The great failure of Syriza in carrying out its anti-austerity program and surrendering to the neoliberal dictates of the EU and the Troika signals a wider failure of progressive politics. In these excerpts from a real in-depth conversation and interview, George Souvlis asked an active participant, Andreas Karitzis, “what went wrong”? * George Souvlis: On… Continue reading
This post by Siôn Whellens originally appeared on whatif.coop In his recently republished Cooperative Manifesto, Tim Huet explains why he came to the conclusion that ‘There Is No More Important Social Change Work You Can Do Than Cooperative Development’. Huet was one of the first organisers of the Arizmendi Assocation of Cooperatives, which Ed Mayo… Continue reading
Video of the press conference: https://youtu.be/o81IEJrVTgg?t=4m35s Xnet, an activist project which has been working on and for networked democracy and digital rights since 2008, launches in the Barcelona City Hall the first public Anti-Corruption Complaint Box using anonymity protection technology like TOR and GlobaLeaks (“Bústia Ètica” in Catalan). With this pioneering project, the Barcelona City… Continue reading
According to the International Cooperative Alliance 77 million Japanese are members of cooperatives. Seikatsu Club formed half a century ago when there were Japan had no specific laws enabling the cooperative legal structure. Women committed to improving life for their families and their communities began collaborating. The result is an umbrella organization touching local production,… Continue reading
How to build the world we want within the world we want to transcend. This very recent article by P2P Foundation founder and president, Michel Bauwens, and the P2PF’s research director and founder of the P2P Lab, Vasilis Kostakis, was originally published in Open Democracy. Our world is once again hurled into a deep socio-economic… Continue reading
By Sunna Kovanen & Ruby van der Wekken. Originally published in Commons.fi. Spring 2016 a Berlin-based Commonsnetwork, among others, called some 30 practitioners and researchers of commons all over Europe to meet for the first time and to build European-wide cooperation. The meeting took place on May 2016 at an organic farm in Villarceaux, some… Continue reading
Marta Nieto Romero, writing for Sustainable Place Making, recounts her trip through the Galician Commons: On the 26th of November I attended a collective hike in Galicia (North West Spain). Organized by the Commons Study Program they invited members of Ergosfera, an association of architects, who guided us in an amazing trip throughout the rural… Continue reading
On the Open Manufacturing Google Group, an email list for people interested in open-source industrial design and commons-based peer production models for physical production, Nathan Cravens raised the question of why peer-production of physical goods has had such a hard time gaining traction as an alternative to the corporate capitalist model: Open source projects seem… Continue reading
Originally published on platform.coop In mid-November on a Floridian island, Six Silberman, a researcher for a German union, offered a retrospective of the platform co-op movement to a full room at the ACM GROUP 2016 conference. Though Silberman’s speech was based on a work of design-fiction, “Reading Elinor Ostrom in Silicon Valley,” and told from… Continue reading
Originally published on the Loomio blog Rory Ridley-Duff is a reader in cooperatives and social enterprise at Sheffield Business School, director of Social Enterprise Europe, and founder of the FairShares Association. They use Loomio to model their governance structure online, for effective, equitable stakeholding. FairShares Association is a loose network of educators, researchers, and consultants … Continue reading
This article has been published at First Monday: Abstract “In this paper I infuse political and legal theory with peer to peer decentralized design features. This experiment studies how property and liability, two core legal institutions attached to individual persons, react and can be transformed (like chemical elements) when applied to a peer to peer,… Continue reading
The commons is an emerging paradigm in Europe embracing co-creation, stewardship, and social and ecological sustainability. Commons perspectives could help to reinvigorate Europe with constructive and concrete policy implications on many terrains. However, much of the current dominant narrative of the EU, focusing on growth, competition, and international trade is in strong contrast with the… Continue reading
“The ETUI Foresight Unit has decided to organise an annual meeting on the social impacts of digitalisation, with the objective of reinforcing the link between scientific analysis and strategic action. The aim of these meetings will be to organise a structured dialogue between researchers involved in forward-looking studies on the future of labour and trade… Continue reading
“I can’t accept the death of my imagination on a daily basis,” Caroline Woolard told us when we visited her at her studio in Lower Manhattan, “I’d rather have less money and work for something that I believe in.” Caroline is an artist that co-creates projects and institutions for and within the solidarity economy. “I… Continue reading
A research article by Primavera De Filippi and Samer Hassan, published at First Monday. Full title: “Blockchain technology as a regulatory technology: From code is law to law is code” Abstract “Code is law” refers to the idea that, with the advent of digital technology, code has progressively established itself as the predominant way to… Continue reading
Cat Johnson: What would it take to move from planetary imbalance into a state of sustained health and healing? In a recent report, Jamie Harvie, Executive Director of the Institute for a Sustainable Future and founder of the Commons Health Network, argues that we need a new health system, one based on a “profound appreciation of the complexity… Continue reading