<div dir="ltr">this proposal will appear april 2 on the p2p blog,<br><br><p>Michel Bauwens:</p>
<p>The recent success of a global mobilization (500+ participants and
collectives in 23 countries and over 50 cities) to collaborative map
P2P-driven, commons-oriented, collaboration/sharing-based initiatives in
hispanic countries, has shown a grassroots hunger for more mutual
coordination to enhance the capacity to initiate social change. I would
like to add the hypothesis that what is in the making is not just a new
social imaginery, but also a potential new political subject. To build
and obtain more civic infrastructures to enable and empower autonomous
social production, I believe we must move to mutualize our forces and
create a new set of political, social and economic institutions which
can have �transitional� effects, i.e. prepare the ground for a
phase-transition to a political economy and civilization in which
socially and environmentally friendly free association between
autonomous producers and citizens become the norm.</p>
<p><strong>I believe the time is there to start constructing the following three institutional coalitions:</strong></p>
<p><strong>* The civic/political institution: The Alliance of the Commons</strong></p>
<p>An alliance of the commons is an alliance, meeting place and network
of p2p-commons oriented networks, associations, places; who do not have
economic rationales. These alliances can be topical, local,
transnational, etc � An example is the initiative Paris Communs Urbains
which is attempting to create a common platform for urban commons
intiatives in the Paris region; another Parisian/French example is the
freecultural network Libre Savoirs, which is developing a set of policy
proposals around digital rights. (both examples were communicated to me
by Lionel Maurel).</p>
<p>An alliance of the commons is a meeting place and platform to
formulate policy proposals that enhance civic infrastructures for the
commons.</p>
<p><strong>* The economic institution: the P2P/Commons Globa-local ��Phyle��</strong></p>
<p>A phyle (as orgiginally proposed by <a href="http://lasindias.net" class="" title="http://lasindias.net" target="_blank">lasindias.net</a>)
is a coalition of commons-oriented, community-supportive ethical
enterprises which trade and exchange in the market to create livelyhoods
for commoners and peer producers engaged in social production. The use
of a peer production licence keeps the created exchange value within the
sphere of the commons and strengthens the existence of a more
autonomous counter-economy which refuses the destructive logic of
profit-maximisation and instead works to increase benefits for their
own, but also the emerging global commons. Phyles created integrated
economies around the commons, that render them more autonomous and
insure the social reproduction of its members. Hyperproductive global
phyles that generate well-being for their members will gradually create a
counterpower to the hitherto dominant MNO�s.</p>
<p><strong>* The political-economy institution: The Chamber of the Commons</strong></p>
<p>In analogy with the well-known chambers of commerce which work on the
infrastructure for for-profit enterprise, the Commons chamber
exclusively coordinates for the needs of the emergent coalitions of
commons-friendly ethical enterprises (the phyles), but with a
territorial focus. Their aim is to uncover the convergent needs of the
new commons enterprises and to interface with territorial powers to
express and obtain their infrastructural, policy and legal needs.</p>
<strong>In short, we need a alliance of the commons to project civil
and political power and influence at every level of society; we need
phyles to strengthen our economic autonomy from the profit-maximizing
dominant system; and we need Chambre of the Commons to achieve
territorial policy; legal and infrastructural conditions for the
alternative, human and nature-friendly political economy to thrive.
Neither alone is sufficient, but together they could be a powerful triad
for the necessary phase transition.</strong><br clear="all"><div><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><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <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>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br>
</div></div>