As the small crowd marched to Meusa and Wheeler’s new home, for instance, people chanted, “Empty houses and houseless people — match them up!” This was a refrain that echoes the rallying cry commonly used by J.R. Fleming, chairman of Chicago’s Anti-Eviction Campaign. (His wording is to match “homeless people with peopleless houses.”)

Similarly, in Woodland, activists covered Alma Ponce’s lawn with tents — an allusion to the fall 2011 occupations that has also been used in eviction blockades in Alabama and Georgia over the last year.

With the continued onslaught of foreclosures across the United States, the question remains: How much will these movements have to scale up to make structural changes, rather than just individual changes?

“Housing is a human right, not for the banks to hold hostage,” Michelene Meusa said a few days after the action, when, at M&T Bank’s request, the Atlanta Police Department arrested her and three others for criminal trespassing. When she refused to leave, she made an explicit comparison between her civil disobedience and the actions of the civil rights movement.

The shift towards a human-rights framing of the housing movement and away from following the Occupy movement’s focus on economic unfairness — i.e., “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” — is significant. The human rights framework is often more powerful in movements led by people of color, drawing strength, as Meusa did, from the civil rights era and cutting through the class divisions that plague housing in a way that movements focused only on mortgage loan modifications cannot.

One important shift evident on the anniversary is that Occupy Homes groups have started rallying more and more behind a rights-based framework to explain why they are pursuing direct action.

Housing organizing during the Great Depression provides some instructive parallels. The economic devastation since 2008 has been quite similar to what the nation experienced throughout that period. In 1933, for example, banks foreclosed on an average of 1,000 homes every day. In 2010, the rate of displacement was comparable: The average number of foreclosures was more than 2,500 homes a day, and the population has increased two-and-a-half fold.

The scale of housing organizing during the early 1930s, however, dwarfs what we have seen so far today. Crowds of hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of people, mobilized to stop evictions in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Gary, Youngstown, Toledo and other urban centers, mostly under the direction of the Communist Party. As in much of current housing organizing, women were often on the front lines. Masses of these women filled the streets as others climbed to the roofs and poured buckets of water on the police below. Women beat back the police officers’ horses by sticking them with long hat pins or pouring marbles into the streets. If the police were successful in moving the family’s furniture out to the curb, the crowd simply broke down the door and moved the family’s belongings back inside after the police had left.

Rural communities also formed anti-foreclosure organizations, combining the fight for housing with the fight for fair wages, especially in the sharecropping South. Hundreds of thousands of farmers came together to form anti-eviction and tenants-rights groups

This movement achieved substantial legislative gains. Housing policy became a major part of the New Deal, culminating in the National Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to provide affordable loans to spur homeownership, and the Housing Act of 1937, which established public housing authorities across the country.

the establishment of public housing systemically changed the landscape and ideology around housing in the United States and was “one of the most successful federal programs in the 20th century,” according to Damaris Reyes, the executive director of the public housing advocacy group Good Old Lower East Side.

By this measure, the Occupy Homes network and aligned housing movements still have light-years to go — a reality that many organizers acknowledge. Yet the conditions have changed since 1930s, suggesting that what we need are not massive federal construction and lending programs, but rather a shift in the way housing rights are perceived and enacted in the U.S. Rather than coping with the scarcity of the 1930s, the United States now confronts vast, unprecedented wealth and gaping economic inequality — a condition that is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that there are upwards of a dozen empty and unused houses for every homeless person in the nation.

With more than enough wealth and roofs to provide safe and dignified homes for the country’s population, the challenge today is to demonstrate that this situation of desperate need coexisting with wasted excess is not one we need to accept.

it is the way food is produced and sold for profit, in a process controlled by agri-industrial giants and supermarkets – rather than food consumption or human population growth as such – that pushes at the earth’s natural limits.

food losses at one-third of what is produced, or 1.3 billion tonnes/year

In rich countries, farming practices are more efficient, transport and storage facilities are better, and much less food is lost between farm and shop. But then “modern consumer culture” takes over: supermarkets often “reject entire crops of perfectly edible fruit and vegetables at the farm” – e.g. 30% of the vegetable crop in the UK – because of its size or appearance.

30% of what is harvested from the field never actually reaches the marketplace (primarily the supermarket) due to trimming, quality selection and failure to conform to purely cosmetic criteria”

the estimated average cost to households in the UK is £480/year per household.

The report suggests that it is not food production per se that is unsustainable, but production of food for the distorted market, i.e. the commodification of food. It is “market mechanisms” that deprive poor country farmers of the means to invest in basic infrastructure and “market mechanisms” according to which supermarkets trash millions of tonnes of good food.

■ Average crop yields increased by 20% between 1985 and 2005, “substantially less than the often-cited 47% production increase for selected crop groups”; ■ Globally, only 62% of crop production by mass is for human food; 35% is for animal feed and 3% for biofuels. ■ The land devoted to raising animals – including pasture, grazing and animal feed production – is an “astonishing” three-quarters of the total, and “the amount of land (and other resources) devoted to animal-based agriculture merits critical evaluation”. ■ Most agricultural expansion is in the tropics, where “about 80% of new croplands are replacing forests”. “Slowing (and ultimately, ceasing) the expansion”, particularly in the tropics, is “an important first step” to sustainability. ■ Irrigation accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, which is “of particular concern”. ■ Fertiliser use, manure application and leguminous crops (which fix nitrogen in the soil) have “dramatically disrupted” the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.

what’s dominant is cooperation, not competition, among other things, because the market for automotive parts is not a true market, but rather a oligopsony (there are only a few buyers at the end of the chain).

Competition requires that where one wins, another loses

But are we talking about the same thing? Certainly not.

the zero sum shows up in a large part of exchanges between humans.

Cooperation among big businesses should worry us, not make us happy.

However, a certain degree of cooperation is required, at least on the part of those who are on each side

every exchange that is a zero-sum game is a bad exchange, something that shouldn’t be done because either you lose, or it’s no good at all (when both sides remain the same), or, worse still, if you win at the cost of the other in the exchange, you mine the trust of the other, and you sow an impending, inevitable, and painful betrayal. So, does it really materialize in “a large part of exchanges between humans?”

If we read the paragraph, we realize that the setting Julen is talking about is a well-defined institutional environment: labor scales and classical teaching organizations. We’re far from schools of the commons or cooperation based on the deliberation of a phyle.

The question is whether or not we think that salaried relationships will continue to be the basis of what we call a business, which organizes a good part of the co-opetition between people to reach the market.

Values take hold in different ways, according to the social structures in which we try to develop them. For example, if we put ourselves in the P2P mode of production, the issue is not whether one produces for the commons or for the market, because one will produce with and for both, creating competition and cooperation at the same time, as in the “coming capitalism,” or in every alternative model based on the dissipation of rents.

does it really make sense to propose rule changes in those environments? Is it possible to hack them? Obviously, if we didn’t think so, we wouldn’t be selling consultancy on the market, but if we thought that was enough, we wouldn’t be committed to building alternatives for ourselves and inviting others to make their own.

Because cooperation in that mold creates that whole gamut that Sennet and Julen talk about, and generally, apart from an arduous and conscious battle like ner is fighting,

debate on deeeper cultural values

send salaried work, even if only little by little, to the memory trunk from an inglorious time, and once and for all

These crises are sharpening our awareness of the existence and importance of the commons. Natural commons are necessary for our survival, while social commons ensure social cohesion, and cultural commons enable us to evolve as individuals.

A reduction in the GDP does not necessarily signal a reduction in the real wealth of a society. Recognizing this fact widens our perspective and opens doors for new types of solutions.

The commons can help us overcome the crisis, but it requires systematic advocacy.

What are the commons and why are they are significant?

Commons

include knowledge and water, seeds and software, cultural works and the atmosphere. Commons are not just „things,” however. They are living, dynamic systems of life. They form the social fabric of a free society.

Commons do not belong to anyone individually nor do they belong to no one. Different communities, from the family to global society, always create, maintain, cultivate, and redefine commons

We have to constantly revitalize our commons, because everything we produce relies upon the knowledge we inherit, the natural resources that the Earth gives us, and cooperation with our fellow citizens. The activity known as „the economy” is embedded in our social fabric.

There‘s something new afoot – a movement to reclaim the commons!

Commons are being rediscovered and defended.

Commons are newly created and built upon. Countless people are creating new things for all and meaningful social and physical spaces for themselves.

Taken together, scientists and activists, citizens and politicians are developing a robust and innovative commons sphere – everywhere.

Commons are based on communities that set their own rules and cultivate their skills and values. Based on these always-evolving, conflict-ridden processes, communities integrate themselves into the bigger picture. In a culture of commons, inclusion is more important than exclusion, cooperation more important than competition, autonomy more important than control.

Neither no man‘s land nor boundless Property

The commons is not only about the legal forms of ownership. What matters most is whether and how community-based rights to the commons are enforced and secured.

The usage rights of fellow commoners are the stop signs for individual usage rights.

Absolute and exclusive private property rights in the commons therefore cannot be allowed.

Each use must ensure that the common pool resources are not destroyed or over-consumed.

No one may be excluded who is entitled to access and use the shared resource or who depends on it for basic needs.

What is public or publicly funded must remain publicly accessible.

The commons helps us re-conceptualize the prevailing concept of property rights.

Our shared quality of life is also limited by knowledge that is excessively commercialized and made artificially scarce. In this manner, our cultural heritage becomes an inventory of lifeless commodities and advertising dominates our public spaces.

We all need commons to survive and thrive. This is a key principle, and it establishes why commoners‘ usage rights should always be given a higher priority than corporations‘ property rights. Here the state has a duty to protect the commons, a duty which it cannot abandon. However, this does not mean that the state is necessarily the best steward for the commoners‘ interests. The challenge is for the commoners themselves to develop complementary institutions and organizational forms, as well as innovative access and usage rules, to protect the commons. The commoners must create their own commons sector, beyond the realm of market and state, to serve the public good in their own distinctive manner.

For a society in which the commons may thrive

The rules and ethics of each commons arise from the needs and processes of the commoners directly involved. Whoever is directly connected to a commons must participate in the debate and implementation of its rules.

Commons are driven by a specific ethos, as well as by the desire to acquire and transfer a myriad of skills. Our society therefore needs to honor the special skills and values that enable the commons to work well. A culture of the commons publicly recognizes any initiative or project that enhances the commons, and it provides active financial and institutional support to enhance the commons sector.

This challenge requires a lot of work, but it is also a great source of personal satisfaction and enrichment.

Our society needs a great debate and a worldwide movement for the commons.

Katsauksessa päädytään johtopäätökseen, että olotilan muutos on todennäköinen välittömässä tulevaisuudessa, muutaman vuosikymmenen tai korkeintaan muutaman vuosisadan kuluttua.

Katsauksessa ei esitetä toimintaohjeita, mutta siinä tunnistetaan keskeisiksi tavoitteiksi ihmiskunnan koon ja resurssien käytön kasvun hillitseminen, nopea siirtyminen muihin kuin fossiiliseen hiilen perustuviin energialähteisiin, ravinnontuotannon tehostaminen ja tehokkaampi biodiversiteetin varannoista huolehtiminen maalla ja merissä.

The Barmbys’ use of the term to describe the process of the creation of a communist society is not a million miles away from its current usage, but it has acquired a more specific set of meanings since the early 1970s when elements of the French ‘ultra-left’ began deploying it as a way of critiquing traditional conceptions of revolution. Communism has often been conceived of by both Marxists and anarchists as a future state of society to be achieved in the distant future long after the messy business of revolution has been sorted out. For advocates of communisation on the other hand, capitalism can only be abolished by the immediate creation of different relations between people, such as the free distribution of goods and the creation of ‘communal, moneyless, profitless, Stateless, forms of life.

There is what might be termed a ‘voluntarist’ conception of communisation

It is voluntarist because there is an emphasis on people choosing to take sides and fleeing capitalist society

What I would term the ‘structuralist’ inflexion of communisation is particularly associated with the French language journal Theorie Communiste (TC). More recently its ideas have been elaborated and extended in discussions with like-minded groups including the English language Endnotes and the Swedish journal Riff Raff. Together these collectives have recently collaborated to produce ‘Sic – an international journal of communisation’ (issue number one was published in 2011). I term this approach as ‘structuralist’ because there is much more emphasis on how the possibility of communisation arises from the structural contradictions of a particular stage of capitalism.

Communisation must remain a hypothesis, but surely so must the possibility of other outcomes in the heat of crisis – including a rise in populist nationalism, racism and/or religious fundamentalism, incorporating elements of a reactionary ‘anti-capitalism’.

In response to the crisis of profitability in the 1970s, capitalism has restructured itself. The old notion of a ‘job for life’ has been scrapped. For many, access to a ‘living wage’ is sporadic and precarious.

In shifting the focus from communism as a distant future ideal state to immediate practical activity, the notion of communisation can help us to think about what could happen in the event of such a scenario.

The problem with much communisation theory though is that it often seems to assume that under pressure of events, large scale efforts at communisation are inevitable even if their success is not guaranteed.

Unfortunately the historic ultra left does not offer many useful tools for understanding fascism and similar movements. By the ‘ultra left’ I mean those currents that trace their origins to the various groups that broke with the mainstream Communist International in the 1920s, including the ‘council communists’ and ‘left communists’ in Germany, Italy and elsewhere. In the 1960s and 70s newer groups emerged that combined ideas from these currents with elements derived from the Situationist International, Socialisme ou Barbarie and others.

Communisation resulting in a classless society is only one of the possibilities on the horizon, and those who advocate it need to reflect more on some of the other potential outcomes and how to avoid them.

In 1960 the French Bordigist journal Programme Communiste published the notorious article ‘Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi’ which suggested that the mass murder of Jews was not the result of anti-Semitism but simply a moment in the eradication of the petit-bourgeoisie as a result of the ‘irresistible advance of the concentration of capital’.

Interestingly it was in this very milieu that the current notion of communisation first emerged: ‘It is not sure who first used the word… To the best of our knowledge, it was Dominique Blanc: orally in the years 1972-74… Whoever coined the word, the idea was being circulated at the time in the small milieu round the bookshop La Vieille Taupe (‘Old Mole”, 1965-72). Since the May 68 events, the bookseller, Pierre Guillaume, ex-Socialisme ou Barbarie and ex-Pouvoir Ouvrier member, but also for a while close to G. Debord (who himself was a member of S. ou B. in 1960-61), had been consistently putting forward the idea of revolution as a communising process’

The strength of the historic ultra-left in all its forms has been its refusal to support capitalist currents of any kind – no ‘critical support’ for social democratic politicians , no defending Stalinist police states, no cheerleading for national liberation dictatorships in waiting. It has correctly argued that misery, exploitation and war continue under the guise of ‘socialism’, anti-fascism and democracy as well under fascism and military rule.

There is though a permanent danger with this position of seeing all forms of capitalist rule as identical, and of misunderstanding everything that happens under capitalism as simply determined by the logic of accumulation without reference to any other historical or political factors.

the issue isn’t just how the state and capital might respond under threat, but how the very dynamic of social antagonism and crisis might give rise to fascism or some 21st century version from below. If it is true that capitalism’s inability to guarantee social reproduction can only prompt various kinds of collective attempts to secure a life worth living, there is no immediate reason why these attempts should take an expansive, internationalist direction. The historical experience would suggest that it is just likely that many people could fall back on some kind of limited national, religious, racial or extended family/clan identity and seek to secure the survival and reproduction of their self-defined group – if necessary at the expense of others.

One possible outcome of crisis is a kind of plunder-state in which capital effectively throws one part of the population to the wolves to ensure its survival, suspending the normal rules of property to enable the looting of the resources and personal effects of marginalised communities.

many German people, including proletarians, were able to materially benefit from the plunder of the Jews and other minorities.

Another possibility is an extension beyond a state-managed plunder towards localised insurrectionary movements with a racist dimension.

If more modern revolutionary movements have generally avoided this, mass participation in ethnically-based massacres in the past 25 years in the ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda suggests that this is always a possibility.

Even a racialized partial communisation is conceivable, in which one part of the community establishes internal relations of equality and sharing of resources while simultaneously ‘ethnically cleansing’ people defined as outsiders. Such a vision is, for instance, promulgated by the thankfully marginal ‘National Anarchist’ scene with its call for racially pure village communities to replace capitalism and the state.

At the heart of this contradiction is the fact that capitalism is increasingly unable to guarantee social reproduction, unlike in the past when it largely did so through the wage.

It may be true that no localized racist or nationalist ‘anti-capitalism’ could create a lasting alternative to capitalism – social reproduction today cannot retreat from a global human society. Astarian is not alone among the pro-communisers in assuming that any such contradictions can only be temporary diversions on the road to a better future: ‘When the counterrevolutionary proletarian alternatives have demonstrated their ineffectiveness by failing to deliver the economic salvation of the proletariat, communisation will bring about the leap towards the non-economy’

But the last hundred years, and indeed much of human history, suggests that in times of crisis the road forward can be terminally blocked by desperate inter-communal violence and the spiral of massacres and reprisals – or when one group is particularly marginalized, massacres without even the fear of reprisals.

Countering this possibility does not mean signing up to some state/media/celebrity ‘anti fascist’ popular front, but it does mean being permanently aware of the potential for even apparently radical, insurgent movements to take a terrible direction. It also means challenging potential manifestations of this at every turn within the real movements around us, whether it be the emergence of nationalist anti-migrant sentiments in workplace struggles (e.g. ‘British jobs for British workers’) or rebranded anti-Semitic notions of saving the ‘real economy’ from ‘cosmopolitan’ money lenders (e.g. the dubious ‘moneyless’ notions of the ‘Zeitgeist Movement’ on the fringes of the Occupy actions).

we aim for a fair synthesis

Our main counter-argument is this: under capitalist conditions, peer production is not capable of self-reproduction and therefore not a full mode of production or value creation. We make an important distinction between the self-reproduction capability of a peer production project as a whole, and the social reproduction at the individual level. The reason is that there is no real universal possiblity for the reproduction of the human life of peer producers under capitalist conditions.

We would characterize Yochai Benkler’s vision as a reformist or meliorist approach, seeking to improve and balance some of the negative aspects of capitalism through increased peer production dynamics.

2. Oekonux: free software as a germ form that is prefigurative of a peer production society

free software production is a full mode of production that is born within capitalism but destined to supersede it, based on a understanding of germ form theory.

The description of Meretz considers free software as a full mode of production, prefigurative of a wider transformation of the current capitalist mode of production.

We would characterize the main argument as stating that the deep lowering of transaction/coordination/communication costs, creates the possibility for a new mode of production next to the market and the firm, which produces value through ‘social allocation’.However, for Benkler, the new modality exists ‘in addition’ and in complementary with market dynamics.

On the collective level, we can see that peer production occurs when a pool of voluntary contributors can create commons-oriented value, under conditions of participatory governance, i.e. through the social, and not market or hierarchical, allocation of productive resources. This can occur on a collective level, but only if we abstract from the need for the social reproduction of the individuals who contribute.

there is no autonomous social reproduction within the commons itself

3. Dmytri Kleiner’s Venture Communism

For Kleiner, peer production can only occur if commoners also own the common stock of production.

Kleiner proposes that peer producers would create common stock cooperatives, and use a specific licence, the Peer Production or Copyfarleft license, to protect their shared innovation commons from private appropriation by capitalist forces.

Like with the P2P Foundation’s approach, Kleiner also recognizes the continuation of the politics of class, as long as we live in a class-based society.

Our contrasting peer production IS a proto-mode of production, which means that indeed value is created in a radically different way in peer production, but that it’s lack of self-reproduction capabilities makes it dependent on capitalism.

Kleiner’s strategy is exactly what can make it independent and capable of self-reproduction since its combination with common-stock physical production entities, would guarantee the self-reproduction capability of individuals and collectives contributing to the commons.

creating a real counter-economy

4. George Caffentzis and the Anti-capitalist commons

two kinds of commons, i.e. anti-capitalist commons which exist to produce value in a different way, and which function against capitalism, and commons which are used by capital for its own self-reproduction and act in favour of capitalism

Politically, pro-capitalist commons are represented by the neo-Hardinian school of Elinor Ostrom

while the basic premise of the existence of capitalism-compatible commons is correct, the making of a radical dichotomy, based on the necessity to struggle against capitalist commons, is absolutely counter-productive.

Our approach stresses that it is more productive to focus on the post-capitalist potentialities of peer production, and make them real and concrete, than to fight against commons that are compatible with capitalism.

it makes only sense to undertake efforts to make the commons more autonomous from profit-maximizing entities and the system as a whole. This can be done through strategies such as those proposed by Kleiner and the P2P Foundation.

In the interpretation of the P2P Foundation, social change occurs because proto-modes of production, which are initially embedded in a dominant economic system, and benefit that system, become gradually more efficient, and capable of self-reproduction, and therefore create the conditions for a phase transition to occur, in which the new emergent mode of production, achieves its independence over the formerly dominant model.

For the P2P Foundation, an integration needs to occur between the new prototype model, i.e. the field of peer production proper, as it emerges in multiple social fields and attempts to become more autonomous; the social mobilization of progressive social forces (i.e. politics and even ‘revolution’ are crucial remaining aspects of social evolution), and political/policy oriented movements that are capable of creating new institutions.

Politically, § we differ from the Benklerite approach because we believe peer production has the potential to succeed capitalism as the core value and organisational model of a post-capitalist society § we differ from Oekonux by stressing the lack of autonomy of peer production under current conditions § we differ from the Telekommunisten approach by stressing it a proto-mode of production § we differ from the Caffentzis approach by stressing a post-capitalist approach centered on the autonomy and self-reproduction needs of peer producers, rather than guided by a core hostility to capitalism

P2P Foundation also has an integrative and integral approach, this means that despite differences, we seek commonality around aspects of our friends and allies that we may differ from in other aspects.

§ we agree with Benkler and similar approaches that peer production improves on the current conditions of capitalism, i.e. we generally support the spread of commons and p2p-oriented practices § we agree with Oekonux that peer production carries within itself the seeds of a post-capitalist value system § we agree with Kleiner’s proposal for a peer-based counter-economy § we agree with Caffentzis that we need a preferential treatment towards autonomous commons approaches that create a counter-logic within the present system

Tällaiseen avoimen lähdekoodin ympäristöön saapui Richard Stallman, joka aloitti työn MIT:n tekoälylaboratoriossa vuonna 1971. Stallmanin ohjelmointiprojekteista kenties tunnetuin on Emacs-tekstieditori, jonka suosio on jatkunut 1970-luvulta näihin päiviin asti.

Monet ohjelmistojen valmistajat alkoivat 1980-luvun vaihteeseen mennessä suhtautua lähdekoodiin kuin yksityisomaisuuteen ja lopettivat sen toimittamisen ohjelmien mukana. Stallman tahtoi vuonna 1980 muokata uuden lasertulostimensa ohjelmistoa, mutta Xerox ei antanutkaan hänelle lähdekoodia. Tämän ja vastaavien kokemuksien vuoksi Stallmanista tuli avoimen lähdekoodin puolesta kampanjoiva aktivisti.

Raymond perusti Stallmanin Free Software Foundationin kanssa kilpailevan Open Source Initiativen. Molemmat suuntaukset ajavat avointa lähdekoodia, mutta Stallmanin vapaaohjelmistot ovat jossain määrin ideologisempi idea kuin Raymondin pragmaattisempi käsite avoimen lähdekoodin ohjelmistot. Raymondin pyrkimyksenä oli pudottaa suurin osa 1960-lukulaisuudesta pois, jotta liike-elämän olisi helpompi innostua avoimesta lähdekoodista.

Free Software Foundationin määritelmän mukaan vapaan ohjelmiston täytyy täyttää neljä ehtoa, alkaen ehdosta nolla, koska tietokoneet aloittavat laskemisen nollasta: Vapaus ajaa ohjelma, mistä tahansa syystä (vapaus 0). Vapaus tutkia ohjelmaa, ja muutella sitä tarpeidesi mukaan (vapaus 1). Lähdekoodin saatavuus on ennakkoehto tälle. Vapaus jakaa kopioita uudestaan, jotta voit auttaa naapuriasi (vapaus 2). Vapaus jakaa uudestaan kopioita ohjelman parannelluista versioista (vapaus 3). Tämä antaa koko yhteisölle hyödyn tehdyistä muutoksista. Pääsy lähdekoodin pariin on ennakkovaatimus tälle.

Vuonna 1991 suomalainen Helsingin yliopiston opiskelija Linus Torvalds julkaisi internetissä GPL-lisensoidun Linux-kernelin, josta tuli GNU-projektin ohjelmiin yhdistettynä toimiva kokonainen käyttöjärjestelmä, jota pitäisikin Stallmanin mukaan kutsua GNU/Linuxiksi eikä pelkästään Linuxiksi.

Keskeisistä avoimen lähdekoodin ideologeista tulee mainita vielä kolmas epädiplomaattinen herrasmies, Eric S. Raymond. Jos Stallman on lähinnä punavihreä aktivisti ja Torvalds pragmaattisesti suuntautunut henkilö, on Raymond yleisiltä poliittisilta mielipiteiltään ollut lähellä oikeistolibertarismia

Vuonna 1983 Stallman perusti GNU-projektin, jonka päämääränä oli luoda avoimeen lähdekoodiin perustuva käyttöjärjestelmä. Hän perusti myös Free Software Foundationin ajamaan vapaaohjelmien aatetta juridiselta ja poliittiselta kannalta.

Raymond on myös kirjoittanut erään merkittävimmistä avoimen lähdekoodin ideologiaa yleisesti käsittelevistä kirjoista, The Cathedral and The Bazaar. Katedraalimallissa lähdekoodi on saatavilla, mutta se tarjoillaan ylhäältäpäin ohjelmistojulkaisujen mukana. Basaarimallissa lähdekoodi on jatkuvasti tarjolla internetissä, ja sen muokkaamiseen on helppo osallistua.

Lähdekoodin eli tiedon ilmainen jakaminen tuo mieleen sosialismin, mutta ehkä on sopivampaa verrata sitä tieteen etiikkaan.

Tieteellinen kommunismi viittaa siihen perinteiseen käsitykseen, että tieteen tulosten täytyy olla avoimia ja koko tiedeyhteisön käytettävissä. Koska ohjelmistoja luotiin alun perin juuri julkisissa tutkimuslaitoksissa, on luonnollista, että tämä ajattelu periytyi tieteestä suoraan ohjelmistotuotantoon. Vasta myöhemmässä vaiheessa ohjelmat alettiin nähdä suljettuna ja yksityisomisteisena ilmiönä.

Rinnastukset poliittiseen sosialismiin ontuvat myös siinä mielessä, ettei yksikään avoimen lähdekoodin keskeinen puolestapuhuja ole varsinaisesti liiketoimintaa vastaan.

Osittain sekaannus johtuu siitä, että englanniksi sana »free» tarkoittaa sekä ilmaista että vapaata. Niinpä suomeksi avoin lähdekoodi on vapaata, muttei aina ilmaista. Englanniksi käsitettä joudutaan selittämään esimerkiksi sanomalla, että avoin lähdekoodi on »free as in freedom, not free as in free beer.»

Markkinataloutta avoin lähdekoodi ei siis vastusta. Jossain määrin sitä voidaan kuitenkin pitää anarkistisena. Peruslähtökohtana on se, että jos joku ei pidä tavasta, jolla jotain projektia hoidetaan, hänellä on mahdollisuus perustaa projektista oma versionsa, eli forkata siitä oma versionsa.

Anarkismista huolimatta avointa lähdekoodia luonnehtii myös meritokraattisuus. Tyypillisesti käytössä on valistuneen diktaattorin malli. Vaikka projekti pyörisi hyvinkin anarkistisesti, voi sen perustajalla, ahkerimmalla tai taitavimmalla jäsenellä olla lopullinen veto-oikeus päätöksiin.

Kuitenkin avointa lähdekoodia kehitetään paljon myös täysin hierarkkisesti organisoituneissa yrityksissä, joten anarkismiakaan ei voida pitää kattavana tunnuspiirteenä. Keskeisimmäksi tunnuspiirteeksi nousee juuri tieteen ihanteen kaltainen tiedon jakaminen.

Google on tukenut jatkuvasti avoimen lähdekoodin hankkeita, vaikka sen liiketoiminnan ytimessä olevat hakualgoritmit lienevät kaikista liikesalaisuuksista salaisimpia. Facebookin tapauksessa lähdekoodin avoimuus ei ehkä ole kovinkaan tärkeää, koska avoimen lähdekoodin projektit pystyvät helposti luomaan vastaavan palvelun, olennaisinta on hallitseva markkina-asema ja se mitä Facebook tekee käyttäjiensä luovuttamilla tiedoilla. Avoimen lähdekoodin näkökulmasta pahin vaihtoehto ei ole Microsoft, jonka hallinta keskittyy käyttöjärjestelmän tasolle. Sellainen on ennemmin vertikaalisesti koko tuotantoketjuaan kontrolloiva Apple.

In October 2009, we co-promoted the first Free Culture Forum (FCF)

The FCF released a Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge

The Charter lists a variety of ways of achieving sustainability developed by initiatives based on free culture principles, some more consolidated, some still experimental

The Charter also promotes the principle of combining several sources of finance, as a way of guaranteeing independence of the creators.

What we call the Free Culture Movements comprises a wide range of experiences mainly emerging in the framework of the internet and the digital revolution.

We are still living in a capitalist society; and in the last twenty years, one major change has been the qualitatively new importance of information, communication and knowledge both in the economy and in society at large.

communities of highly individualised members

the potential opened up by the new technologies

This goes together with a second question we have often dealt with, that is, why these ‘networked forms’ are emerging in so many movements and indeed in so many aspects of present-day society.

these forces have one of their fundamental roots in the movements of the 1960s and 70s and specifically in two salient facts: the shake-up of the Fordist, patriarchal, hierarchical institutions of post-war capitalism and the (connected) repercussions of the massive expansion of higher education.

We need to better conceptualise the anthropological transformation which underlies these new patterns of social relationships

Which leads us to a third area of issues: the movements we analyse have been emerging from the very core of societal innovation of the last decades. What do we call this? Post-Fordism? The knowledge economy? Informationalism? Cognitive capitalism?

When we started Networked Politics, we wanted first of all to deepen the comprehension of the problems that had emerged in the innovative forms and principles of organisation in the global movements. It was in this way that we came to discover parallels with the organisational forms that had emerged in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, as well as with various experiences of web communities of collaborative production

as producing common resources.

logics based on openness to the ‘outside’

the logic behind the internet itself

But there is also another aspect of this social nature of production that needs to be noted: in many senses, the flows of production appeared to shift away from the formal boundaries of what is traditionally considered productive work, to spread into society at large.

the social nature of these processes seems to put pressure on any regulatory, governance and accounting system closed within the boundaries of formally isolated organisations.

this configuration also brings people to questioning the adequacy, legitimacy and efficiency of property regimes as we know them, be they private or state mechanisms.

The increasing rediscovery of the notion of commons by these movements and many beyond them – has its roots here.

When we look at the qualities which need to be mobilised and at the forms of organisation of production in these spheres, we observe an increasing importance of attitudes and capacities

creativity, flexibility, development of information, continuous learning, problem-solving, initiative, communicational and relational skills, decision-making, attention, experiential/practical/”tacit” knowledge.

embedded in individuals and are not easily reproducible and controllable through planned command or automated mechanisms.

depend on motivations which are not easily reducible to the monetary

a blurring of entrepreneurial and managerial functions and of dependent work

another dimension where the experience of the FC-movements is interesting. There are experiments of a different kind around these problems

related to the meshing and mobilisation of different motivations, non-hierarchical division of labour, collaboration and coordination, and so on.

working on the basis of a distributional/sharing

First, where knowledge, information and communication play a central role, the processes of production appear intrinsically and more immediately social. They benefit and rely on flows and networks of production which go beyond the formal boundaries of any specific organisation (not to say single individuals).

a third cluster of problems

The increased immaterial and social nature of the processes of production and of products is creating a series of problems in the systems of measures.

Such problems are evidently further complicated by the digital revolution, which made it possible that a digital product, once created, can be potentially reproduced “easier, faster, ubiquitously and almost free”

In this lies another clue that fundamental difficulties are emerging, which point toward what could be called a crisis of the system of value – which, indeed, has many other roots, well beyond this realm.

Fordist forms of production, to be deployed in a non-destructive way, required the invention of a new institutional framework, which crystallised in the Keynesian revolution; which, in turn, to be effectively deployed required the invention of a new system of (public and private) measures and accounts, which culminated in the famous – and today widely contested concept of – Gross National Product. Doesn’t this resonate with the present?

The software was met with enormous interest

Another crucial factor is the community that coordinates the development of the operating system. The open, decentralized, and seemingly chaotic way of working together pioneered by Torvalds and his collaborators became known as the “bazaar” model of software development (Raymond 2001)

With free software, there is no strict boundary between users and developers. Many participants simply use the software, but some help to improve it, either occasionally or even regularly and intensely. The participants themselves decide whether and how to contribute. Participation is not obligatory, but quite easy if you want to get involved.

Linux and Wikipedia are important examples of two communities – the free software movement (also called open source movement) and the free culture movement

The GNU/Linux story reveals the essential characteristics of peer production. Peer production is based on commons: resources and goods that are jointly developed and maintained by a community and shared according to community-defined rules.

If I modify and distribute a GPL’ed software, I must publish my own version under the GPL. This principle is called “copyleft” since it turns copyright on its head. Instead of granting exclusive rights of control and exploitation to the authors, it ensures that all versions of the software will remain in the commons forever.

While production for the market aims to produce something that can be sold, the usual goal of peer production is to produce something useful.

In contrast to companies and entities in planned economies, peer projects don’t have command structures. That does not mean that they are unstructured; on the contrary, most projects have “maintainers” or “admins” who keep the project on course and decide which contributions to integrate and which to reject.

The success of GNU/Linux is based on the fact that – like all free software – it is a commons that everybody can use, improve and share. The freedoms that make free software a commons were first defined by Richard Stallman in the 1980s. He designed the GNU General Public License (GPL) as an exemplary license to legally protect these freedoms.

Open hardware projects design physical products by freely sharing blueprints, design documents, and bills of materials.

No production is possible without means of production. The RepRap 3D printer has received a lot of attention because it can “print” many of its own parts. Other free 3D printers are the Fab@Home and the MakerBot, around which a large community has formed. Thingiverse is a platform for sharing 3D designs for such printers. Projects such as FurnLab and CubeSpawn design CNC (computer-controlled) machines for processing wood and metals; their aim is to facilitate “personal fabrication.

You cannot create things from designs and blueprints alone – physical resources and means of production are needed as well. Technological advancements have made various production processes less expensive and more accessible.

It makes more sense for productive infrastructures to be community-based, i.e., jointly organized by the inhabitants of a village or neighborhood. There are already examples of this.

Community-organized production places are emerging as well.

Fab Labs are modern open workshops whose goal is to produce “almost anything.” That’s not yet realistic, but they can already produce furniture, clothing, computer equipment (including circuit boards), and other useful things.

Their goal is the creation of an entirely commons-based production infrastructure, a network of free and open facilities that utilize only free software and open hardware.

But can peer production really get that far in the physical world? Won’t it be stopped by the fact that natural resources and the Earth’s carrying capacity are limited?

Digital, Internet-based peer production has produced astonishing amounts of software and contents – a digital plenty that benefits us all. In the physical world, a similar plenty for everyone must seem impossible if one equates plenty with lavishness and wastefulness. But plenty also has another meaning: “getting what I need, when I need it.

Commons-based peer production brings such a needs-driven conception of plenty for everyone into reach.

Physical production is impossible without natural resources. Therefore, peer production won’t be able to realize its full potential unless access to resources is managed according to its principles. Digital peer production treats knowledge and software as a commons. Likewise, physical peer production needs to manage resources and means of production as commons, utilizing them in a fair and sustainable way and preserving or improving their current state.

The challenge is huge

For the future of commons-based peer production it will be very important to bring together the perspectives and experiences of commoners from all areas – whether “digital,” “ecological,” or “traditional.”

People participate in peer production communities

commons-based peer production refers to any coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified intellectual work.

Linux

Wikipedia

Sourceforge

Pirate Bay

It can be argued, however, that in the development of any less than trivial piece of software, irrespective of whether it be FOSS or proprietary, a subset of the (many) participants always play -explicitly and deliberately- the role of leading system and subsystem designers, determining architecture and functionality, while most of the people work “underneath” them in a logical, functional sense.

"humanizing" the capitalist economy

a struggle seeking to build an economy and culture of solidarity beyond capitalism

often considered part of the social economy,

"économie solidaire"

An organisation seeing itself as part of the solidarity economy generally goes beyond achieving purely social aims: it aims to put right an injustice by expressing solidarity

Miller, Ethan.

Grassroots Economic Organizing

The reaction of Stuttgart workers to the destruction of public services and the perversion of co-determination indicates that austerity measures are coming slap-bang up against the legacy of two periods of democratic and egalitarian reform. The first is post-war reconstruction, including the welfare state. The second is the system of co-determination, which was strengthened in response to rebellions in the 60s and 70s. However, the resistance now, in Stuttgart as elsewhere in Europe, is not simply over the erosion of the institutions created in these periods of reform – after all, that erosion has been taking place for at least a decade. It is a profound and uncertain clash of cultures, expectations and increasingly activities, shaped by these periods of reform and rebellion, across generations. People’s expectations, or at least sense of legitimate claims, are for cultural equality as well as moves toward economic equality, and for meaningful and dignified work to match the decades of expansion of higher education.

There are also the spreading networks of autonomous hackers and geeks creating open, non-proprietorial, software and therefore effectively creating a key part of the infrastructure of today’s society as a digital commons

They all involve forms of labour which cannot be understood in the same terms as the conventional wage contract

nd the list also includes trade unionists who are taking on the role of organising for the common good in defence, or for the improvement of public services, or to push their company towards climate jobs.

All kinds of co-ops, cultural and social centres have emerged or been strengthened by these combinations of refusal and creation.

What this variety of activity has in common is that it is based on collaborative forms of creativity

and more recently ‘The coming of the commons’

can the public sector be transformed in a democratic, open and egalitarian direction against the forces of marketisation? If so, it can be a major economic player, especially in urban centres, with considerable bargaining power as contractor, as employer, and as trend-setter and creator of new communicative infrastructure.

The spread of information, knowledge and communication technologies not only enables theoretical expertise and practical knowledge to be shared on a previously unimaginable scale, but also creates tools for co-operation and self-managed co‐ordination of the most complex, multi-actor, transnational processes.

They illustrate ways in which labour could be self-organised, on the basis of social values underlying its purpose, use or context.

What would it mean to think about industrial policies not so much in terms of the goal of nudging the private sector to invest, but more in terms of how to release, develop and extend the creativity of labour in its broadest sense?

How to expand and strengthen ‘productive democracy’? How to enhance the capacities of those whose ‘only’ means of production is their creative potential – and the social co-operation through which they can develop and realise this potential?

First, it’s come from the kinds of challenges that the trade union movement is facing in defending jobs in manufacturing as well as public services.

The second sphere for the rethinking of labour has been through the renewal of the co-operative movement. And a third development is the powerful and ambiguous trend opened up by the new technology towards new kinds of collaboration is the peer to peer, distributed productions and the digital commons, as referred to earlier. This ‘sphere’ is not separate: it could expand both the transformative power of workers already rethinking labour in conventional employment, and the scale and reach of co-operatives.

One increasingly significant context of convergence is over ‘climate jobs’. We’ve noted already the growth of co‐operatives creating and distributing renewable energy. The ravages of climate change are leading some trade unionists to demand that workers, whether currently unemployed or employed in high-carbon industries, be allowed to deploy their know-how to manufacture wind turbines, solar water heaters and other parts of the infrastructure of a low-carbon economy.

Another potential focal point for the mutual reinforcement of different forms of productive democracy is cities.

All these developments also illustrate the significance of democracy – transparency, participatory decision- making, the recognition of and means of sharing plural sources of knowledge – as a source of productivity, a base for a new economics.

The implication of my argument here is that policymakers now need to work on how to support the economic creativity of millions of people, whether in existing workplaces or working precariously outside the formal labour market. At present these capacities are being wasted.

They need specific forms of support, some of it from the state, and some of it from organisations that share or could be persuaded to share their goals. These could include the trade unions, the co-operative movement, some parts of the church, foundations, and the growing experiments in crowdfunding, democratically controlled loan funds and so on.

As far as existing workplaces are concerned, we need states to not only restore and extend rights that protect trade unions in their struggles over wages and conditions, but also to give workers rights to control the purpose of their labour: for example, a legal prohibition on closures or redundancies without alternatives being publicly explored, and in the case of large companies, public inquiries at which alternatives would be presented. Labour is a commons – it should not be wasted. We need a new kind of ‘industrial strategy’ – one designed to support the creation of value that is not only monetary and requires autonomy from the pressures of the labour market. These should include a basic ‘citizen’s income’ (see page 34). Shorter working hours would be another measure that would serve a similar end.

We also need a regional policy that gives real support to cities as hubs of economic development, through direct public employment, and through support for co-ops involving regional banks. These could learn from the operations of the Mondragon bank and become a source of support and co‐ordination to networks of co-ops and other collaborative means of nurturing and realising the creativity of labour, rather than operating as banks of the traditional kind.

These are mere illustrations of industrial policies which recognise the capacities of generations shaped by expectations of cultural as well as political and economic equality. To realise these capacities as a resource for a new model of economic development requires rebuilding the distributional gains of the welfare state – but it also requires going further than that. We need to create not simply full employment, but the conditions by which people can creatively collaborate to meet the needs of a changing society and a precarious planet.

e pakottaa kapitalismin kehittymään kohti tilaa, jossa nousee esille entisajan kommunismille tyypillisiä vaatimuksia, kuten perinteisestä palkk

Uuden ja vanhan järjestyksen välille syntyy jännitteitä. Bauwensin mukaan eräs keskeinen jännite muodostuu tietotyöläisten, ”kognitariaatin”, ja yritysryppäitä hallitsevan ”netarkisen” luokan välille.

Netarkia menestyy kontrolloimalla vertaistuotantoa ja puristamalla voittoa ihmisten vuorovaikutuksen eri muodoista.

Bauwens luottaa kuitenkin tietoiseen strategiaan vertaistuotannon edistämiseksi. Keskeistä on digitaalisen ja materiaalisen maailman vertaistoimijoiden yhteen saattaminen.

Bauwensin mukaan yhdessä toimivat vertaistuottajat, eli ”kommonerit”, ja osuuskunnat sekä yhteiskunnalliset yritykset kykenisivat kilpailemaan suuryrityksiä vastaan nopeudessa, innovaatiokyvyssä ja tuotantokustannuksissa.

Commonsit eli yhteiset resurssit eivät ole julkista tai yksityistä omistusta. Yhteisiä voivat olla esimerkiksi vapaat ohjelmistot, avoin data, yhteiset luonnonresurssit, osuuskunnat, yhteisviljelmät, kylätalot, talkoot, vallatut tilat tai katutaide.

Yhteisten resurssien alustaa ylläpitää ja suojaa usein jokin yhteisö. Yhteisö ei kontrolloi työvoimaa, kuten perinteisillä yrityksillä on taipumus. Tuotantoon osallistuvat niin yhteisten vahvistamiseen sitoutuneet vapaaehtoiset eli kommonerit kuin firmojen työntekijätkin.

Bauwensin visio1. Vertaistuotannossa arvon luomisen ytimessä ovat erilaiset yhteiset, joihin syntyvät innovaatiot tallentuvat. Ne ovat kaikkien jaettavissa ja kehitettävissä. Kuuluisin esimerkki on Wikipedia. 2. Voittoa tavoittelemattomat yhteisöt suojaavat yhteisiä resursseja yksityistämiseltä. Wikipediaa suojaa Wikimedia Foundation. 3. Yhteisen päälle rakentuu energinen talous. Siinä toimii yhteiskunnallisia yrityksiä, joiden juridiset rakenteet sitovat ne yhteiseen perustuvien yhteisöjen tavoitteisiin ja arvoihin. Toiminnan periaatteena tulee voiton tavoittelun sijaan olla sosiaalinen ja ekologinen kestävyys. 4. Sosiaalista tuotantoa ja ihmisten hyvinvointia vahvistamaan tarvitaan ”kumppanuusvaltio”, joka järjestää julkisia palveluja ja esimerkiksi universaalin perustulon.5. Poliittinen tuki vertaistuotannolle saadaan piraattien, vihreiden, vasemmiston ja edistyksellisten liberaalien koalitiosta. Näistä syntyy edistyksellinen enemmistö, joka järjestää yhdessä kommonerien kanssa yhteiseen perustuvan yhteiskunnan.

Ihmiskunta tarvitsee yhteensä 1,5 maapalloa tyydyttääkseen tarpeensa. Suomalaisten ympäristöä kuormittava vaikutus johtuu erityisesti korkeista kasvihuonekaasupäästöistä. Muilta osin Suomen ekologinen jalanjälki on EU-maista pienimpiä.

Ihmiskunnan aineellinen hyvinvointi perustuu viime kädessä luonnon tuottamiin ekosysteemipalveluihin. Maailman maat eroavat toisistaan sen suhteen, mikä on niiden ekologisen jalanjäljen ja biokapasiteetin eli ekologisen tuottokyvyn suhde henkeä kohden. Suomen biokapasiteetti on Euroopan suurin ja maailman seitsemänneksi suurin. Ekologista jalanjälkeä suurempi biokapasiteetti kertoo käytettävissä olevasta maapinta-alasta, mutta myös siitä, millaista luonnonvarapolitiikkaa ja väestöpolitiikkaa maa harjoittaa.

Fakta: Maailman ylikulutuspäivä Ekologinen jalanjälki on kattavin käytettävissä oleva mittari, jolla voidaan arvioida ihmiskunnan kokonaiskulutuksen ja maapallon ekosysteemien tuottokyvyn suhdetta. Jopa yli puolet ekologisesta jalanjäljestä koostuu hiilijalanjäljestä. Hiilijalanjälki kertoo tuotteen tai palvelun elinkaaren aikana syntyneistä kasvihuonekaasupäästöistä. Globaalihehtaareina ilmaistava biokapasiteetti kuvaa alueen yhteenlaskettua ekologista tuottokykyä vuoden aikana. Ihmiskunnan ekologinen jalanjälki on 2,7 globaalia hehtaaria ja biokapasiteetti vain 1,8 globaalia hehtaaria henkeä kohden. Suomalaisen ekologinen jalanjälki on 6,2 globaalia hehtaaria, josta hiilijalanjäljen osuus on 4,2 globaalia hehtaaria. Global Footprint Networkin teemasivu Living Planet -raportti 2012 (WWF)

the state and institutions must take an active role in supporting commoning and to support the creation of new Commons.

But the sphere of Commons is broader still, sometimes even tied to specific projects, as normally occurs in the case of digital or non-material Commons.

Commons must be defended by the legal system and safeguarded through particularly stringent protective norms which can ensure the collective enjoyment and use of them, also for the future. Commons also need a specific form of self-governing by the commoners themselves, which must also be strenuously defended

This active role must translate into forms of public-common partnership, where the institutions enable and empower the collective/social peer-creation of common value.

Governments could also provide seed funding

, incentives and grants for Commons and commoning, just as it currently provides research and development support and assistance to businesses and corporations (6).

The legal recognition of the sphere of Commons must lead to a delegation of authority and power by the state to commons-based institutions.

Current debates (and experiments) focus on Trusts, Foundations, for-benefit institutions etc.

Such trusts can be located either inside the boundaries of one state or be trans-border, according to the size and range of the resource and/or of its relative community of interest.

Just as it is true that commoning normally produces use value which cannot be accounted for in monetary terms (values which are part of the range of positive social or environmental externalities) one should construct a special legal form which could recognise and protect a similar type of enterprise or “project” (a common social enterprise) and protect a similar form of production of use value of collective use, which will help build another type of economy.

And we learned an important lesson: internal democracy doesn’t work without a true community.

the dream was abundance

we started calling the Internet “the Electronic Indies.”

In Iberian history, “the Indies” was the name of the new territories, of the New World discovered by Columbus and soon conceived of, because of its abundance, as the “original paradise.”

In 2001, Juan Urrutia had published his well-known essay “Networks of people, the Internet, and the Logic of Abundance” in the theoretical magazine Ekonomiaz. Distributed networks appeared as the basis of new P2P relationships and an ever-growing diversity

But we didn’t have money

We began to write, and on the seventh of October, 2002, el Correo de las Indias [the Indies Mail] was born, with Bitácora de las Indias [Log of the Indies] in the masthead.

The blog was the way we found our clients, but, more importantly over time, the current indianos.

The business would be the economic structure of the community we were creating, and as such, would have all of the the sources of wealth and income; we would not have — and still don’t have — savings, properties, or personal clients. The cooperative is our community savings and the only owner of all that we enjoy.

In short: economically, we’re closer to a kibbutz than to the big cooperatives at Mondragon.

Understanding the power of network topologies was our principal point of differentiation, both in theory –in dialogue or as cyberactivists — and also in the market.

Later, each cooperative in the group strengthened the model. Today, the consulting business is the group’s main source of financing. And creating and organizing new cooperatives and businesses constitutes our principal activity.