Peer2Politics

In the beginning, there was sharing. That, at least, is the story according to Dominik Wind, a German environmental activist with a genial smile and a cycling cap whom I met in Paris while attending a conference earlier this month about the sharing economy. Years ago, out of curiosity, Wind visited Samoa for half a year; he found that people shared tools, provisions and even sexual partners with their neighbors. Less encumbered by industrial civilization, they appeared to share with an ease and forthrightness long forgotten in the world Wind knew back home.

“Come Back” is a full-length documentary film detailing the aftermath of Spanish activist Enric Duran’s notorious action against 16 major banks. In case you’re not familiar with his act of “financial civil disobedience”, Duran attained roughly half a million Euros in bank loans and subsequently distributed the funds to support anti-capitalist activist movements. This documentary revisits the years-long preparation for the action itself, and interviews the various groups of activists who consequently benefited from the money. The action also led to the foundation of the revolutionary Catalan Integrated Cooperative, a transition-minded post-capitalist community, which is currently thriving. You can read more about Duran and the CIC in this recent interview with Duran, conducted by Michel Bauwens, John Restakis and Neal Gorenflo.

There’s a debate going on about what a “sharing economy” actually constitutes – and that’s a good thing. The fact that there’ll be no end to this debate will be stressful to those who’d like some tidy answers to parrot.  From our point of view, the mutulization of resources and the decrease of “consumerism for its own sake” are good things, but we have to ask ourselves … what happens to the mutualization of the value created? To keep the conversation going, we present this article by Anthony Kalamar and originally published at Opednews.com.

Gordon Cook has been kind enough to transcript Michel Bauwens’ presentation at last year’s Border’s to Cross Conference in Amsterdam. We’ve also included the video at the end for good measure, (so you can see Michel being “invited” offstage for going over his allotted time).