Re: <nettime> [EXT] Re: Thoughts on coups

Hi Brian, Sean,

On 25 Nov 2020, at 01:19, Sean Cubitt <sean.cubitt@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

Eco-socialism yes - but only if the 'social' is rethought - and re-practiced - no longer exclusively as human: The Commons is a better phrase, common land, general intellect (including those forms it takes when congealed into machines and infrastructures). We could start with that absurd contradiction 'intellectual property' - commons as peer-to-peer ecology/economy may start from undoing at least property as core concept of western Enlightenment. That this implies undoing the 'proper' as the principle of individualism is one way to recognise where anarchism belongs to capital and when it doesn’t

I agree with Sean that the discourse and practices of the commons is one of the few truly hopeful political tendencies of recent times. My guide into the domain of the commons has for a long time been David Bollier and his excellent work on the subject (http://www.bollier.org/).

However, I also agree with Brian that we (desperately) need a state, or some more stable form of collective governance in this equation. One of the most interesting things about the commons is that it operates beyond both state and market, but it operates not so much in contradiction to these two as that it operates complementary or in parallel to them.

From the extended debates on the commons it has become gradually clear that while community-governed solutions can work well locally and translocally (more or less in the vein of Elinor Ostrom's work on governance of the commons) the most beneficial situation is where an accountable state can guarantee and facilitate the commons to thrive.

In good old Europe meanwhile the green deal is at the heart of political debates here, and bitterly opposed by predictable political agents (i.e. Brexiteers in the UK, nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland, and so called ‘populists’ across the board). In The Netherlands the worst political agent in this regard cynically named the Forum for Democracy (Forum for Demagogy would be a much better name for them) just went into complete meltdown over a scandal involving their youth organisation spreading antisemitic and nazi-adoration materials. Mind you they won the most recent provincial election and are holding now most seats in the senate (First Chamber), but nowhere near a majority – the Dutch political landscape is thankfully totally fragmented. It is of crucial importance to use this momentum here to avoid another right wing outgrowth to take over again. They are complete climate change denialists, etc. needless to say.

Replacing the social with the collective of humans and non-humans is another good starting point for a new kind of political discourse and new political practices. I think this is already beyond the unthinkable. Some local examples come to mind, such as the most obvious one the Animal Party which has a steady representation in Dutch Parliament now for about 10 years. There are also interesting trajectories launched from the cultural sphere, such as the Embassy of the North Sea, which treats the sea and all its stakeholders / constituents (human / non-human / biological / material) as political actors with interests and rights - see: https://www.embassyofthenorthsea.com/

Also the extensive Neuhaus project organised last year by Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam is a relevant example to start thinking these new relations and how they can be implemented in the political body - https://neuhaus.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en

Also in 2019 I developed a course called The Four Ecologies, drawing on Guattari’s still highly relevant Three Ecologies text (referencing the material / social / subjective ecological registers) and extending this with a fourth register, that of non-human experience (building on Latour, Morton, Haraway etc.).

There’s more examples, in many places - Open Humanities Press has been publishing a lot of relevant material in this direction as well, etc etc..

So, all this is certainly not unthinkable. The point is to start applying these insights. For that we need strong collective actors (the green state and manifold communities sustaining and growing the commons).

So we need commons AND states.

grtngs,

Eric

p.s. - and yes, ‘intellectual property = cultural theft’