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Scoop.it!
Can the State the re-imagined for a commons-centric world – and, can Commoners come up with creative action initiatives to advance a this vision. 
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Scoop.it!
At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable
Scoop.it!
From
bollier
We have so internalized the logic of neoliberal economics and modernity, even those of us who would like to think otherwise, that we don’t really appreciate how deeply our minds have been colonized. It is easy to see homo economicus as silly. Certainly we are not selfish, utility-maximizing rationalists, not us! And yet, the proper role of our emotions and affect in imagining a new order remains a murky topic.
Scoop.it!
The government shutdown is teaching us a lot about the “public sector” — mainly that it doesn’t exist.
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Scoop.it!
The Market/State is in crisis and representative democracy seems to be broken. Many argue, that both problems need to be adressed for the sake of social coherence and security. We think, that adressing them properly implies rethinking the core ideas state power and representative democracy are based upon. After all, there is nothing in the current institutional arrangment or in the system of representation through political parties defending the commons: nor as a special type of institutions, nor as a world-view, nor as a plethora of social practices.
Scoop.it!
1) People are fighting privatization by refusing to recognise the state as the owner of public services and resources, instead claiming that they belong to the people. 2) Where public services are gone, people are organising themselves, locally and democratically, to provide the services they need. This included the provision of healthcare in the Greek example and the provision of housing in the Spanish example, but there are millions of others. 3) But there are also forms which kind of bring together both elements of the first two. These are struggles which both defend or demand the public provision of services while at the same time vesting ownership of services in the people and getting people involved in the democratic control of services.
Scoop.it!
This essay argues that, in the face of the deep pathologies of neoliberal capitalism, the commons paradigm can help us imagine and implement a transition to new decentralized systems of provisioning and democratic governance. The commons consists of a wide variety of self-organized social practices that enable communities to manage resources for collective benefit in sustainable ways. A robust transnational movement of commoners now consists of such diverse commons as seed-sharing cooperatives; communities of open source software programmers; localities that use alternative currencies to invigorate their economies; subsistence commons based on forests, fisheries, arable land, and wild game; and local food initiatives such as community-supported agriculture, Slow Food, and permaculture. As a system of provisioning and governance, commons give participating members a significant degree of sovereignty and control over important elements of their everyday lives. They also help people reconnect to nature and to each other, set limits on resource exploitation, and internalize the “negative externalities” so often associated with market behavior. These more equitable, ecologically responsible, and decentralized ways of meeting basic needs represent a promising new paradigm for escaping the pathologies of the Market/State order and constructing an ecologically sustainable alternative. - See more at: http://greattransition.org/document/the-commons-as-a-template-for-transformation#sthash.nfQ8Jusp.ovW1OUIu.dpuf
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