A section on anything that has a bearing on the history of P2P and the Commons.

See our article that attempts to historicise the forms taken by the commons: History and Evolution of the Commons

Our own recommendations

This is the key world-historical book that helps to frame the evolution of relational models in society, and analyzes the previous transitions:

• The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. by Kojin Karatani. Duke University Press, 2014 [1]

A good follow-up, because it describes a particular transition form one value regime to another, is

• The First European Revolution, by Richard Moore.

It describes the change from the post-Roman 'plunder economy', to a fully-fledged feudal system which also includes the free cities of the Middle Ages.

The following reference material is available on our wiki:

• a section on Civilizational Analysis, with big picture thinking and metamodels about the evolution of human societies

• the third perennial human institution next to markets and states is the commons, here is the essential reading list: What You Should Read To Understand the Commons; the more theoretical sources are compiled here: Sources of P2P Theory

• I (Michel Bauwens), keep track of my own reading with summary reading notes at https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Bauwens_Reading_Notes_Project

Key Resources

Key Books

• Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance. Peter Linebaugh. PM Press, 2014 [2]

* Will of the People: Original Democracy in Non-Western Societies. by Raul S. Manglapus. Praeger, 1987

This book is strongly recommended by Emmanuel Todd, who says it shows how democracy is the original form of governance.

• History of Assemblies in the Middle Ages: (French): La voix du peuple. Une histoire des assemblées au Moyen Âge. Par Michel Hébert. Presses universitaires de France (PUF),

Citations

The Digital Renaissance as Neo-Medievalism

Douglas Rushkoff, interviewed by ERIN LYNCH:

* In one of your recent lectures at The New School you talked about the initial purposes of the industrial age, one of which was to remove peer-to-peer transaction. Do you see that reversing and what would be the overall benefits of it?

I see almost everything about the industrial age being reversed by the things being “retrieved” by the digital age. A renaissance means old, repressed ideas being reborn (re-naissance) in a new context. So industrialism really came out of the last renaissance, which was largely about rebirthing the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome: centralization of authority, empire, and expansion.

Today’s renaissance would retrieve the medieval values (not the lifestyle!) that were stamped out by the renaissance: crafts, peer-to-peer trading at the market, local value creation…even craft beers! Really, it’s no coincidence that the cultural expressions of the digital age – like Burning Man and etsy – share so many medieval qualities.

The benefits of reversing the dehumanizing bias of the industrial age – the drive to reduce human involvement and intervention in production and expansion – is to put the economy and technology back in the service of human beings, instead of letting them continue to devalue us. Because today’s technologies are so much more powerful than they were in the era of the steam engine. If we program them to remove human interference, this time they may be able to do it." (http://www.webvisionsevent.com/2016/01/the-throes-of-change-an-interview-with-douglas-rushkoff/)