Friday, March 25, 2016

How do we transform society?

Following up on the last post:

 Regarding Bauwens' comments on accelerationism in the initial post, he's right that we don't gain power via direct political power. It requires instead for us to "create prefigurative livelihoods which actually embody different post-capitalist logics, and to build social and political forces around this concrete transformative change."

I'm currently reading Dark Money by Jane Myer, which documents how the libertarian capitalists took back power in government. It was not by direct contributions to candidates or direct participation in that government but by building subversive networks of think tanks disguised as philanthropic foundations that propagandized their 'free market' ideology. Through this the wealthy could 'donate' tax-free dollars to inculcate these values in schools, media, the courts and finally legislators. You can hear these values verbatim any time a Republican legislator opens their mouth, when out comes the pre-fab ideas and laws of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

So granted, the P2P Commons espouses different values, but must use a similar strategy in that it starts by building the base infrastructure of livlihoods and practices that exemplify and embody these post-capitalist logics. In so doing this will filter into larger social and political forces to transform the system. We're seeing this in the Sanders candidacy, where he wins by far among the Millennials, who have been inculcated in the new values via social media and its P2P sharing infrastructure. This will only accelerate when more of us start producing material goods via 3-D printers and in-home alternative energy production, thereby creating local micro-economies that are nonetheless connected globally via the internet of things.

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