Participatory Economics and the Commons

What is the relation between the Parecon proposals and the Commons

Excerpted from a longer article by Robin Hahnel:

“* Who Owns the Commons? In a participatory economy the commons belongs to everyone, and no more to one person than any other. While individuals own personal property, everything we need to produce our way of life is owned in common in a participatory economy.

* Who Gets To Use Specific Parts of the Commons?

What we might call “user rights” to different parts of the commons are distributed during the participatory planning procedure to whichever worker council demonstrates that it can generate the greatest social benefit from its use.

* Who Benefits From Using the Commons?

In a participatory economy everyone benefits from the commons, and no one benefits from its use any more than anyone else. Because they can use it more efficiently, some worker councils will end up using more of the commons, or higher quality parts of the commons, than other worker councils. However – and this is crucial – since workers are awarded consumption rights only on the basis of the sacrifices they make, workers in councils using more, or better parts of the commons, receive no extra benefits from doing so.

* Finally, what does all this imply about what “the commons” includes in a participatory economy?

In a participatory economy what we might call “the natural commons” includes everything non-agrarian indigenous societies treated as part of their commons — the land, water, and native flora and fauna they used to support their way of life.

It also includes things like oil, minerals, top soil, and forests that are important “inputs” in modern agrarian/industrial economies, and mainstream economists call “natural capital.”

However, the natural commons in a participatory economy includes things that do not fit neatly into the category “natural capital,” but whose health is crucial to sustaining life today and in the future. Genetic diversity, a stable climate, key eco-systems that support all life, and various eco-systems which serve as “sinks” that store and decompose wastes from human economic activity are all treated as part of the natural commons in a participatory economy.

In a participatory economy what we might call the “produced commons” includes all the machines, tools, equipment, and buildings we use to produce things, which socialists call “the means of production” and mainstream economists call “capital stocks.”

The “produced commons” also includes what economists have long called “technology” or “technical knowhow.” If we imagine a giant recipe book where there is a page describing every way we know how to “cook” every good and service we make, this recipe book is also treated as part of the commons in a participatory economy.

And finally, in a participatory economy the commons includes all of the useful talents and skills people have — both as individuals and groups — that allow us to deploy all this natural and produced wherewithal to productive ends. Mainstream economists refer to this as “human capital,” and some development economists now add the category “social capital” to describe aspects that cannot be identified with particular individuals.

In short, a participatory economy treats everything we need to produce our way of life – whether it be part of an expanded understanding of our natural environment, part of an increasingly complex array of useful manufactured artifacts, or part of the information and knowledge embodied in us, individually or collectively – as belonging to all of us, i.e. as part of what we might call “the modern commons.”

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