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David Bollier's presentation to the Agence Française de Développement in Paris outlining the commons as an alternative vision of "development."
A recent article on a Society of the Commons co-authored by Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, Alex Pazaitis.
It’s time to examine and broaden the debate on how to fund a universal basic income
John Holloway sees socialist models based on taking state power as reproducing rather than abolishing the capital-labor relationship in many ways.
Too often state socialists and verticalists react dismissively to commons-based peer production and other networked, open-source visions of socialism,
How can commoners meet their needs without replicating (perhaps in only modestly less harmful ways) the structural problems of the dominant money system?
* Article: The Failed Metaphysics Behind Private Property: Sharing our Commonhood. By James Bernard Quilligan. Kosmos Journal, SPRING | SUMMER 2011 “This article focuses on the sacred cow of private property in liberal philosophy and politics and its catastrophic impact on the commons. Numerous liberal thinkers (mostly male) have attempted to base social systems, moral …
“Citizen networks, wireless or not, could become a transversal infrastructral layer, reaching across society and different domains, becoming a revolutionary enabler of a new urban life in a way that points beyond capitalism as we knew it. … Rather than having corporations and the state who centrally organize production and consumption, in such a commons mode of production peer-to-peer forms of cooperation link infrastructural, political and cultural layers. The decentralized utopia envisioned by the 68 generation can now become a concrete project. With citizen networks and decentralized computing power localized exchange economies can be organized.”
Expanded concepts of agency allows us to question what or who can be an active participant and allowing for new perspectives on the debate on authorship.
The first Dutch book on P2P Save the World by Michel Bauwens had a good reception in Flanders, but there were also some criticisms. In this article, we examine two criticisms of the book: the feasibility of an unconditional basic income within the present system and the possibility to move gradually to a P2P society without “overthrowing” capitalism. Apart from the “low road” to peer-to-peer (after an economic collapse) and “the high road” to peer-to-peer (through neo- Keynesianism), a third way could open up, based on a reformed partner states facilitating peer production. Our conclusion is that under the present circumstances – with bottom-up initiatives; open source alternatives; and the Internet as a new means of production, value creation and distribution – past failed experiences of socialism could today have more chances of succeeding on the condition that a progressive government arms itself with a commons transitional plan. Such a transitional government would undoubtedly face many difficulties, but it would at least open the horizon for a better future.
A brief tour of the imagining of abundance throughout history, from the Golden Age of the ancients to the P2P production of the current generation.
What would it look like if commoners could invent their own types of law, consistent with state law, to reliably protect their commons?
The latest issue of Boston Review has a lively forum on the growing power of network platform based businesses such as Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.
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Every so often I am invited to write a piece that in effect answers the question, “Why the commons?” I invariably find new answers to that question.
A scholarly paper titled "Commons Movements & 'Progressive' Governments as Dual Power: The Potential for Social Transformation in Europe" by A. Broumas.
For the autonomists and like-minded thinkers, the goal is Exodus rather than taking power.
So rather than asking “What happened to Occupy?” or “What happened to 15-M?
In Dublin there are many needs which are not met due to high rent, the commodification of social/cultural life, and the regulation of public space.
“This series of articles will attempt to reconceptualize the social and natural order of economics through an analysis of the commons—the natural, genetic, physical, social, cultural and intellectual resources which people manage by negotiating their own norms and rules. (For brevity’s sake, Part One uses the term ‘commons’ loosely to refer to both self-organized commons and unorganized common pool resources—a distinction which will be spelled out in subsequent articles.) The recurring theme in these writings is the creation of a commons-based economy which expresses a more inclusive type of value than in traditional economics. A common theory of value—rooted in philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, communication, organizational behavior, technology, history, culture, environmentalism, economics, law, and social and political theory—will explore many of the leading ontological presuppositions in our present belief systems.”
“This article focuses on the sacred cow of private property in liberal philosophy and politics and its catastrophic impact on the commons. Numerous liberal thinkers (mostly male) have attempted to base social systems, moral obligations and property rights in human nature using the laws of the natural universe. They share the blame for the devastation of the commons. No one has influenced the rules, institutions and concepts of modern individualism more than John Locke. It was Locke, the 17th century philosopher and political scientist, who formulated the central tenet of liberalism: that property should be organized through individual ownership by excluding others. Locke’s source code, both at the meta-level and physical level, is still driving our operating system. It repeats endlessly the ‘empirical’ story that nature intended the commons to be possessed through proprietary ownership. From the long view of social history and political philosophy, however, it’s Locke’s sacred cow of proprietary rights that has been devouring the commons, not Hardin’s hungry cattle or their poor herders.”
The Sustainable Development Goals do not constitute a transformative agenda for meeting the basic needs of all people within the means of our shared planet.
Design global, manufacture local: Exploring the contours of an emerging productive model. By Vasilis Kostakis, Vasilis Niaros, George Dafermos, Michel Bauwens. Futures, Volume 73, October 2015, Pages 126–135. Abstract This article aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on post-capitalist construction by exploring the contours of a commons-oriented productive model. On the basis of this …
* Conference Paper: Iaione, Christian. Design and Dynamics of Institutions for Collective Action: A Tribute to Prof. Elinor Ostrom, Second Thematic Conference of the IASC. From the Abstract: “”Where does a person go if she lives in a city, she is not fortunate enough to have got a garden and she needs going into a …
Initiatives that are trying to transform the legal paradigm or carve out new “protected zones” of enforceable rights within existing legal frameworks.
“Where the more-than-human commons departs from other interpretations is in recognizing how the starting point is not an individual subject separated from other people and the world around them, but a relational subject who is always already caught up in a world that is intimately shared . This understanding is not based on an ideal but on the materially and socially constituted relations and practices that tie humans and non-humans together within a particular collective or territory. If we talk of ‘use-rights’ in the commons then these must be contingent on ongoing participation in the production and care of the commons understood as the entire collective of humans, animals, artifacts, elements that are necessary to maintain life processes. This meaning can already be found in the roots of the word ‘commons': ‘com’ (together) and ‘munis’ (under obligation). First, this tells us that the commons is produced together, reflecting our inter-dependence, the assumption that our world is already shared. Second, and arising from this, the obligation that such inter-dependence demands of us. The commons is not a ‘thing’ that we have access to because we hold a title deed or authorization, but something that is ours because we produce and care for it, because we common.”
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Scoop.it!
