Fourth Generation Civilization Substack Newsletter of Michel Bauwens

Context

The Fourth Generation Civilization According to Michel Bauwens

Olivier:

"To understand Michel Bauwens’ thinking, one must first grasp his historical framework. He distinguishes three great generations of civilization that preceded our own:

• The first generation: agrarian and tribal societies, based on kinship and land.

• The second generation: empires, marked by centralized administration and hierarchical systems of power.

• The third generation: nation-states, born from the Treaty of Westphalia and founded on territorial sovereignty, capitalist markets, and an extractive economy.

For Bauwens, this third generation is in crisis. It is no longer capable of solving global problems — climate change, massive inequality, social fragmentation. It is reaching its limits. And it is precisely from this crisis that the necessity of a fourth generation emerges.

The Pillars of the Fourth Generation:

Bauwens does not merely diagnose the crisis; he proposes an alternative model. The fourth generation civilization would rest on four pillars:

• Economy of mutual coordination: Neither pure market nor centralized planning, but horizontal and decentralized cooperation.

• Cosmolocalism: Produce physically what is heavy, and share globally what is light (knowledge, designs).

• Primacy of the commons: Resources and knowledge managed by communities of users, not by the state or the market.

Decentralized governance: Using blockchain and cryptocurrencies to create transparency and trust in distributed organizations.

This is not a utopia, he clarifies. It is a working hypothesis. The seeds of this new world already exist in emerging practices — P2P platforms, digital commons, platform cooperatives. The challenge is to amplify them and connect them together."

(https://olivierastrobiomirror.substack.com/p/the-fourth-generation-and-the-air?)

Notes from Michel Bauwens:

1. primacy of the commons does not mean 'commons only'
2. recognition of the usefulness of blockchain and crypto-based technologies does similarly not mean 'blockchain only'

Contents

Less well edited primary versions of my articles are collected here:

My 'Fourth Civilization' Substack newsletter is at https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/archive

• 1: Towards a Fourth Generation Civilization. Why this substack by Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation.

• 2: Towards Mutual Coordination Economics. Why we should pay attention to mutual coordination as a concept for the next civilization.

• 3: On the Importance of Seed Forms for the Next Civilization: An overview of fifteen years of research by the P2P Foundation.

• 4: Why We Need Real-Time Public Ledger Organizations: RTPLO's might be the 'commons-based' institutions that we need to change the value regime.

• 5: Why We Need 'Crypto for Real': A proposal to link up the open ecosystems for crypto coordination, with the real-life mutualization of provisioning.

• 6: The Fate of Tribes in a Cosmo-Local World: A more personal travelogue that starts in a Lebanese mountain community and ends up in a network nation.

• 7: The Transhumanist Technological Quest Is a Religious Quest: Recovering our technological unconscious.

• 8: Understanding the Emergence of Neo-Venetian Crypto-Networks: Why the prefigurative self-provisioning of mutual coordination infrastructures by the crypto-nomadic networks has a macro-historical importance.

• 9: Three Scenarios for a Turbo-Charged Crypto-Future.

• 10: Shifting from a Commodity-Based Value Regime to a Contributory Value Regime.

• 11: The Age of Trans-Local Self-Organized CoordiNations

• 12: Why Ordo-Communalism is Necessary: on the Ordo-Communal State.

• 13: Getting Ready for the Five Thousand Year Shift in Value Regime: An overview of signposts towards the civilizational shift in the direction of <contribution-based>, <thermodynamically informed> <mutual coordination> economics.

• 14: From the Commons for Capital to Capital for the Commons: How an important book, Assets in Common, introduces the shift towards a Stewardship Economy.

• 15: How Peer Production and Web3 Governance Mechanisms May Prefigure a Isonomic World Order: Is what we are waiting for perhaps not Democracy, but Isonomia ?

• 16: What Kind of Money Do We Need for the Next Value Revolution ?: Beyond fiat money and crypto, how do we measure and reward systemic contributions, i.e. contribution to common infrastructural and care value ?

• 17. Who Can Change the World Today ? Is there a new agent of historical change ? Could it be the commoners ? But if so: allied to who ?

• 18. What Would a Commons-Centric Society or Civilization Look Like ? (Ethical Economy + Partner State + Commons): Adding the commons institutions to the mix: Transforming societies from a national bi-institutional format (market+state) to a cosmo-local tri-institutional format (market-state + commons).

• 19: Why Human Contributive Labor Remains the Creative Principle of Human Society: The salvific and ex-tropic implications of the medieval Christian vision of human work as spiritual activity. (with excerpts from the study: “From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body".

• 20: The Construction of the Post-Civilizational Civium Has Begun: Why the confederation of more than a dozen translocal popup villages in Chiang Mai is a historical pivot

• 21: A Global History of Societal Regulation: Why commons-based institutions now need to regulate the market and state, ‘cosmo-locally’.

• 22: The Cosmo-Local Plan for Our Next Civilization. Towards a convergence of the local bioregional resilient production efforts with the global coordination and 'Capital for the Commons' capacities of Web3.

• 23: The Three Civilizational Priorities of the Next Societal Transition: Can We Truly Change Our Civilizational Model? What we can learn from Peter Pogany's 'Rethinking the World'.

• 24: AI and the Advent of the Age of the Brahmin Workers. The pivot towards P2P AI has just begun.

• 25: Looking at the Evolution of our World Through the Lens of Coordination Systems

• 26: What Kind of Spiritual Revival Can We Expect at the End of This Civilizational Cycle ?

• 27: Is Trump the Unwitting Historical Agent of Cosmolocal Accelerationism ?

• 28: Should We Expect a Spiritual Revolution?

• 29. The State of the Commons in 2025

• 30: Suggestions for a Commons-Based Strategy of Social Change

• 31: Who Can Change the World Today

• 32: China as the First Predictive State

To be updated

• The Geopolitics of Cosmo-Localism (I): Understanding the upcoming conflict and potential synergy of East, West, and Digital. Part I: the post-Civilizational thesis. [1]

• The Geopolitics of Cosmo-Localism (II): How the cosmo-local phygital commons change the world order The new trinitary world order is East - West - Digital, NOT the ‘West vs the Rest’ [2]

• My relationship with Satoshi Nakomoto: a historical review. An overview and discussion of the communication and relation between the Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, and the P2P Foundation, Michel Bauwens. [3]

• We need Commons-Based Instruments of Expansion!! Dispatches from (Zu)Kas, the civilization-building Web3 Oasis in Southern Turkey. [4]

Thematic Clustering

Characteristics of the Transition

Intro:

• Getting Ready for the Five Thousand Year Shift in Value Regime

• The State of the Commons in 2025

• Shifting from a Commodity-Based Value Regime to a Contributory Value Regime

• Global History of Societal Regulation

• Cosmo-Local Plan for Our Next Civilization

• The Three Civilizational Priorities of the Next Societal Transition

• Suggestions for a Commons-Based Strategy of Social Change

• How Peer Production and Web3 Governance Mechanisms May Prefigure a Isonomic World Order

• What Kind of Money Do We Need for the Next Value Revolution

• The Construction of the Post-Civilizational Civium Has Begun

Process

• On the Importance of Seed Forms for the Next Civilization

• Understanding the Emergence of Neo-Venetian Crypto-Networks

• Why We Need Real-Time Public Ledger Organizations

• Three Scenarios for a Turbo-Charged Crypto-Future: The Age of Trans-Local Self-Organized CoordiNations

• What Would a Commons-Centric Society or Civilization Look Like ? (Ethical Economy + Partner State + Commons): Adding the commons institutions to the mix: Transforming societies from a national bi-institutional format (market+state) to a cosmo-local tri-institutional format (market-state + commons).

Characteristics

• Towards Mutual Coordination Economics. Why we should pay attention to mutual coordination as a concept for the next civilization.

• Looking at the Evolution of our World Through the Lens of Coordination Systems

• Why We Need 'Crypto for Real'

Discussion

• Why Human Contributive Labor Remains the Creative Principle of Human Society

Controversies

• The Transhumanist Technological Quest Is a Religious Quest

• AI and the Advent of the Age of the Brahmin Workers. The pivot towards P2P AI has just begun.

• What Kind of Spiritual Revival Can We Expect at the End of This Civilizational Cycle / Should We Expect a Spiritual Revolution?

• Is Trump the Unwitting Historical Agent of Cosmolocal Accelerationism ?