[P2P-F] Fwd: p2p and marxism debate, first 'real' reply to Jean Lievens

Sat Mar 19 14:25:27 CET 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 8:19 PM
Subject: p2p and marxism debate, first 'real' reply to Jean Lievens
To: p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
Cc: jean lievens <jean.lievens at base.be>, orsan at tie-netherlands.nl, Walton
Pantland <waltonp at gmail.com>, Raoul <raoulv at club-internet.fr>, Vasilis
Kostakis <kostakis.b at gmail.com>, George Papanikolaou <georgepapani at gmail.com>,
"Dafermos, George" <g.n.dafermos at tudelft.nl>, Johan Söderberg <
johan.soderberg at sts.gu.se>, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com>, phoebe moore <
pvm.doc at gmail.com>

(Jean, in response to
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/p2p-and-marxism-in-search-of?,
first identified theme)

The historical failure of socialism and the continued dominance of
capitalism

 Dear Jean,

 Here is a start to my response to your stimulating text. I will use my own
proposed fragmentation of your text and respond section by section; not
necessarily as a direct response to your arguments, but certainly covering
the same topic.

 Topic one is the historical failure of socialism and the continued
dominance of capitalism

 I think I can broadly share your assessment:

   -

   the historical movement's relative failure:

 The fact that the mainstream labour movement has accepted all the main
principles of the current dominant system, and has now, in its
social-democratic or actually 'left-neoliberal' form, mainly become a crisis
manager for the system, being on the defensive in terms of civic rights,
welfare rights and solidarity mechanims. It's merely trying to stem the
flows of the losses

 The Stalinist wing, who counted on the solidarity of the totalitarian
regimes, has collapsed with the disappearance of those regimes.

 I think what has collapsed though is in effect the believability of a
systemic alternative to the present system, leaving workers and citizens in
a defensive mode, under the constant aggressions of financial capital and
its predatory demands.

 Some general critical points:

   -

   the socialist movement was generally a movement that operated within
   capitalism, and demanded better modalities for those that it represented,
   which it actually achieved with a relative successful
   -

   the successful revolutions turned into counter-examples, as they actually
   also used the main modalities of capitalism, i.e. waged labour in factories,
   under even less free conditions

 I also have more fundamental critique. My opinion is that Marxism did not
have a real transition strategy, i.e. it assumed that workers movement
needed to take control of the commanding heights of the economy and that
only then could a transition start, after a change in ownership and
governance. My reading of history is that previous phase transitions did not
occur that way. What in fact happened is that proto-feudalism and
proto-capitalist practices first occurred within the old dominant system,
and through centuries of maturation, achieved critical mass, slowly forming
an intermeshed counter-logic, and creating a social basis for its demands.
Only when these demands could not be met by the older system, and that older
system could no longer provide the needs of the population, did phase
transitions actually occur.

 But it is very hard to see proto-socialist practices within the capitalist
system?

 My hypothesis is that these are only occuring in the last two decades,
under the form of commons-based peer to peer production practices. In other
words, it is only now that we see the slow maturation of post-capitalist
practices, which are slowly intermeshing, are forming the basis for a
circulation of the common, and create a social basis for a future phase
transition.

 What is happening is that commons-based peer production is that
proto-modality, and that it is this modality which will be at the basis of
future social and political revolutions.

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