Peer2Politics

It has been called “a radical left sensation”; a “fledgling party” born out of the ashes of the Indignados (“the outraged”) or 15-M movement; and “the new-kid-on-the-block” whose success is yet another example of modern technopolitics or, as some experts have put it, “the power of the connected multitudes.”

Here’s a very special treat. Originally published on Guerrilla Translation, Movimiento por la Democracia´s “Charter for Democracy” stands out as premier example of citizen-led solution making to the various crises we face. It is a constitution for the commons written by commons.

“Historically, the anti-statist tendency in Marxism has been largely carried in a very different ‘worker council’ tradition, that, against the powers of party and state has insisted on the role of workplace assemblies as the loci of decision-making, organization and power. In an essay antediluvian by digital standards, ‘Workers’ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society,’ written in 1957 but republished in 1972, immediately after the Soviet crushing of Hungary’s Workers Councils, Cornelius Castoriadis noted the frequent failure of this tradition to address the economic problems of a ‘totally self-managed society.’ The question, he wrote, had to be situated ‘firmly in the era of the computer, of the knowledge explosion, of wireless and television, of input-output matrices’, abandoning ‘socialist or anarchist utopias of earlier years’ because ‘the technological infrastructures … are so immeasurably different as to make comparisons rather meaningless’ (Castoriadis, 1972: np).

The still raging financial crisis of 2007–2008 has enabled the emergence of several alternative practices concerning the production, circulation and use of money. This essay explores the political economy of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, we examine the context in which this digital currency is emerging as well as its nature, dynamics, advantages, and disadvantages. We conclude that Bitcoin, a truly interesting experiment, exemplifies “distributed capitalism” and should be mostly seen as a technological innovation. Rather than providing pragmatic answers and solutions to the current views on the financial crisis, Bitcoin provides some useful and timely questions about the principles and bases of the dominant political economy.

We are witnessing the outstanding emergence of a new economic model, the collaborative commons, which some have already stated as the End of the Capitalist Era. One of the first analysts shedding light on the importance of these phenomena was Yochai Benkler in  his book The Wealth of Networks. Few years ago I had the honour of being part of the translator team of this book into Spanish within the @Commontrad  project. Leaded by professor Florencio Cabello, it consisted on translating this theoretical essay on the current economic production through collaborative practices by producing a book through a collaborative practice on PiratePad (rarely known tool at that time). Through this amazing experience, I immediately understood that common value generation is so efficient, democratic and socially valuable that would sooner or later supersede current economic model based on close standards and private property. In other words, this is a new reality that will prevail.