# PROTOCOLS FOR POSTCAPITALIST EXPRESSION
## Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space

***By Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen***

[Colchester / New York / Port Watson: Autonomedia / Minor Compositions, Forthcoming 2023]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword: On Economic Intelligence, by Jonathan Beller

[1. Introduction](https://hackmd.io/@ECSA/B1DPptiMC)
1.1 Contesting the current order
1.2 What does the future hold?
1.3 A new economic space; new economic performances
1.4 A note on terminology
1.5 Capitalist and postcapitalist finance
1.6 The immediate proposal: Living in the spread

Appendix 1.1 Design Principles of the Economic Space Protocol
Appendix 1.2 Some key distinctions between the Economic Space Protocol and other paradigmatic blockchain architectures

[2. From Capitalist to Postcapitalist Economy](https://hackmd.io/@ECSA/B1DPptiMC)
2.1 Designing an economy
2.2 An economic primer
2.3 The Hayekian turn: knowledge, price and spontaneous order
2.4 Hayek’s dead end
2.5 Prices freed from profit
2.6 Turning Hayek on his head
2.7 Implication

Appendix 2.1 Do ‘big data’ change the story?

3. Framing the Economic Space Protocol: Markets as Communication Networks
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Agents and markets
3.3 Economic space
3.4 Tokens and distributed ledgers
3.5 Ways of ‘pricing’
3.6 Peer-to-peer; decentralized to distributed
3.7 Social objectives
3.8 Governance
3.9 The tools to reframe

4. Production as Performance
4.1 Background
4.2 Performing relations
4.3 Protocols of performance
4.4 Performance indices and value measures
4.5 A ‘value theory of performance’

Appendix 4.1 A performance evaluation framework
Appendix 4.2 Performances (P) and their outputs (C)

5. Stake: the Key to Value
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The circular logic of reciprocal staking
5.3 Returns to stakeholding
5.4 Staking and the network: a summary and a projection

Appendix 5.1 Fundamental value and speculation: Keynes’ beauty contest
Appendix 5.2 Dividends and the surplus

6. The Commons
6.1 Finding the commons
6.2 Reciprocal staking forms the ‘synthetic commons’
6.3 ‘Dividends’ as the common purpose
6.4 The commons as a process of redistribution

7. Postcapitalist units of measurement
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Measurement categories for the Economic Space Protocol
7.3 A postcapitalist unit of value
7.4 Conclusion: basic categories
8. Liquidity and Credit
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The general conditions of distributed credit issuance
8.3 Stake as collateral: the foundation of credit
8.4 Network recognition of credit and credit settlement
8.5 Implications

Appendix 8.1 Keynes on money and credit

9. Exchange Relations Expressed through Tokens
9.1 Context
9.2 Reciprocal issuance: offers and matching
9.3 Netting and clearing
9.4 Economies enabled by protocols
Appendix 9.1 Tokens and network derivatives

10. Tokens and Ledgers
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Stake tokens
10.3 Liquidity tokens
10.4 Commodity tokens
10.5 Exchanges between tokens
10.6 Three token categories to serve three economic functions

11. Dynamics of a tokenized network
11.1Three circuits of value
11.2 The performance circuit: the circuit of value creation
11.3 The collateral circuit: the circuit of growth
11.4 The credit circuit: the circuit of stability
11.5 Significance

12. Stability, Volatility, Value
12.1 Stability
12.2 Outside currency within the network
12.3 Volatility

Appendix 12.1 Tokenized value: simple and expanded
Appendix 12.2 MV=PQ: An application to the Economic Space Protocol token logic

13. The Conditions of a Digital Postcapitalist Economy
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Network value
13.3 Where to from here?