[P2P-F] My review (bauwens) of Alex Foti's General Theory of the Precariat

Tue Feb 6 07:05:31 CET 2018

thanks Alex!!

On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Alex Foti <alex.foti at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear friends
>
> thanks for your food for thought. was at transmediale for a few days and
> then lost two planes but it went well and talk about the precariat and the
> threat of national populism, all too evident in italy as a fascio-leghista
> goes on a killing rampage targeting anybody who's black in the provincial
> town of macerata. i agree with michel that in france and belgium unions and
> their mutualities are integrated in the welfare state and they get to
> co-manage social security (it's not like that all over europe) - true
> unions have roles in the co-op industry, but this operates largely
> indistinguishably from corporations with social responsibility. anyway i
> really think UBI would do wonders to encourage people to engage with the
> commons, and social entrepreneurship around the commons. it would abolish
> workfare and all other paternalistic, vertical element still attached to
> the fordist welfare state. best ciaos and a little poem i recited for the
> opening. alex
>
> An Ode to the Multiethnic, Transgendered Precariat
> PRECARIOUS OF EUROPE, LET'S DEFEAT THE NEW FASCISM
>
> Neoliberalism made its profits on the precariat's back
> now nazi-populism wants to turn the clock back
> on the millennials' untamed spirit of subversion
> by quashing rebellion and persecuting migration:
> nationalism is back and the left is held in check,
> so we need a whole new anticapitalist hack!
>
> nazis and fascists give people identity,
> to vanquish the bastards in perpetuity
> we need the class based on precarity!
> europe is old and old people hate,
> right-wing populism won't disintegrate
> unless social populism occupies the state:
> a european republic of regions and city-states
> against assimilation by christian nation-states!
>
> not a world of magic, but a barricade against tragic
> return of nationalism in the continent that spawned it;
> since '11 the precariat's been fighting for world liberation:
> it is on the side of women's emancipation vs. male domination,
> it needs constituent power to stop trump and putin's aberration..
>
> O precariat, rise from your slumber
> and riot in multitudinous number:
> you were neoliberalism's early creation
> in affinity groups u opposed globalization;
>
> Now the times have changed for worse:
> fascism is again riding history's mad horse
> from america to russia, from berlin to vienna
> antifa is the last barricade vs racist gehenna!
>
> Anarchists, feminists, ecologists
> commonists, populists, socialists
> must enter in broad alliance
> with the precariat's new defiance,
> to dismantle neoliberalism
> and defeat all nazi populists!
> let's overthrow unequal oligarchy
> let's defeat once for all patriarchy!!
>
> May the 2011 revolution's embers
> spark your minds, guide your levers:
> defeat the bosses in this game's new levels
> free and open europe from Warsaw to Paris;
> we all gotta fight for real democracy,
> welcome refugees, oppose eurocracy!
> The signs of dystopia are all too clear
> war n climate disaster are all too near,
> but hey the people's upswell never stops,
> it will bury Ordoliberismus before it rots..
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 5:48 PM, Stacco Troncoso <
> staccotroncoso at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Here's Michel's review of Alex's book, published in the P2PF blog:
>> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-review-alex-fotis-general
>> -theory-precariat/2018/01/30
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Stacco
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 6:58 PM, 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.ourproje
>>> ct.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.c
>>> oop>
>>> *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/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Advocacy coordinator P2P Foundation <http://p2pfoundation.net/>. Project
>> lead commonstransition.org
>> Co-founder guerrillatranslation.org
>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
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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