Stephan: Here is another spontaneous positive development. And once again it arises in response to the increasingly dysfunctional Federal government owned, and in the service of the special interest of the Corporate Virtual States.
I think this and the Eminent Domain trend are part of a larger trend: the transformation of the United States into a system of bioregions, made up of several states connected in a Federal network, but more autonomous than anything we have previously seen. It started with Gov. Schwarzenegger's climate coalition of Western states. Cascadia -- from Northern California to the Canadian border constitutes one such region. Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Eastern Texas constitutes another. Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire a third. Their cultures are as different in degree as those of France and Italy.
In the blue value regions that emphasize tolerant, life-affirming, social networks peer-to-peer production, as described in this report, is going to be a significant factor, I believe
Don't be put off by the archaic Marxist language. I didn't think anyone wrote with that tone anymore, it's such a bad tactical move, and I am not publishing this piece for that. It is the linkage process described that I call to your attention. That is an important positive trend. Many of you I know are involved in it, through things like the Thriving and Resilient Community movement, or other philanthropic or volunteer projects designed to make social wellness a priority, and better.
New words expressing new concepts usually indicate stirrings at other levels of reality. So when we read of widespread ‘peer-to-peer’ activity (sharing without central authorities) and the spread of ‘open source’ (the mutuality of creativity), or come across seemingly paradoxical concepts such as ‘produsers’ (users producing value as they use), or entirely new concepts such as ‘phyles’ (transnational networks of small companies in which the values of the commons are predominant), we should find out about the innovations that old language does not capture.
We are witnessing the emergence of a new ‘proto’ mode of production based on distributed, collaborative forms of organisation. It is developing within capitalism, rather as Marx argued the early forms of merchant and factory capitalism developed within the feudal order. In other words system change is back on the agenda but in an unexpected form, not as a socialist alternative, but as a commons-based alternative.
Capitalism in its present form is facing limits, especially resource limits, and in spite of the rapid growth of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) economies, is undergoing a process of decomposition. The question is whether the new proto-mode can generate the institutional capacity and the alliances able to […]
