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Can the State the re-imagined for a commons-centric world – and, can Commoners come up with creative action initiatives to advance a this vision.
I estimate state education has set my technical ability as a coder back about a decade. This is annoying, but I think I now have my finger…
Key Series: Critical Theory of Information, Communication, Media, Culture and Technology Publisher’s note: This article was extracted from Heathwood Journal of Critical Theory (Vol. 1, Issue 1). By Christian Fuchs Abstract There are a lot of claims about social and other media’s power today. Some say that we have experienced Twitter and Facebook revolutions. Others …
“Authority” is an interesting word to contemplate. On the one hand it invokes images of dictators and repression. But it also breaks down as author-ity. A..
The problem with undemocratic institutions – be they the government of a country or a business – is that they do the bidding of those in charge at the top, without being accountable to others who have to live with the consequences of their actions.
After the Snowden affair, the rise of social media and the sharing economy, some corporations and governments would like us to believe that ‘privacy is dead’. Privacy should not and cannot be dead as that would mean that security is also dead. It is technically impossible to construct a secure information system without privacy as a precondition. And, conversely, it is impossible to guarantee privacy without security as a precondition.
The fourth edition of our annual State of Power report, coinciding with the international meeting in Switzerland of what Susan George calls “the Davos class”. This series seeks to examine different dimensions of power, unmask the key holders of power in our globalised world, and identify sources of transformative counter-power.
The #occupy movement, which is a surface manifestation of a deeper Multitude movement, is in fact a refutation of power. Not only of the "power in place", i.e. big banks, governments, etc. but of what we call "instituted power", the kind of power your boss has over you. The consensus decision making process, a form of direct democracy that has been adopted by the #occupy movement, is the most obvious affirmation of this refutation of instituted power relations, which until now has been seen as a necessary structuring mechanisms of society.
Rojava’s system is similar to Bookchin’s ideas in the most crucial way: power flows from the bottom up. The base of Bookchin’s system is the citizens’ assembly. The base of Rojava’s is the commune. One of my questions before arriving was whether Rojava’s communes were assemblies of all citizens or rather meetings of their delegates or representatives in a council. But I found out that the communes are made of up a neighborhood’s households, and that anyone from those households may attend and participate in a meeting. That’s an assembly.
We all sense that power is shifting in the world. We see increasing political protest, a crisis in representation and governance, and upstart businesses upending traditional industries. But the nature of this shift tends to be either wildly romanticized or dangerously underestimated.
We can see the power of distributed, crowd-sourced business models every day — witness Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb. But veteran online activist Jeremy Heimans asks: When does that kind of "new power" start to work in politics? His surprising answer: Sooner than you think. It’s a bold argument about the future of politics and power; watch and see if you agree.
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The Market/State is in crisis and representative democracy seems to be broken. Many argue, that both problems need to be adressed for the sake of social coherence and security. We think, that adressing them properly implies rethinking the core ideas state power and representative democracy are based upon. After all, there is nothing in the current institutional arrangment or in the system of representation through political parties defending the commons: nor as a special type of institutions, nor as a world-view, nor as a plethora of social practices.
Powerful people believe it’s fine for them to break rules others should follow. The psychologist whose work informed the movie Inside Out discovers how to get to the top
NEVER again? The global financial crisis of 2008 saw banks around the world bailed out to the tune of billions by governments worried that the entire financial system was in meltdown. "Too big to fail", the thinking went, and since then, efforts have been made to increase scrutiny of large institutions. But the latest research suggests a much more sophisticated analysis is needed to prevent another crisis.
An enterprise is no longer so much a collection of resources and capabilities as it is a set of platforms. Today, a product without connections is a product without capabilities.
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Building Co-operative Power introduces the history and concept of worker co-operation and relays past and present stories of worker co-operatives in the Connecticut River Valley. It offers practical insights on co-op governance, management, communication and conflict highlighted by cautionary tales and sagas of personal transformation of current and former co-operators. It addresses obstacles and opportunities for building a co-operative economy and making worker co-operatives an increasingly important part of the U.S. economy. The authors outline a regional vision based on strategies of worker co-operatives in the Connecticut River Valley as a guide and inspiration for co-operative development in any region.
Investigative journalist Nick Davies on the myth of press freedom.
In an era of politics characterised by unconstrained corporate lobbying, a well-oiled ‘revolving door’ between industry and government, and an endless stream of campaign contributions from dirty oil and other lucrative industries, is the long-championed ideal of a truly democratic state now a lost cause? Should concerned citizens and activists turn their attention instead to establishing sustainable economic alternatives within their towns and communities?
Editor’s Note: A few months ago, ROAR attended the annual Euronomade gathering in Passignano, which brought together dozens of activists and thinkers in the Italian post-workerist tradition. This year, Euronomade invited the Marxist geographer David Harvey to participate in the event alongside a number of other guests, including Michael Hardt and Srećko Horvat.
“Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.”
The two of us have thought a lot about the nature of power, both political and economic, and lately we’ve become convinced that it is shifting in fundamental ways. Looking at the big disruptions we are seeing in many realms, we’re struck by how often those shifts are being driven by new bottom-up, participatory, or peer-driven models that operate very differently from traditional institutions.
Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms on the balance between old and new power.
The Russian government has reportedly issued a bounty of nearly 4 million rubles ($100,000) to be awarded to anyone who can deanonymise users of the Tor network.
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Scoop.it!
