Curated Article on the Role of the Commons in Civilizational Transitions
A proposed syllabus for self-learning
When I started this newsletter, I promised to write my own articles but also to share some of my digital curation. The original idea was some consolidation by topic on the ongoing curation that I am doing under the handle mbauwens on X.
This is not this, but something more longer lasting. During the month of April 2024, I have been asked to teach a course on ‘The Role of the Commons in Civilizational Transition’, in which I summarize my arguments for post-doctoral students from various local institutions, while providing links to documentation in support of those arguments, and so that can form their own ideas based on the sources I have selected.
So, this is not a ‘readable’ article, but something that you can use either as a reference, or, better still, use it as a resource for self-learning.
What you will find below is the following:
a first session introducing the basic ideas and concepts of the macro-historians, in particular of what I call the ‘culturalist school’, who stress the importance of human agency, and therefore the importance of ideas and narratives in mobilizing human effort for change.
in the second session, I provide the material for understanding my own thesis, namely that the commons are a regenerative and preserving counter-institutions (protecting the web of life and human communities). I am to show that the commons are a counter-cyclical institutions, which re-emerges in the descending phases of civilizations, while also playing a vital role in the regeneration that takes place in the ‘Recurring Dark Ages’. In other words, dark ages may also be considered ‘bright ages’, in that they restore the health of natural cycles.
in the third section, I look at the current transition, and what role peer to peer dynamics play. This refers to the capacity for trans-local self-organization, relatively independent of local territories. I explain the role of the digital commons in the current transition.
Finally, in the fourth section, we speculate about the future, and we introduce the following concepts:
Commons-based Peer Production and the Value Crisis
The Contributive Economy
The Partner State
Cosmo-Localism
Magisteria of the Commons
The world is changing, but not randomly, we are in the midst of a chaotic transition which is preparing a bifurcation to a new form of civilization, or even to a ‘post-civilizational’ framework. Many post-modern influenced scholars will tell you the future is entirely random and cannot be predicted. I beg to differ: if you examine the seed forms which follow post-capitalist logics, then, I believe, one can make reasoned predictions about what the future brings, of course not in a mechanistic manner, but still, it reveals structural realities. And it is only to the degree we understand these determinisms, that we can be truly free and use our human agency wisely.
Just to give you an idea of how this looks in practice, look here at what the people in the Stroud Commons are doing, to revitalize their community based on commons-based institutions:
https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/what-makes-the-commons-movement-different-a-its-much-more-difficult-to-co-opt
If your time is limited, I recommend you browse some of the remarkable articles and videos I have unearthed for you.
So here starts our …
Syllabus
Lecturer: Michel Bauwens: PhDSeminar, P2P and Civilizational Transition
Seminars held on Tuesdays 15-17, Aula Ovale, Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali, Vico Monte della Pietà 1.
Before the course starts
To Browse: The Civilizational Analysis section of the P2P Foundation wiki.
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Civilizational_Analysis
This is a guide to start reading macro-historical works. It contains information about the authors and their books, and excerpts illustrating the frameworks they are using to understand history, such as ‘phases’ or ‘cycles’. Thread 1 deals with the cultural historians, Thread 4 with world-systems analysis, Thread 6 with Big History.
To Browse: The Multi-Evolutionism or Non-Linear Evolution Theory of the Russian world-systems school / Big History synthesis by Leonid Grinin and Andrej Korotayev
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Russian_World-Systems_Analysis_School
These publishers of a annual ‘Evolutionary Almanac’, are both continuing the neo-materialist/geopolitical tradition of world-systems analysis, and updating it with systems-theory, complexity science insights into common patterns in the evolution of matter, life and culture (i.e. Big History)
Session 1: Basic concepts from the Macrohistorians
In this session, we will review the basic concepts of macro-historians since the publication of The Decline of the West from Oswald Spengler.
We will distinguish three major waves of macro-history:
The first wave of culturalist (Toynbee, Quigley, Sorokin) and ‘spiritualist’ (De Chardin, Aurobindo) authors, which were published mostly in the post WWII period before the 60s
The second wave of ‘neo-materialist’ (or neo-marxist) world-system analyst authors (Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein), starting in the 60-70s
A third wave of ‘Big History’ authors, which starts its narrative at the Big Bang, seeks common patterns of evolution and change based on systems theory, complexity science and cybernetics. The came of age in the 90s, replacing the hegemony of world-systems analysis in academia.
We will focus on operative concepts such as ‘instruments of expansion’ (Quigley), ‘challenge and response’ (Toynbee); ‘ideate vs sensate’ civilizational models (Sorokin), etc ..
The stress of this session will be on first wave authors.
Recommended readings:
Must-Read Text: Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations About Cosmic Evolution. Cadell Last. Synthesizes the latest Big History findings with 'transhumanist' speculations.
Many useful distinctions and periodizations, introducing the systems-based vocabulary of Big History authors, adding the authors own speculations about potential transhuman scenarios for the future.
To Browse: A annotated bibliography for civilizational research
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RbKtmBBUOLwDPexm5g0kv_C1BSZ-lvTQHzaH8degwUw/edit
This list, a streamlined version, centered on the books by macro-historians, distills key learnings for each author and book.
This is a flowing 3-hour interview with John David Ebert introducing many of the themes around comparative civilizational inquiry, in conversation with Brandon Van Dyck of The Mill Series:
Session 2: The Pulsation of the Commons hypothesis
In this session, we will present a hypothesis that there is a counter-cyclical ‘pulsation of the commons’, which affects societal and civilizational cycles. In short, in the ascending civilizational cycles in which market and state institutions perform relatively well for core populations of a system, commons practices and institutions tend to weaken, while in descending cycles, they tend to revive, playing remarkable functions in the dark ages that intermittently occur between civilizational cycles. We will give examples from medieval Japan and post-Roman Europe.
The key question that will be addressed is: what happens to the commons in a planetarizing system, and especially: what happens to the revival of commoning when such a planetary system is in a phase of relative decline.
I will mention as case studies, see the bibliography:
The transition in 16th cy Japan towards the Shogunate,
( for another account see Mark Whitaker’s book, Ecological Revolution, mentioned below)
Role of mutualized ‘instruments of expansion’ in the European post-Roman ‘dark age’, based on Quigley’s notion of ‘instruments of expansion’, see Richard Moore’s First European Revolution.
Recommended readings:
Must-Read Text: Placing the Commons in a Temporal Framework: The Commons as a Planetary Regeneration Mechanism. By Michel Bauwens and Jose Ramos.
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Pulsation_of_the_Commons
Must-Read Text: Capitalism and the Commons. By Adam Arvidsson. Theory, Culture & Society, 2019
https://www.academia.edu/40231280/CAPITALISM_AND_THE_COMMONS?
Adam Arvidsson focuses on the linkage between thriving commons and emergent markets, with focus on European Middle Ages.
Text: (browse or read as supplement): The Silent Revolution: A New Perspective on the Emergence of Commons, Guilds, and Other Forms of Corporate Collective Action in Western Europe. By TINE DE MOOR. IRSH 53 (2008), Supplement, pp. 179–212
https://www.ris.uu.nl/ws/files/20096187/_PUB_SilentRevolution_IRSH_53_Suppl.pdf
On the explosion of guilds and commons in the 11th-12th cy.
Browse or Read: Ecological Revolution: The Political Origins of Environmental Degradation and the Environmental Origins of Axial Religions; China, Japan, Europe. by Mark D. Whitaker. Cologne, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, AG. , 2009
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Political_Origins_of_Environmental_Degradation_and_the_Environmental_Origins_of_Axial_Religions ; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Whitaker3/publication/296486001_Ecological_Revolution_The_Political_Origins_of_Environmental_Degradation_and_the_Environmental_Origins_of_Axial_Religions_and_Scientific_Advance_China_Japan_Europe/links/56d5f7ea08aee1aa5f730ee4.pdf?origin=publication_list
See the detailed ToC for the many case studies. My interpretation of the role of monastic institutions, both the Benedictines/Cistercensiers for Europe and Pure Land / Zen Buddhism for Japan, is originally inspired by these cases.
Browse or Read: R. I. Moore. The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215. Oxford and New York: Blackwell Publishers, 2000
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/First_European_Revolution
This book has a treatment of the role of the Cluny-headquartered monastic institutions in establishing the new social contract of the ‘Peace of God’ charters, which facilitated the transition towards the high medieval period from the 11th to the 13th century.
Session 3: P2P and the Commons,
This session will introduce the basic concepts on the p2p theory approach, and the history of research at the P2P Foundation.
After introducing the key concepts of P2P Theory and guide students through the use of the wiki of the P2P Foundation, we will review the research undertaken by affiliated researchers, as published in P2P Foundation reports:
The logic of studying open source movements and peer production, governmental transitions at the city and nation-state level, and thinking through commons-based global governance
A stylized history of commoning
Sources of P2P Theory and recommended literature on the Commons
Then we review the P2P Foundation reports and their findings:
Recommended readings:
Must-watch video: Introduction to peer to peer and the commons, By Michel Bauwens.
Flipped classroom module. Please watch it before the course.
P2P Foundation reports:
The study of Value, https://p2pfoundation.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/value_in_the_commons_economy.pdf
P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival, https://p2pfoundation.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AccountingForPlanetarySurvival_def.pdf
The thermo-dynamics of Peer Production, Vol I. , https://p2pfoundation.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Report-P2P-Thermodynamics-VOL_1-web_2.0.pdf ; Vol. II. , https://p2pfoundation.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Report-P2P-Thermodynamics-VOL_2-web_2.0.pdf
Book: The Cosmolocal Reader. Ed. José Ramos, Sharon Ede, Michel Bauwens and Gien Wong. P2P Foundation, 2021, https://clreader.net/
Session 4: The next system, what can we know ?
In this session, based on the material reviewed in the 3 first sessions, we will present a number of scenarios based on the operative concepts developed by the P2P Foundation. After a review of various cycles documented in the macro-historical literature, we will review concepts such as:
Commons-based Peer Production and the Value Crisis
The Contributive Economy
The Partner State
Cosmo-Localism
Magisteria of the Commons
We will present various scenarios, including our own four-fold scenario, on the future deployment of the commons in the context of an evolving meta-crisis.
We will ask students to evaluate such scenarios and eventually suggest their own, as well as inquire into strategies for social change in that context.
Suggested: Intervention of Prof. Adam Arviddson on the Value Crisis
Recommended readings:
To Browse: The P2P Foundation section on historical cycles
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Cycles
Check for the concepts in the search box of the wiki, top right
To Browse: We have collected various future-oriented scenarios here at
Hi Michael. This is quite the inquiry. I discuss a new view of cultural evolution, in the past, present, and the future, in the biosphere, physiosphere, and at the level of human self-reflective mind here in my newly released book, First Principles and First Values. Please feel free to pick up a copy at Amazon: https://bit.ly/4aqnaHV or get the first 5 chapter for FREE at our Center for World Philosophy and Religion site https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/free-download-chapter-1-5-of-first-principles-and-first-values/ . I welcome feedback or reflections on these NEW ideas. You can check out the launch party at this substack posts: https://open.substack.com/pub/marcgafni/p/391-why-first-principles-and-first?r=26b8nn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Be a Hero. Please read through and offer your reflections.
As we near the late-stage capitalism insanity within the war stage of climate crisis-induced collapse, we could posit that it simply fits the civilisational cycles of birth, death and rebirth as found in this repository of models (ref YouTube: John David Ebert on Cultural Immune Systems), we might need to update the model to include the unknown outlying factors that include widespread and near complete planetary biological die-out along from hyper heating.
This extinction possibility would erase or interrupt the cyclical aspect of the civilisation cycle model such that birth doesn't happen anymore after the downfall and death. ie : even with the return of barbarian chaos that follows civilisation disintegration, civilisation Birth won't find favourable enough conditions and barbarianism would be the final flickering of the civilisational light.
In this final chapter of human civilisation overview, there might be some techno-survivalist societal structures that succeed somehow to survive the barbarian stage (some may even come out of the barbarian phase) and be capable to continue to exist inside the mass-extinction and hyper-heating that ends the barbarian evolution before the usual reflourishing of a civilisation stage. These techno-escapee mini-societies in the form of walled and domed cities, troglodyte complexes, mountain redoute towns or hamlets or even nomadic mobile community machines, probably will be attempted by nation states, cities, towns, tribes, families, religious cults, sports teams, corporations, billionaires, entrepreneurs or cooperatives.
Whatever the organising principle, in this climate end-game scenario of hyper-heated mass extinction, the human species (as well as other selected and cultivated, and opportunistic species) hangs on past the extinction event-horizon in the various forms mentioned and constitute a final category we could call : Neo Noah Arch's.
But the real reason for responding to this post is to ask you if you would be interested in working together on booting-up an actual project of civilisational transformation planning committee for a Ministry, Office or Department that is anchored in the knowledge structure you have curated but will attempt to escape it before the falling into the disintegration and barbarian phases? Similar to the previously described anti-revolutionary british method of bifurcating and turning round an obsolete civilisation model to incorporate it even if it is a seemingly useless throwback appendage ie feudalism to democracy : the House of Lords, or our senate, this reboot would attempt to maintain the useful parts of present civilisation, discard unusable ones and create brand new parts as needed.
The theory is more reformational but might have to be extremely radical and could even resemble or indeed come from ... a revolution if consensus in the research and governing structures of the body tasked with the job so decides. The body would be a big, university-like constitutional convention. Or a United Nations - like coordinating body. Or on a national level where it might have the most chance of successful implementation, it would look like a great "citizen's assembly" as previously promoted by Extinction Rebellion.
It could have a nationally authorised mandate. It could resemble something like "Les Etats Generaux de la Societié, de l'Environment et de l'Avenir de la Belgique" (General Assembly on Society, the Environment and the Future of Belgium).
As time is of the essence, this sort of effort, in my opinion, ought to go for it even as it is being constituted. That is, it should be working on its own promotion simultaneous to its initial constitution, theorizing, research, collation, recommendations and lobbying. In this way it will randomly (synchronistically!) attract tangential movements, structures and associations that will help make It (crucially the "idea" of It) a thing. There is little danger, in my opinion, to being insufficiently prepared and previously developed. It'll seem like a movement and/or ideal and be attacked in any case.
As long as the "central bureau", the nucleus remains protected within the cell, the vagaries of infections and immune responses will be normal features of the societal integration and adaptation of the outcoming principles and original idea. This could be characterized by - drasticly novel biospheric conditions compel human society to fundamentally transform itself in an unusually abrupt and short time frame for which it is as yet un-prepared but for which it has the necessary conditions of peace, wealth, education, developed infrastructure, industry, economy, society, and organised accepted and functional democratic political system of government and administration.
That is to say that we are at an apex point before inflection where the Goldilocks time-space for transformation is soon to tip into the slope of disintegration where peaceful and voluntary societal transformation is unlikely or even impossible. If this position is correct, now is the time to act and there will not be any second chances.
Therefore, its time to announce the Age of Aquarius or NEA, NewEuropeanAge or we can use BAM my nomenclature for what I'm working on : Belgian Antropocene Masterplan. Whatever comes to the fore, is less important than getting started. Officially. I put out my hand to you Michel and I offer it to ALL. Shall we begin a General Assembly on Society, the Environment and the Future of Belgium ? peace and love, Bud