- P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: Spirit of Global Citizenship | Call for Essays and Works
by Michel Bauwens 16 Oct '18

16 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Kosmos Journal <info(a)kosmosjournal.org> Date: Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 2:00 PM Subject: Spirit of Global Citizenship | Call for Essays and Works To: <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> Click here <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> to read this newsletter on our website. [image: Kosmos Community Newsletter] Spirit of Global Citizenship | Call for Essays and Works October 16th, 2018 [image: globalpop.jpg]*A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it’s where the rich use public transportation.* – Former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, *Enrique Penalosa* *Kosmos Quarterly *Call for Essays and Works Dear Reader, We are preparing the December edition of *Kosmos Quarterly* and hope you will participate by submitting an essay, poem or artwork. We will be exploring what it means to be a Global Citizen. How can we move beyond platitudes and declarations, toward deep systemic transformation – new institutional designs and new ways of being in the world that reflect our highest hopes and respect nature’s boundaries? In what ways can we express the civic values of a global citizen? How are you personally working to embody the changes you wish to see in the world? What projects, models or initiatives give you the greatest sense of hope? We invite you to submit an essay under 1000 words, a poem, or other artwork, on any of these dimensions or in answer to the question: What does ‘global citizenship’ evoke in your heart? *Deadline: November 15, 2018 | **PLEASE REVIEW OUR GUIDELINES HERE* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> Also in this newsletter, we are sharing two more features from the *Quarterly*: the work of Belgian-Beninese photographer Fabrice Monteiro – *The Prophecy*, and our recent *Quarterly* Keynote, *un-pick-apart-able, An Ecology of Food, *by Nora Bateson. *Please note that only Kosmos subscribers <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> have access to ALL the great content in Kosmos Quarterly. <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…>* Global Oneness Day, October 24th | Join *Kosmos* Founder, Nancy Roof for a Special Panel: *Sacred Action* With Barnet Bain, Nancy Roof, Steve Bhaerman and Karen Noe (host) *7:00 to 8:00 pm Pacific* – Click here to find the time in other time zones. <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> “Sacred Activism is first going within and then acting from the Divine essence of who we are. We are all capable of accessing the Divine core of our being when we quiet our minds and take deep breaths. It is about being first and then taking action for that peaceful and calm state, which our actions will be far more effective when we act from this state.” *LEARN MORE* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> Global Oneness Day is Online All Day and FREE <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…>*See the Schedule* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> In the Light | Humanity’s Team *Humanity’s Team* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> is a global spiritual movement whose purpose is to embody the timeless truth of Oneness, which is essential for responding to the world’s most chronic and acute challenges, and vital for creating a sustainable world of peace and harmony. “Oneness is the energy of love that lies within and connects all of life, allowing us to recognize ourselves in everything.” The creation of *Global Oneness Day* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…>began as a simple petition drive by Humanity’s Team to obtain 50,000 signatures that could be delivered to the United Nations requesting that the U.N. support the focus on “awakening Oneness”. When members of the Global Council for Humanity’s Team met with the U.N., they presented the signatures and also requested that the U.N. create a Global Oneness Day that people around the world could celebrate. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, who hosted the Humanity’s Team Global Council on behalf of the United Nations, graciously thanked the group for coming, and spoke about the mission, vision and purpose of the United Nations including its focus on solidarity. He said: *“Until there is a sense of solidarity among the peoples of the world all of our efforts for peace and security will go nowhere.”* Ambassador Chowdhury invited Humanity’s Team to create a Global Oneness Day. This October 24, 2018 will mark the ninth celebration of Global Oneness Day. *The Oneness Declaration* I declare: 1. That the message We Are All One, interrelated, interconnected and interdependent, with God/Life/One-another, is the one spiritual message that the world has been waiting for to bring about loving and sustainable answers to humanity’s challenges. 2. That the world does not have to be the way it is – and that individual people can change it, using the power of spiritual citizenship. 3. That humanity is good and has unlimited potential, and that social transformation starts with personal transformation. I therefore recognize the importance of connecting with my Divine Essence and inner wisdom throughout my life’s journey; allowing the finest and the highest levels of human potential to flourish for the benefit of all. 4. That my aspirations support spiritual principles, global ethics and universal values such as respect, justice, peace, dignity, freedom, responsibility and cooperation that underlie this declaration. 5. That human beings need each other to survive on this planet. I recognize that we are all in this together and that community flourishes as we learn about each other and revel in the wonder and beauty of our diversities. I declare that I am playing my part to help to bring about a culture in which we, the peoples of the world, can address our common global concerns in an holistic, positive and transforming way and live together in peace with one another. 6. That Oneness contains All of life – also the parts that we regard as the “other”. I realize that wholeness and togetherness can only be experienced through the recognition of the uniqueness, beauty and purpose of all aspects of life and that this recognition starts with my Self. 7. That I am part of the emerging consciousness that promotes a spirit of openness, enquiry, connection and relationship with myself and the entire universe and who continues to recognize the wonder, beauty and mystery of it all. 8. I support Global Oneness Day that has been established for all of humanity to come together each year as one human family, to discuss, celebrate and experience Oneness with the Divine, each other and all of life. 9. That the time for change is now. *Sign the Declaration <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…>* un-pick-apart-able | An Ecology of Food By Nora Bateson In the current edition of Kosmos Quarterly “The nourishment of Cezanne’s awkward apples is in the tenderness and alertness they awaken inside us.” ― Jane Hirshfield In the everyday gesture of a parent providing breakfast for a child, the entire future of humanity, and of thousands of other organisms, pivots. Like other animals, the human species is tasked with feeding the next generations. Life is dependent upon this seemingly simple mandate of continuance. Feed the babies. Don’t fail…Bringing a morsel of food to your lips or to the lips of another is an act of intimacy. It is a personal contact point with the seasons and the generations. READ MORE → <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> The Prophecy By Fabrice Monteiro In the current edition of Kosmos Quarterly Raised in Africa and trained as an industrial engineer, Fabrice Monteiro travelled to some of the most polluted areas to create these works. The costumes were made from found-objects gathered at each site in collaboration with Senegalese fashion designer, Doulcy. Through his stunning work, Monteiro challenges us to examine issues of fashion, race, consumerism, and exploitation. READ MORE → <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> Subscribe to Kosmos Quarterly When you subscribe to the new Kosmos Quarterly, you receive a great e-journal and much more. SUBSCRIBE <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> This email was sent to michelsub2004(a)gmail.com *why did I get this?* <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/about?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1467a04…> unsubscribe from this list <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1…> update subscription preferences <https://kosmosjournal.us3.list-manage.com/profile?u=a2e6f01f29f00e615c1467a…> Kosmos Associates · PO Box 2102 · Lenox, MA 01240 · USA -- 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

1 0

Fwd: Cynthia Travis reviews Deena Metzger's
by Michel Bauwens 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Tikkun Magazine <miriam(a)tikkun.org> Date: Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 7:40 PM Subject: Cynthia Travis reviews Deena Metzger's To: <Michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> [image: Tikkun] <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=zmZNYDvnIfBtZo4TcMnu77TyGoAuc8…> *SUPPORT TIKKUN* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=g4G71OfdnUH0lIE6gUzoUrTyGoAuc8…> *GET THE MAGAZINE* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oKldAqF2NttJ2fMpPT8jyLTyGoAuc8…> *ADVERTISE <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lStc3f67%2Fegi7gFbYYGbj7TyGoAu…>* *JOIN THE MOVEMENT* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=AeqWas1VMQjpC4n8IUvNS7TyGoAuc8…> Cynthia Travis reviews Deena Metzger’s latest novel A Rain of Night Birds October 11, 2018 . You can read this review online at https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/cynthia-travis-reviews-deena-metzge <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=PCopnxNTOe41h9CgQBhwHrTyGoAuc8…> r *Book Review for Tikkun* *by Cynthia Travis* *of* *A RAIN OF NIGHT BIRDS* *by Deena Metzger* *Natural Law was here before and will be here after we’re gone.* *Western law was not here then and will not last.* *~ Marie Gladue, Navajo elder* Sometimes a story poses a question that is inescapable, compelling us to yield to its mandate, demanding its rightful place at the magnetic center of our lives. This is because, in the words of a wise friend, it is a story that reminds us who we are. Such is the question at the heart of Deena Metzger’s *A Rain of Night Birds* (Hand to Hand Publishing, 2017): *What are the ways of being that will ensure a viable future for all life?* A cultural shift of incomprehensible magnitude is urgently required in order to deliver us to that future. Sandra Birdswell is a climatologist. She senses the Earth’s shifts and sufferings in her body; sun flares, earthquakes, and wind are kin to her. Because her mother died in childbirth, she has been raised by her father, John Birdswell, a doctor whose years of work in a small hospital on the nearby Navajo reservation have brought him into an unlikely friendship with Diné elder Hosteen Tseda. Sandra’s professor in graduate school, Terrence Green, is the head of the Department of Earth & Environmental Studies. He is a Native American man of mixed origins. All except Hosteen are missing one or both parents and so do not know the full story of where they came from or who they are. Like most of us, they are bereft of the full lineage that might have guided them in perilous times. The book, at first, is a gently sloping floor, a meditation on love and loss, identity and language, permeated by despair for the decimation of the natural world. It is a slope that becomes incrementally steeper and infinitely more slippery as we come to recognize our own heartache as well as our complicity in the unfolding climate crisis that Terrence and Sandra – and we, must grapple with. By accompanying Sandra, Terrence, Hosteen and John in their undoing and eventual ragged remaking, Metzger invites us to tumble into the abyss of our own despair at what our species has done to the Earth and to each other, and to let ourselves be transformed. The bones of the story seem familiar at first, turning us back on ourselves until we come to see, like the characters in the book, that in the context of Gaia’s impending demise, personal questions can no longer be separated from questions of Earth’s distress. Rather, love, loss and identity in the age of the Anthropocene are nested dilemmas that can only be met with the full surrender of everything we thought we knew in order to become trustworthy to Creation once again. The story sends us to the edges of our thinking, exposed to the elements, with nothing to guide us but our broken hearts and our willingness to be dismantled until individual concerns are subsumed – not erased, but contextualized, by the lived understanding of community in the most expanded and comprehensive sense. The characters’ dilemmas are our dilemmas; they show us the way forward, if we are willing to follow their lead: to yield to our Earthling selves and to ‘the beyond’, that is, to intelligences within and beyond ourselves, expressed in their sovereign forms and understood on their terms, not ours, though they may seek to express themselves through us. At the beginning of the book, Sandra recognizes, through intuition and bodily sensation that a solar flare is occurring. Reflecting on the ways that scientific language dilutes the primacy of felt experience, she muses that “Somehow the technical language that had developed to meet the infinitely large or small… took focus away from the thing-in-itself, the astounding and incomprehensible beauty that was revealing itself to her.” She struggles with the language of science because it does not encompass the aliveness of the world nor the passionate devotion to the Earth of scientists like herself and Terrence Green. She is keenly aware that, in its demand for objectivity, certainty, and commercial value, modern language has become a trap, squeezing the miraculous out of life’s complexities by privileging objects over relationships. Logic over soul. Acquisition over accompaniment. In particular, scientific language and protocols, with their zeal for data, leave little room for emotion, reverence or wonder. Sandra helps us see that we have allowed the cult of objects, objectives, objectivity, to hypnotize us so completely that it’s killing us – and yet we remain in its thrall. Throughout the book, as in our waking world, the loss of wonder has resulted in the subjugation of the Earth and the silencing of too many voices. Loss of reverence is at the core of our self-imposed exile from the Natural World. What is being done to women, to children, to indigenous cultures and people of color everywhere is what is being done to the Earth. Assault is assault. Rape is rape. If we allowed awe to shape us, we could not continue as we are, as the writer Jeanette Winterson rightly reminds us: *They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? *This is the world that *A Rain of Night Birds* is calling us to: a world of wonder that brings us to our knees. The fact that Sandra senses the Earth’s pain, Her tilts and shifts, makes it impossible for Sandra to live a conventional life, though she tries. After earning her PhD., she takes a job as a consultant to developers who seek to greenwash their activities by having people like Sandra and a handful of Native American consultants help determine the best placement and design for real estate developments on pristine land. It’s an unwinnable challenge, but she does her best because she has realized that buildings, landscaping, streets and infrastructure alter water flow, migrations, wind and weather, so she tells herself that her role could be helpful. A Native American colleague is of similar mind, and one day they take their lunches to the top of a nearby hill. “From the vantage of a full landscape, she saw how one might think differently about placement. An eagle’s perspective as well as the prairie dog’s… The invisible had to be included with the visible.” Her Native colleague tells her, “I need to see where the wind wants to go before I put anything in its way.” Still, the dilemma is not resolvable. Even in-depth study of a fragile area slated for development will not result in abstention, only minor modifications: tract homes and shopping centers will be built that do not respect living systems and cannot protect non-human or even human communities. Driving past vineyards and strip malls, Sandra thinks to herself, “There was no logic for the terrain except human willfulness…. The global transition from we to I was almost complete.” She is forced to recognize that her recommendations are mere palliatives, and recoils at the horror of her participation. “Was the river the same river if it was dammed, damned by the violation of the first laws?” Sandra recognizes that “the rapid metastasis of extraction and manufacture” means that Western culture, by its nature, will never allow a fully co-equal co-existence with the Earth. Soon, she can no longer ignore the disparity between her inner and outer landscapes. She reaches “back in memory and beyond her own memory to the ways the ones who had lived on the land had spoken to the elementals and had been answered… Someone had believed that life was dialogic.” When she goes to study ice melt in the Arctic Circle, Native colleagues help her see that “The Western scientists trusted their instruments more than they trusted their own powers of observation or those of the Indigenous… (but) information is not knowledge.” When science pares complex, interwoven living systems down to mere data, it is impossible to come to deep knowing, especially when most of us do not have deep history or deep roots in a place, and when buildings and machinery obscure our experience. As Sandra muses, “Science has no council of elders to decide what might or might not be explored.” We have lost our indigeneity, our Earth stories and our Earth-memories, and do not have the luxury of time to cultivate these things, or to reinvent them. And yet, it’s curious how synchronized we actually are to Earth’s living rhythms, her inhale and exhale; like the water in the soil, the liquids in our bodies rise and fall twice daily with the moon, like internal tides, no matter how far we might be from the shore. And at one time, we too walked the Earth with feet perfectly suited to all Her varied terrains. In recent times, though, we have lost our *baseline gait*, a term borrowed from the science of wildlife tracking that refers to the prints left by a healthy animal moving in a relaxed manner through her environment. With our shoes and our pavements, our high-rises and cars, we have eliminated the in-built, visceral knowing received directly from the Earth. And because we are being bombarded by information, toxins, and electronic signals coming at us faster than our bodies can process, our brains assemble fragments of information into a distorted composite from which we react rather than respond. Terrence’s soul, too, is sundered by science. Like Sandra, he loves the wind and all sorts of weather. But, as he tells her, his weather station, “doesn’t tell me if the wind is blowing through a pine tree, an alder or a yew. It can’t even tell me if it is blowing through a grove of aspen which anyone would recognize.” As a Native man, what Terrence knows that most of us do not is that story and language are inextricable from place. The illness of our times is that we have severed them. In most Indigenous cultures, life events cannot be understood unless they are explicitly located *somewhere*. The physical landscape is an encyclopedia of occurrences over time. The physical world is a narrative rich in teachings for those who know how to read it. Names, like knowledge, arise in tandem with place as well. But Sandra cannot make sense of her name. Whenever she asks her father about it, he refuses to divulge anything about how she came to be called Sandra. It is the only jagged edge between them. Her preoccupation speaks again to one of Metzger’s concerns with the too-many ways that language is used to erase the realities of the vanquished, of the Earth and of our connection to Her, including through the way we name people, places and things. Language and the erasure of language have become weapons used for silencing – but not because silence is valued in its own right. *A Rain of Night Birds* reminds us of how many, many children’s identities were and still are being erased by forbidding them to speak their native tongue. English is being weaponized in other ways; as author Robert MacFarlane sadly explains, the editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary have taken it upon themselves to excise certain words that they feel are no longer “relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included *acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin… cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow.* The words introduced to the new edition included *attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail…* the outdoor and the natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual. Children are now… adept ecologists of the technoscape, with numerous terms for file types but few for different trees and creatures. For blackberry, read BlackBerry.” (Robert Macfarlane, *Landmarks*) By tampering with the language of the natural world, we erase ourselves and the future. And so we must rediscover or reinvent the language of the mysterious, epic, living world and our place in it, complementary to Earth’s voice so that, in saving Her from us, we also rescue ourselves. If we are fortunate and sufficiently dedicated, it may be possible to reawaken our sense of Earth-related purpose. This necessarily redefines our understanding of what it means to ‘make a living’. Terrence and Sandra both struggle with this: “Given the causes of climate change, he was thinking, it was ludicrous to expect that the same perpetrators would want to employ people at significant salaries to work more than forty hours a week to remedy that which would mean change… The too familiar goal of making a standard living to support a standard life style continued as if the right to it was carved in stone, notwithstanding that it was entirely contradictory to the evidence in the field.” Making a living is an empty thing unless we are making a living – and livable, world. The foundation of Sandra and Terrence’s relationship is their visceral connection to the Earth. When Sandra leaves her house to go live with Terrence, she realizes “She would miss the land and didn’t know if she had the right to leave it. What were the agreements between them? Would the land where he lived receive her? Would she receive it?” These are questions that we in the West seldom ask ourselves, uprooted as we are; we have forgotten that every speck of the Earth is teeming with sentient life, comprising a sentient whole. In many traditional cultures, a child’s umbilical cord is buried in the place they were born, creating a lifelong connection to that place. Until modern times, the idea of leaving or selling the land of one’s birth was unimaginable. What is *our* agreement with the land? What is our covenant? As Sandra faces the fact that “Something dire and sinister was at work undermining all life,” she wonders “What did the unthinkable imply?” Human folly plays out as it must, but until now this has always happened against the backdrop of Earth’s abiding and unalterable continuity. Now that this fundamental certainty is crumbling, we are seeing that, since Earth’s systems are fractal by nature, so, too, is Her unraveling. We are living in the End Times. The holographic Gordian knot for humans alive today is the unbearable tragedy that life on Earth may no longer be possible in any viable way for us or our descendants. This realization is, in turn, wrapped in the bottomless heartbreak of knowing that we will never experience an intact Earth, however fervently we may long for it. For Native Americans, this sorrow is not new, nor is it abstract. After only 500 years, it is still fresh and infinitely compounded by the fact that at the time of first contact, the balance between humans and Earth was so exquisite that disease was virtually unknown (*1491*, Charles C. Mann). For Terrence especially, the hopeful, hope-crushing inclusion of TEKW (Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom) in the 2007 IPCC report detailing the looming climate crisis, is unbearable because it is both a belated acknowledgment of essential wisdom and barely a footnote. Terrence muses that “His great grandfather… confronted by today’s issues would have spoken to storm or wind itself, also to eagle, and the spirits would have taught the old man because they would have been in relationship with each other… Yes, this was myth, but it didn’t mean it didn’t happen… myth was a story form of the transmitted teachings and experiences from which, over centuries, his people had built their informed cultures and their lives.” Modernity has discarded the practice of being in conversation with the Natural World, and the mythmaking that arises as a result, with which the tenets of a viable culture are transmitted over time. It takes rigorous discernment, patience and close observation to develop a conversation with the wild. Respect has to be earned, and it requires community – listening together, comparing notes, taking responsibility. The only myth extant now is that unchecked growth is desirable, possible and necessary. What to do? Or, rather, what to undo? How to behave so that things are put right? I sometimes try to imagine what it might be like to reverse the flow of history, to rewind ourselves back to where we came from, back and back until we reach the lifeways that our ancestors once knew. I try to imagine what it would be like to reclaim (if only in our imaginations) our relationships with the original lands that birthed us by returning to the places our ancestors left. For those of us descended from multiple geographies, how would we even choose where to go, and how could we legitimately claim that place of original connection and form an authentic relationship with it? What might we feel? What might the land feel, and the ancestors? Perhaps, by now, the Earth is beyond caring about such particulars and would be grateful for any lived connection, so long as it’s sincere. I have a friend who once dreamed the words “return the people to the land.” But how to accomplish this in a way that restores balance when none of the original relational combinations exist anymore and so cannot be known or repaired? How to remove invasive species, including ourselves, and create a full reclamation when we do not even know of what? Like Sandra and Terrence, I have come to believe that only in surrendering to the grief that takes us apart and strips everything away, can we hope to salvage the essential alliances that keep life going; the partnership between humans and Earth and the reverence engendered by deep knowing that will restore a language with which to speak of it. Terrence and Sandra recognize that they cannot continue living in conventional ways, especially when those ways force them to choose between their professional selves and their Earth-selves. As the story unfolds, we accompany them in the dismantling of their external identities as they realize they must change everything about the way they live: where they sleep, how they express themselves, and how they hold the sorrow that sweeps them away from their habitual lives like a flash flood. In her darkest moments, Sandra begins to see that “holding a field of possibility within which recovery lived” is different from holding out hope because “Hope in any form turns us toward ourselves.” There is no medicine for the illness of grief except grief itself. For Terrence and Sandra there is no sanctuary in the ordinary world, nowhere to turn except toward the mysterious and overwhelming sensations that have engulfed them, the same overwhelming sensations that will engulf us if we allow ourselves to dissolve as they do. The consensual world does not, cannot, understand this process, nor provide a language with any points of reference for it. As Metzger points out: “Illness and symptoms… were markers of breaks in complex relationships that occurred when right relations were askew.” The illness of grief for the Earth is no different. Sandra and Terrence’s only refuge is the sacred spaciousness of Hosteen Tseda’s traditional wisdom and his ability, with the help of Sandra’s father, John Birdswell, to craft a sacred circle to hold them. In a way we can envy Sandra and Terrence their forced surrender to Earth’s wonders and to Her distress; the way this crowds out any other concerns until they must die to their old lives, knowing that initiation, in order to be real, must risk literal death. Everything is at stake, so everything is on the line. If we refuse grief’s call, we will be alone with our madness and its consequences. We must ask ourselves whether we, too, are willing to step away from the tethers of the culture that is killing us. Can we resist its seduction, or shall we remain outside a life of sacred alignment with the Earth’s exquisite complexity and relegate ourselves to the role of longing observer, as we suffer and die along with everything that matters? These are not choices to be made lightly. We’ve worked hard for what we have, distorted though it may be. Our forebears endured great hardship and uncertainty on our behalf, and now we must do likewise for the sake of the future. Until now, most of us have expressed our concern in tamer ways. Until now, it even seemed that occasionally there was progress: though the United States refuses to honor the Paris Accords, other countries remain on board. Perhaps a different president will rejoin the effort. Then again, even if the international community succeeds, even if, as California’s Governor Brown insists, ‘we’ll launch our own damn (weather) satellite’, our efforts are late. Ice melt has outstripped all projections, extinctions are skyrocketing, insect populations are in freefall, extreme weather is intensifying, and reactionary governments are on the rise. In spite of everything, we have somehow developed a taste for the Kool-Aid of denial and paralysis in the face of what’s happening. Are we willing to offer up our comfortably uncomfortable lives for the possibility that there may yet be time to change course? For those of us who are Jewish, a special quandary exists. As my father would have said, it’s time to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation. We are immigrants or children of immigrants, children of the holocaust and the atomic bomb who find ourselves in a mirrored hall of multiplying modern holocausts too numerous to count or respond to. This includes the violence being done in our names in Israel/Palestine, including the violence being perpetrated on the land Herself – bulldozed orchards and abandoned villages, poisoned waterways, lethal levels of ocean pollution and the relentless double-standard of self-protection through subjugation of the perceived Other. As in prewar Europe, Rwanda, Myanmar and too many elsewheres, ecocide foretells genocide. Are we willing to accept the inevitable challenges of simultaneously protecting ourselves, our Palestinian neighbors, and the Earth? These responses require some emotional heavy lifting to handle our personal demons, to sweep out the dusty corners of our individual psyches. It is up to us to unpack and metabolize our collective trauma, and our justifiable terror of the abyss, aware that there is an ever-finer line between our personal anguish and the utterly appropriate panic, depression, rage and despair in the face of the planetary catastrophe unfolding before us. There are no recipes for effective actions to take. No cookie cutters. No instruction manuals. No shortcuts and no guarantees. Only the internal reckoning and the responses that arise from the ashes of that reckoning. Only and above all else our love for the Earth. An unprecedented shift is needed that will reshape us into an entirely different way of being, in an entirely different relationship with the Earth and the non-human world. Everything depends on the decision to step away from the violence of Western culture. The catch is that this cannot be done while participating in it. As Terrence comes to understand, “Western mind was a miasma of denial that entered through the cracks and fissures of his being, like water seeping through rock, undermining the original structure of all things.” Before sitting down to write this, I consulted the I Ching, a 3,000-year-old system of divination based on codified observations about the nature of change and the role of the spirit world in human lives. It is one of the more reliable sources I have found for information from ‘the beyond.’ (*Total I Ching: Myths for Change*, Stephen Karcher). The question I asked was: *What should be the central focus of this book review for maximum impact to change behavior, including my own, in response to the climate crisis?* As sometimes happens, the answer was unnervingly clear: The Context Hexagram (the field we find ourselves in) was #47, Confining/Oppression: *Oppressed, restricted, exhausted, cut off; at the end of your resources… Search within to find the way out… Confining shows an old, dilapidated house or a great open mouth in which a tree is confined… It implies the threat of poverty, exhaustion, being at the end of available resources, unable to meet the challenges presenting themselves. Communication is blocked, indeed deceptive or deceitful…. However this oppression is exactly what teaches you about de, power and virtue, the power to find what is Great and rely on it. It exhausts the old and awakens you from its collective dream. This oppression also teaches the futility of anger and hatred and shows how the Way opens.* The Answering Hexagram (specific response to the question) was #28, Great Traverses: *Great Traverses describes your situation in terms of how to act in a time of crisis… Find what is truly important and organize yourself accordingly. The ridgepole of your house is warped and sagging. The structure of your life is in danger of collapse. But there is a creative force at work in this breakdown. The spirits will help you. This is a very great time… Hold the heart fast and take the risk. *Changing line: Nine at Third* The structure of your life buckles and fails, collapsing under the weight of the transition. There is nothing you can do to brace it up. The Way closes. Accept the change. See it as a sacrifice of the old.* We read, we march, we vote. We recycle, we pray, we meditate. We buy fair trade coffee and ride our bicycles. Perhaps we have solar panels or drive a Prius. And yet somewhere we know, or dread to admit that these things are not sufficient. We teeter on a threshold of change that we have not been willing to cross. Beneath our frenetic creativity lurks a chasm of sorrow for the ways we are complicit, because complicity is a form of authorization, albeit against our will. Never mind that we did not explicitly authorize permanent war, the shooting of unarmed Black people, or the fouling of the water and the air. But what are the alternatives, really, in the ways we live our lives? A few years ago, I decided to live without plastic. That lasted until I sat down at my computer. Picked up the phone. Started my car. Shall we leave our houses? Sleep outside? Run for office? Perhaps, yes to all of these. And…? Maybe, we start with Story and Place. Author Ursula K. Le Guin once said, “If you want to create an unknown reality, tell the story and see what happens.” Peacebuiling pioneer John Paul Lederach tells of how he found a way to work with the violence engulfing Northern Ireland at the time: he told a story. Sitting with partisans from both sides, he asked them to imagine a day several generations hence. It’s late, and a storm is raging outside. A little child climbs onto her grandfather’s knee and begs not to be put off to bed quite yet. “Tell me again, tell me again,” she implores. “How did The Troubles end?” The people in that room were tasked with casting themselves into a future beyond their time and looking back to tell the story of how peace came at last to Northern Ireland. And now here we are, when all will soon be lost, and every dilemma seems intractable. Might we be willing to tell ourselves a story of metamorphosis that meets the magnitude of what we are facing? In the Native American and Indigenous prophesies of what we now call the Americas, doom was foreseen. What to make of this to guide us now? Perhaps it is as it appears: a stark warning seen by Indigenous people across a range of cultures and territory; the echo of a door slamming shut, reverberating down through the centuries. But perhaps, just perhaps, it is an invitation; the beginning of a story that is as yet incomplete. Terrence and Sandra ask themselves, “Is this the end or are we beginning again?” We must ask the same question. There may yet be time to craft a story we can live in that puts things right. But first we must stop doing harm. Then we can undertake the complex process of making amends, of exquisitely careful repair: *tikkun olam *at last? If we succeed, it will usher in what the I Ching calls a whole new cycle of time, one that lifts us out of the Anthropocene and into an epoch as yet unnamed. The Restoracene? The Terramoracene? From the shards of possibility scattered at our feet we can craft a story-vessel that will return us to ourselves, using words that are ripe with anguish and courage. We must emulate Sandra, who “reached out to the world with the balm of her heartbreak.” By entering Terence and Sandra’s story, we take their question to heart: “How could they possibly be well if the Earth was afflicted?” *A Rain of Night Birds* provides a place to begin, or, rather, a jumping off point from which to continue. The new life becomes the story; the story calls forth a new life. Better to die trying than to sacrifice everything on the altar of convenience. Better a fragmentary map that shows us a glimpse of a future with a future, “An eagle’s perspective as well as the prairie dog’s… The invisible… included with the visible,” than an atlas showing only the road to ruin we are already on. Quickly now. We have arrived at the precipice. No turning back. If we take the leap, we will find that Sandra and Terrence, Hosteen and John, are –with us. —- Cynthia Travis is a writer, photographer and documentary film-maker. Her blog, Earth Altar, features Full Moon and New Moon posts about peacebuilding, microbial alliances, earth culture and the wisdom of the breakdown (www.earth-altar.org <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=m1DUb0YsFuZK3hgZbLDOfNnQC3TaOo…>). Her collection of essays, *Riffs, Rants and Visitations* is forthcoming in 2019. She lives on the Mendocino Coast. Editor's Note: If you like this review (or for that matter anything else you read in Tikkun or from Tikkun on line) please help us continue to bring the unique blend of progressive politics, culture, psychological and intellectual sophistication and spiritual depth --by making what you consider to be a substantial donation to make our work possible. Now more than ever, people who want this kind of content that you won't find either in the mainstream media or in the narrowly predictable "alternative" magazines. So keep us going-- donate now at www.tikkun.org/donate <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=N3xzmXKfjFfKKQDvn4hpmrTyGoAuc8…> . --Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun(a)gmail.com Click here to unsubscribe <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=qIzPKz5YSo6qg9225Aqp%2BrTyGoAu…> Copyright © 2017 Network of Spiritual Progressives and Tikkun Magazine 2342 Shattuck Avenue, #1200 - Berkeley, CA 94704 --- Phone 510-644-1200 - Fax 510-644-1255 [image: Tikkun] <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Fx%2BCDRAr8Chwgi1q4Ct5I7TyGoAu…> *SUPPORT TIKKUN* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=PWd99Ebs5KGOcqus9mNVKbTyGoAuc8…> *GET THE MAGAZINE* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=89n6RMvfLcDOf%2FN0v40JNLTyGoAu…> *ADVERTISE <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=6D%2B3cFN0sq36JpgRF34JSbTyGoAu…>* *JOIN THE MOVEMENT* <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4H8voOR4iLWXozDsI5r2cLTyGoAuc8…> Click here to unsubscribe <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GBUDVHjWpVKy%2FzumQizy%2B7TyGo…> Copyright © 2017 Network of Spiritual Progressives and Tikkun Magazine 2342 Shattuck Avenue, #1200 - Berkeley, CA 94704 --- Phone 510-644-1200 - Fax 510-644-1255 [image: empowered by Salsa] <http://www.salsalabs.com/?email> -- 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

1 0

Fwd: [Networked-Labour] James D. White and the Red Hamlet
by Michel Bauwens 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 1:26 PM Subject: [Networked-Labour] James D. White and the Red Hamlet To: Networked Labour <networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc> Dear all, In series of books and articles, James D. White have been building a strong and ground-breaking argument regarding to Marx, Marxism, Marxist mythology, Marx's theory of history and how and why his life project of critique of political economy was not competed and remained as "das capital", could not expand on theorising State and World market, and forming an integral whole. With his 2018, Marx and Russia: The Fate of a Doctrine, White culminates his life work and set forward this argument. In doing so an breaking a ground for study of Marx and Marxism, Russia and Russian Revolution, White also sets the history on its feet, clarify key misconceptions generated by acts and non-acts of figures like Marx and Engels themselves, as well as key figures like Plekhanov, Lenin, and Stalin. He brings back figures like Kovalevsky, Sieber, and Bogdanov and fixes the gaps in history generated mainly by official soviet histography, or historians of Marxism, who did not effort and go back to the original sources to uncover stuff and kept reproducing same misconceptions through generations. The below are James D. White's 1996 and 2001 books, in which he sets out this argument and presents sea of evidences. Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism (1996) http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=29A4F0B999C216DD875E5C2A8261189A Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (2001) http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=55D194B6FF633539E6DA1BBCA54CF8E2 I could not find a pdf version of his 1994 The Russian Revolution 1917-1921: A Short History ( https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-1917-1921-History-Publication/dp/… ) Here is the link to White's 2018 Marx and Russia: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marx-and-russia-9781474224086/ And finally, his forthcoming book, in November 2018, is the first ever written and published intellectual history of Alexander Bogdanov, Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov (https://brill.com/view/title/25179) Best, Orsan _______________________________________________ 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

1 0

Fwd: Reactivating the Empathy Circle Newsletter: bridging our social and political divides
by Michel Bauwens 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Edwin Rutsch <EdwinRutsch(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 10:20 PM Subject: Reactivating the Empathy Circle Newsletter: bridging our social and political divides To: <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Building a culture of empathy Newsletter from Edwin Rutsch and the Empathy Center. View this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/dcb3cea656c4/reactivating-the-empathy-circle-newsletter-…> *Restarting the Empathy Circle Newsletter* bridging the political divide - building a culture of empathy Greetings I am restarting our newsletter. This is for people that subscribed on our website or have had personal email contact with me. Apologies in advance if you don't want to receive it, please unsubscribe here. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> It's been quite a long time since I sent out the last newsletter. The reason is I have 6,500 people on the list and Mail Chimp charges $75 a month for the service, which was too much for me to keep up. *Below are some latest accomplishments from the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>.* We have been focusing on bridging the political divides with mutual listening, constructive dialogues, empathy circles <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>, training, human-centered design <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>, and social activism. Future newsletters will keep you up-to-date on the latest developments in the Empathy Movement. Warmly Edwin Rutsch Director: Center for Building a Culture of Empathy <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Funder: Empathy Tent <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> We held the Radical Empathy Forum with 11 candidates running for the California State Assembly at U.C. Berkeley. This involved candidates using active listening (instead of debate) to dialogue together on how to build a more caring culture. The Daily Californian <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> and the local PBS station <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>covered the forum. More. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> .. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Empathy Tent went to a political rally in the State Capital in Sacramento, California. Previously there had been a fight between the left-right that ended in a stabbing. We offered listening and constructive dialogue. The Sacramento Bee mentioned us:* Protesters keep their cool at pro-Trump, anti-Trump rallies. ‘Empathy tent’ helps <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>. *More <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>... <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> The Empathy Tent team goes to Politicon conference <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> in Los Angeles, Oct 20 to 21. We have a booth and will hold empathy circles with politicians, pundits, political media and conference attendees. If you are in LA - *join us* <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Empathy Tent was in Los Angles at the Anti and Pro Trump Rallies. We set up the Empathy Tent and held 6 political left versus right empathy circles. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Each one ended with the participants giving each other hugs and committing to doing followup dialogues online. The Los Angeles Times <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> mentioned us and we were filmed for a documentary. More. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…>.. <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> See reports on over 60 tent popups <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> and 20 media mentions about our work. * “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” Martin Buber* <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> *We are holding online Empathy Circles between the left and right from around the country. Join us in taking part in a dialogue. Learn, practice and facilitate constructive dialogues.* See More Accomplishments on Our Patreon Page <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Support Us on Facebook Fundraiser <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: Facebook] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Facebook <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: Website] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Website <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: fb Edwin] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> fb Edwin <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: Email] <EdwinRutsch(a)gmail.com> Email <EdwinRutsch(a)gmail.com> [image: LinkedIn] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> LinkedIn <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: Google Plus] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Google Plus <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: YouTube] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> YouTube <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> [image: Twitter] <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> Twitter <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> *Copyright © 2018 Center for Building a Culture of Empathy, All rights reserved.* You are receiving this newsletter because you are a friend or contact of Edwin Rutsch and the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. *Our mailing address is:* Center for Building a Culture of Empathy 515 Kearney St. El Cerrito, CA 94530 Add us to your address book <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/vcard?u=83b412dd95de60e7b42e0b…> unsubscribe from this list <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=83b412dd95de60e7…> update subscription preferences <https://cultureofempathy.us8.list-manage.com/profile?u=83b412dd95de60e7b42e…> -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [Networked-Labour] Fwd: [historicalmaterialism] EVENT: Soviet Cosmologies and Ontologies, 1960s-1970s - University of Westminster, 26 October
by Michel Bauwens 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 12:43 PM Subject: [Networked-Labour] Fwd: [historicalmaterialism] EVENT: Soviet Cosmologies and Ontologies, 1960s-1970s - University of Westminster, 26 October To: Networked Labour <networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc> Cc: Asim <xasimx(a)yahoo.com> A rather interesting event.. and here is a very good artcile by Maria Chehonadskih, one of the speakers: https://www.academia.edu/36029118/The_Stofflichkeit_of_the_Universe_Alexand… ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Historical Materialism News news(a)historicalmaterialism.org [historicalmaterialism] <historicalmaterialism-noreply(a)yahoogroups.com> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2018 at 10:05 Subject: [historicalmaterialism] EVENT: Soviet Cosmologies and Ontologies, 1960s-1970s - University of Westminster, 26 October To: <historicalmaterialism(a)yahoogroups.com> Friday 26th October 2018, 10.00 – 18.00 The Boardroom (room 117), University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW *Soviet Cosmologies and Ontologies, 1960s-1970s* /Marie Curie Foundation Symposium, Individual Fellowship, Horizon 2020 Hosted by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster in conjunction with the Faculty of Arts, University of Wolverhampton/ There is a tendency in revisiting the narratives of historical socialism to focus on the early revolutionary avant-garde and repressive post-revolutionary contexts of Soviet cultural politics, or on the destructive legacy of Stalinism and the dissident cultural non-conformisms it produced. This generates a very familiar teleology of state oppression, in which everything is subject to the instrumental logic of Stalinism. Yet, paradoxically, the political economy of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of this repressive teleology in the 1960s and the 1970s – the years that in the historiography of socialism become the embodiment of both the Khrushchev Thaw and the Brezhnevite stagnation – is underwritten by its explicit counter-capitalist sociality. This is because it was precisely in these years that the residual utopian imaginaries of the communist tradition were able to find a becalmed and reflective (albeit, materially impoverished) place in the would-be socialist relations of Soviet production. As such, these utopian imaginaries became attached to a series of radical humanist interventions into the problems of labour, sexuality, power, gender, language, culture, the unconscious, cognition, reality, the universal, etc., in a context in which the non-libidinal character of post-capitalist political economy became a defining feature of this becalmed, reflective context. The result was the production of new ontologies and lexicons of emancipation, despite the fact that 'state socialism' was in its decline. This one-day conference aims to map these ontologies and heterodox socialist critiques in order to inquire as to whether they have any viability in the context of philosophy and critical theory today. Speakers include: Maria Chehonadskih (Central Saint Martins) Keti Chukhrov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow) Nikolay Erofeev (Oxford University) Anke Hennig (Central Saint Martins) Alexei Penzin (University of Wolverhampton) Hannah Proctor (ICA, Berlin) David Riff (Arts Festival Steirischer Herbst) Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University) John Timberlake (Middlesex University) Download the full programme at: http://instituteformodern.co.uk/2018/soviet-cosmologies-and-ontologies-even… [1] The event is free to attend and all are welcome, but it would help us to get an idea of numbers if you could sign up via our Eventbrite page at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/soviet-cosmologies-and-ontologies-tickets-5106… [2] [1] http://instituteformodern.co.uk/2018/soviet-cosmologies-and-ontologies-even… [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/soviet-cosmologies-and-ontologies-tickets-5106… __._,_.___ ------------------------------ Posted by: Historical Materialism News <news(a)historicalmaterialism.org> ------------------------------ Reply via web post <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/mes…> • Reply to sender <[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20EVENT%3A%20Soviet%20Cosmologies%20and%20Ontologies%2C%201960s-1970s%20-%20University%20of%20Westminster%2C%2026%20October> • Reply to group <[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20EVENT%3A%20Soviet%20Cosmologies%20and%20Ontologies%2C%201960s-1970s%20-%20University%20of%20Westminster%2C%2026%20October> • Start a New Topic <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/new…> • Messages in this topic <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/conversations/top…> (1) ------------------------------ Have you tried the highest rated email app? <https://yho.com/1wwmgg> With 4.5 stars in iTunes, the Yahoo Mail app is the highest rated email app on the market. What are you waiting for? Now you can access all your inboxes (Gmail, Outlook, AOL and more) in one place. Never delete an email again with 1000GB of free cloud storage. ------------------------------ Visit Your Group <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJ…> - New Members <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/historicalmaterialism/members/all;_ylc=…> 1 [image: Yahoo! Groups] <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo;_ylc=X3oDMTJlNXFzZWdpBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkA…> • Privacy <https://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/groups/details.html> • Unsubscribe <historicalmaterialism-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe> • Terms of Use <https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/> SPONSORED LINKS . __,_._,___ _______________________________________________ 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

1 0

Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class? (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 14 Oct '18

14 Oct '18

Dear James, thank you so much for this interesting analysis, I agree with you, and I only use 'precariat' in precise analytical contexts, at SMart for example, we use the concept of 'autonomous worker', but I work to link it specifically with the economy of the commons to liberate these workers from the dictates of the capitalist market, however, in the context of building generative livelihood, which today by necessacity entail a relation with the commons if not commons-centricity, I use the concept of commoners, I find people readily accept it once they get the narrative behind it, what would be your objections to using 'commoners' ? On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 11:14 PM <jbquilligan3(a)charter.net> wrote: > Michel et al > > I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussion on the precariat in the Global > Transition Network during the month of September 2018. I certainly don't > disagree with the accuracy or power of this basic definition of the > precariat, which is sharpened by Guy Standing (the originator of this idea) > in the response below. He makes clear that since the precariat is embedded > in the capitalist paradigm, it's important to emphasize (in Marxist > fashion) the transformational potential that arises through the dangerous > conditions of all workers who are helplessly stuck in the structural > framework of Private production and distribution and State control through > *de*regulation. Indeed so. I get it that we must resist the rules and > conditions through which we have been so profoundly set up to fail. > > Yet, from the standpoint of revolutionary storytelling and > transformational branding, I continue to wonder if a term like *precariat*, > which is chosen partly because of its potential to organize workers based > on their implicit alienation, dispossession and misery, is really apt for > this evolutionary moment. I also note that 'precariat' implies violent > resistance over peaceful resistance to these unequal conditions. This makes > me think that there may be a better choice of language which expresses both > a strong motive power and a positive vision for change, yet is capable of > gathering together the citizen-workers of the world under one banner. I'm > not proposing such a term here, but I do suggest that this language must > convey a sense of decentralization, participation, collectivity, > cooperation, commons, reinhabitation and sustainability. I don't get any of > this from the term 'precariat'. > > The other day a friend of mine was asking, "What would Gandhi do?" in our > present economic/political state of commiseration. It occurred to me that > even if organizing and mobilizing under the banner of 'precariat' inspired > our citizens to shed the old, crystallized system and prepare for some new > kind of structure, without an equally powerful vision of the regenerative > and collaborative system to which we aspire, those who were united under > the precariat banner would soon splinter in disarray and the result would > be social chaos. > > The American, French and Russian revolutions were complete gambles born of > despair -- with no plan of what was to come. We must recognize that our > time is entirely unlike that of the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries, when the > revolutionary goal was to create social change by continuously reigning in > the oppressive oligarchies which sought infinite economic growth to sustain > their wealth and power. Things are very different now. Ecology is telling > us to prepare for an age of finite economic growth. Our goal must be to > slow the destruction of the environment and create social emancipation > while managing economic contraction. How? We must 1) adapt to the precarity > that we are now facing in the environment, while 2) continuing to resist > and transform the precarity of the entrenched capitalist dialectic and its > new oligarchy. > > Ok. But might we express this another way? My view is that a double > negative such as this -- a precarious environment and a precarious working > class -- will only bedevil our strategy and tactics with endless fear and > confusion. It's critical to understand that the negativity of the world's > declining resources combined with the negativity of greater human need > within a growing population will not inevitably lead to disaster if the > situation is framed from a larger perspective. In nature, for example, two > negative charges of energy immediately turn into a positive charge without > losing the power of either of the two formerly negative energies. This is > entirely a function of expression -- of how we perceive the forces at work > and our apply our understanding of this to our circumstances. > > We see this same apparent dichotomy between resources and needs operating > in molecular biology. When energy is required within an organic system, the > need of this energy is automatically met when it is recognized. This is how > cells and organisms and living systems develop: they enable the resources > available in an environment to meet the needs of the population through > their labor. Note that this labor is both ecological and human. > > Transforming two interrelated negatives is the essence of progressive > resistance. It demonstrates that there is a dynamic equilibrium which > underlies an apparent contradiction. In the new economics of social classes > faced with planetary limits to resources, this requires embodying both the > evolutionary meaning of nature as limited by its regenerative capacities > and human labor as limited by its biophysical needs. I do think this is > what Gandhi would be saying today: that it would be shortsighted not to use > the laws of nature to turn the message of global class resistance into a > purely positive meme for transformation. Economics must be designed with > this kind of integration if human society is to exist. Marx and his > followers have failed to complete this loop of ecological/social > metabolism. Here's hoping we do not. > > James Quilligan > > ----------------------------------------- > From: "Michel Bauwens" > To: "p2p-foundation", "Research stream email of P2P Foundation" > Cc: > Sent: Friday October 12 2018 11:27:36AM > Subject: Fwd: The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class? (GTN Discussion) > > This is a dense but very rich and lively text by Guy Standing, which sets > the record straight on both the issues of the precariat and on the basic > income; Guy stresses the relation between the precariat and the commons in > a very direct way, > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> > Date: Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 4:52 PM > Subject: The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class? (GTN Discussion) > To: <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> > > > > From Guy Standing <GuyStanding(a)standingnet.com> > > ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks are due to those who commented on my essay. This rejoinder will not > be able to address all points raised, but rather will focus on a few key > arguments and recurring themes. > > First, I want to rebut the claim, made previously and repeated here by > Ronaldo Munck in his two comments (backed by John Russo, William Robinson, > and Bill Fletcher) that the precariat is a “Northern-centric” concept, > inapplicable in what he calls the “Global South,” a notion hard to maintain > in a globalized capitalist system. I first conceptualized the precariat > while implementing a “labor flexibility” survey in 3,000 industrial > enterprises in Malaysia in the 1980s, and then refined it in similar > surveys in the Philippines, Indonesia, and what was then Bombay. I refined > the ideas while director of the ILO’s technical work in the former Soviet > Union and Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The first estimate of a national > precariat was in South Africa, where I was research director for Nelson > Mandela’s Labour Market Commission. > > Subsequently, I had the privilege of working for over a decade with the > Self Employed Women’s Association of India, a union of two million women > outworkers (i.e., employees who perform their work at home or at a place > not normally considered a business premise), with whom I implemented three > basic income pilots covering thousands of people. But perhaps most > revealing is that some of the most outstanding recent research on the > precariat has been in China (cited in footnote 3 of my essay). > > Based on my work and research on the “Global South” over thirty years > (including 400 presentations on these ideas in 37 countries), I believe the > charge that the precariat concept is “Northern-centric” to be a flippant > and superficial reading of my argument. Obviously, the precariat and the > emerging global class structure are more pronounced in some countries. That > has always been the case with class structures. Perhaps Ronaldo and the > others should direct their fire at Marx for being Northern-centric. After > all, his conception of the proletariat was based on little more than the > knowledge Engels gleaned in Manchester. Perhaps not. > > In his second comment, Ronaldo also dismisses basic income as a “very > ‘Northern’ concern,” claiming it relates “very much to the limited world of > the North Atlantic.” As it happens, I have been involved in basic income > pilots covering thousands of people in India and Namibia, besides analyzing > moves in that direction in other developing countries. We called the book > on the Indian pilots Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India > (Bloomsbury, 2015). This was because the evaluation surveys showed a series > of transformative changes—improvements in nutrition, health and schooling, > better sanitation, emancipatory breakthroughs for women and the disabled, > greater cooperative work activity, and reductions in the power of landlords > and moneylenders. We found similar effects in Namibia. > > What was particularly encouraging was that when the Indian Finance > Minister presented his budget to Parliament in January 2017, he included a > report stating that basic income was affordable and feasible in India. > While I was writing this, friends sent me news that the UN Secretary > General in his address to the Security Council had endorsed basic income. > Having argued for it for nearly forty years, and been ridiculed for doing > so, you may appreciate that the news induced a gulp in my throat. > > Another claim by Ronaldo, supported by others, is that the precariat > concept shows a “complete lack of understanding of contemporary labour or > of the labour movement’s organisations and strategies.” I utterly reject > this criticism based on my research and my experience as a union member for > most of my life, both of which have led me to view worker organizations as > vital. I have addressed numerous unions around the world, and worked with > many, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the > Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). But we must avoid idealizing > unions. Consider five examples that reveal inherent failings of laborism. > > First, for a decade, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions > (ICFTU) refused to accept SEWA as a member, blocking it as a worker body in > the ILO, even though it was fighting for the rights of women outworkers and > had two million members. I acted as an intermediary, as SEWA activists > struggled against excommunication. Unified working class? The sexist bias > was ugly. The argument used by the unions was that SEWA did not represent > “employees”—a Northern-centric position indeed. > > Second, I recall with distaste being invited to discuss the new unions in > Eastern Europe with the then-president of the AFL-CIO. Between expletives, > his message was that I should stop working with them and that he wanted > their leaders dead. I was working with individuals who had bravely stood > against tyranny and for worker rights. Yet here was the leader of the > world’s biggest union confederation showing lack of class solidarity, to > put it mildly. > > A third example occurred when I addressed an international group of union > leaders at a “Summer School.” I posed the question, “Why is it that union > leaders have been among the most vehement opponents of basic income? After > all, it is about giving everybody basic security.” Although the chair tried > to prevent discussion, one leader said, “I think it is because we think > that if people have income security they will not join unions.” I pointed > out the immorality of that sentiment, adding, “Fortunately the premise is > wrong. People who are chronically insecure are less likely to join a > collective body, for fear of retribution. If they have basic security, they > are more likely to have the courage to fight for rights.” > > Fourth, recently a decision had to be made on building a third runway at > Heathrow that will mean planes flying over low-income neighborhoods in east > London. Nobody denies that it will intensify noise and air pollution, > endangering lives and child development. But one group lobbied feverishly > (and, sadly, successfully) for the runway on the grounds that it would > create jobs. Yes, the unions. Other examples abound of how unions have > shown disregard for environmental degradation. Jobs or the environment? No > contest. > > Fifth, when invited to present on the precariat to a conference of about > 500 members of UGT (a large Brazilian union) in São Paulo, I was impressed > that speaker after speaker said it was vital to reach out to the Brazilian > precariat. Had Ronaldo or others told them the precariat had no “resonance” > in Brazil, they would have scoffed at the idea. Unions will have to change > and understand the precariat. > > This leads to Maurie Cohen’s comment in asking “whether a basic income > constitutes a sufficient strategy.” Of course it does not. For successful > transformation, two meta-securities are needed: basic income (for without > economic security, nobody can feel in control of their lives) and strong > “Voice” (for without collective organizations to represent our interests, > we are always vulnerable). That is why in our Indian pilots, we tested for > the impact of Voice by splitting the communities into those where only the > basic income was paid but where there was no organization to represent > their interests and those where a collective body was operating as well. > > Having worked with unions for many years and interacted with unionists > from all over the world, I concluded that they must transform themselves by > responding to the priorities of the precariat, not just the proletariat. > > So, immodestly, I posed the double question: What would constitute a > manifesto for the precariat today, and how would it differ from a > proletariat charter, had it existed, one hundred years ago, at the founding > of the ILO in 1919? This resulted in A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to > Citizens (Bloomsbury, 2014). > > That book argues (Articles 5-10 of the Charter) that we need a synthesis > of the best elements of the craft guilds that industrial unions helped to > destroy and the best elements of trades unions, and that to reach the > precariat, they should focus on “collaborative bargaining” not just > “collective bargaining.” This was elaborated in Work after Globalisation: > Building Occupational Citizenship. > > In developing the Charter, one point crystallized in considering how the > precariat could be a vanguard for social change (which William Robinson > claims is absent in my analysis, but which is treated at length in both > Chapter 5 of the Charter and Chapter 8 of Corruption of Capitalism). In > exaggerated form, it is this: the proletariat’s primary (or frontline) > antagonist is the employer, the boss, the capitalist; the precariat’s > primary (not only) antagonist is the state. > > That became clear in Occupy movements and in the evolution of precariat > movements since. All transformations begin with recognition of common > identity and interest, and with understanding the nature of the enemy. This > is a necessary first step on the road to transformation. The precariat > knows that the immoral regulatory practices of social, economic, and labor > market policy are directed at it, and that this is where the morally weak > underbelly should be critiqued. > > Several commenters, notably Fred Magdoff, referred to the commons. I would > like to correct an apparent impression that I favor “leaving the commons as > private property.” That is the opposite of what I believe. We need to > reclaim the commons and commoning, while extracting the rental income > acquired by those who have enclosed, privatized, or colonized our commons. > Although, as recalled in The Corruption of Capitalism, Marx himself was > radicalized not by rapacious mill owners but by witnessing the theft of the > commons in the Moselle. Marxists and others have been too quiet about this. > That is why “Revive the commons” was Article 27 of the Precariat Charter. > > Peter Barnes, whose work I commend to everybody, says I want “to replace > existing taxes on income and consumption with commons levies.” I do not say > that. We need both, but with greater reliance on the latter than has been > the case. They are also less avoidable. And contrary to what William > Robinson says, I do not think that curbing rentier dimensions of capitalism > will “solve the problem.” But the rentier character of contemporary global > capitalism is extreme. It is neither morally nor economically justifiable > in any school of economic thought, which is why criticism should focus on > it in developing a progressive politics. > > Several comments referred to “job security” (Alexandra K öves, Alison Tate > and Evelyn Astor) when what is meant is “employment security.” In the seven > forms of labor-related security long sought by social democrats, far too > much attention was given to employment security, to the neglect of what I > have called *occupational security*. In conceptualizing the precariat, I > found it useful to see how people in it were losing all seven forms of > labor-related security. > > Robinson’s comment that workers around the world have been subject to what > “Standing and many others, myself included, have identified as unstable and > deregulated labor relations” shows he has not read my work carefully, since > a central claim of mine, right or wrong, is that there has been no > “deregulation.” Indeed, a reasonable hypothesis is that, in the evolution > of capitalism, never has state regulation been more comprehensive or > directive. And this is directed primarily at the precariat. > > George Liodakis’s comment is hard to understand. I will just say that, > while I am unsure how I have “a communist vision,” I strongly disagree that > “relations of distribution are always attendant to specific relations of > production.” It is a key to understanding the different material interests > and tensions between the salariat, proletariat, and precariat that while > all three experience wage labor as part of their “relations of production,” > they have very different structures of social income, with the first group > receiving a large and growing part of their income from capital, the middle > group a rising proportion from the state, and the precariat none of the > former and a shrinking share of the latter. This is why it is vital to > define class by reference to all three dimensions—relations of production, > relations of distribution, and relations to the state. > > Alison Tate and Evelyn Astor, on behalf of the International Trade Union > Confederation (ITUC), with whom I have worked with pleasure, say, “the ITUC > rejects the idea that increasing unemployment and precarious employment are > inevitable.” If they mean to associate this idea with me, they are > mistaken. Actually, I reject the term “precarious employment” and think > that, with the dominant state regulatory policy, low open unemployment is > more likely than high. Concealing unemployment has been a feature of social > democratic support for workfare, as exemplified by Bill Clinton’s 1996 > welfare act, the Hartz IV reforms made by the Social Democrats in Germany, > and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s regime of tax credits and means-tested > benefits in the UK. They have reintroduced Speenhamland. > > It is revealing that the labor movement in general has done very little to > undermine workfare, but have persisted in promoting laborist social > security. Tate and Astor advocate support for ILO Convention 102 on Social > Security. In my writing and in many speeches, I have nominated that > Convention as the most sexist and laborist of all labor Conventions. Passed > in 1952, it defines the “standard beneficiary” as “a man with wife and two > children,” and helpfully adds “the term ‘wife’ means a wife who is > maintained by her husband.” The fact that representatives of the > international “labor movement” support such paternalistic policy is sad. > The precariat would be deeply disadvantaged if Convention 102 were put into > effect. > > I should also like to respond to the interesting comment by John Bellamy > Foster, whose work I greatly respect, particularly in connection with the > Lauderdale Paradox, which is useful for understanding the role of the > commons and why it is so important for the precariat. As he recognized, I > have addressed the Marxian typology in detail elsewhere. Marx made > contradictory statements on the distinction between labor and labor power, > and the distinction between labor (which has exchange value) and work > (which has use value), which Engels addressed in a famous footnote in > Capital. > > But contrary to what Foster suggests, Marx’s notion of “the stagnant > population” does not correspond to what most social scientists call the > “informal sector” and neither are “similar to Standing’s concept of the > precariat.” In my writing and in the ILO, where the informal sector notion > was defended most strongly, I have always rejected the notion of the > informal sector. It mixes up petty production, a labor reserve, and a > lumpen “stagnant” population, allowing some observers to depict it as the > focus for development, others as a reflection of developmental failure. The > precariat does not correspond to any of that. It is the core “active” > desired feature of global capitalism, providing “flexible” labor. But for > critics of existing capitalism, the beauty of it is that it is a dangerous > class, and it is this which is overlooked by leftish critics who mistake > the meaning by focusing only on the downside. It is dangerous precisely > because it is not the > proletariat and not a “proto-proletariat” or a lumpen category. > > Critics presume I am writing about “precarious labor,” a term I have come > to detest, and that the precariat is just a bunch of victims, wallowing in > insecurity. But I tried to convey the dialectical character in the two > books on the precariat—in the first contrasting “groaners” and “grinners,” > and in the second stressing why the growing part is emancipatory. The > proletariat and their laborist representatives want *decent labor*. But the > beauty of the precariat is that its growing part does not suffer from the > false consciousness that decent labor is the answer to a sensible > existential question. Its progressive part wants liberation from labor. > This is why it is so important to differentiate between work from labor and > leisure from recreation, a theme on which the books concentrate. > > This is why I found Foster’s comment on William Morris disappointing. > Morris has been a major influence on my thinking, along with Hannah Arendt. > What Morris railed against was the drabness of labor and the stultifying > quality of what Arendt was to call the jobholder society. The radical > message of News from Nowhere was that when the peaceful revolution came in > 1956, the first thing that happened was that everybody was provided with a > basic income, helping to resurrect the values of work that he did so much > to promote along the Thames. > > I will end this response by pleading for a new conceptual vocabulary. Too > many critics of the precariat and the proposed class typology seem > determined to stick with nineteenth-century words and notions. Millions of > people with secondary and tertiary schooling are surely puzzled or > alienated by being told they are in “the working class.” And to be told > there is a united working class, or that it soon could exist, strikes many > as risible. > > Guy Standing > > ************************************************************ > > Friday, August 31, 2018 > > From Paul Raskin <praskin(a)tellus.org> > ________________________________________ > Dear GTN, > > In 2018, our discussions have been focusing on key oppositional streams > for building a systemic global movement: vivir bien, human rights, > feminism, peace, and much more to come.* Now, the spotlight turns to the > working class, a change agent long central to social and economic justice > struggles. After all, the industrial proletariat, pushed to the wall by the > capitalist system, spawned a mighty movement able to win vital shop-floor > concessions and social welfare protections. However, the very success of > such reforms, along with harsh neoliberal counterblows and massive economic > changes, has muted the militancy and solidarity of the labor movement in > recent decades. > > Is it time, then, to bid farewell to the working class as a driver of > transformation? Not so fast, argues Guy Standing in his new GTI essay, “The > Precariat: Today’s Transformative Class?” While rejecting anachronistic > proletarian dreams, Guy examines the shifting class structure of > contemporary global capitalism, and finds new bases for hope. Specifically, > he believes the “precariat”—the growing army of workers leading precarious > lives of insecure jobs and unpredictable futures—could crystallize into a > new mass class for spearheading system change. > > True, some segments of the “precariat” (the word is a portmanteau of > “precarious” and “proletariat”) may serve as fodder for reactionary > politics, but others can lead the progressive challenge to the neoliberal > order. Whatever you conclude about Guy’s controversial thesis, his essay is > sure to stimulate thinking and challenge preconceptions. Please read it at > www.greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class, and > let the discussion begin! > > Comments are welcome through Sunday, SEPTEMBER 30. > > Over to you, > Paul > GTI Director > > * You may recall that this series kicked off at the end of 2017 with my > framing paper, “How Do We Get There? The Problem of Action” ( > www.greattransition.org/publication/how-do-we-get-there) The full GTN > discussion of that paper is archived at > www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/201-how-do-we-get-there-the-p… > . > > ------------------------------------------------------- > Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network > > Read all comments (or reply) at > > <https://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/207-the-precariat-today-s…> > https://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/207-the-precariat-today-s… > > Note: Expect a delay between posting and receiving your comment > > Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org > > > > > -- > P2P Foundation: <http://p2pfoundation.net>http://p2pfoundation.net - > <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net>http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > Connect: <http://p2pfoundation.ning.com>http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; > Discuss: > <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation> > http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation > > Updates: <http://del.icio.us/mbauwens>http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; > <http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens>http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; > <http://twitter.com/mbauwens>http://twitter.com/mbauwens; > <http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens>http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens > > > > > -- 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

1 0

Re: [P2P-F] cooperative game theory, accounting for the cooperative surplus
by Michel Bauwens 14 Oct '18

14 Oct '18

here is another important article I found today, about funding permissionless regeneratie activity: https://blog.goodaudience.com/rewriting-the-story-of-human-collaboration-c3… On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 5:47 PM John Steven Bianucci < stevebianucci(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you, Michel! I like where this is going, ...allowing for relations > experiencing abundance. > > Sincerely, > John Steven > > *Sincerely,* > > John Steven Bianucci > 847.401.6050 (m) > > > *"In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh > generation" * - *Iroquois Great Law of Peace * > > > On Sun, Oct 14, 2018 at 7:15 AM Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > >> a mustread: >> >> >> https://medium.com/regen-network/cooperative-games-and-the-ecological-data-… >> >> -- >> 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 >> >> >> >> >> -- 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

1 0

cooperative game theory, accounting for the cooperative surplus
by Michel Bauwens 14 Oct '18

14 Oct '18

a mustread: https://medium.com/regen-network/cooperative-games-and-the-ecological-data-… -- 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

1 0

Fwd: The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class? (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 12 Oct '18

12 Oct '18

This is a dense but very rich and lively text by Guy Standing, which sets the record straight on both the issues of the precariat and on the basic income; Guy stresses the relation between the precariat and the commons in a very direct way, ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> Date: Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 4:52 PM Subject: The Precariat: Today's Transformative Class? (GTN Discussion) To: <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> >From Guy Standing <GuyStanding(a)standingnet.com> ------------------------------------------------------- Thanks are due to those who commented on my essay. This rejoinder will not be able to address all points raised, but rather will focus on a few key arguments and recurring themes. First, I want to rebut the claim, made previously and repeated here by Ronaldo Munck in his two comments (backed by John Russo, William Robinson, and Bill Fletcher) that the precariat is a “Northern-centric” concept, inapplicable in what he calls the “Global South,” a notion hard to maintain in a globalized capitalist system. I first conceptualized the precariat while implementing a “labor flexibility” survey in 3,000 industrial enterprises in Malaysia in the 1980s, and then refined it in similar surveys in the Philippines, Indonesia, and what was then Bombay. I refined the ideas while director of the ILO’s technical work in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The first estimate of a national precariat was in South Africa, where I was research director for Nelson Mandela’s Labour Market Commission. Subsequently, I had the privilege of working for over a decade with the Self Employed Women’s Association of India, a union of two million women outworkers (i.e., employees who perform their work at home or at a place not normally considered a business premise), with whom I implemented three basic income pilots covering thousands of people. But perhaps most revealing is that some of the most outstanding recent research on the precariat has been in China (cited in footnote 3 of my essay). Based on my work and research on the “Global South” over thirty years (including 400 presentations on these ideas in 37 countries), I believe the charge that the precariat concept is “Northern-centric” to be a flippant and superficial reading of my argument. Obviously, the precariat and the emerging global class structure are more pronounced in some countries. That has always been the case with class structures. Perhaps Ronaldo and the others should direct their fire at Marx for being Northern-centric. After all, his conception of the proletariat was based on little more than the knowledge Engels gleaned in Manchester. Perhaps not. In his second comment, Ronaldo also dismisses basic income as a “very ‘Northern’ concern,” claiming it relates “very much to the limited world of the North Atlantic.” As it happens, I have been involved in basic income pilots covering thousands of people in India and Namibia, besides analyzing moves in that direction in other developing countries. We called the book on the Indian pilots Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India (Bloomsbury, 2015). This was because the evaluation surveys showed a series of transformative changes—improvements in nutrition, health and schooling, better sanitation, emancipatory breakthroughs for women and the disabled, greater cooperative work activity, and reductions in the power of landlords and moneylenders. We found similar effects in Namibia. What was particularly encouraging was that when the Indian Finance Minister presented his budget to Parliament in January 2017, he included a report stating that basic income was affordable and feasible in India. While I was writing this, friends sent me news that the UN Secretary General in his address to the Security Council had endorsed basic income. Having argued for it for nearly forty years, and been ridiculed for doing so, you may appreciate that the news induced a gulp in my throat. Another claim by Ronaldo, supported by others, is that the precariat concept shows a “complete lack of understanding of contemporary labour or of the labour movement’s organisations and strategies.” I utterly reject this criticism based on my research and my experience as a union member for most of my life, both of which have led me to view worker organizations as vital. I have addressed numerous unions around the world, and worked with many, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). But we must avoid idealizing unions. Consider five examples that reveal inherent failings of laborism. First, for a decade, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) refused to accept SEWA as a member, blocking it as a worker body in the ILO, even though it was fighting for the rights of women outworkers and had two million members. I acted as an intermediary, as SEWA activists struggled against excommunication. Unified working class? The sexist bias was ugly. The argument used by the unions was that SEWA did not represent “employees”—a Northern-centric position indeed. Second, I recall with distaste being invited to discuss the new unions in Eastern Europe with the then-president of the AFL-CIO. Between expletives, his message was that I should stop working with them and that he wanted their leaders dead. I was working with individuals who had bravely stood against tyranny and for worker rights. Yet here was the leader of the world’s biggest union confederation showing lack of class solidarity, to put it mildly. A third example occurred when I addressed an international group of union leaders at a “Summer School.” I posed the question, “Why is it that union leaders have been among the most vehement opponents of basic income? After all, it is about giving everybody basic security.” Although the chair tried to prevent discussion, one leader said, “I think it is because we think that if people have income security they will not join unions.” I pointed out the immorality of that sentiment, adding, “Fortunately the premise is wrong. People who are chronically insecure are less likely to join a collective body, for fear of retribution. If they have basic security, they are more likely to have the courage to fight for rights.” Fourth, recently a decision had to be made on building a third runway at Heathrow that will mean planes flying over low-income neighborhoods in east London. Nobody denies that it will intensify noise and air pollution, endangering lives and child development. But one group lobbied feverishly (and, sadly, successfully) for the runway on the grounds that it would create jobs. Yes, the unions. Other examples abound of how unions have shown disregard for environmental degradation. Jobs or the environment? No contest. Fifth, when invited to present on the precariat to a conference of about 500 members of UGT (a large Brazilian union) in São Paulo, I was impressed that speaker after speaker said it was vital to reach out to the Brazilian precariat. Had Ronaldo or others told them the precariat had no “resonance” in Brazil, they would have scoffed at the idea. Unions will have to change and understand the precariat. This leads to Maurie Cohen’s comment in asking “whether a basic income constitutes a sufficient strategy.” Of course it does not. For successful transformation, two meta-securities are needed: basic income (for without economic security, nobody can feel in control of their lives) and strong “Voice” (for without collective organizations to represent our interests, we are always vulnerable). That is why in our Indian pilots, we tested for the impact of Voice by splitting the communities into those where only the basic income was paid but where there was no organization to represent their interests and those where a collective body was operating as well. Having worked with unions for many years and interacted with unionists from all over the world, I concluded that they must transform themselves by responding to the priorities of the precariat, not just the proletariat. So, immodestly, I posed the double question: What would constitute a manifesto for the precariat today, and how would it differ from a proletariat charter, had it existed, one hundred years ago, at the founding of the ILO in 1919? This resulted in A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (Bloomsbury, 2014). That book argues (Articles 5-10 of the Charter) that we need a synthesis of the best elements of the craft guilds that industrial unions helped to destroy and the best elements of trades unions, and that to reach the precariat, they should focus on “collaborative bargaining” not just “collective bargaining.” This was elaborated in Work after Globalisation: Building Occupational Citizenship. In developing the Charter, one point crystallized in considering how the precariat could be a vanguard for social change (which William Robinson claims is absent in my analysis, but which is treated at length in both Chapter 5 of the Charter and Chapter 8 of Corruption of Capitalism). In exaggerated form, it is this: the proletariat’s primary (or frontline) antagonist is the employer, the boss, the capitalist; the precariat’s primary (not only) antagonist is the state. That became clear in Occupy movements and in the evolution of precariat movements since. All transformations begin with recognition of common identity and interest, and with understanding the nature of the enemy. This is a necessary first step on the road to transformation. The precariat knows that the immoral regulatory practices of social, economic, and labor market policy are directed at it, and that this is where the morally weak underbelly should be critiqued. Several commenters, notably Fred Magdoff, referred to the commons. I would like to correct an apparent impression that I favor “leaving the commons as private property.” That is the opposite of what I believe. We need to reclaim the commons and commoning, while extracting the rental income acquired by those who have enclosed, privatized, or colonized our commons. Although, as recalled in The Corruption of Capitalism, Marx himself was radicalized not by rapacious mill owners but by witnessing the theft of the commons in the Moselle. Marxists and others have been too quiet about this. That is why “Revive the commons” was Article 27 of the Precariat Charter. Peter Barnes, whose work I commend to everybody, says I want “to replace existing taxes on income and consumption with commons levies.” I do not say that. We need both, but with greater reliance on the latter than has been the case. They are also less avoidable. And contrary to what William Robinson says, I do not think that curbing rentier dimensions of capitalism will “solve the problem.” But the rentier character of contemporary global capitalism is extreme. It is neither morally nor economically justifiable in any school of economic thought, which is why criticism should focus on it in developing a progressive politics. Several comments referred to “job security” (Alexandra K öves, Alison Tate and Evelyn Astor) when what is meant is “employment security.” In the seven forms of labor-related security long sought by social democrats, far too much attention was given to employment security, to the neglect of what I have called *occupational security*. In conceptualizing the precariat, I found it useful to see how people in it were losing all seven forms of labor-related security. Robinson’s comment that workers around the world have been subject to what “Standing and many others, myself included, have identified as unstable and deregulated labor relations” shows he has not read my work carefully, since a central claim of mine, right or wrong, is that there has been no “deregulation.” Indeed, a reasonable hypothesis is that, in the evolution of capitalism, never has state regulation been more comprehensive or directive. And this is directed primarily at the precariat. George Liodakis’s comment is hard to understand. I will just say that, while I am unsure how I have “a communist vision,” I strongly disagree that “relations of distribution are always attendant to specific relations of production.” It is a key to understanding the different material interests and tensions between the salariat, proletariat, and precariat that while all three experience wage labor as part of their “relations of production,” they have very different structures of social income, with the first group receiving a large and growing part of their income from capital, the middle group a rising proportion from the state, and the precariat none of the former and a shrinking share of the latter. This is why it is vital to define class by reference to all three dimensions—relations of production, relations of distribution, and relations to the state. Alison Tate and Evelyn Astor, on behalf of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), with whom I have worked with pleasure, say, “the ITUC rejects the idea that increasing unemployment and precarious employment are inevitable.” If they mean to associate this idea with me, they are mistaken. Actually, I reject the term “precarious employment” and think that, with the dominant state regulatory policy, low open unemployment is more likely than high. Concealing unemployment has been a feature of social democratic support for workfare, as exemplified by Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare act, the Hartz IV reforms made by the Social Democrats in Germany, and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s regime of tax credits and means-tested benefits in the UK. They have reintroduced Speenhamland. It is revealing that the labor movement in general has done very little to undermine workfare, but have persisted in promoting laborist social security. Tate and Astor advocate support for ILO Convention 102 on Social Security. In my writing and in many speeches, I have nominated that Convention as the most sexist and laborist of all labor Conventions. Passed in 1952, it defines the “standard beneficiary” as “a man with wife and two children,” and helpfully adds “the term ‘wife’ means a wife who is maintained by her husband.” The fact that representatives of the international “labor movement” support such paternalistic policy is sad. The precariat would be deeply disadvantaged if Convention 102 were put into effect. I should also like to respond to the interesting comment by John Bellamy Foster, whose work I greatly respect, particularly in connection with the Lauderdale Paradox, which is useful for understanding the role of the commons and why it is so important for the precariat. As he recognized, I have addressed the Marxian typology in detail elsewhere. Marx made contradictory statements on the distinction between labor and labor power, and the distinction between labor (which has exchange value) and work (which has use value), which Engels addressed in a famous footnote in Capital. But contrary to what Foster suggests, Marx’s notion of “the stagnant population” does not correspond to what most social scientists call the “informal sector” and neither are “similar to Standing’s concept of the precariat.” In my writing and in the ILO, where the informal sector notion was defended most strongly, I have always rejected the notion of the informal sector. It mixes up petty production, a labor reserve, and a lumpen “stagnant” population, allowing some observers to depict it as the focus for development, others as a reflection of developmental failure. The precariat does not correspond to any of that. It is the core “active” desired feature of global capitalism, providing “flexible” labor. But for critics of existing capitalism, the beauty of it is that it is a dangerous class, and it is this which is overlooked by leftish critics who mistake the meaning by focusing only on the downside. It is dangerous precisely because it is not the proletariat and not a “proto-proletariat” or a lumpen category. Critics presume I am writing about “precarious labor,” a term I have come to detest, and that the precariat is just a bunch of victims, wallowing in insecurity. But I tried to convey the dialectical character in the two books on the precariat—in the first contrasting “groaners” and “grinners,” and in the second stressing why the growing part is emancipatory. The proletariat and their laborist representatives want *decent labor*. But the beauty of the precariat is that its growing part does not suffer from the false consciousness that decent labor is the answer to a sensible existential question. Its progressive part wants liberation from labor. This is why it is so important to differentiate between work from labor and leisure from recreation, a theme on which the books concentrate. This is why I found Foster’s comment on William Morris disappointing. Morris has been a major influence on my thinking, along with Hannah Arendt. What Morris railed against was the drabness of labor and the stultifying quality of what Arendt was to call the jobholder society. The radical message of News from Nowhere was that when the peaceful revolution came in 1956, the first thing that happened was that everybody was provided with a basic income, helping to resurrect the values of work that he did so much to promote along the Thames. I will end this response by pleading for a new conceptual vocabulary. Too many critics of the precariat and the proposed class typology seem determined to stick with nineteenth-century words and notions. Millions of people with secondary and tertiary schooling are surely puzzled or alienated by being told they are in “the working class.” And to be told there is a united working class, or that it soon could exist, strikes many as risible. Guy Standing ************************************************************ Friday, August 31, 2018 >From Paul Raskin <praskin(a)tellus.org> ________________________________________ Dear GTN, In 2018, our discussions have been focusing on key oppositional streams for building a systemic global movement: vivir bien, human rights, feminism, peace, and much more to come.* Now, the spotlight turns to the working class, a change agent long central to social and economic justice struggles. After all, the industrial proletariat, pushed to the wall by the capitalist system, spawned a mighty movement able to win vital shop-floor concessions and social welfare protections. However, the very success of such reforms, along with harsh neoliberal counterblows and massive economic changes, has muted the militancy and solidarity of the labor movement in recent decades. Is it time, then, to bid farewell to the working class as a driver of transformation? Not so fast, argues Guy Standing in his new GTI essay, “The Precariat: Today’s Transformative Class?” While rejecting anachronistic proletarian dreams, Guy examines the shifting class structure of contemporary global capitalism, and finds new bases for hope. Specifically, he believes the “precariat”—the growing army of workers leading precarious lives of insecure jobs and unpredictable futures—could crystallize into a new mass class for spearheading system change. True, some segments of the “precariat” (the word is a portmanteau of “precarious” and “proletariat”) may serve as fodder for reactionary politics, but others can lead the progressive challenge to the neoliberal order. Whatever you conclude about Guy’s controversial thesis, his essay is sure to stimulate thinking and challenge preconceptions. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/precariat-transformative-class, and let the discussion begin! Comments are welcome through Sunday, SEPTEMBER 30. Over to you, Paul GTI Director * You may recall that this series kicked off at the end of 2017 with my framing paper, “How Do We Get There? The Problem of Action” ( www.greattransition.org/publication/how-do-we-get-there) The full GTN discussion of that paper is archived at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/201-how-do-we-get-there-the-p… . ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network Read all comments (or reply) at https://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/207-the-precariat-today-s… 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

1 0

Fwd: [Networked-Labour] Marx in a High Technology Era: Globalisation Capital and Class, Cambridge, 26 October 2018
by Michel Bauwens 12 Oct '18

12 Oct '18

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 2:21 PM Subject: [Networked-Labour] Marx in a High Technology Era: Globalisation Capital and Class, Cambridge, 26 October 2018 To: Networked Labour <networked-labour_igopnet(a)lists.igopnet.cc> As part of the COMPASS project, Cambridge Central Asia Forum, in collaboration with the Centre for Development Studies and the Department of Sociology have organised a conference on ‘Marx in a high technology Era’. The papers will address Marxist Heritage, Marxism and Contemporary Issues, Marx in the Digital Era and Marx in the 21st century. It will be attended by academics and students from the University of St. Petersburg and Moscow State University along with members of UK universities. COMPASS with its focus on the wider region and global networks will benefit from these discussions in wider Eurasia. Russia remains are important for Central Asia and Belarus not only because of the membership to EAEU but also a much longer shared past. Discussions will include how the Eurasian and Central Asian worldview is evolving in the context of this history. _______________________________________________ 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

1 0