(Jean, in response to http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/p2p-and-marxism-in-search-of?, first identified theme)
The historical failure of socialism and the continued dominance of capitalism
Dear Jean,
Here is a start to my response to your stimulating text. I will use my own proposed fragmentation of your text and respond section by section; not necessarily as a direct response to your arguments, but certainly covering the same topic.
Topic one is the historical failure of socialism and the continued dominance of capitalism
I think I can broadly share your assessment:
the historical movement's relative failure:
The fact that the mainstream labour movement has accepted all the main principles of the current dominant system, and has now, in its social-democratic or actually 'left-neoliberal' form, mainly become a crisis manager for the system, being on the defensive in terms of civic rights, welfare rights and solidarity mechanims. It's merely trying to stem the flows of the losses
The Stalinist wing, who counted on the solidarity of the totalitarian regimes, has collapsed with the disappearance of those regimes.
I think what has collapsed though is in effect the believability of a systemic alternative to the present system, leaving workers and citizens in a defensive mode, under the constant aggressions of financial capital and its predatory demands.
Some general critical points:
the socialist movement was generally a movement that operated within capitalism, and demanded better modalities for those that it represented, which it actually achieved with a relative successful
the successful revolutions turned into counter-examples, as they actually also used the main modalities of capitalism, i.e. waged labour in factories, under even less free conditions
I also have more fundamental critique. My opinion is that Marxism did not have a real transition strategy, i.e. it assumed that workers movement needed to take control of the commanding heights of the economy and that only then could a transition start, after a change in ownership and governance. My reading of history is that previous phase transitions did not occur that way. What in fact happened is that proto-feudalism and proto-capitalist practices first occurred within the old dominant system, and through centuries of maturation, achieved critical mass, slowly forming an intermeshed counter-logic, and creating a social basis for its demands. Only when these demands could not be met by the older system, and that older system could no longer provide the needs of the population, did phase transitions actually occur.
But it is very hard to see proto-socialist practices within the capitalist system?
My hypothesis is that these are only occuring in the last two decades, under the form of commons-based peer to peer production practices. In other words, it is only now that we see the slow maturation of post-capitalist practices, which are slowly intermeshing, are forming the basis for a circulation of the common, and create a social basis for a future phase transition.
What is happening is that commons-based peer production is that proto-modality, and that it is this modality which will be at the basis of future social and political revolutions.