The Transition Will Not Be Smooth Sailing � Michel Bauwens and Arthur de Grave
to develop a stable ecosystem, in order to initiate a real movement. Arthur de Grave
In an interview with us in 2013, you stated that capitalism and peer-to-peer were still interdependent. Isn’t that the real problem? Is this a stable relationship?
Michel Bauwens
No, of course not, how could it be? The value generated by the commons is still largely captured by capital: by adopting extractive models, large platforms of the sharing economy are engaged in a form of parasitic commercial activity. In the old days, capitalism was a way of allocating resources in a situation of scarcity, but now it is an engineered scarcity system. Our system is completely mad: we pretend that natural resources are endless, and we set artificial barriers around what is abundant in nature, i.e., creativity and human intelligence. This is a profound moral issue. In her book Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution,2 Marjorie Kelly aptly defines the challenge that awaits us: moving from extractive capital to generative capital. The good news is that this process has already started. First of all, because it is impossible to hide the fact that civil society has now become a value creator. This is an important point, as civil society was mostly absent from the ‘classic’ capitalist equation. In addition, we are beginning to witness a change in market structures: commercial spheres of a new kind are developing around the Commons. Enspiral [a collaborative
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1 Michel Bauwens,
Sauver le monde: Vers une société post-capitaliste avec le peerto-peer [Saving the World: Towards a post-capitalist society with a peerto-peer approach] (Paris: Éditions Les Liens Qui Libèrent, 2015). 2 Marjorie Kelly, Own
ing Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolu tion (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012).