Abstract

In the abstract we argue:

“Our main hypothesis in this paper is that in the current conjuncture, we are moving towards a ‘dominance’ of a ‘commons’ format for societal development. The commons format assumes a ‘third’ mode of development that indicates civil society and community as critical initiators and guardians of common value. The emerging commons model should be distinguished from both the regulation of capitalism by social-democracy, and state-centric Soviet types of socialism. Just as a full-fledged capitalist system could be seen as starting with the seed forms developed in the medieval city-states, so a future commons-centric society can be hypothesized from currently emerging commons-based seed forms. We believe that just as the revolutions bringing full-fledged capitalism were preceded by the development of capitalists and their seed forms, so a commons-based systemic change is necessarily the result of commoners developing their own seed forms. Therefore, the creation of a systemic ecology of the commons becomes an essential strategy for social change. The key approach for emancipation is no longer a redistribution of market value, or a state-centric appropriation of productive assets, but an interweaving of commons-based production and redistribution.”

KEYWORDS: Post-capitalism, commons, value exchange systems, Marxism and the radical left, social transformation

Extract

Here is an extract from the paper below. A preprint version can be found here.

“We thus see commons as thriving through interdependence across multiple scales and dimensions, with myriad communities enacting themselves as commoners who engage in the active creation, defence and management of their commons, but not to the exclusion of others. It might be said that in terms of epistemology, the emerging foundations of the commons perspective shares a radical perspective on the dynamic interconnections that exist between a multitude of forms, as well as a process orienta- tion (Bollier and Helfrich 2015). Arturo Escobar (2015, 355) discusses this relational dynamic as a ‘pluriverse … made up of a multiplicity of mutually entangled and co- constituting but distinct worlds’. Given this, there is a broader political, ecologic and economic context which needs to come with commoning.

First, we do not see any room for exclusionist approaches in our definition of commoning. Historically, labour movements centred on the White European male were exclusionist in orientation (for example the White Australia Policy had its origins in labour movements, and in the United States the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was also supported by labour unions), and in the current era we see, for example, the United States ‘alt-right’ that has emerged as a nativistic construction with an even more virulent form of exclusionism. In contrast to such an exclusionary understanding, our view might be understood as ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’, in which the activity of one particular group needs to do no harm to, complement, or even support the well-being of people universally, not just one group to the exclusion of another. As such, in this paper we put forward the idea of cosmo-localization, the notion that one community of produc- tive commoning on one part of the planet also can and should support other commu- nities of production and commoning in other parts of the world, through the development of a global design commons that democratizes production.

Second, given the ecological crisis that we face, commoning cannot be reductively defined in terms of one community’s activity if it runs counter to the overall health of the whole. A planetary ethos, a view that takes the health of our planetary life support systems as central, needs to guide what it means to enact a commons – the activity of a particular group needs to complement and support the general well-being of planetary life support systems.

Third, commons need to be aligned with a post-capitalist political program. Both nativism and ecological crisis need to be understood as, in certain ways, products of capitalism. Anti-globalization was indeed at first a radical green-left position, as demonstrated by the alliance of ‘Teamsters and Turtles’ at the Battle of Seattle and the wider global protest circuit (Kaldor 2000). For the good part of two decades these demands and cries for transformation have been largely ignored by our neoliberal policy makers, leading to both reactionary populism and a deepening ecological crisis (Ramos 2017a).

This paper begins with a simple depiction of the birth of a ‘civic/civil’ oriented commons, which has emerged concurrently and in the aftermath of the demise of state-socialism and the neoliberal assault. We then provide a theory of change – our proposition is that transformation and phase transition is based on the emergence of seed forms. We provide several historical examples, and we discuss the emergence of the commons as one such seed form. To provide a theoretical and ontological foundation for understanding the emergence of the commons as a seed form within a macrological time-scale, we discuss the work of Alan Page Fiske (1991) and Kojin Karatani (2014) and the implications of their work for an ecology of the commons and reformulation of the left. We then segue into a short discussion on this ecology of the commons as a response to civilizational overshoot and collapse. Within this context of civilizational crisis and the aforementioned theory of change, we trace the general outline of the transition, and describe the emergence of cosmo-localism, Design Global/Manufacture Local (DGML) strategies as a key element of the commons shift. In conceptualizing the practical elements of this proposed ecology of the commons, we present the German Energiewende as a proto-model for state-community co- creation, and a template for future possibilities. We then look broadly across the ontological forms of the city, the nation-state, and global transnational structures as emerging constituent and co-creative elements of such an ecology of the commons. We end with some implications for the left and the challenge of transforming the dark energies of populism.”

The post Re-Imagining the Left Through the Lens of Post-Capitalist Commons‎‎ appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Birgit Daiber: After years of commoning in conferences, cooperation projects, networking, discussions on the diversity of experiences and designing strategies how broaden them – I think it’s time to discuss how to implement them on a political level: Commons as one dimension of initiatives to reclaim a social, ecological and democratic Europe connected with the reconstruction and democratization of public services.

Different from some of the commons networks in Europe which try to stay outside direct political debates, claiming commons as a fundamental new way of economic and social practice that is not assignable to one or the other political direction, I think commons are potentially an essentially left issue. Why? Very simple: The question of property is basic for all left politics from its (organised) beginning in the 19th century – until today. In his theory of value, Karl Marx revealed the contradiction between exchange value and use value. And this too is still relevant today. Within these two dimensions of left thinking we find the global movements of the commons. Francois Houtart says in his basic manifesto from 2011 that commons initiatives focus on use value, democratic participation and autonomy, being part of a new post-capitalist paradigm and in a short note from 2014 he is pointing out:

“Concretely, it means to transform the four ”fundamentals” of any society: relations with nature; production of the material base of all life, physical, cultural, spiritual; collective social and political organization and culture. For the first one, the transformation means to pass from the exploitation of nature as a natural resource merchandize to the respect of nature as the source of life. For the second one: to privilege use value rather than exchange value, with all the consequences with regard to the concept of property. The third one implies the generalization of democratic practices in all social relations and all institutions and finally interculturality means to put an end to the hegemony of Western culture in the reading of the reality and the construction of social ethics. Elements of this new paradigm, post-capitalist, are already present all over the world, in many social movements and popular initiatives. Theoretical developments are also produced. So, it is not a “utopian vision” in the pejorative sense of the word. But a clear aim and definition is necessary to organize the convergences of action. It is a long-term process which will demand the adoption of transitions, facing the strength of an economic system ready to destroy the world before disappearing. It means also that the structural concept of class struggle is not antiquated (fiscal heavens and bank secrecy are some of its instruments). Social protests, resistances, building of new experiences are sources of real hope.”

We are just in time, as left parties in Europe are preparing their national campaigns and their European performance for the next European elections in 2019. Election-campaigns always give the opportunity to discuss programmes and projects more intensely in public debates, and so the Common Good could become one of the core-issue for the Left. Practical initiatives and debates are already well developed on different levels in some countries – as e.g. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and France and Belgium and there are hundreds of examples of successful initiatives on municipal, national and international levels. Just to give some few examples:

The municipal level: most of commons initiatives are local activities, in cities as well as in rural areas. Urban Commons are prominent and well documented. Cities as Seoul (KOR), Barcelona (ES), Naples (IT), Ghent (BE) and Frome (GB) show how to realise urban commons and how municipalities can work together with commoners. There are legal competences too supporting commons initiatives. The Berlin Senate for example has the right to confiscate abandoned property (but they don’t use it yet and there is no obligation for social use).

National level: The movement for Water as a commons in Italy initiated a referendum with the result that 51% of Italian citizens voted for it. The government must act and the Parliament has to discuss new laws – a still on-going struggle. The water-movement is putting the question of Commons in the context of re-thinking the role of the public in the management of goods and services related to the universal human rights.

The “old” left idea, that the State per se would guarantee public services, failed with processes of privatization – and even when the State is still holding the ownership, goods and services are often given to private companies. It is crucial to suspend market activities from public services to ensure that profits in this sector are re-invested for public use. At the same time, public services must be democratized and there has to be public control with the participation of workers and citizens (only?) to guarantee correct functioning of the common good.

On national levels, the laws on social and common use of property and the laws on cooperatives are decisive. An interesting example is the legal structure of SCOPs in France (“Societé cooperative et participative” or “société coopérative ouvrière de production“). In 2016 there were 2680 SCOPs with 45 000 active members – and they are still on the rise.

International level: Bolivia and Ecuador included Commons explicitly in their constitutions. In 2010 the UN general assembly adopted the resolution on access to clean water as basic human right. The initiative for a fundamental declaration on the Common Good of Humanity goes beyond this – well aware that a proclamation has no legally binding character but can be an instrument for social and political mobilization, creating a new consciousness and serving as a basis for the convergence of social and political movements at the international level. Clearly it is a long-term task, but it needs to be started. Not only can the coming together of social movements like the World Social Forum and political parties like the Forum of São Paulo contribute by promoting such a Declaration, but individual countries through their representatives in international organizations like Unesco and the United Nations can also push this agenda forward.

Coming to the European Level: Since some European Parliamentarians from different political groups founded an ‘Intergroup’ on Commons and Public Services in 2014, the ‘European Commons Assembly’ developed with participants from nearly all European countries. ECA initiated conferences and various activities and published a general call: “We call for the provision of resources and the necessary freedom to create, manage and sustain our commons. We call upon governments, local and national, as well as European Union institutions to facilitate the defence and growth of the commons, to eliminate barriers and enclosures, to open up doors for citizen participation and to prioritize the common good in all policies. This requires a shift from traditional structures of top-down governance towards a horizontal participatory process for community decision-making in the design and monitoring of all forms of commons. We call on commoners to support a European movement that will promote solidarity, collaboration, open knowledge and experience sharing as the forces to defend and strengthen the commons. Therefore, we call for and open the invitation to join an on-going participatory, inclusive process across Europe for the building and maintenance of a Commons Assembly. Together we can continue to build a vibrant web of caring, regenerative collective projects that reclaim the European Commons for people and our natural environment.

How could the common good be important for European politics? Just to remind one of the prominent battles of the Left (including Greens and Trade Unions) in the years 2000: the battle against the Bolkestein-Directive. In the end it was possible to introduce the protection of public services as “services of general social and economic interest (SSIG’s) on European level. This could be a starting point for initiatives for commons tofight for the recognition of commons initiatives in different fields as basic citizens rights in Europe.

All these examples show at least the slightly fragmented situation. The political and legal conditions differ widely and there is a need to discuss demands on all levels – and there is the need to discuss them on the European level.

Opportunities for the European Left

The general interest of European Left is to re-think the role of public for goods and services with relation to universal rights and to prohibit market-logic in public services. The aim is to suspend the market from public goods and services and to democratize public services for the recuperation of public services as Common Good. This is the first dimension. The second is to re-think social and workers rights as common goods. And the third is the recognition of citizens’ initiatives as basic rights and the promotion of commons initiatives.

So, it’s a three-fold battle and it could start from the general statement:

Commons are of general public interest, thus the general demand is the political and legal recognition of citizens’ initiatives whose aim is to create, re-construct and recuperate resources, goods and services in a social, ecological and democratic way. But there are specific demands to add. As there are (just to give some examples):

1. Cooperative use of abandoned land and houses. Social use of confiscated property.
2. Right for workers to recuperate their companies and manage them collectively – before selling them to investors or going bankrupt.>
3. Open access for all citizens to information services that are democratically organised, and free public internet.
4. Collectively and self-managed funds for citizens’ initiatives and access to public funding.
5. Democratization of digital radio and TV by reserving e.g. 30% of the slots for non-commercial, community etc. stations.
6. Participatory re-communalization/re-municipaliyation of energy and water.

And I’m sure there are others to add…

It could be the right moment to start to discuss practical political proposals – not with the illusion to change European politics immediately, but with the intention to bring the debate into the light of a greater public.

Thank you for your attention.

About the author: As Member of the European Parliament (MEP), as director of the European Office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Brussels, as coordinator of transatlantic and international projects and as an expert for social urban development, Birgit Daiber has been involved for over decades in the building of Europe. She is the author and publisher of a number of books and articles on European and international issues. The common good of humanity, gender-oriented civil conflict prevention and the intercultural dialogue are in the focus of her present attention.

Photo by pedrosimoes7

The post Let’s talk politics: Conference on Social Commons, Barcelona, June 2018  appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Excerpts from Stefan Heidenreich‘s new book on the post-currency future, republished from Transmediale.

Stefan Heidenreich’s book recently published by Merve Verlag is titled Money (2017). What it presents is not exactly a polemic against money, but rather a convincing speculation that soon we may not need money at all. While the notion that currency might soon become obsolete sounds like science fiction to many, Heidenreich argues that we are likely already within the first phase of a media transition leading to that point. Given the complex information infrastructures that have already been developed for documenting transactions, tying consumer habits to identities, and accurately predicting future exchanges, the substructure of a new kind of economy is now in place. In the following excerpts from his book (translated from the German), Heidenreich explores the potential ways this system might function, based partially on sophisticated “matching” formulas, leading to an age that could be more fair and equitable, but that might also produce monopolization and co-option in entirely new ways.

Introduction

One purpose of money is to distribute goods and labor. In the future, we will be able to solve these tasks differently, without money, instead relying on the help of networks, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

Why do without money? The medium of money combines three functions: payment, value, and storage. In every money economy, the function of storage tends to overshadow the other functions. This tendency is unavoidable because it is inherent to money. The command “More!” is inscribed in it from the very start. The command drives toward a state in which all economic activity is forced to pay tribute. Each valuation of goods and professions shifts in favor of assets and their accumulation. Increasingly, income and property are distributed unequally. This should come as no surprise, since the measures taken by central banks after the crisis in 2008 were limited to the continuous salvaging of assets.

Designing a non-money economy would pose a fundamental utopia in opposition to the money economy. This economy would do without money, abolish the storage of value and assets, and replace the functions of value and payment with the algorithmically supported distribution of things and activities. Technically speaking, this is possible because all transactions are already digitally recorded and enough data can be calculated to enhance and replace the market’s information function. In this sense, the concept of the non-money economy represents a radical leftist utopia: an economy that strives toward equal economic distribution by changing the current system in a fundamental way, because it pertains to money’s nature as a medium.

(…)

1. Distribution

The task of the economy is to distribute money and labor. But money is not necessary for this task. Historically speaking, the medium of money came to be used to bundle necessary economic information and to communicate it. Today, almost the entire economy runs under a money regime. But neither the end of history nor an optimal solution for distribution has been achieved with this scenario. Since data and computers are now large and fast enough, we can envision alternative, moneyless, and probably better techniques of distribution. We need to begin with questions of distribution and allocation and not with markets and their monetary orientation.

The task of distributing many different things among many different participants represents a typical problem for networks, which is how to deal with a variety of connections. The core element of these connections is to form a social relation, be it through a gift or help or communication. Whenever something is distributed, a link is activated.

(…)

With the increasing amount and density of information, the relationship between prices changes radically. Prices only retroactively express what we already know about the behavior of consumers in the market. Whenever we book a flight, we can see how prices are set using algorithms. This data head-start applies not just to final consumers, but also to large sites of trading. Sporadic flash crashes show what happens when algorithms speculate on stocks and other securities.

When our profiles, our likes, and our consumer histories are used to calculate who will buy what and where, the entire market becomes condensed to a singular moment for each transaction—that is, if a profiling algorithm can determine the price one is willing to pay for a specific product at a given time and place, there exists exactly one marketplace for that sale. In that case the price of the item conveys no additional information outside of this single market. Formally speaking, distribution is still depicted in prices and calculated in terms of money, but data currents today already represent the technological foundation of a non-money economy.

(…)

2. Transactions

Transactions form the foundation of every economy. The simplest of all transactions is a gift. One person (A) gives something (x) to another person (B)—noted as a tuple (A, B, x). 1 The term “person” here refers to any kind of active agent, not just human beings, but also robots, programs, machines, or other living beings.

A gift is anything at all that can be given, not just commodities, but also information, events, access, actions, assistance, and the like. Giving, rather than labor, should be considered the foundation of economic relations, for the simple reason that one can indeed work without being part of the economy—that is, entirely for one’s own good and without any effect on others. In contrast, a transaction always represents a social relationship of some kind. This means that, with the division of labor, the foundational act is that of division, not labor. We need to take a closer look at what economic activity means. Labor is part of the money economy and relies on the concept of paid, productive activities. In a non-money field, the economic value of an activity would be decided by whether and how it is shared.

All formats and structures of giving and exchange, like payments, prices, values, purchasers, consumption, supply, demand, and markets, can be traced back to simple transactions. The entirety of all economic relationships can be understood through the elementary transaction of giving. The act of purchasing, today seen as something quite ordinary, emerged rather late in the long history of economic relationships and the advent of money. Previously, simple transactions were the rule: gifts, even forced ones, in the form of taxes, for example. Measuring and noting gifts in numeric form began not with money, but with systems of inscription that were usually linked to temples. All the stories of money that suggest the economy began with exchange are not just historically incorrect; they also refuse to recognize that an economy before money existed, and thus are not suited to conceive of an economy without money today.

(…)

3. Media and Networks 

Reaching the point when data can take over the tasks of money depends on the relationship of computing capacities to transactions. As soon as computer networks are large and fast enough to process all acts of payment, technically speaking it is possible to algorithmically emulate the function of money. We have now reached this very threshold, and are likely to cross it in the course of a few years.

As mentioned, economic forms without money are not entirely new. Before the rise of money, larger economic units were administered by systems of inscription. Their remains are not only found in the ruins of temples, but also in the myths of guilt or debt (Schuld) in many religions. In one of the most famous of all prayers, Christians demand, day in and day out, millions of times over, an end to all debt: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” But they have forgotten the economic core of these lines. With the shift from a centralized system of inscription to a decentralized one—i.e., using money—forgiving debts went out of fashion. This was no coincidence, for the many creditors who had taken the place of a central power were then more interested in collecting debts than in forgiving them. Christianity reacted by replacing debt with sin and replacing the forgiveness of debt with individual confession—that is, through a form of control.

Historically speaking, economic relationships did not begin with exchange and certainly not with payment. What came first was giving, helping, and lending. Property was unknown. In small village communities, memory was sufficient to keep track, more or less, of who gave what to whom.

It was only with the introduction of writing that larger economic units began to be organized over a longer term. Recordings of gifts and debts can be found at many excavation sites of ancient civilizations. Ultimately, the invention of writing can be traced back to such archives of gifts and tributes. Together with the first general medium and system of inscription, new economic units grew. The dominance of these economies of inscription, usually around temples and in cities, could expand as far as their power to collect tributes extended.

Money only came later. In a strictly technical sense, money is not a medium but a technique that uses all sorts of media to make notes transportable—and the process is read-only. For the economy, this meant that money was a fundamental innovation, for it converted the simple transaction of the gift into a symmetrical exchange. If somebody paid to acquire something, there was nothing left over. Nothing needed to be noted. Money saves data.

The expansion of money ran in parallel to war and expansive state forms that, with money’s help, established a cycle of taxes for paying and feeding soldiers.

By way of the circulation of goods and labor, a complex structure evolved of money-like forms of notation for payments and promises of payment, from the coin to the promissory note, from paper money to digital currencies.

In the end, we have returned to a system of inscription that not only notes all payments, but also constructs the wildest derivatives and wagers on promises of payment. But the fact that money condenses data is no longer of interest, since we are able to process enough data.

Peer-to-peer currencies and crypto-currencies are nothing fundamentally new to this system. Bitcoins are still a form of money, even if separated from a central institution. On the path towards the abolition of money, they merely represent a detour. The principle of payment itself is maintained by digital and peer-to-peer payment systems. They simply reproduce old money on the new-media foundation of a distributed network. This corresponds to the first step of a media transformation.

In media theory since Marshall McLuhan, it has been a commonplace to state that newly developed media are first used to reproduce old content. Media transformations often take place in two phases. First, there is a reproduction of the old in the new: in the case at hand, Bitcoin is the internet’s replication of money. Only in the second phase will it become clear what kind of new life the new medium can develop. This step is still to come for money. It will lie in the takeover of economic functions of money by way of intelligent networks.

The most important thing about peer-to-peer currencies is the architecture in the background, the so-called blockchain. This represents the foundation for a decentralized technique of administration by which transactions can be communicated anonymously and examined by anyone. The technique works for money just as well as for other moneyless and decentralized systems of notation. Therefore, the blockchain represents a possible building block for an economy after money.

The second phase of a media transformation applies to the question of how a moneyless economy can emerge and how it could replace money. But technological development leaves many possibilities open here. At issue is not a fixed, defined path that follows deterministically set media guidelines. Technological progress opens possibilities for future activities, in terms of the ecology of information affordances. As a rule, these are achieved by way of a chaotic process full of contradictions. What drives transformation are not plans or impact assessments but rather the misuse of possibilities, the counterculture, hacking, and taking advantage of mistakes and gaps. This applies to the non-money economy as well. We will not be able to plan it. It will emerge in the niches and obscure corners of various networks and spread from there.

(…)

4. Matching

Matching is an important operation in a money-less economy. It takes on functions that are otherwise controlled by prices and by the market. “To match” means to classify, assign, or link.

(…)

The process of matching serves to integrate all participants and their desires, needs, possibilities, and abilities. It offers to mediate between transactions, to advise participants in their decisions, to accompany negotiations, and to note the results.

Theories of algorithms and networks use the term matching to refer to every cross-classification of elements from two different sets. For our purposes, these elements can be things or people or events or points in time or locations or objects of any kind. Elements of the same set may be matched with one another—such as in the case of two people connected by a dating agency, a team of programmers brought together for the development of a project, or trucks or containers coordinated for shipping purposes.

Formally, in a network-based environment, matching performs a gift based on conditional constraints. The result of a match can be described as the difference between before and after, whereby each matched transaction has effects beyond all immediate participants, no matter how small. The environment encompasses all links and information that go into the matching, that are processed along the way, and that are noted in the final conclusion. In the process, all decisions made along the way are accounted for, both on the giving side and the taking side, on the side of the good itself that is given, and on the side of the affected third party. The factors that go into making a match include comparable transactions, the history of transactions in the participants’ profiles, and the participants’ desires, needs, and capacities.

Matching processes all of these parameters to suggest one or several possible solutions. The function is not that of an auctioneer, but of a mediator. This means that it is not the goal to calculate the best solution for an ideal price and to leave things at that, but to communicate among a series of interests. Matching is scaled depending on need. Not all options have to be taken. When it comes to daily use, matching would become a formality and take less time than paying does today. If matching were to be applied to a more extensive political process, it would affect all the committees, authorities, and interested parties involved, and would thus unfold similarly.

(…)

Matching procedures would make suggestions on the path towards a decision, show opportunities, and accompany the process of negotiation. It might well be the case that the algorithm becomes active before we even think of wanting something particular. Some suggestive apps already do this, by evaluating our desires and predicting them. Whether we want this influence or not is perhaps a hypothetical question. The more advantages people see in algorithms, the more they will take recourse to them. In this way, socially recognized patterns of behavior arise all on their own. The future, present, and past of media transformations are never foundationally subject to social intention, but driven by a technological dynamics all their own.

(…)

Seen from the users’ perspective, every process of matching begins with a desire or a need. The algorithm then suggests various solutions. If one of them fits, the other participants—producers, suppliers, inventors, machines, or algorithms—are contacted. If an agreement is reached, the transaction is carried out and noted. The impulse to make a match can emerge from each of the four participating sides: from those interested, from those offering, from the product itself, or from the algorithm. Most steps in a match are basically familiar to us already. We carry them out all the time, looking for something online or offering and selling something of our own.

The matching process encompasses an entire bundle of functions around a transaction. Whether these functions are encounters in a unified framework or are divided among a variety of apps is of no relevance in terms of a currency-less economy. The decisive feature is that matching does not operate with money, but organizes distribution directly. This also means that transactions are noted and stored, but not valued with fixed prices and calculated as such.

Matching is also omnipresent within an economy like the current one that operates with money. When we buy things or somebody pays us for our labor, matching is also taking place. But this usually follows different rules than it would in a moneyless world. Without money, the selection criterion of simple and one-dimensional value would fall by the wayside. Instead, an entire series of various decision-making factors become available.

Consider for a moment how matching works under conditions of money. Let’s say we go into a store and purchase something. The product already has a history behind it. Somebody designed it, others made it, and the store has it in its assortment because it could count on customers like us. Our purchase is thus preceded by several decisions that are all linked to the exchange of information. But before we take the product and pay for it, we undergo a more or less intense process of deliberation: weighing the costs, our budget, our desires, and our needs. This internalized matching can take place in very different ways depending on the person and the situation. Some have to consider every single cent they spend, whereas others are largely free of this concern. In a moneyless economy, there is no guarantee that all will be freed of such concerns.

There will continue to be unfulfilled—and unfulfillable—wishes. Even in an economy without money, we won’t be able to possess all that is denied us under a regime of money. Only the conditions and procedures will change, fundamentally, and for the better.

Whether with or without money, our personal decisions are integrated into a broader cycle of information. In today’s economy, a purchase sends the information that more of the same product is needed. It combines with similar information at the point of sale and reaches the producer from there. Parallel to the flow of money and payment, there is always a second current of information that controls how paths of production are organized and goods are distributed. Matching without money would dock directly onto this secondary flow of information.

1. In mathematics a tuple is a finite ordered list.

Translated from the German by Brian Currid.

This excerpt is part of the transmediale journal – face value edition. You can buy a print copy here.

Photo by Dyroc

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21-23 November 2018

ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

Organiser: CEI-IUL, Centre for International Studies

With the support of the Department of Political Economy (ISCTE-IUL) and Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon

In response to the current global social and environmental crisis, various social movements are developing alternatives to the socio-economic status quo by mobilizing endogenous practices, institutions and resources and networking among grassroots initiatives. Within these movements stands out Solidary Social Economy and the Commons. This international and interdisciplinary conference, guided by an action research strategy, aims to respond to challenges that have arisen from recent research on forms of shared governance between the state, the market and the third sector, promoted by movements and public policies for the Social Solidarity Economy, as well as criticisms made by authors such as Martin Deleixhe, David Harvey and Massimo de Angelis to the theory developed by Elinor Ostrom on the management of common property:

• How to promote a strong sense of community belonging, necessary to promote the cooperation between stakeholders that is necessary for the harmonious governance of Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons, while preventing the emergence of totalizing visions, ensuring pluralism and promoting democratic deepening?

• How to promote shared governance strategies between the state, the market and the third sector, aimed at supporting the development of Social Solidarity Economy networks as spaces of self-organization, in which participants can autonomously construct themselves as economic and political subjects?

• How to promote organizations based on the constitution and / or management of Common Goods (Integral Cooperatives, Ecovillages, associations of users and / or producers, etc.) based on fair, inclusive and participative forms of governance, and integrated into grassroots socioeconomic dynamics?

The purpose of this event is to promote an intersectoral dialogue on this topic at the international level. We invite researchers, activists, public officials, social entrepreneurs and other actors in these fields to present communications that explore possible configurations which the convergence between the approaches proposed by the Solidarity Economy and Common Goods movements can assume in the following fields:

– Production and distribution of food, water and energy;

– Infrastructures (management of territories, means of communication and transport, information technologies, housing and economic and cultural activity spaces);

– Health, Education and Culture

– Financial systems (ethical finance, social currencies, crypto-coins).

The objective is to develop theoretical and empirical materials that facilitate convergence and the establishment of common action plans for the promotion of socially and environmentally resilient communities, in particular through:

(a) adaptation to climate change, transition to the use of renewable energies and promotion of “environmental ethics”;

b) public policies and participatory democracy mechanisms to promote social justice through empowerment and a more effective exercise of social, economic and civic rights by vulnerable social groups;

c) the revitalization of local economies through “short circuits” of production and consumption that stimulate the creation of employment and the establishment of wealth at an autochthonous level.

Please email paper abstracts of no more than 300 words to  [email protected] by May 31 2018. Acceptance and rejection notices will be sent in mid-June 2018.

The organizing committee will subsequently selected papers presented at the conference to be published in the ISCTE-IUL Centre for International Studies (CEI) open source e-book collection. The authors and actors present at the thematic sessions will also be invited to contribute chapters on the topics discussed for publication.

Photo by pedrosimoes7

The post Call for Papers: Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Envisioning Sustainable and Post-capitalist Futures, Lisbon, Portugal, 21-23 November 2018 appeared first on P2P Foundation.