[P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] new text: Proposed_Strategy_for_the_Commons_Movement_in_2015

Mon Aug 31 15:01:37 CEST 2015

<g>, can't remember where I saw it, but it resonated ..

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 7:54 PM, Lynn Foster <foster.j.lynn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I liked the phrase "over-developed world" quite a lot.  Good to get these
> useful descriptive phrases out there.
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
>> thanks for considering these proposals:
>>
>> also via
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Proposed_Strategy_for_the_Commons_Movement_in_2015
>> and next week on the blog:
>>
>> Michel Bauwens, Galway, August 31, 2015:
>>
>> "What do we need to work on NOW ?
>>
>> We are definitely going to a period of dislocation in 2015. The Greek
>> debacle has shown the difficulty of any strategy based on national
>> sovereignty and the end of political democracy for European nations ; the
>> difficulties in China , Brazil and elswhere show the period of high growth
>> for emerging economies has come to an end; and the success of candidates
>> like Donald Trump, which obtains 40% approval rating by promising to deport
>> fifteen million people, shows the potential return of barbarism in the
>> heart of the over-developed world.
>>
>> Do we have any realistic perspective at change right now ? In the current
>> conjuncture, there are still mass political mobilizations that seem to have
>> potential, and we are thinking here about the emergence of social justice
>> candidates in Spain (En Comu, Podemos), Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the
>> U.S. Our CommonsTransition.org initiative, led by Stacco Troncoso, aims at
>> bringing commons and peer production alternatives to these movements, so as
>> to avoid too strong focuses on statist solutions. However, the evolution in
>> Greece should of course caution to any overt optimism, for example at the
>> level of the real openness of such movements for commons and civic
>> alternatives, as well as their true willingness to challenge the status quo.
>>
>> But I think the more long-term focus is to work on the civic-economic
>> front, i.e. building alternative new modes of productions, new relations of
>> production, and new property and governance models, right now, i.e. to
>> 'hurry slowly' in rebuilding a true alternative base for different
>> political and civic mobilizations.
>>
>> I have discussed elsewhere our political proposals , i.e. our proposals
>> for the re-organization of emancipatory politics around the commons,
>> through Assemblies and Chambers of the Commons, and our wish to see Commons
>> Transition Circles.
>>
>> Here I would like to focus on the economic proposals. How do we create a
>> new commons-oriented social fabric around the creation of livelihoods ?
>>
>> Three strategies come to mind:
>>
>>    - a first level is the work that we need to do to create
>>    commons-centric entrepreneurial models, based or inspired by open
>>    cooperativism, i.e. models in which the commoners co-own and co-govern
>>    entrepreneurial forms that co-create commons. Come to mind the work of
>>    lasindias.com, a more collectivist form; the work of Enspiral, a
>>    coalition of 250+ social entrepreneurs working with the Loomio open source
>>    platform for democratic decision-making and the co-budget enterpreneurial
>>    commons for re-investement; and the Ethos Foundation led by Robert Pye, who
>>    is experimenting with fair forms of equity
>>
>>
>>    - the second level of work is to work on territirial economic
>>    eco-systems in which the flows of commons-created value becomes more
>>    integrated ; indeed, even as we are now able to return to more crafts-like
>>    form of ownership of the means of production, thanks to distributed
>>    manufacturing, the power of control still lies in the broader systems, not
>>    just in the mere ownership of 3D printing machines and microfactories; so
>>    the efforts like the one of Stephanie Rearick and team in the Mutual Aid
>>    Network in Madison, Wisconsin; mapping efforts like encommuns.org in
>>    Lille, and initiative like SolidarityNYC are very important at this state ;
>>    virtual efforts at more global organizing like the FairCoop project are
>>    also important.
>>
>>
>>    - the third level of work, where we still see very little happening,
>>    as far as I know, is at the level of platforms that would challenge the
>>    ownership, control and value extraction models of netarchical capitalism
>>    (Uber, AirBnB, Facebook) ; this is the necessary work of the creation of
>>    platform cooperatives, and the conference organized by Trebor Scholz and
>>    Nathan Schneider in New York in November, will be a good start to evaluate
>>    the state of the art.
>>
>>
>> None of these three strategies, all of which have started but are very
>> emergent, will solve urgent crisis, but they will set the stage for a more
>> broader transition later on. I am personally convinced that progressive
>> strategies for resistance and change, like the ones we saw in Greece, that
>> have no serious commons component, are in a great danger of failure ; and
>> we know that neoliberal forces will use nominal commons strategies in their
>> strategy to destroy the solidarity mechanisms of the welfare state
>>
>> In our vision, i.e. the integration of the economic work of peer
>> production, outlined just above, and the broader work of social and
>> political re-organization around commons-centric institutions, which will
>> set the stage for a rebirth of an offensive social and political movement
>> that will have a good chance to promote a phase transition to a
>> commons-centric political, social and economic society."
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
>> http://commonstransition.org
>>
>> 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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>>
>
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>

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

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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