Author Archives: Markus Euskirchen

Really Really Free Markets

According to the capitalist lexicon, the “Free Market” is the economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. Any sensible person can recognize immediately that neither human beings nor resources are free in such a system; hence, a “Really Really Free Market” is a market that operates according to gift economics, in which nothing is for sale and the only rule is share and share alike. In the interest of not taxing the reader’s patience, a single apostrophe stands in for the two “Really”s throughout this text. Read more

New Book: Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons

Italian Vogue 2007: Make Love Not War
Italian Vogue 2007: Make Love Not War

After a decade of digital fetishism, the spectres of the financial and energy crisis have also affected new media culture and brought into question the autonomy of networks. Yet activism and the art world still celebrate Creative Commons and the ‘creative cities’ as the new ideals for the Internet generation. Unmasking the animal spirits of the commons, Matteo Pasquinelli identifies the key social conflicts and business models at work behind the rhetoric of Free Culture. The corporate parasite infiltrating file-sharing networks, the hydra of gentrification in ‘creative cities’ such as Berlin and the bicephalous nature of the Internet with its pornographic underworld are three untold dimensions of contemporary ‘politics of the common’. Against the latent puritanism of authors like Baudrillard and Zizek, constantly quoted by both artists and activists, Animal Spirits draws a conceptual ‘book of beasts’. In a world system shaped by a turbulent stock market, Pasquinelli unleashes a politically incorrect grammar for the coming generation of the new commons. Read the Metamute Review

The Emergence of Open Design and Open Manufacturing

FabberA digital fabricator (commonly shortened to fabber) is a small, self-contained factory that can make objects described by digital data. Fabbers make three-dimensional, solid objects that can be used as models, as prototypes, or as delivered products. It is very tempting to limit Open Source to the field of immaterial production, but the same method of production that has come to dominate the world of software and content on the internet, is now also deeply influencing the way of thinking about designing and even making things. Read more

New Book: Commonwealth by Negri/Hardt

Negri/Hardt: Common WealthCommonwealth is the latest collaboration between Michael Hardt, a Duke University professor who specializes in Italian literature, and Toni Negri, an original member of the radical Autonomia group in Italy. Negri is the more colorful of the two, having at one time been accused of being the intellectual leader of the Red Brigades terrorists who in 1978 kidnapped and murdered former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Negri fled to France and lived in exile before returning to Italy in 1997 to serve out the remainder of a reduced prison sentence on a lesser charge.)Commonwealth concludes the trilogy that started with Empire (2000) and continued with Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), both also from Harvard University Press. Read more

NYC: Conference “The Privatization of Public Space? Resisting Enclosure”

Neoliberalism continues to transform public space in geographically uneven and variegated ways, with far reaching and profound consequences.  On the first day, the conference will provide context for various means of privatization and elaborate on language and visions for discussing this issue.  On the second day, workshops will bring together students, activists, artists, and organizations engaged in imagining and practicing new and creative means of resistance to the new round of enclosures taking place on a global scale.

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Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996–2008

agThe commercial seed industry has undergone tremendous consolidation in the last 40 years as transnational corporations entered this agricultural sector, and acquired or merged with competing firms. This trend is associated with impacts that constrain the opportunities for renewable agriculture, such as reductions in seed lines and a declining prevalence of seed saving. To better characterize the current structure of the industry, ownership changes from 1996 to 2008 are represented visually with information graphics. Since the commercialization of transgenic crops in the mid-1990s, the sale of seeds has become dominated globally by Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta. In addition, the largest firms are increasingly networked through agreements to cross-license transgenic seed traits. Read more

What happens after privatizing the pension system?

sparzeichenThe pension reforms of the years 2000 until 2007 were supposed to attenuate the foreseeable effects of demographic change on the pension system. This is why the retirement age was raised, the pension level was lowered and a so-called sustainability factor (“Nachhaltigkeitsfaktor”) was introduced into the pension formula. This approach meant a fundamental change of objectives – from safeguarding living standards in retirement to the stability of contribution rates. The lower future pension level is to be complemented by the subsidised formation of a private capital stock (“Riester pension”) without employer participation. The analysis of the macroeconomic consequences of this reform shows that the chosen policy of enhanced funding both dampens growth and leads to insufficient income in old age. Thus the current strategy is not suitable for alleviating the demographic burden. Read more (in German language)

Futures Group about the future of food

The Futures Group looks at possible futures in the timeline 2020-25 for opportunities and threats. It straddles both Asian and Western perspectives. In their own words:

Trends/shifts are like seeds today. Some seeds sprout to become towering trees, some seeds will grow for a short while but have no staying power and will die off. Some seeds never make it. What we try to do is make an educated guess how these seeds will contribute to the forest of tomorrow. Then we backcast and ask “How do we prepare ourselves to survive and thrive in this forest?” We’ve covered a variety of topics from Arctic Melt, Food, Global Cities to Little economy, Augmented human beings, Batteries and Electric Cars.

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Whopools.net

whopools.netWhopools.net is a open source online tool to share resources, knowledge, experiences, infrastructure and things with others. For instance: Wood to build shelves (or sth. else), a saw, or a sewing machine, drill press, videos, music, books, a car, computers with the possibility of printing, etc. in your local neighbourhood.

At Whopools.net, you can also share skills, talents or special knowledge.
Read more about whopools.net

Commons in turbulent times

bee_swarm_smallAfter 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

Gift Economy: The Really Really Free Market

Really really free marketAccording to the capitalist lexicon, the “Free Market” is the economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses. Any sensible person can recognize immediately that neither human beings nor resources are free in such a system; hence, a “Really Really Free Market” is a market that operates according to gift economics, in which nothing is for sale and the only rule is share and share alike. In the interest of not taxing the reader’s patience, a single apostrophe stands in for the two “Really”s throughout this text. Read more

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