Funding the Cooperative City focuses on the post-welfare transition of today’s European societies: with austerity measures and the financialisation of real estate stocks and urban services, the gradual withdrawal of the state and municipal administrations from providing certain facilities and maintaining certain spaces have prompted citizen initiatives and professional groups to organise their own services and venues.
Book of the Day: Funding an Economy of Civic Spaces in the Cooperative City through Com... - 0 views
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The self-organisation of new spaces of work, culture and social welfare was made possible by various socio-economic circumstances: unemployment, solidarity networks, changing real estate prices and ownership patters created opportunities for stepping out of the regular dynamisms of real estate development.
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cooperative ownership
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The Boom of Commons-Based Peer Production - keimform.de - 0 views
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In 1991, an undergraduate Finnish computer science student, Linus Torvalds, had a surprising idea: he began to write a new operating system on his PC.
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He announced his work on the Internet and asked for feedback about features that people would like to see. Some weeks later, he put the software online.
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Only two years later, more than 100 people were helping develop the software now called Linux (a wordplay on “Linus” and “Unix”). Richard Stallman’s GNU Project was another initiative that had already developed a number of useful system components. The combination of the GNU tools with the Linux kernel resulted in an operating system that was both useful and free.
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Peer to peer production as the alternative to capitalism: A new communist hor... - 0 views
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This article argues that a section of knowledge workers have already created a new mode of production termed Peer to Peer Production (P2P) which is a viable alternative to capitalism. Although still in its emerging phase and dominated by capitalism, P2P clearly displays the main contours of an egalitarian society.
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This mode of production is very similar to what Marx (1978 a, 1978b) described as advanced communism.
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Commons have existed since the inception of humanity in various forms and among various civilizations (Marx, 1965; Polanyi, 1992; Ostrom, 1990). But all of them, except commons of knowledge, have always been territorialized, belonging to particular communities, tribes, or states. Hence, as a rule, outsiders were excluded. The GPL created a globally de-territorialized, almost all-inclusive commons. It only excluded those users who would refuse to release their own products under the GPL license
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Exploring the commons by Marco Berlinguer | OpenDemocracy | Social Network Unionism - 0 views
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Today’s rediscovery of the notion of the commons stems directly from the need to regulate and to explore how to enable the collaborative action of a multiplicity of protagonists who are autonomous
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Transform! started work in 2004 on the project ‘Networked Politics’, through which we explored
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new organisational forms of collective action and the implications of an economy increasingly based on information, knowledge and communication.
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Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Moveme... - 1 views
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The contemporary U.S. worker cooperative movement is somewhat ambiguous about its relationship to capitalism.
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While empathizing with those who feel a sense of "inevitability" in the face of today's powerful capitalist economy (and disagreeing with those who see it as generally acceptable), I hold firmly to the perspective that a more just and democratic economy is both necessary and possible.
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Operating as isolated businesses or even as networks of businesses, worker cooperatives have barely a prayer (contrary to what some cooperative activists suggest) of growing to "eclipse" and replace capitalist enterprise simply through successful growth and competition.
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Spain's Crisis is Europe's Opportunity by Yanis Varoufakis - Project Syndicate - 0 views
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The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty, one that strengthens cities and regions, dissolves national particularism, and upholds democratic norms.
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Spanish state may be just what the doctor ordered. A constitutional crisis in a major European Union member state creates a golden opportunity to reconfigure the democratic governance of regional, national, and European institutions, thereby delivering a defensible, and thus sustainable, EU
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Barcelona, Catalonia’s exquisite capital, is a rich city running a budget surplus. Yet many of its citizens recently faced eviction by Spanish banks that had been bailed out by their taxes. The result was the formation of a civic movement that in June 2015 succeeded in electing Ada Colau as Barcelona’s mayor.
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Worker-Owned Cooperatives: Direct Democracy in Action - 3 views
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Flashpoints—those unexpected events that movements gather around, when everything is accelerated, exciting, and energizing—fizzle.
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The cooperative movement is experiencing a string of these moments now, and is burgeoning with renewed activity. I see this firsthand as a co-owner of the Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), a worker-owned cooperative
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It’s our philosophy that cooperatives enable direct democracy and local control over the economy. As participants in the coop movement, we help to turn flashpoints into lasting social change.
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