#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek

Reflections on the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Toni Negri

Matteo Pasquinelli: “To Anticipate and Accelerate: Italian Operaismo and Reading Marx’s Notion of Organic Composition of Capital”, Rethinking Marxism journal, vol. 26, n. 2, 2014.

another intriguining peiece from Pasquinelli: “The Power of Abstraction and Its Antagonism. On Some Problems Common to Contemporary Neuroscience and the Theory of Cognitive Capitalism”, Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism, Part 2. Berlin: Archive Books,  2014.

Red stack attack! Algorithms, capital and the automation of the common by Tiziana Terranova:

On this blog [http://syntheticedifice.wordpress.com/] it also possible to follow other reactions and relevant discussion around the Accele-rationalism. Below is for instance a friendly but undermining critique by McKenzie Wark, taken from there:

#Celerity: A Critique of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics

To be honest #Accelerationist manifesto also sounds to me, at first several readings, like a call for Kautskian and/or Plekhanovian politics 2.0. It suggests that to breakdown the global networked cognitive savage capitalism we must lead it into a future trap by Accelerating it until it is broken!

Although this sounds like an excitingly good-crazy idea, I have to step on the brake…. It has always been hard for me to accept the idea that suggest that in order to or if you want to negate and transcend something bad, first you need to let it be worsen and worsen, faster and faster, violent and violent… then bam! Even though political imagery says ‘push it harder towards the cliff’, scary question remains: ‘what if… it still survives then!’ It is great and energizing to hear about the anger and hope being formulated in such intelligent way; crying that the time is up and we need get away with this maniacal system as soon as possible. However, I find myself sympatyizing with Wark’s strong and friendly criticism, suggesting that ‘ok, lets get rid of it, but not accelerating it.. by hacking it, now!” I believe that Wark is right. There exists another ways to hack the capitalist mode of production instead of making it happen faster.

Agreeing with many others who think global working class is currently making it self through ongoing and intensifying struggles, I would formulate a good hack, as a bottom up class project, surely one part of wider free libre and open source code, of which algorithms are currently being written:

“The seed form of the self-organisation of the global working classes needs to be simultaneously well grounded, transnational, and global. It needs also be open, free/gratis and accessible for all the working people; so that they can freely enter and leave it. As modularly integrated organized networks it should be aiming at and capable of linking industrial, digital and inforamtional liek hacker-, academic-, art- workers, sex-. domoestic-, immigrant- … all fragments of the working classes, as well as social-environmental-cultural-informational-sexual justice activists. Adoptable principles and protocols, in form of the ‘code’, which can be pre-determined, as the coding process itself, has to be well documented, open and accessible to local, workplace, neighbourhood, issue based, activist or other forms of political collectives. It should be operating similar to Anonymous, 15M, Occupy, Gezi and other decentralized forms, yet based on more advanced and structured working protocols, closer to FLOSS projects, grassroots and worker’s owned cooperatives. It should not include membership, service, representation sort of logics that at the end leads to the reproduction of disempowerment for involving nodes, creating clientalism. Such form should not be organized by professional intellectuals and activists from outside in, and from top down towards the working people. With an opposite perspective, it should be an open design process led by volunteer participation, based on self-governing and representation principles.

It should be able to put forward creative, assertive and effective direct non-violent mass action, which makes fun of and ridicule the target by allowing the formation of collective intelligence. An active peer-to-peer self-learninig protocols and praxis should be at the core cultural production and re-creation beyond straitjacket put on the working ‘class’. Instead of having teachers who must show the right and enlightened road to the candidate working class members, who needs to get a self-consciousness, a global and networked labour union should be providing working people with the access to the tools, resources and key networks that would make self- empowerment easily possible. By linking spaces where continuous open exchanges take place and carry the energy from one space to other. Utilizing How to(s), Do it Yourself and Do it With Others guides, in online and real world context, by FLOSS communication tools as well as mass-action tactics it would replace top down (issue-anger-action) organizing model, which would allow self-articulation, respectful and collaborative working praxis by harmonized through peer-to-peer digital communication where possible and desirable, as well as face to face and secure meetings, cultural and recreational events cultural events. It should be collaborating with other organizations, creative and productive projects that undermines capitalist mode of production and develop the algorithms and codes of alternative modes, as operating systems that could replace capitalism. Such global network needs to grow by linking existing radical networks groups of activists, hackers, organizers, makers, DIY groups, squatters, eco-willages, diggers, immigrants, asylum seekers, solidarity networks, and so on. In a way all nodes could associate with the globally networked ties, while keeping their autonomy. Instead of #Accelerating capitalism, a better motto we should be spreading might be:

“All empower one, one empower all!”

All empowers one, one empowers all!: Coding the Algorithms of Emancipatory Modes of Production | Social Network Unionism.

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The text below is taken from the European Freelancers movement’s campaign website, which is built on the book written by Joel Dullroy and Anna Cahsman: Independents Unite! If you are a peer producer, self-employed or part of a phyle collective, go read their manifesto and lend a hand to an emerging movement with your signature to the open petition.

About the European Freelancers Campaign

The European Freelancers Campaign was created as a result of cooperation between various European freelancers’ organizations, coworking space networks and many individual supporters. The idea for a large public action arose at a meeting of the European Forum of Independent Professionals (EFIP), the umbrella group for freelancers’ associations. With the European Parliament elections looming, it was decided to put freelancers’ issues on the political agenda by demonstrating the importance of our growing demographic.

The five points of our manifesto were drawn from a major academic study by Professor Patricia Leighton, who identified the key challenges faced by European freelancers.

In the future, we will use this web platform to launch new actions and campaigns that support the concerns of freelancers.

Team

The European Freelancers Campaign was created by a team of freelancers committed to improving the condition of independent workers. Working in cooperation with the freelancers’ organizations of EFIP, we came up with a campaign concept, ran a crowdfunding appeal, built a website, and launched a messaging strategy. Our team includes:

Campaign manager: Joel Dullroy (Freelancers’ Movement)
Graphic designer: Paulo Melo (Paulo Melo)
Website developer: Philipp Hentschell (Welance)
Strategy: Rahul Schwenk (We Are Good Friends)
Video: Julianne Becker (Social Media Week Berlin)
Campaign volunteers: Bianca Gabbey (King Kong Kommunikation), Jeremy Richter, Maisie Hitchcock (Radio Spätkauf), Richard G. and many more!

Freelancers Europe | Building a movement for freelancers.

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Italian Operaismo and the Information Machine, is a must read by Matteo Pasquinelli. However the ‘accelerationism’ is the name of rapidly changing Zeitgeist(s) -the spirit of ‘space-time’, compressed increasingly into smaller units. The direction of meta-data and big-data research already moved further within the timespawn of Pasquinelli’s paper publication in early 2014. The theorization of the emerging ‘meta-data’ society, already has to make quantum leap further in order to make sense of the fundamentals of the ambiguous global (and absolute) control society/civilization vision set forth by the infamous, joke like Islamic State screenplay. For this one has to go further and simulataneoulsy problematize the most recent developments in quantum computing,quantum-like cognition and quantum-mind research, overlapping research and applications between genome, cybernetics, Internet of Everything, and [unifield fields] Theory of Everything in physics.

In conflict with the emancipatory perspectives on P2P production and Commons Transition, the positivist cogntive-cybernetic-compex stsyems theory based research, knowledge and living labour appropriation and modelling applications based on such research have been serving the ruling class interest. The more ‘control’, ‘discipline’, and ‘exploitation’ is modelled and applied, as the capitalist and the ruling elite wish to further commodify the cosmos of the commons, iincludeentire living labour-body-mind embedded in it. The conflict prone class pprojects and processes brought about more stress on the systems exploited, which in turn increase the entropy steering the human civilisation and life on Earth towards extinction. It is, therefore, kind of an urgent task ‘to find’ the advanced and holistic emancipatory methodology that would be helpful to figure out how to turn the tide. To build an emancipatory research and knowledge production, as well as mechanisms to disseminate the emancipatory knowledge produced, it is clear by now that the p2p and commons are the key concepts, as components of counter-class projects and processes. In order to improve our understanding of the world and politics of the p2p, networked and digital labour, value, commons, transition so on, in todays’ global class war context, and steer the world towards emancipatory direction we need to be able to outline such methodology in details in an open and collaborative manner.

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In the recent article, Theorising and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production, Christian Fuchs provides an compelling critic and overview of what he calls ‘Informational and Transnational Capitalism’. Identfyiny the role of ICTs  in the re-design of the globa production and value networks, his argument helps us to see through which nodes industrial, knowledge,  digital and agrarian forms of labour are interconnected in an hierarchically designed networks of global capitalist valorization.

Abstract

This paper considers the following question—where do computers, laptops and mobile phones come from and who produced them? Specific cases of digital labour are examined—the extraction of minerals in African mines under slave-like conditions; ICT manufacturing and assemblage in China (Foxconn); software engineering in India; call centre service work; software engineering at Google within Silicon Valley; and the digital labour of internet prosumers/users. Empirical data and empirical studies concerning these cases are systematically analysed and theoretically interpreted. The theoretical interpretations are grounded in Marxist political economy. The term ‘global value chain’ is criticised in favour of a complex and multidimensional understanding of Marx’s ‘mode of production’ for the purposes of conceptualizing digital labour. This kind of labour is transnational and involves various modes of production, relations of production and organisational forms (in the context of the productive forces). There is a complex global division of digital labour that connects and articulates various forms of productive forces, exploitation, modes of production, and variations within the dominant capitalist mode of production.

Full Text via Theorising and analysing digital labour: From global value chains to modes of production | Fuchs | The Political Economy of Communication.

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Original Post: http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/another-world-now-2/

The post The Coming of the Transnational Revolutions and the Networked Prince appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Valuable and concrete reflections are being published, filling public understanding of the nature and dynamics of the most-recent social and emancipatory uprisings, known also as Global Revolution. The recent articles by Bernardo Gutiérrez and Rodrigo Nunes, both of whom involved in the 15M, Occupy, Gezi, and Brazilian uprisings and systematically put their self-reflections together in a framework of a collaborative action-research network, also named as Global Revolution, are highly informative. They explain very well the reasons why the transnational ‘organization’ of the global ‘revolution’ is different then what we understand from the traditional use of the concepts ‘organization’ and ‘revolution’. Another important resource was produced by Adrià Rodriguez, who have also been very active both in 15M, as other ‘network movements’ since 201-11, and the Global Revolution Research Network.

I have been involved -more directly- in Occupy, Take The Square and Gezi movements/networks, as well, while I was busy with developing an understanding of the emergent new labour movement as a ‘network-movement’. My work at Social Network Unionism and Networked Labour blog/networks heavily relied on the previous work done by people like Peter Waterman, Hilary Wainwright, Marco Berlinguer, Mayo Fuster as well as others they have been collaborating, for instance around the initiatives like Networked Politics. Below are the papers and reports that I published online on various digital spaces before. Now it is worth to put them in a chronological order and reproduce collectively.

May 2014, Transnational networks of radical labour research and (h)activism

March 2013, Another World Now! The coming of the Transnational Revolutions and the Networked Prince

February 2013, Global unionism: the peer to peer model

October 2012, The Dramatic Rise of Peer-to-Peer Communication within the emancipatory movements

August 2012, Organizing, P2P Networking, and Mapping of the Production Process by the Workers: an Argument for a ‘New Unionism 2.0? 

August 2011, Global class warfare and the rEvolutionary working-class agency

Though I was not directly linked to or collaborated with -since I was not aware of- the work done around the Global Revolution research collaboration, I have actively, socially and politically made use of the social networking technologies which mediate, enable and aggregate the new collective political practices. Being part of the same praxis of such network-movements, I have very recently come to realise that there have been overlapping and similarities between the approaches we have been developing when it comes to thinking of the new ontology and epistemology of emerging p2p networked movements.

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By no means GNUnion aims to pose any direct ideological or political challenge to established independent union structures, neither it aims at competing for membership. GNUnion is a free to join network, based not on membership but egaleterian peership. It creates an interface between emerging new agency of global working classes and the world of 20th century organisations of industrial workers on the one hand, and between older and newer forms of social and solidarity networks on the other. So the union would function as a mesh network through which all nodes involved would not only stand together, but also help and empower the others while they empower them selves.

We believe that the only way for humaninty to create another, better civilisations is by joining all our labour and creativity throuhg peer to peer mesh networks that allow stygmergic mass collaborations! To this end GNUnion commit itself to link and support existing independent union structures as well as emerging new forms around the world, in any possible way.

The focus of GNUnion however will be creating and linking mesh networks between creative, positive and assertive struggles, mobilisations and direct actions targeting both to support FLOS social, economic, political and cultural alternatives to capitalism or to replace capitalism with these alternatives, that are exist and growing.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNetworkedLabourUnion

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Campaigning Online and Winning: 

How LabourtStart’s ActNOW Campaigns Are Making Unions Stronger

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