[P2P-F] [Networkedlabour] Fwd: Transnational and P2P Commons Transitions

[Örsan Şenalp]

I replied in between lines:

>
> You mention the potential charge of 'reformism'. I do not consider my
> position 'reformist'. Revolutionaries were never against reforms and my
> ultimate goal is phase transition, i.e. overcoming infinite growth based
> capitalism, while at the same time being meliorist (as defined by William
> James). This means that, while the end goal is in mind, measures that
> advance the cause in any way, are seen as positive milestones. So I would
> call my position 'adaptive'.

I understand the above and agree. In this sense I can admit being
meliorist as well, yet my end goal can be different. With the
reformist charge, I meant it can come by those preferring to use the
old lexicon. From there your approach to partner state, and
transformation of the state and transition to capitalism without
indefinite growth engine [as Hilary Wainwright's 're-claiming the
state' argument, or Tomasso's commonification of public services can
be seen as 'radical democratic reformism']. I however liked to
highlight that both theoretical, practical and techno-political
advancements in the fields of p2p, commons,... etc. has given James'
understanding of meliorism a new aspect. Today, you can in real time
collaborate with agency that would in the past seemed opponent to you
politically; like Phorudon and Marx (anarchism vs communism), Lasal
and Spartakists as well as Lenin and Kautsky (Socialism vs. Social
Democracy), as well as all the following generations of left and
progressive fracitonalism. This made possible for capitalism to assert
itself as an irreversible and immortal historical structure.

> Revolution as classically conceived, as a violent overthrow of one system by
> another, I consider as organic events (even Lenin wrote one month before the
> russian revolution: "unfortunately, I will not witness the revolution in my
> lifetime) that are outside of anyone's control, (most of all the
> revolutionaries themselves) and mostly caused by the inability of the
> previous system to adapt. If you look at the 'bourgeois revolutions', you
> will see a wide variety of revolutionary subjects (the russian star who
> abolished serfdom, the junkers in prussia, with Bismarck instituting the
> first welfare state measures, the english radical religious reformers, and
> so on ..) .. the classic one, the French Revolution, may have been the most
> violent and led to the restoration by Napoleon; regarding so-called workers'
> revolutions (they weren't), again, Russia led to Stalinism, probably the
> worst outcome ...

I see there are inevitable points of revolutionary confrontation both
from above and from below, during the period like today; where crisis
moments following molecular changes escalate as you describe, and
there comes the point where conflicting class forces see no other way
than violent engagement, thereafter winner takes it all and we jump to
a new level of balance of forces (like quantitative changes come to a
point of qualitative jump). What is the key in both times of
revolution from above and revolution from below, both opens up portals
for emancipatory intervention. In case there are visions and working
communities on which figurative models can take clear ad broader form
(like Occupy camps) so can be grasped and participated by larger
segments of the society; so that further ideas, plans, programs and
visions can be produced in a participatory and collaborative way [on
how to deal with inevitable problems with holding and distributing
social power, regulating social conflicts in egalitarian and just way
etc.] emancipatory push would grow and it would inevitable trigger
violence from rulers, unless it is unbearable clear that the mass is
so big and decisive and they wouldn't stop. That is revolution to me,
and inevitable. For instance during the Arab spring, Occupy, 15M,
Gezi, Brazilian uprising, we felt deeply -not the absence of these
practises and experience but- the absence of elaborated communicatable
structures that can interlink existing local, national, global
experiences, perspectives so on. FLOK's value in this sense, lies in
the fact that it bears insights about a national level example which
was worked about in relation to a state.

> My preference goes to the creation of maximally autonomous communities that
> engage in counter-economics, and produce social charters to reconstitute
> politics around p2p and the commons, as the athenians and free citizens of
> the middle ages did. The endgame is phase transition, but not waiting until
> it occurs, but instituting it through hyper-connected micro-scale
> initiatives .. scaling through scope, until we are a social force that can
> play at meso and macro-scale

about the above, that is really inspiring to see those communities
like CIC, and CoopFunding and so important to support them in every
way. so such communities, visions, experiments do not exist in the
rural alone, as Holloway wrote there is a Zapatismo urbano growing,
connect autonomies in the urban areas ans there is movement from urban
to the rural.. In most of the cases, hacker class is approaching to
workers and farmers. Like the Interference space will take place in
amsterdam, sub-altern classes are gaining consciousness -some thing
like 'we can hack the class-society'. As in case of Enric Duran, and
CIC, guerlilla translation, telekommunisten, las indias, gunion .. we
witness disobedient egalitarian ethical emancipatory innovations
produced by rank and file class members. This is the workshop we are
going to held in Interferance mid august:
https://interference.io/wiki/doku.php?id=sessions:gnunion_global_networked_labour_union_beta_1.0
so I like to stress again: as long as we are doing trans-level and
multi-dimentional practice of community/network building and
interlinking work (allowing empowerment of ourselves and all the nodes
simultaneously), it does not matter that much what we have as personal
visions, preferences, expectations, predictions, so on.. about the
future and nature of transition. The previous organisational forms,
like part, platform, block, front, did not allow such collaborative
and egaliterian ethical alliances. Now it is more possible then
before, not perfectly smooth of course. With the 'quantum-logic' I was
reffering this new possibility. This is an outcome of the
technological-communicational paradigm shift, and at the moment it
works for the advantage of the ruled, yet it might not last long.