Category: Uncategorized
Really good interview with Mark Bray covering some history of anarchism, discussion of different tendencies, where it overlaps and differs from Marxism and other revolutionary socialist approaches. Current approaches to organising.
Really interesting, I had not heard of the theory of collective action, another debunkable so-called ‘tragedy’ of the commons.
“Ostrom noted that Olson’s model of collective action[…] is another model which predicts that the commons will be ruined. Olson (1965) examined political and social movements and was critical of the idea that support for a particular ideology or set of policy demands was sufficient to persuade individuals to become politically active in a group.”
“Often it is asserted that human nature shows we are intrinsically competitive by those on the right, or intrinsically cooperative by those on the left. Ostrom’s approach was to reject such broad generalisations and her anti-essentialism made her suspicious of unchanging foundations of human behaviour.” — Derek Wall, #Ostrom‘s Rules for Radicals
Important point. To hope that everyone would be naturally predisposed to cooperation is naive.
List of social centres in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_centres_in_the_United_Kingdom
Is this the best place to go for an up-to-date list?
Back in the day at university I went to The Common Place a few times. https://theculturevulture.co.uk/conversations/speakerscorner/the-common-place-is-closing/
Labour’s report on Alternative Models of Ownership. Not yet read it, but it’s exciting that a major political party is giving such thought to cooperative and municipal models of ownership.
To support the expansion of cooperatives in the UK it is necessary to improve their access to finance, and examples from Italy and Spain point in the direction necessary to achieve this. Cooperatives can further be supported by national legislation and a re-worked government procurement policy.
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Alternative-Models-of-Ownership.pdf
How can we support the transition to a solar/renewable energy infrastructure?
My energy provider (in the UK) is currently one which guarantees buy back of renewables for all energy used. I don’t have enough money to invest in renewable companies. What else should I do? Petition? Protest? Get involved with local community? What else?
#solar #energy
The first free public library [in the UK] was opened in Campfield, Manchester in 1852. http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/public-libraries
Had an idea for a cooperatively-run indieweb hosting platform. We would help set up and / or host WordPress-based indieweb sites. Preconfigured to interact with both the silos and the fediverse. For mainly Gen 3/Gen 4 of indieweb, to coincide (/precipitate) the (surely) upcoming exodus from sites like Facebook.
Thoughts?
I think the article could explain better what it is specifically that both the left the far-right are doing with cryptocurrency. And in what way the far-right is one step ahead.