That's a good overview IMO. "Abolishing markets" for me is a phrase that conjures up images of imposing a uniform, monolithic organizational template on society. What you describe, OTOH, is a good example of an organic, emergent transition process. The former approach is great for writing fictional utopias with meticulously designed bike sheds -- but something no real-world transition process will ever bear the slightest resemblance to. On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 10:56 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
Answered this in an email to someone who believes markets themselves are the key issue, and therefore need to be abolished completely:
"First of all, we distinguish markets from capitalism, and we see markets as having both disadvantages and advantages, as have the 3 other main modes of allocation, for example as described in the Structure of World History by Kojin Karatani, and Alan Page Fiske's 'Structure of Social Life'.
We see that different historical periods have different configurations and 'dominations' of one mode above the others .... Capitalism, because of its extractivism and externalities is now hugely problematic, but it is hard to see how to eliminate markets completely without totalitarian coercion.
Thus it makes more sense in our view to focus on 2 interlocking strategies
1) the first is to re-embed markets in reciprocity mechanisms and as supporting the commons, and in fact we see this emerging and discuss this in our manuscript; we believe change does not descend ex nihilo from people who look at the system from outside and describe how they believe the world should work, but from actual praxis, and it is this praxis we examine. And what we see is commons-based productive communities aiming to re-discpline markets to their needs
2) second, we believe the role of the market will likely drastically diminish, on the condition we can export the current coordination mechanisms for immaterial work, which can already largely operate outside the market (free software , open design), to actual physical production, which will require both the development of open and contributory accounting, of other stigmergic mechanisms, but also shared and open supply chains; this will give the material basis of gradually increasing the mutual coordination of production outside of market mechanisms.
While the first is well underway, the second has hardly started, and so, in this transition period, the focus will be in our opinion on expanding the commons, and re-embedding markets under reciprocity mechanims, ie. de-capitalizing the markets if you like, but while this proceeds, the conditions for the second strategy gradually improves."
-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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