I agree with both you Brian and Michel about the historic chance rising. At the same time, the developments like Gaza and Ukraine are closely linked to tightening fronts between Brics on the one hand and the Old West on the other, and this negative developments (crisis) is dialectically tied to positive things (opportunist): as productive networks and lessons learned coming together creating accelerating synergy. Grassroots projects, activists, hackers, workers, farmers, interlocking nodes,.. Of course not smooth and easy at all, painful repeat of past mistakes, personality faults, communication problems, infiltration and sabotages.. But if there is a sincere open p2p dialogue, self reflection and open learning we can create something impressive and unexpected. 

I think the growing exchange on the new semi-periphery is quite interesting especially reading together with David Harvey's New Imperialism, Kees van der Pijl's Global Rivalries, William Robinson-Jerry Harris' global capitalism 

Arguments and William Carroll's book 'the making of the transnational capitalist class'. To know the enemy better and see its weakness and strengths, but also it help us to evaluate our selves and our alliances. 

The CiC text and collaboration is intriguing Michel, really liked it. I just realized that towards the labour world, or unions transformation I have also been developing a similar quantum strategy: while supporting change agents in established unions with as positive as possible input, I thought the real push needs to come from outside the unions; as it happened before, success of IWW was the external push on craft unions to renew them selves. 

So what I see great in your and p2p f's approach and strategy is not one dimensional, so not statist (based only on the partner state) but praxis outside and beyond the state as well. 

In this context, we have some further steps taken in the design of Sayus project: fusing GNUnion in one project concept, working semi-intensely on we page: saysus.net

And registered the project to CIC's amazing CoopFunding initiative: http://www.coopfunding.net/en/

Best, Orsan

Sent from my iPhone

On 03 Aug 2014, at 10:53, Michel Bauwens <michel@p2pfoundation.net> wrote:

agreed Brian, 

a imperfect analysis that I wrote a few years ago and that jibes with the K-wave timing, http://p2pfoundation.net/Russia_and_the_Next_Long_Wave

my opinion is that the midwave crisis point (to be compared to 1973-74 in the last one) of the next k-wave, is when the huge opportunity will arise, and in the meantime we have to maximalize the conditions (even if it weren't to happen and we have to survive in something much worse than capitalism)

here is the as yet unpublished text of our strategic agreement with the Catalan Integral Cooperative, after a previous accord with the post-growth alliance, we welcome other players to join these huge but necessary efforts:

Towards a first stateless commons transition plan: a partnership of P2P-F with the Catalan Integral Cooperative

Michel Bauwens

6th August 2014

The General Assembly of the Catalan Integral Cooperative has confirmed a proposed partnership with the P2P Foundation.

This is an important development for several reasons.

First, the Catalan Integral Cooperative is the first new type of cooperative that is entirely in line with the idea for a new type of coops engaged in the co-production of the commons, and, after themselves already embodying these ideas before we formulated them in our recent appeal, they are committed to continue and pioneer the path of open cooperativism.

Second, the CIC fully endorses the Commons Transition Plan that was formulated in connection with the floksociety.org project in Ecuador. The FLOK experience was important in that it was a historical first for such ideas to be endorsed at a nation-state level, but also because that cooperation with a government brings its own type of challenges. How to transition towards partner state practices with a state that is not a partner state itself ?

The experience in Catalonia promises to be very different. While the CIC endorses the Commons Transition Plan as its own development plan and roadmap, of course to be adapted and concretized to their own needs, it wants to apply the proposals for the commonification of public services and the partner state, not at the state level, but at the civic level. So the aim here is to directly create civic institutions which can, within or outside of the CIC, carry out the same support functions and enable the further expansion of the commons economy, in particular to stimulate p2p-based production and manufacturing, which the CIC itself is already pioneering. If successful, we may well have a adaptable/changeable but also largely replicable model that could be used in other regions of the world as well, because it will have been the experience where different pieces of successful DNA have come together in a working model.

Here is the announcement of the CIC, translated from Catalan and Spanish:

“CIC and P2pfoundation strategic partners

It’s been a while now since some people in the CIC took the initiative to start collaborating with the P2P Foundation after certifying our common goals. Indeed, the Permanent Assembly of July 27 approved supporting this line of strategic partnership between CIC and P2P Foundation.

In fact, the P2P Foundation itself (a foundation for the peer-to-peer alternatives), has already expressed the need to partner strategically. You can find more information about the purpose of the P2P Foundation on its website.

Amongst it’s priorities, the P2P Foundation includes the promotion of open cooperativism, as explained in this article. In this sense the CIC appears as one of the ongoing initiatives with most affinity to these principles of open cooperativism, and for both organizations it seems important to keep on developing it and make it known.

Another priority of the P2P Foundation, and one of the areas where they have developed more research, is to generate transitions towards open production processes related to knowledge and towards a social, common goods economy. In this sense, they have been collaborating with Flok Society, a project financed by the government of Ecuador, for which the following document was composed.

From the core work group of the CIC in this area we have suggested that they collaborate with us to tailor a plan of this type for the development of CIC in the following 5-10 years. The objective is not as a theoretical approximation, but to contribute towards identifying and developing key strategic projects that might enable the production of tangible and intangible commons to become one of the reference characteristics of the CIC’s approach to production.

The P2P Foundation has responded enthusiastically to the proposal, amongst other reasons because they will bring their experience and knowledge to a grassroots initiative like ours. We are already beginning to form a joint working group so as to get started with our work. Michel Bauwens, the P2P foundation’s co-founder, expressed his intention to find funding for this project through several independent european foundations.

In addition to these initiatives, as strategic partners, new ways for collaboration will most certainly appear in the future.”

On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

On 08/02/2014 01:29 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:

I have one question, you say Minqi Li says there is no longer a reserve
periphery .. but what about Africa ? (and the rise of latin america in
the naugthies ?)
http://p2pfoundation.net/Rise_of_China_and_the_Demise_of_the_Capitalist_World-Economy

Minqi Li's claim is that too many formerly peripheral countries -- especially the giants, India and China -- have moved into the position of what the world systems theorists call "semi-peripheral" countries, supplying mid-range or partially elaborated products to the central, high-technology producers. The result is a declining pool of people to exploit, both in terms of labor and resources, and in terms of defenseless markets that must necessarily buy products from the center. When large percentages of the world population have access to at least mid-level producer technology, capital can no longer accumulate at the former centers, whose power declines. The current state of affairs in Western Europe and the US/Canada seems to bear this thesis out.

In such a perspective, Michel, your ideas and those of everyone working on p2p and commons approaches become far more pertinent. When the centers of capital accumulation can off the fruits of very high technology to all of those, across the world, who rise into the middle classes, then there is scant likelihood of winning them over to a cooperative approach -- the powers of capitalist seduction are just too strong. Yet in a condition of long-term stagnation, coupled with environmental threats stemming directly and visibly from capital accumulation, alternative proposals may become much more attractive across a flattening global hierarchy.

Of course I agree with Orsan that everything possible must always be tried right now. But it is encouraging to realize that over the middle term, there are some dynamics going our way. It is tough to sustain the fascist-type solution for very long. Too many people have too much agency, even under severe conditions. If it is true that capitalism can no longer produce employment of even the precarious kind that prevailed under the last cycle, then there is really room for something new under the sun, that's what I see as an historic chance.

warmly, Brian

--

Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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