Re: [P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
The technologies I'm thinking of are the kinds of open-source micromanufacturing machine tools, smelting furnaces etc. being developed by groups like Open Source Ecology, and tabletop CNC machinery being developed by the open hardware community more generally; open-source machinery like the tractors, compressed earth block machines, sawmills and so forth also being developed by OSE; small-scale intensive food production techniques like Permaculture; and so on. I don't question that there are still many bottleneck technologies that require large scale and capital outlay -- microprocessors probably the most significant. Railroads are another bottleneck industry. I don't think electrical power generation is so much -- generating capability can be pretty well dispersed. And if photovoltaic generators still require larger, more capital-intensive facilities to produce, other kinds of renewable power -- wind, or using solar reflectors as heat source for a steam-powered generator -- are producible at the local level. I may be wrong -- I'm a layman on computer hardware issues -- but I think the hosting capability of server farms can be pretty widely distributed among many small facilities over a large area. But to my mind the most important thing is that the *preponderance* of small-scale means of production for local consumption means a much smaller portion of the economy than in the past, and probably a much smaller portion in the near future than at present, will be critical bottlenecks subject to capitalist control. And the fewer the bottlenecks, and the less time-sensitive they are (as a result of the increasing availability of expedients like reprogrammable micro-chips, recycling old hardware for functions where lower levels of processing capacity are sufficient, increasing cradle-to-cradle recycling of materials in landfills using local processing facilities like mini-mills, and less dependance on long-distance transportation in general thanks to economic relocalization), the more slack/insulation local economies will have for riding out periods of impasse before they actually have to be restocked from the remaining bottlenecks. That means the bottlenecks, while still remaining, will provide a lot less leverage. Not saying there won't be a final phase of violence at the last stage of the transition as the most critical remaining centralized stuff changes hands, but it will probably be a lot smaller in scale and with a vastly shifted correlation of forces -- a mopping-up operation against capitalist-state forces that have already been strategically outmaneuvered. On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 6:25 AM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Firs, what are these technologies? (I am just curious and do not question the possibility of such technologies).
Second, what do we do with satellites-we need them for communication- and other communication infrastructure, trains, railways, ships, ports, aeroplanes, airports, power plants that produce electricity, computing server farms, etc.
For peer production becoming the dominant mode of production these infrastructures along the nature-earth must be transformed into universal commons of humanity. Therefore we need to expropriate capitalists.
Jakob
------------------------------ *From:* NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Kevin Carson <[email protected]> *Sent:* 17 June 2016 11:54 *To:* Jakob Rigi *Cc:* [email protected]; p2p-foundation *Subject:* Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
The autonomist argument is that new, radically cheapening and ephemeral production technologies are rendering accumulation and capital-intensiveness increasingly irrelevant, so that human social relationships are replacing costly physical capital as a source of productivity. Technologies like small-scale open-source CNC machinery, Permaculture, etc., are making it possible to shift a growing share of production into the social or informal sphere of production for use or production by worker cooperatives, with radically smaller capital outlays than older models of production. So Exodus becomes a viable alternative to direct assault aimed at seizing control of the old hierarchies. Bypass them and let them rot instead.
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
Jakob,
capitalism can only reproduce itself through commodity labor and workers as consumers, this gives us powerful leverage.
if we don't have the power, nor a social consensus to 'expropriate', the building of counter-hegemonic power is essential to get there ... merely mobilizing counter-power within the capitalist system, i.e. dependent labor, has not worked for 200 years, and I see few signs that it can. The diverse forms of property that exist, and protected by the state, can be used by commoners to mutualize capital and means of production. Obviously, powerful social movements can set rules to limit monopolistic control of resources, but then you still have to deal with the impotence of nations to do this, and they most likely will smash you, as they are doing with greece and venezuela and elsewhere. This brings to the fore the other aspect of our strategy, which is to built counter-hegemonic power at the global level. Just screaming "I hate capitalism and I will smash you" is not going to do it.
The strategy we describe worked for capital and for all the previous transitions (read Karatini), while the marxist strategy of taking power and change everything once we have that power, has been a dismal failure. So I think that continuing in that vein after 200 years of failure, that is the wishful thinking. It hasn't worked for previous transitions, and isn't working for this transition, so what is your evidence ? Our strategy is based on the necessary prefigurative construction of counter-power, which is how past transitions were successful
Michel
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Mitchel
The idea that commoners and cooperative worker can challenge capitalism
by
working for themselves and make the state their partner is a wishful fantasy- is not realisable.
Capitalism is in the first place the private ownership in means of production. And the state is in the first place the power and institutions that protect the private property in means of production.
No cooperative production can become the dominant mode of production unless land and other strategic means of productions have been transformed into commons.
Do you agree with this statement? If not what are your counter argument?
If yes, then how land other strategic means of production can be transformed into commons?
I argue that this require expropriating capitalists. If you disagree, what are your counter arguments?
If you agree, then, making the production of commons the dominant mode of production requires confronting the sate not becoming its partner. Capitalist did not needed always to expropriate the feudal landowners since the latter started to lease their land to capitalists. But, capitalists expropriated small owners the means of production-the so called primitive accumulation. The emerging Feudal class did not expropriate the slave owners since salve owners themselves became feudals. But, capitalist having expropriated the majority of the population and thereby have monopolised the strategic means of production. Transferring these means of production to the majority, meaning making them universal commons of humanity requires expropriating capitalists. But, state would not allow us to do that. It will tell you that capitalist ownership is guaranteed by the law. And the law is the holiest of the holy. We-the state- will not permit anyone to break the law even if it will be necessary to shed blood. Our monopoly right our violence is here to protect capitalist property in means of production .
So the commoners mus confront such a state and smash at least its coercive and violent institutions and expropriate the expropriators for the benefit of the humanity as whole and transform their property int universal commons.
Jakob
Jakob
________________________________ From: NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Sent: 15 June 2016 10:47 To: Jakob Rigi; Michel Bauwens Cc: Commoning; [email protected]; p2p-foundation Subject: Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
There are many overlapping aspect between Cox, and Van Der Pijl's 'transnational historical materialist' analysis and what you have put together Michel.So I share the vision, I only would add a direct-action, political confrontation axe which needs to be built based on what can be imagined as 'peer to peer social network unionism'. As supportive element in terms of organizing power, and broader alliance building, hence collectivization of working alternatives and to defend them against ruling class violence and use of force. Not to precede what you suggest or to replace it but simultaneously empower the counter hegemonic transnational trinity (of as in Cox Institutons-material capabilities-ideas / capital-state-nation).
Orsan
On 15 Jun 2016, at 03:56, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
some of you may be interested in this short note:
Post-Capitalist Strategy of the P2P Foundation
Discussion[edit]
Michel Bauwens:
"A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
Following Kojin Karatini, we agree that the present system is based on a trinity of capital-state-nation, which represents an integration of three modes of exchange. Capital represents a particular market form based on the endless accumulation of capital, the state is the entity that keeps the system together through coercion, law and redistribution (Karatini calls this function ‘rule and protect’), and the nation is the ‘imagined community’ that is the locus of the survival of community and reciprocity. A post-capitalist strategy must necessarily overcome all three in a new integration.
Overcoming the capitalist form of the market, means interfering in capital accumulation. This can and must be done in two ways. First of all, the capitalist market requires labor as a commodity, and therefore, overcoming capitalism means refusing to work for capitalism as commodity labor. Hence the stress on open cooperativism, i.e. commoners work for themselves, in democratic associations and create autonomous livelihoods around our commons, protected from value capture through membranes such as reciprocity-based licenses. Measures like the basic income also substantially remove the compulsion for workers to have to sell their labor power, and would strengthen the capacity to create alternative economic entities. However, we must proceed with the reality that exists today, and create our own funding and resource allocation mechanisms. The second way is to withdraw from capitalism and capital accumulation is by removing our cooperation as consumers. Without workers as producers and workers as consumers, there can be no reproduction of capital. The latter means the invention and creation of new forms of consumption that are derived from the creation of open cooperatives. Workers mutualize their consumption in pooled market forms such as community-supported agriculture and the like. To the degree that we systematically organize new provisioning and consumption systems, outside of the sphere of capital, we undermine the reproduction of capital and capital accumulation. In addition, we create ‘transvestment’ vehicles, which allow the acceptance of capital, as disciplined by the new commons and market forms that we develop through peer production, this creates a flow of value from the system of capital to the system of the commons economy. Faced with a crisis of capital accumulation, it is entirely realistic to expect a stream of value which seeks a place in the commons economy. Instead of the cooptation of the commons economy by capital, in the form of the netarchical capitalist platforms which capture value from the commons, we coopt capital inside the commons, and subject it to its rules.
I believe we can achieve similar effects with the state. Our strategy for a ‘partner state’ is to ‘commonify’ the state. We strive to transform state functions so that they actually empower and enable the autonomy of the citizens as individuals and groups, to create common resources, instead of being ‘consumers’ of state services. We abolish the separation of the state from the population by increasing democratic and participatory decision-making. We consider the public service as a commons, giving every citizen and resident the right to work in the commonified public services. But we don’t ‘withdraw’ completely from the state because we need common good institutions for everyone in a given territory, which creates equal capacities for every citizen to contribute to the commons and the ethical market organizations.
In another article we have argued that the capital-state-nation trinity is no longer able to balance global capitalism, because it has created a very powerful transnational financial class, which is able to move resources globally and discipline the state and the nations that dare rebalance it. Our answer is to create trans-local and trans-national civic and economic entities that can eventually rebalance and counter the power of the transnational capitalist class. This is realistic because peer production technologies create global open design communities that mutualize knowledge on a global scale, and because we can create global and ethical market organizations around them. Even as we produce locally, we organize trans-local productive communities. These trans-local productive communities are no longer bound by the nation-state and project and require forms of governance that can operate on the global scale. In this way, they also transcend the power of the nation-state. As we explained in our strategy regarding the global capitalist market, these forces can operate against the accumulation of capital at the global level, and create global counter-hegemonic power. In all likelihood, this will create global governance mechanisms and institutions that are no longer inter-national, but trans-national, but are not transnational capitalism.
In conclusion, our aim is to replace the capital-state-nation trinity, which is no longer functioning, and to avoid global domination of private capital, by creating a new integrative trinity, Commons-Ethical Market- Partner State, that is not confined to the nation-state level, but can operate trans-nationally and transcend the older and dysfunctional trinity. Through these processes, citizens develop cosmopolitan subjectivities but also allegiance to local and trans-national commons-oriented communities of value creation and value distribution."
-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org Commons Transition - Commons TransitionCommons Transition <http://commonstransition.org/> commonstransition.org Commons Transition showcases practical experiences and policy proposals for a more humane and environmentally grounded mode of societal organization.
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net -
Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
_______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- 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
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
_______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
"You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous
Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org "You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
I agree with Kevin that at the hardware-software level much can be done locally, given the technologies that he cites. My own worry is more about the increasingly vast info-gathering powers (the technologies also improving rapidly) that centralized institutions--govt and private--are acquiring: the NSA-Microsoft-Google-Facebook complex. Just to give one example: the increasing numbers of CCTV cameras deployed in public places. In some areas, even small businesses are now required (using crime and terrorism as excuse) to install them. Almost every computer/smartphone now comes with a camera. And microphone too. Sooner or later, if it has not happened already, these can be remotely activated for surveillance. Plus all the info we willingly give in every online transaction, in exchange for convenience. In short, we can choose to go small-scale/local/p2p/foss/organic/ renewable/bike transpo PGP Duckduckgo Bitcoin etc but how many are willing to put up with the inconveniences (the central institutions will make sure of that) that go with them? How many on this list, for instance? It is dilemma of The Matrix. The mere use of technologies themselves, as E.F.Schumacher observed a long time ago, shapes minds and changes mindsets. Eric's earlier post about adaptive reuse describes a decaying civilization that has lost a lot of its powers. Unfortunately at the level I'm describing (control of information, behavior and mind), their powers are increasing day by day. I am reminded of a debate here (on media) between mining companies and the local farmers who opposed them. The mining rep accused the anti-mining leader of hypocrisy because he used the metal products of mining like laptops and cellphones. The leader replied, "Ok, we can stop using your products if you also stop using ours. Let's see who gives in first!" Very powerful riposte, but are we willing to exercise that option? (I try, one reason why my posts are very occasional, only when I think what I'll say is important enough.) All this implied suggestion about violence (behind the word "expropriation") recalls to me the old Marx Lenin Mao etc approach though cast in contemporary terms. Be careful what you ask for... Had they won the Cold War, can you imagine where we'd be today? (I can already hear in my head a friend's reply, "Probably like China!" Or like North Korea?, who knows...). The law of unintended consequences can play cruel historical jokes sometimes. I've tried that route too by the way. Today, in case anybody is interested, my personal "ideology" if you can call it that, is the prayer "Give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference." I couple this apparently less "revolutionary" approach with the insights from the sciences of complexity, which have seeming equivalents in quantum physics although I don't know if they are real or imagined. These insights say even ordinary termites, working only locally and aware only of what their immediate neighbors are doing, can build architectural/ecological wonders, which somehow emerge out of local interactions without need for a grand design (or a grand designer for that matter). But then again, termites are the products of millions of years of evolution and God knows how many failures, before the species that survive today got it right. We don't have that luxury. We will probably need to act with more intentionality and mindfulness than termites do. As you can see, although I am somewhat confident in my own ideas, I'm not so sure about them that I'd be willing to ask people to "expropriate" others for these ideas. Also those others will probably "expropriate" back and we end up with the law of unintended consequences again. I do have an idea how to deal with corporations, which I try every so often. It is not expropriation. It is more about asking everyone (you have to do it yourself of course) to take all kinds of steps, big and small, legal or otherwise, to whittle down their profits, until existing is not profitable anymore. For Monsanto, for instance, mandatory labelling of GMOs will probably do it. Even at the 5% content level (big debate I know), they cannot be profitable with only 5% of the market, and as a contaminant at that. Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang described other ways, probably applicable to mining companies. Just keep whittling down their profits. We can be very creative here, more than termites. Deny them markets. Raise their costs. etc. I call this approach "working with the nature of corporations." Like termites bringing down an unwelcome house. Greetings to all, Roberto Verzola On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 15:49:23 -0500 Kevin Carson <[email protected]> wrote:
The technologies I'm thinking of are the kinds of open-source micromanufacturing machine tools, smelting furnaces etc. being developed by groups like Open Source Ecology, and tabletop CNC machinery being developed by the open hardware community more generally; open-source machinery like the tractors, compressed earth block machines, sawmills and so forth also being developed by OSE; small-scale intensive food production techniques like Permaculture; and so on.
I don't question that there are still many bottleneck technologies that require large scale and capital outlay -- microprocessors probably the most significant.
Railroads are another bottleneck industry.
I don't think electrical power generation is so much -- generating capability can be pretty well dispersed. And if photovoltaic generators still require larger, more capital-intensive facilities to produce, other kinds of renewable power -- wind, or using solar reflectors as heat source for a steam-powered generator -- are producible at the local level. I may be wrong -- I'm a layman on computer hardware issues -- but I think the hosting capability of server farms can be pretty widely distributed among many small facilities over a large area.
But to my mind the most important thing is that the *preponderance* of small-scale means of production for local consumption means a much smaller portion of the economy than in the past, and probably a much smaller portion in the near future than at present, will be critical bottlenecks subject to capitalist control.
And the fewer the bottlenecks, and the less time-sensitive they are (as a result of the increasing availability of expedients like reprogrammable micro-chips, recycling old hardware for functions where lower levels of processing capacity are sufficient, increasing cradle-to-cradle recycling of materials in landfills using local processing facilities like mini-mills, and less dependance on long-distance transportation in general thanks to economic relocalization), the more slack/insulation local economies will have for riding out periods of impasse before they actually have to be restocked from the remaining bottlenecks. That means the bottlenecks, while still remaining, will provide a lot less leverage.
Not saying there won't be a final phase of violence at the last stage of the transition as the most critical remaining centralized stuff changes hands, but it will probably be a lot smaller in scale and with a vastly shifted correlation of forces -- a mopping-up operation against capitalist-state forces that have already been strategically outmaneuvered.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 6:25 AM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Firs, what are these technologies? (I am just curious and do not question the possibility of such technologies).
Second, what do we do with satellites-we need them for communication- and other communication infrastructure, trains, railways, ships, ports, aeroplanes, airports, power plants that produce electricity, computing server farms, etc.
For peer production becoming the dominant mode of production these infrastructures along the nature-earth must be transformed into universal commons of humanity. Therefore we need to expropriate capitalists.
Jakob
------------------------------ *From:* NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Kevin Carson <[email protected]> *Sent:* 17 June 2016 11:54 *To:* Jakob Rigi *Cc:* [email protected]; p2p-foundation *Subject:* Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
The autonomist argument is that new, radically cheapening and ephemeral production technologies are rendering accumulation and capital-intensiveness increasingly irrelevant, so that human social relationships are replacing costly physical capital as a source of productivity. Technologies like small-scale open-source CNC machinery, Permaculture, etc., are making it possible to shift a growing share of production into the social or informal sphere of production for use or production by worker cooperatives, with radically smaller capital outlays than older models of production. So Exodus becomes a viable alternative to direct assault aimed at seizing control of the old hierarchies. Bypass them and let them rot instead.
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
Jakob,
capitalism can only reproduce itself through commodity labor and workers as consumers, this gives us powerful leverage.
if we don't have the power, nor a social consensus to 'expropriate', the building of counter-hegemonic power is essential to get there ... merely mobilizing counter-power within the capitalist system, i.e. dependent labor, has not worked for 200 years, and I see few signs that it can. The diverse forms of property that exist, and protected by the state, can be used by commoners to mutualize capital and means of production. Obviously, powerful social movements can set rules to limit monopolistic control of resources, but then you still have to deal with the impotence of nations to do this, and they most likely will smash you, as they are doing with greece and venezuela and elsewhere. This brings to the fore the other aspect of our strategy, which is to built counter-hegemonic power at the global level. Just screaming "I hate capitalism and I will smash you" is not going to do it.
The strategy we describe worked for capital and for all the previous transitions (read Karatini), while the marxist strategy of taking power and change everything once we have that power, has been a dismal failure. So I think that continuing in that vein after 200 years of failure, that is the wishful thinking. It hasn't worked for previous transitions, and isn't working for this transition, so what is your evidence ? Our strategy is based on the necessary prefigurative construction of counter-power, which is how past transitions were successful
Michel
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Mitchel
The idea that commoners and cooperative worker can challenge capitalism
by
working for themselves and make the state their partner is a wishful fantasy- is not realisable.
Capitalism is in the first place the private ownership in means of production. And the state is in the first place the power and institutions that protect the private property in means of production.
No cooperative production can become the dominant mode of production unless land and other strategic means of productions have been transformed into commons.
Do you agree with this statement? If not what are your counter argument?
If yes, then how land other strategic means of production can be transformed into commons?
I argue that this require expropriating capitalists. If you disagree, what are your counter arguments?
If you agree, then, making the production of commons the dominant mode of production requires confronting the sate not becoming its partner. Capitalist did not needed always to expropriate the feudal landowners since the latter started to lease their land to capitalists. But, capitalists expropriated small owners the means of production-the so called primitive accumulation. The emerging Feudal class did not expropriate the slave owners since salve owners themselves became feudals. But, capitalist having expropriated the majority of the population and thereby have monopolised the strategic means of production. Transferring these means of production to the majority, meaning making them universal commons of humanity requires expropriating capitalists. But, state would not allow us to do that. It will tell you that capitalist ownership is guaranteed by the law. And the law is the holiest of the holy. We-the state- will not permit anyone to break the law even if it will be necessary to shed blood. Our monopoly right our violence is here to protect capitalist property in means of production .
So the commoners mus confront such a state and smash at least its coercive and violent institutions and expropriate the expropriators for the benefit of the humanity as whole and transform their property int universal commons.
Jakob
Jakob
________________________________ From: NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Sent: 15 June 2016 10:47 To: Jakob Rigi; Michel Bauwens Cc: Commoning; [email protected]; p2p-foundation Subject: Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
There are many overlapping aspect between Cox, and Van Der Pijl's 'transnational historical materialist' analysis and what you have put together Michel.So I share the vision, I only would add a direct-action, political confrontation axe which needs to be built based on what can be imagined as 'peer to peer social network unionism'. As supportive element in terms of organizing power, and broader alliance building, hence collectivization of working alternatives and to defend them against ruling class violence and use of force. Not to precede what you suggest or to replace it but simultaneously empower the counter hegemonic transnational trinity (of as in Cox Institutons-material capabilities-ideas / capital-state-nation).
Orsan
On 15 Jun 2016, at 03:56, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
some of you may be interested in this short note:
Post-Capitalist Strategy of the P2P Foundation
Discussion[edit]
Michel Bauwens:
"A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
Following Kojin Karatini, we agree that the present system is based on a trinity of capital-state-nation, which represents an integration of three modes of exchange. Capital represents a particular market form based on the endless accumulation of capital, the state is the entity that keeps the system together through coercion, law and redistribution (Karatini calls this function ‘rule and protect’), and the nation is the ‘imagined community’ that is the locus of the survival of community and reciprocity. A post-capitalist strategy must necessarily overcome all three in a new integration.
Overcoming the capitalist form of the market, means interfering in capital accumulation. This can and must be done in two ways. First of all, the capitalist market requires labor as a commodity, and therefore, overcoming capitalism means refusing to work for capitalism as commodity labor. Hence the stress on open cooperativism, i.e. commoners work for themselves, in democratic associations and create autonomous livelihoods around our commons, protected from value capture through membranes such as reciprocity-based licenses. Measures like the basic income also substantially remove the compulsion for workers to have to sell their labor power, and would strengthen the capacity to create alternative economic entities. However, we must proceed with the reality that exists today, and create our own funding and resource allocation mechanisms. The second way is to withdraw from capitalism and capital accumulation is by removing our cooperation as consumers. Without workers as producers and workers as consumers, there can be no reproduction of capital. The latter means the invention and creation of new forms of consumption that are derived from the creation of open cooperatives. Workers mutualize their consumption in pooled market forms such as community-supported agriculture and the like. To the degree that we systematically organize new provisioning and consumption systems, outside of the sphere of capital, we undermine the reproduction of capital and capital accumulation. In addition, we create ‘transvestment’ vehicles, which allow the acceptance of capital, as disciplined by the new commons and market forms that we develop through peer production, this creates a flow of value from the system of capital to the system of the commons economy. Faced with a crisis of capital accumulation, it is entirely realistic to expect a stream of value which seeks a place in the commons economy. Instead of the cooptation of the commons economy by capital, in the form of the netarchical capitalist platforms which capture value from the commons, we coopt capital inside the commons, and subject it to its rules.
I believe we can achieve similar effects with the state. Our strategy for a ‘partner state’ is to ‘commonify’ the state. We strive to transform state functions so that they actually empower and enable the autonomy of the citizens as individuals and groups, to create common resources, instead of being ‘consumers’ of state services. We abolish the separation of the state from the population by increasing democratic and participatory decision-making. We consider the public service as a commons, giving every citizen and resident the right to work in the commonified public services. But we don’t ‘withdraw’ completely from the state because we need common good institutions for everyone in a given territory, which creates equal capacities for every citizen to contribute to the commons and the ethical market organizations.
In another article we have argued that the capital-state-nation trinity is no longer able to balance global capitalism, because it has created a very powerful transnational financial class, which is able to move resources globally and discipline the state and the nations that dare rebalance it. Our answer is to create trans-local and trans-national civic and economic entities that can eventually rebalance and counter the power of the transnational capitalist class. This is realistic because peer production technologies create global open design communities that mutualize knowledge on a global scale, and because we can create global and ethical market organizations around them. Even as we produce locally, we organize trans-local productive communities. These trans-local productive communities are no longer bound by the nation-state and project and require forms of governance that can operate on the global scale. In this way, they also transcend the power of the nation-state. As we explained in our strategy regarding the global capitalist market, these forces can operate against the accumulation of capital at the global level, and create global counter-hegemonic power. In all likelihood, this will create global governance mechanisms and institutions that are no longer inter-national, but trans-national, but are not transnational capitalism.
In conclusion, our aim is to replace the capital-state-nation trinity, which is no longer functioning, and to avoid global domination of private capital, by creating a new integrative trinity, Commons-Ethical Market- Partner State, that is not confined to the nation-state level, but can operate trans-nationally and transcend the older and dysfunctional trinity. Through these processes, citizens develop cosmopolitan subjectivities but also allegiance to local and trans-national commons-oriented communities of value creation and value distribution."
-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org Commons Transition - Commons TransitionCommons Transition <http://commonstransition.org/> commonstransition.org Commons Transition showcases practical experiences and policy proposals for a more humane and environmentally grounded mode of societal organization.
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net -
Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
_______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- 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
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
_______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
"You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous
Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
My guess is that there are a lot of "assassin's maces" against surveillance technologies like cameras with face recognition capability ("assassin's mace" is a military term for area denial weapons like anti-aircraft missiles, smart anti-ship mines, drone-jamming techniques, etc, that cost orders of magnitude less than the fancy stuff they're knocking out) -- cheap hacks for jamming the cameras, messing up the image and making it unrecognizable to the software, etc. And in general networks are many times more agile -- have shorter OODA loops -- than hierarchies, and run circles around them in developing technologies of circumvention. Also, the main thing more surveillance seems to do is increase the size of the haystack and generate false positives. On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Roberto Verzola <[email protected]> wrote:
I agree with Kevin that at the hardware-software level much can be done locally, given the technologies that he cites.
My own worry is more about the increasingly vast info-gathering powers (the technologies also improving rapidly) that centralized institutions--govt and private--are acquiring: the NSA-Microsoft-Google-Facebook complex. Just to give one example: the increasing numbers of CCTV cameras deployed in public places. In some areas, even small businesses are now required (using crime and terrorism as excuse) to install them. Almost every computer/smartphone now comes with a camera. And microphone too. Sooner or later, if it has not happened already, these can be remotely activated for surveillance. Plus all the info we willingly give in every online transaction, in exchange for convenience.
In short, we can choose to go small-scale/local/p2p/foss/organic/ renewable/bike transpo PGP Duckduckgo Bitcoin etc but how many are willing to put up with the inconveniences (the central institutions will make sure of that) that go with them? How many on this list, for instance? It is dilemma of The Matrix. The mere use of technologies themselves, as E.F.Schumacher observed a long time ago, shapes minds and changes mindsets.
Eric's earlier post about adaptive reuse describes a decaying civilization that has lost a lot of its powers. Unfortunately at the level I'm describing (control of information, behavior and mind), their powers are increasing day by day.
I am reminded of a debate here (on media) between mining companies and the local farmers who opposed them. The mining rep accused the anti-mining leader of hypocrisy because he used the metal products of mining like laptops and cellphones. The leader replied, "Ok, we can stop using your products if you also stop using ours. Let's see who gives in first!" Very powerful riposte, but are we willing to exercise that option? (I try, one reason why my posts are very occasional, only when I think what I'll say is important enough.)
All this implied suggestion about violence (behind the word "expropriation") recalls to me the old Marx Lenin Mao etc approach though cast in contemporary terms. Be careful what you ask for... Had they won the Cold War, can you imagine where we'd be today? (I can already hear in my head a friend's reply, "Probably like China!" Or like North Korea?, who knows...). The law of unintended consequences can play cruel historical jokes sometimes.
I've tried that route too by the way. Today, in case anybody is interested, my personal "ideology" if you can call it that, is the prayer "Give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference."
I couple this apparently less "revolutionary" approach with the insights from the sciences of complexity, which have seeming equivalents in quantum physics although I don't know if they are real or imagined. These insights say even ordinary termites, working only locally and aware only of what their immediate neighbors are doing, can build architectural/ecological wonders, which somehow emerge out of local interactions without need for a grand design (or a grand designer for that matter).
But then again, termites are the products of millions of years of evolution and God knows how many failures, before the species that survive today got it right. We don't have that luxury. We will probably need to act with more intentionality and mindfulness than termites do.
As you can see, although I am somewhat confident in my own ideas, I'm not so sure about them that I'd be willing to ask people to "expropriate" others for these ideas. Also those others will probably "expropriate" back and we end up with the law of unintended consequences again.
I do have an idea how to deal with corporations, which I try every so often. It is not expropriation. It is more about asking everyone (you have to do it yourself of course) to take all kinds of steps, big and small, legal or otherwise, to whittle down their profits, until existing is not profitable anymore. For Monsanto, for instance, mandatory labelling of GMOs will probably do it. Even at the 5% content level (big debate I know), they cannot be profitable with only 5% of the market, and as a contaminant at that. Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang described other ways, probably applicable to mining companies. Just keep whittling down their profits. We can be very creative here, more than termites. Deny them markets. Raise their costs. etc. I call this approach "working with the nature of corporations." Like termites bringing down an unwelcome house.
Greetings to all,
Roberto Verzola
On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 15:49:23 -0500 Kevin Carson <[email protected]> wrote:
The technologies I'm thinking of are the kinds of open-source micromanufacturing machine tools, smelting furnaces etc. being developed by groups like Open Source Ecology, and tabletop CNC machinery being developed by the open hardware community more generally; open-source machinery like the tractors, compressed earth block machines, sawmills and so forth also being developed by OSE; small-scale intensive food production techniques like Permaculture; and so on.
I don't question that there are still many bottleneck technologies that require large scale and capital outlay -- microprocessors probably the most significant.
Railroads are another bottleneck industry.
I don't think electrical power generation is so much -- generating capability can be pretty well dispersed. And if photovoltaic generators still require larger, more capital-intensive facilities to produce, other kinds of renewable power -- wind, or using solar reflectors as heat source for a steam-powered generator -- are producible at the local level. I may be wrong -- I'm a layman on computer hardware issues -- but I think the hosting capability of server farms can be pretty widely distributed among many small facilities over a large area.
But to my mind the most important thing is that the *preponderance* of small-scale means of production for local consumption means a much smaller portion of the economy than in the past, and probably a much smaller portion in the near future than at present, will be critical bottlenecks subject to capitalist control.
And the fewer the bottlenecks, and the less time-sensitive they are (as a result of the increasing availability of expedients like reprogrammable micro-chips, recycling old hardware for functions where lower levels of processing capacity are sufficient, increasing cradle-to-cradle recycling of materials in landfills using local processing facilities like mini-mills, and less dependance on long-distance transportation in general thanks to economic relocalization), the more slack/insulation local economies will have for riding out periods of impasse before they actually have to be restocked from the remaining bottlenecks. That means the bottlenecks, while still remaining, will provide a lot less leverage.
Not saying there won't be a final phase of violence at the last stage of the transition as the most critical remaining centralized stuff changes hands, but it will probably be a lot smaller in scale and with a vastly shifted correlation of forces -- a mopping-up operation against capitalist-state forces that have already been strategically outmaneuvered.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 6:25 AM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Firs, what are these technologies? (I am just curious and do not question the possibility of such technologies).
Second, what do we do with satellites-we need them for communication- and other communication infrastructure, trains, railways, ships, ports, aeroplanes, airports, power plants that produce electricity, computing server farms, etc.
For peer production becoming the dominant mode of production these infrastructures along the nature-earth must be transformed into universal commons of humanity. Therefore we need to expropriate capitalists.
Jakob
------------------------------ *From:* NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Kevin Carson <[email protected]> *Sent:* 17 June 2016 11:54 *To:* Jakob Rigi *Cc:* [email protected]; p2p-foundation *Subject:* Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
The autonomist argument is that new, radically cheapening and ephemeral production technologies are rendering accumulation and capital-intensiveness increasingly irrelevant, so that human social relationships are replacing costly physical capital as a source of productivity. Technologies like small-scale open-source CNC machinery, Permaculture, etc., are making it possible to shift a growing share of production into the social or informal sphere of production for use or production by worker cooperatives, with radically smaller capital outlays than older models of production. So Exodus becomes a viable alternative to direct assault aimed at seizing control of the old hierarchies. Bypass them and let them rot instead.
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
Jakob,
capitalism can only reproduce itself through commodity labor and workers as consumers, this gives us powerful leverage.
if we don't have the power, nor a social consensus to 'expropriate', the building of counter-hegemonic power is essential to get there ... merely mobilizing counter-power within the capitalist system, i.e. dependent labor, has not worked for 200 years, and I see few signs that it can. The diverse forms of property that exist, and protected by the state, can be used by commoners to mutualize capital and means of production. Obviously, powerful social movements can set rules to limit monopolistic control of resources, but then you still have to deal with the impotence of nations to do this, and they most likely will smash you, as they are doing with greece and venezuela and elsewhere. This brings to the fore the other aspect of our strategy, which is to built counter-hegemonic power at the global level. Just screaming "I hate capitalism and I will smash you" is not going to do it.
The strategy we describe worked for capital and for all the previous transitions (read Karatini), while the marxist strategy of taking power and change everything once we have that power, has been a dismal failure. So I think that continuing in that vein after 200 years of failure, that is the wishful thinking. It hasn't worked for previous transitions, and isn't working for this transition, so what is your evidence ? Our strategy is based on the necessary prefigurative construction of counter-power, which is how past transitions were successful
Michel
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Jakob Rigi <[email protected]> wrote:
Mitchel
The idea that commoners and cooperative worker can challenge capitalism
by
working for themselves and make the state their partner is a wishful fantasy- is not realisable.
Capitalism is in the first place the private ownership in means of production. And the state is in the first place the power and institutions that protect the private property in means of production.
No cooperative production can become the dominant mode of production unless land and other strategic means of productions have been transformed into commons.
Do you agree with this statement? If not what are your counter argument?
If yes, then how land other strategic means of production can be transformed into commons?
I argue that this require expropriating capitalists. If you disagree, what are your counter arguments?
If you agree, then, making the production of commons the dominant mode of production requires confronting the sate not becoming its partner. Capitalist did not needed always to expropriate the feudal landowners since the latter started to lease their land to capitalists. But, capitalists expropriated small owners the means of production-the so called primitive accumulation. The emerging Feudal class did not expropriate the slave owners since salve owners themselves became feudals. But, capitalist having expropriated the majority of the population and thereby have monopolised the strategic means of production. Transferring these means of production to the majority, meaning making them universal commons of humanity requires expropriating capitalists. But, state would not allow us to do that. It will tell you that capitalist ownership is guaranteed by the law. And the law is the holiest of the holy. We-the state- will not permit anyone to break the law even if it will be necessary to shed blood. Our monopoly right our violence is here to protect capitalist property in means of production .
So the commoners mus confront such a state and smash at least its coercive and violent institutions and expropriate the expropriators for the benefit of the humanity as whole and transform their property int universal commons.
Jakob
Jakob
________________________________ From: NetworkedLabour <[email protected]> on behalf of Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Sent: 15 June 2016 10:47 To: Jakob Rigi; Michel Bauwens Cc: Commoning; [email protected]; p2p-foundation Subject: Re: [NetworkedLabour] A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
There are many overlapping aspect between Cox, and Van Der Pijl's 'transnational historical materialist' analysis and what you have put together Michel.So I share the vision, I only would add a direct-action, political confrontation axe which needs to be built based on what can be imagined as 'peer to peer social network unionism'. As supportive element in terms of organizing power, and broader alliance building, hence collectivization of working alternatives and to defend them against ruling class violence and use of force. Not to precede what you suggest or to replace it but simultaneously empower the counter hegemonic transnational trinity (of as in Cox Institutons-material capabilities-ideas / capital-state-nation).
Orsan
On 15 Jun 2016, at 03:56, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
some of you may be interested in this short note:
Post-Capitalist Strategy of the P2P Foundation
Discussion[edit]
Michel Bauwens:
"A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation
Following Kojin Karatini, we agree that the present system is based on a trinity of capital-state-nation, which represents an integration of three modes of exchange. Capital represents a particular market form based on the endless accumulation of capital, the state is the entity that keeps the system together through coercion, law and redistribution (Karatini calls this function ‘rule and protect’), and the nation is the ‘imagined community’ that is the locus of the survival of community and reciprocity. A post-capitalist strategy must necessarily overcome all three in a new integration.
Overcoming the capitalist form of the market, means interfering in capital accumulation. This can and must be done in two ways. First of all, the capitalist market requires labor as a commodity, and therefore, overcoming capitalism means refusing to work for capitalism as commodity labor. Hence the stress on open cooperativism, i.e. commoners work for themselves, in democratic associations and create autonomous livelihoods around our commons, protected from value capture through membranes such as reciprocity-based licenses. Measures like the basic income also substantially remove the compulsion for workers to have to sell their labor power, and would strengthen the capacity to create alternative economic entities. However, we must proceed with the reality that exists today, and create our own funding and resource allocation mechanisms. The second way is to withdraw from capitalism and capital accumulation is by removing our cooperation as consumers. Without workers as producers and workers as consumers, there can be no reproduction of capital. The latter means the invention and creation of new forms of consumption that are derived from the creation of open cooperatives. Workers mutualize their consumption in pooled market forms such as community-supported agriculture and the like. To the degree that we systematically organize new provisioning and consumption systems, outside of the sphere of capital, we undermine the reproduction of capital and capital accumulation. In addition, we create ‘transvestment’ vehicles, which allow the acceptance of capital, as disciplined by the new commons and market forms that we develop through peer production, this creates a flow of value from the system of capital to the system of the commons economy. Faced with a crisis of capital accumulation, it is entirely realistic to expect a stream of value which seeks a place in the commons economy. Instead of the cooptation of the commons economy by capital, in the form of the netarchical capitalist platforms which capture value from the commons, we coopt capital inside the commons, and subject it to its rules.
I believe we can achieve similar effects with the state. Our strategy for a ‘partner state’ is to ‘commonify’ the state. We strive to transform state functions so that they actually empower and enable the autonomy of the citizens as individuals and groups, to create common resources, instead of being ‘consumers’ of state services. We abolish the separation of the state from the population by increasing democratic and participatory decision-making. We consider the public service as a commons, giving every citizen and resident the right to work in the commonified public services. But we don’t ‘withdraw’ completely from the state because we need common good institutions for everyone in a given territory, which creates equal capacities for every citizen to contribute to the commons and the ethical market organizations.
In another article we have argued that the capital-state-nation trinity is no longer able to balance global capitalism, because it has created a very powerful transnational financial class, which is able to move resources globally and discipline the state and the nations that dare rebalance it. Our answer is to create trans-local and trans-national civic and economic entities that can eventually rebalance and counter the power of the transnational capitalist class. This is realistic because peer production technologies create global open design communities that mutualize knowledge on a global scale, and because we can create global and ethical market organizations around them. Even as we produce locally, we organize trans-local productive communities. These trans-local productive communities are no longer bound by the nation-state and project and require forms of governance that can operate on the global scale. In this way, they also transcend the power of the nation-state. As we explained in our strategy regarding the global capitalist market, these forces can operate against the accumulation of capital at the global level, and create global counter-hegemonic power. In all likelihood, this will create global governance mechanisms and institutions that are no longer inter-national, but trans-national, but are not transnational capitalism.
In conclusion, our aim is to replace the capital-state-nation trinity, which is no longer functioning, and to avoid global domination of private capital, by creating a new integrative trinity, Commons-Ethical Market- Partner State, that is not confined to the nation-state level, but can operate trans-nationally and transcend the older and dysfunctional trinity. Through these processes, citizens develop cosmopolitan subjectivities but also allegiance to local and trans-national commons-oriented communities of value creation and value distribution."
-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org Commons Transition - Commons TransitionCommons Transition <http://commonstransition.org/> commonstransition.org Commons Transition showcases practical experiences and policy proposals for a more humane and environmentally grounded mode of societal organization.
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net -
Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
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-- 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
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
_______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
-- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
"You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous
Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
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-- Kevin Carson Senior Fellow, Karl Hess Scholar in Social Theory Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org "You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com Desktop Regulatory State http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
participants (2)
-
Kevin Carson -
Roberto Verzola