Political Alternatives

Commons

After several decades of relentless neoliberal enclosures, the idea of ‘commons’ is enjoying a renaissance amongst some neo-Keynesian economists and commentators, while political scientist Elinor Ostrom has just been award the Nobel prize ‘for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons’. Massimo De Angelis explains why capital’s commons will always be distorted – because they are based upon social injustice – and why we can only reclaim the commons from capital by constructing common interests. Read more about the tragedy of the capitalist commons. If the cell form of capitalism is the commodity, the cellular form of a society beyond capital is the common. Nick Dyer-Witheford discusses the circulation of commons and the conditions they would create for new collective projects and waves of organising. Read more about Commonism

Pirates save fishes

Fischen jetzt wieder mit Erfolgsaussichten für Küstenbewohner in OstafrikaIn past years, illegal commercial trawlers parked off Somalia’s coast and scooped up the ocean’s contents. Now, fishermen on the northern coast of neighboring Kenya say, the trawlers are not coming because of pirates. “There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates,” said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association. Read more

Feral vs. capitalist trade

Feral Trade is a public experiment trading goods over social networks. The use of the word ‘feral’ describes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel. Read more

Open Cola and Cube Cola

Cube Cola PosterThe principle of Open Source now set Cola free from monopolist capital. It was reconstructed via reverse ingeneering, published as Open Cola under the GPL and since then optimized by global community under the conditions of free cooperation. One of the approaches is Cube Cola: Besides working on the recipe a group of artists from the “Cube” in Bristol produces “information material” like a poster and a tea towel with the recipe, as well as a hand book and a set of tools necessary for the production of free cola. Finally it is distributed besides other goods via Feral Trade Courier. That is a live shipping database for a freight network running outside commercial systems. The database offers dedicated tracking of feral trade products in circulation, archives every shipment and generates freight documents on the fly.

Prokla available online

Prokla (Probleme des Klassenkampfes/problems of class struggle), one of the leading and long standing unorthodox Marxist journals in Germany, is now available from the internet. The older issues from 1971 to 2006 are even freely accessible. Of course Prokla as all left journals is dependent on subscriptions. Check out www.prokla.de

Conference: Surviving in the »Creative Industries«

Creative IndustriesThe »Creative Industries« are considered key to the city development in the 21st Century. Cities such as Berlin put them at the center of image and location policy. The debates are mainly of benefit to the economy and capital development at the forefront – the changed living and working conditions of creative people are in contrast scarcely taken into view. They will be the topic of the congress. The digital revolution in production and distribution, the struggles for intellectual property and realization rights, more flexible corporate structures and labour relations, the project form of work and the privatization of cultural institutions have changed jobs and lifestyles as subjectivities. An unwieldy number of opportunities face enormous competition for jobs and contracts, increased chances of expression the pressure of conformity by the market, more self-determination the self-exploitation in informal and precarious employment relationships and with unfettered income at the same time. Read more

What is the Common? An International Conference

Gothenburg, Sweden: “The Kurrents‘” program for 2009 is organized under the title “What Is the Common?”. It is again a co-organized event together with invited artists, researchers and internationally leading intellectuals. The intention is to investigate different axes related to the common as both a real force and an idea. As such the common permeates such diversified domains as artistic practice, law, economy and gender relations.
From the Call for Papers:

In the shadow of the global crisis of capitalism, the common, somehow obliterated in the recent past, has emerged as an indispensable and central notion. The conference addresses this notion both as a real movement and as an already present horizon, a dynamic principle, for societal life. It is a critical topic today, not only because the public, administrated by the state, is reduced to expendable assets for regulating a supposedly self-regulating machine called Market, but more importantly because the emerging forms of the common impose themselves with an unprecedented acuity and in opposition to the doxa of the private property.

Read more

Doug Henwood: Nationalize the Banks!

Doug Henwood delivered ”Nationalize the Banks! What Does it Really Mean?,” on a panel organized by the Socialist Register, at the Left Forum, New York City, April 19, 2009:

“The title of our session reminds me of that glorious week in Seattle back in December 1999. At that time, and for a little while afterwards, it seemed like a new movement had been born, and there was some real potential for transforming, or even overthrowing, capitalism. One of my favorite chants of that moment of carnival came from the unfairly maligned Black Bloc: “Capitalism? No thanks! We will burn your fucking banks!” Not constructive, perhaps, but inspiring nonetheless.”

Read more

Call for papers: What is the common?

University of Gothenburg, Sweden, is calling – submission deadline: September 5th, 2009:

In the shadow of the global crisis of capitalism, the common, somehow obliterated in the recent past, has emerged as an indispensable and central notion. The conference addresses this notion both as a real movement and as an already present horizon, a dynamic principle, for societal life. It is a critical topic today, not only because the public, administrated by the state, is reduced to expendable assets for regulating a supposedly self-regulating machine called Market, but more importantly because the emerging forms of the common impose themselves with an unprecedented acuity and in opposition to the doxa of the private property.

Read more

Water cannons against water scarcity??!

Wasserwerfer gegen Kritiker des WeltwasserforumsSince yesterday the Turkish government hosts the fifth World Water Forum against a backdrop of what is probably the most sweeping water privatisation programme in the world. As well as privatizing water services, the government plans to sell of rivers and lakes. Turkish social movements, who hosted their own conference in Istanbul last month, suspect the Government is using the World Water Forum to push through this highly controversial agenda. Protesters are struck back with water cannons… Read more