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

Wed Jul 23 20:48:50 CEST 2014

Good synthesising exchange..

I am preparing a response to your reply on other tread Michel, re the
class and alliances. Since here popped up the key issue before my
reply, just wanted to drop it first. Yet again, to highlight, this
tread is directly linked to other one..

So in one sentence, your below exchange address two logic that was
positioned around the same old question: reform, revolution or
REvolution...

Although the tone of my initial brain storming sounded pretty much
close to the ideas or questions raised by Willi, and also underlined
by Fabio, and others, I also think that Michel's point is very
important. Especially in the situation we are in, enourmous political,
ideological, cultural, military and economic power is concentrated in
the hands of state and capitalist ruling classes, and when they
violently attacking each other -though by killing the most innocent
and weak elements of the ruled classes least exploitable- to close the
doors of fellowship and solidarity and collaborate with only those who
think and label his/her self like us, would be a mortal mistake. This
is also valid for solidarity and collaboration between those who
thinks like Michel, so tackling both state and grassroots community
solidarity networking at the same time, and those who chose only one
of these either for reform or revolutionary change. Although Internet
is a f**ked up space, what it did may be out of intention of the
rulers, was produced a virtual social space where quantum logic works
better then in the actual world. So thinking experiments can be made
and applied on both reformist and revolutionary ideas, reflections can
be shared and the message in visual, audio or text format, can be
virally spread with the speed of light... the amount of the impact one
can make on self or others consciousness is big. Of course here lies
the essential thing the fights between projects/processes led by the
agencies who are striving to determine the structural and overall
outcomes (in real time); the intra-, inter- and may be cross-class
struggles.

To be able to win, we need to link as much brain that work with
quantum logic as possible to emancipatory forces, which can talk to
and collaborate with various ideas, events, people, communities and
their networks, while linking them to each other as conscious and
strategically as possible. So the growing networks could be
interlocked smoothly and hopefully become meshed and genuinely p2p, so
not allow  falling back into centralisation, ending up being co opted
to the fight between netarhical-capitalist or feudal-aristocratic
classes, and let them take us down all together once more.

here where I have been playing and praxising, collaborating with
others directly and indirectly, from reform, revolution and REvolution
perspectives.. There is also a network-map to visualise the ties:
http://gnunion.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/gnunionize-in-solidarity/

orsan

On 22 July 2014 11:30, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
> 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 ..
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
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>
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