[P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] You Talk About the Collapse of Western Civilisation as If It Would be a Bad Thing

Fri Jul 1 16:38:02 CEST 2016

Is this what you mean Peter: 

http://www.commonssense.it/emend/european-charter-of-the-commons-eng/

We did indeed start to compile a draft text and discussion material here: 
https://globalcommonscharter.titanpad.com/1

This is globally open to anyone who like to contribute to the wiki-writing (ideally multi-lingual) process. 

Next monday we will have a workgroup meeting over skype to discuss core issues and before that we will try to send around an appealing invitation. However whoever feels to join please do so without waiting invite; this as an totally open peer to peer commoning process;  

note in your agenda that we meet next Monday, at 16:00 UK Time, on Skype. 

My skype ID is orsan1234 if you add me and call (or Ellen, or Anna) you can join the call. 

Best, 

Orsan

> On 1 July 2016 at 15:49, peter waterman <peterwaterman1936 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Orsan
> 
> I have an idea there is some kind of Charter of the Commons online somewhere. I'll try to find it. But if I can't, why don't you draft one.
> 
> Peter W
> Charter Lover
> 
>> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 1:11 PM, Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> What needed is a commons program designed and carried out by the emancipatory forces struggling to unite in the global south (transnationally located in east-west-north-south). 
>> 
>> Inter-networks of local, national and global communities needs to form defacto global 'unState'; based on self-organized and direct-democratic economic, cultural, decision making, and execution bodies. 
>> 
>> Wsf can play a crucial role, as well as a most radical commons charter (a global Magna Charta) movement demanding end of domination of elite-ruling classes, their yoke on all the commons, means of production, culture, and sources of social power. 
>> 
>> ... 
>> Orsan 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 01 Jul 2016, at 13:01, Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I recently shared a draft translation of Sultan-galiev's ~1929 article in which he described the nature of slaver-master relationship build consciously by the West towards the East during the colonial period. 
>>> 
>>> In the so called post-colonial era however, as middle classes has become skeleton for ruling power structures within the Western stable capitalist Nation-states (which are  clonned in the periphery) European and broader Western consumer-worker aristocracy of the past did become center of gravity in the new post-colonial imperial value extraction, accumulation by exploitation. It's asthetic, individualizm, and economics has spread by clonned of nation state structures and given the legitimacy of all mass killings, wars, genocides in the service of capitalist accumulation at the world level... We experienced in the 20 and 21cc transnationalization of production, classes, and the state system out of which global south - global north framework emerged. West and East expanded all over the world so to say. 
>>> 
>>> In case Europe, and the West collapse and the center of gravity of the Global North's imperialism over the global south things can even go worst. So for the sake of global emancipation and liberation of humanity what needs to fall is, with its translocal and transnational structures, the entire rule of the global north over the global south. 
>>> 
>>> Orsan
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On 30 Jun 2016, at 14:04, Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Agree with your questioning and solutioning. :) 
>>>> 
>>>> I have a different set of networked and self-organized 'unstate' 'uninstitutions' as part of translocally transnationally forging of rebuildng-struggle but rest sounds good to me. 
>>>> 
>>>> Orsan
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On 24 Jun 2016, at 21:59, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> interesting, here are some questions of my own:
>>>>> 
>>>>> * would a more neoliberal, anti-workers EU, be better for African nations .. is the collapse of Greece and all its human costs, good for the majority of the African population
>>>>> 
>>>>> * what is the evidence that European neoliberal oligarchies, and their terms of trade, would be more friendly towards these populations without the EU and the countervailing power of European social movements ?
>>>>> 
>>>>> * what is the evidence that new imperial forces, if the power of Europe would collapse, would be more friendlier (in the beginning, there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm of the African elite towards China, is that still the case ?)
>>>>> 
>>>>> My own inkling would be to answer in a negative way, i.e. a further neoliberalisation of Europe would not be a good thing for anyone
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nevertheless, I am not very optimistic about the attempt by Varoufakis and DIEM, althought it probably must be tried, as it would require a wholesale progressive electoral revoluton in the whole of Europe, while a left-right polarisation seems so much more likely .. Second, if such a mobilisation was the case, wouldn't it be better to recreate European and other multilaterial structures, on a wholly different footing as the current neoliberal institutions ? (and agreeing with the author, such a re-organization would seek fair trade, not unfair free trade)
>>>>> 
>>>>> my own bias would be to work at the transnational level, using direct links between European, African and other populations, see: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Why_the_P2P_and_Commons_Movement_Must_Act_Trans-Locally_and_Trans-Nationally
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Orsan Senalp <orsan1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> From: Toussaint Losier <toussaint.losier at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> Date: 24 Jun 2016 16:24:54 GMT+2
>>>>>>> To: Debate is a listserve that attempts to promoteinformation and analyses of interest to the independent left in South andSouthern Africa <debate-list at fahamu.org>
>>>>>>> Subject: [Debate-List] You Talk About the Collapse of Western Civilisation as If It Would be a Bad Thing
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> written prior to today's referendum results ...
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> June 23, 2016
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> You Talk About the Collapse of Western Civilisation as If It Would be a Bad Thing
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> by Kalundi Serumaga
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Former Greek Finance Minister Yiannis Varoufakis’ crusade to help save the 60 year old European Union from a growing potential disintegration is intriguing. He, and the other activists talk ultimately about the collapse of Western civilization, and more so as if it would necessarily be a bad thing. Some of us –for whom the world is a catastrophe already-, are not so sure.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Coming from a far left perspective, Dr Varoufakis argues that the purpose of the campaign is to prevent the emergence of something worse. That such a rescue mission will inevitably also bolster the economic system upon which the EU rests, not to mention many of the super-rich who derive disproportionate benefits from it, is regarded as a necessary evil.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> This could be a mistake.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Certainly, an unraveling of the EU, even partially, would be momentous, particularly in terms of the economic impact on lives and communities there. Those arguing for its preservation –especially those on the Left of the political spectrum- are probably also correct about a resultant vastly increased risk of a return to the earlier pan-European penchant for large-scale war and extreme intolerance as methods of managing political problems.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> However, if the matter of the future of the EU continues be treated as a matter for its member states and their citizens alone, then these advocates of progress will find they have become the advocates of the very evils they seek to strike down. Dr Varoufakis may well find himself committing the same kind of betrayal of which he accuses his former boss (Greek Prime Minister) Alex Tsipiras: sacrificing a pig or two so the big bad corporate wolf does not blow the whole house down.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Varoufakis’ country was able to freely elect a government of its own choice, to speak on its behalf against the new economic regime. By contrast, much of the same measures, when brought to Africa by the same EU and its other partners, were agreed to by stealth with the resident dictator/election cheat running the state, and then imposed, without much debate, if any, on the population. What is more, some of these measures have now been in effect for so long (over twenty years in Uganda, where I come from), that the have become the norm for many in the population, intelligentsia included.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The EU is a global power in its own right. It is the major trading partner for a whole host of states, many of which were created by European countries during their empire phase. The vast majority of them, now collected in the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) also form the bulk of the Least Developed Nations list.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The family of trade agreements between the EU and the ACP region are the direct descendants of trade pacts made between then EU’s own ancestor known as the European Commission, and the various fledgling regional trade blocs throughout the South. In 1974, a major sit-down was held where all such blocs were grouped as the ACP region, and all such Agreements became the Lome’ Convention.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Renamed today as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) their primary features is a lopsided arrangement greatly favouring the EU, particularly through preserving European agricultural subsidies while eliminating ACP ones, and also forcing open the ACP agricultural sector to foreign domination, and commodity dumping.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> “These trade and investment agreements serve the interests of multinationals and undermine the legal sovereignty of participating countries. Not only do EPAs hinder the development of many Africans, they lead to growing inequality, violence and migration.” Ugandan trade activist Yash Tandon, author of Trade is War, explains.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Today, the seventy-nine member ACP is locked into a 2000-2020 EPA with the EU, and thousands of young African economic migrants from bankrupted farming and fishing families are making the dangerous crossing to try and enter the Eurozone.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> While it is clear that something has fallen apart, this side of the matter seems wholly absent from the European parties on all sides of the ongoing debate. They talk about the EU’s economic crisis, and the African migrant crisis, as if they are two completely unrelated things.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Western economic policy has never just been a matter of skill. It has always been a matter of power. The current global world order was created out of a half-millennial process of the powerful imposing their vision of how things should be, on the weak.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> If it were simply a question of implementing knowledge then perhaps Queen Elisabeth would not have had to ask the Professors at LSE why none of them saw the crash coming.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> This is how unequal “trade” (for lack of a more precise word) comes in to help resolve some of the glaring contradictions contained within Western economic assumptions: From where will new actual value be created to pay off the ever-lengthening line of credit being extended to the general population? Is it reasonable for societies with massively shrinking manufacturing bases to expect to live to the same, or even better, material standards that existed before the contraction? If your economies are not producing as much new actual value as they did a few generations ago, then what exactly is keeping your currencies “strong”?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Any African wishing to amuse a group of western thinker-activists,  could try explaining to them how what appears as trade on their end of the contract looks very much like sophisticated looting on the African/ACP end. This assertion is often met with derision. Nevertheless, there is a lot of data and anecdote now available to show how the gap between what Western economies actually make, and what they actually spend, is bridged by the relentless forcing down of the prices of the basic commodities and labour that they are able to extract from the “developing” world.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Pro-EU activists must ask themselves: who bears the real cost of keeping the European Union together?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The EU’s EPAs EU backstop a whole pattern of economic relations planted through colonial violence. Large areas of fertile ACP land are still given over to the production of crops consumed largely in the west, at prices fixed in their commodity exchanges.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> In that context, the EU members, individually and collectively, have done much to shape the contemporary economic landscape in Africa and elsewhere. And guess what? Much of it has been in the form of the very “austerity” economic policies that Varoufakis has heroically battled against both as Finance minister, and after, as Europeans began discovering what Africans have been living with for a generation.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The EU is a vast political safety device formed after the 1939-1945 war that Europeans started. It is based on the notion that it may be harder to start a fight with someone with whom you are locked in a tight embrace. What began as an initiative toward integrated trade in certain key commodities has grown in to complex political and economic system taking in much of the wealthier parts of the European landmass.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> In practical terms, this means a greater likelihood of western commercial interests driving war in the oilfields of the Middle East, rather than another one over the vast mineral wealth of the Alsace-Lorraine region . It is the ultimate outsourcing.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The campaign argues for keeping the EU together, but while fundamentally reforming it so that its bureaucracy becomes more democratically accountable to its populations, particularly in economic affairs.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> But to us non-Europeans, it would appear that the campaigners’ real complaint is that social democratic compact between the rich and the  poor countries and economic social classes that was ruptured with the onset of austerity measures across Europe following the Western 2008 banking collapse, is not being respected.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Dr Varoufakis accuses the wealthy European economic classes of in fact using the economic crisis as an opportunity to abandon the decades-old social democratic obligations under the cover of a fictitious “need” for austerity programmes.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> As an African living within an EPA, I believe that no European discussion on how best to recover their economic prosperity, and what then to do with it, will be legitimate and ultimately productive, unless Europeans (and in particular, the former colonial powers in western Europe) also address the basis upon which they acquired and maintain that prosperity in the first place.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Trade indeed is still war, and a direct continuation of the “first real First World War” (1520-1550) when the then European powers fought each other to grab the Americas and first real “Second World War”, when even more European powers scrambled against each other and Asians and Africans for more real estate. We saw it again during the 1947-1990 “Cold War”, which, apart from serving as an excuse to impede the many struggles for progress and emancipation, was anything but “Cold” in the African and Asian theatre.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> For the ACP region, with ongoing conflicts over arable land and “blood minerals” being fuelled by Western demand and implemented by western-friendly warlords (sometimes masquerading as heads of state), “there is no past, everything is still happening” to quote native Australian Elder Banjo Clarke.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Short of such a fuller discussion, the “save the EU” campaign will risk looking more like an attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, instead of first asking him to think about why, given his fragility, he decided to perch himself so high up on a wall to begin with. Africa, along with the entire ACP region will be expected to retain their “proper” place as a poorer trading partner, so as to help guarantee a certain standard of living for even the poorest
>>>>>>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
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