Peer2Politics

The still raging financial crisis of 2007–2008 has enabled the emergence of several alternative practices concerning the production, circulation and use of money. This essay explores the political economy of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, we examine the context in which this digital currency is emerging as well as its nature, dynamics, advantages, and disadvantages. We conclude that Bitcoin, a truly interesting experiment, exemplifies “distributed capitalism” and should be mostly seen as a technological innovation. Rather than providing pragmatic answers and solutions to the current views on the financial crisis, Bitcoin provides some useful and timely questions about the principles and bases of the dominant political economy.

Occupy’s public discussions on “diversity of tactics” have often lacked historical perspective; discussions, at least online, have tended to degenerate to “Ghandi!” “No, ANC!” Now, however, Erica Chenoweth has developed a dataset and analyzed the historical record. Below the fold are slides summarizing the results of her study of 323 non-violent and violent campaigns from 1900-2006. (There are twenty slides, so anybody with a slow connection may prefer to download a zipped file of the original PDF). Here’s one key slide:

“In sharp contrast to the alternative development discourse, which seemed to have been swept aside by the onrush of ‘globalisation’, the highest profile advocates for an alternative globalisation do not seek comprehensive social change or transformation, but rather a reform of existing features of the neoliberal system, and can thus be considered ‘reform liberals’. For Scholte reformism seeks modest change which shifts the emphasis from economic development to socially oriented public policies through sub-state, state and supra-state mechanisms (Scholte, 2000, pp. 284-285).

In addition to our efforts in the P2P Lab and to our collaborators and partners (for example the DLN network or the Athens-basedhackerspace), the  TEPSIE report (see the full citation and more info about it at the end) contains some more initiatives with the aim to build alternatives for the Greek society: