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Jukka Peltokoski

De Meent | The Dutch Commons Assembly | P2P Foundation - 0 views

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    Hyvä kommonerin määritelmä, mutta aika sanakeskeinen. Jos yhteinen on tekemistä, niin pitäisi olla yhteistekemistä. Hyvä toki että päätöksenteko otetaan heti tavoitteeksi.
Jukka Peltokoski

Europe's Left after Brexit | Yanis Varoufakis - 0 views

  • This article
  • addresses left-wing critics of DiEM25 claiming that DiEM25 is pursuing the wrong objective (to democratise the EU) by means of a faulty strategy (focusing at the European rather than at the national level).
  • The question is not whether the Left must clash with the EU’s establishment and current practices. The question is in what context, and within which overarching political narrative, this confrontation should take place. Three are the options on offer.
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  • Option 1: Euro-reformism
  • One (fast receding) option is the standard variety of euro-reformism, practised typically by social democrats who argue for ‘more democracy’,
  • dynamic analyses
  • The EU’s institutions are incapable of being reformed through the standard process of inter-governmental deliberations and gradual treaty changes.
  • Option 2: Lexit
  • This (Lexit) option raises concerns regarding its realism and probity. Is its agenda feasible? In other words, is it a realistic prospect that, by (in Kouvelakis’ words) calling for referenda to leave the EU, the Left can block “the forces of the xenophobic and nationalist Right from winning hegemony and diverting the popular revolt”? And, is such a campaign consistent with the Left’s fundamental principles?
  • the EU was constructed intentionally as a democracy-free zone designed to keep the demos out of decision-making
  • Given that the EU has established free movement, Lexit involves acquiescence to (if not actual support for) its ending and for the re-establishment of national border controls
  • the Left should demand common minimum wages in exchange for its support for the Single Market
  • xenophobic Right
  • do they truly believe that the Left will win the discursive and policy war against the fossil fuel industry by supporting the re-nationalisation of environmental policy?
  • Option 3: DiEM25’s proposal for disobedience
  • Instead, DiEM25 proposes a pan-European movement of civil and governmental disobedience with which to bring on a surge of democratic opposition to the way European elites do business at the local, national and EU levels.
  • national parliaments and governments have power
  • a progressive national government can only use this power if it is prepared for a rupture with the EU troika.
  • a clash with the EU establishment is inescapable.
  • wilfully disobeying the unenforceable EU ‘rules’ at the municipal, regional and national levels while making no move whatsoever to leave the EU.
  • Undoubtedly, the EU institutions will threaten us
  • Consider the profound difference between the following two situations: The EU establishment threatening progressive Europeanist governments with ‘exit’ when they refuse to obey its authoritarian incompetence, and Progressive national parties or governments campaigning alongside the xenophobic Right for ‘exit’.
  • It is the difference between: (A) Clashing against the EU establishment in a manner that preserves the spirit of internationalism, demands pan-European action, and sets us fully apart from the xenophobic Right, and (B) Walking hand-in-hand with nationalisms that will, inescapably, reinforce the xenophobic Right while allowing the EU to portray the Left as populists insufficiently distinguishable from Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen etc.
  • The Left’s traditional internationalism is a key ingredient of DiEM25, along with other constituent democratic traditions from a variety of political projects (including progressive liberalism, feminist and ecological movements, the ‘pirate’ parties etc.).
  • DiEM25 proposes a rebellion to deliver authentic democracy at the levels of local government, national governments and the EU.
  • This leftwing objection to DiEM25’s call for a pan-European movement is interesting and puzzling. In effect, it argues that democracy is impossible on a supranational scale because a demos must be characterised by national and cultural homogeneity.
  • The Left, lest we forget, traditionally opposed the bourgeois belief in a one-to-one relationship between a nation and a sovereign parliament. The Left counter-argued that identity is something we create through political struggle (class struggle, the struggle against patriarchy, the struggle for smashing gender and sexual stereotypes, emancipation from Empire etc.).
  • in order to create the European demos that will bring about Europe’s democracy
  • Only through this pan-European network of rebel cities, rebel prefectures and rebel governments can a progressive movement become hegemonic in Italy, in Greece, in England, indeed anywhere.
  • The question for Europe’s Left, for progressive liberals, Greens etc. is, now, whether this struggle, this project, should take the form of a campaign to leave the EU (e.g. Lexit) or, as DiEM25 suggests, of a campaign of civil, civic and governmental disobedience within but in confrontation with the EU
  • to those who berate DiEM25 and its call for a pan-European democratic movement as utopian, our answer is that a transnational, pan-European democracy remains a legitimate, realistic long-term goal, one that is in concert with the Left’s time honoured internationalism. But this objective must be accompanied by pragmatism and a precise plan for immediate action:
  • Oppose any talk of ‘more Europe’ now
  • Present Europeans with a blueprint (a comprehensive set of policies and actions) of how we plan to re-deploy Europe’s existing institutions
  • ensure that the same blueprint makes provisions for keeping internationalism alive in the event that the EU establishment’s incompetent authoritarianism causes the EU’s disintegration
  • “The EU will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!”
  • We cannot predict which of the two (democratisation or disintegration) will occur. So, we struggle for the former while preparing for the latter.
  • DiEM25’s Progressive Agenda for Europe will be pragmatic, radical and comprehensive. It will comprise policies that can be implemented immediately to stabilise Europe’s social economy, while:
  • affording more sovereignty to city councils, prefectures and national parliaments, proposing institutional interventions and designs that will reduce the human cost in case the euro collapses and the EU fragments, and setting up a democratic Constitution Assembly process that enables Europeans to generate a European identity with which to bolster their reinvigorated national cultures, parliaments and local authorities.
  • Conclusion:
  • The EU is at an advanced stage of disintegration. There are two prospects. The EU is not past the point of no return (yet) and can, still, be democratised, stabilised, rationalised and humanised The EU is beyond the point of no return and incapable of being democratised. Therefore, its disintegration is certain, as is the clear and present danger of Europe’s descent into a postmodern version of the deflationary 1930s
  • So, what should progressives do?
  • Campaign vigorously along internationalist, cross-border, lines all over Europe for a democratic Union – even if we do not believe that the EU can, or ought to, survive in its current form Expose the EU Establishment’s authoritarian incompetence Coordinate civil, civic and governmental disobedience across Europe Illustrate through DiEM25’s own transnational structure how a pan-European democracy can work at all levels and in all jurisdictions Propose a comprehensive Progressive Agenda for Europe which includes sensible, modest, convincing proposals for ‘fixing’ the EU (the euro even) and for managing progressively the EU’s and the euro’s disintegration if and when the Establishment brings it on.
Jukka Peltokoski

The Tragedy of the Anticommons | The Wealth of the Commons - 0 views

  • Let’s start with something familiar: a commons.
  • commons
  • commons
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  • wasteful overuse is a tragedy of the unmanaged commons
  • creating private property
  • If cooperation fails, nobody can use the resource.
  • Each one can block the others’ use
  • a hidden tragedy of the anti­commons.
  • a brief overview of the anticommons lexicon
  • three basic types: private, commons, and state property
  • private property
  • private property is about an individual decision maker who directs resource use.
  • Commons property refers to shared resources, resources for which there is no single decision maker.
  • open access
  • open access
  • group access
  • State propert
  • process that is, in principle, responsive to the needs of the public
  • Privatizing a commons may cure the tragedy of wasteful overuse, but it may inadvertently spark the opposite.
  • too many people can block each other from creating or using a valuable resource. Rightly understood, the opposite of overuse in a commons is underuse in an anticommons.
  • clear rights and ordinary markets are not enough
  • Wasteful underuse can arise when ownership rights and regulatory controls are too fragmented.
  • The anticommons parallel to open access is full exclusion in which an unlimited number of people may block each other.
  • With full exclusion, states must expropriate fragmented rights or create hybrid property regimes so people can bundle their ownership
  • differs from open access: an anticommons is often invisible
  • group exclusion in which a limited number of owners can block each other. For both group access and group exclusion, the full array of market-based, cooperative, and regulatory solutions is available.
  • For group exclusion resources, the regulatory focus should be support for markets to assemble ownership and removal of roadblocks to cooperation.
  • Much of the modern economy – corporations, partnerships, trusts, condominiums, even marriages – can be understood as legally structured group property forms for resolving access and exclusion dilemmas
  • drug patents
  • “if commons leads to ‘tragedy,’ anticommons may well lead to ‘disaster’”
  • underuse caused by multiple owners is unfamiliar
  • we need to name the phenomenon: the tragedy of the anticommons should join our lexicon.
  • Heller, M. 1998. “The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets.” Harvard Law Review. 111:621.
Jukka Peltokoski

Economic Democracy and the Billion-Dollar Co-op | P2P Foundation - 0 views

  • Candidate Donald Trump made a campaign stop in February 2016 hosted by South Carolina’s Broad River Electric Cooperative.
  • By the onset of the Great Depression, few people in the rural United States had electricity at home—about 10 percent. The power companies that had lit up the cities simply didn’t see enough profit in serving far-flung farmers. But gradually some of those farmers started forming electric cooperatives—utility companies owned and governed by their customers—and strung up their own lines.
  • We typically think of our democratic institutions as having to do with politicians and governments. But there are democratic businesses, too—not just these electric co-ops, but also hulking credit unions, mutual-insurance companies, and ubiquitous cooperative brands from Land O’Lakes to the Associated Press. Their democracy is fragile. When it’s not exercised or noticed, these creatures act on their own volition.
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  • Local co-ops band together to form larger co-ops of co-ops—power suppliers that run power plants, cooperatively owned mining operations, and democratic banks that finance new projects.
  • It’s also a neglected democracy
  • by member-owners of the co-ops
  • and by a society that forgets what cooperative economic development have achieved.
  • Electric cooperatives are conservative institutions, carrying out the business of reliability while balancing their members’ interests with formidable inertia. But they’re also poised to lead a radical shift to a more renewable distributed-energy grid. They can be fiefdoms for long-entrenched establishments, but they’re also bastions of bottom-up, local self-governance.
  • depends not just on the whims of investors or on the promises of presidents, but on the readiness of the people who use it to organize.
  • We Own It, for instance, is a new network started by young but seasoned cooperators determined to support organizing among co-op members
  • “There are so many things that point to a structural change in the electrical industry.” He compared the change to what cellular did to telephones.
  • Co-ops not locked into G&T contracts have been especially ambitious in switching to renewables.
  • electric co-ops still lag behind the national average in their use of renewables. The local co-ops are bound to their decades-long G&T contracts, and the G&Ts say they can’t walk away from their past investments in coal anytime soon.
  • co-op staffs know as well as anyone that their democracy is in some respects nominal—an opportunity, but by no means a guarantee.
  • According to Derrick Johnson, the president of One Voice and the state NAACP, “Our ultimate goal is to help them understand how to develop a strategy to maximize members’ participation.” Then, he hopes, “they can begin to think about renewable energy differently.”
  • Without member pressure, for instance, managers often have an incentive to sell more power rather than helping members reduce their consumption, their costs, and their carbon footprints.
  • In particular, he pointed out the billions of dollars in “capital credits” that co-ops collectively hold—excess revenues technically owned by members, but that often go unclaimed, serving as a pool of interest-free financing.
  • Heneghan believes that co-ops are uniquely positioned to benefit. Their lean, local, customer-centered kind of business has already made them pioneers in easy, low-risk financing for energy-efficiency improvements and renewables.
  • By way of explanation, a staff member repeated what I’ve been told by the leaders of other big co-ops: Low turnout means that members are satisfied.
  • “If the members are not involved in any significant way, the directors become very insular, and they can basically do with the co-op as they please.”
  • As the Trump administration assembles its promised trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, it seems unlikely to unleash a fresh spree of cooperative rural development.
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