<div dir="ltr"><a href="https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/top-p2p-books-you-should-have-read-in-2014-1-the-return-of-the-cooperative-commonwealth/2015/01/25">https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/top-p2p-books-you-should-have-read-in-2014-1-the-return-of-the-cooperative-commonwealth/2015/01/25</a><div><br></div><div>The Top P2P Books of the Year will be serialized this year.</div><div><br></div><div>people in cc, you will find your books in this list,</div><div><br></div><div>Item is available as of tonight or next morning:</div><div><br></div><div>would be great if anyone has the time to give it a better lay-out and look:</div><div><br></div><div><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><em>Our book of the year is Humanizing the Economy by John Restakis. See why below.</em></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">2014 was definitely the year of the commons – cooperative convergence. Two objective trends especially since the systemic economic crisis of 2008 are the revival of the commons, mostly driven through peer production; AND a revival of cooperatives and cooperativism, which had been subjected to a certain decline and even a neoliberal degeneration in the period since the 1980’s. What was new in 2014 is that these two sectors started talking and looking at each other. At the P2P Foundation, we call for a new synthesis in the form of open cooperativism, i.e. cooperatives which consciously and structurally co-produce commons, as pioneered by the Catalan Integral Cooperative or the Allianza Solidaria in Quito.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">The best record of this, which we don’t count as a book, is the following report of a in-depth convergence conversation by leading commoners and cooperativists:</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 0. “<a href="http://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/open_co-operativism_report_january_2015.pdf" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">TOWARD AN OPEN CO-OPERATIVISM</a>. A New Social Economy Based on Open Platforms, Co-operative Models and the Commons. A Report on a Commons Strategies Group Workshop Berlin, Germany, August 27-28, 2014. By Pat Conaty and David Bollier. CSG / Boll Foundation / Foundation pour le Progres de l’Homme, 2014.</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">We strongly urge everyone to read this.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>Our top book about the cooperative commonwealth tradition is paradoxically a book that appeared in 2010, but that strongly deserves a second life.</strong> It is the marvelously well written book by John Restakis, entitled “Humanizing the Economy”, which places cooperativism in its historical tradition, and presents innovations such as solidarity cooperatives. Learn there about the cooperative tradition in Emilia-Romagna and the innovative Seikatsu movement in Japan. Since, John Restakis has developed a much stronger understanding of the commons and worked with the P2P Foundation and myself on the commons-cooperative convergence. The evidence of this lies in our P2P-Foundation published e-book on the Commons Transition, which has strong chapters by John Restakis on the convergence of the commons economy, the partner state approach, and the cooperative economy. Finally, our own book, “Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy” co-authored by Vasilis Kostakis, gives a detailed vision of expectations related to this cooperative commons economy: <em>will it fullfill its promise, of fall victim to the forces which extract its value for purely private benefit of large multinationals of netarchical capital?</em></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>1. <a href="http://www.newsociety.com/Books/H/Humanizing-the-Economy" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Humanizing the Economy</a>. Co-operatives in the Age of Capital. by John Restakis. New Society Publishers, 2010</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>1. 1. b eBook: <a href="http://commonstransition.org/commons-transition-the-book/" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">COMMONS TRANSITION: POLICY PROPOSALS FOR AN OPEN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY</a>. By Michel Bauwens and John Restakis. P2P Foundation, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 1.1.c. <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net/Network_Society_and_Future_Scenarios_for_a_Collaborative_Economy" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy</a>. By Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">The second trend, the revival of the commons, produced two very important book this year, by David Bollier and Jeremy Rifkin.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">David Bollier’s book is a very well written general introduction of what ‘commoning’ means for human life, comparable to these great classics like The Gift by Lewis Hyde; Jeremy Rifkin’s book may not go deep enough in the problematic transition, but gives a great historical introduction to changes in the modes of production, and why the commons is now an economic fact, destined to grow not just in the so-called ‘immaterial’ economy, but also in the physical economy, through the ‘margical cost’ effects of distributed energy and 3D printing.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 2. <a href="http://www.newsociety.com/Books/T/Think-Like-a-Commoner" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Think Like a Commoner</a>. A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. by David Bollier. New Society, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 2.1. <a href="http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">The Zero Marginal Cost Society</a>: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. by Jeremy Rifkin. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>More good books on the Revival of Cooperativism:</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3. <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=688814" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Capital and the Debt Trap</a>. Learning from Cooperatives in the Global Crisis. By Claudia Sanchez Bajo and Bruno Roelants. Palgrave MacMillan (2013)</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">“The recent financial crisis has had a devastating impact around the globe. Thousands of businesses have closed down and millions of jobs have been cut. Many people have lost their homes. Capital and the Debt Trap explains how key economies have fallen into a ‘debt trap’, linking the financial sphere to the real economy, and goes beyond, looking into alternatives to the constant stream of financial bubbles and shocks. Overlooked by many,cooperatives across the world have been relatively resilient throughout the crisis. Through four case studies (the transformation of a French industrial SME in crisis into a cooperative, a fishery cooperative in Mexico, the Desjardins Cooperative Group in Quebec and the Mondragon Group in the Basque country of Spain), the book explores their strategies and type of control, providing an in-depth analysis within a broader debate on wealth generation and a sustainable future.”</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3.1 e-Book: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/211019686/Democratic-Wealth" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Democratic Wealth</a>: Building a Citizens’ Economy. Ed. by Stuart White, and Niki Sethi-Smith. openDemocracy and Politics in Spires, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">“Democratic Wealth’ is a collection of essays that challenges the poverty of thinking around economic policy, particularly after the 2007 financial crash. It explores the renewed interest in republicanism and suggests this as a framework to shape an economy that serves the common good. It is a selection of articles from a series published by openDemocracy and Politics in Spires, a blog run by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3.2 eBook: <a href="http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/alternatives_to_capitalism_proposals_for_a_democratic_economy" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Alternatives To Capitalism: Proposals For A Democratic Economy</a>. by Robin Hahnel, Erik Olin Wright. New Left Project, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">“New Left Project’s new e-book, Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy, is now available for download.<br>In it the leading radical thinkers Robin Hahnel and Erik Olin Wright take on the crucial but all-too neglected question: what kind of society should we be fighting for instead of capitalism? Hahnel favours ‘participatory economics’. Wright advocates ‘real utopian socialism’. Alternatives to Capitalism puts these practical proposals through their paces in an in-depth, frank and extremely instructive debate about the central question of our time.”</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3.3 Gary Alexander. <a href="http://earthconnected.net/egaia-2nd-edition/" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">eGaia Growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through Communications</a>. Published by Lighthouse Books, ISBN 0907637248 (2nd ed. 2014)</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">A updated second edition. See <a href="http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/blog/?page_id=34" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);text-decoration:none">here</a> for reviews.</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3.4 <a href="http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/cooperatives_in_a_postgrowth_era" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Co-operatives in a Post-growth Era</a>. Creating Co-operative Economics. Edited by Sonja Novkovic and Tom Webb. Fernwood Pubn. (with Zed Books), 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">“Featuring a remarkable roster of internationally renowned critical thinkers, this book presents a feasible alternative for a more environmentally sustainable and equitable economic system. The time has never been better for cooperatives everywhere to recognize their own potential and ability to change the economic landscape.”</p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px"><strong>* 3.5 Robert Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski. <a href="http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8922" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none">Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future</a>: Insights from 45 Global Thought Leaders. World Scientific, 2014</strong></p><p style="line-height:1.5em;margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;color:rgb(42,42,42);font-family:Ubuntu,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.960000038147px">“The book offers a broad, critical discussion of what a sustainable and desirable future should or can be, with chapters written by some of the world’s leading thinkers, including: Wendell Berry, Van Jones, Frances Moore Lappe, Peggy Liu, Hunter Lovins, Gus Speth, Bill McKibben, and many more.”</p><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan" target="_blank">http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan</a> </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></div>