along with 'structure of world history' and the 'first european revolution', this is perhaps the third book to have a profound influence on my thinking and approach, i.e. Frederic Lordon's Imperium, reviewed here in a not so open access article, https://newleftreview.org/II/97/alberto-toscano-a-structuralism-of-feeling why, because the message of Lordon is very simple and powerful: horizontalism does NOT created enduring social structures, because if association is totally free , people leave when their 'affects' change ... only by introducing 'verticality', i.e. institutions, do groups who share an affect become more permanent ... this means, radical horizontalism is as illusionary as all-statism or market totalitarianism just as challenging, Lordon maintains that globalism is impossible, as it is not possible to unite all the people under one affect, so intermediary institutions, like the nation-state, are very strong .. he argues that other types of non-nation-state institutions, are in fact , also 'nations' of a sort, so I would conclude that the preference that we show at the p2p foundation for such institutios is indeed an effort to create a new type of 'nation', less bound by geography (except for the virtual geographies of people who share an 'affect' for shared social objects); Lordon would suggest that such new nations however, are unlike to replace the older nation-state models ... this seems a realistic aim to me: to add a new layer of governance and institutions ... I hope one day, I can debate this with Lordon, Michel -- 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/