[p2p-research] the most important article of the year so far ...

[Michel Bauwens]

Thanks Ryan, your thoughtful comments are most appreciated, as always, I
need more thinking myself to say anything sensible, but I strongly recommend
that you read carlota perez, it's a kind of modified kondratieff, rather
well aware of its limitations, but nevertheless, very instructive,

human history, and future, is neither entirely free nor entirely determined,
but I do believe there are underlying logics and waves etc .. at work, and
that deducing from history is legitimate ...

Could you keep this comment to add on to the blog article when it appears?

right now, my internet and computer is rather dysfunctional, otherwise I
would have done it ...

Michel

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Michel,
>
> Thanks for sending Gopal Balakrishnan's paper.  It broke up a dull day for
> me.
>
> As an initial aside, I wish I had a dime for every time I've seen Martin
> Wolf's "Seeds of its own Destruction" article cited left and right.  That
> little column sure had legs.
>
> Positives About Balakrishnan's Article:
>
> 1. It was magisterial in scope.
> 2. It followed traditional New Left themes and language in a way that was
> easily understood and consistent with others
> 3. It pointed to real, if nebulous, outcomes to expect.
> 4. It laid out a convincing explanation for why a number of bogeymen (fiat
> currencies, huge debts, failure to materialize technological solutions,
> failure of green solutions, etc.) will lead to this "gray" world.
>
> Negatives
>
> 1. I think vast themes were ignored.  First, I think he left out
> demographics almost completely.  I read today where the average child born
> in a US hospital today can expect to live to 100.  The average.
> 2. I think he underplays Japan and focuses on the US when Japan actually
> far more illustrates his own points.
> 3. I do not believe he compelling theorizes a decline of China due to a
> lack of consumers.  I doubt seriously it will go that way.  China can turn
> inward (as it has many times in past) to build a Xanadu consumer
> wonderland.
> 4. I think the End of History metaphor is lost...he needed to show how
> Fukuyama's history failed--democracy has been overtaken by neo-liberal
> technocrats and therefore has become an underground movement--a la P2P.
> These are not "dispersed agents of opposition, but technologically empowered
> persons who need no organization--no parties, etc. which he feels are
> missing.
>
> Overall, I found him to be technologically naive--not in that he was not a
> technophile--but rather in that he didn't see the enabling powers of
> emerging technologies to sweep aside the sort of 20th century
> organization (unions, left parties, etc.) he seems to crave.
>
> That is a minor critique to a good paper on what seems to be a slower spin
> to the current world of capitalism or neo-liberalism as it attempts to
> de-lever.  What is profoundly difficult about such a paper is the need
> to explain all.  I think that is where Marxian ideas come up short.  In
> fact, they are too magisterial.  The world now is nano-fragments.  It cannot
> be synthesized easily or well.
>
> I myself have speculated somewhat formally in the last two days that the US
> is headed for a second civil war...a war of small interests against
> institutions that have betrayed the public trust.  In short, a new
> democratic revolution against the conventional republic which has become
> torpid, corrupt and self-serving.  I see such a fight brewing now in the
> increasingly dysfunctional political dialogue.  That sort of Apache-like
> sniping...a technical P2P war against the institutions, seems much more
> plausible to me than the slow spinning death GB theorizes.
>
> Your waves are interesting and I look forward to your formal expositions,
> but I feel, frankly, that they are like a sort of Aristotelian set of
> complexities for what may be a much more simple set of occurrences.  That
> is, I feel they may be bent to fit the reality rather than descriptive of
> it.  As an illustration, I can see where it is useful.  For now, I
> personally remain unconvinced Kondratieff is a real phenomenon rather than a
> descriptive apparatus.  I will study more to see if I can convince myself
> otherwise.  In general, I am skeptical of thematic, Newtonian, mechanistic
> futurism.  It would be interesting to be convinced otherwise (not your duty
> but mine).
>
> Thanks for sending along the article.
>
> Ryan
>
>



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