[P2P-F] Self-organisation and the economy

Fri Apr 1 09:33:37 CEST 2011

Dear Mathieu,

extremely interesting,

could you keep an eye on reports, or eventually offer one yourself, for the
p2p blog?

Michel

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Mathieu ONeil <mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au>wrote:

> Self-organisation and the economy - Friday April 1st 2011
> Time: 5-8 pm
> Location: Lock Keepers Cottage, QMUL, Mile End, London E14NS - no.33 on the
> map.
>
> How do self-organising practices clash with, are reabsorbed into, or exit
> the mainstream economy? Participants are invited to address issues of
> self-organisation in the economy from cooperatives to social enterprises,
> between state funding, self funding, alternative economies and charity
> dependence, and related questions of authorship, redistribution of
> resources, production of value and co-production.
>
>
> Siôn Whellens (Calverts Coop, London)
> Siôn Whellens was a contributing editor at Anarchy Magazine, and active
> with London Workers Group, Workers Playtime and the anti-party and
> autonomist communist left in London in the late 1970s and 1980's. He
> co-published a bi-weekly newsletter, the Picket Bulletin, during the long
> Wapping printers' lockout of 1986, dedicated to creating an effective
> communication tool for grassroots activists. Since 1983 he has worked with
> Calverts, a collective-type worker co-operative of graphic designers and
> printers, and in the wider worker co-operative milieu. He is an elected
> member of the Worker Co-operative Council and a director of Co-operatives
> UK . Siôn is interested in exploring the conflicts and potentials of
> workers’ self-expression, self-organisation and self-management under
> capitalism, and understanding how the development of our day-to-day
> activity can contribute to the emergence of a new social economy.
>
> For resources, see:
>
> Siôn's blog: Bethnal Bling;
>
> The special issue of Affinities on The New Coopoerativism;
>
> A group of worker co-operators recently wrote and published a ‘code of
> governance’ which is really a guide to what the seven co-operative
> principles should look like in practice. PDF download;
>
> Bob Cannell's blog. He is a thinker-practitioner of worker co-operation and
> its enemies;
>
> Radical Routes is an explicitly anti capitalist federation of autonomous UK
> worker, housing and social co-ops. Their site has interesting content and
> resources;
>
> For a more political take, see the opening paragraphs of Barrot &
> Martin’s ‘Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement’
>
> -------------------------------------
>
>
>
> Marcel Mars (Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht)
> Marcel Mars will discuss the use of free software, proprietary
> collaborative software/social networks and file sharing practices in the
> context of self-organization. Software is a socio-technical system in which
> machines, people, and processes are inextricably interconnected and
> interdependent. [1]
> The use of collaborative software in every organization will affect its
> organizational structure, capacity of negotiations, rules of access to
> (org) resources, decision making process and overall group dynamics. That
> said, an organization (still) controls the strength of the effect with its
> knowledge of how to use and adapt (develop) collaborative software to its
> own needs.
> The collaborative development of software, as in the case of free software
> movement, brought to the world enormous autonomous infrastructure beloved
> by many activists and self-organization freaks. Still, the network effect
> [2] created by most of the groups, activists or not, pays off to the web2.0
> startups, social network giants and other proprietary solutions.
> "Utility Computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as
> computation, storage and services, as a metered service similar to a
> traditional public utility (such as electricity, water, natural gas, or
> telephone network)."[3] When computing in general and computer-supported
> collaboration becomes public utility its development becomes more and more
> invisible to the public. Utility computing is still in its first phase. It
> is mainly led by big corporations like: Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Google,
> Oracle, IBM etc.
> Their infrastructures are built upon Free software (Linux, Xen, KVM,
> Apache, Hadoop). But, they keep their advances in technology as trade
> secrets.
>
> [1] Ensmenger, Nathan L. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers,
> Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. The MIT Press,
> 2010.
> [2] “Network effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, n.d.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect.
> [3] “Utility computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, n.d.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing.
>
> For resources, see Marcel's blog: Kiberkomunist
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
> Matt Zimmerman (Debian/Ubuntu, London)
>
> ---------------------------------------
>
> Toni Prug (QMUL, London, Hack the State, gComm(o)ns)
> Toni Prug will discuss the impossibility of democratic self organization in
> the economy.
>
> ‎"If the economy disrupts our lives, then we must disrupt the economy"
> (UK Uncut, 2011)
>
> For self organization to be democratic, there must be no capital, state
> power holders, or holders of physical forces of coercion (parts of society
> without state/capitalist controls over them) who are in the position to
> impose their will to dictate the model of cooperation by utilizing
> people’s need to acquire the means of subsistence by selling their labour
> for a wage, or to obey in fear for life. The egalitarian impulse that
> exists in self organization is rarely developed due to participants’
> different class positions (skills, time, space, money, social networks) and
> the lack of value chains external to capitalist models of valorization
> whose inbuilt anti-egalitarianism cannot valorize egalitarian self
> organization.
>
> The richest parts of the world have increased their productivity several
> times since WWII. Instead of proliferation of time for self organization
> based on abundance of the time gained by increased productivity,
> egalitarian elements (access to shelter, health, education, care) are
> disappearing and the amount of labour time sold for a wage, or volunteered
> in a hope of one, is increasing. If we consider self organization as a form
> of emancipation, and if we aim for it to be democratic, in the times of
> rapidly reduced material equality amongst the people of some of the
> wealthiest states in the world, the possibility of democratic self
> organization has to be considered not as a sporadic question, but as a
> central, systemic one.
>
> For resources, see:
>
> Werner Bonefeld: ‘What is the alternative?’ (Shift, 2011, No. 11)
> http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=400
>
> Alexei Penzin, ‘The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and
> Collective Work: An Interview with Paolo Virno’ (Mediations, Volume 25,
> No. 1, Fall 2010)
> http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/the-soviets-of-the-multitude
>
> "Marx's Method" by David Harvey: A Colloquium Talk Video (Geography at
> Berkeley, October 21, 2010)
> http://geography.berkeley.edu/about/story.php?id=47
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> Next encounter in the series:
>
> Friday May 6th
>
> Self-organization and community
>
> External dynamics, political discourse and outreach. The role of the
> organizer when working with constituencies. Issues of politicization,
> outreach, involvement, negotiation.
>
> Doina Petrescu (Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée, Paris)
>
> http://www.urbantactics.org/
>
> Jane Wills (QMUL, London)
>
> http://www.citizensuk.org/campaigns/living-wage-campaign/
>
>
> For more information or to take part in the project, please write to
> *MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from
> "mail.paris-sorbonne.fr" claiming to be* *MailScanner has detected a
> possible fraud attempt from "mail.paris-sorbonne.fr" claiming to be
> selforganising at gmail.com*<https://mail.paris-sorbonne.fr/src/[email protected]>
>  or visit www.self-org.blogspot.com
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

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