The role of the Commons in Civilizational Transitions
Channel: personalcinema
Date: 25/11/2023

A talk by  Michel Bauwens at Perasma, Athens, Greece, 15/11/2023
 

 Michel Bauwens is currently studying the place of the commons within large historical canvas. The main idea is that whenever you have a declining period in the state or market led economy, it's also at the same time a regenerative period for the commons. Sounds contradictory, but when things go well, the commons decline and weaken. When things go bad, the commons grow and become stronger. Is there a way to go smoothly down this if we cannot go up? Is there a way to go smoothly down that is not chaotic? That is not full of war? States and market forces fight for resources. When you do that in a shrinking world, where resources are increasingly becoming scarce, this is a recipe for conflict and war.

        If it is true that human civilization is a cyclic phenomenon, and if it is also true that within those cycles we see this kind of mirror of extraction and regeneration, then what happens today when we have a global overshoot? The answer is that means that the commons has to become global. What we get today, co-emerging with the peer production of shared knowledge through the digital networks, is the combination of local production with global open design communities. We need to move towards a world that combines a maximum amount of diversity and local differentiation, but also recognizes that the protection of the earth and its beings require trans-local and trans-national cooperation, preferably to institutions that are an expression of civic cooperation, not just imposed by states or market forces.