[P2P-F] A globa-local synthesis of a possible city-supported public-commons partnership for climate- friendly and ecologically balanced provisioning systems

Thu Oct 5 07:09:14 CEST 2017

dear Michael,

I will add some responses in-line

On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 11:51 PM, Michael Lewis <Lewiscccr at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Pat I really like the memo you sent. But I have several questions.
>  (Michel - I wrote this and then see you have replied to Pat) I will think
> about and perhaps comment later.  I the meantime here is my response to Pat)
>
> I am a poor student of history, but as I have come to understand Cole his
> guild strategy was rooted in the work place, although relevant to other
> kinds of association.  The role of the state was radially reduced. What
> emerged was a decentralized, democratic approach to provisioning, where
> workers were the central (but not only) actors.  Advise me here what I am
> missing.
>
> If this is the case there a large difference in what Michel is proposing?
> The foundation of his proposition is  public-commons partnerships. Is this
> not very different?  Given the radical difference in reference points -
> Cole with workers a the base and this 21st idea where globally mediated
> knowledge that enables localize production on an
> open-mutualized-cooperative basis; I wonder where the context renders some
> of Cole’s propositions less relevant.
>

in my interpretation, the commons are themselves multi-stakeholders, so
this include the workers and the user communities ; you may be familiar
with the idea of some that today the workplace has exploded and is no
longer confined to the factory; but there is an obvious linkage between the
commons seen as the locus of co-production, and thus a sphere of production
including workers, and industrial and craft workers as they used to exist

> Second, as I understand it Michel, your proposition is critically
> dependent of an member cities to be active at the city and global level,
> the latter through associations. In short, cities are organized into a body
> the coordinates and governs the terms under which sourcing technical
> solutions is build and maintained on an open source base.  Question here
> Michel is whether access to the knowledge repository requires cities to be
> active members of the global mutual…??
>

the code is open source, and would be accessible to everybody, but the
right to commercialization of that code may be subjected to some
reciprocity limitatations, in my opinion (reciprocity-based licensing)

>
> Third,  the territorial platform co-operatives become critical
> infrastructure for production, distribution and governing.  Michel…a
> question about the platform co-ops; are they conceived of as being
> multi-stakeholder and, if so, what is the role of local state actors, if
> any?
>

yes, they are conceived as multi-stakeholder and I'm open to co-governance
by local public actors

>
> Lastly,  I am wondering about the thinking to date on whether there will
> be limits to what is gathered into the global digital open source
> repository?  Is the focus on all the critical elements to aid and
> accelerate transition? Given the absolute urgencies emerging from climate
> breakdown, this might make senses. Or is it broader?  I think these are
> important questions as they will shape the counters of the politics that
> such a proposition would provoke.   Even if it is restricted to urgent
> transition related production, I can imagine that a global manufacturers of
> say, public transit vehicles,  and their employees,  would be none to
> pleased with a strategy that could has the potential for sidelining their
> businesses and jobs..   But, then again,  I may not be capturing the
> fullness of the vision.
>

for me, this would work for all provisioning systems, and is connected to
the climate/ecological/resource emergency of our time, i.e. this proposal
is one of the crucial ways to radicallly reduce our material footprint

>
> One interesting and attractive feature of what Michel is proposing is the
> bypassing of national governments. Given the growing network of cities
> collaborating on climate breakdown and transition strategies, and for those
> involved, their leadership in advancing more progressive transition
> politics,  the proposal being put forward has a strategic context where it
> can be tested.
>

national partner-state governments could decide at a later stage to join
and support these global depositories

by the way, this was written in the context of urban transitions, but I
realize it could be stronger in stressing the role of the cooperative
sector in supporting the deployment of such infrastructure

Michel

>
> Anyways, a bit more grist for the proverbial mill.
>
> Michael L
>
> On Oct 4, 2017, at 9:04 AM, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> Dear Pat,
>
> as I was schooled in marxism in my youth, and subsequently abandoned it,
> this means that much of the tradition you speak of is completely unknown to
> me, I had simply no idea that georgism and guild socialism even existed and
> where so big back then ... for me there were revolutionaries, reformists
> and anarchists (and stalinists <g>) ...
>
> when I decided to embark on p2p work, I decided to make a clear break with
> my dogmatic past, and start constructing a 'low theory' that would be a
> more direct expression of what is happening and possible today. Hence in my
> wiki, I only include things that exist (no projects or plans) and use
> concepts that are born from the very movement I am observing.
>
> as much as I think it is necessary, I don't see it as a very realistic
> possibility for me to dig into that history, so I am very much counting on
> you for this historical context and genealogy!!
>
> one note, you will have seen in my approach a combination of the local and
> the global, bypassing the nation-state level.
>
> There is both a opportunistic and strategic reason for this
>
> Opportunistic as it appears in a report on urban transitions,
>
> but strategic as I see coalesced cities (and bioregions/territorities) as
> a crucial new part of transnational governance, which can't be a
> inter-statist world government, but must be based on global public-commons
> alliances
>
> quid with the nation-state,
>
> I am not dissing it, but I think nation-states should now support
> transnational commons infrastructures
>
> the double movement has become inoperative because of the
> trans-nationalization of capital; national revolutions carry great risks
> and dangers (syriza, venezuela), and keynesianism can only be a small part
> of the solution in the context of overshoot
>
> so what is a progressive majority in a nation-state to do, for sure, let
> it do green  new deals at the national level, but crucially, it must also
> understand that change today is not going to come from a frontal assault
> against a stronger enemy, but from a global coalition of change efforts
> everywhere, which are the only ones that can overwhelm the repressive
> capacity of the transnational empire
>
> in other words, progressive national governments must absolute support the
> kind of global commoning policies we are proposing and cannot limit their
> vision on their own citizens
>
> Michel
>
> On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 10:21 PM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
>> Hi Michel
>>
>> Some feedback for consideration.....
>>
>> This is a really good summary and illustration. So much makes complete
>> sense to me. Thanks so much for this articulation. I think it is rich and
>> very helpful indeed. When will the report be coming out and who are the
>> authors?
>>
>> I have a sense of deja vu however? So my comments are about the practical
>> articulation and the dynamics as other forces are in play.  For the past
>> two hundred plus years, the tension and indeed struggle between authority
>> at the political level and the striving for democratic authority from the
>> grassroots has been continuous and constant. Polanyi's Double movement
>> therefore has many dynamic aspects to consider. How is it best to do this
>> to be clear about the dialectical complexity?
>>
>> Stephen Yeo, a very close colleague of Robin Murray's over decades, is
>> writing a book on the Three Socialisms. These are Statism (from social
>> democracy to communism), Collectivism and Associationism. The last form is
>> the most forms that are participatively democratic and includes working
>> class self-help associations for mutual aid and including of course trade
>> unions that we should try to include in your illustration of the layers.
>>
>> The ideas you are advancing are a rekindling of the debates and thinking
>> from say 1900 right up to 1947 when the Cold War kicked off and when
>> Statism thereafter effectively crushed and suppressed associative democracy
>> thinking and ideas. Statists East and West told co-ops and unions thank,
>> but no thanks. We are taking over to make your bits and pieces integrated
>> and comprehensive.
>>
>> But to guide this earlier struggle by commoners, In 1919 GDH Cole
>> produced his book Guild Socialism Restated when he set out a very clear
>> blueprint with a remarkable coincidence with what you, David B, Janelle
>> Orsi and others are working up here.
>>
>> What is very creative about the Cole proposals that Bertrand Russell
>> fully supported in his book Roads to Freedom a century ago was to recognise
>> clearly that political socialism (social democracy shall we say) and
>> associative socialism need to be established at the territorial level and
>> at the national level in a system of checks and balances with a clear and
>> agreed division of labour between the politicos and the economic democrats.
>>
>> Essentially the proposal of Cole set out a blue print for how economic
>> democracy though a Guild Congress at local, regional and national levels
>> would relate and complement Parliamentary democracy. But what was wonderful
>> about the Cole proposals is that it considered co-operative commonwealth
>> building in all industries, services, arts and sciences and worked out
>> sector solutions for them. Plus Cole also proposed that cities should be
>> based on land held in commons to capture economic rent and to stop
>> speculation. Thus he argued for co-operative garden cities.
>>
>> 20 years earlier in Fields Factories and Workshops had attempted a very
>> creative blueprint as well for economic democracy and what in practice this
>> would look like.
>>
>> Okay Polanyi did not arrive in the UK until about 1933 and his way to
>> escape fascism was paid for by crowd funding by Guild Socialist, but given
>> that in Vienna in the 1920s Polanyi was at the forefront of associative
>> democracy solutions and thinking, you can see the resonance.
>>
>> Given that democratic socialism is being rekindled in parts of Europe
>> (Spain, Portugal, the UK and elsewhere), I think it would helpful to
>> connect the sound thinking from the 1920s before the lights began being
>> turned out with what you are proposing.
>>
>> I would suggest we are rediscovering co-operative commonwealth thinking
>> and practice which you are doing such a brilliant job of updating to the
>> digital age.
>>
>> I hope this helps.  Drawing on the best practices from the past will
>> enable us to contextualise the arguments and link these to this vernacular
>> part of the Double Movement we should not overlook.
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Pat
>>
>> On 04 October 2017 at 06:35 Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> this is the very last section of our report which will come out soon with
>> the Boll foundation:
>>
>> 3.6. Towards a global infrastructure for commons-based provisioning
>>
>> We have argued in this overview that we are in a conjuncture in which
>> commons-based mutualizing is one of the keys for sustainability, fairness
>> and global-local well-being. In this conclusion, we suggest a global
>> infrastructure, in which cities can play a crucial role.
>>
>> See the graphic below for the stacked layer that we propose, which is
>> described as follows:
>>
>>    -
>>
>>    The first layer is the cosmo-local institutional layer. Imagine
>>    global for-benefit associations which support the provisioning of
>>    infrastructures for urban and territorial commoning. These are structured
>>    as global public-commons partnerships, sustained by leagues of cities which
>>    are co-dependent and co-motivated to support these new infrastructures and
>>    overcome the fragmentation of effort that benefits the most extractive and
>>    centralized ‘netarchical’ firms. Instead, these infrastructural commons
>>    organizations co-support MuniRide, MuniBnB, and other applications
>>    necessary to commonify urban provisioning systems. These are the global
>>    “protocol cooperative” governance organizations.
>>    -
>>
>>    The second layer consists of the actual global depositories of the
>>    commons applications themselves, a global technical infrastructure for open
>>    sourcing provisioning systems. They consists of what is globally common,
>>    but allow contextualized local adaptations, which in turn can serve as
>>    innovations and examples for other locales. These are the actual ‘protocol
>>    cooperatives’, in their concrete manifestation as usable infrastructure.
>>    -
>>
>>    The third layer are the actual local (urban, territorial,
>>    bioregional) platform cooperatives, i.e. the local commons-based mechanisms
>>    that deliver access to services and exchange platforms, for the mutualized
>>    used of these provisioning systems. This is the layer where the Amsterdam
>>    FairBnb and the MuniRide application of the city of Ghent, organize the
>>    services for the local population and their visitors. It is where houses
>>    and cars are effectively shared.
>>    -
>>
>>    The potential fourth layer is the actual production-based open
>>    cooperatives, where distributed manufacturing of goods and services
>>    produces the actual material services that can be shared and mutualized on
>>    the platform cooperatives.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> [image: Figure 8.png]
>>
>> Figure 8: City-supported cosmo-local production infrastructure
>>
>> --
>> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
>> http://commonstransition.org
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> 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/
>
>
>

-- 
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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