Transcending State & Corporations: Introduction to Peer-to-Peer and the Commons

By popular demand, Michel Bauwens will repeat his 10 Dec morning talk at Occupy London's Tent City University, by offering this extended, 2-hr teach-in about the same subject at Occupy London's Bank of Ideas, in the afternoon.

This is the first programme in a new series of events hosted by the School of Commoning in the context of Occupy London's educational programmes. It will be facilitated by Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and a partner of the Commons Strategies Group that seeks to seed conversations around the new commons paradigm. He also serves in the Advisors Circle of the School of Commoning.

Key ideas:

To succeed in radical social change, we need three things: 1. a genuine mass movement, 2. concrete alternatives that can change our lives, and 3. the ability to be able to stop bad policies, and propose new ones

1. As the first native movement and great hope of the digital age, Occupy has grown into mass movement in a relatively short time.

2. Regarding the concrete alternatives that can change our lives and allow us to live our values right now, that is what commons-based peer production provides – a new way of producing value.

3. To stop bad policies that don’t work and propose good ones that does, we need true democratic processes.

The peer-to-peer vision relies upon the three major sectors of society – the state, market and civil society – but with different roles and in a revitalized equilibrium. At the core of the new society is civic society, with as its main institution, the commons, which uses peer production to generate common value outside of the market logic.

These commons consist of both the natural heritage of mankind (oceans, the atmosphere, land, etc.), and commons that are created through collective societal innovation, many of which can be freely shared because of their immaterial nature (shared knowledge, software and design, culture and science).

In the vision of a commons-based society, the market is subsumed under the dominant logic of the commons... This vision does not preclude an evolution of society through which the market may become entirely marginal.

In this vision the public sector is neither a corporate welfare state at the service of a financial elite, nor a welfare state that has a paternalistic relation to civil society, but a Partner State, which serves civil society. This vision anticipates an evolution of society through which the state becomes marginal and sovereignty returns to the people.

In this teach-in, we will also explore how to get from here to there. Bring your curiosity and open mind.