P2P & INOVAÇÃO is a new journal linked Grupo de Pesquisa Economias colaborativas e produção P2P no Brasil (Collaborative  Economy and P2P Production in Brazil Research Group) from Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT). The second volume has just been published and includes, amongst others, articles authored by P2P Foundation collaborators.

This week we introduce Femke Kaulingfreks’s and Ruud Kaulingfreks’s essay titled “Open-access communism”.

Abstract

As the West loses its political credibility, the search has opened for alternatives to neo-liberal parliamentary democracies, failing on their own scale of good governance. Several contemporary critical thinkers, such as Alain Badiou, turn towards a communist horizon. In this paper, we want to explore the idea of commons in contemporary Internet-based groups, as a quest for contemporary appearances of communism in the Badiouian sense. From wiki formats to the hacktivism of Anonymous, there are various Internet-based initiatives that are built on a philosophy of open access to all, regardless of their identity, and a horizontal, rhizomatic organisation. We think that the organisational features of these initiatives make them suitable to carry out a struggle for new, more democratic political alternatives.

More can be found here.