<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">Dear Brian,</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">I am in full agreement with what you write here, a new K-wave is coming at some point, but I believe it will necessarily integrate key elements of the green and p2p compacts, if it wants to work .. I compare it to the 18th cy, period, one system was going down (nobility), one system was going up (bourgeoisie), with the 'absolute kings' acting as temporary arbiters as long as both forces were of more or less equal strength . but in the end, it had to be resolved by a flurry of 'phase transitions', in one country after another ..</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">so, while police state fascism will emerge in certain contexts, it is far from sure that this will be the dominant reality (thailand is really significant here, declining nobility and bangkok middle class, facing rising rural (including enterpreneurial), working and chinese industrial class sections, neither coalition can win, so the military come up as arbitrageurs, but though they want to lock down democracy in favour of the first , the strength of the latter coalition precludes long term success); some kind of compromise is inevitable in order to pacify the social majority, it seems to me</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">But I have one question, you say Minqi Li says there is no longer a reserve periphery .. but what about Africa ? (and the rise of latin america in the naugthies ?) <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net/Rise_of_China_and_the_Demise_of_the_Capitalist_World-Economy">http://p2pfoundation.net/Rise_of_China_and_the_Demise_of_the_Capitalist_World-Economy</a></div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">Michel</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:38 AM, Brian Holmes <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com" target="_blank">bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div id=":x8" class="" style="overflow:hidden">In the 90s, middle-classes in the overdeveloped world and proto-middle-classes everywhere else were seduced by networked technology to play their traditional roles as managers and consumers, despite the fierce inequalities of neoliberalism. If a new geopolitical order is achieved, the pervasive-computing utopia touted by people like Kaku will again seduce many people; but it will come with even sharper unemployment and huge environmental crises. This time, the global middle classes are going to be clearly affected, as we move to a world of centers and semi-peripheries, without any undeveloped peripheries to exploit any more (that's Minqi Li's analysis, I recommend it). Already we see an ugly future. "Perfect capitalism" shrinks the pie and poisons the sunny day when you are supposed to eat it. One path that is already opening up to deal with the resultant problems is the new police-state fascism. That path is preferred by the transnational capitalist class and it is already highly advanced, as we know.<br>
<br>
However, a bifurcation is possible. Its essential traits are being created now. Of course they are yet small in scale, but that is not so surprising. Only since 2011 have large sectors of the world population understood that the current development path, and any future one that tries to prolong it, is a dead end. If critical mass is built over the next ten years, our ideas can inflect the major developments of the world system. I think this is what Michel is talking about when he evokes the possibility of a "phase change." It may not be an entirely new, fully non-capitalist system. But decisive axioms could be changed, leading to much less concentration in property and resource ownership, energy production, manufacturing, media and education. This can only happen if a new political and ecological philosophy, as powerful as Marxism once was, can be articulated and spread in such a way as to inform practice. Zizek's Leninism isn't going to do it, I am certain.<br>
<br>
After the 20th century and after the disastrous Arab Spring, people will not be likely to risk total revolution. Uprisings are still important. But not if their aims are confined to either the institution of new liberal democracies (ie masks over the current system) or so-called proletarian states (ie industrial developmental states ruled by party technocrats, as in China and Russia today). Those are zombie solutions. We need to transform our modes of producing, of managing production, and of symbolizing what a good society is, all from the bottom up. Only such transformations can inflect the future forms of civilization.</div>
</blockquote></div><br><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div><b>Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..</b></div><div>
<br></div>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></div>