[p2p-research] 21st Century Socialism: Eleven Talking Points

[Kevin Carson]

On 5/3/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sam,
>
> I face similar difficulties,
>
> socialism can mean many many different things, but it is essentially a 19 cy social ideology that has been deeply discredited by 20th century failings ...
>
> this is one of the reasons that I use the peer to peer narrative and steer away from any language in that tradition
>

I think the recovered understanding of "socialism" as it existed in
the early 19th century, subsequently buried by a late 19th century
shift in meaning that became dominant in the 20th, is quite relevant
to the p2p movement.

It seems to me that both the state capitalists and the state
socialists have an interest in suppressing this recovered meaning,
because it's in their shared interest to pretend that our only
alternatives are a world run by Gosplan and a world owned by
Halliburton.  It amounts to a cartel in which they can divide up their
market shares between people who see
Gosplan or Halliburton, respectively, as more threatening than the alternative.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html