thanks james! On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:59 AM, james burke <[email protected]> wrote:

A public response will follow. We know him personally and like him, although he likes to complain a lot.

J

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

...

Dear James et al,

thanks for responding to this question and critique by Orsan Senalp:

Message: 1 Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 20:16:36 +0200 From: Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Subject: [P2P-F] Eu funded Global Commons Conference, 2-3 September, Amsterdam To: "<[email protected]>" <[email protected]>, P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]>, Commoning <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I am based very Amsterdam but heard about this event from Facebook. It was not clear from the website if registration fee will be charged. In case there is a fee for participation, although I am very close it seems as many other commoners it would not possible for me to join this event; let alone the ethic problem of charging people for already funded event by EU, with public money.

.....

Peer Value:Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level. The conference is organized along three tracks: Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism We will explore questions such as: What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons? What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience? Decentralization - why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained? How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable ?material? manufacturing? What about social innovation and livelihoods - how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP? How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national - even global - levels? Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model. Register now >

This event is funded by a European Union FP7 research grant.

Web: Peervalueconf.eu

.... In solidarity,

?rsan

-- 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/

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

-

-- 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/

Does anyone know who is you James? you write it like you know all on the list, and you know me. Your sarcastic tone is really annoying, and you don't know me, you don't like me at all. Neither I know you and like you. The truth is your paid job is to sets up and event, funded by EU, where Global Commons agenda is supposed to be set up, you guys, as once Restakis accidentally declared to public, on the driving wheel... Plus charging participants... Sorry but it will not be like that. There will be annoyed ones critically targeting what is being boiled.. WSF is another story, I will complain about that later, which is not your paid job area. Things boil down to agenda setting, and power struggle. We will luckily discuss all publicly this time. God bliss commons, p2p and the Internet. Good luck.

On 3 jul. 2016, at 01:33, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks james!

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:59 AM, james burke <[email protected]> wrote: A public response will follow. We know him personally and like him, although he likes to complain a lot.

J

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: Dear James et al,

thanks for responding to this question and critique by Orsan Senalp:

Message: 1 Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 20:16:36 +0200 From: Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Subject: [P2P-F] Eu funded Global Commons Conference, 2-3 September, Amsterdam To: "<[email protected]>" <[email protected]>, P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]>, Commoning <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I am based very Amsterdam but heard about this event from Facebook. It was not clear from the website if registration fee will be charged. In case there is a fee for participation, although I am very close it seems as many other commoners it would not possible for me to join this event; let alone the ethic problem of charging people for already funded event by EU, with public money.

.....

Peer Value:Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level. The conference is organized along three tracks: Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism We will explore questions such as: What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons? What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience? Decentralization - why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained? How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable ?material? manufacturing? What about social innovation and livelihoods - how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP? How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national - even global - levels? Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model. Register now >

This event is funded by a European Union FP7 research grant.

Web: Peervalueconf.eu

.... In solidarity,

?rsan

-- 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/

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

-- 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/ _______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list

Blog - http://www.blog.p2pfoundation.net Wiki - http://www.p2pfoundation.net

Show some love and help us maintain and update our knowledge commons by making a donation. Thank you for your support. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/donation

https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Well James, seems like complaining is needed. You take it as 'a lot', but where there is no prefigurative act; it is never enough When those always talking about the importance of commons, p2p, opennes... and as they emerge as star goals turns into means- a feeling emerges and it becomes visible that actually none cares the content commons, Peer to Peer, free and open... they are not seen as important as it is said at all.. By stellars themselves... it feels like you, as well as your employers, all see these as means to end as well. Think about the EU funding; do you recall how many million Euro was that? And the setting up this conference -'Think like a Commoner' and tell us do you see any one can prefigure a partner state like practice; No opennes, no participatory - open budgeting, bo cooperatives.. there is only inter-stellar politics agenda setting, controlled access and all nice words about what is needed to be done. Thanks for the effort to clarify and try to show some respect for The sake of transparemcy; but in that sense I and others don't know anything yet. All this inter-stellar conferences, too bright light our new Stars shine blinds most of us; of funding, of power.. I dont know James, if you care at all; or understand politics; but this way would only bring more funding and power to some and this line of high level politics is destined to end up with more enclosure of the commons, at best, by a new class of people.. Good luck

On 03 Jul 2016, at 09:55, james burke <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Orsan,

We are very underfunded for the event because the budget has already been used for research. We were already lucky to have the city of Amsterdam provide a space for the event. This is why we are charging for some tickets. Also the price for the tickets is very low compared to most conferences with a similar stellar lineup of speakers. You are right to ask and now you know. Apologies for any sarcarsm. Not intended.

Best,

James

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:23 AM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote: Does anyone know who is you James? you write it like you know all on the list, and you know me.

Your sarcastic tone is really annoying, and you don't know me, you don't like me at all. Neither I know you and like you.

The truth is your paid job is to sets up and event, funded by EU, where Global Commons agenda is supposed to be set up, you guys, as once Restakis accidentally declared to public, on the driving wheel... Plus charging participants... Sorry but it will not be like that.

There will be annoyed ones critically targeting what is being boiled..

WSF is another story, I will complain about that later, which is not your paid job area.

Things boil down to agenda setting, and power struggle. We will luckily discuss all publicly this time. God bliss commons, p2p and the Internet.

Good luck.

...

On 3 jul. 2016, at 01:33, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks james!

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:59 AM, james burke <[email protected]> wrote: A public response will follow. We know him personally and like him, although he likes to complain a lot.

J

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: Dear James et al,

thanks for responding to this question and critique by Orsan Senalp:

Message: 1 Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 20:16:36 +0200 From: Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Subject: [P2P-F] Eu funded Global Commons Conference, 2-3 September, Amsterdam To: "<[email protected]>" <[email protected]>, P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]>, Commoning <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I am based very Amsterdam but heard about this event from Facebook. It was not clear from the website if registration fee will be charged. In case there is a fee for participation, although I am very close it seems as many other commoners it would not possible for me to join this event; let alone the ethic problem of charging people for already funded event by EU, with public money.

.....

Peer Value:Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level. The conference is organized along three tracks: Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism We will explore questions such as: What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons? What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience? Decentralization - why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained? How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable ?material? manufacturing? What about social innovation and livelihoods - how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP? How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national - even global - levels? Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model. Register now >

This event is funded by a European Union FP7 research grant.

Web: Peervalueconf.eu

.... In solidarity,

?rsan

-- 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/

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

-- 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/ _______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list

Blog - http://www.blog.p2pfoundation.net Wiki - http://www.p2pfoundation.net

Show some love and help us maintain and update our knowledge commons by making a donation. Thank you for your support. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/donation

https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

Hi James, thanks again. Will follow the updates. I hope all goes well with the organization, and hope there would be some space for a lively discussion in the program. If am around, and can effort it, I may be dropping by. Best, Örsan

On 03 Jul 2016, at 16:45, james burke <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Orsan,

We are adjusting the website to be more accurate regarding the ticketing and the funding information as it was incomplete. The conference is for the benefit of the Commons. We hope you come and hope to see you there.

Thanks for the feedback,

James

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> wrote:

Well James, seems like complaining is needed. You take it as 'a lot', but where there is no prefigurative act; it is never enough When those always talking about the importance of commons, p2p, opennes... and as they emerge as star goals turns into means- a feeling emerges and it becomes visible that actually none cares the content commons, Peer to Peer, free and open... they are not seen as important as it is said at all.. By stellars themselves... it feels like you, as well as your employers, all see these as means to end as well.

Think about the EU funding; do you recall how many million Euro was that? And the setting up this conference -'Think like a Commoner' and tell us do you see any one can prefigure a partner state like practice; No opennes, no participatory - open budgeting, bo cooperatives.. there is only inter-stellar politics agenda setting, controlled access and all nice words about what is needed to be done.

Thanks for the effort to clarify and try to show some respect for The sake of transparemcy; but in that sense I and others don't know anything yet. All this inter-stellar conferences, too bright light our new Stars shine blinds most of us; of funding, of power.. I dont know James, if you care at all; or understand politics; but this way would only bring more funding and power to some and this line of high level politics is destined to end up with more enclosure of the commons, at best, by a new class of people..

Good luck

...

On 03 Jul 2016, at 09:55, james burke <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Orsan,

We are very underfunded for the event because the budget has already been used for research. We were already lucky to have the city of Amsterdam provide a space for the event. This is why we are charging for some tickets. Also the price for the tickets is very low compared to most conferences with a similar stellar lineup of speakers. You are right to ask and now you know. Apologies for any sarcarsm. Not intended.

Best,

James

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:23 AM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote: Does anyone know who is you James? you write it like you know all on the list, and you know me.

Your sarcastic tone is really annoying, and you don't know me, you don't like me at all. Neither I know you and like you.

The truth is your paid job is to sets up and event, funded by EU, where Global Commons agenda is supposed to be set up, you guys, as once Restakis accidentally declared to public, on the driving wheel... Plus charging participants... Sorry but it will not be like that.

There will be annoyed ones critically targeting what is being boiled..

WSF is another story, I will complain about that later, which is not your paid job area.

Things boil down to agenda setting, and power struggle. We will luckily discuss all publicly this time. God bliss commons, p2p and the Internet.

Good luck.

...

On 3 jul. 2016, at 01:33, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks james!

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:59 AM, james burke <[email protected]> wrote: A public response will follow. We know him personally and like him, although he likes to complain a lot.

J

> On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear James et al, > > thanks for responding to this question and critique by Orsan Senalp: > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 20:16:36 +0200 > From: Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> > Subject: [P2P-F] Eu funded Global Commons Conference, 2-3 September, > Amsterdam > To: "<[email protected]>" > <[email protected]>, P2P Foundation mailing list > <[email protected]>, Commoning > <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > I am based very Amsterdam but heard about this event from Facebook. It was not clear from the website if registration fee will be charged. In case there is a fee for participation, although I am very close it seems as many other commoners it would not possible for me to join this event; let alone the ethic problem of charging people for already funded event by EU, with public money. > > ..... > > Peer Value:Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level. > The conference is organized along three tracks: > Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons > Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production > Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism > We will explore questions such as: > What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons? > What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience? > Decentralization - why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained? > How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable ?material? manufacturing? > What about social innovation and livelihoods - how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP? > How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national - even global - levels? > Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model. > Register now > > > This event is funded by a European Union FP7 research grant. > > Web: Peervalueconf.eu > > .... > In solidarity, > > ?rsan > > -- > 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/

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

-- 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/ _______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list

Blog - http://www.blog.p2pfoundation.net Wiki - http://www.p2pfoundation.net

Show some love and help us maintain and update our knowledge commons by making a donation. Thank you for your support. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/donation

https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

--

James Burke

T:+31 (0)6 5244 6445

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifesized LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/in/lifesized

I will try to give a considered respond to your answer, which I am guessing is the public reply James mentioned.

I think the realities of organizing events is underestimated. They are two choices, one is the grassroots barcamp type events, in which everyone is welcome, and everyone has to fund his own trip; these events are great, and important, but have advantages as well as disadvantages One disadvantage is that it excludes those who can't self-fund their trips.

I assume it is more than me underestimate the realities of organizing event then organizers undervalue the practices of peer to peer and commoners. In response to Boiler's book title 'Think like a commoner', it could be more then possible to 'Act like a commoner'. So it is more of a choices, philosophy and politics, more then 'realities' or 'practices' of, those who like to 'think' and 'research' about the real practices; coincidentally this makes you star, solve income problems, and moreover allow one to deliver politics, and gain influence and power. I think this is not only underestimated, but totally absence in your response Michel. Of course there is not only two options, there are plenty of alternatives. Other wise realities of 'organizing' or 'organization', could be only 'the state' / 'corporation' or 'anarchy and there would be no commons, commonning, peer to peer alternatives. Are they exist or not? Are they reliable or not? Are they believable or not.. Or only theorizing or researching about them is important? I know you really believe in p2p and commons, but it is hardly possible to see any prefigurative action and practice Michel. This is a public and open critique, meaning very sincere and friendly way, you need to really think about it.

The other choice is to go for paid conferences. This involves other disadvantages, such as the rules imposed by funders (very stringent demands for transparency for example with EU funding). But it has some advantages ... one is the choice of speakers, which can be more focused on past expertise; the other is that speakers' trip can be paid, as well as small, or sometimes bigger stipends; the paid entries can help fund those without the means of self-funding.

Actually, and to be honest, I really wonder if you really ever organized something what you call barcamp type, self-organized, do it yourself, peer to peer event. Since I never saw any disadvantage then not being able to have star speakers, who would occupy all the space; and the rest of the participants who pay for the cost of starts, would only listen and leave the space with lots of frustration. May be only one disadvantage is not being able to make a show and attract media attention. The rest is negligible in my opinion.

So, in the case of the Synergia conference, this is an entirely unfunded conference. The price was set taken into account the travel costs and very small per diems for the teachers/speakers; and full lodging of participants. In this context, the fee amounts to 900 EURO per week, full pension, which is, in the context of the prices of Tuscany, actually very cheap, though of course, will also exclude those with financial difficulties. For this, you get access to a quite extraordinary roster of teachers/speakers and intense dialogue with other participants. For people with jobs in the cooperative economy, for which this conference is intended, the cost is not un-realistic. For those without income, the price is prohibitive, but bursaries are available. According to John Restakis, the program requires 15 paid students to achieve break-even; after that, bursaries can be funded.

Yes, Synergia conference... You say this 900 per week, several thousands euro per all course is, or should be okay for cooperative workers, worker owned cooperatives.. while you can not effort only your trip to self-organized, barcamp events.

I for example, would not be able to attend neither Tuscany nor the P2P Value events on my own, in either format, but I can attend both because my travel and basic costs are provided for. This is not a gift, but a small reciprocal payment for my contribution to the event. In contrast, the self-organized barcamp absolutely preclude me from making a living from my contributions.

Would if you can not effort, how do you think workers, cooperative owners, peer producers could so.

The second issue is that of 'democracy'. The P2P Value event has been organized and decided by all those involved in the research project, i.e. a consortium of 8 organizations, and James was responsible for organizing the event as part of the contract; in the Synergie case, this is also a collaborative effort of many dozen people, involved in the Synergia consortium, a voluntary association of cooperativists the world over.

Second issue is not only democracy, transparency, nor participation. Not about politics, but it is about generation of culture. It is prefigurative act. In case of its lack, or while main evangelists or preachers of communism, would not see any problem in ruling people's soviets from the winter palace of the old-rulers, then that revolution is over before it started. P2P Revolution is going down before it starts, not because it is un-democratic, or as you argue against democracy that is it is meritocratic. I think including you, Silke, David, as well as all other commoners, and theory leaders do lack practical aspect that generates no culture at the 'strategist' level. About Restakis.. My remark was a reference to his email, accidentally sent to the list, in his response to you, Jason Nardi, Pat Conaty and some others about the four wheels of the 'radical change car'.. He was making a joke of 'you' as the strategists of commons transition, open cooperativism, peer - license, what ever.. Being on the 'driver seat'. Then there was a cold silence, no one replied or asked or commented on his joke. But history registered. I can find and redistribute that exchange if you like.

They take their decisions in good faith, given the funding and other realities they contend with. Yes, it means not everyone can attend, but within the parameters they work with, they strive for the maximum inclusion of motivated participants, and find individual solutions when possible.

Division is not between 'not every body' and 'everybody'. But 'organizers' and 'organized'; 'agenda setters' and those agendas are set, strategists and strategised; so sort of masters and puppets.

Now the alternative of barcamps of the massively self-organized WSF ... well, I can't afford to go those either, they exclude all those that are not able to self-fund. So no system is perfect,

Come on Michel, some one like you can easily receive support to go there, of any kind.

and both are easy to critique from the outside, by people who are unwilling to dive into the real difficulties and constraints of organizing these events,As far as I can recall, Orsan, you organized exclusive events with TNI, and you did that very well. Far from critiquing you for these exclusionary events, I would commend you for it, for bringing important players together, and for funding our trips and participation. I feel the same about John Restakis and James Burke, and given their efforts and responsibilities, I can find sympathy for their irritation when they are critiqued by outsiders who are not contributing to the organization of these events, and unaware of the constraints they are operating with.

My critique of TNI, and end of my relationships with it is declared by me on several occasions. Now same critique, of NGO world in general, is covering to commons NGOs, which present same mistakes, same fault lines, and these are not a complain of some one humpy dumpy, it is documented and agreed wide spread critique. Of course people, individually doing their best, to survive and combine income and passion and idealism would get irritated. But what irritate us, ordinary people, is them finding this not enough and when that also like to tell us what to do, what to say, what to chose, what to like and dislike.. So when they feel power of ideas, and wish to define the course, on the driving seat of the 'radical' change car. Well, without managing to combine applying self-labour, mental and manually, apologies but this is not going to happen. Because, now, irritation of being rule, is so high, and those who are wanted to be managed posses high skills, like political analysis. In solidarity, Orsan

hi Orsan, this is my response only, I am not speaking for James or anyone else, quick online reactions On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

I will try to give a considered respond to your answer, which I am guessing is the public reply James mentioned.

...

I think the realities of organizing events is underestimated. They are two choices, one is the grassroots barcamp type events, in which everyone is welcome, and everyone has to fund his own trip; these events are great, and important, but have advantages as well as disadvantages One disadvantage is that it excludes those who can't self-fund their trips.

I assume it is more than me underestimate the realities of organizing event then organizers undervalue the practices of peer to peer and commoners. In response to Boiler's book title 'Think like a commoner', it could be more then possible to 'Act like a commoner'. So it is more of a choices, philosophy and politics, more then 'realities' or 'practices' of, those who like to 'think' and 'research' about the real practices; coincidentally this makes you star, solve income problems, and moreover allow one to deliver politics, and gain influence and power. I think this is not only underestimated, but totally absence in your response Michel. Of course there is not only two options, there are plenty of alternatives. Other wise realities of 'organizing' or 'organization', could be only 'the state' / 'corporation' or 'anarchy and there would be no commons, commonning, peer to peer alternatives. Are they exist or not? Are they reliable or not? Are they believable or not.. Or only theorizing or researching about them is important? I know you really believe in p2p and commons, but it is hardly possible to see any prefigurative action and practice Michel. This is a public and open critique, meaning very sincere and friendly way, you need to really think about it.

I am not organizing any of those two events Orsan. I have lightly co-organized barcamps, enough to know how they work; I like them but they can only go so far, it's not the only legitimate formula. The events I have co-organized more intensely were not on the lines of such open access events, but selective events, like the ones you organized for networked labour. What are the p2p/commons aspects about them ? 1)They aimed at creating a diverse and balanced participation 2) they aimed to balance self-organisation and prior organisation 3) they aimed to balance inclusion and expertise 4) they aimed at being no-cost for the participants But like in your event, they were characterized by a careful selection.

...

The other choice is to go for paid conferences. This involves other disadvantages, such as the rules imposed by funders (very stringent demands for transparency for example with EU funding). But it has some advantages ... one is the choice of speakers, which can be more focused on past expertise; the other is that speakers' trip can be paid, as well as small, or sometimes bigger stipends; the paid entries can help fund those without the means of self-funding.

Actually, and to be honest, I really wonder if you really ever organized something what you call barcamp type, self-organized, do it yourself, peer to peer event. Since I never saw any disadvantage then not being able to have star speakers, who would occupy all the space; and the rest of the participants who pay for the cost of starts, would only listen and leave the space with lots of frustration. May be only one disadvantage is not being able to make a show and attract media attention. The rest is negligible in my opinion.

I have a different experience, I very much enjoy listening to speakers with more experience than myself, I don't find that frustating. The conferences I enjoy the most are 'mixed', i.e. they mix the opportunity to listen to more experienced people, inclusionary sessions with panels, and the opportunity for deep conversations in circle type events, i.e. they include peer to peer dynamics, but not exclusively.

...

So, in the case of the Synergia conference, this is an entirely unfunded conference. The price was set taken into account the travel costs and very small per diems for the teachers/speakers; and full lodging of participants. In this context, the fee amounts to 900 EURO per week, full pension, which is, in the context of the prices of Tuscany, actually very cheap, though of course, will also exclude those with financial difficulties. For this, you get access to a quite extraordinary roster of teachers/speakers and intense dialogue with other participants. For people with jobs in the cooperative economy, for which this conference is intended, the cost is not un-realistic. For those without income, the price is prohibitive, but bursaries are available. According to John Restakis, the program requires 15 paid students to achieve break-even; after that, bursaries can be funded.

Yes, Synergia conference... You say this 900 per week, several thousands euro per all course is, or should be okay for cooperative workers, worker owned cooperatives.. while you can not effort only your trip to self-organized, barcamp events.

...

I for example, would not be able to attend neither Tuscany nor the P2P Value events on my own, in either format, but I can attend both because my travel and basic costs are provided for. This is not a gift, but a small reciprocal payment for my contribution to the event. In contrast, the self-organized barcamp absolutely preclude me from making a living from my contributions.

Would if you can not effort, how do you think workers, cooperative owners, peer producers could so.

that's what I said, it requires effort and investment on the part of the students, or of those institutions that fund them; it is mostly only realistic for those with links to institutions; I'm fully aware of this; bursaries are a solution to attenuate this

...

The second issue is that of 'democracy'. The P2P Value event has been organized and decided by all those involved in the research project, i.e. a consortium of 8 organizations, and James was responsible for organizing the event as part of the contract; in the Synergie case, this is also a collaborative effort of many dozen people, involved in the Synergia consortium, a voluntary association of cooperativists the world over.

Second issue is not only democracy, transparency, nor participation. Not about politics, but it is about generation of culture. It is prefigurative act. In case of its lack, or while main evangelists or preachers of communism, would not see any problem in ruling people's soviets from the winter palace of the old-rulers, then that revolution is over before it started. P2P Revolution is going down before it starts, not because it is un-democratic, or as you argue against democracy that is it is meritocratic. I think including you, Silke, David, as well as all other commoners, and theory leaders do lack practical aspect that generates no culture at the 'strategist' level.

About Restakis.. My remark was a reference to his email, accidentally sent to the list, in his response to you, Jason Nardi, Pat Conaty and some others about the four wheels of the 'radical change car'.. He was making a joke of 'you' as the strategists of commons transition, open cooperativism, peer - license, what ever.. Being on the 'driver seat'. Then there was a cold silence, no one replied or asked or commented on his joke. But history registered. I can find and redistribute that exchange if you like.

please do redistribute, I haven't seen it

...

They take their decisions in good faith, given the funding and other realities they contend with. Yes, it means not everyone can attend, but within the parameters they work with, they strive for the maximum inclusion of motivated participants, and find individual solutions when possible.

Division is not between 'not every body' and 'everybody'. But 'organizers' and 'organized'; 'agenda setters' and those agendas are set, strategists and strategised; so sort of masters and puppets.

...

Now the alternative of barcamps of the massively self-organized WSF ... well, I can't afford to go those either, they exclude all those that are not able to self-fund. So no system is perfect,

Come on Michel, some one like you can easily receive support to go there, of any kind.

the fact Orsan is that I haven't; nobody ever offered to finance my participation to the WSF; and until 2014, I was extremely precarious and the P2P-F itself has zero funds; so if you know of easy forms of support, please do forward

...

and both are easy to critique from the outside, by people who are unwilling to dive into the real difficulties and constraints of organizing these events,As far as I can recall, Orsan, you organized exclusive events with TNI, and you did that very well. Far from critiquing you for these exclusionary events, I would commend you for it, for bringing important players together, and for funding our trips and participation. I feel the same about John Restakis and James Burke, and given their efforts and responsibilities, I can find sympathy for their irritation when they are critiqued by outsiders who are not contributing to the organization of these events, and unaware of the constraints they are operating with.

My critique of TNI, and end of my relationships with it is declared by me on several occasions. Now same critique, of NGO world in general, is covering to commons NGOs, which present same mistakes, same fault lines, and these are not a complain of some one humpy dumpy, it is documented and agreed wide spread critique. Of course people, individually doing their best, to survive and combine income and passion and idealism would get irritated. But what irritate us, ordinary people, is them finding this not enough and when that also like to tell us what to do, what to say, what to chose, what to like and dislike.. So when they feel power of ideas, and wish to define the course, on the driving seat of the 'radical' change car.

you are no more ordinary than anyone else; I dont think most ordinary people would be irritated by open debate and exchange of opinions : I will certainly restrict my own rights of free speech on the basis of other's irritations

Well, without managing to combine applying self-labour, mental and manually, apologies but this is not going to happen. Because, now, irritation of being rule, is so high, and those who are wanted to be managed posses high skills, like political analysis.

thanks for this exchange, end of my comments

In solidarity, Orsan

-- 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/

I don't have time at the moment for a full detailed response but I want to make a few things clear. 1) I am no longer employed by the P2P Foundation and the P2PF is not providing any financial support or payment for my participation in the FSM. 2) Elisabetta Cangelosi and I initiated a discussion about the presence of Commons at the FSM last year as an independent initiative. Meaning the only connection with P2PF is that the mailing list was hosted by P2PF. 3) We created mailing list and invited you Orsan several times to participate in the process. We value constructive input but your participation or lack of is up to you. Kevin On 5 July 2016 at 15:00, Örsan Şenalp <[email protected]> wrote:

Michel, in response to your reply I also like to direct this email to the attention of Silke, David, Pat, James, Chico.. and other self-claimed strategists, organisers, leaders, of global justice and solidarity, and now commons movements..

First issue, is the one you avoid to respond; lack of prefiguration hence moral - cultural leadership, neede for the hegemony you are willing to build over first other movements, then against the ruling classes. This is a general issue, and is a critique of all NGO sector; 'progressive' or 'supportive' NGO cadre, degenerate 'solidairty and justice' culture, by getting stuck and generate 'capitalist' competitive culture. That is why, in a Gramscian sense, it would never be possible to get real moral and intellectual leadership over the progressive movements, like commons movement, that you are trying to 'build' or mould out of real people's real struggles.

In 2013, and 2014, together with others from most recent movements, from Occupy, 15M, Arab spring, and including Carminda McLorin -from Occupy Montreal and Classe, an initiative formed and called itself 'Global Square'. We have designed and tried to open up an occupied Commons Space, within the WSF in Tunis 2013 and 2014: http://www.global-square.net/about/ Carminda was had participated all calls and meetings of Global Square actively and she become the face of the WSF Montreal local coordination team (with Chico Whiteaker being on her side). Based on unique experience we developed, in a really p2p and commoning way, during 2011-2014 period, at Agora99, Frienze 10+10, WSF Tunis under the Banner of Global Square (with combined methodologies) in 2014 I tried out to scratch the below designs on the way to Montreal. I shared it with you, and it has been picked up by you, and others; then it was modified into un-P2P and un-common ways and translated in to NGO format with carefully controlled access (over the funding opportunities and competitiveness reasons I assume).. and we have a modified Commons Space. Here is the Hackpad where Kevin, of the P2P Foundation has been the main organiser from the beginning, with Elisabetta of Transform: https://commonsspace.hackpad.com/Commons-Space-k6rOCvUgyhC

As response to your question what is the easy way to go to WSF and finding support for that: I think your is a political answer, since it is your choice not to go to WSF personally, you expressed it before; so you are sending Kevin to do the ground work for the Foundation to build an event I foresee and suggested to you last year -on the Commons. Meanwhile, James of the P2P foundation, is responsible from the Global Commons Conference, in Amsterdam where I live. You say you would recommend me, to people, but about the idea I desingned and shared with you, James, your secretariat is recommended.

You are expected to be invited to WSF and paid for some other organisations, while Kevin's participation and ground work labour is paid by P2P Foundation. You personally are not able to go WSF, but P2P Foundation is taking the responsibility to organise a major Commons event at the WSF in August, and James organise another global event in Amsterdam for the EU project of which P2P Foundation is a partner. Which was originally my suggestion..

Here is the genuinely p2p and commons way design for WSF Commons Space event, I designed in 2014: Peer to Peer Transnational Networking for a Commons Humanity

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vRRHhASr9wfWolPJzq0Ec7gsomug2T-jeTFmqfzr...

The below design I made it in 2013 to ensure a broader alliance between variety of forces; in an open and peer to peer solider way.. based on ideas re the development of open spaces, towards and during the WSF as well as other events. It was taken, modified and adopted to NGO style. Below is how it was translated to NGO language by Stacco,who was an occupy activist and ex-worker owned coop practitioner, now professional expert hired by P2P Foundation:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wud-VMjA89aE14GNWDE_YkUMNqIYsK-oLVLo4bVW...

And during 2014, there was an email discussion about avoiding cooptation and developing a pool resource for commoners, using the funding recuperated by commons NGOs type organisations; supposed to be supportive of commons. Discussion taken place mid 2014, before or after Degrowth conference, and then Michel, you suggested the below idea, which has not been implemented, yet. Open Coop development agency idea:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/188Y7COujNwhU60pMiNypXHaRHgLrjKywVlfN6AyO...

Although I find EDGE Founders, under the leadership of commons friendly Nicolas Krauzs of P2P Foundations funder FHP (Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation), it is clearly an human-washorganisation with Soros' open society and US' large corporate funders behind, they might have been imposing their own agenda over the commons; about which you guys have no idea. I will provide a deeper analysis of this, with proves. But for the moment I just like to share the nice and sincere-open reports of the events, documented by Pat Conaty and David Boiler, and am guessing are the selective events organised and you have been able to join: This is the event on Open Cooperativism: http://bollier.org/open-co-operativism-report

And this is the top-down vision of alliance building: Part I: http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-i-the-general... Part II: http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-ii-strategies...

I like to reader to pay attention of funders, participants' composition, and the content. The total picture is clearly top-down movement building, beyond the closed doors. These are not supportive nice, exchange wise productive events.

To finish, I like to make one constructive suggestion. If you guys, really really sincere, please consider use the some part of the fundings getting collected -i take it recuperated from the public resources stolen by state elite- and give it back to commoners, by for instance creating totally autonomous spaces for them; so by time for them; inviting commoners from the Global South, paying their registration fees, arrange them a permentant space in the Montreal WSF; in where they can have time and energy to exchange and build their own agenda in their own ways and means.

In solidarity, Orsan

PS: as promised below is the documentation of the "driver seat" phenomenon...

-- the date was beginning of 2015, not mid 2014, did confuse the years. I pasted entire email exchange to give the contex:

John <[email protected]>

07/01/2015 to Pat, Michel, me, Brian, Michel, networkedlabour, e-mail, David, Michael, margie I like the four wheels. And us in the drivers seat!

On 15-01-07 6:17 PM, Pat Conaty wrote:

Michel

Touche and very good but some in this list our ends and others means. So a bit more work involved, but getting there.

As Polanyi argued, Commons solutions for land, money and people to take them out of market are a sine qua non so money becomes servant not master. With this focus we can get onto the right livelihoods roadway of the Tools for Convivality arguments of Illich.

The social-public partnership is crucial of course. The Guild socialists understood this in the 1920s as did much of the left in Europe before they were slaughtered by fascism.

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 15:03, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

to take your wheel metaphor,

if one wheel is the commons, the second wheel cooperatives , the third weel sustainability, and the fourth wheel the partner state (necessary civic infrastructures including things like the basic income) .. are we missing a lot ? (I see social justice as part of that fourth wheel)

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Pat Conaty<[email protected]> wrote:

...

Hi Orsan and Brian

Great comments yet again. We are on to something here in this exchange.

So important for all of Europe as the Greek election approaches. A bit like the Allende election it feels.

...

The whole world this time is watching with instant news globally.

When I talk about the solutions being as old as the industrial hills, I mean that at each Long K-wave, offers a chance and this time for a Great Transition in the way Kenneth Boulding expressed this in the 1960s is at hand. Michel’s argument for a Commons Transition is crucial as the unless the biosphere is saved, we are heading for a 6 degree rise in global temperatures as Naomi Klein’s latest book both highlights and points to a common cause to unite social movements. She makes the parallel to the movement to abolish slavery, but here the campaign and focus should be on ending wage slavery. I think Gar Alperovitz offers us far more than meets the eye. As a young researcher, he cut his teeth in the 1960s working for Dr. Martin Luther King. In his latest book he points out that if the US annual income was equitably shared, each family could be provided a Basic Income of $200,000 or $100,000 for a 20 hour week. Abundance is at hand if co-operative economic root and branch solutions could be harnessed.

Let me explain…...

Boulding was an evolutionary economist following more closely the path of Veblen then Schumpeter. He was also a pioneer of systems theory and complexity analysis. He saw the Great Transition along the lines of what Schumacher, Illich and others were hoping might happen after the Opec oil crisis. They wanted to jump from the information age to the social knowledge age. Intermediate technology was a way to solve the gap between North and South and to secure a convergence between green and red thinking or social economics and ecological economics.

Few among the New Left saw what they were forecasting and understood the practical and positive hope they were offering. Exceptions though were Erich Fromm and Andre Gorz who embraced the ideas of Illich for Tools for Convivality. Fromm also in the 1950s made these arguments and stood up on national US TV interviews to the bogeyman of McCarthy.

Gorz set this out in a series of books starting with his Critique of Economic Rationality and early arguments for a Basic Income. Also in the UK in the early 1980s the work of the Greater London Council and the technology networks that Robin Murray and Hilary Wainwright were moving forward on linked up with this thinking and that of Mike Cooley in the work on the Lucas Plan and the case for a radically new trade unionism.

Co-operative solutions if only seen in relation to corporate ownership are one dimension only of systems change. Only one wheel when we need at least three or four. What you find though historically is at or near to the K-wave turning points, say 1880s, 1920s and indeed the 1970s you get a wider take that is three or four dimensional in relation to co-operative economic transition. This is the concept of ‘co-operative commonwealth’ that is lost sight of again and again by younger generations because of the say 50 year K-waves.

Like Camus showed, we end up having to rebel without cause from generation to generation and only and slowly slowly recover the vernacular wisdom of our grandparents.

Crucially here activists and thinkers alike when they rediscover the full set of co-operative wheels at last, they then begin to address the fundamental foundations of capitalism, namely the taboo questions of land and money. Solving these two is the key to ending wage labour slavery.

You might find of interest this paper I presented at the international Karl Polanyi conference in Montreal two months ago. Earlier at the conference, Michael Hudson gave a superb speech about financialisation and the casinos economy crisis. The vote in Greece on 25 January may trigger a Lehman II crisis. Michael and I talked and he fully agreed with this analysis and proposals. I found out this second time I met Michael that in the late 1960s and early 1970s he was working for Citibank as a collector of Latin American sovereign debt. He then had his Pauline conversion, quit Wall Street and moved to the New School for Social Research.

My paper offers some practical solutions as to how to de-commodify money and land. Michel has just posted it in recent weeks a three part series on the P2P website.

Without addressing these taboo questions positively, transparently and practically, wars will loom larger. Greece, Ireland, Spain and indeed the UK need a prisoners dilemma roadmap out of expanding debt as the fiscal deficits are ballooning and there is no Jubilee release in sight.

All the best

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 11:28, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks Michel, this came very timely indeed, site looks great and the content just answers in my opinion perfectly half of the question Brian asks below, he also asked before and you have given a perfect answer indicating what a site and platform as you launch corresponds in reality. I think this work focusing and addressing state or political society level/dimension of what needs to be done together, and doing it extremely good. Plus the closer relationship emerged in recent years between P2P-F, with Guerrilla Translation, CIC, and Fair.coop closely, I think Michel and friends of P2P, with open-commons-cooperative approach has moved much closer to the recently converging grassroots activism to a position that can greatly contribute to a bridge building activity, with normal people the actual field of political movements and struggles.

I continue in lines below:

let me very appropriately I think, after enjoying the insights of all, just briefly mention thathttp://commonstransition.orghas been launched today, precisely meant as a global platform for p2p/commons based policy making by global and local commoners,

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Brian Holmes< [email protected]>wrote:

...

Orsan, your ideas are tremendously interesting. Thank you. I would

appreciate it even more if you take some time to draw more strategic conlcusions. What to do in the present situation? What to do with the kinds of energies and cetworks and collaborations in which we ourselves can participate?

...

...

To me, the process packaged as Globalization, was the most peaceful possible form of the institutionalization project aiming

to

...

...

rebuild the world as a small village connected by information highway of Bill Gates'. As Cox describes in the below video, and I share the way he describes it, Asian crisis can be seen as a breaking point.

I could not agree more. For years I ran an intermittent seminar called "Continental Drift" whose main these was exactly the above. The question was: Why is it that exactly when the world comes together (globalization) it begins to fall apart (continental blocs)?

Slowly it became apparent to me that the US, which had been well and truly hegemonic after WWII, could only solve the crisis of the Keynesian-Fordist paradigm by internationalizing key power functions. They believed this extension of hegemony could be restricted to the two Northern core states which, not coincidentally, had been destroyed in WWII and rebuilt under American auspices: namely Germany/EU and Japan. So you would have a Trilateral hegemony, or "Triad Power," as Kenichi Ohmae called it (yen-euro-dollar: YE$). After '89 and First Gulf War, Clinton believed that the colonization of the unified world market could be managed, peacefully, by this troika, which had solved the monetary crisis of the 70s and had also assembled the largest military coalition in history in 1991. In fact, the world market was unified by the new productive processes of Neoliberal Informationalism. But the bid to retain hegemony by sharing it proved illusory, especially because of the rise of Asia, and especially China, after the Asian crisis of '98. Control threatened to slip away into every semi-autonomous node of the world market, and the US turned to preemptive warfare and institutionalized counter-terrorism in a desperate and failing bid to contain the genie that it had let out of the bottle. That genie is nothing more or less than the deliriously productive forces of fifth-wave industrial capitalism.

This is why Neoliberal Informationalism is so hard to govern. The old power is crumbling (very slowly though), the new one is not yet ready to take command, and we are faced with the global organic crisis of hegemony, which as Gramsci would say, is full of morbid symptoms. In my view, however, this is a far better situation than if China were ready to simply replace the US as capitalist hegemon. Because it is not, we have the chance, in this generation, to complete the task of building a critical and constructive global civil society, able to face both climate change and the constant threat of inter-regional war between the fragmented blocs. The thing is, the Trilateral period spawned not just TNCs, but also TNCS - transnational civil society, or what I also call transnational culture sharing. For me, that is the deep meaning of p2p. It's the other genie that got out of the bottle, and this one is not industrial or capitalist. It is a practical, constructive, dialogical way to build cooperation across the scales - from local and urban to national, continental and global - in order to tame, restrain and redirect (but also sometimes topple) the rapacious elites who are now anarchically deploying the powers of informationalism.

totally agree here, again with reference to Gramsci, the organic crisis emerging at point organic intellectuals can not function and facilitate coherence and consensus amongst the ruling classes, as in smoothing informal network spaces like Davos, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg meetings, but also at local level with Rotary-Lions, or Masonic Clubs, especially at the time of miss-match between the sub-structure and super-structure occurs. However you are right, focusing to knowing enemy more then yourself is not an health way, and agree we need to look for answers to, also in my opinion, most crucial point. How we, as everyone else then elite, and ruling class members, and their broader circles, will move forward, mobilizing and organizing ourselves to act to protect our own, and others dignity, lives and the cosmos, in practice.

...

p2p = the possiblity of global government from below. This is what

progressive global grassroots networks have been experimenting with since the mid-1990s, around the time that Zapatismo emerged. And this is what Michel was calling "the business model of Occupy" in a memorable article a couple years back.

I see in the link Michel shared a growing interaction and mutual learning that might also feed in more moral, creative, and genuinely collaborative politics to emerge amongst new and old left between Autonomists, European left, democratic socialist groups. Such convergence would develop opening ups for collaborative politics including greens and mainstream unions, with positive and creative input might come most hopefully from Podemos kind of experiments. Thinking for instance Rojava and the role it can play here, if the Cantons in theory and practice are linked to social houses, squatter and transition town networks, as well as to urban cooperatives and peer producers. I believe the professional politics is the last part to expect anything good at the moment, or it needs to be thought as a last resort to hope from but something to encourage to go for the real change by showing. Since a possible convergence is indeed needed, as Anna said earlier, if we want to reverse the worsening general situation.

For a long time I have been busy thinking of and searching in, on, behind, around, progressive political and societal institutions, unions, NGOs, activist and political collectives, as well as streets, actions, assemblies so on -being close and far enough to the worlds of unionism, party politics, developmental and progressive NGOism, and issue based social justice movements- studying divisions, ideas and practices of alliances, tried to see possibilities to realize sincere collaboration based on mutual recognition between groups. What I have come to think most recently is, a bit different than what Michel suggested by prioritizing one of the many among who suffers the conditions of today the peer producers as main protagonist to be protected and flourished, actually probably he also meant it this way that, creation of distributed p2p platforms and infrastructures that allow people to liberate from capital and to get empowered to become peer producers for themselves and for others. More in line with what Peter Waterman cites often in my opinion, 'the network is the vanguard'; to open up p2p, egalitarian self-organiased networks of world working classes -for itself- is the vanguard, not one of the enlightened or segments of them, or any entity that claims to be acting on be half of masses, building on a position of chosen class or class segment because of the historical and strategic position it has occupy in the global production-commodity networks. Which brings me to the point below.

...

...

I will cut it here but before like to saying one last thing about the similarity I do see between the netarhicalness of Walmart, Apple, and even Nike and Amazon on the one hand, and the forms like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and others who accumulate wealth by producing and selling meta-data to other businesses, on the other.

I

...

...

see here similarity between these forms not in terms of how they extract, capture and accumulate the value, but the way they

organise

...

their production line in order to capture the value created.

I will go back to the analysis I promised above in the next email. Now I like to continue answering your question in relation how we ourselves would be engaging in such (un)vanguard people's political-economy networking; which I have been woking on a design draft called 'FreeKonomia'. It is as a networked infrastructure for totally free exchange of very high quality goods and services, produced by love and care, which is to be supported by integrated floss platforms. One aspect is for free transportation of people, work force, and light material goods, as well as some portable services. It is possible to be re-design a version of BlaBlaCar-Go with Open-map embed showing the points to get on and get off, handy if these are social centers, people's houses, as routes between them to organize the car-go function. For building larger projects and physical infrastructures we need to combine scientific expertise, like those brought together in co-working spaces such as OMNI in Oakland, and large Occupy camps, where people could go camp, have fun and rest while working. What is needed of course to be embedded also is an application that help to match needs and offers of any kind is Sensorica kind, or NPR, Bob and Lynn has been developing, including kind of admin and tracking application, where everyone can see and show who needs what, where, when, what amount. It is very key to manage this all for Free as in Free Beer, and based on positive and encouraging repetitional system, as the driving feed back loop mechanism. So the more you share for free and high quality with others, both system and participants gain value and trust. then freeness and personality would become the anti-money so to speak, replacing and killing the unconditional love and trust we used to give to stupid and dirty papers and metals :) I think mass solidarity actions towards Greek and Spanish social houses, Rojava and Ukrain, for both peace and humanity, can be designed to build up such routes and maps, and this can be linked to Sharing cities mapping-jam organized by Shareable. These processes needs to be in tandem also balancing the Podemos kind of projects, or Partner State emergence. Then in the mid term if we can harmonize these with first organizing the Exodus from Capital, and then a creative and constructive-but also blokaida form of Golden Strike at the weakest points of the system, we might make a good chance to win.

Orsan

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan

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/

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan

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

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

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On 4 July 2016 at 19:22, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

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hi Orsan,

this is my response only, I am not speaking for James or anyone else,

quick online reactions

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

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I will try to give a considered respond to your answer, which I am guessing is the public reply James mentioned.

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I think the realities of organizing events is underestimated. They are two choices, one is the grassroots barcamp type events, in which

everyone is

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welcome, and everyone has to fund his own trip; these events are great, and important, but have advantages as well as disadvantages One disadvantage is that it excludes those who can't self-fund their trips.

I assume it is more than me underestimate the realities of organizing event then organizers undervalue the practices of peer to peer and commoners. In response to Boiler's book title 'Think like a commoner', it could be more then possible to 'Act like a commoner'. So it is more of a choices, philosophy and politics, more then 'realities' or 'practices' of, those who like to 'think' and 'research' about the real practices; coincidentally this makes you star, solve income problems, and moreover allow one to deliver politics, and gain influence and power. I think this is not only underestimated, but totally absence in your response Michel. Of course there is not only two options, there are plenty of alternatives. Other wise realities of 'organizing' or 'organization', could be only 'the state' / 'corporation' or 'anarchy and there would be no commons, commonning, peer to peer alternatives. Are they exist or not? Are they reliable or not? Are they believable or not.. Or only theorizing or researching about them is important? I know you really believe in p2p and commons, but it is hardly possible to see any prefigurative action and practice Michel. This is a public and open critique, meaning very sincere and friendly way, you need to really think about it.

I am not organizing any of those two events Orsan. I have lightly co-organized barcamps, enough to know how they work; I like them but they can only go so far, it's not the only legitimate formula.

The events I have co-organized more intensely were not on the lines of such open access events, but selective events, like the ones you organized for networked labour. What are the p2p/commons aspects about them ? 1)They aimed at creating a diverse and balanced participation 2) they aimed to balance self-organisation and prior organisation 3) they aimed to balance inclusion and expertise 4) they aimed at being no-cost for the participants

But like in your event, they were characterized by a careful selection.

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The other choice is to go for paid conferences. This involves other disadvantages, such as the rules imposed by funders (very stringent

demands

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for transparency for example with EU funding). But it has some advantages ... one is the choice of speakers, which can be more focused on past expertise; the other is that speakers' trip can be paid, as well as small, or sometimes bigger stipends; the paid entries can help fund those without the means of self-funding.

Actually, and to be honest, I really wonder if you really ever organized something what you call barcamp type, self-organized, do it yourself, peer to peer event. Since I never saw any disadvantage then not being able to have star speakers, who would occupy all the space; and the rest of the participants who pay for the cost of starts, would only listen and leave the space with lots of frustration. May be only one disadvantage is not being able to make a show and attract media attention. The rest is negligible in my opinion.

I have a different experience, I very much enjoy listening to speakers with more experience than myself, I don't find that frustating. The conferences I enjoy the most are 'mixed', i.e. they mix the opportunity to listen to more experienced people, inclusionary sessions with panels, and the opportunity for deep conversations in circle type events, i.e. they include peer to peer dynamics, but not exclusively.

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So, in the case of the Synergia conference, this is an entirely

unfunded

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conference. The price was set taken into account the travel costs and very small per diems for the teachers/speakers; and full lodging of participants. In this context, the fee amounts to 900 EURO per week, full pension, which is, in the context of the prices of Tuscany, actually very cheap, though of course, will also exclude those with financial difficulties. For this, you get access to a quite extraordinary roster of teachers/speakers and intense dialogue with other participants. For people with jobs in the cooperative economy, for which this conference is intended, the cost is not un-realistic. For those without income, the price is prohibitive, but bursaries are available. According to John Restakis, the program requires 15 paid students to achieve break-even; after that, bursaries can be funded.

Yes, Synergia conference... You say this 900 per week, several thousands euro per all course is, or should be okay for cooperative workers, worker owned cooperatives.. while you can not effort only your trip to self-organized, barcamp events.

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I for example, would not be able to attend neither Tuscany nor the P2P Value events on my own, in either format, but I can attend both because my travel and basic costs are provided for. This is not a gift, but a small reciprocal payment for my contribution to the event. In contrast, the self-organized barcamp absolutely preclude me from making a living from my contributions.

Would if you can not effort, how do you think workers, cooperative owners, peer producers could so.

that's what I said, it requires effort and investment on the part of the students, or of those institutions that fund them; it is mostly only realistic for those with links to institutions; I'm fully aware of this; bursaries are a solution to attenuate this

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The second issue is that of 'democracy'. The P2P Value event has been organized and decided by all those involved in the research project,

i.e. a

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consortium of 8 organizations, and James was responsible for organizing the event as part of the contract; in the Synergie case, this is also a collaborative effort of many dozen people, involved in the Synergia consortium, a voluntary association of cooperativists the world over.

Second issue is not only democracy, transparency, nor participation. Not about politics, but it is about generation of culture. It is prefigurative act. In case of its lack, or while main evangelists or preachers of communism, would not see any problem in ruling people's soviets from the winter palace of the old-rulers, then that revolution is over before it started. P2P Revolution is going down before it starts, not because it is un-democratic, or as you argue against democracy that is it is meritocratic. I think including you, Silke, David, as well as all other commoners, and theory leaders do lack practical aspect that generates no culture at the 'strategist' level.

About Restakis.. My remark was a reference to his email, accidentally sent to the list, in his response to you, Jason Nardi, Pat Conaty and some others about the four wheels of the 'radical change car'.. He was making a joke of 'you' as the strategists of commons transition, open cooperativism, peer - license, what ever.. Being on the 'driver seat'. Then there was a cold silence, no one replied or asked or commented on his joke. But history registered. I can find and redistribute that exchange if you like.

please do redistribute, I haven't seen it

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They take their decisions in good faith, given the funding and other realities they contend with. Yes, it means not everyone can attend,

but

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within the parameters they work with, they strive for the maximum inclusion of motivated participants, and find individual solutions when possible.

Division is not between 'not every body' and 'everybody'. But 'organizers' and 'organized'; 'agenda setters' and those agendas are set, strategists and strategised; so sort of masters and puppets.

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Now the alternative of barcamps of the massively self-organized WSF ... well, I can't afford to go those either, they exclude all those that are not able to self-fund. So no system is perfect,

Come on Michel, some one like you can easily receive support to go there, of any kind.

the fact Orsan is that I haven't; nobody ever offered to finance my participation to the WSF; and until 2014, I was extremely precarious and the P2P-F itself has zero funds; so if you know of easy forms of support, please do forward

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and both are easy to critique from the outside, by people who are unwilling to dive into the real difficulties and constraints of

organizing

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these events,As far as I can recall, Orsan, you organized exclusive events with TNI, and you did that very well. Far from critiquing you for these exclusionary events, I would commend you for it, for bringing important players together, and for funding our trips and participation. I feel the same about John Restakis and James Burke, and given their efforts and responsibilities, I can find sympathy for their irritation when they are critiqued by outsiders who are not contributing to the organization of these events, and unaware of the constraints they are operating with.

My critique of TNI, and end of my relationships with it is declared by me on several occasions. Now same critique, of NGO world in general, is covering to commons NGOs, which present same mistakes, same fault lines, and these are not a complain of some one humpy dumpy, it is documented and agreed wide spread critique. Of course people, individually doing their best, to survive and combine income and passion and idealism would get irritated. But what irritate us, ordinary people, is them finding this not enough and when that also like to tell us what to do, what to say, what to chose, what to like and dislike.. So when they feel power of ideas, and wish to define the course, on the driving seat of the 'radical' change car.

you are no more ordinary than anyone else; I dont think most ordinary people would be irritated by open debate and exchange of opinions : I will certainly restrict my own rights of free speech on the basis of other's irritations

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Well, without managing to combine applying self-labour, mental and manually, apologies but this is not going to happen. Because, now, irritation of being rule, is so high, and those who are wanted to be

managed

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posses high skills, like political analysis.

thanks for this exchange, end of my comments

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In solidarity, Orsan

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

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

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#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

-- https://twitter.com/flgnk Skype: kev.flanagan Phone: +353 87 743 5660

Kevin, by no means to criticize you or Michel, and I know it is just too busy to reply for you at the moment, I just wanted to return this thread since: 1. Michel confirmed in his response that you asked for funding to go WSF about to work on these things you initiated. 2. You created the e-list with p2p-foundation domain name to follow up on the process, and all was okay with it, me too. Yet although you have claimed not representing or working for the foundation, if it is not you, how do you explain the existing of P2p foundation's name as co-organizer of the commons space activities? I asked the same question to Michel, since he was also claiming no involvement personally or as foundation. 3. In relation to this, just to clarify, are you just using some independent funding to voluntarily contribute these organizational efforts, which I find it very useful and productive, yet limited and constrained only with NGO sort of activities, very similar to what we have saw in the history of the WSF. A question comes to minds then, to direct commons space event organizers, how do you assure and guarantee to reflect not your personal and organizational interest or views,crashed then commoners that are not able to or has no time or interest in participating such events, like new movements often being addressed or talked about? These issues and questions are applicable to all others who contributed to these efforts in bringing the commons formulations you had in the WSF process. Thanks for all the work, and considering a reply in any way. Best, Orsan On 5 jul. 2016, at 15:38, Kevin Flanagan <[email protected]> wrote:

I don't have time at the moment for a full detailed response but I want to make a few things clear.

1) I am no longer employed by the P2P Foundation and the P2PF is not providing any financial support or payment for my participation in the FSM. 2) Elisabetta Cangelosi and I initiated a discussion about the presence of Commons at the FSM last year as an independent initiative. Meaning the only connection with P2PF is that the mailing list was hosted by P2PF. 3) We created mailing list and invited you Orsan several times to participate in the process. We value constructive input but your participation or lack of is up to you.

Kevin

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On 5 July 2016 at 15:00, Örsan Şenalp <[email protected]> wrote: Michel, in response to your reply I also like to direct this email to the attention of Silke, David, Pat, James, Chico.. and other self-claimed strategists, organisers, leaders, of global justice and solidarity, and now commons movements..

First issue, is the one you avoid to respond; lack of prefiguration hence moral - cultural leadership, neede for the hegemony you are willing to build over first other movements, then against the ruling classes. This is a general issue, and is a critique of all NGO sector; 'progressive' or 'supportive' NGO cadre, degenerate 'solidairty and justice' culture, by getting stuck and generate 'capitalist' competitive culture. That is why, in a Gramscian sense, it would never be possible to get real moral and intellectual leadership over the progressive movements, like commons movement, that you are trying to 'build' or mould out of real people's real struggles.

In 2013, and 2014, together with others from most recent movements, from Occupy, 15M, Arab spring, and including Carminda McLorin -from Occupy Montreal and Classe, an initiative formed and called itself 'Global Square'. We have designed and tried to open up an occupied Commons Space, within the WSF in Tunis 2013 and 2014: http://www.global-square.net/about/ Carminda was had participated all calls and meetings of Global Square actively and she become the face of the WSF Montreal local coordination team (with Chico Whiteaker being on her side). Based on unique experience we developed, in a really p2p and commoning way, during 2011-2014 period, at Agora99, Frienze 10+10, WSF Tunis under the Banner of Global Square (with combined methodologies) in 2014 I tried out to scratch the below designs on the way to Montreal. I shared it with you, and it has been picked up by you, and others; then it was modified into un-P2P and un-common ways and translated in to NGO format with carefully controlled access (over the funding opportunities and competitiveness reasons I assume).. and we have a modified Commons Space. Here is the Hackpad where Kevin, of the P2P Foundation has been the main organiser from the beginning, with Elisabetta of Transform: https://commonsspace.hackpad.com/Commons-Space-k6rOCvUgyhC

As response to your question what is the easy way to go to WSF and finding support for that: I think your is a political answer, since it is your choice not to go to WSF personally, you expressed it before; so you are sending Kevin to do the ground work for the Foundation to build an event I foresee and suggested to you last year -on the Commons. Meanwhile, James of the P2P foundation, is responsible from the Global Commons Conference, in Amsterdam where I live. You say you would recommend me, to people, but about the idea I desingned and shared with you, James, your secretariat is recommended.

You are expected to be invited to WSF and paid for some other organisations, while Kevin's participation and ground work labour is paid by P2P Foundation. You personally are not able to go WSF, but P2P Foundation is taking the responsibility to organise a major Commons event at the WSF in August, and James organise another global event in Amsterdam for the EU project of which P2P Foundation is a partner. Which was originally my suggestion..

Here is the genuinely p2p and commons way design for WSF Commons Space event, I designed in 2014: Peer to Peer Transnational Networking for a Commons Humanity https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vRRHhASr9wfWolPJzq0Ec7gsomug2T-jeTFmqfzr...

The below design I made it in 2013 to ensure a broader alliance between variety of forces; in an open and peer to peer solider way.. based on ideas re the development of open spaces, towards and during the WSF as well as other events. It was taken, modified and adopted to NGO style. Below is how it was translated to NGO language by Stacco,who was an occupy activist and ex-worker owned coop practitioner, now professional expert hired by P2P Foundation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wud-VMjA89aE14GNWDE_YkUMNqIYsK-oLVLo4bVW...

And during 2014, there was an email discussion about avoiding cooptation and developing a pool resource for commoners, using the funding recuperated by commons NGOs type organisations; supposed to be supportive of commons. Discussion taken place mid 2014, before or after Degrowth conference, and then Michel, you suggested the below idea, which has not been implemented, yet. Open Coop development agency idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/188Y7COujNwhU60pMiNypXHaRHgLrjKywVlfN6AyO...

Although I find EDGE Founders, under the leadership of commons friendly Nicolas Krauzs of P2P Foundations funder FHP (Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation), it is clearly an human-washorganisation with Soros' open society and US' large corporate funders behind, they might have been imposing their own agenda over the commons; about which you guys have no idea. I will provide a deeper analysis of this, with proves. But for the moment I just like to share the nice and sincere-open reports of the events, documented by Pat Conaty and David Boiler, and am guessing are the selective events organised and you have been able to join: This is the event on Open Cooperativism: http://bollier.org/open-co-operativism-report

And this is the top-down vision of alliance building: Part I:http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-i-the-general... Part II:http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-ii-strategies...

I like to reader to pay attention of funders, participants' composition, and the content. The total picture is clearly top-down movement building, beyond the closed doors. These are not supportive nice, exchange wise productive events.

To finish, I like to make one constructive suggestion. If you guys, really really sincere, please consider use the some part of the fundings getting collected -i take it recuperated from the public resources stolen by state elite- and give it back to commoners, by for instance creating totally autonomous spaces for them; so by time for them; inviting commoners from the Global South, paying their registration fees, arrange them a permentant space in the Montreal WSF; in where they can have time and energy to exchange and build their own agenda in their own ways and means.

In solidarity, Orsan

PS: as promised below is the documentation of the "driver seat" phenomenon...

-- the date was beginning of 2015, not mid 2014, did confuse the years. I pasted entire email exchange to give the contex:

John <[email protected]>

07/01/2015 to Pat, Michel, me, Brian, Michel, networkedlabour, e-mail, David, Michael, margie I like the four wheels. And us in the drivers seat!

On 15-01-07 6:17 PM, Pat Conaty wrote:

Michel

Touche and very good but some in this list our ends and others means. So a bit more work involved, but getting there.

As Polanyi argued, Commons solutions for land, money and people to take them out of market are a sine qua non so money becomes servant not master. With this focus we can get onto the right livelihoods roadway of the Tools for Convivality arguments of Illich.

The social-public partnership is crucial of course. The Guild socialists understood this in the 1920s as did much of the left in Europe before they were slaughtered by fascism.

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 15:03, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

to take your wheel metaphor,

if one wheel is the commons, the second wheel cooperatives , the third weel sustainability, and the fourth wheel the partner state (necessary civic infrastructures including things like the basic income) .. are we missing a lot ? (I see social justice as part of that fourth wheel)

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Pat Conaty<[email protected]> wrote:

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Hi Orsan and Brian

Great comments yet again. We are on to something here in this exchange. So important for all of Europe as the Greek election approaches. A bit like the Allende election it feels. The whole world this time is watching with instant news globally.

When I talk about the solutions being as old as the industrial hills, I mean that at each Long K-wave, offers a chance and this time for a Great Transition in the way Kenneth Boulding expressed this in the 1960s is at hand. Michel’s argument for a Commons Transition is crucial as the unless the biosphere is saved, we are heading for a 6 degree rise in global temperatures as Naomi Klein’s latest book both highlights and points to a common cause to unite social movements. She makes the parallel to the movement to abolish slavery, but here the campaign and focus should be on ending wage slavery. I think Gar Alperovitz offers us far more than meets the eye. As a young researcher, he cut his teeth in the 1960s working for Dr. Martin Luther King. In his latest book he points out that if the US annual income was equitably shared, each family could be provided a Basic Income of $200,000 or $100,000 for a 20 hour week. Abundance is at hand if co-operative economic root and branch solutions could be harnessed.

Let me explain…...

Boulding was an evolutionary economist following more closely the path of Veblen then Schumpeter. He was also a pioneer of systems theory and complexity analysis. He saw the Great Transition along the lines of what Schumacher, Illich and others were hoping might happen after the Opec oil crisis. They wanted to jump from the information age to the social knowledge age. Intermediate technology was a way to solve the gap between North and South and to secure a convergence between green and red thinking or social economics and ecological economics.

Few among the New Left saw what they were forecasting and understood the practical and positive hope they were offering. Exceptions though were Erich Fromm and Andre Gorz who embraced the ideas of Illich for Tools for Convivality. Fromm also in the 1950s made these arguments and stood up on national US TV interviews to the bogeyman of McCarthy.

Gorz set this out in a series of books starting with his Critique of Economic Rationality and early arguments for a Basic Income. Also in the UK in the early 1980s the work of the Greater London Council and the technology networks that Robin Murray and Hilary Wainwright were moving forward on linked up with this thinking and that of Mike Cooley in the work on the Lucas Plan and the case for a radically new trade unionism.

Co-operative solutions if only seen in relation to corporate ownership are one dimension only of systems change. Only one wheel when we need at least three or four. What you find though historically is at or near to the K-wave turning points, say 1880s, 1920s and indeed the 1970s you get a wider take that is three or four dimensional in relation to co-operative economic transition. This is the concept of ‘co-operative commonwealth’ that is lost sight of again and again by younger generations because of the say 50 year K-waves.

Like Camus showed, we end up having to rebel without cause from generation to generation and only and slowly slowly recover the vernacular wisdom of our grandparents.

Crucially here activists and thinkers alike when they rediscover the full set of co-operative wheels at last, they then begin to address the fundamental foundations of capitalism, namely the taboo questions of land and money. Solving these two is the key to ending wage labour slavery.

You might find of interest this paper I presented at the international Karl Polanyi conference in Montreal two months ago. Earlier at the conference, Michael Hudson gave a superb speech about financialisation and the casinos economy crisis. The vote in Greece on 25 January may trigger a Lehman II crisis. Michael and I talked and he fully agreed with this analysis and proposals. I found out this second time I met Michael that in the late 1960s and early 1970s he was working for Citibank as a collector of Latin American sovereign debt. He then had his Pauline conversion, quit Wall Street and moved to the New School for Social Research.

My paper offers some practical solutions as to how to de-commodify money and land. Michel has just posted it in recent weeks a three part series on the P2P website.

Without addressing these taboo questions positively, transparently and practically, wars will loom larger. Greece, Ireland, Spain and indeed the UK need a prisoners dilemma roadmap out of expanding debt as the fiscal deficits are ballooning and there is no Jubilee release in sight.

All the best

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 11:28, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks Michel, this came very timely indeed, site looks great and the content just answers in my opinion perfectly half of the question Brian asks below, he also asked before and you have given a perfect answer indicating what a site and platform as you launch corresponds in reality. I think this work focusing and addressing state or political society level/dimension of what needs to be done together, and doing it extremely good. Plus the closer relationship emerged in recent years between P2P-F, with Guerrilla Translation, CIC, and Fair.coop closely, I think Michel and friends of P2P, with open-commons-cooperative approach has moved much closer to the recently converging grassroots activism to a position that can greatly contribute to a bridge building activity, with normal people the actual field of political movements and struggles.

I continue in lines below:

let me very appropriately I think, after enjoying the insights of all, just briefly mention thathttp://commonstransition.orghas been launched today, precisely meant as a global platform for p2p/commons based policy making by global and local commoners,

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Brian Holmes<[email protected]>wrote:

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Orsan, your ideas are tremendously interesting. Thank you. I would appreciate it even more if you take some time to draw more strategic conlcusions. What to do in the present situation? What to do with the kinds of energies and cetworks and collaborations in which we ourselves can participate?

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To me, the process packaged as Globalization, was the most peaceful possible form of the institutionalization project aiming to rebuild the world as a small village connected by information highway of Bill Gates'. As Cox describes in the below video, and I share the way he describes it, Asian crisis can be seen as a breaking point.

I could not agree more. For years I ran an intermittent seminar called "Continental Drift" whose main these was exactly the above. The question was: Why is it that exactly when the world comes together (globalization) it begins to fall apart (continental blocs)?

Slowly it became apparent to me that the US, which had been well and truly hegemonic after WWII, could only solve the crisis of the Keynesian-Fordist paradigm by internationalizing key power functions. They believed this extension of hegemony could be restricted to the two Northern core states which, not coincidentally, had been destroyed in WWII and rebuilt under American auspices: namely Germany/EU and Japan. So you would have a Trilateral hegemony, or "Triad Power," as Kenichi Ohmae called it (yen-euro-dollar: YE$). After '89 and First Gulf War, Clinton believed that the colonization of the unified world market could be managed, peacefully, by this troika, which had solved the monetary crisis of the 70s and had also assembled the largest military coalition in history in 1991. In fact, the world market was unified by the new productive processes of Neoliberal Informationalism. But the bid to retain hegemony by sharing it proved illusory, especially because of the rise of Asia, and especially China, after the Asian crisis of '98. Control threatened to slip away into every semi-autonomous node of the world market, and the US turned to preemptive warfare and institutionalized counter-terrorism in a desperate and failing bid to contain the genie that it had let out of the bottle. That genie is nothing more or less than the deliriously productive forces of fifth-wave industrial capitalism.

This is why Neoliberal Informationalism is so hard to govern. The old power is crumbling (very slowly though), the new one is not yet ready to take command, and we are faced with the global organic crisis of hegemony, which as Gramsci would say, is full of morbid symptoms. In my view, however, this is a far better situation than if China were ready to simply replace the US as capitalist hegemon. Because it is not, we have the chance, in this generation, to complete the task of building a critical and constructive global civil society, able to face both climate change and the constant threat of inter-regional war between the fragmented blocs. The thing is, the Trilateral period spawned not just TNCs, but also TNCS - transnational civil society, or what I also call transnational culture sharing. For me, that is the deep meaning of p2p. It's the other genie that got out of the bottle, and this one is not industrial or capitalist. It is a practical, constructive, dialogical way to build cooperation across the scales - from local and urban to national, continental and global - in order to tame, restrain and redirect (but also sometimes topple) the rapacious elites who are now anarchically deploying the powers of informationalism.

totally agree here, again with reference to Gramsci, the organic crisis emerging at point organic intellectuals can not function and facilitate coherence and consensus amongst the ruling classes, as in smoothing informal network spaces like Davos, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg meetings, but also at local level with Rotary-Lions, or Masonic Clubs, especially at the time of miss-match between the sub-structure and super-structure occurs. However you are right, focusing to knowing enemy more then yourself is not an health way, and agree we need to look for answers to, also in my opinion, most crucial point. How we, as everyone else then elite, and ruling class members, and their broader circles, will move forward, mobilizing and organizing ourselves to act to protect our own, and others dignity, lives and the cosmos, in practice.

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p2p = the possiblity of global government from below. This is what progressive global grassroots networks have been experimenting with since the mid-1990s, around the time that Zapatismo emerged. And this is what Michel was calling "the business model of Occupy" in a memorable article a couple years back.

I see in the link Michel shared a growing interaction and mutual learning that might also feed in more moral, creative, and genuinely collaborative politics to emerge amongst new and old left between Autonomists, European left, democratic socialist groups. Such convergence would develop opening ups for collaborative politics including greens and mainstream unions, with positive and creative input might come most hopefully from Podemos kind of experiments. Thinking for instance Rojava and the role it can play here, if the Cantons in theory and practice are linked to social houses, squatter and transition town networks, as well as to urban cooperatives and peer producers. I believe the professional politics is the last part to expect anything good at the moment, or it needs to be thought as a last resort to hope from but something to encourage to go for the real change by showing. Since a possible convergence is indeed needed, as Anna said earlier, if we want to reverse the worsening general situation.

For a long time I have been busy thinking of and searching in, on, behind, around, progressive political and societal institutions, unions, NGOs, activist and political collectives, as well as streets, actions, assemblies so on -being close and far enough to the worlds of unionism, party politics, developmental and progressive NGOism, and issue based social justice movements- studying divisions, ideas and practices of alliances, tried to see possibilities to realize sincere collaboration based on mutual recognition between groups. What I have come to think most recently is, a bit different than what Michel suggested by prioritizing one of the many among who suffers the conditions of today the peer producers as main protagonist to be protected and flourished, actually probably he also meant it this way that, creation of distributed p2p platforms and infrastructures that allow people to liberate from capital and to get empowered to become peer producers for themselves and for others. More in line with what Peter Waterman cites often in my opinion, 'the network is the vanguard'; to open up p2p, egalitarian self-organiased networks of world working classes -for itself- is the vanguard, not one of the enlightened or segments of them, or any entity that claims to be acting on be half of masses, building on a position of chosen class or class segment because of the historical and strategic position it has occupy in the global production-commodity networks. Which brings me to the point below.

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...

I will cut it here but before like to saying one last thing about the similarity I do see between the netarhicalness of Walmart, Apple, and even Nike and Amazon on the one hand, and the forms like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and others who accumulate wealth by producing and selling meta-data to other businesses, on the other. I see here similarity between these forms not in terms of how they extract, capture and accumulate the value, but the way they organise their production line in order to capture the value created.

I will go back to the analysis I promised above in the next email. Now I like to continue answering your question in relation how we ourselves would be engaging in such (un)vanguard people's political-economy networking; which I have been woking on a design draft called 'FreeKonomia'. It is as a networked infrastructure for totally free exchange of very high quality goods and services, produced by love and care, which is to be supported by integrated floss platforms. One aspect is for free transportation of people, work force, and light material goods, as well as some portable services. It is possible to be re-design a version of BlaBlaCar-Go with Open-map embed showing the points to get on and get off, handy if these are social centers, people's houses, as routes between them to organize the car-go function. For building larger projects and physical infrastructures we need to combine scientific expertise, like those brought together in co-working spaces such as OMNI in Oakland, and large Occupy camps, where people could go camp, have fun and rest while working. What is needed of course to be embedded also is an application that help to match needs and offers of any kind is Sensorica kind, or NPR, Bob and Lynn has been developing, including kind of admin and tracking application, where everyone can see and show who needs what, where, when, what amount. It is very key to manage this all for Free as in Free Beer, and based on positive and encouraging repetitional system, as the driving feed back loop mechanism. So the more you share for free and high quality with others, both system and participants gain value and trust. then freeness and personality would become the anti-money so to speak, replacing and killing the unconditional love and trust we used to give to stupid and dirty papers and metals :) I think mass solidarity actions towards Greek and Spanish social houses, Rojava and Ukrain, for both peace and humanity, can be designed to build up such routes and maps, and this can be linked to Sharing cities mapping-jam organized by Shareable. These processes needs to be in tandem also balancing the Podemos kind of projects, or Partner State emergence. Then in the mid term if we can harmonize these with first organizing the Exodus from Capital, and then a creative and constructive-but also blokaida form of Golden Strike at the weakest points of the system, we might make a good chance to win.

Orsan

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan

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

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On 4 July 2016 at 19:22, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

...

hi Orsan,

this is my response only, I am not speaking for James or anyone else,

quick online reactions

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

...

I will try to give a considered respond to your answer, which I am guessing is the public reply James mentioned.

...

I think the realities of organizing events is underestimated. They are two choices, one is the grassroots barcamp type events, in which everyone is welcome, and everyone has to fund his own trip; these events are great, and important, but have advantages as well as disadvantages One disadvantage is that it excludes those who can't self-fund their trips.

I assume it is more than me underestimate the realities of organizing event then organizers undervalue the practices of peer to peer and commoners. In response to Boiler's book title 'Think like a commoner', it could be more then possible to 'Act like a commoner'. So it is more of a choices, philosophy and politics, more then 'realities' or 'practices' of, those who like to 'think' and 'research' about the real practices; coincidentally this makes you star, solve income problems, and moreover allow one to deliver politics, and gain influence and power. I think this is not only underestimated, but totally absence in your response Michel. Of course there is not only two options, there are plenty of alternatives. Other wise realities of 'organizing' or 'organization', could be only 'the state' / 'corporation' or 'anarchy and there would be no commons, commonning, peer to peer alternatives. Are they exist or not? Are they reliable or not? Are they believable or not.. Or only theorizing or researching about them is important? I know you really believe in p2p and commons, but it is hardly possible to see any prefigurative action and practice Michel. This is a public and open critique, meaning very sincere and friendly way, you need to really think about it.

I am not organizing any of those two events Orsan. I have lightly co-organized barcamps, enough to know how they work; I like them but they can only go so far, it's not the only legitimate formula.

The events I have co-organized more intensely were not on the lines of such open access events, but selective events, like the ones you organized for networked labour. What are the p2p/commons aspects about them ? 1)They aimed at creating a diverse and balanced participation 2) they aimed to balance self-organisation and prior organisation 3) they aimed to balance inclusion and expertise 4) they aimed at being no-cost for the participants

But like in your event, they were characterized by a careful selection.

...

...

The other choice is to go for paid conferences. This involves other disadvantages, such as the rules imposed by funders (very stringent demands for transparency for example with EU funding). But it has some advantages ... one is the choice of speakers, which can be more focused on past expertise; the other is that speakers' trip can be paid, as well as small, or sometimes bigger stipends; the paid entries can help fund those without the means of self-funding.

Actually, and to be honest, I really wonder if you really ever organized something what you call barcamp type, self-organized, do it yourself, peer to peer event. Since I never saw any disadvantage then not being able to have star speakers, who would occupy all the space; and the rest of the participants who pay for the cost of starts, would only listen and leave the space with lots of frustration. May be only one disadvantage is not being able to make a show and attract media attention. The rest is negligible in my opinion.

I have a different experience, I very much enjoy listening to speakers with more experience than myself, I don't find that frustating. The conferences I enjoy the most are 'mixed', i.e. they mix the opportunity to listen to more experienced people, inclusionary sessions with panels, and the opportunity for deep conversations in circle type events, i.e. they include peer to peer dynamics, but not exclusively.

...

...

So, in the case of the Synergia conference, this is an entirely unfunded conference. The price was set taken into account the travel costs and very small per diems for the teachers/speakers; and full lodging of participants. In this context, the fee amounts to 900 EURO per week, full pension, which is, in the context of the prices of Tuscany, actually very cheap, though of course, will also exclude those with financial difficulties. For this, you get access to a quite extraordinary roster of teachers/speakers and intense dialogue with other participants. For people with jobs in the cooperative economy, for which this conference is intended, the cost is not un-realistic. For those without income, the price is prohibitive, but bursaries are available. According to John Restakis, the program requires 15 paid students to achieve break-even; after that, bursaries can be funded.

Yes, Synergia conference... You say this 900 per week, several thousands euro per all course is, or should be okay for cooperative workers, worker owned cooperatives.. while you can not effort only your trip to self-organized, barcamp events.

...

I for example, would not be able to attend neither Tuscany nor the P2P Value events on my own, in either format, but I can attend both because my travel and basic costs are provided for. This is not a gift, but a small reciprocal payment for my contribution to the event. In contrast, the self-organized barcamp absolutely preclude me from making a living from my contributions.

Would if you can not effort, how do you think workers, cooperative owners, peer producers could so.

that's what I said, it requires effort and investment on the part of the students, or of those institutions that fund them; it is mostly only realistic for those with links to institutions; I'm fully aware of this; bursaries are a solution to attenuate this

...

...

The second issue is that of 'democracy'. The P2P Value event has been organized and decided by all those involved in the research project, i.e. a consortium of 8 organizations, and James was responsible for organizing the event as part of the contract; in the Synergie case, this is also a collaborative effort of many dozen people, involved in the Synergia consortium, a voluntary association of cooperativists the world over.

Second issue is not only democracy, transparency, nor participation. Not about politics, but it is about generation of culture. It is prefigurative act. In case of its lack, or while main evangelists or preachers of communism, would not see any problem in ruling people's soviets from the winter palace of the old-rulers, then that revolution is over before it started. P2P Revolution is going down before it starts, not because it is un-democratic, or as you argue against democracy that is it is meritocratic. I think including you, Silke, David, as well as all other commoners, and theory leaders do lack practical aspect that generates no culture at the 'strategist' level.

About Restakis.. My remark was a reference to his email, accidentally sent to the list, in his response to you, Jason Nardi, Pat Conaty and some others about the four wheels of the 'radical change car'.. He was making a joke of 'you' as the strategists of commons transition, open cooperativism, peer - license, what ever.. Being on the 'driver seat'. Then there was a cold silence, no one replied or asked or commented on his joke. But history registered. I can find and redistribute that exchange if you like.

please do redistribute, I haven't seen it

...

...

They take their decisions in good faith, given the funding and other realities they contend with. Yes, it means not everyone can attend, but within the parameters they work with, they strive for the maximum inclusion of motivated participants, and find individual solutions when possible.

Division is not between 'not every body' and 'everybody'. But 'organizers' and 'organized'; 'agenda setters' and those agendas are set, strategists and strategised; so sort of masters and puppets.

...

Now the alternative of barcamps of the massively self-organized WSF ... well, I can't afford to go those either, they exclude all those that are not able to self-fund. So no system is perfect,

Come on Michel, some one like you can easily receive support to go there, of any kind.

the fact Orsan is that I haven't; nobody ever offered to finance my participation to the WSF; and until 2014, I was extremely precarious and the P2P-F itself has zero funds; so if you know of easy forms of support, please do forward

...

...

and both are easy to critique from the outside, by people who are unwilling to dive into the real difficulties and constraints of organizing these events,As far as I can recall, Orsan, you organized exclusive events with TNI, and you did that very well. Far from critiquing you for these exclusionary events, I would commend you for it, for bringing important players together, and for funding our trips and participation. I feel the same about John Restakis and James Burke, and given their efforts and responsibilities, I can find sympathy for their irritation when they are critiqued by outsiders who are not contributing to the organization of these events, and unaware of the constraints they are operating with.

My critique of TNI, and end of my relationships with it is declared by me on several occasions. Now same critique, of NGO world in general, is covering to commons NGOs, which present same mistakes, same fault lines, and these are not a complain of some one humpy dumpy, it is documented and agreed wide spread critique. Of course people, individually doing their best, to survive and combine income and passion and idealism would get irritated. But what irritate us, ordinary people, is them finding this not enough and when that also like to tell us what to do, what to say, what to chose, what to like and dislike.. So when they feel power of ideas, and wish to define the course, on the driving seat of the 'radical' change car.

you are no more ordinary than anyone else; I dont think most ordinary people would be irritated by open debate and exchange of opinions : I will certainly restrict my own rights of free speech on the basis of other's irritations

...

Well, without managing to combine applying self-labour, mental and manually, apologies but this is not going to happen. Because, now, irritation of being rule, is so high, and those who are wanted to be managed posses high skills, like political analysis.

thanks for this exchange, end of my comments

...

In solidarity, Orsan

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

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

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Sent from my iPad

On 5 jul. 2016, at 18:21, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

I hope you recognize the elitism in your approach,

Elitism in my approach... This is WP definition of the term: "Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals who form an elite—a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality or worth, high intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose influence or authority is greater than that of others; whose views on a matter are to be taken more seriously or carry more weight; whose views or actions are more likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities, or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.[1] Alternatively, the term elitism may be used to describe a situation in which power is concentrated in the hands of a limited number of people. Oppositions of elitism include anti-elitism, egalitarianism, populism and political theory of pluralism. Elite theory is the sociological or political science analysis of elite influence in society: elite theorists regard pluralism as a utopian ideal." I would keep going the more you avoid central issues and reverse the reality. Instead of be open to criticism and self-criticisms -to the elitism in your politics and philosophy- you refer to my critic of it as elitism..

first of all, there are no self-proclaimed leaders here, I never heard Silke or David, of myself, proclaim ourselves as leaders, we are just facilitators of certain events in a sea of other activists ; if people mention us, it is not because of any hierarchical directive of us to anyone else, but because people recognize our work in a peer to peer way; I don't have a single employee to direct, and neither have SIlke and David

What does the name: "Commons Strategy Group" formed by three key names; supposed to associate.. An affinity group, close to funders, and NGOs,.. You say " if people mention us, like us, listen us, it is because ...people recognize our thoughts.." It sounds like you are not the one who theorise P2P, network effect, ripples, long ties, meritocracy so on so forth.. You know how it works.. If people choses AirBnB, or Uber it is not because they recognize that these are better options, but it is because structurally they are being presented as options. People looks at you and others, see them as gate keeper stars, and recognize that. How many of your funs, do you think reads your pieces?

second, who says our activities are not prefigurative ... I have worked with a non-hierarchical (non-authoritarian) network for ten years in very precarious circumstances, at about 10% of my previous income, and under the level in which I could provide for comfortable lives for my family; I know Silke lives very frugally and David is struggling as well. Both within the p2p foundation, and within the CSG , there are no authoritarian relations, we are collaborative collectives. I briefly found funding to pay Kevin to help me with organize my agenda.

Again, read the definition of Elitism, and compare to your meritocracy ideas. People in the Bilderberg groups works in a peer to peer way too. What determines, and I refer as prefigurative, is about the attitude and stand towards the broader communities, and public. That is what is lacking, and seen by observers.

What is remarkable in your attitude and your politics of resentment, is that instead of focusing your energy on changing the system and the real elite, you are instead focusing on attacking fellow activists ... have you ever thought who benefits from this ?

I am sorry, but I will remain critical, and it is not to hurt you or anyone else. This is a broader struggle, and I am not sure what do you mean who would benefit from this kind of reflection. So do you prefer total silence and self-celebration, while there are obvious mistakes.

You seem to be comfortable being the self-proclaimed leader of a movement against fake enemies, instead of spending your time on constructing commons. I've seen a lot of succeeding empty initiatives proclaiming mass mobilizations tomorrow, which seem to peter out almost as fast. Constructing commons is hard constructive work,

... Not at all, I am very uncomfortable to be forced to write all these publicly. But years and years, the more people rise voice, towards the other direction you guys have been steering the car. Believe me there are more people like me, but it is happen to me who does not have any expectations from high way politics, hence noting to lose. Orsan

Michel

...

On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 8:00 PM, Örsan Şenalp <[email protected]> wrote: Michel, in response to your reply I also like to direct this email to the attention of Silke, David, Pat, James, Chico.. and other self-claimed strategists, organisers, leaders, of global justice and solidarity, and now commons movements..

First issue, is the one you avoid to respond; lack of prefiguration hence moral - cultural leadership, neede for the hegemony you are willing to build over first other movements, then against the ruling classes. This is a general issue, and is a critique of all NGO sector; 'progressive' or 'supportive' NGO cadre, degenerate 'solidairty and justice' culture, by getting stuck and generate 'capitalist' competitive culture. That is why, in a Gramscian sense, it would never be possible to get real moral and intellectual leadership over the progressive movements, like commons movement, that you are trying to 'build' or mould out of real people's real struggles.

In 2013, and 2014, together with others from most recent movements, from Occupy, 15M, Arab spring, and including Carminda McLorin -from Occupy Montreal and Classe, an initiative formed and called itself 'Global Square'. We have designed and tried to open up an occupied Commons Space, within the WSF in Tunis 2013 and 2014: http://www.global-square.net/about/ Carminda was had participated all calls and meetings of Global Square actively and she become the face of the WSF Montreal local coordination team (with Chico Whiteaker being on her side). Based on unique experience we developed, in a really p2p and commoning way, during 2011-2014 period, at Agora99, Frienze 10+10, WSF Tunis under the Banner of Global Square (with combined methodologies) in 2014 I tried out to scratch the below designs on the way to Montreal. I shared it with you, and it has been picked up by you, and others; then it was modified into un-P2P and un-common ways and translated in to NGO format with carefully controlled access (over the funding opportunities and competitiveness reasons I assume).. and we have a modified Commons Space. Here is the Hackpad where Kevin, of the P2P Foundation has been the main organiser from the beginning, with Elisabetta of Transform: https://commonsspace.hackpad.com/Commons-Space-k6rOCvUgyhC

As response to your question what is the easy way to go to WSF and finding support for that: I think your is a political answer, since it is your choice not to go to WSF personally, you expressed it before; so you are sending Kevin to do the ground work for the Foundation to build an event I foresee and suggested to you last year -on the Commons. Meanwhile, James of the P2P foundation, is responsible from the Global Commons Conference, in Amsterdam where I live. You say you would recommend me, to people, but about the idea I desingned and shared with you, James, your secretariat is recommended.

You are expected to be invited to WSF and paid for some other organisations, while Kevin's participation and ground work labour is paid by P2P Foundation. You personally are not able to go WSF, but P2P Foundation is taking the responsibility to organise a major Commons event at the WSF in August, and James organise another global event in Amsterdam for the EU project of which P2P Foundation is a partner. Which was originally my suggestion..

Here is the genuinely p2p and commons way design for WSF Commons Space event, I designed in 2014: Peer to Peer Transnational Networking for a Commons Humanity https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vRRHhASr9wfWolPJzq0Ec7gsomug2T-jeTFmqfzr...

The below design I made it in 2013 to ensure a broader alliance between variety of forces; in an open and peer to peer solider way.. based on ideas re the development of open spaces, towards and during the WSF as well as other events. It was taken, modified and adopted to NGO style. Below is how it was translated to NGO language by Stacco,who was an occupy activist and ex-worker owned coop practitioner, now professional expert hired by P2P Foundation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wud-VMjA89aE14GNWDE_YkUMNqIYsK-oLVLo4bVW...

And during 2014, there was an email discussion about avoiding cooptation and developing a pool resource for commoners, using the funding recuperated by commons NGOs type organisations; supposed to be supportive of commons. Discussion taken place mid 2014, before or after Degrowth conference, and then Michel, you suggested the below idea, which has not been implemented, yet. Open Coop development agency idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/188Y7COujNwhU60pMiNypXHaRHgLrjKywVlfN6AyO...

Although I find EDGE Founders, under the leadership of commons friendly Nicolas Krauzs of P2P Foundations funder FHP (Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation), it is clearly an human-washorganisation with Soros' open society and US' large corporate funders behind, they might have been imposing their own agenda over the commons; about which you guys have no idea. I will provide a deeper analysis of this, with proves. But for the moment I just like to share the nice and sincere-open reports of the events, documented by Pat Conaty and David Boiler, and am guessing are the selective events organised and you have been able to join: This is the event on Open Cooperativism: http://bollier.org/open-co-operativism-report

And this is the top-down vision of alliance building: Part I:http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-i-the-general... Part II:http://commonstransition.org/a-new-alignment-of-movements-part-ii-strategies...

I like to reader to pay attention of funders, participants' composition, and the content. The total picture is clearly top-down movement building, beyond the closed doors. These are not supportive nice, exchange wise productive events.

To finish, I like to make one constructive suggestion. If you guys, really really sincere, please consider use the some part of the fundings getting collected -i take it recuperated from the public resources stolen by state elite- and give it back to commoners, by for instance creating totally autonomous spaces for them; so by time for them; inviting commoners from the Global South, paying their registration fees, arrange them a permentant space in the Montreal WSF; in where they can have time and energy to exchange and build their own agenda in their own ways and means.

In solidarity, Orsan

PS: as promised below is the documentation of the "driver seat" phenomenon...

-- the date was beginning of 2015, not mid 2014, did confuse the years. I pasted entire email exchange to give the contex:

John <[email protected]>

07/01/2015 to Pat, Michel, me, Brian, Michel, networkedlabour, e-mail, David, Michael, margie I like the four wheels. And us in the drivers seat!

On 15-01-07 6:17 PM, Pat Conaty wrote:

Michel

Touche and very good but some in this list our ends and others means. So a bit more work involved, but getting there.

As Polanyi argued, Commons solutions for land, money and people to take them out of market are a sine qua non so money becomes servant not master. With this focus we can get onto the right livelihoods roadway of the Tools for Convivality arguments of Illich.

The social-public partnership is crucial of course. The Guild socialists understood this in the 1920s as did much of the left in Europe before they were slaughtered by fascism.

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 15:03, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

to take your wheel metaphor,

if one wheel is the commons, the second wheel cooperatives , the third weel sustainability, and the fourth wheel the partner state (necessary civic infrastructures including things like the basic income) .. are we missing a lot ? (I see social justice as part of that fourth wheel)

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 8:11 PM, Pat Conaty<[email protected]> wrote:

...

Hi Orsan and Brian

Great comments yet again. We are on to something here in this exchange. So important for all of Europe as the Greek election approaches. A bit like the Allende election it feels. The whole world this time is watching with instant news globally.

When I talk about the solutions being as old as the industrial hills, I mean that at each Long K-wave, offers a chance and this time for a Great Transition in the way Kenneth Boulding expressed this in the 1960s is at hand. Michel’s argument for a Commons Transition is crucial as the unless the biosphere is saved, we are heading for a 6 degree rise in global temperatures as Naomi Klein’s latest book both highlights and points to a common cause to unite social movements. She makes the parallel to the movement to abolish slavery, but here the campaign and focus should be on ending wage slavery. I think Gar Alperovitz offers us far more than meets the eye. As a young researcher, he cut his teeth in the 1960s working for Dr. Martin Luther King. In his latest book he points out that if the US annual income was equitably shared, each family could be provided a Basic Income of $200,000 or $100,000 for a 20 hour week. Abundance is at hand if co-operative economic root and branch solutions could be harnessed.

Let me explain…...

Boulding was an evolutionary economist following more closely the path of Veblen then Schumpeter. He was also a pioneer of systems theory and complexity analysis. He saw the Great Transition along the lines of what Schumacher, Illich and others were hoping might happen after the Opec oil crisis. They wanted to jump from the information age to the social knowledge age. Intermediate technology was a way to solve the gap between North and South and to secure a convergence between green and red thinking or social economics and ecological economics.

Few among the New Left saw what they were forecasting and understood the practical and positive hope they were offering. Exceptions though were Erich Fromm and Andre Gorz who embraced the ideas of Illich for Tools for Convivality. Fromm also in the 1950s made these arguments and stood up on national US TV interviews to the bogeyman of McCarthy.

Gorz set this out in a series of books starting with his Critique of Economic Rationality and early arguments for a Basic Income. Also in the UK in the early 1980s the work of the Greater London Council and the technology networks that Robin Murray and Hilary Wainwright were moving forward on linked up with this thinking and that of Mike Cooley in the work on the Lucas Plan and the case for a radically new trade unionism.

Co-operative solutions if only seen in relation to corporate ownership are one dimension only of systems change. Only one wheel when we need at least three or four. What you find though historically is at or near to the K-wave turning points, say 1880s, 1920s and indeed the 1970s you get a wider take that is three or four dimensional in relation to co-operative economic transition. This is the concept of ‘co-operative commonwealth’ that is lost sight of again and again by younger generations because of the say 50 year K-waves.

Like Camus showed, we end up having to rebel without cause from generation to generation and only and slowly slowly recover the vernacular wisdom of our grandparents.

Crucially here activists and thinkers alike when they rediscover the full set of co-operative wheels at last, they then begin to address the fundamental foundations of capitalism, namely the taboo questions of land and money. Solving these two is the key to ending wage labour slavery.

You might find of interest this paper I presented at the international Karl Polanyi conference in Montreal two months ago. Earlier at the conference, Michael Hudson gave a superb speech about financialisation and the casinos economy crisis. The vote in Greece on 25 January may trigger a Lehman II crisis. Michael and I talked and he fully agreed with this analysis and proposals. I found out this second time I met Michael that in the late 1960s and early 1970s he was working for Citibank as a collector of Latin American sovereign debt. He then had his Pauline conversion, quit Wall Street and moved to the New School for Social Research.

My paper offers some practical solutions as to how to de-commodify money and land. Michel has just posted it in recent weeks a three part series on the P2P website.

Without addressing these taboo questions positively, transparently and practically, wars will loom larger. Greece, Ireland, Spain and indeed the UK need a prisoners dilemma roadmap out of expanding debt as the fiscal deficits are ballooning and there is no Jubilee release in sight.

All the best

Pat

On 7 Jan 2015, at 11:28, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

thanks Michel, this came very timely indeed, site looks great and the content just answers in my opinion perfectly half of the question Brian asks below, he also asked before and you have given a perfect answer indicating what a site and platform as you launch corresponds in reality. I think this work focusing and addressing state or political society level/dimension of what needs to be done together, and doing it extremely good. Plus the closer relationship emerged in recent years between P2P-F, with Guerrilla Translation, CIC, and Fair.coop closely, I think Michel and friends of P2P, with open-commons-cooperative approach has moved much closer to the recently converging grassroots activism to a position that can greatly contribute to a bridge building activity, with normal people the actual field of political movements and struggles.

I continue in lines below:

let me very appropriately I think, after enjoying the insights of all, just briefly mention thathttp://commonstransition.orghas been launched today, precisely meant as a global platform for p2p/commons based policy making by global and local commoners,

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Brian Holmes<[email protected]>wrote:

...

Orsan, your ideas are tremendously interesting. Thank you. I would appreciate it even more if you take some time to draw more strategic conlcusions. What to do in the present situation? What to do with the kinds of energies and cetworks and collaborations in which we ourselves can participate?

...

To me, the process packaged as Globalization, was the most peaceful possible form of the institutionalization project aiming to rebuild the world as a small village connected by information highway of Bill Gates'. As Cox describes in the below video, and I share the way he describes it, Asian crisis can be seen as a breaking point.

I could not agree more. For years I ran an intermittent seminar called "Continental Drift" whose main these was exactly the above. The question was: Why is it that exactly when the world comes together (globalization) it begins to fall apart (continental blocs)?

Slowly it became apparent to me that the US, which had been well and truly hegemonic after WWII, could only solve the crisis of the Keynesian-Fordist paradigm by internationalizing key power functions. They believed this extension of hegemony could be restricted to the two Northern core states which, not coincidentally, had been destroyed in WWII and rebuilt under American auspices: namely Germany/EU and Japan. So you would have a Trilateral hegemony, or "Triad Power," as Kenichi Ohmae called it (yen-euro-dollar: YE$). After '89 and First Gulf War, Clinton believed that the colonization of the unified world market could be managed, peacefully, by this troika, which had solved the monetary crisis of the 70s and had also assembled the largest military coalition in history in 1991. In fact, the world market was unified by the new productive processes of Neoliberal Informationalism. But the bid to retain hegemony by sharing it proved illusory, especially because of the rise of Asia, and especially China, after the Asian crisis of '98. Control threatened to slip away into every semi-autonomous node of the world market, and the US turned to preemptive warfare and institutionalized counter-terrorism in a desperate and failing bid to contain the genie that it had let out of the bottle. That genie is nothing more or less than the deliriously productive forces of fifth-wave industrial capitalism.

This is why Neoliberal Informationalism is so hard to govern. The old power is crumbling (very slowly though), the new one is not yet ready to take command, and we are faced with the global organic crisis of hegemony, which as Gramsci would say, is full of morbid symptoms. In my view, however, this is a far better situation than if China were ready to simply replace the US as capitalist hegemon. Because it is not, we have the chance, in this generation, to complete the task of building a critical and constructive global civil society, able to face both climate change and the constant threat of inter-regional war between the fragmented blocs. The thing is, the Trilateral period spawned not just TNCs, but also TNCS - transnational civil society, or what I also call transnational culture sharing. For me, that is the deep meaning of p2p. It's the other genie that got out of the bottle, and this one is not industrial or capitalist. It is a practical, constructive, dialogical way to build cooperation across the scales - from local and urban to national, continental and global - in order to tame, restrain and redirect (but also sometimes topple) the rapacious elites who are now anarchically deploying the powers of informationalism.

totally agree here, again with reference to Gramsci, the organic crisis emerging at point organic intellectuals can not function and facilitate coherence and consensus amongst the ruling classes, as in smoothing informal network spaces like Davos, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg meetings, but also at local level with Rotary-Lions, or Masonic Clubs, especially at the time of miss-match between the sub-structure and super-structure occurs. However you are right, focusing to knowing enemy more then yourself is not an health way, and agree we need to look for answers to, also in my opinion, most crucial point. How we, as everyone else then elite, and ruling class members, and their broader circles, will move forward, mobilizing and organizing ourselves to act to protect our own, and others dignity, lives and the cosmos, in practice.

...

p2p = the possiblity of global government from below. This is what progressive global grassroots networks have been experimenting with since the mid-1990s, around the time that Zapatismo emerged. And this is what Michel was calling "the business model of Occupy" in a memorable article a couple years back.

I see in the link Michel shared a growing interaction and mutual learning that might also feed in more moral, creative, and genuinely collaborative politics to emerge amongst new and old left between Autonomists, European left, democratic socialist groups. Such convergence would develop opening ups for collaborative politics including greens and mainstream unions, with positive and creative input might come most hopefully from Podemos kind of experiments. Thinking for instance Rojava and the role it can play here, if the Cantons in theory and practice are linked to social houses, squatter and transition town networks, as well as to urban cooperatives and peer producers. I believe the professional politics is the last part to expect anything good at the moment, or it needs to be thought as a last resort to hope from but something to encourage to go for the real change by showing. Since a possible convergence is indeed needed, as Anna said earlier, if we want to reverse the worsening general situation.

For a long time I have been busy thinking of and searching in, on, behind, around, progressive political and societal institutions, unions, NGOs, activist and political collectives, as well as streets, actions, assemblies so on -being close and far enough to the worlds of unionism, party politics, developmental and progressive NGOism, and issue based social justice movements- studying divisions, ideas and practices of alliances, tried to see possibilities to realize sincere collaboration based on mutual recognition between groups. What I have come to think most recently is, a bit different than what Michel suggested by prioritizing one of the many among who suffers the conditions of today the peer producers as main protagonist to be protected and flourished, actually probably he also meant it this way that, creation of distributed p2p platforms and infrastructures that allow people to liberate from capital and to get empowered to become peer producers for themselves and for others. More in line with what Peter Waterman cites often in my opinion, 'the network is the vanguard'; to open up p2p, egalitarian self-organiased networks of world working classes -for itself- is the vanguard, not one of the enlightened or segments of them, or any entity that claims to be acting on be half of masses, building on a position of chosen class or class segment because of the historical and strategic position it has occupy in the global production-commodity networks. Which brings me to the point below.

...

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I will cut it here but before like to saying one last thing about the similarity I do see between the netarhicalness of Walmart, Apple, and even Nike and Amazon on the one hand, and the forms like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and others who accumulate wealth by producing and selling meta-data to other businesses, on the other. I see here similarity between these forms not in terms of how they extract, capture and accumulate the value, but the way they organise their production line in order to capture the value created.

I will go back to the analysis I promised above in the next email. Now I like to continue answering your question in relation how we ourselves would be engaging in such (un)vanguard people's political-economy networking; which I have been woking on a design draft called 'FreeKonomia'. It is as a networked infrastructure for totally free exchange of very high quality goods and services, produced by love and care, which is to be supported by integrated floss platforms. One aspect is for free transportation of people, work force, and light material goods, as well as some portable services. It is possible to be re-design a version of BlaBlaCar-Go with Open-map embed showing the points to get on and get off, handy if these are social centers, people's houses, as routes between them to organize the car-go function. For building larger projects and physical infrastructures we need to combine scientific expertise, like those brought together in co-working spaces such as OMNI in Oakland, and large Occupy camps, where people could go camp, have fun and rest while working. What is needed of course to be embedded also is an application that help to match needs and offers of any kind is Sensorica kind, or NPR, Bob and Lynn has been developing, including kind of admin and tracking application, where everyone can see and show who needs what, where, when, what amount. It is very key to manage this all for Free as in Free Beer, and based on positive and encouraging repetitional system, as the driving feed back loop mechanism. So the more you share for free and high quality with others, both system and participants gain value and trust. then freeness and personality would become the anti-money so to speak, replacing and killing the unconditional love and trust we used to give to stupid and dirty papers and metals :) I think mass solidarity actions towards Greek and Spanish social houses, Rojava and Ukrain, for both peace and humanity, can be designed to build up such routes and maps, and this can be linked to Sharing cities mapping-jam organized by Shareable. These processes needs to be in tandem also balancing the Podemos kind of projects, or Partner State emergence. Then in the mid term if we can harmonize these with first organizing the Exodus from Capital, and then a creative and constructive-but also blokaida form of Golden Strike at the weakest points of the system, we might make a good chance to win.

Orsan

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On 4 July 2016 at 19:22, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:

...

hi Orsan,

this is my response only, I am not speaking for James or anyone else,

quick online reactions

On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

...

I will try to give a considered respond to your answer, which I am guessing is the public reply James mentioned.

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I think the realities of organizing events is underestimated. They are two choices, one is the grassroots barcamp type events, in which everyone is welcome, and everyone has to fund his own trip; these events are great, and important, but have advantages as well as disadvantages One disadvantage is that it excludes those who can't self-fund their trips.

I assume it is more than me underestimate the realities of organizing event then organizers undervalue the practices of peer to peer and commoners. In response to Boiler's book title 'Think like a commoner', it could be more then possible to 'Act like a commoner'. So it is more of a choices, philosophy and politics, more then 'realities' or 'practices' of, those who like to 'think' and 'research' about the real practices; coincidentally this makes you star, solve income problems, and moreover allow one to deliver politics, and gain influence and power. I think this is not only underestimated, but totally absence in your response Michel. Of course there is not only two options, there are plenty of alternatives. Other wise realities of 'organizing' or 'organization', could be only 'the state' / 'corporation' or 'anarchy and there would be no commons, commonning, peer to peer alternatives. Are they exist or not? Are they reliable or not? Are they believable or not.. Or only theorizing or researching about them is important? I know you really believe in p2p and commons, but it is hardly possible to see any prefigurative action and practice Michel. This is a public and open critique, meaning very sincere and friendly way, you need to really think about it.

I am not organizing any of those two events Orsan. I have lightly co-organized barcamps, enough to know how they work; I like them but they can only go so far, it's not the only legitimate formula.

The events I have co-organized more intensely were not on the lines of such open access events, but selective events, like the ones you organized for networked labour. What are the p2p/commons aspects about them ? 1)They aimed at creating a diverse and balanced participation 2) they aimed to balance self-organisation and prior organisation 3) they aimed to balance inclusion and expertise 4) they aimed at being no-cost for the participants

But like in your event, they were characterized by a careful selection.

...

...

The other choice is to go for paid conferences. This involves other disadvantages, such as the rules imposed by funders (very stringent demands for transparency for example with EU funding). But it has some advantages ... one is the choice of speakers, which can be more focused on past expertise; the other is that speakers' trip can be paid, as well as small, or sometimes bigger stipends; the paid entries can help fund those without the means of self-funding.

Actually, and to be honest, I really wonder if you really ever organized something what you call barcamp type, self-organized, do it yourself, peer to peer event. Since I never saw any disadvantage then not being able to have star speakers, who would occupy all the space; and the rest of the participants who pay for the cost of starts, would only listen and leave the space with lots of frustration. May be only one disadvantage is not being able to make a show and attract media attention. The rest is negligible in my opinion.

I have a different experience, I very much enjoy listening to speakers with more experience than myself, I don't find that frustating. The conferences I enjoy the most are 'mixed', i.e. they mix the opportunity to listen to more experienced people, inclusionary sessions with panels, and the opportunity for deep conversations in circle type events, i.e. they include peer to peer dynamics, but not exclusively.

...

...

So, in the case of the Synergia conference, this is an entirely unfunded conference. The price was set taken into account the travel costs and very small per diems for the teachers/speakers; and full lodging of participants. In this context, the fee amounts to 900 EURO per week, full pension, which is, in the context of the prices of Tuscany, actually very cheap, though of course, will also exclude those with financial difficulties. For this, you get access to a quite extraordinary roster of teachers/speakers and intense dialogue with other participants. For people with jobs in the cooperative economy, for which this conference is intended, the cost is not un-realistic. For those without income, the price is prohibitive, but bursaries are available. According to John Restakis, the program requires 15 paid students to achieve break-even; after that, bursaries can be funded.

Yes, Synergia conference... You say this 900 per week, several thousands euro per all course is, or should be okay for cooperative workers, worker owned cooperatives.. while you can not effort only your trip to self-organized, barcamp events.

...

I for example, would not be able to attend neither Tuscany nor the P2P Value events on my own, in either format, but I can attend both because my travel and basic costs are provided for. This is not a gift, but a small reciprocal payment for my contribution to the event. In contrast, the self-organized barcamp absolutely preclude me from making a living from my contributions.

Would if you can not effort, how do you think workers, cooperative owners, peer producers could so.

that's what I said, it requires effort and investment on the part of the students, or of those institutions that fund them; it is mostly only realistic for those with links to institutions; I'm fully aware of this; bursaries are a solution to attenuate this

...

...

The second issue is that of 'democracy'. The P2P Value event has been organized and decided by all those involved in the research project, i.e. a consortium of 8 organizations, and James was responsible for organizing the event as part of the contract; in the Synergie case, this is also a collaborative effort of many dozen people, involved in the Synergia consortium, a voluntary association of cooperativists the world over.

Second issue is not only democracy, transparency, nor participation. Not about politics, but it is about generation of culture. It is prefigurative act. In case of its lack, or while main evangelists or preachers of communism, would not see any problem in ruling people's soviets from the winter palace of the old-rulers, then that revolution is over before it started. P2P Revolution is going down before it starts, not because it is un-democratic, or as you argue against democracy that is it is meritocratic. I think including you, Silke, David, as well as all other commoners, and theory leaders do lack practical aspect that generates no culture at the 'strategist' level.

About Restakis.. My remark was a reference to his email, accidentally sent to the list, in his response to you, Jason Nardi, Pat Conaty and some others about the four wheels of the 'radical change car'.. He was making a joke of 'you' as the strategists of commons transition, open cooperativism, peer - license, what ever.. Being on the 'driver seat'. Then there was a cold silence, no one replied or asked or commented on his joke. But history registered. I can find and redistribute that exchange if you like.

please do redistribute, I haven't seen it

...

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They take their decisions in good faith, given the funding and other realities they contend with. Yes, it means not everyone can attend, but within the parameters they work with, they strive for the maximum inclusion of motivated participants, and find individual solutions when possible.

Division is not between 'not every body' and 'everybody'. But 'organizers' and 'organized'; 'agenda setters' and those agendas are set, strategists and strategised; so sort of masters and puppets.

...

Now the alternative of barcamps of the massively self-organized WSF ... well, I can't afford to go those either, they exclude all those that are not able to self-fund. So no system is perfect,

Come on Michel, some one like you can easily receive support to go there, of any kind.

the fact Orsan is that I haven't; nobody ever offered to finance my participation to the WSF; and until 2014, I was extremely precarious and the P2P-F itself has zero funds; so if you know of easy forms of support, please do forward

...

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and both are easy to critique from the outside, by people who are unwilling to dive into the real difficulties and constraints of organizing these events,As far as I can recall, Orsan, you organized exclusive events with TNI, and you did that very well. Far from critiquing you for these exclusionary events, I would commend you for it, for bringing important players together, and for funding our trips and participation. I feel the same about John Restakis and James Burke, and given their efforts and responsibilities, I can find sympathy for their irritation when they are critiqued by outsiders who are not contributing to the organization of these events, and unaware of the constraints they are operating with.

My critique of TNI, and end of my relationships with it is declared by me on several occasions. Now same critique, of NGO world in general, is covering to commons NGOs, which present same mistakes, same fault lines, and these are not a complain of some one humpy dumpy, it is documented and agreed wide spread critique. Of course people, individually doing their best, to survive and combine income and passion and idealism would get irritated. But what irritate us, ordinary people, is them finding this not enough and when that also like to tell us what to do, what to say, what to chose, what to like and dislike.. So when they feel power of ideas, and wish to define the course, on the driving seat of the 'radical' change car.

you are no more ordinary than anyone else; I dont think most ordinary people would be irritated by open debate and exchange of opinions : I will certainly restrict my own rights of free speech on the basis of other's irritations

...

Well, without managing to combine applying self-labour, mental and manually, apologies but this is not going to happen. Because, now, irritation of being rule, is so high, and those who are wanted to be managed posses high skills, like political analysis.

thanks for this exchange, end of my comments

...

In solidarity, Orsan

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

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I think I understand the distinction Orsan is trying to make between a movement which is headed by experts in the field, and one which consciously avoids leaders, by trying to provide conditions where as far as possible people can be treated as equals. I also understand the difficulties in a 'transitional' situation where people attempt to earn a living based on their expertise, which is seen to have some financial value, by speaking, writing articles, consequently gaining recognition and status, which aids them in earning. I don't see a resolution to this except to become as aware as possible of how defensive we might feel, when called to account for exploiting publicity to our own advantage. Anna

On 5 Jul 2016, at 18:26, Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> wrote:

I am uncomfortable, especially I really like you in person but also theoretician; I even can see you as sort of a theoretical mentor; but like Marx or Lenin; not as political organizer or a leader; you claimed once (last year) not to involve in politics of this, but now you are in the center of politics..

I am really glad now, after three years, not to accept your offer to be 'labour person' of p2p foundation; as you formulated then. I really think and believe, autonomy and egalitarianism are the keys, for any alternative world vision to be successful; and labour and other commons to be emancipated.

Yours, Orsan

On 05 Jul 2016, at 19:11, Orsan <[email protected]> wrote:

_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list

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James, are you serious?

On 03 Jul 2016, at 00:59, james burke <[email protected]> wrote:

A public response will follow. We know him personally and like him, although he likes to complain a lot.

J

...

On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: Dear James et al,

thanks for responding to this question and critique by Orsan Senalp:

Message: 1 Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 20:16:36 +0200 From: Orsan Senalp <[email protected]> Subject: [P2P-F] Eu funded Global Commons Conference, 2-3 September, Amsterdam To: "<[email protected]>" <[email protected]>, P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]>, Commoning <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I am based very Amsterdam but heard about this event from Facebook. It was not clear from the website if registration fee will be charged. In case there is a fee for participation, although I am very close it seems as many other commoners it would not possible for me to join this event; let alone the ethic problem of charging people for already funded event by EU, with public money.

.....

Peer Value:Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level. The conference is organized along three tracks: Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism We will explore questions such as: What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons? What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience? Decentralization - why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained? How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable ?material? manufacturing? What about social innovation and livelihoods - how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP? How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national - even global - levels? Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model. Register now >

This event is funded by a European Union FP7 research grant.

Web: Peervalueconf.eu

.... In solidarity,

?rsan

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