I have an unexplored thesis that both liberal and conservative political thinking is theoretical while the most important thinking around P2P and the commons simply describes how they work as an economic and cultural system. For instance, Ostrom’s work is comparative political analysis that draws out common working principles across various commons. It basically shows how commons work. I’m probably just unaware, but I don’t know of other political analysis on left or right that’s this straightforward.

Thanks Neal, I borrow concepts from various traditions, including marxist ones when they make sense, and I think equaliberty, which points to the co-conditionally of both, is actually a nice way to put it. I agree that social justice is not just an ethical issue, but also something necessary for societies to thrive. It’s good that we can now learn from indigenous people, and from all the valuable practices that we have ‘forgotten’ in our modern societies. I argue in another text that post-material and pre-material civilisations have a lot to learn from each other.

see http://p2pfoundation.net/Neotraditional_Economics and the text that is linked to it: http://p2pfoundation.net/Importance_of_neotraditional_approaches_in_the_reconstructive_transmodern_era

Michel

-The idea of social justice seems in need of reformulation. In leftist circles it’s posed as a sort of moral obligation when in reality it’s simply pragmatic. A society where power and wealth is highly concentrated is unstable and fragile resulting in all kinds of social ills that are expensive as hell if not impossible to address without going to the cause. In other words, such societies underdeliver in quality of life in the present and are not sustainable in the long run. Many indigenous peoples understood this and had norms protecting against concentration of wealth and political power and /or separation of wealth and political power.

-I support your position. However, a friend points out that using terms from Marxist philosophers (ex. equaliberty from Balibar) might undermine your position.

-This Wittgenstein quote comes to mind 😉
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.