Great interview with Loomio’s Rich Bartlett, originally published in The Socialist Entrepreneur. Loomio is a fascinating project. The web and the internet have fundamentally altered how people around the globe network and share information, but up until now these technologies have not much changed how people make democratic decisions together. Loomio is a new online… Continue reading
In 1990 the world’s most extensive biological collaboration, Human Genome Project, began as a publicly funded endeavor. In 2003, the project delivered the first complete draft of the human genome. Corporations wanted to patent genes. Government security entities wanted to restrict access. But the information is public and available on the internet. The Human Genome… Continue reading
The Communard Manifesto (Las Indias, May 9, 2016). Translated by Level Translation. By way of background, the Communard Manifesto comes out of the Las Indias Cooperative Group, which is a real-world venture in establishing a phyle — a non-territorial networked economic support platform — of the kind that Las Indias’s David de Ugarte described theoretically… Continue reading
Very interesting feminist analysis of the Deliveroo protests and the state of the gig-economy. Written by kaitijai and originally published in Feminist Philosophers: After a week of protests, UK workers for the takeaway delivery firm Deliveroo have won the right to continue their old contracts rather than being forced onto a new contract. Whereas the… Continue reading
I consider the POC21 project to be a pioneering endeavour of historical importance. For five weeks in a French castle, scheduled to coincide with the climate change conference in Paris (COP21), a dozen maker groups got together to simulate amongst themselves a circular economy, based on the freedom to share knowledge, sustainable production techniques in… Continue reading
Once we recognise that capitalism itself is diverse, however, we may find that there are some forms of it, suitably regulated, that make a positive contribution overall to our well-being. Given this possibility, we can no longer simply dismiss all capitalism on the grounds of Marx’s spurious theory of exploitation. Instead of applying the formulaic… Continue reading
The optimum scale is most efficient dimension of the productive units of a society, the size as of which inefficiencies created by having to manage the excessive size of those units exceeds the benefit produced by being a little bigger. For each dimension of the market and each technological level, there exists an optimal scale… Continue reading
“Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value, like love, fraternity, courage, beauty, dignity, or responsibility. Innovation-speak worships at the altar of change, but it rarely asks who benefits, to what end? A focus on maintenance provides opportunities to ask questions about what we really want out… Continue reading
Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit or thought-form driven by greed, excess and selfish consumption. It deludes its host into believing that consuming the life force of others for self-aggrandizement or profit is a logical and morally upright way to live. In this interview presented by the Upstream podcast, Martin Kirk – founder… Continue reading
The Xarxa d’Economia Solidària de Catalunya, commonly referred to as “XES”, constitutes essentially the most important community organization for the social and solidarity economy in Catalonia. Operating since 2003 as a non-profit association, it forms a network that connects a multitude of solidarity economy projects (including the Catalan Integral Cooperative) with the aim of strengthening… Continue reading
The answer to the question above is not just no, but the truth is the contrary of it. Humanity needs to wean itself away from forms of agriculture that destroy and degrade every time more of our soil commons. But re-generative agriculture is gearing up. Watch the video and check the background on film-makers below… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation (and Guerrilla Translation!) is exceedingly happy with this recent development. Our heartfelt thanks to Julia Kogol and Andrew Gryf Paterson for making this happen. The Political Economy of Peer Production essay by Michel Bauwens, written in 2005, and first published on CTheory.net platform is one of the keystone texts for the conceptual… Continue reading
I have been invited to participate in the annual gathering of green activists in Croatia, which is known as a place of red-green dialogue in that part of Europe. This year’s commons module has a great stress on the relation of the commons with the state. A tentative agenda of the event can be found… Continue reading
Decades before the first socialist and libertarian groups of any weight were formed, an alternative trend had started down a long path with a very different focus: communitarianism. The new world will be born and affirmed inside the old The basic idea of communitarianism is that the new world will be born and grow inside… Continue reading
A discussion by Michael McAllum, on Disruptive and Revolutionary Technology, from the PHD thesis, “Making Sense of Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution” Michael McAllum: “Technologies can engender revolutionary effects. Technology that is disruptive at a civilisational scale, occurs when particular technologies (in the contemporary situation networking, robotic and energy technologies) reorder, replace and integrate, certain dimensions… Continue reading
The digital economy is diverse not only in the sense that it includes both capitalist and non-capitalist forms, but also in the sense that there are multiple varieties of the capitalist form, many of which do not conform to the traditional models, and indeed multiple varieties of gift economy forms, as well as forms that… Continue reading