<div dir="ltr">dear all,<div><br></div><div>I have been quiet and behind schedule, mostly because i was ten days behind the great chinese firewall, unable to access google services and gmail, then on full-on trips to Berlin and Ghent,</div><div><br></div><div>but the next few weeks I am settling in, though very busily, in brussels, working 2 months on and off for the labour mutual SMart,</div><div><br></div><div>so much to read just by following Pat's leads ..</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 11:16 PM, Stephen Yeo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank">stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Thank you Pat for <b>THE TRADITION </b>of workers' control by
Ostergaard, I shall have to get this... Am away for two weeks but
just read David Bollier <i>Thinking Like a Commoner </i>for the
first time. Wonderful clear account plus so many useable examples
I mention it because he is v good on not reifying ( or anyway not
all the time) THE state... and good, as John will know already ,
for work towards a partner state, partner states.And on the John
Ruskin inheritance.. Back in a week's time anyway. The state as a
relation of production ( was that Philip Corrigan?NOT Paul but
Philip of <i>The Great Arch....)</i><br>
</p>
<p>solidarity from,</p>
<p>Stephen <br>
</p><div><div class="h5">
<br>
<div class="m_-3615764300833454304moz-cite-prefix">On 28/10/2017 13:25, pat commonfutures
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p>Hi Michel, Stephen, Roberto, Stacco, John. Colm and Henry</p>
<p>This thread of ours is such an important debate. All about the
scope for city, commons and public social partnerships. What
John R has been advocating as the partner state and that I am
struggling with Mike Lewis and the Synergia team to improve the
course content for the next iteration of Transition to Co-op
Commonwealth.</p>
<p>A few comments as food for further thought as John and I will
be talking soon to Cilla about what a Co-op College course on
Synergia might look like.</p>
<p>Stephen it is good for you to recall and share the work of
Raymond Williams. Also in respect to Dawkins and the Selfish
Gene, Kropotkin's Mutual Aid provided chapter and chapter of
social, historical and anthropological evidence to critique
social darwinism and over a century ago.</p>
<p>Geoffrey Ostergaard died in 1990 and was a political scientist
at the University of Birmingham for almost 40 years. He did his
Phd under the guild socialist theorist and activist, GDH Cole.
Ostergaard was an expert on the Gandhian movement in India and
the struggle in the 1970s of the students and co-op activists
against the corruption of Indira Gandhi. He wrote a long book
about this.</p>
<p>His writings on guild socialism were mainly in articles but
they were compiled in 1997 into a short book called The
Tradition of Workers Control. I have been re-reading this during
the week and in fact stimulated by this email thread and by the
work of Stephen and his forthcoming new book on the Three
Socialisms - Statist, Collectivist and Associationalist.
Stephen's brilliant manuscript prompted me to re-read the
Ostergaard. It really is an eye-opener and I would encourage you
all to get a copy.</p>
<p>Michel and Stacco you would find it very helpful indeed to the
work you are doing on the Chamber of the Commons. Essentially
this is what GDH Cole was seeking to do in his book Guild
Socialism Restated. The challenge is all about how the partner
state can be designed and co-developed as an Associative
Democracy and how the present static unaccountable forms of
democracy can be made practically functional in a distributive
decentralised way.</p>
<p>In the last chapter of Stephen Yeo's draft book, which is
superb, he shows how the work of Paul Hirst, Robin Murray and
others were ploughing this field. So much in the Ostergaard book
goes back to the very full on debates before World War 1 and
into the 1930s about these functional democracy questions. The
theories then ranging about civic sovereignty (SG Hobson) and
co-sovereignty (GDH Cole) are very detailed examinations of how
worker, citizen, consumer, co-op and state associational
interests can be enabled and connected to secure real democracy
freedoms via creative institutional restructuring. </p>
<p>Ostergaard's book is so relevant to co-op commons and partner
state challenges as it follows this thread of thinking and
theorising and practice from the 1890s to the 1950s when
McCarthyism snuffed it all out. I would encourage everyone to
get a copy. It is 150 pages, reads like an express train and it
is available in paperback for about £5 plus postage.</p>
<p>We need to revisit all this rich thinking as everything was up
for grabs in 1920s before Fordism took over and worker consumer
and the potential for co-op economics was forsaken along with
the mission of co-op commonwealth and guild commonwealth.
Actually John and Michel, Guild Commonwealth was a real powerful
way forward and a strong alternative to the statist socialist
paths of Fabian state control, communism and worse of course in
Germany. Michel the theory of Co-Sovereignty is in fact
expressed in commons language and very close to what you are
working up in your practical work in Ghent.</p>
<p>All the best</p>
<p>Pat</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">On 16 October 2017 at 10:14 Stephen Yeo
<a class="m_-3615764300833454304moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank"><stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop></a> wrote:<br>
<br>
<p>1) It may be interesting that in the new Introduction to the
tenth anniversary edition of his <em>The Selfish Gene </em>that
highly influential figure Richard Dawkins admitted that a
better title for his militantly-competitive, neo-Darwinian
book might have been 'the co-operative gene' , Stephen Jay
Gould ( at base a New York Marxisant radical Democrat) had
been arguing for such an approach, against Dawkins , for years
before that.... Darwin has of course been misappropriated
ideologically very often, and I cannot think of a more kindly,
co-operative field-worker and researcher than him.... <br>
</p>
<p>2) And good one, Henry ! Thank you... This notion of a
'tradition' deliberately assembled is a v fruitful one I
think. Raymond Williams <em>Culture and Society 1780-1950 </em>was
such a deeply felt project, in 'literature' but spiiling over
much more widely than that , to piece together a radical
tradition versus Leavis and others and their 'Great
Tradition'... and it has not often been noticed how in the
Conclusion to that book ( continued into <em>The Long
Revolution </em>of course), he explicitly makes working
class organisation/ association into a cultural form , just as
'cultural' and just as creative and just as available for
practical and moral evaluation/critique as any work of 'art' .
Worth revisiting and trying to extend into all the solidarity
and social creativity work which Synergia and Solidarity
associations of many kinds are pulling together? ....</p>
<p>anyway, solidarity from,</p>
<p>Stephen <br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-cite-prefix">On 16/10/2017 02:19,
Roberto Verzola wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>By the way, the word cooperation strikes a resonant chord across several fields. For instance, in evolution, some biologists insist that cooperation is as widespread a paradigm, if not more dominant, as competition. In market economics, competition is often contraposed to monopoly. But an orthogonal view will contrapose cooperation to competition. I haven't seen the word being coopted in any effective way by corporates, probably because its deep connotations are to foreign to them. (Although Adam Smith once wrote, in paraphrase, beware of monopolies when businessmen start to cooperate...). Finally cooperative has less historical baggage than communes.
Roberto
On Sun, 15 Oct 2017 14:18:17 +0100
Henry Tam <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:htam.global@talk21.com" target="_blank"><htam.global@talk21.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Pat & colleagues,
Mill, as Pat you reminded us previously, indeed has much to offer beyond being lumped with the ‘classical economists’. His philosophy enhanced by cooperative practices ought to be a source of inspiration for contemporary activists. Incidentally, the need to advance the vision of cooperation as a guide to reshaping the socio-economic order is well set out in Stephen’s book on Holyoake, about which I’ve written up this review: <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://henry-tam.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/cooperation-new-order-of-life.html" target="_blank">http://henry-tam.blogspot.co.<wbr>uk/2017/10/cooperation-new-<wbr>order-of-life.html</a>
The democratic cooperative tradition running from Mill, the Owenites, Hobhouse, Hobson, Tawney, Cole, through to today’s solidarity coop advocates is one we should build on, because it has so much to offer, and has the ballast of a real tradition, and not just another concoction with a label the Right hasn’t yet tried to steal. A cooperative society, with a partner state guided by public social partnerships. Cooperation, not exploitation.
In solidarity,
Henry
From: Pat Conaty <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank"><pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop></a>
Reply-To: Pat Conaty <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank"><pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop></a>
Date: Sunday, 15 October 2017 at 13:09
To: Henry Tam <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:htam.global@talk21.com" target="_blank"><htam.global@talk21.com></a>, <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rverzola@gn.apc.org" target="_blank"><rverzola@gn.apc.org></a>, Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a>, Colm <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:colm@solidarityeconomy.coop" target="_blank"><colm@solidarityeconomy.coop></a>, Stephen Yeo <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank"><stephen.yeo@phonecoop.coop></a>
Cc: Stacco Troncoso <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:staccotroncoso@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><staccotroncoso@p2pfoundation.<wbr>net></a>, Holemans Dirk <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Dirk.Holemans@stad.gent" target="_blank"><Dirk.Holemans@stad.gent></a>, Tim Crabtree <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tim.crabtree@schumachercollege.org.uk" target="_blank"><tim.crabtree@<wbr>schumachercollege.org.uk></a>, John Restakis <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:restakis1@gmail.com" target="_blank"><restakis1@gmail.com></a>, P2P Foundation mailing list <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org" target="_blank"><p2p-foundation@lists.<wbr>ourproject.org></a>, Mike Gismondi <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mikeg@athabascau.ca" target="_blank"><mikeg@athabascau.ca></a>, David Bollier <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:david@bollier.org" target="_blank"><david@bollier.org></a>, Cilla Ross <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Cilla@co-op.ac.uk" target="_blank"><Cilla@co-op.ac.uk></a>, Margie Mendell <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mendell@alcor.concordia.ca" target="_blank"><mendell@alcor.concordia.ca></a>, Michael Lewis <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Lewiscccr@shaw.ca" target="_blank"><Lewiscccr@shaw.ca></a>
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] A globa-local synthesis of a possible city-supported public-commons partnership for climate- friendly and ecologically balanced provisioning systems
Hi Henry, Roberto, Michel, Colm and Stephen
Really good reflections and comments.
The origin of words is important. I made that point about the Anglo-saxon word for Wealth being Wellbeing.
Of course we know that liberty has the two meanings. Positive liberty which takes us in the direction of economic democracy and negative liberty which is the laissez-faire free market and limited liberty. JS Mill and others promoted Associative Democracy, shifting from consumer co-ops to producer co-ops and avoiding Mill's fear of a Tyranny of the Majority (Trump nativism, etc) by spreading and developing co-operative education. Mill's question was, yes we can all agree socialism is a great idea, but how the hell do we build and make it work.
RH Tawney a century ago in his fabulous book, the Acquisitive Society, makes the case for Economic Democracy as the alternative and way out of false utopias, namely the then emerging Fordist consumerism that he was critiquing in the early 1920s.
Tawney showed that democracy and freedoms (rights acquired) need to be seen as a hierarchy that has been layered up with rights for citizens through class and social struggle. Hence a thousand years ago commercial freedom can be traced back to the early charters for trade negotiated with overlords to set out a fair for people and artisans to meet and the quid pro quo being the right to such exchange was protected by the overlord in exchange for taxes. A huge battle to get to this outcome that took place all over Europe. But we must remember, these early markets in most cases were regulated in moral economy ways at least.
Tawney goes on to show the next layers that emerged being freedom of religious expression through the reformation, freedom for science through Galileo, etc freedom of the press and communications thereafter and then civil liberties, the franchise etc But he indicates that Economic Democracy as a form of daily democracy really is a stage of democracy and liberty almost nowhere secured. It is the battle hardly yet advanced and really only since Tawney died 50 years ago via Mondragon and other more recent innovations like social co-ops are we now clearly about the co-operative economic science and arts needed to make these work.
We have to remember also how recent have been the civil liberty battles and still how this remains the burning issue in the Middle East, China, etc.
But also what happened with the Guild system it must recalled was that in some places this was an interesting form of economic democracy, planning emerging before laissez faire thinking and what today we would call neoliberalism gained hegemony. Kropotkin shows this in his classic book Mutual Aid. It was under Elizabeth I, over four centuries ago that artisanal guilds lost their powers to operate but the Queen did not restrict the lawyer, accountancy and higher skilled professions from practicing guild governance of their trades.
Thus economic democracy has been very partial. This is core as extending economic democracy really requires co-ops, trade unions, local government and commoners to join forces. This is what Associative Democracy and Gulld Socialism are all about. What John calls a new partner state based on public social partnerships (thanks to Robin Murray for this!)
That strategy would be what I have in mind about the science and arts of Co-operative Economics in practice in both seeing and engaging in Co-operative Commonwealth place shaping for all people and the planet.
Pat
On 15 October 2017 at 10:38 Henry Tam <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:htam.global@talk21.com" target="_blank"><htam.global@talk21.com></a> wrote:
Roberto’s reflections illustrate the perennial problem of political mind-sets and word-choices.
Words can always be claimed, co-opted, converted … Like everything else, it is sometimes necessary to contest and fight for them.
Otherwise, the Right will keep taking whatever words they like as ‘right’.
& the Left will keep rummaging for alternatives out of the odd terms that are left.
‘Democracy’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Commonwealth’, ‘Cooperation’, ‘Community’, ‘Citizenship’, ‘Values’, ‘Respect’, ‘Progress’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Equality’, ‘Integrity’, let us not concede such terms to those who do not in fact care for what they ought to convey.
In solidarity,
Henry
On 15/10/2017, 07:53, "Roberto Verzola" <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rverzola@gn.apc.org" target="_blank"><rverzola@gn.apc.org></a> wrote:
Thank you for this, Pat.
Yes, "degrowth" can be a problem rather than a solution, especially to those who are already on the brink or are already caught in the sinkhole of poverty.
I didn't mean to promote the term "sustainable development", which as you said is already corrupted/polluted. I used the terms separately in the sense that Daly meant them.
I agree we need to find and settle on some new vocabulary that reflects precisely the ideas we are promoting. "Commonwealth" may work in some context. It is a good term, though the term also carries some historical baggage, which can be negative in some countries. "Cooperative", or even P2P are good words. "Democracy" is another overused word, and it is too identified with representative democracy, which as we know has been mostly hijacked by corporations. I haven't settled on the right term(s) yet, and I scan all the exchanges here and other lists in the hope of discovering the right term(s).
I count myself as a Green, but the word "green" has also been coopted, and I now find myself having to explain everytime I use the term.
But that is generally the case. When a term acquires positive connotations, corporate marketers jump on it and appropriate it for their own use. And they have a much larger media budget than most of us combined. Perhaps we can still find a combination of terms whose deep connotations are so anti-corporate that they dare not appropriate it. "Free software" is probably one such term (though RMS also found it necessary to clarify what "free" meant).
I disagree that "there is no green version that will work at all", although this may be more because we associate different meanings to that word. I consider Green my description of closed material cycles fuelled by renewable energy, where the cycles of biological and non-biological materials are kept separate (with very well-defined interfaces between them, I would add--a concept I borrow from software design). I think this is already working in some situations. It even accomodates some form of growth (putting in more renewable energy to speed up the material flows).
Greetings,
Roberto
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 18:47:26 +0100 (BST)
pat commonfutures <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank"><pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop></a> wrote:
Hi Roberto
These are great points. Yes indeed, Daly talks in Beyond Growth, a very good book from about 1990 on using Sustainable Development as the term instead of ideas like Degrowth. We are experiencing degrowth in Europe in austerity stricken regions and here in the UK, Wales has been in a depression along with the North of England if you look at the falls in GDP post 2010. However these regional indicators are not talked about but but the national UK headline figures that show low-level aggregate growth. In fact degrowth and recession/depression is the underlying problem.
Growth and its necessity is driven by returns required to capital to service debt both for households, nations and businesses. But as Mill indicated but also Keynes in his essay on the future a hundred years ago, we need to move to post capitalist society and end usury practices in relation to land, money and other speculation. This means as the old co-op saying has stressed, labour needs to hire capital or indeed reformulate money and make it neutral money or interest free. As Stephen Yeo has said, the early Owenite socialists but also the Proudhonians in France from the 1820s sought ways and means to develop co-op land and co-op money without economic rent, interest seekers, etc. See here the thinking of post Keynesians on cheap money, Daly on money as a commons (an essay of his), Silvio Gesell on negative interest rates, etc. This Owenite thinking was also an anti-politics then as working people had no franchise. The thinking is at the roots of what we have overlooked a!
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre> s Co-op
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>erative Economics.
The problem with Sustainable Development is that the UN introduced it via the Brundtland report in 1987 but it has become a polluted and co-opted term by corporations and by global banks talking about green banking and SRI. Just so much greenwash. Daly like Schumacher earlier hoped that reforms like the Meidner Plan in Sweden would show how to fully democratise ownership of corporations over several decades. The Meidner Plan was a plan to transform the Swedish Welfare State into a co
I think therefore that post capitalism, co-operative commonwealth are better notions and key words with the latter more specific and in the vernacular of those in the Co-op movement who have pursued past and present Economic Democracy (mainstream co-op movement does not go there) which means beyond wage labour and capital as we know them (the essence of debt driven growth and capitalism - there is no green version that will work at all).
Pat
On 09 October 2017 at 01:23 Roberto Verzola <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:rverzola@gn.apc.org" target="_blank"><rverzola@gn.apc.org></a> wrote:
May I add my few cents' worth to this discussion on growth, degrowth, steady state, etc.
To introduce myself briefly: I am currently involved in social experiments in renewable energy, and we have since expanded this to sustainable technologies in general. We define a sustainable technology as one that involves a closed loop of material cycles run by renewable energy, where cycles of biodegradable materials and cycles of non-biodegradable materials (which McDonough and Braungart call "technical materials") are kept separate. Other technologies we actually work with include the system of rice intensification (SRI), which currently holds the world record in rice yield and can be implemented organically, low-power FM (in which the technology determines form and content to a significant extent), biogas digesters, a social (rather than technical) solution to power outages through the use of traditional and social media, and a few others.
I think it was Daly too who distinguished between growth and development. Growth involves increases in quantity, while development may involve improvements in quality.
As someone said earlier, "degrowth" is a politically untenable message especially in a country like the Philippines where almost a third of the population live below the poverty line. But calling for a shift in emphasis to development rather than growth is more easily defensible (plus of course a certain level of distribution).
The point I wanted to contribute is that within our definition of sustainable technology, we can still imagine growth occurring when the material flows in the cycles I referred to above are increased as long as additional energy from renewable sources is available to feed into these cycles. So I can still see growth as a component in an overall strategy of development.
By the way, her work is a bit dated now, but I still find Jane Jacobs' Cities and the Wealth of Nations and her paradigm of city-centered regional (i.e., sub-national) development very useful, especially if it is updated to take ecological matters as well as the information sector more into account.
Greetings to all,
Roberto Verzola
Philippines
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 19:26:26 +0700
Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a> wrote:
very helpful Pat,
in the articles, not books, that I've read by Daly, i saw no reference to
this,
Michel
On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 6:59 PM, pat commonfutures <
<a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank">pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop</a>> wrote:
Hi Michel
A key question Michel, here is my attempt to answer this. Others like
Stephen Yeo may wish to chip in that know the history.
Daly argues for a shift from growth economics to steady-state economics.
The latter implies no capitalism. His argument is based on the forecasts by
Adam Smith, JS Mill and Keynes that in future growth will decline when the
opportunities for it dry up. Marx called this the accumulation crisis. From
1776 in the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith foresaw this endpoint in about
250 years. Keynes foresaw this in his Essay on the Future Economics of Our
Grandchildren as happening about 2025. Mill did not give a date.
The issue for Daly was what system would replace an economy without growth
as other economists have foreseen such a state as leading to the abyss.
Mill argued that with worker ownership of the means of production via
worker co-ops and comprehensive land reform, this steady state could be a
positive future for qualitative human development.
Mill argued though that the ownership question was crucial to set the
enabling circumstances for this. Hence his argument for land taxation to
move property into common ownership or public ownership. Henry George takes
his single tax idea directly from Mill. But Mill also argued as another
crucial reform for worker ownership and he made the case that consumer
co-ops were not sufficient. The reason for this Mill showed is that
economic democracy and in fact full democracy required participative
structures and educational reform to secure this. Only then could socialism
be practical he felt. This was his argument against other non-democratic
forms of socialism that he feared would lead to authoritarian outcomes.
Polanyi is of this school of democratic socialism and Daly is a strong
supporter of Polanyi in his books Beyond Growth and For the Common Good.
There is a major problem with the history of socialism. Socialism was the
term coined by the early Co-op movement in England from the 1820s. Robert
Owen in particular called it also social science. He used the terms almost
interchangeably. These socialists were also for land reform, co-operative
land solutions and interest free money. Mill picked up his ideas for a
democratic socialism from this original socialist movement. But Marx and
Engels argued for communism and derided the early socialists as utopian and
non-scientific. Sadly Marx also misunderstood money and the need for
interest-free forms as the Owenite socialists, the Proudhonian socialists
and other early co-op movements like these in the US understood.
Polanyi followed all this and celebrates this in the Great Transformation
and so did the Guild socialists who felt strongly about economic democracy
(RH Tawney, GDH Cole, Bertrand Russell) and in the case of Clifford Douglas
(who was very involved with the early guild socialist movement), monetary
reform. Frederick Soddy picked up ideas from Douglas and Silvio Gesell in
the 1920s and argued for 100% money free of interest and debt.
Daly's arguments follows closely Polanyi and Soddy who he quotes and
celebrates in Beyond Growth.
But because Marx was muddled on the money question and weak on the need
for economic democracy, Marxists are blind to the needs for really taking
land, people and money out of the market as Polanyi showed the need for. A
pity this as like Polanyi Marx saw labour, money and land enclosure so well
and how they had been made into false commodities.
I can recommend to you and others on this list an outstanding text book
that should be core reading for Synergia students and the entire commons
movement. It is by Mark Lutz and called Economics for the Common Good.
John uses the term political economy and the need for a new political
economy in relation to the partner state. I understand the reason why but I
do think this is problematic historically as key words are important to be
clear about. In the late 19th century, political economy and capitalism
were one and the same thing.
While the resisters to industrial capitalism coined the term socialism in
the 1820s as the humane alternative, until the 1870s, capitalism was not a
word really used. The term for it was political economy and this is why
Marx wrote his Capital as a critique of political economy. It was with the
publication of Capital that capitalism began to be used more widely.
During the 19th century the movement against capitalism was indeed known
as social economy and included the co-ops and the trade unions. Sadly the
EU definition of social economy by Jacques Delor from the 1990s leaves out
trade unions and only talks about Co-ops, Mutuals, Associations and
Foundations (CMAF).
The Lutz book traces a continuous strand of social economics from the late
18th century to today (sometimes also called co-operative economics) that
is a radical strand of socialist thinking that avoids the blindspots of
Marx.
Also in Daly's book. For the Common Good, he talks about the work of
Schumacher on innovative thinking viz. an ownership form for co-ops that
could become intergenerational for securing the common good. Schumacher saw
the solution as to ensure a structure of ownership in co-ops that required
a strong common ownership foundation. This is very relevant to your work
and to developing Social Solidarity Economy thinking. The Lutz book is
vital guidance here and for how we best frame Synergia's pedagogy on these
question and what this idea of Eco-socialism would look like. It would be a
vitally needed synergia of social economics and ecological economics.
Co-operative economics also ploughs in this direction if you look at the
adherents.
But there is no teaching of Co-op Economics within the international Co-op
movement, though I think St. Mary's University in Halifax has run a course
like this prior to an ICA meeting in Montreal not that long ago. I just
heard this this week.
Hope this is helpful.
Pat
On 08 October 2017 at 08:37 Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a>
wrote:
I did read several pieces from Daly but it seems to me he is not
challenging capitalism per se,
anyone read him differently ?
On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 10:43 PM, pat commonfutures <
<a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank">pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop</a>> wrote:
Hi Mike and Michel
Thanks Michel for the Commons Transition reports. Very good to see these.
Your reply to Mike is also helpful.
Thanks also Mike for sharing the Stan Cox critique about renewable energy
wishful thinking. I found the comments by David Schwartzman very persuasive
about the Military Industrial Complex power elite and their focused role
viz. fossil fuel geopolitics and nuclear energy. This is a very little
discussed structural impediment.
Also this confirms the need for Greens to focus on eco-soclalist ways
forward. As Streeck argues, Growth is bound in its hands and feet with the
Accumulation demands of capitalism and the money machine. Steady-state
economics based on thermodynamics as Herman Daly so well articulates this
necessitates a post capitalism system. Schwartzman underscores this.
Pat
On 05 October 2017 at 06:09 Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a>
wrote:
dear Michael,
I will add some responses in-line
On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 11:51 PM, Michael Lewis <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Lewiscccr@shaw.ca" target="_blank"><Lewiscccr@shaw.ca></a> wrote:
Pat I really like the memo you sent. But I have several questions.
(Michel - I wrote this and then see you have replied to Pat) I will think
about and perhaps comment later. I the meantime here is my response to Pat)
I am a poor student of history, but as I have come to understand Cole his
guild strategy was rooted in the work place, although relevant to other
kinds of association. The role of the state was radially reduced. What
emerged was a decentralized, democratic approach to provisioning, where
workers were the central (but not only) actors. Advise me here what I am
missing.
If this is the case there a large difference in what Michel is proposing?
The foundation of his proposition is public-commons partnerships. Is this
not very different? Given the radical difference in reference points -
Cole with workers a the base and this 21st idea where globally mediated
knowledge that enables localize production on an
open-mutualized-cooperative basis; I wonder where the context renders some
of Cole’s propositions less relevant.
in my interpretation, the commons are themselves multi-stakeholders, so
this include the workers and the user communities ; you may be familiar
with the idea of some that today the workplace has exploded and is no
longer confined to the factory; but there is an obvious linkage between the
commons seen as the locus of co-production, and thus a sphere of production
including workers, and industrial and craft workers as they used to exist
Second, as I understand it Michel, your proposition is critically
dependent of an member cities to be active at the city and global level,
the latter through associations. In short, cities are organized into a body
the coordinates and governs the terms under which sourcing technical
solutions is build and maintained on an open source base. Question here
Michel is whether access to the knowledge repository requires cities to be
active members of the global mutual…??
the code is open source, and would be accessible to everybody, but the
right to commercialization of that code may be subjected to some
reciprocity limitatations, in my opinion (reciprocity-based licensing)
Third, the territorial platform co-operatives become critical
infrastructure for production, distribution and governing. Michel…a
question about the platform co-ops; are they conceived of as being
multi-stakeholder and, if so, what is the role of local state actors, if
any?
yes, they are conceived as multi-stakeholder and I'm open to co-governance
by local public actors
Lastly, I am wondering about the thinking to date on whether there will
be limits to what is gathered into the global digital open source
repository? Is the focus on all the critical elements to aid and
accelerate transition? Given the absolute urgencies emerging from climate
breakdown, this might make senses. Or is it broader? I think these are
important questions as they will shape the counters of the politics that
such a proposition would provoke. Even if it is restricted to urgent
transition related production, I can imagine that a global manufacturers of
say, public transit vehicles, and their employees, would be none to
pleased with a strategy that could has the potential for sidelining their
businesses and jobs.. But, then again, I may not be capturing the
fullness of the vision.
for me, this would work for all provisioning systems, and is connected to
the climate/ecological/resource emergency of our time, i.e. this proposal
is one of the crucial ways to radicallly reduce our material footprint
One interesting and attractive feature of what Michel is proposing is the
bypassing of national governments. Given the growing network of cities
collaborating on climate breakdown and transition strategies, and for those
involved, their leadership in advancing more progressive transition
politics, the proposal being put forward has a strategic context where it
can be tested.
national partner-state governments could decide at a later stage to join
and support these global depositories
by the way, this was written in the context of urban transitions, but I
realize it could be stronger in stressing the role of the cooperative
sector in supporting the deployment of such infrastructure
Michel
Anyways, a bit more grist for the proverbial mill.
Michael L
On Oct 4, 2017, at 9:04 AM, Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a>
wrote:
Dear Pat,
as I was schooled in marxism in my youth, and subsequently abandoned it,
this means that much of the tradition you speak of is completely unknown to
me, I had simply no idea that georgism and guild socialism even existed and
where so big back then ... for me there were revolutionaries, reformists
and anarchists (and stalinists <g>) ...
when I decided to embark on p2p work, I decided to make a clear break with
my dogmatic past, and start constructing a 'low theory' that would be a
more direct expression of what is happening and possible today. Hence in my
wiki, I only include things that exist (no projects or plans) and use
concepts that are born from the very movement I am observing.
as much as I think it is necessary, I don't see it as a very realistic
possibility for me to dig into that history, so I am very much counting on
you for this historical context and genealogy!!
one note, you will have seen in my approach a combination of the local and
the global, bypassing the nation-state level.
There is both a opportunistic and strategic reason for this
Opportunistic as it appears in a report on urban transitions,
but strategic as I see coalesced cities (and bioregions/territorities) as
a crucial new part of transnational governance, which can't be a
inter-statist world government, but must be based on global public-commons
alliances
quid with the nation-state,
I am not dissing it, but I think nation-states should now support
transnational commons infrastructures
the double movement has become inoperative because of the
trans-nationalization of capital; national revolutions carry great risks
and dangers (syriza, venezuela), and keynesianism can only be a small part
of the solution in the context of overshoot
so what is a progressive majority in a nation-state to do, for sure, let
it do green new deals at the national level, but crucially, it must also
understand that change today is not going to come from a frontal assault
against a stronger enemy, but from a global coalition of change efforts
everywhere, which are the only ones that can overwhelm the repressive
capacity of the transnational empire
in other words, progressive national governments must absolute support the
kind of global commoning policies we are proposing and cannot limit their
vision on their own citizens
Michel
On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 10:21 PM, pat commonfutures <
<a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.coop" target="_blank">pat.commonfutures@phonecoop.<wbr>coop</a>> wrote:
Hi Michel
Some feedback for consideration.....
This is a really good summary and illustration. So much makes complete
sense to me. Thanks so much for this articulation. I think it is rich and
very helpful indeed. When will the report be coming out and who are the
authors?
I have a sense of deja vu however? So my comments are about the practical
articulation and the dynamics as other forces are in play. For the past
two hundred plus years, the tension and indeed struggle between authority
at the political level and the striving for democratic authority from the
grassroots has been continuous and constant. Polanyi's Double movement
therefore has many dynamic aspects to consider. How is it best to do this
to be clear about the dialectical complexity?
Stephen Yeo, a very close colleague of Robin Murray's over decades, is
writing a book on the Three Socialisms. These are Statism (from social
democracy to communism), Collectivism and Associationism. The last form is
the most forms that are participatively democratic and includes working
class self-help associations for mutual aid and including of course trade
unions that we should try to include in your illustration of the layers.
The ideas you are advancing are a rekindling of the debates and thinking
from say 1900 right up to 1947 when the Cold War kicked off and when
Statism thereafter effectively crushed and suppressed associative democracy
thinking and ideas. Statists East and West told co-ops and unions thank,
but no thanks. We are taking over to make your bits and pieces integrated
and comprehensive.
But to guide this earlier struggle by commoners, In 1919 GDH Cole produced
his book Guild Socialism Restated when he set out a very clear blueprint
with a remarkable coincidence with what you, David B, Janelle Orsi and
others are working up here.
What is very creative about the Cole proposals that Bertrand Russell fully
supported in his book Roads to Freedom a century ago was to recognise
clearly that political socialism (social democracy shall we say) and
associative socialism need to be established at the territorial level and
at the national level in a system of checks and balances with a clear and
agreed division of labour between the politicos and the economic democrats.
Essentially the proposal of Cole set out a blue print for how economic
democracy though a Guild Congress at local, regional and national levels
would relate and complement Parliamentary democracy. But what was wonderful
about the Cole proposals is that it considered co-operative commonwealth
building in all industries, services, arts and sciences and worked out
sector solutions for them. Plus Cole also proposed that cities should be
based on land held in commons to capture economic rent and to stop
speculation. Thus he argued for co-operative garden cities.
20 years earlier in Fields Factories and Workshops had attempted a very
creative blueprint as well for economic democracy and what in practice this
would look like.
Okay Polanyi did not arrive in the UK until about 1933 and his way to
escape fascism was paid for by crowd funding by Guild Socialist, but given
that in Vienna in the 1920s Polanyi was at the forefront of associative
democracy solutions and thinking, you can see the resonance.
Given that democratic socialism is being rekindled in parts of Europe
(Spain, Portugal, the UK and elsewhere), I think it would helpful to
connect the sound thinking from the 1920s before the lights began being
turned out with what you are proposing.
I would suggest we are rediscovering co-operative commonwealth thinking
and practice which you are doing such a brilliant job of updating to the
digital age.
I hope this helps. Drawing on the best practices from the past will
enable us to contextualise the arguments and link these to this vernacular
part of the Double Movement we should not overlook.
All the best
Pat
On 04 October 2017 at 06:35 Michel Bauwens <a class="m_-3615764300833454304ox-1b1f50d62d-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank"><michel@p2pfoundation.net></a>
wrote:
this is the very last section of our report which will come out soon with
the Boll foundation:
3.6. Towards a global infrastructure for commons-based provisioning
We have argued in this overview that we are in a conjuncture in which
commons-based mutualizing is one of the keys for sustainability, fairness
and global-local well-being. In this conclusion, we suggest a global
infrastructure, in which cities can play a crucial role.
See the graphic below for the stacked layer that we propose, which is
described as follows:
-
The first layer is the cosmo-local institutional layer. Imagine global
for-benefit associations which support the provisioning of infrastructures
for urban and territorial commoning. These are structured as global
public-commons partnerships, sustained by leagues of cities which are
co-dependent and co-motivated to support these new infrastructures and
overcome the fragmentation of effort that benefits the most extractive and
centralized ‘netarchical’ firms. Instead, these infrastructural commons
organizations co-support MuniRide, MuniBnB, and other applications
necessary to commonify urban provisioning systems. These are the global
“protocol cooperative” governance organizations.
-
The second layer consists of the actual global depositories of the
commons applications themselves, a global technical infrastructure for open
sourcing provisioning systems. They consists of what is globally common,
but allow contextualized local adaptations, which in turn can serve as
innovations and examples for other locales. These are the actual ‘protocol
cooperatives’, in their concrete manifestation as usable infrastructure.
-
The third layer are the actual local (urban, territorial, bioregional)
platform cooperatives, i.e. the local commons-based mechanisms that deliver
access to services and exchange platforms, for the mutualized used of these
provisioning systems. This is the layer where the Amsterdam FairBnb and the
MuniRide application of the city of Ghent, organize the services for the
local population and their visitors. It is where houses and cars are
effectively shared.
-
The potential fourth layer is the actual production-based open
cooperatives, where distributed manufacturing of goods and services
produces the actual material services that can be shared and mutualized on
the platform cooperatives.
...
[image: Figure 8.png]
Figure 8: City-supported cosmo-local production infrastructure
--
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre> </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://commonstransition.org" target="_blank">http://commonstransition.org</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>
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