Five Elements (and a coda) for the Counter-Hegemonic Project

Five basic elements, with linked explanatory text, to develop a comprehensible narrative of the transition to the P2P production method as the only substantive alternative to systemic crisis… with a confederalist coda that has a Prodhounian aftertaste.

1. Since the ’90s, we have been living through the first steps of the transition towards a P2P production method
2. While the forefront of this transition over the last couple of decades was in the immaterial realm (content, free software, etc.), today, it’s laying the foundations of a new Industrial Revolution.
3. The ultimate origin of the crisis is the reduction of the optimal scale of production, which the financial system has not adapted to, making it the “bubble-making machine” whose consequences we’re all paying for today. If large scale is still sought after today, it’s not because it generates greater efficiency, but because the rents derived from power (and irresponsibility it gives them) compensate managers for the inefficiencies of size and let them play in a market captured by financialization.
4. The P2P production method is based on the combination of the commons and dissipation of rents, allowing for a profound redefinition of the function and the power of capital and the market and therefore of forms of cooperation, competition and the remuneration of the factors of production.
5. It’s these tools of the P2P production method which, while still young, let us begin to aspire to a new, local reindustrialization and think of alternatives to the crisis and massive unemployment, generating autonomy for local communities and laying new foundations for cohesion and well-being.

Coda

The change in scale is not confined to the area of production. If the P2P production method brings a new dimension to what we think of as “public,” (based on the development of the already gigantic, productive, and universal commons) the management of common infrastructures and services must be localized, blazing a trail for the resurgence of the confederal principle as the basis for coordination among communities much smaller than the current large nation states.

And there’s more…

• “The ‘welfare state’ is dead – long live the partner state?“ by Michel Bauwens
• “The Homebrew Industrial Revolution“ by Kevin Carson

Translated by Steve Herrick of intepreters.coop from the original (in Spanish)

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