Athina and Michel (and others) then suggested, as a precaution, that a draft set of guiding principles be constructed to guide such ventures and others that might entail interactions with p2p organizations. Michel asked that I try to coordinate this effort since I had been vocal about my concerns. [If any of this mistates the ideas or intentions of principals, please correct as needed]

To achieve this, I started with a draft ethos for p2p in general and am moving on to draft interaction principles. I intend to add a section on best practices soon. Any other near-term addition ideas would be most welcome.

My intent is to build a normative document rather than an administrative charter. That is, it is meant to guide thinking about running p2p efforts, not to act as a policy sheet or corporate charter for one. Drafting those would be useful as well in boilerplate form, but that is not the current focus.

I have made some personal and perhaps excessively bold assertions in the document. Please call me on them or change them outright if unsuitable.

After the pig breeding patent had been granted, farmers “started to pay attention to the issue and are asking what this office is up to,” Tippe told the protesters. She collected the 5,000 individual complaints against the pig breeding patent. These complaints now have to be checked by the EPO and sent to Newsham for comments.

Hagen Henry: The ILO views cooperatives as important in improving the living and working conditions of women and men globally as well as making essential infrastructure and services available even in areas neglected by the state and investor-driven enterprises. Moreover, values that are at the heart of the cooperative movement are central to creating decent jobs. Cooperatives are close to a democratic, people-centred economy which cares for the environment, while promoting economic growth, social justice and fair globalization. Cooperatives play an increasingly important role in balancing economic, social and environmental concerns as well as in contributing to poverty prevention and reduction.

ILO Online: What is the impact of the current global economic crisis on cooperatives?

Hagen Henry: Available information suggests that, with few exceptions, cooperative enterprises across all sectors and regions are relatively more resilient to the current market shocks than their capital-centred counterparts. However, as for other enterprise types, the situation of cooperatives with regard to the crisis varies with the degree of dependency on demand and external financing, the degree of their diversification and also with the sector. We just commissioned a study, which will provide us with further, more in-depth information.

ILO Online: Can you give us a concrete example?

Hagen Henry: At the peak of the crisis cooperative banks were faced with an increase in membership and savings deposits and found it difficult to respond to this sudden growth in demand. So far cooperative banks have not announced any significant losses due to this crisis. Nevertheless, losses incurred by the German central bank of cooperatives (DZ), itself a stock company, show how cooperative banks could put themselves at a financial risk. In this reported case, cooperative specific control mechanisms were either not in place or failed. However, most cooperative banks have lessened their vulnerability and increased transparency mainly by investing in their proximity and in the real economy. Ethiopian coffee growers seem to be less affected by world market fluctuations than coffee producers who are not part of cooperative specific value chains.

ILO Online: Cooperative banks are more resilient to the financial crisis?

Hagen Henry: No cooperative bank seems to have applied for state aid so far. As the German example shows, this may not be interpreted as them not having been impacted negatively by the crisis. But self-help mechanisms, like member liability to further call, inter-cooperative bank guarantees, or reserve liabilities are being used before applying for external support. Both in the US American credit union system and in the German cooperative banking system these mechanisms have prevented member customers from losing any money ever since the Great Depression was over. What’s more, bankruptcies of cooperatives due to the crisis have not been reported, nor have employee lay offs.

ILO Online: Do the financial crisis and the new perception of cooperatives represent an opportunity for the ILO and its constituents?

Hagen Henry: Cooperatives are not “just” another form of business, they are not enterprises “en miniature”, but a specific, value-based business model for all sizes and activities. Just to mention famous examples like KPMG, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Best Western hotel chain, AP, which are all cooperatives. The crisis has led to a self interrogation about the right business model. Cooperatives are one interesting alternative model. They put a premium to longer term sustainability and profitability, to sharing benefits between their members who are the capital owners and the main users (lenders, borrowers); they factor in the needs of the local community, are highly transparent and – fundamentally – have a social agenda which does not prevent them from being sustainable and profitable at the same time.

ILO Online: What is the economic and social impact of cooperatives worldwide?

Modern theorists of producer cooperatives from Ward (1958) and Vanek (1970) onward have inadequately tackled this issue. As a rule, they have simply examined possible working modes of cooperative firms in capitalistic systems without asking themselves if a quantitative growth of cooperative firms with corresponding gains in efficiency may further the turn from capitalism to the new system. (Exceptions include Schweickart, 2002 and Dow, 2003).

Nonetheless, tracing the successive steps of a workable transition to a system of democratic firms is a subject of major interest.3 To start with, there can be little doubt that democratic firms will never outnumber capitalistic firms by a spontaneous process, for history has taught that no such process has ever been recorded to-date (see inter alia., Putterman, 1982 and 1984; Pagano 1991 and 1992; Gunn, 2000, pp. 451-55; Jossa and Cuomo, 2000, chap. XV). Many authors who have inquired into the reasons why democratic firms have difficulty asserting themselves in their own right have, however, provided conclusive evidence that the main obstacle to their spontaneous growth is by no means lesser efficiency.

As theoretical studies have shed light on numerous advantages of cooperative firms over their capitalistic ‘twins’, it is possible to argue that democratic firms are ‘merit goods’ which are capable of generating ‘external economies’ and would hence well deserve incentives from the public hand. Provided this is true, a parliament sharing the view of democratic firms as merit goods could be assumed to enforce a wide spectrum of benefits in favor of cooperatives and thereby encourage their proliferation with intent to spark off a transitional process.

A second possible scenario is a transition fuelled by a normal competition process. As is well known, firms are newly established and closed down day after day, and in capitalistic systems they face winding up whenever they prove unable to work at a profit. However, in contrast with the widely shared assumption that firms that do not report profits waste wealth, from our perspective this is only true of firms that fail to produce value added and it is a fact that firms can generate considerable value added even though they simply break even without reporting profits. On this assumption, when a firm faces insolvency in the ordinary course of business in a capitalistic market it could actually be in the best interests of the community to keep it going and have it run by its workers (see Engels, 1886, p. 389).

This is what might have happened in the so-called ‘red biennium’ in Italy, when Sen. Agnelli declared that he was prepared to transfer responsibility for the management of FIAT to the workers’ council. As times were not ripe for such a solution, this project came to nothing because of the opposition of trade unions. Salvemini (1928, p. 22) blamed this decision on “stout opposition from risk-averse leaders of the General Labor Confederation and the Socialist Party to a communist and anarchist design aimed to sharpen the crisis and give it a revolutionary spin”.

Gramsci also shared this view: “Union members – he argued – are attuned with a society founded on competition; they are no communists. No unions will ever endorse a radical overthrow of society: although they can provide the proletariat with able bureaucrats or industrial experts, they will never become the mainstay of proletarian power” (Gramsci, 1919-1920, p. 36).

In fact, one reason why history records no systematic transfer of insolvent firms to workers is that left-wing parties have never pro-actively worked towards this goal. It remains to be established if this is mainly due to lack of confidence in this solution or to the fear of a back-lash from industrialists. For our part, the assumption which is at the basis of this paper is that the findings of modern producer cooperative theory are providing clear evidence that a system of democratic firms can function properly provided it is organized in accordance with principles of economic efficiency.

Thus, there are reasons to assume that unions, left-wing parties and the greater part of the electorate and intelligentsia will gradually espouse both the equation of a self-managed firm system with “true socialism” and Lenin’s belated insight that cooperation “nearly always coincides fully with socialism”. And the moment when the cooperation/socialism equation becomes a hegemonic notion (along with the idea of the feasibility of the process), a systematic takeover of firms in financial crisis by workers is likely to start a transition to socialism.

But there is also a ‘third road’ towards ‘true socialism’. No major political shift – Hayek argued – is obtainable through mass propaganda; the problem is just to persuade intellectuals (Hayek, 1983, p. 192; see, also, Keynes, 1936, last page). If this is correct and intellectuals are won over to the idea of a system of democratic firms as a major advancement over capitalism, this far-reaching political shift could be set off by a majority vote in parliament abolishing wage labor in ways and to the extent deemed appropriate in the circumstances prevailing from time to time.

In line with Hayek’s and Keynes’s suggestion, once intellectuals have fully interiorized this notion, the general public would gradually assimilate the beliefs of their leaders and, sooner or later, a parliament would probably be in a position to pass the legislative provisions required for implementing socialism by democratic means. From our perspective, the most effective measure would be an act of parliament simultaneously converting equities of joint stock companies into bonds of equal value and limited companies into firms run by their own workers.

What the rebuilding of the washed out road in Polihale State Park teaches us is that we can do more than that. We can apply the DIY spirit on a civic scale.

Aneesh Chopra, the Secretary for Technology of the Commonwealth of Virginia, recently told me why he liked the term “commonwealth” better than “state”: commonwealth emphasizes the value that we create by coming together. Technology provides us with new ways to coordinate, new ways to govern and to regulate, but we should never forget that these are merely means. The end is a better society. And that starts with us.

We need to rediscover government as an enabler, not a solution provider; as a platform for our own innovation, a lever for our own work, not as the deus ex machina that we’ve paid to do for us what we could be doing for ourselves.

Bifo has been a pivotal figure in Italian social movements for that past 40 years. He co-founded the legendary Radio Alice (1977), the first pirate radio station in Italy, the magazine A/Traverso (1977-81), and Rekombinant (2000), an online network environment that focuses on radical philosophy, urban conflicts, media activism, networking art, knowledge economy, western psychopathology, autonomous universities, and institutions of the common. More recently he produced the autonomous street television network Orfeo TV (2002), which sparked a national network of pirate micro TV stations to counter the media monopoly of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

This event marks the long awaited publication of the first two Bifo’s books in English: Felix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography (Palgrave, 2008); and Ethereal Shadows: Communication and Power in Contemporary Italy (with Marco Jacquemet and Gianfranco Vitali, Autonomedia, 2009).

This site, run by common citizens, provides open information about pandemic surveillance.

Quebec Government hired the firm BCP – among several projects – to set up a secret ‘Pandemic Watch Portal’, only accessible to 20 officials from Health and Human Services (ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du Québec). BCP received up to $725,000/year since 2005.

This information was revealed to the public in May 2008, when reporter Denis Lessard from La Presse investigated (via the Access to Information Act) about Quebec’s bird flu surveillance activities. (Here is an English translation of this article : tinyurl.com/dffuab.)

The president of BCP, John Parisella, is also the actual communication consellor of Prime Minister of Quebec, Jean Charest.

DIY Zonegrippeaviaire.com translates bird flu and pandemic preparedness breaking news in French and blogs about these issues. The community of practice feeding the site Zonegrippeaviaire generates an average of 50 posts per day. The official gov site Pandémie Québec (www.pandemiequebec.ca/fr/actualites/actualites.aspx) publishes less than 12 news per year.

Quebec Governement rejected DIY Zonegrippeaviaire in June 2008. Officials said social media are ‘not credible and not mature enough’. This decision is based on a document (written by Services Québec), entitled «Les médias sociaux et la communication du risque» (Social media and risk communication). This document was not published by the government. It was obtained via the Access to Information Act: tinyurl.com/9fd6p4

This document concludes: Invest little time and money, and wait untill social media achieve both greater maturity and credibility.

And exactly when that will be?

In the meantime, Quebecois newspapers propagate the media myth of the immature citizen (bit.ly/SXDe). [Translation] ‘Sure thing, it’s not tomorrow that we will see bloggors from Quebec play the role of citizen-reporters writing novel news, and being invited to press conferences, as it is the case in Europe and in United States. I think the model of citizen-media is not here.’

And why exactly is that so?

The next morning a small group gathered over breakfast at Peter’s house to discuss the possibilities for starting a community currency on the island. It took little more than an hour to reach a common vision and a plan for a currency that would initially be issued as vouchers by a popular local café, then shift over into a credit clearing association anchored by a few trusted issuing members. The expectation is that this first node might be the “seed crystal” that can precipitate the organization of similar small clearing associations that will eventually be linked up to form an Auckland area exchange network.

Returning to Auckland later that morning, Laurence hurried me over to the studios of New Zealand National Radio to record an interview with Kim Hill to be aired on her popular Saturday morning program. [That program was aired on April 11 and can be heard at www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/sat/2009/04/11/thomas_greco_community_currencies. During the following week I heard favorable comments from many people who had heard that broadcast].

That same evening, (Wednesday, April 8), a group of about 90 people gathered at Auckland University to hear my presentation on, Money, Power, Democracy, and War: Finding the path toward global peace, harmony, and prosperity. This was an updated version of a presentation I first gave in Tucson a couple years ago.

Waitakere is one of five cities (boroughs?) that comprise the Auckland metropolitan region. It seems that the new right-wing national government is determined to replace these five city administrations with a single “super city” administration, a move which will further disempower people and local communities. It is opposed by the majority of residents and likely to face serious citizen opposition. For now, the separate city governments are still functioning. Around noontime on the next day (Thursday), Laurence and I met with some staff people of the Waitakere city to discuss community economic development strategies.

In Wellington, I gave a presentation called, The Political Money System: The Story of Central Banks, Inflation, and Legal Tender, which I began with a statement that I had posted on my blog in September, 2008:

The present disorder in the financial markets and the cascading failures of financial institutions come as no surprise. Those who recognize the impossibility of perpetual exponential growth and who understand how compound interest is built into the global system of money and banking expect the continuation of periodic “bubbles” and “busts,” each of increasing amplitude, until the systems shakes itself apart.

As I’ve said before, and as I argue forcefully in my new book (which I’m told has just come off the press), the separation of money and state is something that is urgently needed if any dignified form of civilization is to survive the deepening multi-dimensional global crisis.

To Carterton where I was the guest of Helen and Alf Dew. Helen is a living example of sustainable living on a largely self-sufficient urban homestead. I hope that she will some day write her own book detailing her approaches to gardening, water harvesting, food preserving, nutrition and the various other aspects of “the art of living.”

The national Community Currencies Conference (April 17-19) brought together well over 100 enthusiastic participants who convened at the Quaker Settlement in Wanganui to share information and discuss new possibilities. My Keynote presentation delivered on Saturday morning (April 18) was titled, Reclaiming The Credit Commons: The Key to Sustainability and Relocalization. Prefaced with a brief outline of my vision of societal metamorphosis, I argued that liberating the exchange process from monopoly control by means of localization and popularization of credit is a necessary prerequisite to achieving a steady-state economy and the devolution of power to local communities.

On Monday, the day before my departure for Australia, Laurence took a few of us on a tour of the Environmental Center and a couple community gardens around Wanganui. Towards the end of our tour he received a call from Merania, a reporter who writes for the local daily newspaper. She wanted to do an interview for a feature story, so we hurried back to the Environmental Center to meet her there. She spent quite a bit of time asking questions not only of me but also of Helen Dew and Margaret Jefferies, conference presenters who were in our party. Merania called back later in the evening to say that the editors had liked the story so much that it would be a front page feature in the next morning’s edition.

Let me try to briefly explain the general idea:

The biggest problem with money is that it basically introduces artificial scarcity of one particular good – the money itself. All the other problems are a logical consequence from the mentioned problem – interest, fiat money, credit. Barter exchange does not have this problem because it does not introduce any scarcity that have not existed before. The only problem with barter is that it does not works when a wide variety of goods are traded.

This is called “double coincidence of wants” which spoils things down. So basically barter would be nice if it worked at all (but it does not).

I propose a kind of generalization of barter which I call “Circular Exchange Trading System” or CETS. The ordinary barter is a special case of circular exchange of goods where there are only 2 participant in the exchange. General idea is that lots of people declare what they have for sale and what they seek to buy and the computerized system offers them appropriate circular barter transaction. Details are not important at this level of abstraction.

What is important here is that “double coincidence of wants” problem disappears because the guy you deliver what you have and the guy you obtain what you need form are different.