“cultural revolutions typically precede political revolutions, as the former creates the social conditions for a critical mass of the people to embrace new social values that orient them toward the possibility of another world” Kali Akuno & Ajamu Nangwaya
On the importance of education and information dissemination. And in my opinion, speculative fiction.
There’s a call to action for solidarity and mutual aid with Cooperation Jackson at the end of chapter one of Jackson Rising.
What’s exciting is that with the 3rd and 4th industrial revolutions, there’s a chance I can give that solidarity from across the globe. It could be financial, technical, informational, it could be microtasking on some problem.
It reminds me of Walkaway, where the remote network springs into action when a group needs their help. We rise up.
Great to see reuse and recycling flagged as key parts of the Jackson plan, part of a deemphasis of production/consumption. Even tool libraries get a mention! I’d like to see repair get more of an explicit mention too.
Places bypassed by capital might provide the best opportunity for alternative economies.
“the weak and relatively sparse concentration of capital in Mississippi creates a degree of “breathing room” on the margins and within the cracks of the capitalist system that a project like ours can maneuver and experiment within in the quest to build a viable anti-capitalist alternative.”
Makes me think cities like London are probably lost causes for now.
Loving the first chapter of Jackson Rising. Straight-up practical details on bootstrapping a solidarity economy, from people that are doing it, and doing it in pretty adverse conditions.
Voting closed, and the next book for the social.coop reading group will be Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi.
“Jackson Rising is a chronicle of one of the most dynamic, but under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States.”
Looking forward to learning about Cooperation Jackson.
And with that, I’ll pass the hosting baton on to @Matt_Noyes. Cheers!
President Erdogan announces that Turkish flag hoisted in the centre of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian city of Afrin.
Damn.
If you like live coding and generatively created music / visuals, 3 days of it about to start streaming live here: https://algorave.com/wearesix/
Apropos retoot:
I’ve seen a few posts recently about FOSS burnout, where the act of maintenance becomes a heavy burden.
Like you could potentially argue that the ‘free rider’ problem (noting that I don’t like that term…) in FOSS could be people leaving poorly specified bug reports, angry comments when something doesn’t work, etc. Using up developer-time/energy, which is a subtractible resource, even if the end product isn’t.
So there would be a need for governance rules to mitigate that.
HELL™ by Darren Cullen.
https://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/businesshell
“All the business people are sent to Hell but they end up taking the place over and running it for profit, industrialising the torture process and making everything much more efficient and terrible.”
Brett sits down with Dr. Mark Bray to discuss the political philosophy, history, and future of Anarchism. Topics include: Bakunin and Marx, the first international, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinism, listener questions, the anarchist view of the State, Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, and much more!
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.
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action.
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.
Josh Davis(social.coop)Let us not forget our working class revolutionaries: http://www.geo.coop/story/hidden-history-solidarity-economy-visions https://social.coop/media/VLjogxTYY3Vfn6j5tzI #SolidarityEconomy #Coops #BlackHistoryMonth
without close attention to how to construct new structures, aspiration is unlikely to be translated into effective workable systems.
I do like how Ostrom’s views could be used as a different tack to organising in socialism. Locally focused but also recognises need for institutional superstructures. However, these made through rules and constitutions of diverse groups, not ideology and party apparatus.
Dunno if it’s reformist or revolutionary tho yet. Probs reformist.
#Ostrom #readinggroup
In politics we pick a side; in contrast, for Ostrom the main emphasis was to participate in creating rules and, in effect, constitutions. — Derek Wall
If I’m understanding Ostrom’s views so far, I’d say the emphasis there is on ‘participate in’, such that rule making is at a local level. Rules and constitutions will vary from region to region (and over time too presumably.)
Questions raised as to why there is a prevailing whiteness in the workers co-ops movement. One suggestion was that those from black and minority ethnic groups are hesitant to enter a suspiciously white space. A bit of a Catch 22 that needs concerted effort to be overcome. Important to do so though especially given the structural potential for coops to empower.
Interesting point made as to the demonization made of the white working class as being the racists in society, when in fact there is much subtle and potentially more damaging racism perpetrated by the white middle class.
Really interesting talks at the Stir to Action event tonight on racial justice and the new economy. Moving to a new socio-economic paradigm won’t automatically remove systemic racial biases. We should address them head on to avoid repeating them in our new structures.
D Dino(Toot.Cat)marshalling resources means making sure your friend hosting that nextcloud instance can eat all month. capital marshals resources with the poverty gun: obey or be fired, if you can get in the door at all. volunteer infrastructure is an alternative but we’ve still got rent and that remains an issue. i think we can subvert capital using software but that’s not the fix either. organizations matter here. logistics matters here. i dream of social infrastructure.
Joshovi(niu.moe)https://niu.moe/media/NHbR9Xd0t8U_A3FK49w
@blankideogram @jbond I think it's useful to support people like Corbyn when he's calling for re-nationalization of the railways, but I think nationalization isn't enough. It's just a first step. There needs to be a commons model where people have a real stake in the services which they're running. Something like running them as coops. State capitalism has the same kinds of failure modes as private ownership by corporations. We need to make systems public in a way where they can't easily be enclosed and sold off later on. A bit like the fediverse. People could sell off instances, but it would be hard for anyone to sell off the fediverse as a whole because it's "owned" by so many different people.
