Dear Mathieu,<br><br>extremely interesting,<br><br>could you keep an eye on reports, or eventually offer one yourself, for the p2p blog?<br><br>Michel<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Mathieu ONeil <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au">mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div> <p><span style="font-family: monospace;">Self-organisation and the economy - Friday April 1st 2011</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Time: 5-8 pm</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Location: Lock Keepers Cottage, QMUL, Mile End, London E14NS - no.33 on the</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">map.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">How do self-organising practices clash with, are reabsorbed into, or exit</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">the mainstream economy? Participants are invited to address issues of</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">self-organisation in the economy from cooperatives to social enterprises,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">between state funding, self funding, alternative economies and charity</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">dependence, and related questions of authorship, redistribution of</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">resources, production of value and co-production.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Siôn Whellens (Calverts Coop, London)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Siôn Whellens was a contributing editor at Anarchy Magazine, and active</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">with London Workers Group, Workers Playtime and the anti-party and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">autonomist communist left in London in the late 1970s and 1980's. He</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">co-published a bi-weekly newsletter, the Picket Bulletin, during the long</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Wapping printers' lockout of 1986, dedicated to creating an effective</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">communication tool for grassroots activists. Since 1983 he has worked with</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Calverts, a collective-type worker co-operative of graphic designers and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">printers, and in the wider worker co-operative milieu. He is an elected</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">member of the Worker Co-operative Council and a director of Co-operatives</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">UK . Siôn is interested in exploring the conflicts and potentials of</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">workers’ self-expression, self-organisation and self-management under</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">capitalism, and understanding how the development of our day-to-day</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">activity can contribute to the emergence of a new social economy.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For resources, see:</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Siôn's blog: Bethnal Bling;</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">The special issue of Affinities on The New Coopoerativism;</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">A group of worker co-operators recently wrote and published a ‘code of</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">governance’ which is really a guide to what the seven co-operative</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">principles should look like in practice. PDF download;</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Bob Cannell's blog. He is a thinker-practitioner of worker co-operation and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">its enemies;</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Radical Routes is an explicitly anti capitalist federation of autonomous UK</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">worker, housing and social co-ops. Their site has interesting content and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">resources;</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For a more political take, see the opening paragraphs of Barrot &</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Martin’s ‘Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement’</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">-------------------------------------</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Marcel Mars (Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Marcel Mars will discuss the use of free software, proprietary</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">collaborative software/social networks and file sharing practices in the</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">context of self-organization. Software is a socio-technical system in which</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">machines, people, and processes are inextricably interconnected and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">interdependent. [1]</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">The use of collaborative software in every organization will affect its</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">organizational structure, capacity of negotiations, rules of access to</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">(org) resources, decision making process and overall group dynamics. That</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">said, an organization (still) controls the strength of the effect with its</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">knowledge of how to use and adapt (develop) collaborative software to its</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">own needs.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">The collaborative development of software, as in the case of free software</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">movement, brought to the world enormous autonomous infrastructure beloved</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">by many activists and self-organization freaks. Still, the network effect</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">[2] created by most of the groups, activists or not, pays off to the web2.0</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">startups, social network giants and other proprietary solutions.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">"Utility Computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">computation, storage and services, as a metered service similar to a</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">traditional public utility (such as electricity, water, natural gas, or</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">telephone network)."[3] When computing in general and computer-supported</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">collaboration becomes public utility its development becomes more and more</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">invisible to the public. Utility computing is still in its first phase. It</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">is mainly led by big corporations like: Amazon, Microsoft, HP, Google,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Oracle, IBM etc.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Their infrastructures are built upon Free software (Linux, Xen, KVM,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Apache, Hadoop). But, they keep their advances in technology as trade</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">secrets.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">[1] Ensmenger, Nathan L. The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. The MIT Press,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">2010.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">[2] “Network effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, n.d.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">[3] “Utility computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, n.d.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For resources, see Marcel's blog: Kiberkomunist</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">-----------------------------------------</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Matt Zimmerman (Debian/Ubuntu, London)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">---------------------------------------</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Toni Prug (QMUL, London, Hack the State, gComm(o)ns)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Toni Prug will discuss the impossibility of democratic self organization in</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">the economy.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">"If the economy disrupts our lives, then we must disrupt the economy"</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">(UK Uncut, 2011)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For self organization to be democratic, there must be no capital, state</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">power holders, or holders of physical forces of coercion (parts of society</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">without state/capitalist controls over them) who are in the position to</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">impose their will to dictate the model of cooperation by utilizing</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">people’s need to acquire the means of subsistence by selling their labour</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">for a wage, or to obey in fear for life. The egalitarian impulse that</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">exists in self organization is rarely developed due to participants’</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">different class positions (skills, time, space, money, social networks) and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">the lack of value chains external to capitalist models of valorization</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">whose inbuilt anti-egalitarianism cannot valorize egalitarian self</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">organization. </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">The richest parts of the world have increased their productivity several</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">times since WWII. Instead of proliferation of time for self organization</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">based on abundance of the time gained by increased productivity,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">egalitarian elements (access to shelter, health, education, care) are</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">disappearing and the amount of labour time sold for a wage, or volunteered</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">in a hope of one, is increasing. If we consider self organization as a form</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">of emancipation, and if we aim for it to be democratic, in the times of</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">rapidly reduced material equality amongst the people of some of the</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">wealthiest states in the world, the possibility of democratic self</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">organization has to be considered not as a sporadic question, but as a</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">central, systemic one.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For resources, see:</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Werner Bonefeld: ‘What is the alternative?’ (Shift, 2011, No. 11)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=400" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=400</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Alexei Penzin, ‘The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Collective Work: An Interview with Paolo Virno’ (Mediations, Volume 25,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">No. 1, Fall 2010)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/the-soviets-of-the-multitude" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/the-soviets-of-the-multitude</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">"Marx's Method" by David Harvey: A Colloquium Talk Video (Geography at</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Berkeley, October 21, 2010)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://geography.berkeley.edu/about/story.php?id=47" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://geography.berkeley.edu/about/story.php?id=47</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">----------------------------------------------</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Next encounter in the series:</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Friday May 6th</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Self-organization and community</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">External dynamics, political discourse and outreach. The role of the</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">organizer when working with constituencies. Issues of politicization,</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;">outreach, involvement, negotiation.</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Doina Petrescu (Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée, Paris)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.urbantactics.org/" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://www.urbantactics.org/</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">Jane Wills (QMUL, London)</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.citizensuk.org/campaigns/living-wage-campaign/" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">http://www.citizensuk.org/campaigns/living-wage-campaign/</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br></span><span style="font-family: monospace;">For more information or to take part in the project, please write to</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="https://mail.paris-sorbonne.fr/src/compose.php?send_to=selforganising@gmail.com" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank"></b></font></b></font><font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "mail.paris-sorbonne.fr" claiming to be</b></font> <font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "mail.paris-sorbonne.fr" claiming to be <font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "mail.paris-sorbonne.fr" claiming to be selforganising@gmail.com</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;">or visit</span><span style="font-family: monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><a href="http://www.self-org.blogspot.com/" title="Ce lien vers un site externe s'ouvrira dans une nouvelle fenêtre " target="_blank">www.self-org.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-family: monospace;"><br>
</span></p> </div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
P2P Foundation - Mailing list<br>
<a href="http://www.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://www.p2pfoundation.net</a><br>
<a href="https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank">https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br>
<br>Connect: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.ning.com" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.ning.com</a>; Discuss: <a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank">http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation</a><br>
<br>Updates: <a href="http://del.icio.us/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://del.icio.us/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br>
<br><br><br><br><br>