The social network for trade unionists - a LabourStart project.
'The Commons' has entered the official discourse of the international trade union movement in Rio at Labour and Environment Assembly organised by ITUC, TUCA and Sustainlabour. Yet what do unions and unionists know about the Commons, and rising Commons movement, aims at protecting and flourishing the Commons as base for an new socioeconomic, cultural ecological system which can be a real alternative to capitalism and may be the last chance before the humanity! What would such an alternative look like and what would be the role of unions in building such bright future world for all? Should we worry to loose our jobs, positions or can we give a lead to a positive transition? Can we transform ourselves into commons organisations of the labouring people? If yes how can we do that?
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Comment by Orsan Senalp on September 28, 2012 at 12:05 
A WORLD BEYOND MARKET & STATE
A new collection of 73 essays that describe the enormous potential of the commons in conceptualizing and building a better future, edited by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich.
We are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born. Surrounded by centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, people around the world are searching for alternatives. Continue reading
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 23, 2012 at 13:23 
Illustration: Andrzej Krauze
‘At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.’
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 23, 2012 at 13:23 I have lo
ng thought this 2003 item out of date. I never got any feedback on it. I am now, however, thinking it was only premature. For the last couple of years ‘the commons’ have been moving into the foreground of innovatory social movement discourse. I may have posted a couple of such relevant items elsewhere on this blog. Acknowledgements here to Massimo de Angelis who, with his Commoner website (see below), was even more premature than I, and who encouraged me to write this piece.
Now read on:
(2003)
[Source: Waterman, Peter. 2003. ‘Omnia Sint Communia: A New/Old Slogan for International Labour and Labour Internationalism’, European Social Forum, Florence, Italy, 7-10 November, 2002.http://www.commoner.org.uk/].
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:24 A simple schematic of the system of intellectual production in the P2P mode of production with the role of each kind of group, its production and the relationships between them.
Color key:
dark blue, institutions of the commons; dark red: digital commons; light blue: local groups Continue reading
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:24 “Occupy will never die; Evict us, we multiply!”
Section 1: Reports from #OWS’s “Making Worlds: A Forum on the Commons” - blogs, videos and interviews reporting back on all the action from a seminal meeting between the International Occupy and Commons Movements.
Section 2: Essays on the Commons - from dedicated commons activists and occupiers trailblazing new connections in the commons and between occupy and the commons.
Section 3: Commoning in Europe - we take a tour around Europe to discover initiatives that give voice to the unheard 99% and educational initiatives for making radical, systemic change.
Section 4: Voices of the Movement - In this section we explore the creative side of the commons in poetry and song.
Section 5: Activist News - News from Occupy London and Vancouver, International survey of Commons Activism, reflections on an emerging open source civilisation, and reports on an exciting commons game and the potential of serious games for occupiers.
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:17 Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:17 A proposal for working on a convergence of the ideas of Gramsci, Robert Cox and P2P Theory, by Örsan Şenalp:
Our intention is to draw mainlines for an historical materialist narrative of the rise of the p2p as the dynamic of true communal culture and social relationships among individuals and the peoples. We want to analyse how was it existed in each mode of production and now [based on Cox and Van der Pijls’ approaches] transnationalised and globalised. In a way we could draw a line between ‘cognitive’ and ‘transnational’ capitalism theories. We wish to explore empirically how did the spreading p2p relational dynamics has been transforming central productive forces (primarily society itself), and capitalist social relations of production, so how did this bring about a possibility of truly communal culture and social relationships first time at a global scale.
He further explains:
“Since the previous global crisis, that started in the late 60s, there has been major contributions made, from critical perspectives, to our understanding of the expanding of capitalist mode of production and the formation of the world market. Much of the insights were developed by political economists from the West/Center. The first and second generation classics were those of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, Vladimir I. Lenin, Bukharin, Karl Polanyi, Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci. The third generation classical works has arrived in this period. Luis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Ralph Milliband, Christian Palloix, Robin Murray, Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Henry Breverman, and Nichos Poulantzas -among others- have been key names who reopened and expanded the analysis of the state, classes, capitalism. In this post-war and New-Left era, both Gramsci and Polanyi had been rediscovered and their work stimulated -especially via Poulantzas’ analysis- the development of the analysis of the transnational dimension of the new transformations that capitalism were undergoing.
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:16 A brief introductory report for a summary presentation the ideas born of the debate on theoretical research and the generation of a structure of learning in P2P
The debate in recent months about the system of research and learning in the P2P mode of production has been marvelously fruitful. We’ve reached an invaluable clarity of ideas in the conversation between blogs with Jorge, Javier,Ester, Juanma y Juanjo and also thanks to the numerous contributions in the comments. This clarity is also due in no small part to our own internal debate interno and the contributions of our Dogo.
We Indianos think that this vision is a genuine treasure that must materialize to really contribute. Now it’s time to find global P2P leaders prepared to lead and give relevance to these ideas by making them into a concrete project, a step that must precede finding sources for its sustainability.
...
Comment by Orsan Senalp on July 20, 2012 at 23:15 Illustration: Andrzej Krauze
‘At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.’
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Comment by Orsan Senalp on June 22, 2012 at 21:40 "Linking Labour and The Commons Internationally
Whatever the history, the memory or even the desire, we have to recognise the distance that today exists between labour struggles and those around the commons, nationally and internationally. It would be easy to blame this on any half-dozen of the socialist’s hand-me-down Others: the ‘labour bureaucracy’; ‘trade union reformism’, the ‘labour aristocracy’, the ‘Northern unions’, ‘trade union imperialism’. However, as US cartoon character, Pogo, once so notably said, ‘I have seen the enemy and he is us’. At a seminar of the Association for Workers Liberty at the European Social Forum, Florence, November 2002, at which a draft of this paper was first presented, one young British working-class socialist said something like this:"
quote from P. Waterman All in Common
© 2013 Created by Eric Lee.
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