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[ox-en] Politics and Oekonux

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I was warned by Stefan Merten that there is a familiar pattern after Oekonux conferences: first people get very enthusiastic, they have lots of ideas, then that dissipates and progressively dies off. Well, while I’m certainly more calm about the whole thing now than straight after, my interest in getting involved has not dissipated completely (yet J).

Michel Bauwens recently wrote that there should be a turn to the political. This got me thinking: What is the political purpose of Oeknoux?

When there is a chance that people who have no clue about what use or exchange value are… will nonetheless massively support an organisation like the Pirate Party because they like free culture… I contend that the purpose of Oekonux is to articulate and communicate to these people just how the rejection of exchange value contains the germ form of a future society based on emancipation and cooperation. Or at least that P2P can spread beyond music and film… I also doubt that exchange will disappear completely. In short, Oekonux needs to connect the rejection of copyright to a much wider social critique.

So I return to what I wrote about a while ago…

How to get the message out better? 

How to get new people interested and involved?

Two things come to mind: a book and a website. Other media such as comix would have to wait until there is something that they can refer people to..

I’ve said previously that in my view a totally academic book would have limited impact by not reaching possible targets in the non-academic universe. Anyway, I know there are some people (Athina, Stefan Merten, others?) who are interested in this project so I will concentrate on the website, though I am of course willing to help with contacts, preparation of prospectus, editing, etc. Or: should a pre-TOC be established now? CFP? 

This brings me back to the website. I posted some suggestions before, and apart from Stefan Merten, no-one responded, so I take it that there is limited interest so far out there in getting involved. So in a sense that liberates me because I can now say: this is what I think should be done.

What purpose should the website have? 

- Should it be an archive of texts (like now)? In my view there should of course be an archival section, but as Franz argued a while back it should not be a comprehensive archive, this already exists (P2P…).

- Should it be a site for spirited discussion between highly involved people about the merits of this or that aspect of P2P economics (or whatever you want to call it)? No, this is the function of the mailing list.

I think the website should have these main functions:

(a) it should articulate clearly how peer production is a germ form for a society without exchange - short texts, slogans, etc

(b) it should have some longer theories to back up (a): this already exists

(c) it should provide concrete examples of how peer production is working now (free software and hardware) 

(d) it should provide concrete examples of how peer production might be applied to other sectors. This is a key point. What can be done to extend peer production?

(e) finally, it should offer some means of dialogue between the ox community and others

Concretely:

(a) These definitions should be written collaboratively by whoever wants to lend a hand and then submitted to the list within a reasonable time frame so that the process does not drag on forever

(b) at this stage it is not cost-effective to redo everything so I am thinking we can have links to the old website for particularly interesting texts

(c) pretty obvious, no need to dwell on it – a page of links would do

(d) I think there needs to be a focused effort by the community to come up with short, sharp summaries of how peer production can start being applied right now to new areas. For example, there has been a discussion on p2p and ox lists about education. But without going into details about how this would work in a future where everything is free, how could peer production be used _right now_ in the education sector?

(e) interactivity will help to attract people.  What I an suggesting is that people with a strong interest in peer production (basically anyone on the lists, though obviously people like Christian and Michel for example (who have big websites) or Smari or whomever would agree to debate all comers on an open wiki. This could be restricted to certain days (once or twice a week) during a month. We would "advertise" this widely over the net – Oekonux monthly / ? /quarterly dialogues or whatever. We could publish a summary after each one.

I am happy to help coordinate within reason but (a) (d) and (e) rely on community input. If no-one speaks up, I will let it slide – its not like I don’t have enough to do already… 

cheers

Mathieu

PS. @ List: I did find it hard to keep up with posts, especially as I am using a web browser to access this email address so I essentially skipped some threads – though I might read them later – it is probably best to take more time to compose and reply messages…

PPS. @ Stefan M: in my view, its important to be as inclusive as possible. I understand that some statements seem to be going in a different direction than what you would want but at the end of the day you and Michel have a lot more in common than separates you… i.e. belief in the goodness of P2P… let's keep borrowing from Obama and focus on what unites, not divides… 



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