Malaga Manifesto 2008-10-22

Malaga Manifesto

Question:
How do we form communities, participatory groups, that are self-sustainable? For in the last two days we've heard many discussions about how this or that gov't is supporting Libre Software. But we have heard no solutions to this, besides making the source available. That seems to me just another way of looking to the market for solutions. And I do not think that works.
So what I would like to propose here is the draft of a manifesto on the formation of sustainable participatory communities. I use the term “participatory” because FOSS is specific to software, but we all know, at least we all want to believe that libre software communities are but one instance.
The principles:
• Do today what can be done tomorrow and the day after, or planning for the future in every act. This means that it's indefensible to pollute your local environment (or even your neighbour's) because that kills the future, yours and his.
• Do things in the consciousness of others (con la conscienca de los otros). This means that you have to engage others in what you do. The future is like another country, and it could be near or far. We wont' last forever, Kurzweill or not; and what we do, if we want to engage others, and I think we do, as the age of gross egotism is dead, I hope, must be done in ways that enable others to sit at the same table as you. Call this the commensal principle, and it is the hope of the commons.

(Forget about forgetting the past or declaring history bunk; capitalism's short memory is our long life. Razing the past to build the future never works because the past remembers us even as we try to forget it in the fiction of the present and future.)

• Do what you can now, and don't wait for some sign, revolution, spectacle of catastrophe. We have the tools to act, we have the sense, and we all know what has to be done. But I at least don't want local communities of fascists acting on the spur of their own distorted beliefs. I want communities of freedom, based on the principles of individual freedom and responsibility and acting in conjunction with others.
Freedom and responsibility, communities of freedom: Freedom without responsibility is a version of what the Victorians would derisively call the American "Do as you like" ideology. Freedom without responsibility is the death of community, and we can see some fine examples of it today, in the blood money flooding Wall Street and now Main Street. (What me worry? ideology, is another way of putting it, if flippant.)
The inverse, responsibility without freedom doesn't work, it's fascism. We've had enough of that and it always keeps nations, people down, benighted. Consider it community without possibility, an impossible community. The goal is rather liberty and community, community and liberty, not one or the other, and one not privileged over the other. (If the American revolution brought liberty without the claim of community--the US got federation, instead--the French revolution introduced the necessity of community as a crucial element of freedom. But as history has shown, it's a balance, a negotiation, a narrative. And elements of the triad gt lost. This is why I believe we need to renew that social contract, revive the egalité, fraternité, liberté as goals and practices.)
So, I assert--the need for developing communities of liberty for establishing sustainable systems of production. This is true whether we speak of energy, food, or Foss, and in practice, each instance will have its own archive of examples, contexts, but one logical effect would be to respect local markets, wisdom and to connect disparate communities, for as the Málaga conference shows, the world is connected