[P2P-F] Co-op Commons: How to we make small not just beautiful but powerful?

Thu Feb 1 14:27:39 CET 2018

hi pat,

I wasn't reacting to public banking at all, which I support though I would
prefer multi-stakeholders arrangements for their governance if not
ownership, sorry for the misunderstanding,

just generally speaking, both the left and the social-populists are still
in nation-state centric vaguely neo-keynesian modalities, and it is high
time to inject more commons thinking and practice .. not to abandon the
nation-state, but to add both (trans)local and trans-national elements to
their strategies, centered around the creation of strong and shared commons

Michel

On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 2:22 PM, pat commonfutures <
pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> Touche.
>
> But we are talking at cross purposes Michel. You make valid points and
> raise concerns that are vitally important but you misunderstand the case I
> am making.
>
> Public banking need not necessarily be neo-Keynesian. Yes commonly and
> almost always in social democratic traditions this has been the case. Post
> Keynesian ideas are different and relevant to Post Capitalism and that it
> is in this vein I am making this case.
>
> The Bank of Canada during its radical days before 1973 and from 1938
> financed infrastructure by creating interest free money and finance. This
> was not in the restricted neo-Keynesian song book.
>
> This other short piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian and again on the
> Magic Money Tree and on People's QE (that Corbyn took up but then dropped
> as a hot potato) shows up the wall of ignorance and on how peaceful social
> investment is being totally blocked as this is a Taboo subject.
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/04/
> printing-money-jeremy-corbyn-quantitative-easing-peoples-qe
>
> Pat
>
> On 01 February 2018 at 12:13 Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> I know this is going to sound arrogant and self-serving, but seriously,
> after ten years of research and engagement in two intense projects at
> nation-state and city level, I think we have a pretty good handle of the
> inter-relationship between commons, market and state; we pretty much know
> the most important elements of this relationship ... it's more a question
> now of making more things happen that exemplify it,
>
> as a reminder, in Ecuador we looked in-depth at how to create national
> knowledge commons, with the instutiional, regulatory and material
> conditions to make it happen, offering a specific methodology, and in
> Ghent, an institutional framework for public-commons cooperation at the
> city level, focusing on material provisioning systems,
>
> if you put the two together, and add John Restakis' developments on the
> same theme , focusing on the social economy, we have the basics at hand,
>
> this is why I think it is now vital to bring these insights to
> social-populist politicians, to give them a way forward beyond
> neo-keynesianism,
>
> at the P2P Foundation, feeling confident about the basic logic of
> commons-market-state cooperative institutions, we are now moving to the
> underlying social and ecological conditions that underlie such an
> institutional structure
>
> one is commonfare and the reform of social protection so that it can
> protect autonomous workers (and the care economy); the other is
> bioacapacity-based supply chains and accounting,
>
> it's gonna be at least a five year plan <g>
>
> On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 10:52 AM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
> Thanks Mike, Michel, Dirk, Stacco and Margie for the supportive feedback.
>
> We need to fit together the commons, co-op and partner state jig-saw
> pieces. But how and Now?
> Let me widen the analysis and think how to turbocharge the superb
> bootstrap grassroots work in Barcelona, Ghent, Bologna and Preston. Bear in
> mind that Bruno Roelants is now head of the ICA and he supports the
> solidarity economy and has a growing interest in commons and co-op commons
> especially.
>
> From an utter state of dire poverty and crisis, Preston is making a
> co-operative fight back. There are many post industrial towns in Northern
> France and other parts of southern and Eastern Europe precisely in this
> dire state today and without a commons co-op Plan supported by social
> investment they will continue to be lured by the far Right.
>
> Councillor Matthew Brown in Preston has been inspired by the Evergreen
> Co-ops in Cleveland, Ohio and the work of Ted Howard at the US Democracy
> Collaborative. Ted has been to speak in Preston 2 or 3 times in recent
> years.
>
> On the need for monetary and banking reform to complement the Preston set
> of ideas , here in Wales we ran a very successful Build a Co-operative
> Country conference last June and simply allowed the Community land trust
> groups, the social co-op groups for care services, the renewable energy
> co-ops, the housing co-ops, freelancer co-ops and others like this to tell
> their stories in a big plenary. This worked wonderfully well because the
> different co-op and commons innovators are so busy ploughing their own
> separate fields, they were not well aware of what their other comrades in
> arms were doing and succeeding with. If they were not aware, the wider
> pubiic is even less aware of a practical What if vision?
>
> The politicians in attendance were very impressed with these commoner
> stories. All these projects are lacking in strategic investment badly and
> none has the scope to move from micro-level success to upping their game
> big time. We do not have the democratic financing infrastructure in place
> to do this. For example a recent report on renewable energy co-ops in Wales
> showed that they cannot aggregate easily to attract low cost patient
> capital from public sector pension funds that are looking to invest in
> non-fossil fuel alternatives. This got us thinking about how to put in
> place such a bridge.
>
> During the Great Depression public banks like the early Bank of Canada
> created new money to invest in public services, housing, health services,
> rural revival, electrification etc. It worked.
>
> Over the past 18 months we have been working on a public bank for Wales
> that could create money out of thin air and invest in the commons and co-op
> sectors big time. All the politicians of most parties say There is no magic
> money tree for social investment. This short article from Zoe Willams in
> the Guardian reveals the  massive ignorance of MPs of all parties about how
> money is created.  A good one this for the Common Transition Plan.
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/global/shortcuts/2017/oct/29/how
> -the-actual-magic-money-tree-works
>
> We held a public meeting on a public bank for Wales last October and got
> to attend the Minister for Local Government and Finance and the chief
> economist for Welsh government. The research we had stimulated came out
> before this meeting and is getting on side our thinking. We are soon to
> complete another report on the public bank and money creation that the
> Minister has invited us to send him.
>
> Ellen Brown at the Public Banking Institute in the US has joined our
> Public Banking action group and has been twice to Wales to talk.
>
> Public banks that really create new  money are a key piece of the jig-saw
> for commons. In our forthcoming report we are advancing the case for the
> creation of £1 billion of new money by a Welsh public bank from year 1 on a
> ratio of 5:1. That is five times new money created for patient social
> investment to the core capital in the new bank that we are inviting local
> governments in Wales to put up from say 5% of their annual capital budgets.
> Leverage this and you can get take-off locally and thereafter regional.
>
> We need to operationalise Magic Money Trees at local government area
> levels across Europe.
>
> Pat
>
> On 31 January 2018 at 17:58 Michael Lewis < Lewiscccr at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> This is a brilliant article Pat.  Thanks for sharing.
>
> On Jan 31, 2018, at 6:21 AM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
> In the UK it would be great if we had a supportive mayor somewhere like in
> Barcelona or the work in Ghent. One local government though that is going
> down this road is Preston. This article in the Guardian today tells the
> story.
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/presto
> n-hit-rock-bottom-took-back-control
>
> Pat
>
> On 30 January 2018 at 20:01 Holemans Dirk < Dirk.Holemans at stad.gent>
> wrote:
>
> Me too, I just bought a second-hand version of Henry’s book online
>
> Michel: we can share it!
>
>
> *Van: *<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> namens Michel Bauwens <
> michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> *Datum: *dinsdag 30 januari 2018 14:10
> *Aan: *pat commonfutures <pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop>
> *CC: *Simona Levi Xnet <simona at xnet-x.net>, emanuele braga <
> bragaberlino at gmail.com>, "visioning at p2pfoundation.net" <
> visioning at p2pfoundation.net>, David Bollier <david at bollier.org>, George
> Papanikolaou <georgepapani at gmail.com>, Daniel Chavez <chavez at tni.org>,
> Stacco Troncoso <staccotroncoso at gmail.com>, Fiona Dove <fdove at tni.org>,
> Hazel Henderson <hazel.henderson at ethicalmarkets.com>, John Restakis <
> restakis at gmail.com>, Holemans Dirk <Dirk.Holemans at stad.gent>, Alex Foti <
> alex.foti at gmail.com>, p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>,
> Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>, Margie Mendell <mendell at alcor.concordia.ca>,
> Michael Lewis <Lewiscccr at shaw.ca>
> *Onderwerp: *Re: My review (bauwens) of Alex Foti's General Theory of the
> Precariat
>
>
> looking forward to Henry's book!
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 1:59 PM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
> Michel
>
> Thanks for this link. Just to let you know that the communitarian thinker
> and former UK civil servant Henry Tam is compiling a book on Reinventing
> Government. I am contributing a chapter on ideas like those I have shared
> and Anna Coote at New Economics Foundation is also doing a chapter on
> social commons. She is drawing from your work and David Bollier's.
>
> Henry's book will come out later this year.
>
> Pat
>
>
> On 29 January 2018 at 13:27 Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> thanks a lot Pat, very useful!
>
>
> keeping track of 232 current commonfare initiatives here for just that
> reason:
>
> https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Solidarity
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 1:33 PM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
> Hi Dirk. Alex and Michel
>
> We need to be aware that public services as we know them had their origins
> in pioneering class struggles by commoners that developed the fundamental
> social economic innovations. We forget this out of ignorance and at our
> peril.
>
> A great book on the history you ask about Dirk is Eric Hopkins'
> Working-class Self-Help in nineteenth century England. By 1900 there were
> 27,000 friendly societies providing a wide range of mutual aid services for
> funerals, for sick pay and also for small pensions. They date back in
> formation to the 18th century and many early trade unions before they were
> legalised after 1825 operated clandestinely as friendly societies. Also
> early co-ops used friendly society laws to form legally.
>
> Alex you are right that social democracy emerged decades before 1945 and
> those who studied closely over a century ago mutual aid, friendly
> societies, co-ops and trade unions, like the Fabian socialists Beatrice and
> Sidney Webb, advocated that the emerging Labour parties should seek to
> collectivise the best practices of friendly societies and co-ops via
> welfare state practices to provide sick pay, retirement pensions,
> industrial injury payments and primary health care. The 1911 National
> Insurance Act in the UK provided these services in collective ways via the
> state in a three way contributory system into social insurance funds with
> the workers paying in a third, employers a third and the government a
> third. This was the deal with the state and from 1911 until 1948 - when the
> National Health Service widen coverage and health services comprehensively
> - the friendly societies were involved in the administration of the 1911
> Act.
>
> As Michel points out, trade unions in Belgium and in countries in
> Scandinavia still to this day play a key social security delivery role.
>
> From 1948 as friendly society roles diminished as the state took all the
> roles over, the numbers in the UK have reduced now to only about 200.
>
> Interesting to see that the Broodfonds or Bread Funds in the Netherlands
> developed after 2006 as 21st century friendly societies when the Dutch
> state ended access to sickness benefits for self-employed people. So where
> markets fail and states leave gaps as is increasingly the case since 2010,
> mutual aid re-emerges.
>
> You are right Dirk, the dialectical tension between waves of commons
> movements and the state and how relationships are forged for better or for
> worse is key for developing strategies for the new commons movement.
>
> Given that the public services required commons innovation and the current
> commons innovations need to spread, what the deal is with the state and
> especially municipalities is crucial for the emergence of a democratic,
> social and ecological economy.
>
> Pat
>
>
> On 29 January 2018 at 08:43 Michel Bauwens < michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> by the way, I just want to mention that the p2p foundation maintains a
> closed 'visioning' discussion list, in which high quality discussants are
> very welcome,
>
>
> Stacco can add you to the list,
>
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 5:47 PM, Holemans Dirk < Dirk.Holemans at stad.gent>
> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> Many thanks for this inspiring dialogue. As ecologist (director of green
> foundation Oikos and city councillor in Ghent), I see I can learn a lot
> from your contributions, and authors like GDH Cole and Clifford Douglas.
>
>
> Being inspired by Polanyi, I am trying to connect his lines of thinking
> with the historical research on the three waves of commons in Europe since
> the Middle Ages. To reduce complex research to this simple line, one could
> argue that the democratic second movement of Polanyi correspondents with
> the second wave of the commons. By this I am very interested in what Pat
> writes on the “23,000 mutual friendly societies set up over decades of
> social movement struggles and almost all promoted and supported by diverse
> trade unions for their members”. Are there specific articles or books that
> documents these pre-war social movements in the UK?
>
>
> Already many thanks
>
> Dirk
>
>
> *Van: *pat commonfutures <pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop>
> *Beantwoorden - Aan: *pat commonfutures <pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop>
> *Datum: *zondag 28 januari 2018 13:31
> *Aan: *Alex Foti <alex.foti at gmail.com>, Michel Bauwens <
> michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> *CC: *Simona Levi Xnet <simona at xnet-x.net>, John Restakis <
> restakis at gmail.com>, "david at bollier.org" <david at bollier.org>, Hazel
> Henderson <hazel.henderson at ethicalmarkets.com>, Fiona Dove <fdove at tni.org>,
> Holemans Dirk <Dirk.Holemans at stad.gent>, "visioning at p2pfoundation.net" <
> visioning at p2pfoundation.net>, emanuele braga <bragaberlino at gmail.com>,
> p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>, George Papanikolaou
> <georgepapani at gmail.com>, Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>, Daniel Chavez <
> chavez at tni.org>, Margie Mendell <mendell at alcor.concordia.ca>, Michael
> Lewis <Lewiscccr at shaw.ca>
> *Onderwerp: *Re: My review (bauwens) of Alex Foti's General Theory of the
> Precariat
>
>
> Hi Michel and Alex
>
> The commons work in Ghent is great to see. Also the Bologna regulations
> work of Christian Iaione are needed to help commons and local government
> partnerships and social contracts to be negotiated.
>
> Why GDH Cole and guild socialism ideas are relevant to the present is that
> Cole proposed in 1919 in his book on Guild Socialism Restated that guild
> congresses for economic democracy should complement local government and
> regional and national governments and that social economic actors involved
> in production and reproduction could be a co-operative economic counterpart
> to parliamentary democracy. Therefore economic democracy would become a
> separate form of democracy complementary to political democracy. A system
> of checks and balances.
>
> Garden city ideas where all the land would be commonly owned and economic
> rent captured for residents transparently was a foundational concept for
> Cole for the guild assemblies locally.
>
> Remember Polanyi showed that the capitalist system is oppressive and
> structured historically because people, money and land have been enclosed
> and commodified. What was interesting about the guild socialist ideas in
> the early 1920s that Bertrand Russell, RH Tawney and GDH Cole were working
> on is that the garden city ideas and socialist planning would take land out
> of the market for new housing, workspace, commons spaces etc, workplace
> democracy advancing then and across Europe would end wage labour and the
> further step would be pursued as Clfford Douglas argued by taking money out
> of the market by issuing social credit as a national dividend that would be
> locally managed by monetary authorities that could be part and parcel of
> the guild economic congresses so that underconsumption would no longer be
> addressed by more capitalist debt issuance by banks but by transparent
> monetary reform to democratise money.
>
> Tawney and Cole did not push for what Douglas was arguing for which was a
> pity. Polanyi only wrote about the tripartite need to take people, money
> and land out of the market in his Great Transformation in 1944. But these
> three reforms are the bedrock for a commons mode of production to pursue
> structurally the paradigm shift to advance economic democracy and to secure
> co-operative commonwealth.  Sadly Massimo De Angelis only mentions Polanyi
> in passing in his latest book and missed all this. Otherwise his book is
> excellent I think.
>
> On your query about mutuals and co-op innovations and the doubt you have
> Alex about the state replicating these. Keynes's gets his ideas of 'cheap
> money' which is not the same as social credit from Clifford Douglas and
> Silvio Gesell. See the last chapter of the General Theory by Keynes.
>
> In 1943 when the National Health Service was being designed, co-operative
> and mutual health services in the UK were patchy but being then provided by
> 23,000 mutual friendly societies set up over decades of social movement
> struggles and almost all promoted and supported by diverse trade unions for
> their members. There was an effort to incorporate these mutuals into the
> NHS but authoritarian socialists refused to allow this to happen.
>
> Also if you look at the reconstruction of housing and new towns after 1948
> in the UK, they used co-op Garden City ideas for guidance for public land
> and public housing design but left out the ecological dimensions and
> pursued post War reconstruction from the top down.
>
> Pat
>
> On 27 January 2018 at 19:40 Alex Foti <alex.foti at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Pat,
>
>
> thanks for your observations on mutualism and the ecological and social
> rights to the city. i'm a big gdh cole fan, btw. the weekend has
> overwhelmed me with obligations. i ll try to come back to in more detail
> tomorrow with more time. however the only thing i m doubtful the fact that
> mutualism is replaced by the welfare state which was a way of neutralizing
> and institutionalizing the commonist and separatist tendencies of the
> working class. at least since 1919 it seems to me social democracy opted
> for state intervention rather than self-reliant mutualism (or worse,
> syndicalism).
>
>
> best ciaos!
>
>
> lx
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 7:27 PM, pat commonfutures <
> pat.commonfutures at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
>
> Hi Michel and Alex
>
> My two cents......
>
> Enjoyed reading your review Michel and hearing loud and clear the comments
> from Alex. Glad to see you recognise strategically the role for economic
> democracy organisations to come together to develop commonwealth solutions.
> Challenge is to animate and mobilise co-ops, trade unions, mutual aid
> organisations and commons movements and other actors to cross connect.
>
> Capital needs to be on tap not on top. Labour needs to hire capital. Thus
> economic democracy is the operative mantra. But how.....?
>
> I think the analysis of Massimo De Angelis in Omnia sunt communia that
> focuses on commons solutions for provisioning to address precarious
> housing, precarious work, precarious social services, etc. is the way to
> increasingly Walk the Talk.
>
> But so much of the infrastructure needs aligning to develop a generative
> system to build the new to replace the toxic old. In the period from 1910
> to 1948 it was the working class self-organisations and partnerships with
> municipalities that co-developed a turn key system for affordable housing,
> mutual insurance services for access to health care, patient finance
> instruments, etc.  As you highlight Michel, without this proving of the
> possible, the Post 1945 welfare states would not have been practical.
> History has airbrushed out of memory all the working class achievements
> leading up to social democracy's action to rebuild war torn Europe with
> guidance from Keynes. Keynes himself took credit for what commoners had
> innovated and brought into being over many decades.
>
> But we are back to the same situation again.
>
> To pursue pluralist commonwealth post capitalist futures, the facts are
> similar at least as a pattern to 1945...
>
> Many good solutions that emerged out of commoner struggles since the 1970s
> now exist as viable and proven models. Examples include Community Land
> Trusts for housing and workspace, social co-operatives for care services,
> community renewable energy, freelancer co-ops, etc but we lack the general
> assembly of protagonists to plan and co-ordinate them all and bring them
> together into a viable system.  Neoliberalism continues to repress and
> marginalise these Cinderella Liberties that if nurtured and united could
> tackle the multiplying wants that make no sense among economies of plenty
> perversely allocated.
>
> The Garden City movement pioneers developed socialist planning guidance in
> 1906 which played a key role to unite the fragments. We need to revive
> democratic planning again and make this participative to set in train
> evolutionary urban and rural reconstruction and to help animate, activate
> and co-ordinate economic democracy in action. Garden cities were on the
> right road as they sought to unite urban and rural life in ecological
> resilient ways.
>
> The guild socialist ideas of GDH Cole in the early 1920s are worth
> revisiting. As Danny Dorling shows in his book on the 1%, between 1918
> and1978 social and economic inequality reduced across developing countries
> and indeed as forms of socialism advanced stage by stage.
>
> Today socialism needs to be planned and re-implemented with deeper
> democracy methods and on a co-operative and ecological economics
> foundations to produce commonwealth via a commons mode of production. I
> look forward to reading your book Alex.
>
> Thanks to you both for the joint inspiration.
>
> Pat
>
> On 26 January 2018 at 12:38 Michel Bauwens < michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> hi alex,
>
>
> very happy to engage, and I fully understand the legitimacy of your
> strategic choices, though your vision of a successful new new deal is also
> a sign of optimism in itself .... I agree we have to fight for it
>
>
> this is a very good overiview of the other polarity, I think at the p2p
> foundation, we are somewhere in between, even as we are very liberally
> cited in this overview of commons-based relocalization:
> https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Networked_Cities_as_Resilient
> _Platforms_for_Post-Capitalist_Transition#Excerpt
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 10:34 AM, Alex Foti < alex.foti at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Michel, Dear Friends,
>
> a trillion thanks for this thoughtful and appreciative review. i look
> forward to co-developing a veritable post-capitalist strategy by embodying
> the commons-based approach and i find your criticism of an excessive
> capitalist realism justified (lost a few nights' sleep about it, but i am
> very fearful of cryptofascist reaction, and think we can force liberal
> capitalism into a social compromise - which you're right would make funding
> and reclaiming the commons a central feature of society - and also i guess
> i wanted to avoid excessive utopianism given that current historical
> reality is so dystopian). again thanks for taking the time to read and
> engage with the book's arguments.
>
> best milanese ciaos,
>
> lx
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 9:25 AM, Michel Bauwens < michel at p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>
> see also link here at  https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net
> /General_Theory_of_the_Precariat#Evaluation
>
>
> "This book is essential reading for all commoners that want to think
> through the right strategy for social change. It squarely places itself
> from the point of few of the new social groups (or class in formation, as
> Foti would have it) that have grown under the conditions of neoliberalism
> and its decline, or in other words under the emergence of cognitive
> capitalism or 'informationalism'. This key group are the various
> constituent parts of the precariat, all the people who can no longer work
> with dependable classic labor contracts and the steady income and
> protection deriving from it.
>
> This book should be read through its end, i.e. chapter five, because its
> first four chapters on the precariat are only set in a more complex
> geopolitical context in that last chapter. To be honest, I was quite
> reactive at times during the reading of the first four chapters, because
> two very important structural elements were missing in his analysis. First
> is the commons itself, the other side of the antagonistic struggles of the
> precariat; and second is the ecological crisis, the very material
> conditions under which this struggle must occur today. Foti indeed calls
> for economic and monetary growth, and sounds like an unabashed
> neo-Keynesian but only in the last chapter stresses that this growth should
> be thermodynamically sound (i.e. he calls for monetary growth, but not
> growth in material services). Foti also almost completely ignores the role
> of the commons and 'commonalism' in the first four chapters, only
> acknowledging in a few parts of chapter 5, that it is a vital constituent
> part of the precarious condition. If you don't read chapter 5, you could be
> mistaken for seeing Foti's analysis as an exercise in re-imagining the
> class dynamics and compromises of the New Deal and post-WWII european
> welfare states, and has simply replaced working class with precariat,
> working class parties with social populism, and the New Deal with a social
> compact for green capitalism.
>
> So, the fact that this is a remarkably thought out book about contemporary
> strategy for social change, should be tempered by a few paradoxes that the
> author has not completely resolved.
>
> Indeed at the heart of the book lies also an enduring paradox: Foti calls
> for the most radical forms of conflict, and identifies with the more
> radical cultural minorities, acknowledging their anticapitalist and
> anarchist ethos, yet calls for mere reformism as a focus and outcome. This
> is therefore not a book about transforming our societies to post-capitalist
> logics, this is a book about a new reformism. This is a book against
> neoliberalism, not against capitalism. At times, it is plain 'capitalist
> realism', as Foti explicitly acknowledges he sees no dynamic value creation
> outside of capitalism. For Foti, it is clear, if sufficient conflict and
> precariat self-organisation can occur, then a new regulation of capitalism
> can occur. He justifies this by a detailed analysis of the different
> regulatory modes of capitalism (smith-ism, fordism, jobs-ism) and how they
> relate to the kondratieff economic cycles, drawing on the insights of
> Carlota Perez and others. Foti distinguishes crises of demand, where there
> is too much accumulation of capital, and not enough distribution. These
> crises he says, are essentially reformist crises, as people mobilize to
> restore balance in the redistribution, but not against the system per se.
> The crisis of the 30's and the crisis after 2008, are such crises, he in my
> view convincingly shows. Other crises are caused by a failing supply, due
> to over-regulation of capital and falling profit rates, such as the crisis
> of the 70s, and these crises, which are inflationary, are revolutionary.
> This distinction between crises of accumulation and crises of regulation,
> is in my opinion very insightful, and true. This recognition may of course
> be troubling, but if true, we have to take serious stock of it. We are
> simply not in revolutionary times, right now, but rather in a struggle
> between national populism and social populism. From this analysis, Foti
> then argues that the first priority is for the precariat to re-regulate for
> a distribution of wealth, much like the old working class achieved after
> WWII.
>
> But even if we acknowledge this conjuncture, I would argue that Foti
> insufficiently balances his outlook between reforming capitalism and
> constructing post-capitalism, beween antagonistic conflict and positive
> construction of the new. He argues that without income, there can be no
> such construction. This is very likely true, so we need to rebalance
> redistribution, in a way that income growth can lead to immaterial growth
> that is compatible with the ecological limits of our planet, and use these
> surpluses to transform societal structures. Foti calls for social (or 'eco'
> populist movements and coalitions as the political means to that end,
> pointing to Podemos and En Comu, and perhaps Sanders and Corbyn, as such
> forces, supported by to be created Precariat Syndicates. He also puts
> forward the thesis that the enemy is national populism, an alliance between
> retrograde fossil fuel capitalism and the salariat, with on the other side
> a possible alliance of green capitalism (a real effort not a marketing
> ploy) with the precariat, with the former fighting for top-down coalition
> and the second for bottom-up regulation. This division of the working class
> is in my view way too stark, and perhaps even defeatist. I would very
> strongly argue to seek alliances and develop policies that can give hope to
> the salariat. The thrust of our work for the Commons Transition aims at
> precisely that. (elsewhere in the book, Foti does call for an alliance with
> progressive middle classes, but if these are not the workers with jobs,
> where are these then ?)
>
> Now Foti correctly critiques in my view, people like Mason and Rifkin for
> failing to problematize the post-capitalist transition, they make it seem
> like an inexorable process if not affirming that we are already
> post-capitalist, as some others do, but in my view then in his turn he
> fails to pay proper attention to it. What if the re-regulation of
> capitalism doesn't work for example ? Then at some point, say in about 30
> years, as Kondratieff cycles would indicate, we would still face a crisis
> of over-regulation, and a more revolutionary moment. For Foti, we have to
> take it on faith that green capitalism will be a successful new regulatory
> mode of capitalism. What if it turns out to be a unworkable compromise and
> that more drastic action is needed. But Foti has no faith in alternatives
> to capitalism, which means that the only alternatives would then be
> eco-fascism as a new feudalism with only consumption for the rich, lifeboat
> eco-hacking, a situation akin to that of medieval communes, or dictatorial
> eco-maoism, say Cuba on a global scale.
>
> Contra this 'capitalist realism', our contention at the P2P Foundation is
> that post-capitalism is both necessary and possible, even if we recognize
> that today is a possible reformist moment in that evolution/transformation.
> In that context, the construction of seed forms, the recognition of other
> forms of value creation (which can be monetized!), of other forms of
> self-organization is absolutely a vital side of the coin in the dialectic
> of construction and conflict. Foti seems to forget that the traditional
> working class did not simply 'fight', but constructed cooperatives (both
> consumer coosp and producer coops), unions, parties, mutualities and many
> fraternal/sororal organizations. The very generalization of the welfare
> system was an extension by means of the state, of the solidarity mechanism
> of the working class, which had taken decades to develop. Also vitally, the
> identity itself of the working class was not just as a part of capitalism,
> but as a movement for another type of society, whether that was expressed
> through socialism, social-democracy, anarchism, and other variants. When
> that hope was lost terminally, that was also the end of the strength and
> identify of working class movements. There can be no offensive social
> strategy without a strong social imaginary, and mere reformist designs
> won’t do. So commonalism is not just something that we do when we come home
> from work, or tired from our conflictual organizing against an enemy from
> whom we want mere redistribution. On the contrary, it is vital part of the
> class formation and identity, this is why we stress our identity not just
> as precariat, which is a negative formulation that characterizes us as the
> weaker victims of the capitalist class, but as commoners, the multitude of
> co-constructors of viable futures that correspond to contemporary
> emancipatory desires. We cannot just trust green capitalism, we vitally
> need to build thermodynamically sound and mutualized provisioning systems
> as commons even if we have to compromise with capitalism. Post-capitalism
> should not be essentialized as something occuring 'after the revolution',
> but as an ongoing process, dynamically inter-linked with political
> self-organizing and conflict. Foti in this book, is only really good at
> conflict. Even if we look at conflict, I would argue that the strength of
> the reformist compromise after WWII was very much linked to the fear of the
> however flawed alternative that existed, and that the forms of compromise
> were the result of decades of invention of new forms.
>
> If we take that view, then I believe the contradiction in Foti's book can
> be resolved. Indeed in that case we do not have to ask the radical
> precariat to give up it's values for a reformist compromise, but to
> productively combine radically transformative post-capitalist practice.
>
> There is another issue with Foti's book. He very much stresses the
> superdiversity of the precariat, and the key role of gender and
> race/migration unity in their struggles. He also mentions en passant the
> need for a potential eurasian alignment between Europe and China , now that
> the Atlantic unity has been broken by Trump. But , at the same time, this
> is really a very eurocentric book, calling for a new compromise in Europe
> and 'advanced western states'. Obviously, since in the Global South it is
> the salariat and proletariat which is growing, there is a theoretical
> difficulty here. But what if a thermo-dynamically sound economy would
> require a cosmo-localization of our global economy, as we contend at the
> P2P Foundation, combining global sharing of knowledge with substantial
> relocalization of physical production (as even big bank reports now
> recognize) ? Only if we recognize this, can we actually have a new global
> view of solidarity, as both elements benefit workers, salaried and
> precarious, in the whole world.
>
> So, in conclusion, I find Foti's book to be an excellent first half of a
> book, which would have been much better and sound, if it had more
> extensively struggled with the commons equation of the precariat. The
> commons is not something we do 'afterwards' , after a successful New Green
> Deal, it is is something that is as ongoing and vital. Theoretically, in a
> few paragraphs at the end of the book, Foti seems to recognize it, but it
> is not integrated in his strategic vision, or only marginally.
>
> Readers who miss this aspect, could look at the ten years of research and
> analysis we have conducted on that other half of the equation, at the P2P
> Foundation. We may have the other weakness though, and in fact we purposely
> have focused not on the conflict part, which is the natural inclination of
> the left and needs no help, but in pointing out how any self-organization,
> and construction of the commons, which inevitable comes with conflict, is
> just an essential part of the programmatic alternatives of the precariat.
> Not just as proposals of electoral parties and syndicates, but as
> expressions of actual practice. Our orientation is to try to achieve a
> greater understanding by emancipatory forces, of both the salariat, the
> precariat, and progressive entrepreneurial groups, of the importance of
> integrating the commons as a programmatic element in their struggles, and
> their proposals. We will probably stick to this bias towards the
> constructive side of the equation, tempered by a full awareness that this
> is by itself insuffient, and requires the kind of understanding of
> struggle, and its attendant strategies, as provided by Foti.
>
> In conclusion, Foti's enduring quality is to have worked out
> systematically, what the conflict part of the equation entails, and that is
> a very important achievement. Bearing in mind what we think is missing in
> this book, there is much to be learned, and I believe the different
> perspectives and different weaknesses in the approaches of people like Foti
> and the P2P Foundation (and other) commons-centric approaches, there is
> room for a lot of convergence and mutual enrichment."
>
>
> --
>
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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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