I would argue in a first attempt to open up a different project of inquiry, that capitalist society is not to be understood as the outcome of a “progressive” uptake of “social innovation” by emerging agents of the new society, but rather as an unresolved struggle between dominators and dominated, that could only be processed by specific historical forms, namely wage labour, market exchange and abstract law. Those forms were flexible enough to incorporate the aspirations for freedom which were the root cause of the feudal crisis by making them productive for the prolonging of social domination. The social forms of capitalism (including technologies) were experimentally developed in “niches” (the army, the poor houses etc.) and spread mainly because of a functional relation to war-making (which was in its turn necessary to stabilize those “niches”).

How do we get from the proliferation of peer to peer projects in the alternative or counter economies, to a full phase transition?

This is what the following text from the Austrian “Social Innovation Network” attempts to answer.

Excerpted from Andreas Exner:

“Fundamental to this “family of concepts” (termed “innovation theory” in the following) is the concept of strategic niche. A strategic niche is conceived as a site of innovation, seen as necessary on the assumption that innovations are blocked by regimes, both structurally as well as by the interests of dominant groups profiteering from a regime (which is, in turn, supported by a wider socio-technical landscape). The strategic niche is a place of socio-technical experiments, which are partially protected from the regime (and market forces) by social, material and/or financial resources. Within the niche, three processes take place: (1) the convergence of expectations (resulting in a willingness to experiment and further develop the innovation), (2) social networking (strengthening the niche as a social network and creating support by linking the niche to wider social networks with more social power, e.g. to change regimes), (3) education and learning (supporting the construction of know-how and adapting the niche to new experiences). Taking the strategic niche concept as a start, the multi-level perspective introduces an awareness of the structural constraints impeding the profileration of niches and their diffusion into society due to regimes and landscapes of socio-technical patterns. The multi-level perspective stresses the point, that an innovation can only diffuse from the niche into society in case of a crisis on the level of the socio-technical landscape. Otherwise, the forces of inertia acting on the level of the regime (and the landscape) will determine the scope of innovations and limit their possible diffusion.

Agenda: Research for Transformative Action

From both a marxist point of view and a perspective interested in radical social movements such as the Transition Towns, two elements appear to be of immediate interest: (1) the niche processes described (convergence/willingness, networking/power, learning/adapting), (2) the general view on social innovation, its development (niche profileration, diffusion) and contextual requirements (landscape-level crisis, transition management). Obviously, the strategic niche management-family of concepts closely resembles the “Keimform-approach” (see www.keimform.de, compare also the P2P-idea), which states that germs of social innovation appear in an outdated mode of production and will be taken over as the old mode declines and is outcompeted by the new one. Furthermore, the multi-level perspective has some (distant) similarities with the regulation school, which differentiates between accumulation regimes and modes of regulation in its conception of capitalist society. Finally, the hypothesis that landscape-level crisis are crucial for social innovations to be adopted on a regime (and landscape) level of course is in a (very rough) line with the classical marxist emphasis of crisis as the strategic point in time where radical change is possible.

I will conclude this brief account of the Social Innovation Networks short history and the excursion into the world of social innovation theory and its possible relations to a more radical view on society and change with a sketch on a possible research agenda. This agenda might be of relevance for transformative action, in as much as such an endeavour is in need of self-reflection when it comes to formulate strategic orientations and learn from past success and failures.

First of all, we must engage into a serious discussion, what should be regarded as socially innovative. This discussion has to start from a theory of the basic structures of the capitalist mode of production and the society dominated by this mode, i.e.: wage labour, market exchange and statehood. When it comes to social innovation in a deeper sense, i.e. with the potential to challenge the “landscape-level” of society, it is crucial to clearly conceptualize the landscape features and subordinated “regimes” (if the multi-level terminology shall be adopted). Otherwise we do not have a criterion at hand, for which kind of social practice we should watch out in our search for innovation and its niches.

Maybe the second most important issue of such an agenda would be a deepened understanding of the social processes in a strategic niche being crucial to niche stabilization, proliferation and the diffusion of its innovation(s). This implies a more precise concept of the niche – is it to be understood mainly as a place (geographical site of innovation), as a social space, or as some kind of intersection? Only after the first and second point are clarified, we can look for potential sites of innovation and assess their features (of course, we will already have some candidates at hand…)

Thirdly, we have to acquire a deeper understanding of the social forces limiting innovation niches. Quite obviously, social innovation theory underplays the importance of conflict and ignores class antagonism, let alone the social forms which distinguish the capitalist mode of production historically (the value form and its empirical “derivations”, i.e. money, price, wage, profit, interest, ground-rent etc.). Yet innovation theory performs better than the Transition Town discourse in terms of at least partially recognising powerful social forces and agents acting as a considerable obstacle to change. Both innovation theory and the germ theory approach (“Keimform-Theorie”) share the flaw of not satisfactorily answering the question, how diffusion precisely occurs. In bourgeois innovation theory, a regime (e.g. the food system) comes into trouble due to landscape-level crisis and subsequently takes up innovations that have already developed in niches because it becomes dysfunctional as long as the traditional pattern of handling things prevails. The story is quite similar in germ theory, where social innovation in the sense of non-capitalist modes of production is developed in a niche, from which it spreads on to the regime and landscape level that are already in crisis. According to germ theory, free software production is the niche for non-capitalist modes of production, that will be taken up by capitalist actors due to a “competitive advantage” that is provided by a hybrid construction of the innovation and the dominant regime and landscape logic. In the course and as a result of increasing hybridization, the innovative mode of production shall outcompete the old one in the longer run completely. Both bourgeois innovation theory and germ theory assume – at least implicitely – that (1) dominant regimes and agents have an inherent interest in adopting innovations (that run per definition contrary to their logic and interests), and (2) that in this way, a landscape-level change will be occur. This – again at least implicitely – supposes that production takes place in order to satisfy a concrete human need (such as the need to eat, to stay warm etc.). Otherwise, a social innovation that runs counter to the dominant logic (of, for instance, prolonging the life of fossil fuel infrastructures, or, to take an example which fits into the germ theory perspective, to prolong wage labour as the dominant mode of producing) could not be taken up by those representing the status quo (without serious and enduring conflict); which includes not only capitalists, but probably also the majority of wage labourers in the world. While it takes little wonder that bourgeois innovation theory supposes that the ultimate end of production (and a regime) is to satisfy a concrete need (such as hunger in case of the food regime), such an assumption constitutes an obvious deficit of a marxist-inspired approach such as germ theory.

Fourthly, we have to develop a much deeper understanding of crisis and state. Both are interlinked, since crisis of the capitalist mode of production can only be (temporarily) be solved by an apparatus which puts the masses under control and makes strategic action of the capitalist class possible: the state.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly from a “philosophical” angle, we must interrogate each other more seriously on the question of crisis. Interestingly enough, both the classical marxist line of thought (to which the germ theory approach / “Keimform-Theorie” in my view belongs when it comes to the role crisis plays in social innovation) and bourgeois innovation theory converge on the point, that crisis is a necessary ingredient or context of fundamental change. This assumption implies a strictly objectivist view on crisis – it is not the result of innovation, but its prerequisite. Its causes are not the cumulative disobedience and anti-systemic behaviour of individuals (including new social practices, developed in niches or beyond), but the other way round: the crisis enables disobedience, deviant behaviour and technologies that do not fit into the dominant regimes to spread. As far as “systemic innovations” in a social sense are concerned, innovation theory must of course ignore almost per definition the question how the capitalist mode of production came into being and how it might be superseded by another mode. Germ theory targets this question, yet in a quite traditional manner. The shift from the feudal to the capitalist mode is understood mainly as a peaceful take up of “social innovation” (the capital relation, in this case) by an emerging new group of agents (entrepreneurs) due to its “competitive advantage”. The innovation in this case was protected by the pre-modern (absolutist) state. The “social innovations” experimented with and developed within this “strategic niche” subsequently proliferated to the point that a new “socio-technical landscape” and related “regimes” emerged. Free software production is proposed to be an analogous “niche” of “innovation”, with a seemingly “objective” crisis of the capitalist system (analogous to the crisis of the feudal system) as a framework for “niche proliferation” and “innovation diffusion”. I will conclude by raising the question if crisis is really adequately understood as an objective process, as opposed to a view, that crisis is in fact the “alienated” representation of massive disobedience and deviance from the functional necessities of the dominant regimes and socio-technical landscape. Concerning the specific interest of germ theory to explain “social systems innovation” along the “model” of the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production, a renewed inquiry into the causes of this transition might prove fruitful, i.e. in discussing the precise role that power and objective factors (such as climate change) played in the course of the crisis of feudalism.

I would argue in a first attempt to open up a different project of inquiry, that capitalist society is not to be understood as the outcome of a “progressive” uptake of “social innovation” by emerging agents of the new society, but rather as an unresolved struggle between dominators and dominated, that could only be processed by specific historical forms, namely wage labour, market exchange and abstract law. Those forms were flexible enough to incorporate the aspirations for freedom which were the root cause of the feudal crisis by making them productive for the prolonging of social domination. The social forms of capitalism (including technologies) were experimentally developed in “niches” (the army, the poor houses etc.) and spread mainly because of a functional relation to war-making (which was in its turn necessary to stabilize those “niches”).”