Peer2Politics
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Peer2Politics
on peer-to-peer dynamics in politics, the economy and organizations
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Exploring the Horizon of Social, Political and Economic Change: An Interview with R.C. Smith by John Wisniewski (Part 2) | Heathwood Press

Exploring the Horizon of Social, Political and Economic Change: An Interview with R.C. Smith by John Wisniewski (Part 2) | Heathwood Press | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it

The demands of sustainable social-historical change are so complex - we need input from all disciplines, we need radical democratic and alternative philosophical foundations. We can’t possibly think that we can just overthrow the system – to suddenly remove presents structures and systems – and then some Utopia will suddenly emerge. It will take a lot of healing and support to move beyond capitalism’s coercive legacy (psychologically, emotionally, relationally, socially, epistemologically and so on). To suddenly destroy the capitalist system will not make its coercive legacy disappear. That is why, again, I think that seeing emancipatory change as a transitory process is crucial. Indeed, it will take a lot of participation and grassroots organisation, and it will require different systems to support this in both the short and long term. I am reminded, for instance, of a great paper by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis titled From the <em>Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons: Towards an Open Co-operativism</em>, which highlights a similar transitional approach to a post-capitalist economy that I’ve alluded above, combining both commons-oriented open peer production models with common ownership and governance models, such as those of co-operatives (i.e., worker self-directed enterprises, economic democracy, etc.) and the solidarity economic models. The idea here is basically to create a “proto-counter-economy”, which, again, could support the development and expansion of alternative (political, social and economic) space and assist in the greater multidimensional sociohistorical transition. There is something fundamentally significant about this concept."

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Henry A. Giroux | Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism - Truth-Out

In addition, the depoliticization of politics and the increasing transformation of the social state into the punishing state have rendered possible the emergence of a new mode of authoritarianism in which the fusion of power and violence increasingly permeates all aspects of government and everyday life.[ix] This mad violence creates an intensifying cycle rendering citizens' political activism dangerous, if not criminal. On the domestic and foreign fronts, violence is the most prominent feature of dominant ideology, policies and governance. Soldiers are idealized, violence becomes an omniscient form of entertainment pumped endlessly into the culture, wars become the primary organizing principle for shaping relations abroad, and a corrosive and deeply rooted pathology becomes not the mark of a few individuals but of a society that, as Erich Fromm once pointed out, becomes entirely insane.[x]Hannah Arendt's "dark times" have arrived as the concentrated power of the corporate, financial, political, economic and cultural elite have created a society that has become a breeding ground for psychic disturbances and a pathology that has become normalized. Greed, inequality and oppressive power relations have generated the death of the collective democratic imagination.

 
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