Ecosocialism.org
An important international meeting of ecosocialists will be held in Paris on October 7 and 8, 2007. To receive further notices about the meeting, send your name, country, email to ian[at]ecosocialism[dot]org
The term “social money” suggests that some money, such as the form we are familiar with, is not social, even anti-social. With Mauss, I consider that money’s principal function, like that of the gift, is the extension of society, just as Simmel saw society’s potential for universality reflected in money.
The UK-based peer to peer finance service Zopa (see here for a previous report) had already been “cutting out the middleman” between lender and borrowers for some time by letting lenders specify what rate they want to lend at and matching them to identity and credit-checked, risk-assessed borrowers willing to pay that rate.
This is the title of an upcoming lecture at Goldsmith’s University in London by Geert Lovink, author of a recent book by the same name. Lovink is critiquing notions of blogging as citizen journalism, and I thought that you might be interested in his analysis. The following quote outlines Lovink’s position, and may provide some food for thought.