[P2P-F] Fwd: FW: FLOK Society

Tue May 27 23:58:37 CEST 2014

flok interview to be published by Richard Poynder later today

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Poynder <ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk>
Date: Tue, May 27, 2014 at 2:41 AM
Subject: RE: FW: FLOK Society
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

Dear Michel,

I have made a few edits to the text, as below. I would expect to post this
later today.

Good luck.

Richard

*From:* michelsub2004 at gmail.com [mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com] *On Behalf
Of *Michel Bauwens

*Sent:* 26 May 2014 04:58
*To:* Richard Poynder
*Subject:* Re: FW: FLOK Society

yes, ok, thanks again for your efforts!

>>>

Working for a phase transition to an open commons-based knowledge society:
Interview with Michel Bauwens

*Today a **summit* <http://cumbredelbuenconocer.ec/>* starts in Quito,
Ecuador that will discuss ways in which the country can transform itself
into an open commons-based knowledge society. The team that put together
the proposals is led by Michel Bauwens from the **Foundation for
Peer-to-Peer Alternatives* <http://p2pfoundation.net/>*. What is the
background to this plan, and how likely is it that it will bear fruit?
With the hope of finding out I spoke recently to Bauwens.*

One interesting phenomenon to emerge from the Internet has been the growth
of free and open movements, including free and open source software, open
politics, open government, open data, citizen journalism, creative commons,
open science, open educational resources
(OER<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources>),
open access etc.

While these movements often set themselves fairly limited objectives
(e.g. “freeing
the refereed literature <http://cogprints.org/1702/>”) some network
theorists maintain that the larger phenomenon they represent has the
potential not just to replace traditional closed and proprietary practices
with more open and transparent approaches, and not just to subordinate
narrow commercial interests to the greater needs of communities and larger
society but, since the network enables ordinary citizens to collaborate
together on large meaningful projects in a distributed way (and absent
traditional hierarchical organisations), it could have a significant impact
on the way in which societies and economies organise themselves.

In his influential book *The Wealth of
Networks*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks>,
for instance, Yochai Benkler
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler>identifies and describes
a new form of production that he sees emerging on
the Internet — what he calls “commons-based peer
production<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production>”.
This, he says, is creating a new Networked Information
Economy<http://www.slideshare.net/macloo/networked-information-economy-benkler>.

Former librarian and Belgian network theorist Michel
Bauwens<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens>goes so far as to
say that by enabling peer-to-peer (
P2P <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_peer-to-peer_processes>)
collaboration, the Internet has created a new model for the future
development of human society. In addition to peer production, he explained
to me in 2006<http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/p2p-blueprint-for-future.html>,
the network also encourages the creation of peer property (i.e. commonly
owned property), and peer governance (governance based on civil society
rather than representative democracy).

Moreover, what is striking about peer production is that it emerges and
operates outside traditional power structures and market systems. And when
those operating in this domain seek funding they increasingly turn not to
the established banking system, but to new P2P practices like crowdfunding
and social lending.

When in 2006 I asked Bauwens what the new world he envisages would look
like in practice he replied, “I see a P2P civilisation that would have to
be post-capitalist, in the sense that human survival cannot co-exist with a
system that destroys the biosphere; but it will nevertheless have a
thriving marketplace. At the core of such a society — where immaterial
production is the primary form — would be the production of value through
non-reciprocal peer production, most likely supported through a basic
income.”

Unrealistic and utopian?

So convinced was he of the potential of P2P that in 2005 Bauwens created
the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives <http://p2pfoundation.net/>.
The goal: to “research, document and promote peer-to-peer principles”

Critics dismiss Bauwens’ ideas as unrealistic and utopian, and indeed in
the eight years since I first spoke with him much has happened that might
seem to support the sceptics. Rather than being discredited by the 2008
financial crisis, for instance, traditional markets and neoliberalism have
tightened their grip on societies, in all parts of the world.

At the same time, the democratic potential and openness Bauwens sees as
characteristic of the network is being eroded in a number of ways. While
social networking platforms like Facebook enable the kind of sharing and
collaboration Bauwens sees lying at the heart of a P2P society, for
instance, there is a growing sense that these services are in fact
exploitative, not least because the significant value created by the users
of these services is being monetised not for the benefit of the users
themselves, but for the exclusive benefit of the large corporations that
own them.

We have also seen a huge growth in proprietary mobile devices, along with
the flood of apps needed to run on them — a development that caused
*Wired’s* former editor-in-chief Chris
Anderson<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Anderson_(writer)>to
conclude <http://www.wired.com/2010/08/ff_webrip> that we are witnessing a
dramatic move “from the wide-open Web to semi closed platforms”. And this
new paradigm, he added, simply “reflects the inevitable course of
capitalism”.

In other words, rather than challenging or side-lining the traditional
market and neoliberalism, the network seems destined to be appropriated by
it — a likelihood that for many was underlined by the recent striking
down<http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-net-neutrality-20140114-story.html#page=1>of
the US net neutrality regulations.

It would also appear that some of the open movements are gradually being
appropriated and/or subverted by commercial interests (e.g. the open
access<http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-state-of-open-access.html>and
open
educational resources movements).

While conceding that a capitalist version of P2P has begun to emerge,
Bauwens argues that this simply makes it all the more important to support
and promote social forms of P2P. And here, he suggests, the signs are
positive, with the number of free and open movements continuing to grow and
the P2P model bleeding out of the world of “immaterial production” to
encompass material production too — e.g. with the open
design<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_design>and open
hardware <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware> movements, a
development encouraged by the growing use of 3D
printers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing>.

Bauwens also points to a growth in mutualisation, and the emergence of new
practices based around the sharing of physical resources and equipment.

Interestingly, these latter developments are often less visible than one
might expect because much of what is happening in this area appears to be
taking place outside the view of mainstream media in the global north.

Finally, says Bauwens, the P2P movement, or commoning (as some prefer to
call it <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bollier>), is becoming
increasingly politicised. Amongst other things, this has seen the rise of
new political parties like the various Pirate
Parties<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party>.

Above all, Bauwens believes that the long-term success of P2P is assured
because its philosophy and practices are far more sustainable than the
current market-based system. “Today, we consider nature infinite and we
believe that infinite resources should be made scarce in order to protect
monopolistic players,” he says below. “Tomorrow, we need to consider nature
as a finite resource, and we should respect the abundance of nature and the
human spirit.”

Periphery to mainstream

And as the need for sustainability becomes ever more apparent, more people
will doubtless want to listen to what Bauwens has to say. Indeed, what
better sign that P2P could be about to move from the periphery to the
mainstream than an invitation Bauwens received last year from three
Ecuadorian governmental institutions, who asked him to lead a team tasked
with coming up with proposals for transitioning the country to a society
based on free and open knowledge.

The organisation overseeing the project is the FLOK Society (free, libre,
open knowledge). As “commoner” David Bollier <http://bollier.org/about>
explained<http://bollier.org/blog/bauwens-joins-ecuador-planning-commons-based-peer-production-economy>when
the project was announced, Bauwens’ team was asked to look at many
interrelated themes, “including open education; open innovation and
science; ‘arts and meaning-making activities’; open design commons;
distributed manufacturing; and sustainable agriculture; and open machining.”

Bollier added, “The research will also explore enabling legal and
institutional frameworks to support open productive capacities; new sorts
of open technical infrastructures and systems for privacy, security, data
ownership and digital rights; and ways to mutualise the physical
infrastructures of collective life and promote collaborative consumption.”

In other words, said Bollier, Ecuador “does not simply assume — as the
‘developed world’ does — that more iPhones and microwave ovens will bring
about prosperity, modernity and happiness.”

Rather it is looking for sustainable solutions that foster “social and
territorial equality, cohesion, and integration with diversity.”

The upshot: In April Bauwens’ team published a series of
proposals<http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Pl>intended to
transition Ecuador to what he calls a sustainable civic P2P
economy. And these proposals will be discussed at a summit to be held this
week in the capital of Ecuador (Quito <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quito>).

“As you can see from our proposals, we aim for a simultaneous
transformation of civil society, the market and public authorities,” says
Bauwens. “And we do this without inventing or imposing utopias, but by
extending the working prototypes from the commoners and peer producers
themselves.”

But Bauwens knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and he realises that he
has taken on a huge task, one fraught with difficulties. Even the process
of putting the proposals together has presented him and his team with
considerable challenges. Shortly after they arrived in Ecuador, for
instance, they were told that the project had been defunded (funding that
was fortunately later reinstated). And for the moment it remains unclear
whether many (or any) of the FLOK proposals will ever see the light of day.

Bauwens is nevertheless upbeat. Whatever the outcome in Ecuador, he says,
an important first stab has been made at creating a template for
transitioning a nation state from today’s broken model to a post-capitalist
social knowledge society.

“What we have now that we didn’t have before, regardless of implementation
in Ecuador, is the first global commons-oriented transition plan, and
several concrete legislative proposals,” he says. “They are far from
perfect, but they will be a reference that other locales, cities,
(bio)regions and states will be able to make their own adapted versions of
it.”

In the Q&A below Bauwens discusses the project in more detail, including
the background to it, and the challenges that he and the FLOK Society have
faced.

The interview begins

*RP:  We last spoke in 2006 when you discussed your ideas on a P2P
(peer-to-peer) society (which I think **David
Bollier*<http://www.bollier.org/>*
refers to as “commoning”). Briefly, what has been learned since then about
the opportunities and challenges of trying to create a P2P society, and how
have your thoughts on P2P changed/developed as a result?*

*MB:* At the time, P2P dynamics were mostly visible in the process of
“immaterial production”, i.e. productive communities that created commons
of knowledge and code. The trend has since embraced material production
itself, through open design <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_design> that
is linked to the production of open
hardware<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware>machinery.

Another trend is the mutualisation of physical resources. We've seen on the
one hand an explosion in the mutualisation of open workspaces
(hackerspaces<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace>,
fab labs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab>,
co-working<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking>)
and the explosion of the so-called sharing economy and collaborative
consumption.

This is of course linked to the emergence of distributed practices and
technologies for finance (crowd
funding<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding>,
social lending <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_lending>); and for
machinery itself (3D printing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing>and other forms of
distributed
manufacturing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_manufacturing>).
Hence the emergence and growth of P2P dynamics is now clearly linked to the
“distribution of everything”.

There is today no place we go where social P2P initiatives are not
developing and not exponentially growing. P2P is now a social fact.

Since the crisis of 2008, we are also seeing much more clearly the
political and economic dimension of P2P. There is now both a clearly
capitalist P2P sector (renting and working for free is now called sharing,
which is putting downward pressure on income levels) and a clearly social
one.  First of all, the generalised crisis of our economic system has
pushed more people to search for such practical alternatives. Second, most
P2P dynamics are clearly controlled by economic forces, i.e. the new
“netarchical” (hierarchy of the network) platforms.

Finally, we see the increasing politicisation of P2P, with the
emergence of Pirate
Parties <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party>, network parties (Partido
X in Spain) etc.

We have now to decide more clearly than before whether we want more
autonomous peer production, i.e. making sure that the domination of the
free social logic of permissionless aggregation is directly linked to the
capacity to generate self-managed livelihoods, or, if we are happy with a
system in which this value creation is controlled and exploited by platform
owners and other intermediaries.

The result of all of this is that my own thoughts are now more directly
political. We have developed concrete proposals and strategies to create
P2P-based counter-economies that are de-linked from the accumulation of
capital, but focused on cooperative accumulation and the autonomy of
commons production.

*RP: Indeed and last year you were **asked to lead a
team*<http://bollier.org/blog/bauwens-joins-ecuador-planning-commons-based-peer-production-economy>*
to come up with proposals to “remake the roots of Ecuador’s economy,
setting off a transition into a society of free and open knowledge”. As I
understand it, this would be based on the principles of open networks, peer
production and commoning. Can you say something about the project and what
you hope it will lead to? Has the Ecuadoran government itself commissioned
you, or a government or non-government agency in Ecuador? *

*MB:* The project, called FLOKSociety.org <http://floksociety.org/>, was
commissioned by three Ecuadorian governmental institutions, i.e. the
Coordinating
Ministry of Knowledge and Human Talent <http://www.conocimiento.gob.ec/>,
the SENESCYT <http://www.senescyt.gob.ec/web/guest> (Secretaría Nacional de
Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación) and the
IAEN<http://iaen.edu.ec/>(Instituto de Altos Estudios del Estado).

The legitimacy and logic of the project comes from the National Plan of
Ecuador<http://www.unosd.org/content/documents/96National%20Plan%20for%20Good%20Living%20Ecuador.pdf>,
which is centred around the concept of Good Living (Buen
Vivir<http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/buen-vivir-philosophy-south-america-eduardo-gudynas>),
which is a non-reductionist, non-exclusive material way to look at the
economy and social life, inspired by the traditional values of the
indigenous people of the Andes. The aim of FLOK is to add “Good Knowledge”
as an enabler and facilitator of the good life.

The important point to make is that it is impossible for countries and
people that are still in neo-colonial dependencies to evolve to more fair
societies without access to shareable knowledge. And this knowledge,
expressed in diverse commons that correspond to the different domains of
social life (education, science, agriculture, industry), cannot itself
thrive without also looking at both the material and immaterial conditions
that will enable their creation and expansion.

FLOK summit

*RP: To this end you have put together a transition plan. This includes **a
series of proposals*<http://bollier.org/blog/ecuador%E2%80%99s-pathbreaking-plan-commons-based-peer-production-update>*
(available **here* <https://floksociety.co-ment.com/text/>*), and a main
report (**here* <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan>*). I
assume your plan might or might not be taken up by Ecuador. What is the
procedure for taking it forward, and how optimistic are you that Ecuador
will embark on the transition you envisage?*

*MB:* The transition plan provides a framework for moving from an economy
founded on what we call “cognitive” and “netarchical” capitalism (based
respectively on the exploitation through IP rents or social media
platforms) to a “mature P2P-based civic economy”.

The logic here is that the dominant economic forms today are characterised
by a value crisis, one in which value is extracted but it doesn’t flow back
to the creators of the value. The idea is to transition to an economy in
which this value feedback loop is restored.

So about fifteen of our policy proposals apply this general idea to
specific domains, and suggest how open knowledge commons can be created and
expanded in these particular areas.

We published these proposals on April 1st in co-ment<http://www.co-ment.com/>,
an open source software that allows people to comment on specific concepts,
phrases or paragraphs.

This week (May 27th to 30th) the crucial FLOK
summit<http://cumbredelbuenconocer.ec/>is taking place to discuss the
proposals. This will bring together
government institutions, social movement advocates, and experts, from both
Ecuador and abroad.

The idea is to devote three days to reaching a consensus amongst these
different groups, and then try and get agreement with the governmental
institutions able to carry out the proposals.

So there will be two filters: the summit itself, and then the subsequent
follow-up, which will clearly face opposition from different interests.

This is not an easy project, since it is not possible to achieve all this
by decree.

*RP: Earlier this year you made a series of
**videos*<http://bollier.org/blog/flok-society-vision-post-capitalist-economy>*
discussing the issues arising from what you are trying to do —  which is
essentially to create “a post-capitalist social knowledge society”, or
“open commons-based knowledge society”. In one video you discuss three
different value regimes, and I note you referred to these in your last
answer — i.e. cognitive capitalism, netarchical capitalism and a civic P2P
economy. Can you say a little more about how these three different regimes
differ and why in your view P2P is a better approach than the other two?*

*MB:* I define cognitive capitalism as a regime in which value is generated
through a combination of rent extraction from the control of intellectual
property and the control of global production networks, and expressed in
terms of monetisation.

What we have learned is that the democratisation of networks, which also
provides a new means of production and value distribution, means that this
type of value extraction is harder and harder to achieve, and it can only
be maintained either by increased legal suppression (which erodes
legitimacy) and outright technological sabotage
(DRM<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management>).
Both of these strategies are not sustainable in the long term.

What we have also learned is that the network has caused a new model to
emerge, one adapted to the P2P age, and which I call netarchical
capitalism, i.e. “the hierarchy of the network”. In this model, we see the
direct exploitation of human cooperation by means of proprietary platforms
that both enable and exploit human cooperation. Crucially, while their
value is derived from our communication, sharing and cooperation (an empty
platform has no value), and on the use value that we are exponentially
creating (Google, Facebook don’t produce the content, we do), the exchange
value is exclusively extracted by the platform owners. This is
unsustainable because it is easy to see that a regime in which the creators
of the value get no income at all from their creation is not workable in
the long; and so it poses problems for capitalism. After all, who is going
to buy goods if they have no income?

So the key issue is: how do we recreate the value loop between creation,
distribution, and income? The answer for me is the creation of a mature P2P
civic economy that combines open contributory communities, ethical
entrepreneurial coalitions able to create livelihoods for the commoners,
and for-benefit institutions that can “enable and empower the
infrastructure of cooperation”.

Think of the core model of our economy as the Linux economy writ large, but
one in which the enterprises are actually in the hands of the value
creators themselves. Imagine this micro-economic model on the macro scale
of a whole society. Civil society becomes a series of commonses with
citizens as contributors; the shareholding market becomes an ethical
stakeholder marketplace; and the state becomes a partner state, which
“enables and empowers social production” through the commonication of
public services and public-commons partnerships.

Challenges and distrust

*RP: As you indicated earlier, it is not an easy project that you have
embarked on in Ecuador, particularly as it is an attempt to intervene at
the level of a nation state. Gordon Cook has
**said*<http://www.cookreport.com/newsletter-sp-542240406/current-issues/287-cook-report-for-may-june-2014>*
of the project: “it barely got off the ground before it began to crash into
some of the anticipated obstacles.” Can you say something about these
obstacles and how you have been overcoming them?*

*MB:* It is true that the project started with quite negative auspices. It
became the victim of internal factional struggles within the government,
for instance, and was even defunded for a time after we arrived; the
institutions failed to pay our wages for nearly three months, which was a
serious issue for the kind of precarious scholar-activists that make up the
research team.

However, in March (when one of the sides in the dispute lost, i.e. the
initial sponsor Carlos
Prieto<http://www.elciudadano.gob.ec/new-left-review-se-presento-en-ecuador/>,
rector of the IAEN), we got renewed commitment from the other two
institutions. Since then political support has increased, and the summit is
about to get underway.

As for Gordon, he became a victim of what we will politely call a series of
misinterpreted engagements for the funding of his participation, and it is
entirely understandable that he has become critical of the process.

The truth is that the project was hugely contradictory in many different
ways, but this is the reality of the political world everywhere, not just
in Ecuador.

Indeed, the Ecuadorian government is itself engaged in sometimes
contradictory policies and is perceived by civil society to have abandoned
many of the early ideas of the civic movement that brought it to power. So,
in our attempts at broader participation we have been stifled by the
distrust many civic activists have for the government, and the sincerity of
our project has been doubted.

Additionally, social P2P dynamics, which of course exist as in many other
countries, are not particularly developed in their modern, digitally
empowered forms in Ecuador. It has also not helped that the management of
the project has been such that the research team has not been able to
directly connect with the political leaders in order to test their real
engagement. This has been hugely frustrating.

On the positive side, we have been entirely free to conduct our research
and formulate our proposals, and it is hard not to believe that the level
of funding the project has received reflects a certain degree of
commitment.

So the summit is back on track, and we have received renewed commitments.
Clearly, however, the proof of the pudding will be in the summit and its
aftermath.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it has always been my conviction that the
formulation of the first ever integrated Commons Transition Plan (which
your readers will find here <http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan>)
legitimised by a nation-state, takes the P2P and commons movement to a
higher geopolitical plane. As such, it can be seen as part of the global
maturation of the P2P/commons approach, even if it turns out not to work
entirely in Ecuador itself.

*RP: I believe that one of the issues that has arisen in putting together
the FLOK proposals is that Ecuadorians who live in rural areas are
concerned that a system based on sharing could see their traditional
knowledge appropriated by private interests. Can you say something about
this fear and how you believe your plan can address such concerns?*

*MB:* As you are aware, traditional communities have suffered from
systematic biopiracy
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/biopiracy>over the last few
decades, with western scientists studying their botanical
knowledge, extracting patentable scientific results from it, and then
commercialising it in the West.

So fully shareable licenses like the GPL would keep the knowledge in a
commons, but would still allow full commercialisation without material
benefits flowing back to Ecuador. So what we are proposing is a discussion
about a new type of licensing, which we call Commons-Based Reciprocity
Licensing <http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License>. This idea was
first pioneered with the Peer Production License as conceived by Dmytri
Kleiner <http://www.dmytri.info/>.

Such licences would be designed for a particular usage, say biodiversity
research in a series of traditional communities. It allows for free sharing
non-commercially, commercial use by not-for-profit entities, and even
caters for for-profit entities who contribute back. Importantly, it creates
a frontier for for-profits who do not contribute back, and asks them to
pay.

What is key here is not just the potential financial flow, but to introduce
the principle of reciprocity in the marketplace, thereby creating an
ethical economy. The idea is that traditional communities can create their
own ethical vehicles, and create an economy from which they can also
benefit, and under their control.

This concept is beginning to get attention from open machining communities.
However, the debate in Ecuador is only starting. Paradoxically, traditional
communities are today either looking for traditional IP protection, which
doesn't really work for them, or for no-sharing options.

So we really need to develop intermediary ethical solutions for them that
can benefit them while also putting them in the driving seat.

Fundamental reversal of our civilisation

*RP: In today’s global economy, where practically everyone and everything
seems to be interconnected and subject to the rules of neoliberalism and
the market, is it really possible for a country like Ecuador to go off in
such a different direction on its own? *

*MB:* A full transition is indeed probably a global affair, but the
micro-transitions need to happen at the grassroots, and a progressive
government would be able to create exemplary policies and projects that
show the way.

Ecuador is in a precarious neo-colonial predicament and subject to the
pressures of the global market and the internal social groups that are
aligned with it. There are clear signs that since 2010 the Ecuadorian
government has moved away from the original radical ideas expressed in the
Constitution and the National Plan, as we hear from nearly every single
civic movement that we've spoken with.

The move for a social knowledge economy is of strategic importance to
de-colonialise Ecuador but this doesn't mean it will actually happen.
However, the progressive forces have not disappeared entirely from the
government institutions.

As such, it is really difficult to predict how successful this project will
be. But as I say, given the investment the government has made in the
process we believe there will be some progress. My personal view is that
the combination of our political and theoretical achievements, and the
existence of the policy papers, means that even with moderate progress in
the laws and on the ground, we can be happy that we will have made a
difference.

So most likely the local situation will turn out to be a hybrid mix of
acceptance and refusal of our proposals, and most certainly the situation
is not mature enough to accept the underlying logic of our Commons
Transition Plan *in toto*.

In other words, the publication and the dialogue about the plan itself, and
some concrete actions, legislative frameworks, and pilot projects, are the
best we can hope for. What this will do is give real legitimacy to our
approach and move the commons transition to the geo-political stage. Can we
hope for more?

Personally, I believe that even if only 20% of our proposals are retained
for action, I think we can consider it a relative success. This is the very
first time such an even partial transition will have happened at the scale
of the nation and, as I see it, it gives legitimacy to a whole new set of
ideas about societal transition. So I believe it is worthy of our
engagement.

We have to accept that the realities of power politics are incompatible
with the expectations of a clean process for such a fundamental policy
change. But we hope that some essential proposals of the project will make
a difference, both for the people of Ecuador and all those that are
watching the project.

For the future though, I have to say I seriously question the idea of
trying to “hack a society” which was the initial philosophy of the project
and of the people who hired us. You can't hack a society, since a society
is not an executable program. Political change needs a social and political
basis, and it was very weak from the start in this case.

This is why I believe that future projects should first focus on the lower
levels of political organisation, such as cities and regions, where
politics is closer to the needs of the population. History though, is
always full of surprises, and bold gambles can yield results. So FLOK may
yet surprise the sceptics.

*RP: If Ecuador did adopt your plan (or a significant part of it), what in
your view would be the implications, for Ecuador, for other countries, and
for the various free and open movements? What would be the implications if
none of it were adopted?*

*MB:* As I say, at this stage I see only the possibility of a few legal
advances and some pilot projects as the best case scenario. These, however,
would be important seeds for Ecuador, and would give extra credibility to
our effort.

I realise it may surprise you to hear me say it, but I don't see this as
crucial. I say this because, we already have thousands of projects in the
world that are engaged in peer production and commons transitions, and this
deep trend is not going to change. The efforts to change the social and
economic logic will go on with or without Ecuador.

As I noted, what we have now that we didn’t have before, regardless of
implementation in Ecuador, is the first global commons-oriented transition
plan, and several concrete legislative proposals. They are far from
perfect, but they will be a reference that other locales, cities,
(bio)regions and states will be able to make their own adapted versions of
it.

In the meantime, we have to continue the grassroots transformation and
rebuild commons-oriented coalitions at every level, local, regional,
national, global. This will take time, but since infinite growth is not
possible in a finite economy, some type of transition is inevitable. Let’s
just hope it will be for the benefit of the commoners and the majority of
the world population.

Essentially, we need to build the seed forms of the new counter-economy,
and the social movement that can defend, facilitate and expand it. Every
political and policy expression of this is a bonus.

As for the endgame, you guessed correctly. What distinguishes the effort of
the P2P Foundation, and many of the FLOK researchers, is that we’re not
just in the business of adding some commons and P2P dynamics to the
existing capitalist framework, but aiming at a profound “phase transition”.

To work for a sustainable society and economy is absolutely crucial for the
future of humanity, and while we respect the freedoms of people to engage
in market dynamics for the allocation of rival goods, we cannot afford a
system of infinite growth and scarcity engineering, which is what
capitalism is.

In other words, today, we consider nature infinite and we believe that
infinite resources should be made scarce in order to protect monopolistic
players; tomorrow, we need to consider nature as a finite resource, and we
should respect the abundance of nature and the human spirit.

So our endgame is to achieve that fundamental reversal of our civilisation,
nothing less. As you can see from our proposals, we aim for a simultaneous
transformation of civil society, the market and public authorities. And we
do this without inventing or imposing utopias, but by extending the working
prototypes from the commoners and peer producers themselves.

*RP: Thanks for speaking with me. Good luck with the summit.*

-- 
*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:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
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