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Make Capitalism History
This open access book presents an alternative to capitalism and state socialism through the modelling of a post-market and post-state utopia based on an upscaling of the commons, feminist political economy and democratic and council-based planning approaches. It discusses the left’s need to explore non-capitalist modes of production, the inability of green or socialist market economies to produce real social and ecological change, and the need to look beyond traditional ideas of reform and revolution. The book discusses how a socio-economic organisation beyond money, wage labour, patriarchal division of work and centralised state planning may look like. It develops an approach to societal transformation based on seed forms of commons practices and social movements. This book will be relevant to activists, students and researchers interested in fundamental social change, political economy and feminist and Marxist economics. This is an open access book.
Society After Money
Project Society After Money is an interdisciplinary project between commons theory, evolutionary political economy, media studies and sociology, that enter into a dialogue with one another in order to look at their specific theories and criticisms of money. Conceived as the beginning of a necessary interdisciplinary dialogue, the possibilities of post-monetary forms of organization and production are taken into account and examined. On one hand there is a lot of talk about 'digital revolution', 'mediatized society', 'networks', 'Industry 4.0'. On the other hand the present is described in terms of crisis: 'financial crisis', 'economic crisis', 'planetary boundaries'. At once there is the des...
The Wealth of the Commons
We are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born. Surrounded by centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, people around the world are searching for alternatives. The Wealth of the Commons explains how millions of commoners have organized to defend their forests and fisheries, reinvent local food systems, organize productive online communities, reclaim public spaces, improve environmental stewardship and re-imagine the very meaning of "progress" and governance. In short, how they've built their commons. In 73 timely essays by a remarkable international roster of activists, academics and project leaders, this book chr...
From Capital to Commons
In this stimulating analysis, Hannes Gerhardt outlines the potentials and challenges of a technology-enabled, commons-focused transition out of capitalism. The book shows that openness and cooperation are more beneficial in today’s economies and societies than competition and profit-seeking. Driven by this conviction, Gerhardt identifies key imperatives for overcoming capitalism, from democratizing our digital, material, and financial economies to maintaining a robust, political mobilization. Using clear examples, he explores tactical openings through the lens of ‘compeerism’, a newly constructed framework that highlights the latent counter-capitalist possibilities, but also limits, of our emerging technological landscape. This is an accessible contribution to counter-capitalist discourse that is both inspiring and pragmatic for academics and activists alike.
My First Recession
My First Recession starts when the party is over. This study maps the transition of critical Internet culture from the mid-to-late 1990s Internet craze to the dotcom crash, the subsequent meltdown of global financial markets, and 9/11. In his discussion of the dotcom boom-and-bust cycle, Geert Lovink lays out the challenges faced by critical Internet culture today. In a series of case studies, Lovink meticulously describes the ambivalent attitude that artists and activists take as they veer back and forth between euphoria and skepticism. As a part of this process, Lovink examines the internal dynamics of virtual communities through an analysis of the use of moderation and "collaborative filtering" on mailing lists and weblogs. He also confronts the practical and theoretical problems that appear as artists join the growing number of new-media education programs. Delving into the unexplored gold mines of list archives and weblogs, Lovink reveals a world that is largely unknown to both the general public and the Internet visionaries.
Rule and Resistance Beyond the Nation State
Rule and resistance can no longer be understood in national contexts only. They both have transnationalised over the last decades. The scholarly discourse, however, still lags behind these developments. While International Relations only sees institutional “governance”, social movement studies only see instances of resistance. Both, however, lack the necessary vocabulary to describe the dynamic interplay between systems of rule and resistance. While we are governed by transnational structures of rule, a systematic analysis of how this operates and how it can be resisted remains to be developed. This book develops an understanding of these power relations through rich empirical case studies of different forms of rule-resistance relationships. Some resistant groups demand reforms of particular policies and institutions. Others attack institutions head-on. Yet other actors attempt to escape the rules they reject. Which forms of resistance can we expect under different kinds of rule? How can we understand transnational rule in the first place? The book gives new inspiring answers to these difficult questions.
Digital Solidarity
Felix Stalder’s extended essay, Digital Solidarity, responds to the wave of new forms of networked organisation emerging from and colliding with the global economic crisis of 2008. Across the globe, voluntary association, participatory decision-making and the sharing of resources, all widely adopted online, are being translated into new forms of social space. This movement operates in the breach between accelerating technical innovation, on the one hand, and the crises of institutions which organise, or increasingly restrain society on the other. Through an inventory of social forms – commons, assemblies, swarms and weak networks – the essay outlines how far we have already left McLuhan’s ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’ behind. In his cautiously optimistic account, Stalder reminds us that the struggles over where we will arrive are only just beginning.
The Commons
This book explores the potential creation of a broader collaborative economy through commons-based peer production (P2P) and the emergent role of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The book seeks to critically engage in the political discussion of commons-based peer production, which can be classified into three basic arguments: the liberal, the reformist and the anti-capitalist. This book categorises the liberal argument as being in favour of the coexistence of the commons with the market and the state. Reformists, on the other hand, advocate for the gradual adjustment of the state and of capitalism to the commons, while anti-capitalists situate the commons against capitalis...
