[P2P-F] Fwd: [CommonGood] political strategy

Fri Jun 30 12:54:45 CEST 2017

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Birgit Daiber <bir.dai at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 12:08 PM
Subject: [CommonGood] political strategy
To: "commongood at listi.jpberlin.de" <commongood at listi.jpberlin.de>

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I had the opportunity to participate in a very inspiring meeting of the
Transform-Europe-Working Group on Commons.

Together with Fundació Alternativa (Barcelona) the Working Group organised
a preparatory meeting in Barcelona on June 16 to discuss political
strategies for the implementation of „Commons as an new political practice
and concept to decommodify and transform society“.

The participants decided to concentrate on the political and strategic
context of Commons as a complex political vision for the transformation of
society. The working group will address two essential dimensions:

1)   Politics, institutions and Common

2)   Property, right of use and Common

The working group will prepare a paper and present it to the Conference the
European Left is organising on Nov. 10/11 in Marseille. The aim is to
motivate EL to take a clear standpoint on Commons in their programme for
the next European elections. Furthermore a kind of checklist for candidates
could be developed to test how far they respond to the needs of the
Commons-communities.

In their initial text for the Barcelona-meeting the working group pointed
out:

 *“Commons as political subject*

In recent times, we have been witnessing a redefinition of the battle
against privatization and the dismantling of the public sector, ranging
from the re-municipalisation of water, transport, education and energy, to
the defence of the territory against environmental degradation.

This battle is premised on our ability to shed light on the greed of
neoliberalism and on its depredation of everything that has been
collectively built or defended up until today and considered of public
interest to our countries.

This is the reason why in Italy, just as in Cochabamba and Ireland, the
defence of public water has become a symbol of revolt against the interests
of multinationals and financial speculation, bringing forward a notion that
is becoming increasingly widespread: the notion of the commons.

Over and above its historical definition and the pre-modern laws that
recognized its utility and importance, this term’s significance for our day
resides in its capacity to redefine the terrain of the political battle for
a democratic transformation and bring forward new subjects involved in this
transformation.

For this reason, alongside the Marxist analysis of the conflict between
capital and labour, which remains valuable insofar as it has production as
its focal point, recent historical developments necessitate new tools and
approaches, which enable us to interpret the passage of history in order to
build effective responses.

Globalized capitalism entails the dismantling of state control, and with it
the democratic relations that, to a certain degree, prevailed until a few
decades ago. The struggle for democratic control and the protection of
collective interest have found in the notion of the commons a valuable tool
of analysis for the re-composition of this interest.

As transform! Europe we have been following the evolution of the idea of
the commons since its very beginning. Through our participation in relevant
debates within the left, we have realised that is very difficult to reach
conclusions that are unified and harmonious on this subject matter.

Although many single-issue movements have developed on a national and
international level, these rarely see themselves as a unified movement;
their many battles, big and small, are, more often than not, conditioned by
their local or thematic context.

This is the reason why we have begun to explore ways of weaving theoretical
and practical approaches to the commons into a wider struggle for social
change. This is a process which aims to rethink the “class composition”,
which in the past developed around the workers’ movement, but should now be
re-examined in the light of the new forms of production and reproduction
that have emerged in the last few decades.

After the first meeting in Paris in 2014, we met again in Rome in 2016 to
examine the phenomenon of the recuperated factories (self-management) and
the social re-appropriation processes that have been emerging, also in the
field of labour, in countries affected by delocalization and the
dismantling of the productive infrastructure.”

Other good news:

Ive Ivsic reported on the success of their “Zagreb in common” initiative,
creating a common list with participants from the left, trade unions and
local commons-initiatives, being able to win seats in the local elections,
both, on municipal level (8%) and district-level.

Elisabetta Cangelosi could report a similar sucess from “Sinistra Comune”
at local elections in Palermo (7%).

And colleagues from “Fundació Alternativa” gave a report on the conference
“Cities without fear” in Barcelona just one week before the working group’s
meeting  with participants from more than 150 cities organised by
“Barcelone en Comú”, their slogan was: Democracy was born on local level,
and that’s where we can win it back”.

Yours, Birgit

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JPBerlin - Politischer Provider
CommonGood at listi.jpberlin.de
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