Bibliography for the Global Political Economy

Source

Original title: P2P, THE COMMONS AND THE CRITIC OF GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

Proposed and developed by Örsan Şenalp.

Bibliography: P2P, THE COMMONS AND THE CRITIC OF GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

A. PEER PRODUCING A COMMONS KNOWLEDGE POOL FOR THE EMANCIPATORY TRANSITION

Since the previous global crisis, which had triggered the launch of global neoliberal restructuring known as Globalisation in the late 60s, there have been major contributions made from critical perspectives to understand the expansion of capitalist mode of production and the formation of the world market. Much of the insights were developed by political economy theorists from the West and the Center. Taken the first and second generation classical work of those like Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, Vladimir I. Lenin, Bukharin, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Polanyi, Antonio Gramsci, third and forth generation classics came out in this period. Althusser, Foucoult, Lefebvre, Balibar, De Bord, Deleuze, Miliband, Poulantzas, Palloix, Murray, Hymer, Wallerstein, Amin, Arrighi, Baran, Sweezy, Breverman, Tronti, Negri, Verno, Cox, van der Pijl, Waterman among many others have re-worked on the state, classes, production, labour, capital, power, ideology, agency, and so forth, and had added new insights to make a common sense of the ever changing world historical structures, the collective social agency, as well as possiblities and limits for radical emancipatory change. In this post-war and New-Left era, both Gramsci and Polanyi had been rediscovered and their work stimulated, especially by Poulantzas’ work, the development of varying analysess of the transnational dimension of the changing character of capitalism.

This fourth generation, and their students, have spent precious attention on the TNCs, internationalization of the capital, the state and the classes on the one hand, and the increasingly dominating role of information and knowledge in the current shifts in the world of production and labour, in relation to the dynamic structural forces currently at work. Amongst the third generation theorists, Robert W. Cox was one of those who successfully synthesized insights taken from first, second and third generation theories. He renewed and applied Gramsci and Poulantzas’ concepts and ways of thinking on power and counter-power, so that it become possible to developed a transnational and trans-level systematic critique of political economy from the level of production to inter-state system. After serving long time as an ILO expert, Cox became academic at Colombia University and delivered his seminal articles thourhg which the introduced the ‘Gramscian Turn’ in socal theory, to the International Relations discipline. His first articles published, in Millennium Journal of International Studies in the early 80s, paved a way for the emergence of critical globalization of political economy as an attempt to recover the gap between artificially alienated and disciplined fields of scientific inquiry. Cox successfully translated basic concepts of Gramsci, like hegemony, historic bloc, passive revolution, so on to the world level. This innovation broke a ground not only in Rrealism-Liberlism dominated mainstream IR. With his book, the Production, Power and World Orders: Social Forces in the Making of History came out in 1987, Cox developed his original concepts as state-society complex, internationalization of production, internationalization of state, and international class formation, based on empirical facts. The implementation of historical materialist method to the analysis of transnational relations in this book has been a great contribution to the major debates especially on the state, the capital, and labour, as well as later debates as globalization and global governance. Since then the work of Cox and his close followers as Stephan Gill and Mark Rupert, as well as theoretical and research innovations by Kees van der Pijl, Henk Overbeek, Otto Holman in Europe, has bridged the seperate islands of IR to the debates and reseach in other fileds of social sciences. This strand is known today as Neo-Gramscian critical global or international political eonomy. As those other innovations we will mention below this strand too based their analysis on the critique of the earlier and current theories of Post-Fordism, inspired by regulation school Aglietta, Boyer, Lipietz, Jessop. While doing so, they did erspond Robin Murrey's criticque of isolating of incquiry by either focusing on the state or the capital, as in the analyses Palloix'did on the accumulation or as in the famous Poulantzas-Miliband State debate. Responding Murray's warning the primary objective of Neo-Gramsicans was to anaylse state-society complexes and class formation processes in dynamic-moving and trans-level context of world historical structures. In order to do so, they have developed what is called transnational historical materialst method, that takes dialectics of the agency-structure serious and develops the pespective of internationalization or transnationalization of production by critical re-eveluation of the methodological nationalism of the regulationist post-fordism theories.

On the other hand, other very important analyses and innovations have been made by critical social theorists, or others known as neo-, open-, post- Marxist, post-structuralist, as well as theorists, thinkers, and researchers associated with political strands as Trostkysm, Situationism, Autonomism, Workerism and Anarchism. Amongst these of course comes Habermas, Chomsky, Touraine, Zizek, Castells, Gorz, Hist, Thompson, Tronti, Verno, Negri, Bifo, so on so forth. Amongst these strands, which includes the Regulationists and their critics, there emerged other innovative inquiry towards the subjectiviy and agency. While post- or non- structuralist, Anarchist, Autonomist and Workerist, perspectives left out the study of capital-state-society hence class dimensions, they did developed an creative and insightful analsis that can shed light on the class formation processes at the molecular level. So while the commons understading on role of collective identities, gender, ethnicity, so on out plays in the compex system of social-individual, others have developed theories and research on social-space and time, like Lefebvre and De Bord, communication theorists where, how, and through wihch molecular processes consituting formation of social structures and classes, out plays and bridge the inner- and intra- relationships between reflective-social organisms as part of net of soical relationships at the meso level. Then there were those further developed insifghts with findings in the fiels of technology, science, environment, and we could have develop a broad commons repertuar that allows today us to make better sense of the forces and relations of production, especially on the impact of communication, information and transportation technologies and networks. For instance Castell's, Beck's, and Dickens', work on ICTs and network effect did brake a ground in the 90s as well as the work of Autonoists and Workeris strands. Hardt and Negri delivered their magnum opus ‘the Empire’, just before 9/11, and debate and exhcange srapked out of closed circles, in parallel to worsenin crises and emerging new wars. Empired was followed by the Multitude and the Commonwealth, exchanegs intensified. In our view Empire constituted controversial and comprehensive post-disciplinary and post-structural 'global political economy' analysis, and when studying the changes currently taking place at the production level, successfully identified the potential and actual power of the emerging new productive forces, as well as the future tendencies, towards rising of networked power relationships within the production processes and beyond, over power structures at state and world order levels. In this sense the work of Hardt and Negri was producing an analysis similar to that of Cox', yet without being informed by the accumulated work in the field now called critical global political economy. Probably because of the controversies emerged around the post-modernity of the Empire, the research and the theory at the critical global political economy front remained immune to the innovation and insights coming from this latter strand. In a sense, Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth was turning point from Autonomy, and Workerism, to Post-Autonomy and Post-Workerism, becasue of ts re-engagement with the State, the Capital and the Ruling.. Classes. Thus, it was also post-post-structuralism. However, Empire and the perspectives, debates and research around it has included very limited empirical analysis of the relationship between its original approaches on networked subjectivity, the comons, peer prodiction, so on and the catagories of the theories of transnationalization (of production, capital, state and class formation processes), and more importantly on the inter and intra-class struggles re-emerging in the 90s. The ‘Empire’ however has accelerated the theorisation of networked collaborative social relatioships, peer production, and commons thinking and practice, which bears major importance for the emancipatory collective action. This theorisation there, sheds more lights, also based on the critiue of the Post-Fordism, by focusing on the informationalisation and cognitive aspects of the change in the late 20th and early 21st century capitalism. It provides insights on how informatics has been transforming the key relationships in the capitalist mode mode of production, and triggering its terminal crisies, from the patterns of production to ownership, from distribution to consumption. Which provides deeper understanding about how to make sense of the class formation and struggle processes for labour in broader society and social struggles level, for instance of the role of informatics and cybernetics both as base of increasing structural power of the ruling classes. Also about how emerging mode of informational production, provided material, ideational and institutional foundation of the global financial architecture, being entangled woth transnational modular commodity-production networks built on ICTs how other modes of production that are existing in agriculture, trade, industry and services at regional, national and local levels across the world are being incorporated in a new labour division and hierarchy. However empirically and theoretically thin understanding of the trans-formation of social classes, states and inter-state system, in this front, or a historical and materialist understanding of transnational social relations, and global systemic change, creates an important gap.

Therefore, critical global political economy theory started with Cox, Gill and Van der Pijl, and developed by people like Overbeek, Holman, Carroll, Van Apeldoorn, Harris, Robinson, on the one hand and informational cognitive capitalism theories catalyzed by the work of Negri, Bifo, Castells and taken up by the most recent generation of thinkers like Lazzarato, Boutang, de Angelis, Lovink, Nossiter, Huws, Bauwens, Terranova, Pasquinelli, Kleiner, Fusch, Rigi among many others, would benefit from a fruitful exchange. Potentially a p2p-commons update on the understanding of the 'transnationalization of production', which as process overlaps with the informatization of economy, networkisation of societies, and neoliberal globalization offensive, and vice versa; a global political economy upgrade for the latter theories, in our opinion, is urgently needed. Such an exchange would provide much more clear understanding over the complexity of global power structures, states, classes, the power and weaknesses of partnerships and alliances between capital and the state elite which creates divisions & scarcities among masses, using the structural power they hols, to rule and take advantage of the human societies. Such clear understanding would help to level the field at least for a bit, opening up broader possibilities to build up more efficient alternatives, creative and assertive counter strategies that would eventually mobilize more people to take initiative of their own lives, diminish all sort of alienation in and between their societies, and favor themselves and other peoples globally.

From the above departure point, we create the below as an peer produced commons resource, that will include text books, articles, audio and video materials addressing and broadening such dialogue mentioned to fill in the gap identified. In a historical context of deepening systemic crisis of human civilization, under serious threats of global wars, natural and human disasters caused by the current mode of production, as well as the emerging new reality and understanding of p2p and the commons which has, it is clear by now, the potential of what Marx called 'associated mode of production' more then one and a half century; and promising what Kropotkin called 'communal mutual aid society' earlier in the previous century. Therefore we invite and encourage those all who is interested to collaborate with us on this project. In order to be able to make any entry please register to the P2P-Foundation wiki first. Please make your entries under the relevant section by copying the similar format used for the items already on the list. Let us enrich a common pool of emancipatory knowledge and analyses, as a base for commons action and alternatives, to realize commons transitions towards fair, just, peaceful and beautiful worlds.

B. UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD

1. World Historical Structures

• Transnational Capitalism

• Cognitive Capitalism

• Informational Capitalism

• Empire

• Global Capitalism

• New Imperialism

• The Capitalist World System

• Uneven and Combined Development of Capitalism

• Exchange, polemic and critics

2. The State and the Inter-State System

• Internationalization and Transnationalsiation of the State

• Global Governance

• Transnational State

• Empire

• Semi-peripherial States and State Capitalism

• Exchange, polemic and critics

3. The Value and the Capital

• Internationalization and Transnationalisation of Capital

• Cognitive, Informational, Networked Capital

• Global Financial Architecture

• New International Labour Division

• Global Production Networks

• Transnational Modular Production-Commodity Networks

• The Commons and the Commonwealth

• Exchange, polemic and critics

4. The Production and the Labour

• Internationalization and Transnationalsiation of Production

• Peer production

• Immaterial Labour

• Affective Labour

• Digital Labor

• Free Labour

• Precarious Labour

• Networked Labour

5. The Agency

• Transnational Capitalist Class

• Netarchical Class

• Vectoral Class

• Multitude

• Precariat, [Cybertariat]], Cogniteriat

• New Middle Class, Enterprenual Class

• New Labour and Global Working Class

• New Social Network Movements

• New Social Network Movement Unionism

• New Cooperativism

• New Internationalism

• Exchange, polemic and critics

6. Other Categories

• Power

• Civil Society

• Culture and Ideology

• Media and Communication

• Science and Technology

• Singularity, Meta-data

• Survelliance

B. CHANGING THE WORLD

1. Future Scenarios

• P2P Theory: Bauwens, Commons Transition Plans

• Neo-Gramscian Projections for future World Orders

• Accelerationist Rapture

• Zapatismo Urbano: Holloway and changing the world without taking power

• Transnational and Bio-Regional Mututal Aid Societies: Application of Kroportik and Buchkin's at global level

2. Commons-P2P Based Transition Perspectives

• Global Collaborative Commons

• Bio-regional Governance of the Commons

• Commune of Europe: Post-Autonomous, Post-Workerist and Euro-Communist Perspective

• Commons Strategy Group, P2P Foundation and Commons Transition

• Global Villages, resilient communities vision (transition towns,...)

3. Community projects, networks and alternative building

• Open knowledge, self-learning and science communities

• Floss projects

• Online creation communities

• Peer production, distribution and consumption networks

• Co-working spaces

• Co-living spaces

• Fab-labs

• Maker Spaces

• Democratic self-governance

• Workers owned cooperative communities

4. Movements, NGOs, unions, parties: Putting alternatives in global action

• Uprisings, Forums and assemblies

- Arab Spring

- Occupy

- 15M

- Gezi

• Autonomous networks

- Squatters net

- Transition towns

- Global villages

• Political Parties

- European Left Party: Podemos, Syriza, De Link, Communist Re-foundation,

- European Greens: Green Parties

• Progressive NGO and CSOs

- P2P Foundation

- Corporate Europe Observatory

- Transnational Institute

- On the Commons

• NGO, CSO, Union, Left Party Think-tanks Networks

- ATTAC

- Seattle to Brussels

- Our World is Not for Sale

- Friends of the Earth

- Transform

• Networked Platforms of Party, Union, CSOs, and NGOs, Thnik-tanks

- Alter-Summit

- Blockupy

• Broader Convergence and Networking Spaces

- DeGrowth

- Economics and the Commons

- Chaos Computer Congress

- World Social Forum

- World Forum of Alternatives

Reading List

M. Castells,

C. Fusch,

J. Rigi,

B. Holmes,

G. Lovink,

N. Rossiter,

M. Berlinguer,

P. Moore,

G. Dafermos,

P. Gerbaudo,

F. Stalder

B. van Apeldoorn

R. W. Cox,

S. Gill,

H. Overbeek,

O. Hollman

W.I. Robinson,

K. vad der Pijl

W. Carroll

P. Waterman

B. Guiterrez

M.F. Morell

The Dramatic Rise of Peer-to-Peer Communication within the emancipatory movements Reflections of an International Labour, Social Justice and Cyber Activist [ https://www.academia.edu/7358045/The_Dramatic_Rise_of_Peer-to-Peer_Communication_within_the_emancipatory_movements_Reflections_of_an_International_Labour_Social_Justice_and_Cyber_Activist]

Transnational Networks of Radical Labour Research and (H)acktivism by Örsan Şenalp and Mehmet Gürsan Şenalp, forthcoming in 2015 [1]