Crypto types need to give up libertarian ideas of escape, and connect their code to maker communities - known as "Crypto For Real"
Interesting to pick up Michel Bauwens again, whose concept of “cosmolocalism” has been so useful for us at the Alternative UK. In his new Substack platform, Bauwens is posting regular essays, including this one on the intriguing concept of “Crypto For Real.” As he puts it:
It is the name I would like to give to any orientation and series of initiatives that link crypto-economic coordination mechanisms, not just to the flow of code and financial value, but to actual physical production efforts.
I want to see a convergence - between local provisioning movements and their desire for global interconnection; with the existing mutual coordination infrastructure that is emerging in the crypto world.
They are a natural fit for each other; they need each other.
There is no realistic exodus from a world of pain and poverty and ecological breakdown. Therefore, there is the need for a convergence
between local productive and regenerative capacities
and a crypto infrastructure that more easily allows for universal coordination of cognitive efforts.
Micheal is primarily a theoretician, so this will need a little explanation.
As he says, crypto-communities tend to mark themselves as libertarians, seeking “exodus” from the current system, and assuming that establishing a parallel global money system (like Bitcoin and Ethereal) is enough of an act of resistance. The speculative bubbles and reckless behaviours that beset this version of crypto come from their vision of being “Nowheres” , as populist theorists put it - loyal to no place, sovereignty or territory other than that they virtually create.
Bauwens asks them to think of a different identity:
Not as rootless cosmopolitans seeking escape, and letting the world rot, but as rootful Everywheres,. That is, a cognitive and coding class at the service of the productive citizens of the world - those that contribute to the feeding and the clothing and all the services that we require for a happy human life.
Michel makes this interesting historical comparison on this “class”:
A second way of reading crypto is to read it as an expression of the desires and social power of a new class.
Five thousand years ago, the pivot to state and market forms (aka ‘civilization’) was driven by the writing elite. Today, the shift to distributed networks is driven by the emerging coding elite.
The writing elite clearly created a more hierarchically coordinated class society based on state or market-based oligarchies.
it seems the crypto ideology is driven by a desire for the creation of truly distributed infrastructures (even if most of it in reality is still very oligarchic in terms of ownership).
There’s much else of great interest in this piece, for example this recommendation:
Crypto needs to move from simply moving around code and its own value flows, to an active engagement with local production, under the cosmo-local model. This combines relocalized production with ‘cosmic’, i.e. universal cooperation, under the famous adage ‘what is heavy is local, what is light is global and shared’.
See more from Michel here.