[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networkedlabour] <nettime> Consensus within the Bay Area elites?

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a mustread of Brian Holmes

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 24, 2014 at 2:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Networkedlabour] <nettime> Consensus within the Bay Area
elites?
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>, Jaap van Till <
vantill at gmail.com>


Michel, it's great to hear from you. Your ideas are often on my mind: I
consider you the most precise, most generous and least compromised exponent
of the cooperative economy, which is clearly the best thing to have emerged
out of the short-lived growth surge of the 1990s. It is typical of you to
write immediately whenever someone expresses anything like an idea or a
proposal. Your attentiveness is really much appreciated.

Also I am intrigued about Jaap's presentation on the Eurasian corridors. I
would be glad to know more. Please feel free to forward this to the
networked labor list. I tried to subscribe but I'm still waiting for the
answer.

There is so much to say. I'd like to begin answering your questions with a
bit of a preamble. It seems to me that whether or not one refers explicitly
to Kondratiev, Schumpeter, Mandel, Freeman & Louca, etc, the idea of long
cycles of growth punctuated by major crises (40 or 50 years from trough to
trough) is widely shared at this point, among state planners, corporate
elites, neo-Marxists, technology boosters and probably others as well. And
it has been widely shared as far back as the '70s. After all, the lessons
of the 1930s, and of the rise of state-orchestrated Fordism in the postwar
period, were there for all to see. During the 1970s, in the context of the
last long downturn before the present one, these ideas were again debated
on the left, particularly due to Mandel. But they were also applied by the
state and corporate sectors. I believe we can discern their mainstream
influence, due rather to Schumpeter than  Mandel, in the support shown by
the Reagan adminstration for two key industries: biotech and
microprocessors. In both cases, agents of the American state tried very
deliberately to prime the pump of a new growth cycle, which could be
impelled, in their view, by investment in technological innovation.

For the case of biotech I refer you to the brilliant first chapter of
Melinda Cooper's Life as Surplus. I am unaware of anyone else who has
analyzed the pattern of investment in biotech so well. Where
microprocessors are concerned, I imagine everyone remembers the massive
state investments into microelectronics by way of the US Strategic Defense
Initiative ("Star Wars"), as well as the knock-on effects that these
investments had for the successive period of private-sector investment and
development. If that's not clear, look at Castell's chapter on "Welfare to
Warfare State," in his book The Informational City (his best, in my view).
The point of this whole preamble is to stress the close cooperation of both
state and corporate planners in the unleashing of new growth waves.
Nonetheless, you and I will agree that the third sector of civil society
(however one calls it) is crucial to the whole process. Castells also
agrees:

"Modes of development emerge from the interaction between scientific and
technological discovery and the organizational integration of such
discoveries in the processes of production and management... The transition
between modes of development is not independent of the historical context;
it relies heavily on the social matrix initially framing the transition, as
well as on the social conflicts and interests that shape the transformation
of that matrix. Therefore, the informational mode of development will
emerge from the interaction between its technological and organizational
components, and the historically determined process of the restructuring of
capitalism."

"Historically determined" means that the transition from one cycle of
growth to the next will be what all participating social forces make of it;
and therefore, that none of them alone will have the decisive word. Carlota
Perez has very similar concepts. I guess most everyone who has looked in
detail at the way an epoch-defining infrastructure like the Internet has
developed would be inclined to agree with some version or twist of this
idea.


> I see two issues that need to be covered. I share Brian's view of the
> possibility of a new kondratieff wave, which I called some years ago,
> the 'the high road to p2p' (high, because, even though it is capitalist,
> it would be more smoothly creating p2p infrastructures in a context of
> growth and redistribution, rather than low: bottom-up survivalist p2p in
> the context of global dislocation); such a high road, I argued then,
> would necessarily incorporate both green and p2p/distributed elements;

Your idea of a "high road" to global growth, containing both green and p2p
elements, is spot on, and you really do it honor with your current work, by
the way. Again, this idea is widely shared: witness Jeremy Rifkin, who does
advise a large number of European governments. However, green policy is not
the same as green ideology. The same holds for everything concerning the
cooperative economy, and I would imagine that your current work in Ecuador
leads to the need for a sharp distinction between lip-service to the
commons, and the creation of really usable commons. We can't just be
utopian; we also have to be critical. The next growth cycle will happen, in
one way or another. But it will not necessarily take the high road.

In fact, I quite agree with the following:


> however, it is important that such k-wave growth would require at the
> same time deep structural reforms, of the kind undertaken by roosevelt
> in the 30s and by european post-war govt's after WWII (and now we would
> need this type of reconfiguration:
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Russia_and_the_Next_Long_Wave)
>
> Yet, we see  nothing on this sort. This could mean that the scenario
> would be that following the 1873 meltdown, not a consistent growth, but
> a long series of enduring crisis, ultmately leading to world war and the
> russian revolution; but the difference is, there are now much more
> serious problems to deal with: energy and resource crisis, climate
> change, soil depletion and so much more grave social crisis.

> What this would mean is that, all the potential for growth that we see
> (smart cities, internet of things, etc ..) may actually not be able to
> be used by capitalism for a growth wave.

But it is also here that I diverge somewhat, concerning your interpretation
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I don't think that
period resembles the present doldrums. I think it resembles the neoliberal
period from which we are now exiting.

The thing is that after the long stagnation of 1873-1896, there was
tremendous growth in the United States in the period from 1897 to 1929 --
just as there was tremendous growth in both the US and East Asia from the
'80s to 2008. To understand the situation of the world economy today, you
have to grasp the characteristics and limits of the growth cycle that did
occur in the early twentieth century, and see the parallel to the the
growth cycle that really did unfold from 1980 to 2008. (I say "really did"
because some Marxists, following Robert Brenner, deny it altogether, as
though global cities, the cabling of thw world, the rise of East Asia, etc,
were just a detail).

After the "Great Depression" of 1873-96 (that's exactly what they called it
at the time), the new upswing began with the unprecedented merger wave of
1898 to 1902, which institutionalized the vertically integrated,
multidivisional corporation. That was somethig new under the sun. I'm
talking about US Steel, General Electric, General Mills, Nabisco, and
dozens of similar giant corporations, many of which are still around today.
Typically their names include the idea of "national" or "general," which
signifies the step upward in scale from the regional enterprises that
preceded them, and which they absorbed. At the core of this whole
development you find a very nasty corporation, Du Pont, along with its
stepchild, General Motors, and its emblematic manager, Alfred P. Sloan.
They forged the real archetype of the giant corporation. These corporations
developed tremendously during the naughts and teens, and then again after
WWI. The growth wave happened; and global hegemony was already shifting to
the US. But the social order could not absorb the shocks of this
development. It could not soften the brutal exploitation of labor and
redistribute profits for social reproduction. It could not control the
tremendous ecological damage unleashed by oil-powered machinery (in the US,
the major ecological issues were water pollution, erosion and flooding, and
the dust bowls created by mechanized agriculture). Finally, the
institutions of exchange -- the gold standard and high finance -- could not
stand the stress brought by America's rise and Britain's decline. This was
the triple crisis of labor, land and money in the 1920s and 30s, as
described by Karl Polanyi. It was a consequence of erratic, unbalanced
capitalist growth, and therefore, as you say, of a long series of unending
crises.

We know that the period of chaos was followed by one of rationalization and
integration in the postwar period. The name of that period is Fordism,
because Ford, despite or maybe because of all his managerial violence and
crude racism, had a social philosophy. I'm not going to get into the
philosophy of Fordism which is developed ad nauseum by whoever you care to
read. I'm nauseated because I also know the history of neo-imperialism and
of the so-called "Third World" at this time. Let's just say that the
recurrent crises of the period between 1897 and 1945 were resolved,
temporarily, and at tremendous costs, through the creation of a form of
stable growth that sowed the seeds for the kinds of breakdowns that we are
experiencing today.

Now, here comes the point at which it may be difficult to follow my
argument. I want to contend that the period of 1980 to 2008 has _already_
been a long period of both growth and unending crises, comparable in that
sense to the early 20th century. These periods are comparable because they
both saw the irruption of tremendous and destabilizing productive forces
(as destabilizing as the steam engine itself was in its day). The Internet
was something new under the sun, and so was the networked firm. Remember
those incredible years of the late 1990's, when corporations like Enron and
WorldCom burst on the scene? Again there was a tremendous upward scaling,
to reach global level; and of course, not all the contenders survived. But
today we can see the ones that did: thus the talk about the "new
managerialism" of the Bay Area elites. Their modus operandi, as you know,
is still the Schumpeterian dogma of disruptive innovation. They are still
preaching chaos.

Indeed, no one has been willing to see the neoliberal era as in any way
similar to the Fordist period that preceded it, especially in terms of
stability. No one has called those neoliberal years "the Sunday of life,"
as the Hegelian philosopher Kojeve described the boom years of the 50s and
60s (which, for Kojeve, marked "the end of history"). Instead, the
neoliberal period from 1980 to 2008 has seen continuous social, ecological
and monetary crises, which, since the financial crisis and Fukushima, have
become very difficult to ignore. Even the hard capitalist right in the US
does not ignore them: it very actively denies them. The untenability of the
present world order is an open secret. In fact, it's a bleeding wound.

I believe that governments and ruling elites in the rest of the world (and
even to some extent within the US itself) take the present crisis very
seriously indeed, and realize that the creation of a new pattern of
development and of governance is now urgent. Not because the productive
forces are lacking, but because they cannot find a sustainable "fit" with
the current social order. And yet it is not so simple to invent a new one.
All the more because the inventor of the last apparently stable order, the
US under Roosevelt, is now in the long and protracted process of losing its
hegemony, while the rising powers of East Asia, especially China, are not
very well positioned to assert their new strengths. In the early 20th
century the US had a continent-sized territory for a relatively small
population, and it was unmatched in its hemisphere; whereas the Chinese are
embroiled in the dense tangle of rivalries left by WWII and the Cold War.
So, even though the essential features of this crisis are relatively easy
to see, the supposedly happy outcome corresponding to the norm of 1945-73
(if one really believes that was a happy outcome) is not so easy to see.
Instead, it's frankly invisible.

By the way, I have written at length on the theory of all this, in both
English and Spanish:

http://brianholmes.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/crisis_theory.pdf

http://brianholmes.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tres_crisis.pdf


> So my question to you Brian is: what makes you so sure that this wave of
> growth is indeed coming ?

Well, if the outcome of a grand crisis truly is historically determined,
then we cannot exactly know what is coming; because we ourselves still have
to make it happen. Here I would like to point out how unlikely the Fordist
expansion of the 50s and 60s looked in the 1930s, or again, how unlikely
the network-driven globalization surge seemed in the 1970s and even the
1980s. It's a bitch for an intellectual not to know what is coming, but
that's the way it is. I am not at all sure that we will see a growth wave
with the characteristics of the postwar period, inspired by the
Rooseveltian New Deal. I think that period is wrongly taken as a norm to
which society must inevitably return. However, let's face it, the Chinese
governing elites are incredibly good students of history, and their every
move since 2008 proves this -- whether it's huge state investments in
transportation infrastructure, or cornering the markets in wind and solar
power, or expanding cooperative relations with other countries, or
experimenting with the consequences of popular democracy in Wukan, or
investing in the smart power grids touted by Rifkin. They are engaging in
major rounds of infrastructural investment, as the US did in the 1930s and
the postwar period, in the attempt to stabilize capital accumulation and
adjust it to meet society's needs. So we can't just look at the West
anymore. We also have to look at what is going on in the East.

Now, I am not a Chinese booster, far from it, I have spent enough time
there to see how painful life in China can be. But the actions of the
Chinese communist elites really make it look as though they spent some time
reading Arrighi and Wallerstein on the characteristics of a successful
hegemony. Both of these authors (and let's throw in another neo-Gramscian,
Robert Cox) stress the way that a would-be hegemon must offer positive
advantages to its potential rivals, so that they aspire to emulate rather
than reject the new dominant power. China is doing this all over the world,
following to some extent (but in its own more forceful and imperious way)
the pattern of networked cooperation set earlier by Japan. Of course the
offer of cooperation is being taken up by many countries. Germany, in
particular, has every interest in emulating and partnering with its biggest
customer -- because German growth since 2008 has been predicated on Chinese
demand for both sophisticated industrial technology and high-end consumer
durables. China's effort since the mid-2000s was already to extend its
infrastructural development from the coast to the interior, that was the
"Go West" phase. Now, with its Eurasian development corridors and its
African and Latin American economic policies, it is trying that on a global
scale. And it's doing so for better and for worse: just as the US expansion
after WWII was for better and for worse, despite all the enthusiasm that
people around the world had for Roosevelt and the Americans in 1945. We are
likely to see at least the lineaments of a new China-centric world order,
before we all perish from climate change.

But anyway, Michel, you have lived in Asia, presumably you have a lot to
say about this. I am not naive about China and I think there is quite a
good chance that its policies will fail utterly, by foundering on the
internal contradictions between savage capitalism and an overdeveloped
control apparatus. My point here is merely that if a new growth wave
depends in part on the relation between technological development and state
policy, and if that is well known by almost everyone, then the least we can
do as intellectuals is to observe how certain larger powers are drawing
conclusions from those well-known postulates. We are not alone with our
theorizing of Kondratiev waves.

Further: I do think some kind of investment wave and capitalist growth will
happen in the 2020s, beginning perhaps very soon (well, I actually think it
has already begun). I think it will also happen in the West, despite
everything. However, it may not eventuate in any virtuous spiral with
positive effects on social relations. It may be very ugly indeed. I share
your worries, believe me. Look at the huge, suicidal investment in shale
gas and tar sands oil in North America, and the plans currently afoot to
use this deadly energy source as the key factor for the reindustrialization
of the continent. Look at Mexican industrial and cognitive-sector growth in
the devastating context of the narco-wars. These are terrible signs, not
just harbingers but actualities. All the political intelligence of the
western hemisphere can at present be found in a few South American
countries, and they don't have the power to change things on a geopolitical
level. The picture is not rosy, far from it. I hope all of the above lends
a little clarity to my brief remarks in the previous post.


> The second issue is: do you see Brian, the broad restructuring that is
> also taken place from the bottom up ? Yes, indeed, most of the p2p
> economy is indeed subsumed to capitalism, but, there is a huge wave of
> bottom up innovation, mobilisation and re-invention, on the scale of the
> labor movement in the latter half of the 19th cy. If you see it (I do,
> as I document it every day), how is this impacting your assessment of
> capitalist strategies. I would question any analysis that is exclusively
> focused on the internal dynamics of the capital class, and neglects the
> counter-movements and counter-restructurings that are taking place.

Yes, of course I do see it, this is the impressive thing going on in the
world! And it has been going on for quite a while. The thing to realize and
to act on is that these counter-dynamics are continuous since the crisis of
the Fordist political economy and the beginning of neoliberal restructuring
in the 1970s. At that time, a very broad and deep assessment of the
dead-ends of capitalist development was shared around the planet, and it
went far beyond the legacies of Marx, even though the Marxist inheritance
was crucial to the new thinking. I was born in California in '59 and I can
attest that counter-cultural ideas and practices have unfolded continuously
since the 60s around the world, in rather astonishing ways at differernt
periods, not the least of which was the late 90s/early 2000s. However, only
now, under the destructuring power of the current crisis, are large numbers
of people able to see the stakes of global development as clearly as they
did back in the late 60s and early 70s. Yet I think that in certain
respects -- and however counter-intuitive this may seem -- we are a good
deal more empowered now than dissenting sectors were back then.

True, those generations stopped the war in Vietnam and dealt a huge blow to
the hegemonic capitalist power by unseating Nixon and ushering in a whole
series of social and ecological reforms. But they also launched the complex
of ideas and practices which you have been documenting through the p2p
foundation, and those usages shaped the social matrix from which the
Internet developed, changing the social game decisively. People say the net
was created by Darpa. That's superficial and ignorant. The net, as a global
infrastructure and social institution, was created in exactly the way that
Castells describes, with crucial inputs from the state, the corporations,
and civil society. Especially the latter. In the foundational architecture
of the TCP/IP stack, and in the subsequent development of GNU/Linux, one
can see the imprint of a powerfuly egalitarian ethos, oriented toward use
values. In fact, that development vindicates in many ways the vision of the
great dissenting American sociologist Thorstein Veblen, in his forgotten
little book The Engineers and the Price System (1921), which had already
sparked a social movement in the 1930s.

Veblen understood the core value of the engineers to be cooperation in the
development and use of technological systems; and he contrasted that
cooperative ethos to the price system of "business enterprise" which, in
his view, was all about sabotaging industrial cooperation so as to create
monopolies, maintain scarcities, and impose higher prices. Business
enterprise cuts productivity to exact higher prices. On the basis of that
key insight, which he derived from the sharp recession that followed WWI,
Veblen attempted with some success to start a social movement of engineers,
in protest against the forms of development that were being imposed by the
giant monopoly corporations. Veblen's real inheritance, however, came much
later, in the dissenting sociology of people like C. Wright Mills, who
inspired the entire New Left, notably people at UC Berkeley. That was the
kind of place where, in the 70s and early 80s, the egalitarian potentials
of the TCP/IP stack were developed into social practices.

Everyone should be aware of the crucial features of TCP/IP, which
distinguished it from the X.25 protocol that several European states as
well as Japan were working on in the 1970s. X.25 was designed to make the
national telcos into gateway providers of informational services, which
they would control, meter and price. TCP/IP - that sinister creation of
Darpa - was designed to encode and decode whatever message you want,
period. No meter, no control, no price. For the early Internet engineers
and the top scientists who got first access to the fledgling net, this was
elegant, useful, commendable -- just good common sense for smart and
privileged people. For the marginalized grad students and counter-cultural
hippie types at places like Berkeley, this was a chance to turn idealistic
potentials into social realities. The point was to create a communications
machine that would be the polar opposite of the three coporate-state TV
channels, ABC, NBC and CBS - the Pepsi, Coke and Dr. Pepper of the Fordist
mass media. The Internet that we still know today resulted from a complex
and contradictory evolution where emancipatory inputs had tremendous
relevance. And that kind of process has continued up to this day, from
Napster to Global Revolution TV in 2011.

Of course I know what has happened in parallel to all that, from Google to
NSA. I have analyzed and critiqued the counter offensives of the corporate
states, step by step. But I have also participated, step by step, in the
unfolding of the emancipatory potentials of the information society, which
moved far beyond the US and have largely left that country behind (I am sad
to say, since I now live there once again). The important thing to see is
that growth waves do have positive sides to them. What was so impressive,
in the 90s, was the manner in which a vast, truly global constellation of
egalitarian and ecological movements took hold of the emancipatory
potentials that were thrown off by the wave of growth that shot through the
world system after the Fall of the Wall, and before the state-corporate
elites got started on their ill-conceived attempt at imposing a "return to
order." I think that going forward, we should really respect all the
components of a historically determined process such as the one we are
living through. What has typically been lacking, among the sectors oriented
toward p2p and the commons, is a real understanding of how important state
institutions and industrial development still is. If we want to influence
the responses to the crisis, we have to be aware of these things and
actively deal with them.


> Just for info, if Brian has not seen it, the Commons Transition Plan we
> have crafted here in Ecuador,
> http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan, with the ToC at bottom.

Michel, I was not aware of this. I am moved. This is a tremendous plan. I
have followed to some small degree what is going on in Ecuador, notably
because I had often crossed paths with Carlos Prieto del Campo some years
ago in Spain. But this is fabulous! It is really beautiful, inspiring and
encouraging to witness an attempt at turning those vast molecular
revolutions into tangible institutional policy. I get what you mean when
you talk about contributory comons, the reformed corporations of a solidary
economy, and a partner state. Some positive dynamic between those three
major social formations is needed to change anything.


> Though the actual effect of this plan will be limited in Ecuador, it is
> significant that it has been commissioned, and that a global
> commons-oriented movement of movements is emerging from which it is
> derived and which is looking at it. Lots of the proposals I made a few
> years ago (the commons-based reciprocity license, the alliance and
> chamber of the commons, the global coalition of the commons), are now
> being taking seriously and the subject of actual experimentation on the
> ground, along with the thousands of other p2p/sharing/commons
> experimentations and projects (I'm not talkng about the business sharing
> economy here). Nearly every aspect of the bottom-up p2p economy (from
> urban gardening to co-working to rural hackerspaces) is growing
> exponentially, along with its capitalist similes .. (this is factually
> documented, I'm not just saying this, though of course, it is easier for
> emergent phenomena to grow exponentially).

Of course it is not only documented, it is visible to anyone with eyes to
see. If Jeremy Rifkin can leave the Wharton School of Business to go talk
about p2p and decentralized energy grids with EU bureaucrats and German
ministers, then something is happening. All the more when similar ideas
start to take root in China. The great effort now, across the the three
major social formations but especially within civil society, is to make the
new technologies viable for social and ecological reproduction.

Generally speaking, when you get outside the Anglo-American orbit, the
limitations of the price system become clearer. How exactly do you offer
hundreds of millions of impoverished people access to culture, energy,
development and productivity by way of a monopoly system? Impossible. And
even more, how do you offer people in the formerly developed world those
same things, at a time when the monopoly system has "progressed" to such a
point that even those people are superfluous? It's impossible. Apple and
co. are not going to bring progress to the masses. The cooperative economy
offers an answer that the capitalist system cannot offer. And yet most of
our social institutions are still tragically incapable of even registering
either the impossibility of the current social deal, or the proposed
reformulation of our productive relations.


> So my second question is: how do the new social movements affect
> capitalist scenarios ?

Well, I am afraid we can see it, no? The capitalist scenarios remain firmly
fixed in North America, where they are exacerbated to the point of madness.
In Europe, which has partially collapsed, a green-washing p2p rhetoric is
applied on top of mounting inequalities, while Germany reconfigures itself
to become the continental hegemon and attempt a new partnership with China.
Meanwhile China itself, the largest and most productive country on earth,
is fixated on a development path that oscillates wildly between excarbated
entrepreneurialism and intensified state control. In other words, the
rising global hegemon is prey to centripetal and centrifugal forces that
constantly threaten to rip it apart, were it not for some fairly amazing
efforts to ride the tiger, wherever it may choose to go.

The terrible thing is that today, new social movements lend fuel to
reactionary forces. In China, 8% growth per annum is considered the minimum
necessary to stave off an impending social revolution by the have-nots of
the urban peripheries and the vast interior. In Turkey and Brazil it's
substantially the same, in Egypt the revolution has already happened. with
the results we have before our eyes. My guess is that the peace can't hold
much longer in India either. And I have not even mentioned Boko Haram, or
the bombs that just wnt off in Urumqi, etc. The dynamic of action and
reaction is systemic. Social movements are tremendously powerful, except
when you compare them to their dialectical other, the forces of social
control. The same dynamic governs cognitive capitalism, in its antagonistic
relation to the forces of commons-based peer production.

In the deadlock of this global conflict we are definitely looking at
triumph of the powers of chaos, comparable in that sense to those that
expressed themselves after 1914, when the long breakup of British hegemony
began. The sun that finally set on the British Empire is now setting on the
American one. And what happens in the twilight hour? That's the question of
the present. History would lead us to predict vast wars. I am not so sure
that will happen. Again, everyone has had plenty of time to reflect on
World Wars I and II. No such conflagration followed the break-up of the
Soviet Union. Instead we are hit with climate change and recurrent
financial crises. A generalized, low-intensity civil war seems to be the
predominant form of violence in our time, rather than cataclysmic wars
between nation-states and empires.


> My hypothesis is: the next k-wave may well not be coming, and with a
> perfect storm of really grave issues risking to coalesce say by 2030, we
> may need an integrated alternative, much faster than we expect.

I agree with you, Michel. Well, not entirely: I do think there will be some
kind of new growth wave, but I don't think it will correspond to any
Rooseveltian norm -- and I don't think we should wait for that to happen,
as though only a capitalist god could save us now. The worst thing would be
to trust in the new growth wave (or ripple) when it finally comes. Anything
short of political-economic autonomy is an illusion. And the latter can
only be gained by galvanizing and extending the great accumulation of
counter-systemic thinking that has been built up across the twentieth
century and on into the present. The Saint-Simonian belief that we have to
catch the next train of progress is still rampant on the center left, but
it's pseudo-historicism, the weak thinking that history always repeats.
That's exactly why the critical utopia of the Multitudes journal broke up:
some people like Yann Moulier Boutang believed that the contradictions of
cognitive capitalism would be overcome in a new growth wave; while others
-- like myself and all the Italian emigres -- foresaw that nothing so
fortunate was going to happen, and that there would be no "New New Deal."
Maybe the postman doesn't always knock twice. Kondratiev waves are like
waves on the beach: they always come, but they are not always what you
expect.

I had a dear friend who was killed in the '80s by a wave on the beach in
California, the result of an unexpected tsunami in Asia. What else is new?
Fukushima was already your perfect storm: the wave that destroyed any
promise that capitalist growth waves can somehow save us. We don't need a
new expansion of the death machines. We need a revolution. It's not going
to come from some desperate gesture that sparks the fires of reaction. It
can only come from the urgent propagation of a critical utopia, in the face
of a gathering disaster. You're right, we have to go much faster. And at
the same time, we have to hold much closer to the truth of what is really
happening in the world. If everyone shares our most basic ideas, than we
had better insist on the specific differences. And we had better make those
differences into real social practices.

thanks for all your work in exactly that direction, Brian

>
> # 2 Background on the FLOK Project
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Background_on_the_FLOK_Project>
> # 3 The Framing of the Proposal
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
Framing_of_the_Proposal>
>
>
>   * 3.1 The Three Value Models and the transition to a Social Knowledge
>     Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Three_
Value_Models_and_the_transition_to_a_Social_Knowledge_Economy>
>
>       o 3.1.1 The first model: 'Classic' Cognitive Capitalism based on
>         IP extraction
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_first_
model:_.27Classic.27_Cognitive_Capitalism_based_on_IP_extraction>
>       o 3.1.2 The second model: Netarchical Capitalism based on the
>         control of networked platforms
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
second_model:_Netarchical_Capitalism_based_on_the_
control_of_networked_platforms>
>
>           + 3.1.2.1 The Value Crisis under conditions of netarchical
>             capitalism
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Value_
Crisis_under_conditions_of_netarchical_capitalism>
>       o 3.1.3 Towards a third model: a mature 'civic' peer-to-peer
>         economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Towards_a_
third_model:_a_mature_.27civic.27_peer-to-peer_economy>
>
>           + 3.1.3.1 Solving the value crisis through a social knowledge
>             economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Solving_
the_value_crisis_through_a_social_knowledge_economy>
>   * 3.2 Four Technology Regimes
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Four_Technology_Regimes>
>
>       o 3.2.1 Netarchical Capitalism as a technological regime: peer to

>         peer front end, hierarchical back-end
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Netarchical_Capitalism_as_a_technological_regime:_peer_to_peer_front_end.2C_
hierarchical_back-end>
>       o 3.2.2 Distributed Capitalism as a technological regime: the
>         commodification of everything
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Distributed_Capitalism_as_a_technological_regime:_the_
commodification_of_everything>
>       o 3.2.3 Resilience Community Platforms Designed for
>         Re-Localization
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Resilience_Community_
Platforms_Designed_for_Re-Localization>
>       o 3.2.4 The Global Commons Scenario as the desired alternative
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
Global_Commons_Scenario_as_the_desired_alternative>
>   * 3.3 Cognitive/Netarchical Capitalism vs. an Open-Commons based
>     Knowledge Society
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Cognitive.
2FNetarchical_Capitalism_vs._an_Open-Commons_based_Knowledge_Society>
>
>       o 3.3.1 The Socio-Economic Implications of a Social Knowledge
>         Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Socio-
Economic_Implications_of_a_Social_Knowledge_Economy>
>       o 3.3.2 Discussion: IP and patents impede and slow down innovation
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Discussion:_IP_and_patents_impede_and_slow_down_innovation>
>
>           + 3.3.2.1 Intellectual property rights and their supposed role
>             in cognitive capitalism
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Intellectual_property_rights_and_their_supposed_role_in_cognitive_capitalism
>
>           + 3.3.2.2 A synopsis of empirical evidence on the effect of

>             exclusive intellectual property regimes on innovation and
>             productivity
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#A_synopsis_of_empirical_
evidence_on_the_effect_of_exclusive_intellectual_property_regimes_on_
innovation_and_productivity>
>       o 3.3.3 Discussion: the role of Indigenous Peoples and
>         (Neo)Traditional Knowledge
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Discussion:_the_role_of_
Indigenous_Peoples_and_.28Neo.29Traditional_Knowledge>
>
>           + 3.3.3.1 Arguments for the specific role of (neo)-traditional

>             knowledge and peoples in a social knowledge transition
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Arguments_
for_the_specific_role_of_.28neo.29-traditional_knowledge_and_peoples_in_a_
social_knowledge_transition>
>           + 3.3.3.2 The potential role of commons-based reciprocity

>             licenses to protect traditional knowledge
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
potential_role_of_commons-based_reciprocity_licenses_to_
protect_traditional_knowledge>
>       o 3.3.4 Discussion: Gender Aspects
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Discussion:_Gender_Aspects
>
>   * 3.4 Introducing the new configuration between State, Civil Society
>     and the Market
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Introducing_the_new_
configuration_between_State.2C_Civil_Society_and_the_Market>
>
>       o 3.4.1 What can we learn from the already existing social
>         knowledge economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#What_can_
we_learn_from_the_already_existing_social_knowledge_economy>
>       o 3.4.2 The new configuration
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_new_configuration>
>       o 3.4.3 Why is this a post-capitalist scenario?
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Why_is_
this_a_post-capitalist_scenario.3F>
>       o 3.4.4 Discussion: The role of the capitalist sector
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Discussion:_The_role_of_the_capitalist_sector>
>   * 3.5 A description of the new triarchy of the Partner State, the

>     Ethical Economy and a Commons-based Civil Society
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#A_description_of_the_new_
triarchy_of_the_Partner_State.2C_the_Ethical_Economy_and_a_
Commons-based_Civil_Society>
>
>       o 3.5.1 The concept of the partner state and the commonification
>         of public services
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
concept_of_the_partner_state_and_the_commonification_of_public_services>
>       o 3.5.2 The Ethical Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Ethical_Economy>
>
>           + 3.5.2.1 Discussion: Material and Immaterial Infrastructural

>             Requirements for the Ethical Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Discussion:_Material_and_
Immaterial_Infrastructural_Requirements_for_the_Ethical_Economy>
>       o 3.5.3 The Commons-Based Civil Society
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
Commons-Based_Civil_Society>
>   * 3.6 Beyond the market, beyond planning ?
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Beyond_
the_market.2C_beyond_planning_.3F>
>
>       o 3.6.1 The key role of Commons-Based Reciprocity Licenses
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_key_
role_of_Commons-Based_Reciprocity_Licenses>
>       o 3.6.2 Mutual coordination mechanisms in the new 'ethical'

>         enterpreneurial coalitions: Cybersin redux ?
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Mutual_
coordination_mechanisms_in_the_new_.27ethical.27_
enterpreneurial_coalitions:_Cybersin_redux_.3F>
>   * 3.7 The historical and present importance of mutualization in times
>     of increasing resource scarcity
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_
historical_and_present_importance_of_mutualization_in_times_of_increasing_
resource_scarcity>
>
>       o 3.7.1 Discussion: The issue of eco-system sustainability
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#
Discussion:_The_issue_of_eco-system_sustainability>
>
>           + 3.7.1.1 Why innovation should be located in open design
>             communities
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Why_
innovation_should_be_located_in_open_design_communities>
>           + 3.7.1.2 The role of 'idle-sourcing' and the sharing economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_role_
of_.27idle-sourcing.27_and_the_sharing_economy>
>   * 3.8 A historical opportunity: The Convergence of Material/Technical

>     P2P Infrastructures, Digital/Immaterial Commons, and
>     Commons-Oriented Governance and Ownership Models
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#A_
historical_opportunity:_The_Convergence_of_Material.2FTechnical_P2P_
Infrastructures.2C_Digital.2FImmaterial_Commons.2C_and_
Commons-Oriented_Governance_and_Ownership_Models>
>   * 3.9 Elements of Idealized and Integrative Full Transition Plan to a
>     mature Social Knowledge Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Elements_
of_Idealized_and_Integrative_Full_Transition_Plan_to_a_
mature_Social_Knowledge_Economy>
>
>       o 3.9.1 Analysis
>         <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Analysis>
>           + 3.9.1.1 1. Under conditions of proprietary (industrial)
>             capitalism
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#1._Under_
conditions_of_proprietary_.28industrial.29_capitalism>
>           + 3.9.1.2 2. Under conditions of emerging peer production

>             under the domination of financial and 'cognitive',
>             'netarchical' capitalism
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#2._Under_
conditions_of_emerging_peer_production_under_the_
domination_of_financial_and_.27cognitive.27.2C_.27netarchical.27_capitalism>
>           + 3.9.1.3 3. Under conditions of strong peer production under
>             civic dominance
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#3._Under_
conditions_of_strong_peer_production_under_civic_dominance>
>       o 3.9.2 Transition Dynamic
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Transition_Dynamic>
>           + 3.9.2.1 The State
>             <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_State>
>           + 3.9.2.2 The Ethical Economy
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Ethical_Economy_2>
>           + 3.9.2.3 The Commons Sector
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#The_Commons_Sector>
>   * 3.10 Political reconstruction of social movements in a conjuncture
>     of post-industrial transformation
> <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan#Political_
reconstruction_of_social_movements_in_a_conjuncture_of_
post-industrial_transformation>
>



-- 
*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

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
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#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
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