DisCO DNA 1: The Commons and P2P
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Overview
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DNA Strands
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Complementarities
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More Resources
If you want to dig into the Commons we recommend starting with what we consider its defining text, David Bollier and Silke Helfrich's Free Fair and Alive: the Insurgent Power of the Commons. A large portion of the DisCO team was integral to the design and outreach process surrounding the book and we hold it dear. Free, Fair and Alive has plenty of practical examples and tools. Also by Bollier and Helfrich, see their earlier compilations The Wealth of the Commons and Patterns of Commoning, as well as Bollier’s Think Like a Commoner.
David Bollier and the much missed Silke led the Commons Strategies Group, another organization closely linked to DisCO where we spent our formative years. We created their webpage and helped compile their publications and videos. Standout publications include Re-imagining Value: Insights from the Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace and Nature, State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship, and Democratic Money and Capital for the Commons.
One of our favorite authors is Kevin Carson and we consider his texts on the Commons to be foundational. If you want a sweeping introduction to political movements in the last two centuries and a fully DisCO-compatible guide to changing the world, check out Exodus: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century. His earlier books The Desktop Regulatory State: The Countervailing Power of Individuals and Networks and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto are some of the best articulations of possible P2P futures. His articles and publications for C4SS are also highly recommended.
For more perspectives on the commons, check out Silvia Federicis’s Caliban and the Witch and Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, Yochai Benkler’sThe Wealth of Networks, Dmytri Kleiner’s Telekommunist Manifesto, Massimo De Angelis Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism and Hardt and Negri's Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, and Commonwealth, McKenzie Wark's A Hacker Manifesto and Lewis Hyde's Common as air : Revolution, Art, and Ownership.
When talking about the Commons we must mention Elinor Ostrom. Standout books include Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action and Understanding knowledge as a commons: from theory to practice. For a short introduction read this article with Ostrom's Eight Design Principles for Successful Commons.
The above are basic texts on the Commons, offering different perspectives, at times, contradictions. For essential non-western perspectives on the commons, see the Decoloniality section, where we’ll recommend you the Colonial commons and the decolonisation of the left again.
Although we're no longer affiliated, the DisCO co-founders were part of the P2P Foundation from 2013-19, where we helped produce these publications. We are very proud of our work on the Commons Transition and P2P Primer, which led to the Commons Transition Primer website as a more accessible and inclusive way to understand the Commons and P2P. DisCO.coop’s co-founders Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel wrote several articles during that time that pointed toward what would become DisCO. These include From Platform to Open Cooperativism, Commons in the Time of Monsters and Reimagine, Don’t Seize, the Means of Production.
The P2P Lab's independent research on Commons Based Peer Production contains many valuable ideas and is highly readable. Closely related is the work of Research and Degrowth who offer a rich understanding of the commons informed by decolonial perspectives. Great books on degrowth offering realistic ways forward for commoning in the 21st century include Jason Hickel's Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World, The Case for Degrowth, by Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D'Alisa, Federico Demaria and The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter. Ephemera's issue on Organizing for the Post-Growth Economy is a good complement.
Other recommended sites regularly featuring stories on P2P and the Commons include Shareable, ROAR Magazine, Connected Action for the Commons, Stir to Action, the Sustainable Economies Law Center blog, the Journal of Peer Production,On the Commons, the International Journal of the Commons and Metapolis Magazine (co-edited with our sisters at Guerrilla Media Collective, the OG DisCO).
Commons superhero David Bollier writes regularly on the topic in his long running blog and produces the excellent Frontiers of Commoning Podcast. DisCO Pink Board member Dmytri Kleiner has written extensively on the political economy of network architectures and P2P in his blog. All of these resources have been foundational in DisCO's thinking
We also recommend checking out Remix the Commons’ staggering media collection and the CommonSense online documentary, as well as the Upstream and Extraenvironmentalist Podcasts.