[p2p-research] newsweek on The Creativity Crisis

[Michel Bauwens]

HI Patrick,

I think we can recognize three basic ways of doing this,

1) through the 'public', i.e. the collective field representing all of us,
this does not necessarily mean through the state nor through bureaucratic
mechanisms, but can also happen under democratic control and transparency

2) through enterpreneurial initiative, again, this does not necessarily mean
through monopolistic businesses that privatize their gains and socialize our
losses

3) through civil society, which no longer means just through NGO's and civil
assocations but also through commons oriented peer production

I personally think that pluralism is vital and that we need a balance
between those three realms,

so what needs to be done is:

1)  strengthen the possibilities for the commons approach in civil society

2) reform state and corporate forms to make them more fully transparent,
accountable and servants of the public benefit

3) find an appropriate form of metagovernance so that the 3 realms can
cooperate

Until 1973 we had a welfare state based on a social compromise to share
productivity gains with the workers by giving them a larger share of the
social product that they produce; after 1973 we have had a corporate welfare
state, which channels money from working people to private monopolies

I think we are now groping for  a partner state model, which first will be a
new social compromise within a still dominant capitalist order, but can
become a new transitional state form no longer beholden to private interests
...  The first phase is based on first, multiple small steps that can be
achieved here and there, then a deep reform based on more massive political
and social mobilizations, and finally a radical break with the state form
which enforces the expropriation of producers, to one which recogonizes that
the value producers should be the owners.

In the background of all this is the strengthening of civil society and a
counter economy which does not feed the machine of infinite accumulation but
shows a practical way to achieve political, economic and social ends with
sustainability and combining peer to peer commons with all kinds of new
cooperative formats for material production,

Michel
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com>wrote:

> Ryan Lanham wrote:
> > There is a great deal of good basic science
> > that is privately funded.
> > Personally, I like that model.  States waste.
>
> This is a false dichotomy.  There are other ways to organize.
>
> Both 'private' and 'public' have their own problems that we need to
> solve as we construct at least one more way to share resources which
> can directly compete against the traditional offerings.
>
> I see as the main goal of the P2P Foundation.
>
>
> > People want the state to be their shield against
> > scrutiny outside of their "peers."
>
> People need to be able to group together for their own benefit to
> shield them from the State *and* from Capitalism - which both do some
> very wrong things.
>
> People don't want demoralizing handouts, they just want to be fully
> compensated for what they add to society without clever middle-men
> tricking them out of most of that value.
>
> We want to be peers, but cannot do it alone, so are still trying to
> discover or rediscover how to create a community that we really
> control which can provide us a way to trade skills without paying
> tribute to those who do no work.
>
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>



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