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Co-operatives UK has welcomed the announcement (Wednesday 20 April) by the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, that the Lab
This excerpt, chosen and provided to us by Nathan Cravens, is from Paul Mason’s latest book on PostCapitalism: “At present, the community of thinkers and activists around the peer-to-peer movement are heavily focused on experimental, small-scale projects – credit unions or co-ops, for example. When they think about the state, it is at the level …
“”What an amazing day on Sunday at Mindful Uprising: a pop-up People’s Summit in Melbourne. Thanks Michel Bauwens for presenting your inspirational vision for a p2p commons-based society; Richard and Laurent from Centre for the Future for co-sponsoring and hosting the event with Melbourne Polytechnic; Daryl for bringing the Summit into being; Jose for co-facilitating the Open Space session with me & our Connectors Michelle, Julian, Aidan & Mike. At the end of the day we were proud to announce the formation of the Commons Transition Coalition and now invite our friends in Adelaide (Sharon), Sydney (Declan), Brisbane (Michelle), Canberra (David), NZ (Sam) and others to work with us to develop a charter and plan for 2016.”
is it possible that Klein’s analysis is right on the politics and the solutions, but incomplete in terms of an overarching strategy for how to get there?
* Article: Commons for Peace. James Quilligan. Kosmos Journal, FALL | WINTER 2011 Summary: “Although the term ‘human security’ has various meanings, two have predominated.
Six months after promising the end of austerity, the Syriza leadership had to sign an agreement which not just imposes an extreme neoliberal impoverishment of its people, but actually suspends democracy, since the agreement explicitely states that no laws can be voted without agreement of the European institutions. The radicality of this defeat is not …
Excerpted from an interview conducted before the news of the agreement was know, but still relevant. James Galbraith is interviewed by Lynn Parramore. * LP: What are the alternatives for Greece at this point? JG: “Capitulation or exit. It really depends upon a political judgment in the Greek government, which is opaque to me. There …
The European Parliament is formally focusing on the commons paradigm through a new “Intergroup on common goods.”
Sunday’s referendum will mark a defining moment in Greece’s modern history and a decisive turn for Europe’s neoliberal project. The choice is very clear. Five years after the people of Greece first rose up against the anti-democratic imposition of the Troika’s austerity measures, they have finally been given the chance to decide upon their own …
What the new commons coalition has on its plate, excerpted from Ashifa Kassam: “Colau’s main challenge will come from inheriting a city at a crossroads. “The Barcelona model is in decline,” said journalist Marta Monedero, referring to the ideas that guided the city’s growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s and helped put Barcelona …
Worth watching! ” A longtime anti-eviction activist has just been elected mayor of Barcelona, becoming the city’s first female mayor. Ada Colau co-founded the anti-eviction group Platform for People Affected by Mortgages and was an active member of the Indignados, or 15-M Movement. Colau has vowed to fine banks with empty homes on their books, …
How to promote social cohesion and belonging in our neighbourhoods through Internet and why centralized corporate architectures.
A very astute analysis by Leo Panitch, which gives historical background to the emergence of Syriza as a movement, and looks at the geo-strategic importance of this first victory against austerity politics.
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As his candidancy falters, where can that rapturous energy be channelled? Into building an economy that serves ordinary people, and excludes the 1%
Despite its stated poliical intentions, which we reported about in this blog, every time push came to shove, Syriza did not support commons solutions, shows Theodoros Karyotis in ROAR magazine (which is now a print publication as well), highlighting different case studies: “Let us look into some examples where the SYRIZA government, instead of ratifying …
Great presentation by the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, on the democracy deficit in EU institutions. Watch the video here:
Excerpted from Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: (go to the original for all the supporting links) “The new emerging paradigm is premised on a fundamentally different ethos, in which we see ourselves not as disconnected, competing units fixated on maximising consumerist conquest over one another; but as interdependent members of a single human family. Our economies, rather …
“In Buenos Aires, an open source platform called Democracy OS, designed for citizens to get informed, to debate, and to vote on how they would like their representatives to vote, is reimagining politics. Democracy OS founder Pia Mancini discusses how the platform has changed the political landscape and argues that we need to further the conversation about innovation in the political system.”
The debates in Italy (with the history of the referendum on water as common good) are the most advanced reflecting the content and strategic options. A interesting input gave Ernest Urtasun from the Catalonian left-green party – referring to a more general approach for a Fundamental Charter on Common Goods. Republished from Elisabetta Cangelosi, and …
“All we know is this: over the past couple of years, the debate within Syriza on how to resolve the crisis has essentially revolved around two poles: the government’s original plan A — to end austerity within the eurozone — and the more radical alternative originally proposed by the party’s left faction, whose Plan B envisions a unilateral default and Grexit as a way out of the misery. We also know that the latter plan has gained more and more support from Syriza cadres (even those close to Tsipras) as the negotiations with creditors stalled.
only the “No” can save Greece – and by saving Greece, save Europe. A “No” means that the Greek people will not bend, that their government will not fall, and that the creditors need, finally, to come to terms with the failures of European policy so far. Negotiations can then resume – or more correctly, …
Michel Bauwens: (also published in an edited form in the Winter 2015 issue of STIR) Capitalism wasn’t always an organic and dominant system. Before it achieved its status as a full mode of production, i.e. as a coherent way to create and diffuse value, as a form of society and civilization, it needed to hack …
X-net's Simona Levi corrects some popular misconceptions resulting from international press coverage on the role of Podemos.
The first explanation dates from 2012; the second is an interview from 2014. The Finnish parliament has failed to act on the first six citizen initiatives based on crowdsourced legislation, but the project leaders remain committed. First video: Second Video:
I think it is safe to say that in the present system, civil society is not the primary social reality. “Value” is created in the private sector, where we are present as ‘workers’, under the ‘leadership’ of corporations and those members of our society who have access to capital. Civil society though in theory ‘sovereign’, chooses its own authority in terms of electing the state personnel. The secondary status is well established in our language, where the organisations of civil society are called non-profits, i.e. considered as secondary to the for-profit corporations, or NGO’s, non-governmental organisations that are secondary to ‘government’ or the state. Despite all democratic advances, the state forms have clearly been captured by private interests. Despite the critique that we can address to this state of affairs, it also represents some kind of reality, i.e. that in a capitalist system, ‘civil society’ is not directly productive of the goods and services that we need to survive, live and thrive.
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Scoop.it!
