Peer2Politics

Michel Bauwens: A note on the post-capitalist strategy of the P2P Foundation How to create a Post-Capitalist strategy? As expressed in our previous posts —  where we describe the work of Kojin Karatani—  we agree that the present system is based on a trinity of capital-state-nation, and that this reflects the integration of three modes... Continue reading →

During the late Middle ages Europeans formed alliances which were based primarily not on kinship, but on some other common characteristic such as occupation

In the context of the Ecuadorian transition project towards a open commons-based knowledge society, see Floksociety.org, and to complement the prior analysis of three competing economic models in the age of peer production, I have formulated some transition proposals, on how to get from Phase 2, emerging peer production in the context of the dominance... Continue reading →

European network for alternative thinking and political dialogue

Right-wing techno-libertarianism is a last-ditch effort to capture the technologies of freedom and abundance and harness them to their own greed.

Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History is an astonishing work of synthetic historical theory: world history is the history of modes of exchange.

Perhaps the simplest lesson is that even decentralized networks need, and have, governments. Every network is a state. Every state has a government.

Karatini focuses on world history as an evolution of ‘modes of exchange’, i.e. how humans produce, but most of all, ‘exchange’ value. Like Alan Page Fiske, in ‘Structures of Social Life’, Karatini recognizes four basic ways of doing this, and these modes exist at all times and in all places. For example, while the dominance of capitalism is new, markets have existed since very early times; or, if the dominance of the state was new after the replacement of tribal systems, distribution depending on rank pre-existed its dominance. This insight is very important because it allows us to recognize that any political and economic system is not just one modality, but an integration of modalities. As Dmytri Kleiner says, ‘we live in a multi-modal world’, and ‘if the capitalists won, its because there were capitalists already’

"Digital Transitions explores the relationship between technological changes and the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which these changes occur. Digital technologies have moved into every corner of life and the classic separation between work and non-work has become obsolete. The digital economy has become indistinguishable from life in the digital age. This is a book about the merger of economy and life, about life in digital capitalism.