[P2P-F] the two economic-centric priorities for commoners right now

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Marty,

apologies, I have read your two contributions today, 12 days late because
of email overload, but found them very interesting,

I take it in as great info and experience on your part, but don't have a
specific reaction to challenge your points,

Michel

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 7:20 AM, Marty Heyman <marty.heyman at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Michel,
>
> As you rightly point out, I am new to this P2P space with you all. I come
> from a different vocabulary and point of starting perspective and some of
> your language causes me to stumble and lurch a bit.
>
> I agree that we need to maximize the number of persons and teams working
> on the material and immaterial “Resources” that would contribute to the
> various “Commons” (plural) of interest. I also agree we have much work to
> do to actualize the link between the voluntary (unpaid, uncorked)
> contributions to various Bazaars and the production of the means of
> sustenance (contributions to livelihood). My personal work and that in
> which I am involved with GEO is pretty direct as we are VERY focused on
> bringing help to communities in precarity or outright poverty.
>
> I don’t respond so well to the “self-reproduction of the commoners” point
> as that is an educational and personal-transformational issue. You can
> teach someone to fish and they can feed their family and neighbors. It is a
> bigger problem to teach them to teach others to fish and to reach out for
> others to teach (self-reproduction of the “communing urge” as it were). We
> find this secondary step quite problematic even after we get buy-in on the
> first step.
>
> As an Open Source Software company, we save discarded programmers of note
> when we have the surplus cash-flow to make that possible. The number
> discarded by the big sponsors, annually, as they stumble and bumble from
> one “objective” to the next is much larger than we can afford to rectify.
> We concentrate on a few leaders in a very specialized niche (several in the
> past couple of years) and mourn for all those we know who we simply can’t
> help. Your point is philosophically reasonable but often, it is all we can
> do to place good people in wildly inappropriate positions for lack of
> opportunities to provide for their “means of sustenance” any other way.
>
> As a member of GEO, I DO get to see many of the folks you point to and the
> energy and commitment is always an inspiration. We are particularly focused
> this past year or so on the Federation of co-operative ventures (commons’s
> in the vocabulary I see in places in Europe) to get the solidarity economic
> benefits of tighter value-flows, increased value velocities and the like.
> Some of us are convinced that alternative currencies are a critical
> foundation piece. Others are more focused on democratic solidarity
> construction in “the community.” There’s a lot of room to make a difference.
>
> —
> Marty Heyman
> 510-290-6484
>
> On Jul 27, 2015, at 3:17 AM, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 2:12 PM
> Subject: Re: Continuing to fill in the context
>
>
> I'll share my perspective on this, which may not be that of the others
> copied in,
>
> my first inclination today is that the focus needs to be on constructing
> commons, immaterial and material, everywhere we can, and to create vehicles
> so that this allows the creation of livelihoods and the self-reproduction
> of the commoners. While the struggle between labor and capital remains a
> reality as long as the current political economy dominates, I think
> personally that all struggles that focus on bringing more labor into
> subordinate working relations in view of redistribution, are no longer
> operative, and that we must focus on counter-economic networks, with
> decommodified cooperative labor co-constructing commons. This means, as
> first suggested by Pat Conaty on this list, to create a in-between between
> the commons and capital, i.e. to focus on cooperative accumulation. But
> that cooperative accumulation can no longer be merely a coop that competes
> on the capitalist marketplace, but a coop that co-produces commons, and
> works with non-capitalist capital in a non-capitalist market. This means
> concretely working on the creation of entrepreneurial coalitions that are
> co-dependent and organized around the commons that they are co-creating.
>
> Concretely, at the territorial level, this looks like what Stephanie
> Rearick is doing in Madison,
> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/100-women-who-are-co-creating-the-p2p-society-stephanie-rearick-of-the-mutual-aid-network/2015/07/18,
> or what Marion Rousseaux is trying to do in Lille with Encommuns.org
> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/100-women-who-are-co-creating-the-p2p-society-marion-rousseaux-on-the-commons-in-lille-france/2015/07/25,
> i.e. create interlocking value chains for the cooperative commonwealth, at
> the local or the translocal level.
>
> At the more 'trans-national' level, this means a direct focus on the
> creation of phyles, i.e. ethical, 'generative' business networks that
> sustain a community and its commons. This means projects like
> lasindias.net, enspiral, ethos, and others. (marty, you'll find
> descriptions of all those in the p2pfoundation.net wiki, via the search
> box on the top right)
>
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Marty Heyman <marty.heyman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi to the others on the list.
>>
>> My quibble, such as it is, is that Capital (Finance) pervades and largely
>> controls … especially “the conversation.” A program to reverse its
>> enclosures of the economic, political, and social spheres would appear to
>> need a core of equally committed and motivated strategists with the
>> resources to create a contrary “movement” to mobilize wealth, power, and
>> public sentiment. Absent the “Davos” of anti-Capitalism (most importantly
>> it’s “core team”), I don’t know how to unseat them and their “system.”
>>
>> We need to continue to educate me on the philosophical underpinnings of
>> terms like “the common good”. Language that feels like it pits “the common
>> good” against “the private good” most broadly seem overly broad. Certainly
>> the “common good” is the aggregate of the “private good”(s) of some
>> collection of persons (and institutions). The usage here seems to want to
>> exclude the “private good” of Finance, Capital, and Corrupt Politics …but
>> such distinctions are hard to draw accurately as the Commons (Co-operative)
>> and Solidarity movements rely heavily on Capital from somewhere for seed
>> money.
>>
>> Finally, not all the “Externalities” lead to desertification and useless
>> waste. Vast bodies of code, design, and  other technological artifacts are
>> abandoned by Capital and Finance to our “Digital Commons”. I often think of
>> Open Source Software as much a vast scrap-heap of discarded and abandoned
>> code as I do a bazaar or innovation. There is too much redundant,
>> self-gratifying “Innovation” and not enough refinement of the material
>> already just sitting there waiting to be improved. I think, ultimately, we
>> are seeing much the same with agricultural lands in climate zones
>> considered non-optimal for industrial agriculture. Opportunities abound for
>> self-directed, democratically governed initiatives and ventures IMHO.
>>
>> —
>> Marty Heyman
>> 510-290-6484
>>
>
>


-- 
Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org


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