[P2P-F] FLOK (the concept) and P2P: what's next? (Fabio Barone)

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Fabio,

I'm responding inline

FABIO wrote

<So the questions:
- Could it be more productive and effective to concentrate on "our" ground:
P2P connections, direct connections between us, and focus on forming
virtual and physical communities, do business, learn and teach together,
produce and share our knowledge, holding up the "open" principle in
whatever we do, instead of tackling the state level?>

But why not both? No social movement, whether it's labour, agrarian,
women's rights, civil rights, LBTG etc .. has advanced without doing both
at the same time. First we need to organize, but the state controls much of
the funding and all of the regulation, so without tackling the state, no
social victories are possible. The relative success and failure of the
Ecuadorian flok experiment has to do, in my view, with the mismatch between
what was announced, i.e. a strategic transition program fully supported by
the govt, and the reality, which is that the top layers actively fought
against it. The second weakness was its social basis, which was very
limited. There was no real 'internal' demand. So the FLOK was a gamble,
which would have worked very well if the support of the govt had been real,
and worked much less, because that support turned out to be largely
ilussory (but lower-level officials are engaged to make certain pilot
projects happen as we speak).

Next time, the social basis would ideally be much stronger, so that social
pressure can be exerted.







- Is the "Commons Transition" limited in any way if it doesn't espouse the
"partner state" principle? Alternatives?

At this stage, in Ecuador, the partner state was only an idea, not a
practice. Alternatives would be non-state and actually our next p2p-f
project will be entirely non-state, and create collective civic structures
to sustain a regional cooperative economy, BUT, can you imagine any
fundamental phase transition , in a class society, that simply bypasses the
state ? This would mean you have an expectation that the privileged layers
and their state would simply sit idly by while their privileges are
dismantled. So for me, confronting and transforming the state remains vital
in any transition. But do not confuse the partner state, where the state
ARE the people, with the market or bureaucratic state. Think Ancient Athens
and free free medieval cities. In the meantime, we have to find allies
within the complex state apparatus, who are willing to do prefigurative
experiments.



<- On the other hand, we could think of a "Commons Utopia". How would it
operate, would there be a state? What about the law system for example? How
would a "Transitioned Commons" body be organized? Anarchy? Or is it beyond
the P2P idea to address the state level itself?>

my own positioning is here .. in a nutshell, since I do not believe in the
near term realization of a classless society, I think we should opt for a
pluralistic commonwealth, which retains civic, private and state forms but
each one internally transformed and with a new configuration, see
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-basic-orientation-of-p2p-theory-towards-societal-reform-transforming-civil-society-the-private-and-the-state/2011/07/12

for the state level, I see the realization of liquid democracy as the
transforming agent


<I think to have understood that societal transitions don't occur in
isolation, or in niches, or layers, but as holistic expressions of the
current world view. Please forgive the rhetoric, but collaboration,
sharing, community, connection, along sustainability and harmony with our
environment and fellow living beings are new values no doubt emerging more
and more (along with their dark sides though: totalitarianism, control,
centralization, domination), which are though still trapped in a corset of
the status quo. So maybe with time things may "just" emerge, and we should
just joyfully play along and try things out, create, throw away, fork and
share. Utopias don't seem to work well in reality.>

things never just emerge, they are always confronted with pressure to
coopt, adapt etc ... and create hybrid realities .. so the difficult
question remains, how to obtain more autonomy in these very difficult
circumstances ...

I don't have the answer to that, but my choice is to pragmatically connect
the peer producing, commons oriented communities, in order to strenghten
their networks, and find the appropriate political and social expression so
that they can become powerful change agents in the wider society and
economy.

-- 
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*

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