What goes through the mind of a riot cop as he’s beating you senseless? Not needing much in the way of qualifications, a career in policing serves as a refuge, especially in times of crisis, for low ranking social profiles unable to afford an education or seeking to escape unemployment and precariousness.
The initial promise and subsequent disappointment of 21st Century Socialism – along with emergent self-organized reactions – is thoroughly analyzed in this interview with Venezuelan and Bolivian sociologists Miriam Lang and Edgardo Lander.
During the summer of 2017 the P2P Foundation’s Maïa Dereva travelled throughout France. Now she shares the stories of the commons she met along the way, never knowing what she would find in advance.
We must sign the peace treaty: we need a lasting agreement that doesn’t insist upon dividing the world between those who know and those who don’t; an armistice to liberate the world from the arrogance of experts.
Our revamped website brought along another major change: our bits are since then hosted at the Servidor Libre de Trayectorias Tecnológicas, managed by Hacklab Cochabamba via Codigo Sur and with the support of Hivos.
The rise of Podemos has provoked no shortage of stern omens in the international press, warning of hellish scenarios and dark times ahead were the breakout party to rise to office. One Spanish journalist has summarized those fears in four tidy paragraphs listing the legacy of the present establishment, reframed and handed back in cool satire.
“What does it mean to have €10K in fines? It’s money that never existed, so it can’t be claimed as missing from somewhere. If I pay, would it create wealth? Increase GDP? Socialize wealth, perhaps? Or only change hands? Whose hands are better?”
“Her intervention, full of circus and theatre, was a clear show of what each individual is, or could become — a powerful social actor. To achieve this, you need only perform an action similar to hers, a sign, a gesture capable of disrupting the usual programming.” A reflection on Art, Beauty and Glitter-bombing Mario Draghi by Leonidas Martín
The hacker culture is capable of reversing the relationships at play in the contribution economy. Hacking means appropriating tools and networks to put them to other uses. We’re amateurs, yes, but rebel amateurs…
My dear friend, I know what you’re going through. Neoliberalism has you possessed and you don’t know how to get rid of it. If it’s any consolation, let me tell you that you are not alone. Neoliberalism, more than an ideology or a policy, is a demon that has possessed everything. It has possessed the State and all its institutions, the hospitals, the schools, and the workplaces. It has also possessed us. It has taken our bodies, our desires and yearnings, our ideas and dreams. And once possessed, the demon of neoliberalism governs us under its one law: the law of competition.
“We met with John Holloway in the city of Puebla, Mexico, to ask him if, after everything that has happened in the past decade, from the progressive governments of Latin America to Podemos and Syriza in Europe, along with the problems for self-organised practices to exist and multiply, he still thinks that it is possible to “change the world without taking power”.
This interview with P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens was originally conducted in Spanish, with consecutive translation by our friend Andrés Delgado. For our blog, We’ve translated the questions in text and kept Michel’s audio answers in English.