Almost any contemporary group could be positioned on this two axis based in its proposals and practice on economy and network architecture.
During the last week, after discussion in «La Matriz», we proposed our friends and readers to discuss and collaboratively produce an ideological map of the p2p world. The result is just a partial result, a «working paper», but it clearly expresses a new world coming. First of all, we couldn’t use a unidimensional criteria, as in the old world uses to be the liberal-conservative axis. Two criteria emerge: the abundance-degrowth axis and the centralized-distributed one.
Almost any contemporary group could be positioned on this two axis based in its proposals and practice on economy and network architecture. Some well known firms and experiences as Mondragon, Apple, Ubuntu or Google were included in the graphics too as a reference.
You can download the .odg file, position your group and discuss it with us (you can use English language in la Matriz, our GNUsocial node).
who else agrees with these positionings, especially the place of the p2p foundation ?
I have my quibbles: first of all, it is clear that las indias has a caricatural view of degrowth, and takes some of its most extreme forms, not recognized in any majority consensus document of the degrowth forums, as the norm .. think: ‘let’s all abandon to cities and go back to rural life’; it also unnecessarily puts at alternatives abundance and degrowth, thereby essentializing both …
the real issue is to think about what can be abundant and what must be degrowth … if you read the science, there are simply no realistic scenarios whereby the whole of humanity can use up resources in matter and energy of the planet .. this is the simple and inescapable truth of degrowth .. but make no mistake what has to ‘degrow’ is the material footprint; the rest , answering the how, is political.
And the P2P Foundation, or at least my own approach, firmly belief that with the right use of social and appropriate technology, not only can we have the abundant lifestyle described by marshall sahlins , but in fact the comforts of modern life .. a judicious stacking of open design in communities, open source circular economy production processes based on open logistics and open accounting, the real sharing economy of mutualizing infrastructures, can not only preserve decent and even abundant lifestyles, but broaden it to the whole of the human population.
The only knd of abundance we need to oppose are the ‘infinite growth’ illusions of capitalism and neoliberalism; and the magical thinking of transhumanists and other technocrat, who believe there is a simple fix for this …
so the key is to produce more and equitable abundance, what Jean Russell calls thrivability, within a context of degrowing our material and energy footprint ..
Stacco Troncosa adds:
I think that this is the P2PF’s position on this, at least it’s the one I feel identified with. From “Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy” by M Bauwens and V Kostakis. This is the source material las Indias should be evaluating to determine the P2PF’s position on the quadrant. It’d be interesting to post this as comments on the blog though, Michel Bauwens and not only here on FB.
“The local focus of the resilient communities quadrant becomes, however, evident. In extreme forms, this scenario contains simple lifeboat strategies and initiatives, aimed at the survival of small communities in the context of generalized chaos. They may build on the idea that we must accept the reality of considerably more expensive energy and food (Lewis and Conaty, 2012). What marks such extreme initiatives is arguably the abandonment of the ambition of scale while the feudalization of territorial integrity is considered mostly inevitable. Though global cooperation and web presence may exist, the focus remains on the local. Most often, political and social mobilization at scale is seen as not realistic, and doomed to failure. In the context of our profit-making versus Commons axis though, these projects are squarely aimed at generating community value. We consider them a healthy reaction against global problems and environmental degradation. Resilient communities try to be immune to the dominant system and they use P2P practices and technologies for good reasons. They try to support individuals’ physical and psychological well-being by generating a positive sense of place, localizing the economy within ecological limits, and securing entrepreneurial/community stewardship of the local Commons (Wilding, 2011). They do not, however, build global structures. According to our understanding, the issue is how to organize a global counter-power able to propose alternative modes of social organization on a global scale. For Sharzer (2012), ‘localism’ is the fetishization of scale, as some positive benefit is ascribed to a place precisely because it is small. He (2012) argues that resilient communities and other similar projects inevitably become parts of the broader capitalist economy, because they do not confront capitalism, but rather avoid it. Initiatives like Transition Towns are growing movements, though with local focus. They can co-exist in harmony within the next scenario of global Commons by the logic that whatever is heavy is local (for instance, desktop manufacturing technologies), and whatever is light is global (for instance, global knowledge Commons).
In addition to the focus on the local, the degrowth narrative is central to the resilient communities’ scenario. We believe, quoting Foster (2011), ‘that the ecological struggle, understood in these terms, must aim not merely for degrowth in the abstract but more concretely for de-accumulation – a transition away from a system geared to the accumulation of capital without end’. To realize such a transition it is crucial to develop pragmatic alternatives. Similar to how we began talking about ‘alter-globalization’ when the ‘antiglobalization’ movement became counter-intuitive, we now need to become more positive and start talking about ‘alter-growth’ scenarios instead of thinking in anti-growth/degrowth terms. Arguably, the issue is not to produce and consume less per se, but to develop new models of production which work on a higher level than capitalist models. We consider it difficult to challenge the dominant system if we lack a working plan to transcend it. A post-capitalist world is bound to entail more than a mere reversal to pre-industrial times. As the TEPS theory informs us, the adaptation of current institutions and the creation of new ones take place in the deployment phase of each TEP. We claim that the times are, finally, mature enough to introduce a radical political agenda with brand new institutions, fueled by the spirit of the Commons and aiming to provide a viable global alternative to the capitalist paradigm beyond degrowth or antiglobalization rhetorics.”
Here’s a quote I particularly like in relation to growth:
“Considerations of distributional equity, of genuinely sharing, trump economistic considerations of allocation and of the size of the pie. Thus: We need to talk more about SHARING. We all know that growthism is a SUBSTITUTE for real fairness, a more equal society, serious redistribution. (It is what ‘socialists’ turned to once they abandoned hope of achieving socialism.) Let’s start saying so! Let’s let go of ‘trickle down’ nonsense once and for all.” Rupert Reade. ().
Framed that way, can we vouch for the growth and resilience of the Cooperative Commons movement so it can protect itself from attacks from big capital? And, conversely, for the de-growth of pervasive financialization of everything, speculative assets and share-holder profit oriented extractivist nonsense?. I think we need more nuanced semantics to discuss these issues, rather than treating the term “de-growth” as an absolute with immovable connotations.
If ‘Abundance’ and ‘Degrowth’ are not mutually exclusive, the chart fails to make sense, and in my mind, those two concepts can go very well together, in fact long-term it will be impossible to have abundance without degrowth. It will in fact be impossible to have survival without degrowth…
I agree with Guy. I dont see this oposition between abundance and degrowth, so the vertical landscape not makes sense..
otherwise Cic and FairCoop are based in diversity, this means that can include different experiences and ideological visions inside, that can not being put together as a point in a map
Hi there,
If you want to cast these values I would maybe sugest using a 3d graphic with x, y and z, polarizing “centralized/decentralized”, “abundance/scarcity”, degrowth/growth-based”.
Cheers!