P2P Foundation

The December 2008 /January 2009 issue of the progressive Scottish magazine “Red Pepper” is dedicated to the opportunities and challenges of Obama’s victory, but also contains a special section with interviews on ‘alternatives to neoliberalism’.

Next to Leo Panitch, Robin Blackburn, Martin Ryle, Kate Soper, I’m also interviewed on the P2P Alternative.

The issue’s articles are not available online, but I have posted the draft of my conversation with Hilary Wrainwright here.

Here’s the background to this issue, explained by editor Hilary Wrainwright:

“This interview is part of an exploration into the question: ‘if not capitalism, what? ‘ It is a question posed in a very practical way by the present crisis. It’s not that capitalism is in death throes from which it cannot recover. In some, partially altered form there’s no doubt it will recover – depending on how strong are the pressures and actualities of alternatives. The point is that the crisis is leading millions of people to question the legitimacy and social viability of the economic system that has produced this mess, often they are questioning it without knowing the alternatives, or even the direction and path to or means of creating alternatives. So I’m interviewing several people who have been putting forward frameworks for an alternative mode of production/economic and political system or key elements of such, based on alternatives they perceive to be already emerging. I’m asking them how their ideas offer a different economic logic to that which has produced the present crisis and what proposals they would now make – using this moment of collapse of the old order , when it is appropriate to think boldly about the possibilities of the new – to strengthen the emergent alternatives.”