Dear Michel, many thanks for your general answer. I will also use it to a more general answer. The answer to the question for our relation to the state construction, always based on the roman constitutional law, follows immediately from our perspectives. I think, therein, we agree. After then, we check what is the state. And then we can decide. Based on my personal principles: 1) all people are equivalent. It follows a) all opeople have the equal rights b) all our working have the same values 2) never we accept the private ownership of common resources 3) all decisions about the way of life are taken local Based on my principles of development as a result of the principles of the nature: a) massivly decentral b) massivly parallel c) massivly redundant Immediatly we come to the concept of the world society as a network of local independent community. The P2P environment of local communities. This, because we live always in local communities and we act as a part of this communities. The stability of our lifebase is a direct function of our local independent economy. And this rest always on our local technical infrastructures. The destination for me is, that the people in the local communities can create and build most of that, what they need or what they think, that they need. Also this is a local decision. Because we know, that many task for that are more general, we follow the old principle: "global thinking, local doing". This means, that all our theoretical work we do together in an open and free environment. Therefore, the communication system is so important. But in his inner structure we use our general and fundamental principles. The free access to the free communication for the free access to our free knowledge and information exchange. Knowledge is always worldheritage. It is always a common resource. Now to the state construction. In general it is a system from the elites for the elites against the people, against the self-organisation of the local communities. In the political systems we have two poles: a) the representative systems b) the democratic, local self-decision systems In the area of the representative system we have a big garden of different flowers. But in his core it is always the same. Incapacitation and centralization. The elites need this to organize her parasitic existence. And, because it is not so easy, they need the violence apparatus and the bureaucratic instances. Always based on the incapacitation of the local people. The private ownership of common resources is a necessary part of that. And to legitimate and stabilize this they need the control of the law system, based on the violence apparatus. This is in short form my general view. And immediatly, we see, that never we can operate together with any state system that follows a way against our principles, agains the people. States always are parasitic instances. They use but never they create or build. But in our perspective, we need the reduction of parasitic instances and change to a overall creative and productive activities. With that We can massively reduce the individual cost, the individual effort. Om the blog of Robert Steele we find the sentence in the head: "the truth at any cost lowers all other cost". Maybe, this is a more free interpretation from me. But this is the core for distribution of the activity for our life. If all people are part of the basical activities in the areas for our material existence then all people have enough time to study the laws of the nature to extent the reduction of the efforts for our material life-basics. Of course, we can first disolve all not necessary instances, the parasitic instances. May be, this is the most effective part on our way. Likeany military and all infrastructure for that. In the communication system we can see it very clear. All this parasitic instances we don't need any more. All this stupid instances of "Internet Governance" are superfluos. And we can massivly reduce the volume of packet transports. The same we will find in all spheres of our life. many greetings, willi now: Medellin, Colombia Am 05/07/2014 21:22, schrieb Michel Bauwens:
Thanks for the first spate of reactions: orsan, willi, Kevin
First thing, yes Orsan, the hard politics of p2p transition in the existing context of capital-state-polity-policy-funding-culture.. that is the key issue we have to deal with, and I hope to add my own efforts to this, as soon as my homecoming fever is over ..
Willi and Kevin, you both pose the specific problem of the Partner State. I think there are really big misunderstandings if the relative failure of Ecuador is interpreted to mean that it means the failure of the Partner State.
The Ecuadorian state is not a partner state, it's a market state, though different from the neoliberal one. I interpret as a state that wants to rebalance the market state towards local sovereignity and the local bourgeoisie. It represented a different type of class alliance that wanted to strengthen the local state to tame international capital for its own ends. After a more radical phase after 2007, it is now slowly retreating and seeking a new accomodation with Empire. The results are a mixed bag of very strong social justice results, but a disempowering of civil society as a collective force. It is remarkable that after meeting more than 70 different civic groups, I could not find a single one that supported the government, and even the ones that one did, are now alienated from it. The Ecuadorian state is technocratic, 'knows best' and dislikes participation. They dislike indepedent civic groups as much as, if not more, than neoliberal capital. So-called neosocialism is a statist approach to make Ecuador fit for a socially better kind of capitalism. It's mostly better than what existed before (though quite a few civic groups disagree and say they have less freedom now), but it's neither socialism nor p2p nor participatory.
The second important point is that while we can never idealize the state, the big and central question remains:
1) is it possible to imagine a class society without a state ? My answer is no, as who would stop the homeless of going into empty houses, or elite paramilitaries to take away the land of the farmers ... While failed states are possible, they are generally worse. I am not aware of big migrations to Somalia, nor of colombian urban dwellers to the lands of the paramilitaries, but am only aware of the opposite. People able to vote with their feet, flee stateless regions
2) is it possible to imagine abolishing class society by fiat. My answer is no. Therefore in any transition period, there will be a state to defend the mass of the people and their democracy against attempts at restoration.
Thus the state is simply unavoidable.
So the question becomes, what kind of state. My answer is the partner state, a state where the people themselves are the state, and the historical precedents are of course the greek polis and the free medieval city states described by the anarchist Kropotkin. If you agree, I don't care what other name you use for it, that is the partner state we are talking about, nothing else can be it.
The third question is: what do we do in the meantime. My answer is 1) build autonomous social organisation 2) engage with the state to fight bad legislation and promote good legislation 3) create prefigurative partner state policies where the people's forces have majorities.
So back the question: does the relative failure of flok prove anything about the failure of the partner state concept ? My answer is: the opposite. Ecuador shows that anything but a partner state approach is relatively doomed. It wasn't a partner state, we thought a prefigurative experiment was possible, and it wasn't. But micro-experiments, like in Sigchos, are still possible, and worth fighting for.
Michel