[p2p-research] [Fwd: Re: Concerning wikiworld and its use of socialist terminology]

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Tere,

Thank you so much for this letter, I found it very moving and hope Ryan and
Daniel will get to read it to understand the european perspective.

As for me, I see the same reality as you, in other words, I acknowledge all
we owe to the labour and socialist movement in Europe. Simply put, without
it, I would, coming from a originally poor working class familty, never had
a chance to study and develop myself.

But I still take different conclusions, in part for reasons of
communication.

Yes, peer to peer, the free association of individuals without coercion, is
what the movement was about as an ideal.

But, its historical evolution produced crimes, was so centered around
statism, and has such  a long history of splits and acrimony, that it is a
difficult heritage.

Also today, I do not feel that the remaining movements in that tradition,
are sufficiently adaptive to take in the new realities, though one of my
aims is to bridge that gap. I find that this is true both for the radical
factions, and for say social-democracy, which is now basically carrying out
the neoliberal dictates of the financial predators and the  market state.

But I think that, given the current mindset of young people, and their
embeddedness in p2p infrastructures and life practices, that this new
language and its concepts offers the best way to have a dialogue and obtain
a maturation to conscious construction of alternatives and political
maturation and expression of these life goals. From that new position and
the new movements which I think are born of the new lifeworld, say, the free
culture movement and its different expressions, a fruitful dialogue can then
be done with those that still see themselves as part of that older tradition
of socialism. In this way, the new identity and subjectivities, and the
older one with its long history, can find each other.

My expectation is that in the future, different political sensibilities will
combine traditional ways of thinking, say socialism, with the new ways, say
p2p and commonism, and that around this new orientation, new alignments may
occur, a powerful new social movement may be born, and that commonism will
be the fight of the 21st century, in effect carrying out the higher ideals
of what once was the socialist idea and movement, but adapted to our times.

Michel

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Tere Vadén <tere.vaden at uta.fi> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> seems like this did not go through to the list...
>
> T:T
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Concerning wikiworld and its use of socialist
> terminology
> Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 12:32:12 +0300
> From: Tere Vadén <tere.vaden at uta.fi>
> To: p2p research network <p2presearch at listcultures.org>,  Juha Olavi
> Suoranta <juha.suoranta at gmail.com>
>
> Hi all,
>
> well, there are several things here.
>
> First of all, I want to say that the discussions and reservations on the
> words "socialist" and "communist" presented on this list and by
> participants elsewhere have not gone unnoticed by Juha and myself.
> Indeed, the historical connotations do give me pause, in two ways: i)
> the atrocities perpetrated by people calling themselves communists and
> ii) the tendencies toward fixation on persons (Marx etc.) and the
> theories presented by them. (I like David Graeber's point that the
> difference between socialists and anarchists is evident already in the
> fact that the factions of the former are identified by proper names
> (Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, etc.) while the latter are identified
> by ideas (syndicalists, libertarians, communalists, etc.)). These
> discussions have made me more reflective and careful in using those
> terms; I'm thankful to you all for that.
>
> However, I still do use those terms, and we decided to keep them in
> Wikiworld. Why?
>
> There is the general point that I think that we should not give language
> and words up too easily. "Anarchism" is maybe even more a case in point
> than communism. To the man in the street "anarchism" means all that is
> wrong, and this is the result of a conscious and purposeful campaign of
> meaning-change by the enemies of anarchism (including factions of
> communists, to be sure). I'm not sure we should just abandon a word that
> is willfully poisoned; that would keep us running forever. Having said
> that I have nothing in principle against new words and names, just as
> long as they are good ones. :)
>
> So are the words "socialism" and "communism" worth trying to save? Well,
> the wager here is that they are. First, communism is a very "obvious"
> idea to which no Marx or no China has a copyright. Think about certain
> primitive societies: there is no party or coercion there, but certainly
> communism. Second, there is an inspiring new wave of thinking about
> communism in the post-communist era; I'm thinking of people like Zizek
> and Graeber ("communism is what you do naturally when you co-operate in
> a family, a village, etc."), for instance, and especially the
> indianismo-movements in Latin America that combine socialism with
> anti-colonialism. Third, and most importantly, I'm personally familiar
> with a form of communist/socialist politics that was not blind towards
> Stalinism, that was not violent, not subservient to "Marxism", and that
> did produce real, tangible results. My grandfather was a part of a
> communist generation after the civil war in Finland that started their
> political activity underground. With the industrialization of the
> country, especially after WWII, the communists and socialist were very
> popular in elections; my grandfather was a representative in the
> municipal council for decades. The main goals for him there were free
> education and universal health care; both of which were achieved. There
> was a very direct link between his socialism and the school next door;
> the "reds" wanted it, the reds built it and made sure everyone gets in.
> The reds had their own co-op shops, banks, sport stadions, etc., indeed
> a relatively autonomous and self-reliant economic sphere that is even
> hard to imagine now. This is the "concrete utopia" I have in mind: the
> little money the reds had never entered the stock exchange, they
> collectively owned food production and processing chains that also made
> possible improving on working conditions, they had their own independent
> non-Hollywood culture. This was, to be sure, to some extent parasitic on
> the growth of the capitalist system (fossil fuels), but I see no
> in-principle reason why it could not have been made more independent,
> had they been aware of the energy-environment facts. (There was, indeed,
> a local municipally owned water-powered electricity station, too, that
> was torn down as "ineffective" later). (I would have to admit, however,
> that violence – the threat of violence – did probably have its role. The
> fact of the civil war and the proximity of the Soviet Union forced the
> hand of the right in granting major concessions to the left.) At the
> same time, he was very critical and non-naive about the Soviet Union,
> having visited it several times and knowing already from the 30's about
> what happened to Finnish communists that moved there (they were killed).
> To sum up: this was not Don Quixote, this was not ideological blindness,
> but a very nitty-gritty and down-to-earth day-to-day grind that did
> eventually over the decades produce concrete results, most of which
> have, alas, been lost. I just don't have the stomach to say that he was
> wrong in calling it "socialism" or "communism". ("Welfare-statism" would
> be one possible alternative, but that has its problems too, since while
> welfare was an important goal and the state an important tool, equality,
> locality and internationalism would override both welfare and statism in
> his thinking and action.)
>
> Maybe the conclusion, then, is that when we want to envision, on one
> hand, a world of education that for its freedom needs also the
> collective/common ownership of the physical infrastructure, and, on the
> other hand, want to see this model take root in physical production as
> well, it would actually be dishonest to call it something else than
> socialist or communist. We know more, we have better tools, so it will
> not be the same; if we can come up with a better name, I'm in. But at
> the same time, there already exists a significant body of thought and
> praxis on these things that also helps to situate current developments
> in context, so why invent everything from the ground? (This point is not
> only academic: in my day job in the university I talk about p2p and open
> hardware and so on, which might be tactically right, but gives me some
> trouble with my conscience, because I know that it is "communism with a
> twist" I'm talking about and I suspect the students can see that, too.
> So why not say it?)
>
> One last point: I suspect that with peak oil and the financial/debt
> crisis, certainly the right and possibly the left will in the
> foreseeable future turn more and more authoritarian. So the decisive
> political divide will more be on the authoritarian - anti-authoritarian
> axis than on the right-left axis.
>
> Best,
>
> T:T
>
>
>
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