[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p

Sat May 16 16:06:35 CEST 2009

I believe the seemingly absurd idealism of the European left is useful to
the world.  Whether it leads anywhere or just gives fodder to the right that
the left is silly remains to be seen in the voting booths. But my own
interpretation is that it is useful for pushing collaborative, open inquiry
types (I hope like myself) to further question and reflect on their own
equivocations.

Most of the discussions seem better set in 1880 than 2009.  Terms like
"capital" "labor" "management" seem to me to belong with terms like "steam
engine" "railroad" and "factory."  They aren't even seriously part of most
people's worlds.

The battlefield today is the mind.  Can its produce be free?  Can there be
justice in allocating knowledge and the expansion of knowledge?  Who wins
when knowledge is expanded?  Knowledge isn't a conventional capital like a
gear or machine tool.  It is very different.  The left seems unaware of
that.  Is there a left that open to post-capital social arrangements?  Or
maybe I'm it.

Ryan Lanham

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 6:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Marco,
>
> you may be right that there are many people who want to abolish the
> personhood of corporations, but I have yet to meet the first one ... on the
> other hand, I meet scores of people who want to be enterpreneurs and create
> a company, regardless of its bylaws ...
>
> I think that the answer here, if I'm correct about the lack of traction, is
> not necessarily to fight the old, we can do that later when we're stronger,
> but rather to build constructive and better alternatives .. I think that
> social entrepreneurships, fair trade, for-benefit associations and
> blended/value good-capital approaches, including chris cook's open capital,
> aim to do precisely that, to create better formats that can outgrow the
> limitations of the corporate patholotical form ...
>
> So I agree with the ultimate aims of POCLAD, but I think it's more fruitful
> to build alternatives at this stage,
>
> As you know, Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc., is doing a good job of educating
> people in POCLAD type critiques, as did The Corporation a few years earlier
> ...
>
> Michel
>
>
> On 5/15/09, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, May 15, 2009 16:14:02 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>> > Hi Marco,
>> >
>> > Thanks for your contribution.
>> >
>> > I understand your comment, but my 'feeling' is just the opposite.
>>
>> No problem! As I said, I'm all but an expert on monetary reform issues
>> or corporate law, so I don't really have any strong opinion or
>> position to defend, no problem. When these specific issues are
>> concerned, I'm still a student collecting material for homework.
>>
>> With respect to this:
>>
>> > Hundreds of cities and regions and tens of thousands of people are
>> > working on monetary issues .. it's a vibrant and growing movement ..
>> > In contrast, POCLAD is just minuscule
>>
>> There is no doubt that the "monetary alternatives" movement, for lack
>> of a better term, is much more vibrant, growing and known among
>> activists than things like POCLAD. I myself discovered POCLAD by pure,
>> pure chance online some years ago. I also have no problem, at least
>> now, to accept your evaluation that POCLAD has much, much smaller
>> possibilities of success than monetary reform. What I didn't expect,
>> and find really interesting, is this assertion:
>>
>> > and it requires really what the immense majority of people will find
>> > an unacceptable reform.
>>
>> Regardless, again, of the probability of success and of any inherent
>> flaws in the idea, I am pretty sure that, around here, I would find:
>>
>> 1) much, much less difficulties to explain POCLAD proposals than any
>>   money reform scheme passed on this list since when I subscribed
>>
>> 2) (partly due to 1) ) many more supporters of such a corporate reform
>>   than of any of those scheme.
>>
>> That is, my **feeling** is that if both sets of proposals were given
>> equal coverage in mainstream media (we can dream, can we not?), the
>> majority of non-activists, the "Joe Sixpack" class, in American slang,
>> would go for POCLAD (especially in these times...) rather than money
>> reform which would be, in that context, a much more alien concept than
>> "corporations are bad".
>>
>> So I wonder how much of this feeling depends on where one lives. What
>> do list subscribers from other parts of the world think? Which of
>> those two classes of concepts is easier to sell (regardless of its
>> intrinsic value) to Joe Sixpack? Just curious, really, answer off list
>> if you think it's off topic.
>>
>> marco
>>
>> --
>> Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
>> software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090516/a89c6e3d/attachment.html>