The only circular economy worth looking at is the perma-circular one. Over any horizon longer than 50 or 75 years — which as of today encompasses the lives of our children and certainly our grandchildren — we have no use for a pseudo-circular metabolism that is actually a steadily widening spiral: circling, yes, but spinning… Continue reading
Following on her brilliant The Making of a Cybertariat, a modern classic in the analysis of class and gender, work and consumption, Huws turns her sharp eye to the present crisis into which the cybertariat ‘has come of age.’ Rich in theoretical and methodological insights, Labor in the Global Digital Economy carefully guides us through… Continue reading
A brief summary of my message to a ETUI conference, associated with the European Trade Union Congress. Video interview Michel Bauwens, ETUC/ETUI conference ‘Shaping the new world of work’, Brussels, 27-29 June 2016.
An article on digital democracy by Julie Simon and Theo Bass, originally published at Nesta: “Politics is in crisis. Disillusionment, a lack of trust in politicians, apathy, falling turnout at elections and a surge in populist movements around Europe. What is the way out of this miasma? Digital tools and technologies have transformed the way… Continue reading
The current international political context allows us to clearly see the serious limits to the possibilities of social change through institutional routes. On the one hand, the new left-wing political experiences in Latin America have had scarce impact on actual political life in the countries where they have had a chance to govern. There… Continue reading
Counter-intuitive conclusions, which I find hard to believe: we show that collaboration, particularly on equal terms, is inductive to the emergence of corruption. * Article: The collaborative roots of corruption. By Ori Weisela and Shaul Shalvib. Edited by Susan T. Fiske. PNAS August 25, 2015 vol. 112 no. 34 10651-10656 “Cooperation is essential for… Continue reading
The New Nationalism Of Brexit And Trump Is A Product Of The Digital Age TV may have been about global unity, but the Internet inspires the opposite. Most of us thought digital technology would connect the whole world in new ways. The Internet was supposed to break down those last boundaries between what are essentially… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens: A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation How to create a Post-Capitalist strategy? As expressed in our previous posts — where we describe the work of Kojin Karatani— we agree that the present system is based on a trinity of capital-state-nation, and that this reflects the integration of three modes… Continue reading
Synergia Summer Institute 2-Week Study Program “Transition to Co-operative Commonwealth: Pathways to a New Political Economy” September 11 – 23, 2016 Monte Ginezzo, Tuscany UPDATE: Synergia Summer Institute registration reduced full 2 week program now €1,500 and 1 week option €1,000 Overview Around the world today, there is a universal sense that we are living… Continue reading
I haven’t seen books yet that deal so directly with peer to peer issues regarding urbanism: * Book: Radical Inclusivity. Architecture and Urbanism. Edited by Krzysztof Nawratek. dpr-barcelona, 2015 From the publisher’s description: “The real strength of today’s protest movements is not conflict, but a reclaimed solidarity and newly rebuilt sense of community. The real… Continue reading
Tis an ill wind that bloweth no good. Henry IV– William Shakespeare The devastating effects of global capital markets arise from its twin pillars – extraction and exclusion. Human existence becomes a commodity. Corporate business strategy unabashedly seeks to extract “every cent of value from a customer over the customer’s lifetime.” Under duress, humans innovate…. Continue reading
Intervention in an important debate on what is value in the context of peer production. Rigi and Prey argue that the labor theory of value is still operable, contra Fuchs and Negri. * Article: Value, Rent, and The Political Economy of Social Media. Jakob Rigi and Robert Prey. The Information Society 2015, October, Issue 5…. Continue reading
“What strikes me about this wonderful paper is how he creatively frames an outline of the new money commons architecture and he approaches this challenge in a multi-level way from global to national to regional. He links insightfully the fossil fuel crisis to the crash in 2008 and also highlights what the late Margrit Kennedy… Continue reading
Assemblies have not just been used in protest movements such as Occupy and the 15M movements, but also in the governance of regions such as Rojava. One of the sources behind this emergence are the ideas of Murray Bookchin, whose writings on the subject have been collated in this book: Book: The Next Revolution: Popular… Continue reading
Futurist, Eric Hunting writes: One of the interesting effects of advancing technology is a progressive reduction in economies of scale in many industries and systems. Some of the bottleneck technologies you note do have some interesting, if still speculative, alternatives. New proposed systems like SkyTran or Hyperloop have significantly lower economies of scale than conventional rail–deliberately… Continue reading
A study on markets for the Center for a Stateless Society by Chris Shaw: “Markets are generally conceived as the bulwark of capitalism, greasing the wheels of capital accumulation and mobilisation and creating the class relations characteristic of modern capitalism. It creates winners and losers, and displaces workers and firm owners through the mechanisms of… Continue reading