ownership for energy democracy, and anchor strategies for the energy transition. The report was written by Next System Project co-chair Gus Speth and researchers Carla Skandier and Johanna Bozuwa. "Within the system we have, we will never be able to push the needle far or fast enough toward a renewable energy system," says the report's introduction. "We need to start implementing energy interventions today in key points of the system with the aims of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, deploying renewable energy, and changing our political economy. The report has four chapters. - The Systemic Roadblocks to Climate Action <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> explains how three interconnected imperatives of the current system—the unrelenting pressure for economic growth, the outsized power of corporations, and the United States’ extractive approach to resource use—push us toward climate catastrophe and prevent meaningful action. - Quantitative Easing for the Planet <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> charts ways to halt fossil fuel extraction and dissolve entrenched opposition from major fossil fuel companies by proposing a buyout that can at once secure public control over fossil fuel reserves, keep them in the ground, and unlock an orderly, just energy transition. - Public Ownership for Energy Democracy <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> investigates opportunities for putting electricity generation and distribution back into public and community hands while enhancing democratic governance, wealth distribution, and renewable energy use throughout states and municipalities. - An Anchor Strategy for the Energy Transition <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> spells out how large, mission-driven energy consumers can create an alternative to today's extractivist economy by leveraging their resources to help build community systems and local demand for renewable energy sources, jobs, and investments. Our page features a downloadable copy <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> of the full report, an infographic <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> that summarizes the "three interventions to take back the energy system," and links to web versions of the introduction and four chapters. Go to the report... <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> *Join Us at the Global Climate Action Summit* Report co-authors Carla Santos Skandier and Johanna Bozuwa will be at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco starting September 12, and will also be at the "Rise for Climate" <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> march that will precede the summit on September 8. Rise for Climate is a global day of action to challenge local leaders to commit to building a fossil-fuel-free world that puts people and justice before profits. If you are not in the San Francisco area, find a march near you <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> . Follow the action online on The Next System Project's Twitter <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> and Facebook <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> pages, as well as #GCAS2018 on Twitter. *How We Respond To the Fossil Fuel Bailout* Carla Santos Skandier writes in *Truthout* that the conditions are ripe for a fossil fuel industry bailout that parallels the financial industry bailouts of 2008-2009. When that happens, Skandier says we should be prepared to respond with a plan that quickly phases out the industry and replaces it with democratically controlled sustainable energy. Read the article... <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> *We Need a Dose of Public Pharma* In *The American Prospect*, Next System Project deputy director Dana Brown lays out the case for a public pharmaceutical system. The unwillingness of the major drug corporations to invest in the development of new antibiotics to fight a new generation of "superbugs" vividly demonstrates the need. "Despite the many incentives being thrown their way ... major pharmaceutical companies are pulling out of antibiotic research and development at alarming rates," Brown writes. "In an industry that has a bad case of market-incentive syndrome, it is time to consider the establishment of public pharmaceutical companies as an antidote." Read the article... <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> *Dana Brown Talks Public Pharma on "The Zero Hour"* "The Zero Hour with R.J. Eskow" <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> features Dana Brown talking about her argument in favor of a public pharmaceutical alternative. "The Zero Hour" is produced by We Act Radio in Washington and airs on radio stations around the country as well as on YouTube. Watch... <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> *We Help Paint A Picture of a 'Socialist America'* Next System Project and Democracy Collaborative writers Joe Guinan, Thomas Hanna and Peter Gowan were among the contributors to Politico's Labor Day holiday feature, "What Would a Socialist America Look Like?" <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> The anthology features quick takes from a number of leading left voices, including people from Our Revolution, Democratic Socialists of America and Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congressional candidate from Michigan slated to assume the seat held by longtime congressman John Conyers Jr. Gowan, Guinan and Hanna each share a perspective on how democratic ownership and control serve as a vital counterpoint to capitalism. Read the article... <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> Learn more about the basics of system change and catch up with past episodes of The Next System Podcast <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> on our website, thenextsystem.org <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…>. DONATE <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> Share <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> Tweet <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> <http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285e71110&id=035…> Forward <http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285e71110&id=035…> <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> Follow us on Twitter <https://thenextsystem.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e51d2c7d40bc9992285…> -- 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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outstanding and must-read essay on the origins of gender equality
by Michel Bauwens 07 Sep '18

07 Sep '18

This is a really outstanding essay making the case that humanity is primed for cooperation and gender equality: https://libcom.org/history/gender-egalitarianism-made-us-human-response-dav… " Does it matter that women organizing as the revolutionary sex bust through the ‘gray ceiling’ of brain size? That deep social mind gave us the platform of trust for sharing language, rhythm and song? That female political strategies created human symbolic culture? That resistance is at the core of being human? Should we be telling our children the story of our Paleolithic heritage of gender equality – the untold secret – and how it gave our African ancestors an extraordinary future? If we want that future stretching ahead of us as far as it stretches back into our hunter-gatherer past, I think it does. We are lingering in the dying days of a clapped-out Neolithic gender system. The more that women all over the world achieve true equality, the more they regain the Palaeolithic birthright of all humans. Through gender egalitarianism, we became language-speaking, artistic, shamanistic, all-singing, all-dancing human beings roughly 200,000 years ago. Against the lifespan of our species, Neolithic patriarchy is a historic blip in time." -- 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: September 2018 Newsletter
by Michel Bauwens 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Smart CSOs Lab <do-not-reply(a)smart-csos.org> Date: Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 1:35 PM Subject: September 2018 Newsletter To: <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> View this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/417a4bcbd3d6/september-2018-newsletter?e=331c725150> [image: Smart CSOs logo] <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> September 2018 Dear Michel, We're back from summer break, successfully staving off the post-holiday blues with some hopefully interesting reading, especially curated for you. - Guest contribution: “The neighbourhood as a commons” by David Brocchi <#m_9081317248631680896_mctoc1> - Why we need to switch the story for the Great Transition to succeed <#m_9081317248631680896_mctoc2> - The case for complicating our narrative <#m_9081317248631680896_mctoc3> - How to build global cooperation: Simpol <#m_9081317248631680896_mctoc4> Guest contribution: “The neighbourhood as a commons” by David Brocchi People living in cities often don’t know their neighbours, living increasingly lonely lives. Secular societies have not found substitutes for places like church and rituals like mass that helped people bond and form communities. In many ways we have lost the ‘art of association’ that Alexis de Tocqueville believed to be a crucial success factor for our ability to solve problems collectively and cooperatively. The Day of the Good Life, initiated by sociologist Davide Brocchi, has the potential to revitalise the art of association and show how we can contribute to the Great Transition in a meaningful way from the bottom up. We have asked Davide to write an article explaining the ideas (and theories) behind the Day of the Good Life <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…>, how they were put into practice (with great care and devotion) and what the plans are for scaling up. [image: A self-made dining and living room in the neighbourhood on Day of the Good Life 2013 in Cologne. Photo by Marén Wirths] *A self-made dining and living room in the neighbourhood on Day of the Good Life 2013 in Cologne. Photo by Marén Wirths* Why we need to switch the story for the Great Transition to succeed In our recent essay <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…>, Micha wrote: “I have been convening conversations about the role of activism in tackling the root causes of climate change, inequality etc. for more than ten years. During the last three years, the conversations in social justice and environmental activist spaces have changed considerably. These conversations have increasingly been captured by an ideological agenda where all problems are seen through the lens of patriarchy, racism and colonialism. The dogmatism developing in these spaces has become so extreme that I’m now convinced we need to relaunch this strategic conversation. Under the prevailing thinking that tries to explain almost everything as a consequence of persisting systems of oppression, I don’t believe we will be able to explore the best ideas necessary for contributing to the Great Transition. What I suggest instead is that the premise for a new space has to be the honest willingness and ability to explore ideas beyond a dogmatic post-modern ideology that is inherently anti-intellectual.” After initial feedback from thought leaders in our network, we feel encouraged to take John Stuart Mill’s ideas to heart and broaden the diversity of views in our discussions. We also believe that we need to deepen our understanding of evolutionary science to find more promising approaches for the urgent cultural evolution of humankind. We welcome further feedback from our wider network. [image: Evolution as depicted by the ape-to-human progression] The case for complicating our narrative This is an article for journalists, but it is highly relevant for activists, academics and civil society leaders because we’re all communicators in the digital world. Probably counterintuitively, it makes the case for “complicating our narrative” in these times of growing polarisation and tribalism. “The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words. There are many ways to complicate the narrative […]. But the main idea is to feature nuance, contradiction and ambiguity wherever you can find it. This does not mean calling advocates for both sides and quoting both; that is simplicity, and it usually backfires in the midst of conflict. Just providing the other side will only move people further away […]. Nor does it mean creating a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and their opponents. That is just simplicity in a cheap suit. Complicating the narrative means finding and including the details that don’t fit the narrative — on purpose. The idea is to revive complexity in a time of false simplicity. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.” Read the full article here. <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> How to build global cooperation: Simpol Leading evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson discusses the ‘simpol‘ solution on the Evonomics website. “The Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) will consist of a series of multi-issue global problem-solving policy packages, each of which is to be implemented by all or sufficient nations simultaneously, on the same date, so that no nation loses out. Citizens who join the campaign can contribute to the design of those policies and to getting them implemented. But how? By joining the campaign, citizens agree to ‘give strong voting preference in all future national elections to politicians or parties that have signed a pledge to implement Simpol simultaneously alongside other governments, to the probable exclusion of those who choose not to sign’. This pledge (the ‘Pledge’) commits a politician, party or government to implement SIMPOL’s policies alongside other governments, if and when sufficient other governments have also signed on.” Read the full article here. <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> Best wishes, Micha and Viki <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> *Copyright © 2018 Smart CSOs, All rights reserved.* You are receiving this e-mail as a member of the Smart CSOs community or because you opted in at our website. *Our mailing address is:* Smart CSOs . ., . Spain Add us to your address book <//smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/vcard?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681ceefb4&id=7e4f1c129d> Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681ceefb4&…> or unsubscribe from this list <https://smart-csos.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=5cf566bc194b8a0b681cee…> . [image: Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp] <http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm…> -- 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: Empathy, relationship and neuroscience
by Michel Bauwens 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: The Real Conversation <sophiedocker(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 3:23 PM Subject: Empathy, relationship and neuroscience To: <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> Dear Friends, This Autumn brings more exciting collaborations with international thought-leaders navigating how we relate to each other across difference as we work towards a world that works for all. I am incredibly excited to have *Sarah Peyton* coming to Frome in October. Sarah is based in Washington and she specialises in NVC, Interpersonal Neurobiology and Constellations, looking at how relational language and neurobiology can transform our brains and help us thrive. Her event: * From conflict to interdependence, the neuroscience of relationship* <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> 5th - 6th October, will be groundbreaking, looking at incredible recent research into the brain and the truth it shows about our interdependence. In November I will be supporting *Kirsten Kristensen* who is an absolute master in inner transformation with NVC drawing on her background in Family Therapy with a retreat: *Experiencing polarity without creating polarisation <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> *from 9th-11th November in Bristol/Frome area, more info on this soon, or get in touch <sophiedocker(a)gmail.com?subject=Kirsten%20Kristensen> with me to book. Hope to see you at one of these events or somewhere else along the path x <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> *More info on Sarah's event.... From Conflict to Interdependence: The Neuroscience of Relationship with Sarah Peyton * *October 6th and 7th 10am-6pm Frome Town Council Chambers* Fees are £195/£225 for both days, if you would like to apply for financial assistance to come please get in touch <sophiedocker(a)gmail.com> Through Nonviolent Communication and understanding the impact of our life experience and relationships on the brain, Sarah illustrates what happens when we communicate and opens pathways to being in resonant relationship. Working experientially, with creativity and compassion, we will unravel the extraordinary interdependence of our brains, and the enormous potential for transformation in our relationships with ourselves, each other and the planet. Participants will come away with: - An understanding of the way that language changes the brain and the way we see the world - Skills to move conflict into relational language, to help discover when the conflict is not about the other person - A deep experience of resonance and how to invite it with others - Knowledge about In-group out-group experience and how we relate to difference - Greater self-understanding and self-compassion - The capacity to identify the shift into the left hemisphere and what to do with that knowledge *Read more about Sarah's work on her website www.empathybrain.com* <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> Please click on the booking form link below of get in touch sophiedocker(a)gmail.com 07837570940 if you are interested or would like to know more. Booking form for Sarah Peyton <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> I will be contributing to the Friday of KIN a new event in Bristol this year by organisers of Shambala festival. Nov 8th-11th, Bristol <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=82674580caae91d0c68…> *Copyright © 2018 The Real Conversation, All rights reserved.* Your are receiving this email as you have signed up via our website or attended an event we have organised. *Our mailing address is:* The Real Conversation Alexandra House Church St Upton Noble, Somerset BA46AS United Kingdom Add us to your address book <//sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/vcard?u=82674580caae91d0c6842ac5c&id=8606a35b24> Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/profile?u=82674580caae91d0c6842ac…> or unsubscribe from this list <https://sophiedocker.us12.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=82674580caae91d0c68…>. [image: Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp] <http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm…> -- 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: Book Launch Commonism - A New Aesthetics of the Real.
by Michel Bauwens 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Gielen Pascal <Pascal.Gielen(a)uantwerpen.be> Date: Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 9:05 AM Subject: Book Launch Commonism - A New Aesthetics of the Real. Dear Authors, We’re very grateful to all of you for your contribution to our new book Commonism – A New Aesthetics of the Real. Coming months there will be several activities/book launches where the book will be presented. The first one will be September 26 at the Venice Biennial for Architecture (more info:, https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/aria/activities/summer-schools… ) You’re very welcome! Kind Regards, Nico Dockx & Pascal Gielen [image: /Users/pascalgielen/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Caches/Signatures/signature_1730593913][image: /Users/pascalgielen/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Caches/Signatures/signature_1743524027] Pascal Gielen Professor Sociology of Culture & Politics -- 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: Google Alert - "P2P Foundation"
by Michel Bauwens 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

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Fwd: Google Now Provides a Big Data View of the Ethereum Blockchain - CoinDesk
by Michel Bauwens 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

Subject: Google Now Provides a Big Data View of the Ethereum Blockchain - CoinDesk To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> https://www.coindesk.com/google-now-provides-a-big-data-view-of-the-ethereu… -- -- 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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INSCI2018 Workshop 'The Future of Decentralized Governance'
by Francesca Musiani 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

Dear colleagues, as part of the NEXTLEAP project's final steps, Harry Halpin and Ksenia Ermoshina are chairing the workshop The Future of Decentralized Governance: A Workshop on Encryption, Blockchains, and Personal Data https://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/internetsci2018/ in conjunction with the 2018 Internet Science conference in St. Petersburg, Russia. I'm on the program committee along with several colleagues from NEXTLEAP and beyond. Please consider submitting! Deadline September 25. Thanks and regards! Francesca -- Francesca Musiani (ph.d.) associate research professor (*chargée de recherche*), CNRS, ISCC <http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/> associate researcher, i3, CSI <http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/>, MINES ParisTech vice-chair, CPT <http://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/cp-t>, IAMCR academic editor, @PolicyR <http://policyreview.info/> on the web <http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article1960> | on twitter <https://twitter.com/franmusiani>

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Fwd: [Authoritarian-working-group] Populism Isn't The Problem | Boston Review
by Michel Bauwens 04 Sep '18

04 Sep '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Nick Buxton <nick(a)tni.org> Date: Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [Authoritarian-working-group] Populism Isn't The Problem | Boston Review To: authoritarian-working-group(a)lists.tni.org < authoritarian-working-group(a)lists.tni.org> Thanks for forwarding Firoze. Am forwarding to others who were involved in some of TNI's discussions on this last year. Very good piece and interesting on the US history of the term (Farmers Alliance) On 02/09/18 04:12, Firoze Manji wrote: http://bostonreview.net/politics/jason-frank-populism-not-the-problem Populism Isn't The Problem August 15, 2018 Aug 15, 2018 *Image: A 1896 cartoon shows William Jennings Bryan as a populist snake swallowing the Democratic party mule/Wikimedia Commons <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bryan,_Judge_magazine,_1896.jpg>.* The concepts we use to frame our understanding of the political world are always implicated in the politics they purport to describe. They bring certain aspects of a political context into clear view while obscuring or concealing others entirely. For example, when advocates of the U.S. Constitution proclaimed themselves “Federalists” and labelled their opponents “Antifederalists,” they not only understated their own commitment to the consolidation of national power, they shifted the frame of the political debate towards appropriate institutional forms and away from post-revolutionary social conflicts between commercial elites and the newly enfranchised popular classes. This is a recurring theme in politics, but the nature of language and its relation to politics becomes particularly vivid—and urgent—in periods of crisis, when newly emergent political forms challenge “politics as usual” as well as the concepts we use to navigate that familiar terrain. These are periods that require us to be more reflective about the political categories we rely on: what they reveal and what they conceal. The charge of populism does not just muddy our understanding of critiques of the establishment. It inhibits our engagement with the deeper causes of democratic decline. So it is with “populism,” the go-to term for scholars and journalists alike to describe the emergent authoritarianisms of our time and the dangers they pose to liberal democracy. It is hard to keep track of the growing raft of conferences, symposia, books, and op-eds dedicated to explaining populism’s role in hastening democratic decline. The consonant titles—Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s *How Democracies Die* (2018), Yascha Mounk’s *The People vs. Democracy* (2018), William Galston’s *Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy* <https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300228922/anti-pluralism> (2018), and so on—reveal a widely shared thesis. As Jan-Werner Müller, one of the most eloquent advocates <http://bostonreview.net/politics/jan-werner-muller-populism> of the populist thesis, wrote in *What is Populism? *(2000), “The danger to democracies today is not some comprehensive ideology that systematically denies democratic ideals. The danger is populism—a degraded form of democracy that promises to make good on democracy’s highest ideals.” For Müller and other prominent advocates of the populist thesis (we can add David Frum and Cas Mudde to the above list), populism brings into focus the common danger posed to democracy by such disparate leaders as Trump and Chavez, Orbán and Morales, Erdoğan and López Obrador, and such disparate political movements and parties as Podemos and the Tea Party, Syriza and Alternative for Germany, the Five Star Movement and the National Front. But what do we make of a concept that can unite such ideologically polarized leaders, movements, and parties? As Roger Cohen argued in a recent *New York Times* op-ed <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/opinion/populism-language-meaning.html>, not much. He urged fellow commentators to drop the term because it has “become sloppy to the point of meaninglessness, an overused epithet for multiple manifestations of political anger.” The problem, however, is not simply ambiguity or the dismissive laziness of metropolitan elites who can’t seem to work up the energy to find more precise terms “to describe current political phenomenon.” The problem is not just conceptual imprecision so much as it is political obfuscation. The charge of populism does not just muddy our understanding of the particular claims made by antiestablishment leaders and movements, it inhibits our engagement with the more longstanding and persistent causes of democratic decline. The blanket accusation of populism polices the boundaries of ‘politics as usual’ and the parameters of legitimate and reasonable political speech. The charge of populism tells us at least as much about those making the charge as it does about their opponents, and in contemporary political contexts the inherent ambiguity of populism assumes clear polemical meaning when articulated from the embattled position of a once-hegemonic liberalism. The blanket accusation of populism polices the boundaries of “politics as usual” and the parameters of legitimate and reasonable political speech. Advocates of the populist thesis emphasize its authoritarian dangers while quietly pushing off stage the more enduring and structural sources of democratic decline such as the dramatic and growing inequalities of wealth and power that have defined the era of global neoliberalism, the marketization of once public goods and steady erosion of procedures of democratic accountability, and the unfettered role of money in political life that further guarantees the ongoing intensification of these processes. These more enduring sources of democratic decline—and the resulting dynamic devolution Antonio Gramsci elegantly termed, “catastrophic equilibrium”—have arguably led to the emergence of these authoritarian movements in the first place. The term populism conveniently facilitates this evasion. Roger Cohen is not alone. Most discussions of populism begin by noting the inherent ambiguity of the term, which led Richard Hofstadter, one of American populism’s greatest historians and critics, to title a 1967 conference paper, “Everyone is talking about populism—but no one can define it.” While most agree on populism’s ideological flexibility, the consensus falls apart around what distinguishes populism from other forms of politics. Is it a particular form of party organization and electoral mobilization, or is it a social movement and example of contentious politics? Is it a style of political rhetoric, or is it a coherent, albeit “thin-centered,” ideology? With all of the disagreement, it is not surprising that the most influential theorist of populism—the late Ernesto Laclau—placed ambiguity at its very center and argued that populist reason is equivalent to the logic of the “empty signifier.” Populism entered the English language to describe a political movement born of struggle against the oligarchic economic and political order of the first Gilded Age. Populism’s inherent ambiguity helps explain the often vague or catch-all use of the term in contemporary discussions, but more reflective accounts usually recognize that populism, while ideologically flexible, is not completely open. Populism is a discourse organized around a clear set of normative commitments. Most obviously, populism emerges from a commitment to popular sovereignty, to the modern legitimating idea that the people are the ultimate ground of public authority and that political appeal to that authority can transcend the formal institutions of democratic representation. Advocates of the populist thesis emphasize the populist claim to speak on behalf of a morally pure and unitary people against the ruling power of a corrupted and unrepresentative elite. The idea that the popular will can be identified beyond the institutions of the constitutional state sets the condition for populist leaders to claim the sole mantle of popular authority against all competing political factions. The central claim of populism, we are often told, is that only some of the people really are “the People” and that it is the populist leader who acts on their behalf. This fundamental claim engenders the illiberal democracy associated with populism and its rejection of basic elements of democratic pluralism. In power, populist appeals to absolute popular authority leads to the rejection of the separation of powers, judicial independence, legitimate political opposition, and other informal and formal norms of liberal constitutionalism. The personalization of politics, these commentators often argue, is not an accident of populism but essential to it, because it is only through the crusading populist leader that the people’s will can wreak its vengeance on the corrupted ruling elite and restore power to the people themselves. When considering this familiar portrait of populism and the dangers it poses to democracy, it is worth remembering that populism entered the English language to describe a nineteenth-century political movement born of struggle against the oligarchic economic and political order of the United States’s first Gilded Age. Twenty years before the People’s Party and William Jennings Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, the Farmers’ Alliance served as the egalitarian heart of U.S. populism. Throughout the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of men and women participated in this interlacing and explicitly non-hierarchical network of cooperative organizations, which were active in forty-three states and territories. Far from a Caesarist politics of authoritarian personalism, U.S. populism was, as Lawrence Goodwyn writes: first and most centrally, a cooperative movement that imparted a sense of self-worth to individual people and that provided them with the instruments of self-education about the world they lived in. The movement gave them hope—a shared hope—that they were not impersonal victims of a gigantic industrial engine ruled by others but that they were, instead, people who could perform specific acts of self-determination. This populist experimentation with new democratic forms—and the sustained effort to understand and collectively address the impoverished conditions of their lives—defines U.S. populism’s radical democratic realism. The struggle to generate democratic power outside the established institutions of governance and to build a “cooperative commonwealth” gave birth to the concept of populism—an origins story that is erased in our contemporary preoccupations with “populism and democratic decline.” Indeed, in *What is Populism?* Müller somewhat awkwardly concedes that the “one party in U.S. history that explicitly called itself ‘populist’ was in fact not populist.” The point, however, is not to resolve the semantic ambiguity of populism by appealing to the authority of original meanings. Instead, while taking orientation from that history, we should examine how the charge of populism operates in contemporary political debates, especially the dangers to democracy it brings to light and those it conceals. Defenders of democracy cannot surrender the authority of the people without undermining the very goal they claim to be fighting for. By focusing on populism as the primary source of democratic decline, the economic and political developments that have most profoundly undermined democratic institutions and the meaning of democratic citizenship over the past forty years are obscured. Worse, populism has become the name given willy-nilly to all movements challenging these developments on behalf of a recovered sense of collective authority and political control, whether articulated from a racist and xenophobic right or a radically egalitarian left. Authoritarian attempts to centralize and expand the state’s executive power and wield it against “enemies of the people”—however defined by Trump, Erdoğan, Orbán, and others—should never be equated with the radically democratic institutional experimentalism of Podemos or the Farmers’ Alliance. More attention should be paid to how “the people” is envisioned by these different movements, and how they propose popular power to be democratically enacted. Designating populism as the term that best encapsulates the political dangers authoritarianism poses to democratic politics in so many parts of the world today has the additional and unfortunate consequence of suggesting that widespread resistance to these movements should not itself be populist, should not claim the mantle of “we the people” and engage in an antagonistic politics of who we are and what kind of collective power we should wield. This political movement need not recover and rally around the term populism—democratic socialism is also enjoying a new day in the sun—but it should openly recognize that a return to “politics as usual” may be insufficient to confront the full extent of the dangers democracies currently face. Defenders of democracy cannot surrender the authority of the people without undermining the very goal they claim to be fighting for. -- ----------------------------------------------------- NICK BUXTON Futures Lab/Communications/Online Learning m: +1 530 902 3772 e: nick(a)tni.org twitter: @nickbuxton skype: nickbuxton w: www.tni.org ----------------------------------------------------- Read my latest book, The Secure and the Dispossessed (November 2015)www.climatesecurityagenda.org CONNECT WITH TNI - Sign up to TNI's e-newsletters: http://www.tni.org/subscribe - TNI on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TransnationalInstitute - TNI on twitter: https://twitter.com/TNInstitute _______________________________________________ Authoritarian-working-group mailing list Authoritarian-working-group(a)lists.tni.org https://lists.tni.org/mailman/listinfo/authoritarian-working-group -- 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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