In recent years, many researchers and social activists from very different countries, like myself, have rediscovered the notion of the commons as a key idea to deepen social and environmental justice and democratise both politics and the economy. This reappropriation has meant questioning the vanguardist and hierarchical visions, structures and practices that for too long have characterised much of the left. This concept has resurfaced in parallel with the growing distrust in the market and the state as the main suppliers or guarantors of access to essential goods and services. The combined pressures of climate change and the crisis of capitalism that exploded in 2008 (a permanent and global crisis, which is no longer a series of conjunctural or cyclical recessions) force us to reconsider old paradigms, tactics and strategies. This means discarding both the obsolete models of planning and centralised production at the core of the so-called ‘real socialism’ of the last century and the state capitalism that we see today in China and a few other supposedly socialist countries, as well as the equally old and failed structures of present-day deregulated capitalist economies.

At first, the concept of the commons was disseminated by progressive intellectuals inspired by the work of Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 2009. Ostrom, an American political scientist, was a progressive academic, but could hardly be classified as a radical thinker or as a leftist activist. In the last decade, academics and activists from very diverse ideological families of the left have reviewed her contributions and have engaged in intense theoretical debates about the potential of the commons, based on the analysis of many inspiring prefigurative experiences currently underway.

Ostrom’s main contribution was to demonstrate that many self-organised local communities around the world successfully managed a variety of natural resources without relying on market mechanisms or state institutions. Currently, it is possible to identify various perspectives in the theoretical debates around the commons, but in general they all converge on the importance of a third space between the state and the market (which should not be confused with the Third Way outlined by Anthony Giddens and adopted by politicians as dissimilar as Tony Blair in Britain, Bill Clinton in the United States, or Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil as a hypothetical social democratic alternative to socialism and neoliberalism).

Nowadays, a quick search in Google about the commons results in millions of references. Most definitions tend to characterise commons as spaces for collective management of resources that are co-produced and managed by a community according to their own rules and norms. We (TNI) have recently published a report on the commons in partnership with the P2P Foundation, in which we refer to this concept as the combination of four basic elements: (1) material or immaterial resources managed collectively and democratically; (2) social processes that foster and deepen cooperative relationships; (3) a new logic of production and a new set of productive processes; and (4) a paradigm shift, which conceives the commons as an advance beyond the classical market/state or public/private binary oppositions.

In Latin America and Spain, those of us interested in this field of activism and research must overcome a linguistic obstacle, since the translation of the concept of the commons from English into Spanish is not always easy or appropriate. This problem also appears in other parts of the world, so we often use the original English word to avoid confusion. Some of our friends and comrades use the concept of bienes comunes, but this term refers to ideas linked to the old economy or the social imaginary propagated by the church and other conservative institutions, without capturing all the richness, complexity and potential of recent theoretical developments and empirical processes around the commons. Obviously, the production of meaning in this field has already spread beyond the Anglo-Saxon world and there are already many people in countries of the South involved in this type of processes. That’s why the P2P Foundation and other friendly organisations have added a new word to the Spanish dictionary, procomún, while others (like myself) prefer to use the word comunes, which derives from a literal translation of the original term. From a similar perspective, many European or African activists prefer to use the English term instead of bens comuns (Portuguese), beni comuni (Italian), biens communs (in French), or gemeingüter (German).

Are the concepts of ‘the commons’ and ‘the public’ synonymous?

This question is the axis of heated theoretical debates, since it alludes to the old discussion about the nature and role of the state. The defenders of the commons who are most disillusioned with the left in government in several Latin American countries, particularly those linked to the fundamentalist autonomist current (like many of my friends in the Andean region, mainly those who are involved in struggles around the rights to water or energy) are convinced that the state should not assume any role and that the social order should be restructured by transferring political and economic power to self-organised local communities. Other researchers and activists (including myself, something that’s not surprising having been born in a country as state-centric as Uruguay) retort that such a contradiction is artificial and that we should at the same time expand the reach and influence of the commons – for example, by creating and interconnecting new types of authentically self-managed cooperative enterprises– and democratising or ‘commonising’ the state – for instance, incorporating workers and users into the management of existing state-owned enterprises or creating new public-public partnerships for the provision of essential public services.

My friend Michel Bauwens, a Belgian social activist internationally recognised as one of the most creative and influential thinkers in this field, often highlights the importance of what he has characterised as the partner state. From his (and mine) perspective, the state is perceived not as the enemy, but as an entity that could provide local communities and self-organised workers with the institutional, political or economic power that would be required for these processes to reach their maximum potential in the framework of the political and economic transition that we need. It also means, among several other possibilities to be considered, the provision of financial or in-kind support for cooperatives or other initiatives inspired by the notion of the commons.

The idea of the ​​partner state is in line with some relatively recent theoretical debates among Marxist thinkers. Today, and especially after a series of counter-hegemonic governments that we have had in Latin America, we’re already very aware that the contemporary state is not simply that “committee for the management of the common affairs of the bourgeoisie” that Marx and Engels referred to in the Communist Manifesto. Neither Marx nor Engels were interested in developing a unified or integral theory about the state, so we should not interpret their statement (from the year 1848!) literally,. In the 1970s, Nikos Poulantzas and other non-dogmatic thinkers began to rethink the institutional framework of capitalist societies and argued that the state should be understood as a social relationship and not as an abstract entity floating above conflicting social classes, and added that the transformation of state institutions could be possible in the context of a “democratic way to socialism” (opened by the government experience of Popular Unity in Chile and brutally repressed by a military coup in 1973). More recently, Bob Jessop has shown how, although the state has a strong structural bias towards the reproduction of social relations, it’s also influenced by the totality of social forces, including counter-hegemonic struggles. My perspective of analysis on the state and the commons is very influenced by Jessop, and also by David Harvey, when he argues that a big problem on the left is that many – pointing to John Holloway and other proponents of the thesis of “changing the world without taking power” – think that the capture of state power wouldn’t be of much importance in emancipatory processes. We must recognise the incredible power accumulated in the institutions of the state and, therefore, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of state institutions; in particular when there’re opportunities to enable the expansion of the commons.

To those who are interested in deepening the knowledge of contemporary theoretical debates on the state and the commons, I would recommend reading our comrade Hilary Wainwright, the British political economist with whom I co-coordinate the TNI New Politics Project. A few years ago Hilary wrote a beautiful book, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, where she argued the need to ‘occupy’ state institutions while, in parallel, we organise ourselves to create and connect new political and economic institutions rooted in local communities and workers’ collectives. Her books, the one mentioned here and more recent ones, are based on the detailed investigation of positive examples of commons-related initiatives across the Globe.

In recent years, within the framework of our New Politics project, Hilary, myself, and many other activist-scholars from different regions of the world have tried to make sense of a substantial shift in emancipatory thinking. Until not long ago, the economic policy of much of the left included the proposal of nationalisation of key industries. Nowadays, and maybe influenced by the recognition of the failures or shortcomings of nationalisation in places like Venezuela (where in recent years there’s been a recentralisation of political and economic power in the hands of the bureaucrats and military that control the reins of the state, with very negative in terms of lesser autonomy and influence for popular organisations and with very bad indicators in the management of nationalised companies) many of us are more interested in the design of a new economy based on cooperative relations, in which state institutions would play a facilitating and protective role. We emphasise the importance of public ownership of public services and productive infrastructure, but only as long we ensure a significant level of decentralised ownership and management; for example, in the provision of water and energy services and in the production of a vast range of goods through networks of self-managed ventures.

This perspective also means a deeper and more serene examination of the ambivalent consequences of the scientific and technological changes currently underway. We already know that the emerging forms of organisation and control of information and communication technologies and distributed production constitute a very contested space, in which a few transnational corporations (I’m thinking of Uber, Airbnb and other examples of the wrongly called ‘sharing economy’) financialise and benefit from precarious workers, the users of social networks and independent software programmers – with negative impacts on unions’ power and on the quality of work – but we should also be able to recognise that the same technological developments could be beneficial for the (re)creation of truly solidarity, democratic and self-managed forms of ownership and management. Around the world, we can see the emergence of a new generation of workers who use their technological knowledge to launch new enterprises and networks based on the principles of the commons and coordinate and collaborate among themselves, transcending economic sectors and geographical borders, and being ethically (and increasingly also politically) aware of the new social and economic order they’re creating.

How would you appraise the so-called ‘pink tide’ in Latin America vis-à-vis the commons?

My personal perspective on these issues has evolved, as I tried to understand the arguments of comrades from other Latin American countries who posed a very strong critique of the statist political culture prevalent in some political and academic circles of the region. Like many Uruguayans, it was hard for me to assimilate the positions of compañeros like Pablo Solón in Bolivia, Edgardo Lander in Venezuela, Arturo Escobar in Colombia, Maristella Stampa in Argentina, or Eduardo Gudynas himself in Uruguay. They (and many others) are strong critics of ‘development’, and in particular of its ‘(neo)extractivist’ component. In short, my critique to them focused on two aspects: their staunch criticism of the state, and their inability to formulate alternatives or proposals to transcend the reality that they criticised. With the passage of time, and after many and agitated discussions with Pablo and Edgardo in workshops at the World Social Forum, seminars of our New Politics project and other similar spaces, I could understand that their criticisms of the state (not always so homogeneous nor so acidic as I perceived them) were not that far from my own criticism of the Latin American left, and I also ended up realising that indeed there were proposals embedded in their criticisms.

My position on these issues has also been influenced by my increasingly pessimistic interpretation of the outcomes of our progressive of left governments. After having followed very closely the processes of Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and to a lesser extent also those of Bolivia and Nicaragua, I think we should ask ourselves up to what point is it possible for the left to get involved in government without losing autonomy and our utopian perspective. In other word: is it possible to operate within the state apparatus without being caught in the demobilising logic of institutional power? Unlike some of the friends I mentioned before, I don’t have a single or categorical answer to such question. I still believe that the state has a very important role to play, but I’m also convinced that it is now imperative for the left to get rid of its obsolete state-centric vision and open up to fresh perspectives like those of the commons.

For the Uruguayan left, such transition could be difficult, if we consider the heavy weight of the state in our society, politics, economics and culture. A significant difference between Uruguay and most other countries in the region is its long tradition of strong and efficient state-owned companies, which are highly appreciated by the population. In Uruguay, people perceive the state as a catalyst for development and guarantor of equity and social integration. On the other hand, the transition could be made easier if we consider the already high significance of workers’ and housing cooperatives. I grew up in a mutual-aid housing cooperative, so I might not be entirely objective. And we know that not all cooperatives are well managed or are internally democratic or participatory, but when we compare the reality of the Uruguayan cooperative sector with other countries of the region and the world, it’s clear that we already have a very fertile terrain for the development of the commons.

From a purely theoretical or ideological point of view, many components of the current global debate around the commons wouldn’t be a novelty for the Uruguayan left. If we look at several parties that compose the ruling coalition Frente Amplio(Broad Front), we realise that parties as different as the Progressive Christian Democrats (PDC, the advocates of the thesis of socialismo autogestionario, self-managed socialism), the People’s Victory Party (PVP, in line with their libertarian roots), or the Socialist Party (PS, with their proposal of transition from co-management to self-management, which the party has been advocating since 1930, when it demanded workers’ control of the economy) have been for a long time formulating programmatic ideas that transcend the limits of statism.

In other countries of the region, it would seem that the proposal of the commons would be more compatible with the governmental discourse. In fact, the proponents of the commons in Europe often refer to the concepts of vivir bien (living well) or buen vivir (good living), which came from Latin America. These concepts became popular on a world scale as a supposed alternative paradigm to capitalism. The concepts of suma qamaña and sumaq kawsay have their roots in the economic and societal models developed over centuries by the indigenous peoples of the Andean and Amazonian regions, prioritising forms of production more horizontal and in harmony with nature. The translation (or ‘export’) into other languages and cultures is problematic, but in the countries of origin the significance of these concepts can be debated as well. Bolivia and Ecuador, during the governments led by Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, incorporated the notions of living well and good living in their respective constitutions and policy guidelines, but the policies implemented have not always been coherent with the spirit or with the letter of the new legal and institutional framework. In Ecuador, in the framework of the very radical turn to the right performed by president Lenin Moreno in recent months, the discourse of buen vivir (which sounds beautiful and guarantees a left patina) is being used to provide justification for an impending wave of privatisation and corporatization of public services. In Venezuela, there was also much talk around self-management and people’s power, and considerable resources were allocated to the creation of cooperatives and associative ventures of a new type, but in practice very little progress was achieved; the rentier model based on the exploitation of a single resource – oil – deepened during the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and its current exhaustion is the most important factor to explain the political, economic and social crisis that the country suffers today.

What are the organisational and programmatic challenges of the left for the integration of the idea of the commons into its political platform?

To answer this question, I should start by clarifying that I do not believe that the promotion of the commons should be the only strategy of the left. I believe that we must embrace the emancipatory vision of the commons, but without forgetting the role of the state and the need to respond to the very urgent problems of large sectors of the population. I agree with the criticisms of the hegemonic model of development and support the struggles against extractivism. I also tend to agree with many elements (not the whole package) of the emerging theorisation around the concept of degrowth – which is already very influential among European left circles, but not very significant within the Latin American left. But I disagree with visions such as Escobar’s when he speaks of “underdevelopment” as a mere “narration”, presenting it as an abstract concept that the colonialists would have elaborated and spread for the colonized to repeat. We can’t ignore the terrible rates of poverty, exclusion, and poor access to basic goods and services that still affect millions of Latin Americans. Our region should be incorporated into the global fight against climate change, and we must promote new forms of organisation and production that preserve the ecological balance, but we must also respond to social demands in the context of a quite likely deterioration of the economic situation in the short or medium terms. In that sense, I believe that the impulse to the commons must be framed within a broader strategy of growth, different from that offered by predatory and savage capitalism.

Thinking about the specific conditions of Uruguay, and based on data and projections published by local researchers, it should already be evident that the promotion of mega-projects like the huge paper mills run by Finnish corporations, or the already privatisation of the wind segment of the energy sector, don’t constitute the most appropriate developmental strategy. I would have preferred that the effort made by the government to convince us that the attraction of direct foreign investment and the liberalisation of trade are the right path would have been accompanied by serious studies sustained by reliable information to appraise the pros and cons of two different strategies: supporting large private investment on the one hand, and the promotion of the local and popular solidarity economy on the other. What would be the impacts of redirecting the tax exemptions and the large explicit or covert subsidies received by large transnational corporations if all that money were used to support cooperatives and other associative enterprises rooted in the national economy? I don’t have concrete answers to these queries, but I know that other Uruguayan economists and social researchers also raise similar questions and could provide objective and relevant information to deepen this exchange.

How to incorporate the commons within a political project that aims at the de-commodification of public services?

In Latin America we have many valuable examples of de-commodification of public services, past and present, that we should reconsider in the framework of current exchanges around the commons. A few years ago, during the heyday of what we then praised as the Bolivarian ‘revolution’, I worked in Venezuela and I was able to appreciate very closely the emergence of multiple processes of popular self-organisation in which millions of people participated. I’m referring to the mesas técnicas (people’s technical committees), the consejos comunitarios de agua(community water councils), the consejos comunales (communal councils) and the comunas (communes). Unfortunately, most of these processes are no longer in existence or in terminal crisis. Individualism and competition has been stronger than solidarity and cooperation in the responses to the crisis that Venezuela is experiencing today. This is a sad realisation, which forces us to question ourselves about the reasons and the conditions that made possible the erosion of processes that many of us considered very strong and even irreversible. A large part of the communal and participatory initiatives that had emerged in the most fecund years of the Venezuelan transition have gone into rapid regression when faced with the loss of the resources provided by the state (of which they had become dependent), in the context of the terrible deterioration of the social and economic situation. I think that many lessons can emerge from Venezuela, both on the potential of the commons and on the fragility of processes of this type. It also forces us to rethink the limits of ‘revolutionary’ political projects that are excessively focused on the state.

At the international level, and taking as a basis for analysis the European reality – which is the one that today I know better, since it’s my place of residence, activism and research – I believe that Latin Americans could ‘import’ some interesting ideas from current European exchanges on alternatives to commodification and corporatization. The side of the European left most active side in the promotion of the commons is that linked to struggles around the right to the city and the citizen platforms that won local office in several Spanish cities. Today, an important part of the European left perceives the city as the privileged space for political, social and economic experimentation, without seeing cities as isolated entities or at the margin of processes aimed at changing the state on a national scale, but recognising their growing significance in the new regional and world order. It’s not by chance that the fight against climate change or for the recovery of public services are led by networks of progressive local governments. Barcelona En Comú, the citizen coalition that now governs the Catalan capital, in particular, is a very powerful source of inspiration of regional and world importance. The political influence of Barcelona today is comparable to the hope that Porto Alegre, Montevideo and other Latin American capitals had been generated in the 1980s and 1990s, when the left began to experiment with participatory budgeting and other innovative policies for the radicalisation of democracy at the municipal level. Barcelona is today a laboratory for the design and testing of multiple initiatives inspired by the principle of the commons.

Another possible source of inspiration could be the current program of the British Labour Party. Since Jeremy Corbyn became party leader, Labour has become much more radical than our Frente Amplio and most other left parties in Latin America and Europe. The Labour Party has a proposal for renationalisation that’s much more advanced than similar initiatives applied or proposed anywhere else in the world. In the specific case of the energy sector, Corbyn and his party propose to bring back the sector into public hands, so that the country’ energy becomes environmentally sustainable, affordable for users, and managed with democratic control, as stated in the programmatic manifesto launched last year. But renationalisation, from this perspective, does not simply implies that the state retakes control by going back to the obsolete state-owned companies of the past, but rather the combination of different forms of public ownership and management. In short, Labour proposes not merely to re-nationalise companies that had been privatised during Thatcherism and Blairism, but to reconvert the big banks and other financial institutions that during the crisis had been saved from bankruptcy with public monies into a network of local banks based on mixed ownership (state and social), or the creation of new municipal utilities. The party is committed to create new municipal utilities, inspired by some socially-owned companies already in operation – such as Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham – or by popular campaigns – such as Switched On London – that propose the de-privatisation of power through the launch of new public enterprises, rooted in a more democratic type of management based on the active participation of users and workers, being environmentally sustainable, and securing services with affordable rates for the entire population.

Originally posted at the Transnational Institute Website

Lead image by Roger Cunyan. Additional image by Isabella Jusková.

The post The commons, the state and the public: A Latin American perspective appeared first on P2P Foundation.

I. Commons and Worlds

Commons exist within worlds. Long before private property showed its ugly head and started to devour territories, people created what today we call commons as a principal strategy to enact their worlds. These worlds, made up of human and nonhuman, living and nonliving, material and spiritual beings and forms woven together in inextricably entangled ways, have continued to persevere nevertheless.

Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda (1984) describes how the introduction of barbwire for cattle ranching in the Caribbean Coast region of Colombia at the dawn of the twentieth century interrupted flows of people and animals, regularized landscapes and even desiccated wetlands and lagoons in some areas. Despite these challenges, the region’s people had a resilient culture and strove time and again to reconstitute their commons. They sought to recreate the sensual wholeness that Raoul Vaneigem describes as a casualty of the economy:

The economy is everywhere that life is not….Economics is the most durable lie of the approximately ten millennia mistakenly accepted as history….With the intrusion of work the body loses its sensual wholeness…work existed from the moment one part of life was devoted to the service of the economy while the other was denied and repressed (Vaneigem 1994:17, 18, 27, 28).

And so, and against all odds, and like many other people throughout the world, the Caribbean people described by Fals go on enacting a world of their own, creating with every act and every practice worlds in which the commons – indeed, commoning – still find a breathing space and at times even the chance to flourish. Commoners are like that. They refuse to abide by the rules of the One-World World (OWW) that wishes to organize everything in terms of individuals, private property, markets, profits, and a single notion of the Real. OWW seeks to banish nature and the sacred from the domain of an exclusively human-driven life (Law 2011).

Those who insist on commoning defy this civilization of the One-World (capitalist, secular, liberal, patriarchal, white) that arrogates for itself the right to be “the world” and that reduces all other worlds to nonexistence or noncredible alternatives to what exist (Santos 2002). Vaneigem is again instructive:

Civilization was identified with obedience to a universal and eternal market relationship….The commodity is the original form of pollution….Nature cannot be liberated from the economy until the economy has been driven out of human life….(From the moment the market system minimizes the fruits of the earth by seeing them only in terms of the fruits of labor, the market system treats nature as its slave)… As the economy’s hold weakens, life is more able to clear a path for itself (Vaneigem 1994).

This reality has always been evident to most of the world’s peoples-territory (pueblos-territorio).¹ An activist from the Process of Black Communities of Colombia said: “The territory has no price. Our ancestors cared for the territory with a great sense of belonging. This is why we have to create our economies not from the outside coming in but the other way around: from the inside going outwards.”² The world this activist talks about has persevered, again despite all odds. Let us visit this this world for a brief moment.

II. Yurumanguí: Introducing Relational Worlds

In Colombia’s southern Pacific rainforest region, picture a seemingly simple scene from the Yurumanguí River, one of the many rivers that flow from the Western Andean mountain range towards the Pacific Ocean, an area inhabited largely by Afrodescendant communities.³ A father and his six-year old daughter paddling with their canaletes (oars) seemingly upstream in their potrillos (local dugout canoes) at the end of the afternoon, taking advantage of the rising tide; perhaps they are returning home after having taken their harvested plantains and their catch of the day to the town downstream, and bringing back some items they bought at the town store – unrefined cane sugar, cooking fuel, salt, notebooks for the children, or what have you.

On first inspection, we may say that the father is “socializing” his daughter into the correct way to navigate the potrillo, an important skill as life in the region greatly depends on the ceaseless going back and forth in the potrillos through rivers, mangroves and estuaries. This interpretation is correct in some ways; but something else is also going on. As locals are wont to say, speaking of the river territory, acá nacimos, acá crecimos, acá hemos conocido qué es el mundo (“Here we were born, here we grew up, here we have known what the world is”). Through their nacer~crecer~conocer they enact the manifold practices through which their territories/worlds have been made since they became libres (i.e., free, not enslaved peoples) and became entangled with living beings of all kinds in these forest and mangrove worlds.

Let us travel to this river and immerse ourselves deeply within it and experience it with the eyes of relationality; an entire way of worlding emerges for us. Looking attentively from the perspective of the manifold relations that make this world what it is, we see that the potrillo was made out of a mangrove tree with the knowledge the father received from his predecessors; the mangrove forest is intimately known by the inhabitants who traverse with great ease the fractal estuaries it creates with the rivers and the always moving sea; we begin to see the endless connections keeping together and always in motion this intertidal “aquatic space,” (Oslender 2008) including connections with the moon and the tides that enact a nonlinear temporality. The mangrove forest involves many relational entities among what we might call minerals, mollusks, nutrients, algae, microorganisms, birds, plant, and insects – an entire assemblage of underwater, surface and areal life. Ethnographers of these worlds describe it in terms of three non-separate worlds – el mundo de abajo or infraworld; este mundo, or the human world; and el mundo de arriba, or spiritual/supraworld. There are comings and goings between these worlds, and particular places and beings connecting them, including “visions” and spiritual beings. This entire world is narrated in oral forms that include storytelling, chants and poetry.

This dense network of interrelations may be called a “relational ontology.” The mangrove-world, to give it a short name, is enacted minute by minute, day by day, through an infinite set of practices carried out by all kinds of beings and life forms, involving a complex organic and inorganic materiality of water, minerals, degrees of salinity, forms of energy (sun, tides, moon, relations of force), and so forth. There is a rhizome “logic” to these entanglements, a logic that is impossible to follow in any simple way, and very difficult to map and measure, if at all; it reveals an altogether different way of being and becoming in territory and place. These experiences constitute relational worlds or ontologies. To put it abstractly, a relational ontology of this sort can be defined as one in which nothing preexists the relations that constitute it. Said otherwise, things and beings are their relations; they do not exist prior to them.

As the anthropologist from Aberdeen Tim Ingold says, these “worlds without objects” (2011:131) are always in movement, made up of materials in motion, flux and becoming; in these worlds, living beings of all kinds constitute each other’s conditions for existence; they “interweave to form an immense and continually evolving tapestry.” (2011:10) Going back to the river scene, one may say that “father” and “daughter” get to know their local world not through distancing reflection but by going about it, that is, by being alive to their world. These worlds do not require the divide between nature and culture in order to exist – in fact, they exist as such only because they are enacted by practices that do not rely on such divide. In a relational ontology, “beings do not simply occupy the world, they inhabit it, and in so doing – in threading their own paths through the meshwork – they contribute to their ever-evolving weave.” (Ingold 2011: 71) Commons exist in these relational worlds, not in worlds that are imagined as inert and waiting to be occupied.

Even if the relations that keep the mangrove-world always in a state of becoming are always changing, to disrupt them significantly often results in the degradation of such worlds. Such is the case with industrial shrimp farming schemes and oil palm plantations for agrofuels, which have proliferated in many tropical regions of the world. These market systems, often built at the expense of mangrove and humid forest lands, aim to transform “worthless swamp” into agroindustrial complexes (Ogden 2012; Escobar 2008).

Here, of course, we find many of the operations of the One-World World at play: the conversion of everything that exists in the mangrove-world into “nature” and “nature” into “resources”; the effacing of the life-enabling materiality of the entire domains of the inorganic and the nonhuman, and its treatment as “objects” to be had, destroyed or extracted; and linking the forest worlds so transformed to “world markets,” to generate profit. In these cases, the insatiable appetite of the One-World World spells out the progressive destruction of the mangrove-world, its ontological capture and reconversion by capital and the State (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). The OWW, in short, denies the mangrove-world its possibility of existing as such. Local struggles constitute attempts to (re)establish some degree of symmetry by seeking to influence the partial connections that the mangrove-worlds inevitably maintain with the OWW.

III. Territoriality, Ancestrality and Worlds

Elders and young activists in many territorial communities worldwide (including increasingly in urban areas) eloquently express why they defend their worlds even at the price of their lives. An activist from the Afrodescendant community of La Toma of Colombia’s southwest, which has struggled against gold mining since 2008, said: “It is patently clear to us that we are confronting monsters such as transnational corporations and the State. Yet nobody is willing to leave her/his territory; I might get killed here but I am not leaving.”⁴

Such resistance takes place within a long history of domination and resistance, and this is essential for understanding commoning as an ontological political practice. La Toma communities, for instance, have knowledge of their continued presence in the territory since the first half of the seventeenth century. It’s an eloquent example of what activists call “ancestrality,” referring to the ancestral mandate that inspires today’s struggles and that persists in the memory of the elders, amply documented by oral history and scholars. (Lisifrey et al. 2013) This mandate is joyfully celebrated in oral poetry and song: Del Africa llegamos con un legado ancestral; la memoria del mundo debemos recuperar (“From Africa we arrived with an ancestral legacy; the memory of our world we need to bring back”).⁵ Far from an intransigent attachment to the past, ancestrality stems from a living memory that orients itself to a future reality that imagines, and struggles for, conditions that will allow them to persevere as a distinct, living mode of existence.

Within relational worlds, the defense of territory, life and the commons are one and the same. This is the ontological dimension of commoning. To this extent, this chapter’s argument can be stated as follows: The perseverance of communities, commons, and movements and the struggles for their defense and reconstitution can be described as ontological. At its best and most radical, this is particularly true for those struggles that incorporate explicitly ethno-territorial dimensions and involve resistance and the defense and affirmation of commons.

Conversely, whereas the occupation of territories implies economic, technological, cultural, ecological, and often armed aspects, its most fundamental dimension is ontological. From this perspective, what occupies territories and commons is a particular ontology, that of the universal world of individuals and markets (the OWW) that attempts to transform all other worlds into one; this is another way of interpreting the historical enclosure of the commons. By interrupting the neoliberal globalizing project of constructing One World, many indigenous, Afrodescendant, peasant, and poor urban communities are advancing ontological struggles. The struggle to maintain multiple worlds – the pluriverse – is best embodied by the Zapatista dictum, Un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos, a world where many worlds fit. Many of these worlds can thus be seen as struggles over the pluriverse.

Another clear case of ontological occupation of territories comes from the southernmost area in the Colombian Pacific, around the port city of Tumaco. Here, since the early 1980s, the forest has been destroyed and communities displaced to give way to oil palm plantations. Nonexistent in the 1970s, by the mid-1990s they had expanded to over 30,000 hectares. The monotony of the plantation – row after row of palm as far as you can see, a green desert of sorts – replaced the diverse, heterogeneous and entangled world of forest and communities.

There are two important aspects to remark from this dramatic change: first, the “plantation form” effaces the socioecological relations that maintain the forest-world. The plantation emerges from a dualist ontology of human dominance over so-called “nature” understood as “inert space” or “resources” to be had, and can thus be said to be the most effective means for the ontological occupation and ultimate erasure of the local relational world. Conversely, the same plantation form is unthinkable from the perspective of the forest-world; within this world, forest utilization and cultivation practices take on an entirely different form, closer to agroforestry; even the landscape, of course, is entirely different. Not far from the oil palm plantations, industrial shrimp farming was also busy in the 1980s and 1990s transforming the mangrove-world into disciplined succession of rectangular pools, “scientifically” controlled. A very polluting and destructive industry especially when constructed on mangrove swamps, this type of shrimp farming constitutes another clear example of ontological occupation and politics at play (Escobar 2008).

IV. Commons Beyond Development: Commoning and Pluriversal Studies

The ontological occupation of commons and worlds just described often takes place in the name of development. Development and growth continue to be among the most naturalized concepts in the social and policy domains. The very idea of development, however, has been questioned by cultural critics since the mid-1980s; they questioned the core assumptions of development, including growth, progress, and instrumental rationality. These critiques came of age with the publication in 1992 of a collective volume, The Development Dictionary. The book started with the startling claim: “The last forty years can be called the age of development. This epoch is coming to an end. The time is ripe to write its obituary.” (Sachs 1992; Rist 1997) If development was dead, what would come after? Some started to talk about a “post-development era” in response to this question (Rahnema 1997). Degrowth theorists, notably Latouche (2009), contributed to disseminate this perspective in the North.

Postdevelopment advocates argued that it is possible for activists and policymakers to think about the end of development, emphasizing the notion of alternatives to development, rather than development alternatives. The idea of alternatives to development has become more concrete in South America in recent years with the notions of Buen Vivir (good living, or collective well-being according to culturally appropriate ways) and the rights of Nature. Defined as a holistic view of social life that no longer gives overriding centrality to the economy, Buen Vivir (BV) “constitutes an alternative to development, and as such it represents a potential response to the substantial critiques of postdevelopment” (Gudynas and Acosta 2011; Acosta and Martínez 2009). Very succinctly, Buen Vivir grew out of indigenous struggles for social change waged by peasants, Afrodescendants, environmentalists, students, women and youth. Echoing indigenous ontologies, BV implies a different philosophy of life which subordinates economic objectives to ecological criteria, human dignity and social justice. Debates about the form BV might take in modern urban contexts and other parts of the world, such as Europe, are beginning to take place. Degrowth, commons and BV are “fellow travelers” in this endeavor.

Buen Vivir resonates with broader challenges to the “civilizational model” of globalized development. The crisis of the Western modelo civilizatorio is invoked by many movements as the underlying cause of the current crisis of climate, energy, poverty and meaning. This emphasis is strongest among ethnic movements, yet it is also found, for instance, in peasant networks such as Via Campesina for which only a shift toward agroecological food production systems can lead us out of the climate and food crises. Originally proposed by the Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social (CLAES) in Montevideo and closely related to the “transitions to post-extractivism” framework, Buen Vivir has become an important intellectual-activist debate in many South American countries (Alayza and Gudynas 2011; Gudynas 2011; Massuh 2012). The point of departure is a critique of the intensification of extractivist models based on large-scale mining, hydrocarbon exploitation or extensive agricultural operations, particularly for agrofuels such as soy, sugar cane or oil palm. Whether they take the form of conventional – often brutal – neoliberal extractivist policies in countries like Colombia, Perú or México, or the neoextractivism of the center-left regimes, these models are legitimized as efficient growth strategies.

This implies a transition from One-World concepts such as “globalization” to concepts centered on the pluriverse as made up of a multiplicity of mutually entangled and co-constituting but distinct worlds (Blaser, de la Cadena and Escobar 2013; Blaser 2010). There are many signs that suggest that the One-World doctrine is unraveling. The growing visibility of struggles to defend mountains, landscapes, forests and so forth by appealing to a relational (non-dualist) and pluriversal understanding of life is a manifestation of the OWW’s crisis. Santos has powerfully described this conjuncture with the following paradox: We are facing modern problems for which there are no longer modern solutions (Santos 2002:13).

This conjuncture defines a rich context for commons studies from the perspective of pluriversal studies: on the one hand, the need to understand the conditions by which the one world of neoliberal globalization continues to maintain its dominance; and on the other hand, the (re)emergence of projects based on different ways of “worlding” (that is, the socioecological processes implied in building collectively a distinctive reality or world), including commoning, and how they might weaken the One-World project while widening their spaces of (re)existence.

The notion of the pluriverse, it should be made clear, has two main sources: theoretical critiques of dualism, and the perseverance of pluriversal and non-dualist worlds (more often known as “cosmovisions”) that reflect a deeply relational understanding of life. Notable examples include Muntu and Ubuntu in parts of Africa, the Pachamamaor Mama Kiwe among South American indigenous peoples, Native US and Canadian cosmologies, and even the entire Buddhist philosophy of mind. Examples also exist within the West as “alternative Wests” or nondominant forms of modernity. Some of the current struggles going on in Europe over the commons, energy transitions, and the relocalization of food, for instance, could be seen as struggles to reconnect with the stream of life. They also constitute forms of resistance against the dominant ontology of capitalist modernity. Worldwide, the multiple struggles for the reconstruction of communal spaces and for reconnecting with nature are giving rise to political mobilizations for the defense of the relational fabric of life – for instance, for the recognition of territorial rights, local knowledges, and local biodiversity. Struggles over the commons are key examples of such activation.

V. The Commons and Transitions Towards the Pluriverse

Economically, culturally, and militarily, we are witnessing a renewed attack on anything collective; land grabbing and the privatization of the commons (including sea, land, even the atmosphere through carbon markets) are signs of this attack. This is the merciless world of the global 10 percent, foisted upon the 90 percent and the natural world with a seemingly ever-increasing degree of virulence and cynicism. In this sense, the world created by the OWW has brought about untold devastation and suffering. The remoteness and separation it effects from the worlds that we inevitably weave with other earth-beings are themselves a cause of the ecological and social crisis (Rose 2008). These are aspects of what Nonini (2007) has insightfully described as “the wearing-down of the commons.”

The emergence, over the past decade, of an array of discourses on the cultural and ecological transitions necessary to deal with the interrelated crises of climate, food, energy and poverty, is powerful evidence that the dominant model of social life is exhausted. In the global North and the global South, multiple transition narratives and forms of activism are going beyond One-World strategic solutions (e.g., “sustainable development” and the “green economy”) to articulate sweeping cultural and ecological transitions to different societal models. These Transition discourses (TDs) are emerging today with particular richness, diversity and intensity. Those writing on the subject are not limited to the academy; in fact, the most visionary TD thinkers are located outside of it, even if most engage with critical currents in the academy. TDs are emerging from a multiplicity of sites, principally social movements and some NGOs, from emerging scientific paradigms and academic theories, and from intellectuals with significant connections to environmental and cultural struggles. TDs are prominent in several fields, including those of culture, ecology, religion and spirituality, alternative science (e.g., complexity), futures studies, feminist studies, political economy, and digital technologies and the commons.

The range of TDs can only be hinted at here. In the North, the most prominent include degrowth; a variety of transition initiatives (TIs); the Anthropocene; forecasting trends (e.g., Club of Rome, Randers 2012); and the movement towards commons and the care economy as a different way of seeing and being (e.g., Bollier 2014). Some approaches involving interreligious dialogues and UN processes are also crafting TDs. Among the explicit TIs are the Transition Town Initiative (TTI, UK), the Great Transition Initiative (GTI, Tellus Institute, US), the Great Turning, (Macy and Johnstone 2012) the Great Work or transition to an Ecozoic era, (Berry 1999) and the transition from The Enlightenment to an age of Sustainment. (Fry 2012) In the global South, TDs include the crisis of civilizational model, postdevelopment and alternatives to development, Buen Vivir, communal logics and autonomía, subsistence and food sovereignty, and transitions to post-extractivism. While the features of the new era in the North include post-growth, post-materialist, post-economic, post-capitalist and post-dualist, those for the south are expressed in terms of post-development, post/non-liberal, post/non-capitalist, and post-extractivist. (Escobar 2011)

VI. Conclusion: Commoning and the Commons as Umbrella and Bridge Discourses

What follows is a provisional exploration, as a way to conclude, on the relation between commoning and the commons and political ontology and pluriversal studies. To begin with TDs, it is clear that there needs to be a concerted effort at bringing together TDs in the global North and the global South. There are tensions and complementarities across these transition visions and strategies – for instance, between degrowth and postdevelopment. The commons could be among the most effective umbrellas for bringing together Northern and Southern discourses, contributing to dissolve this very dichotomy. As Bollier (2014) points out, the commons entails a different way of seeing and being, a different model of socionatural life. Seen in this way, the commons is a powerful shared interest across worlds. Struggles over the commons are found across the global North and the global South, and the interconnections among them are increasingly visible and practicable (see, e.g., Bollier and Helfrich 2012). Commons debates show that diverse peoples and worlds have “an interest in common,” which is nevertheless not “the same interest” for all involved, as visions and practices of the commons are world-specific (de la Cadena, 2015).

Second, reflection on commons and commoning makes visible commons-destroying dualistic conceptions, particular those between nature and culture, humans and nonhumans, the individual and the communal, mind and body, and so forth (see Introduction to the volume). Commons reflection reminds those of all existing in the densest urban and liberal worlds that we dwell in a world that is alive. Reflection on the commons resituates the human within the ceaseless flow of life in which everything is inevitably immersed; it enables us to see ourselves again as part of the stream of life. Commons have this tremendous life-enhancing potential today.

Third, debates on the commons share with political ontology the goal of deconstructing the worldview and practice of the individual and the economy. No single cultural invention in the West has been more damaging to relational worlds than the disembedded “economy” and its closely associated cognate, “the autonomous individual.” These two cornerstones of the dominant forms of Western liberalism and modernity need to be questioned time and again, particularly by making evident their role in destroying the commons-constructing practices of peoples throughout the planet. Working towards a “commons-creating economy” (Helfrich 2013) also means working towards the (re)constitution of relational world, ones in which the economy is re-embedded in society and nature (ecological economics); it means the individual integrated within a community, the human within the nonhuman, and knowledge within the inevitable contiguity of knowing, being and doing.

Fourth, there are a whole series of issues that could be fruitfully explored from the double perspective of commons and political ontology as paired domains. These would include, among others: alternatives to development such as Buen Vivir; transitions to post-extractive models of economic and social life; movements for the relocalization of food, energy, transport, building construction, and other social, cultural, and economic activities; and the revisioning and reconstruction of the economy, including proposals such as the diverse economy as suggested by Gibson-Graham et al. (2013), subsistence and community economies, and social and solidarity economies (e.g., Coraggio and Laville 2014). There are many ontological and political questions relating to these issues that cross-cut both commons and political ontology, from how to question hegemonic forms of thinking more effectively to how to imagine truly innovative ways of knowing, being and doing with respect to “the economy,” “development,” “resources,” “sustainability,” and so forth. Along the way, new lexicons will emerge – indeed, are emerging – for transitions to a pluriverse within which commoning and relational ways of being might find auspicious conditions for their flourishing.

Today, the multiple ontological struggles in defense of commons and territories, and for reconnection with nature and the stream of life, are catalyzing a veritable political awakening focused on relationality. Struggles over the commons are key examples of such activation. Moving beyond “development” and “the economy” are primary aspects of such struggles. But in the last instance .

Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.

References

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Arturo Escobar (Colombia/USA) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Research Associate, Grupo Nación/Cultura/Memoria, Universidad del Valle, Cali.

Photo by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

The post Patterns of Commoning: Commons in the Pluriverse appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Franck Gaudichaud: Following their participation in the international symposium that we coordinated last June on “Progressive governments and post-neoliberalism in Latin America: End of a golden age?” at the University of Grenoble, France,[1] we thought it would be worthwhile going back over the Latin American context with the sociologists Edgardo Lander (Venezuela) and Miriam Lang (Ecuador). Both of them have a sharp critical view, very often at odds concerning the present scene, and both have participated actively in recent years in the debates on the initial balance sheets of the progressive governments of 1998-2015, in particular those of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Miriam’s case[2] and of the Transnational Institute in Edgardo’s case.[3]

For example, they have written probingly on such topics as the problematics of development and the state, neocolonialism and extractivism, the lefts and the social movements, and both have tackled the difficult issue of conceiving roads of emancipation at times in which humanity is going through a profound ecosystemic crisis of civilization, challenges that mean, inter alia, re-inventing the left and (eco)socialism in the 21^st century. — FG

Franck Gaudichaud: In the recent period there have been many debates concerning the end of a cycle of progressive and national-popular governments in Latin America, or rather their possible retreat and loss of political hegemony. What are your thoughts about this debate? From where you stand, can we say that this debate is going beyond the question of an end to a cycle? And what can we say about the present situation compared with the progressive experience from 1999 to 2015?

Edgardo Lander: This is indeed a very intense debate, especially in Latin America, because there had been many expectations about the possibilities for profound transformation in these societies beginning with the victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. That was the point of departure of a process of political change that led to the majority of the governments in South America being identified with something referred to as progressive or left-wing in one of their versions. These expectations of transformations that will lead to post-capitalist societies posed severe challenges both in terms of the negative experience of the socialisms of the last century and in terms of new realities like climate change and the limits of the planet Earth that it was necessary to confront. To think about transformation today necessarily means something very different from what it meant in the past century. At a time when the discourse of socialism had practically disappeared from the political grammar in much of the world, it reappears in this new historical moment in South America. Based especially on the struggles of the indigenous peoples, some of these processes seem to incorporate in a very central way a profound questioning of fundamental aspects of what had constituted socialism in the 20^th century. Centrally present in part of the imaginaries of the transformation were themes like pluriculturalism, different forms of relationship with the other networks of life, notions of the rights of nature, and conceptions of buen vivir that pointed to a possibility of transformation that could take into account the limitations of the previous processes and open new horizons to address the new conditions of humanity and the planet.

FG: So, we’re talking about the initial period, the beginning, in the early 2000s, when resistance from below was combined with the creation of socio-political dynamics more or less rupturist and post-neoliberal depending on the case, which also happened to emerge on the national electoral and governmental plane.

EL: Yes, in a period in which extraordinary hopes were developing that radical transformations were beginning in society. In the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia, the new governments were a result of the processes of accumulation of forces of social movements and organizations fighting neoliberal governments. The experience of the Indigenous Uprising in Ecuador and the Water War in Bolivia were expressions of societies in movement in which social sectors that were not the most typical in the political action of the left played protagonistic roles. It was a plebeian emergence, social sectors previously invisibilized, indigenous, peasants, urban popular forces, that came to occupy a central place in the political arena. This gave rise to extraordinary expectations.

However, over time severe obstacles appeared. Despite the high-flown rhetoric, important sectors of the left that had leading roles in those processes of struggle had not submitted the experience of 20^th century socialism to sufficiently critical thinking. Many of the old ways of understanding leadership, party, vanguard, relations between state and society, economic development, relations with the rest of nature, as well as the weight of the Eurocentric monocultural and patriarchal cosmovisions were present in those processes of change. The historic colonial forms of insertion in the international division of labour and nature were deepened. Obviously, any project that aims at overcoming capitalism in the present world must necessarily deal with the harsh challenges posed by the profound crisis of civilization now facing humanity, in particular the hegemonic logic of endless growth of modernity that has come to overload the planet’s capacity and is undermining the conditions that make possible the reproduction of life.

The experience of the so-called progressive governments is occurring in times in which neoliberal globalization is accelerating, and China is becoming the workshop of the world and the major economy on the planet. That produces a qualitative leap in the demand for and price of commodities: energy resources, minerals and products of agro-industry such as soy. In these conditions, each of the progressive governments has opted to finance the promised social transformations via the deepening of predatory extractivism. This has not only the obvious implications that the productive structurerof these countries is not questioned but also that it is deepened in terms of the neocolonial forms of insertion in the international division of labour and nature. Also, the role of the state is increased as the major recipient of income from the rents produced through the export of commodities. Thus, over and above what the constitutional texts say about plurinationality and interculturalism, there is an overriding conception of the transformation centered primarily on the state and the identification of the state with the common good. This inevitably leads to conflicts over territories, indigenous and peasant rights, struggles for the defence of and acess to water, and resistance to megamining. These popular and territorial struggles have been viewed by these governments as threats to the national project presented, designed and led by the state as representing the national interest. To carry forward their neo-developmentalist projects in the face of this resistance governments have resorted to repression and are taking on increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Defining from the centre which are the priorities, and viewing anything that stands in the way of this priority as a threat, there is established a logic of raison d’état that requires the undermining of the resistance.

In the case of Bolivia and Ecuador this has led to a certain demobilization of the major social organizations as well as divisions promoted by the government in the movements, which has resulted in fragmentations of their social fabric and weakened the democratic transformative energy that characterized them.

FG: In contrast to this analysis, and particularly to what you say about raison d’état, militants and intellectuals participating in those processes as part of the governments and members of pro-government parties argue that in the last analysis the only way to pursue an authentic post-neoliberal course in Latin America was, first, to recover the state through the social and plebeian mobilizations that overthrew the old party-based elites, and after overwhelming anti-oligarchic electoral victories begin using the state (but with links to those below) to distribute and reconstitute the possibility of a “real” alternative to neoliberalism.

Miriam Lang: Before getting into that, I would like to go over again what Edgardo said, because the term “end of cycle” suggests somewhat that we are looking at the whole region in light of the Argentine and Brazilian experience where the Right has indeed come back. However, a more appropriate reading would be to look at how the project of transformation has changed during the years of progressive governments and why now we are in all respects in a different situation than we were 10 or 15 years ago, including in those countries where there are still progressives in the government, as in Bolivia or Ecuador. I am referring to what some call the transformation of the transformations and also the diversity of political tendencies that make up those governments, in which the transformative lefts are not in fact necessarily hegemonic but where the processes have become successful projects of modernization of capitalist relations and insertion in the global market.

FG: After all, you both have a clear critical position on the international division of labour, commodities, the use of extractivism, the problem of the state (often authoritarian and clientelist even today), phenomena that have certainly not disappeared and have even been consolidated in various ways under the progressive governments. But you do not mention here the balsas familia [family allowances], the big reduction in poverty and inequality, the incorporation of subaltern social classes into politics, the reconstruction of basic service systems, of public health, the spectacular growth of infrastructures, etc. during the decade-long golden age of the progressive governments. In short, if I can act as a spokesman for the logic of García Linera, the Bolivian vice-president, you would be those “coffee-shop critics” that he denounces[4] as not having a genuine empathy toward the popular sectors and their day-to-day living conditions. That is, to say the least, a classic argument of the progressive government supporters in their present debate with the critical left.

ML: Well, it depends somewhat on how each of us looks at the reality. If you look, for example, at the new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador, the transformation project delineated therein goes much further than the reduction of poverty. The previous social struggles, whatever they sought, went much further than a small distribution of income. In saying that I do not want to ignore the fact that the day-to-day life of many people has become easier, at least in those years of high prices for hydrocarbons. But we also have to look beyond the poverty statistics. We can say that so many people have risen above the poverty line, and that’s great, but we can also take a closer look and ask what type of poverty are we talking about? In Latin America poverty is still measured in terms of incomes and consumption; this measures to what degree a household is participating in the capitalist way of life and possibly it says a little about the quality of life of that household. What it does not reveal is the dimensions of the subsistence economies, the dimensions of the quality of human relations, etc. To what degree were people able to really express their needs according to their context? To what degree have these policies of redistribution of income strengthened or expanded territorially the logics of the capitalist market in countries where a large part of the population, because of the enormous cultural diversity that exists, still did not live completely under capitalist precepts?

We could say that this diversity of ways of life constituted a significant transformative potential in terms of horizons for overcoming capitalism. And if we look at the ecological conditions of the planet, many peasant, indigenous, Black or popular urban communities, instead of being labelled as poor or underdeveloped, could have been viewed as examples of how we can consume less and be more satisfied. However, what has happened is precisely what I call the “mechanism of underdevelopment”;[5] in the context of “ending poverty” they are told: your way of life, which requires so little money, is undignified, you have to become more like the urban, capitalist, consumerist population that has to manage money, and the form of exchange in the capitalist market, no other forms of exchange are valid. So-called financial literacy, which was part of the progressive anti-poverty policy, has helped financial capital to establish new credit markets among the poorest people and at much higher interest rates. And the famous introduction to consumption tends to occur in third-rate conditions. So in the end, we have populations that are indebted through consumption because needs have been generated for them that they may not have had in the past. So it depends a little on how we look at these things. It’s a problem of values and perspective, of how we want future generations to live. It’s not simply a question of democratizing consumption; the commitment was to build a world that is sustainable for at least five, six, seven generations to come, and I have serious doubts as to whether this form of erradicating poverty has contributed to those objectives.

EL: In the Venezuelan case, the use of the petroleum rent in a form that differed from how it had been used historically had huge consequences during the first decade of the Chávez government. Social spending came to represent something like 70 percent of the national budget. This public expenditure on health, education, food, housing and social security effectively signified a profound transformation in the living conditions of a majority of the population. Venezuela, which like the rest of Latin America has historically been a country of deep inequalities, not only reduced poverty levels quite significantly (measured by monetary income), but it also managed to sharply reduce inequality. The CEPAL [Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLA, a UN regional commission] has pointed out that Venezuela came to be, along with Uruguay, one of the two least unequal countries on the continent. This was a very major transformation, and it was expressed in such vital matters as a reduction in infant mortality and an increase in the weight and height of children. These are not in any way secondary issues.

On the other hand, this was accompanied from the political standpoint by processes of very broadly based popular organization in which millions of people participated. Some of the most important social policies were designed in such a way that they required the organization of the people in order to function. The best example of this was the Barrio Adentro Mission, a primary healthcare service providing broad coverage to the popular sectors throughout the country, and made possible principally by the participation of Cuban doctors. It was a program that held out the possibility of other forms of understanding public policies in a non-clientelist way that required the participation of the people.

With Barrio Adentro, important steps were begun to transform the country’s healthcare system. It went from a medical system that was fundamentally hospital-based to a decentralized regime with primary services located in the local communities. From a situation in which, for example, a child who was dehydrated in a Caracas neighborhood in the middle of the night had to be transferred, outside the public transit schedule, to the nearest hospital, where the family had to deal with the tragic scenes in the emergency wards, to a situation in which the primary care module, where the physician lives, is a short distance from the child’s home and at any time one can knock on the door and be attended to.

Barrio Adentro was conceived as a project that required community participation in order to function. The doctor, alone, especially if he or she was a Cuban who did not know the neighborhood or the city, could only work with support from the community. This meant, among other things, conducting a census of the community, identifying the women who were pregnant, the children with problems of undernourishment, the elderly, and in general the people with special needs. This was a conception of social policy completely different from some gift from above because it made the community a co-participant in its operation. There was in this dynamic an extraordinarily rich potentiality.

FG: So, has this constituent potentiality, disruptive of the process, been exhausted? Is that what you are saying?

EL: During the years covered by the Bolivarian process not only has the country’s productive structure not been altered but the country has become more highly dependent on petroleum exports. The public policies directed to the popular sectors have been characterized at all times by their distributive character, with a very limited drive toward alternative productive processes to petroleum extractivism. This dependency on high petroleum revenues imposed severe limits on the Bolivarian process.[6]

The dynamic, motivating nature of the popular organizational processes of the public policies was exhausted for various reasons. First, because not all of the Missions (the generic name for the various social programs) were given the resources they had in such areas as the literacy program and Barrio Adentro. But also because the larger-scale organizational processes including the Communal Councils and Communes were processes in which there was always a strong tension between the tendencies toward self-government, autonomy, self-organization, etc., and the fact that almost all the projects that these organizations could carry out depended on transfers of resources from above, from some state institution. This has generated a recurrent tension between the political-financial control from above and the possibilities for more autonomous self-organization. These tensions have operated in quite varied ways, depending on the existing conditions in the location: whether or not local leaderships were present previously; whether or not the community had had experiences in organizing themselves politically prior to the Bolivarian process; and the political conceptions of the functionaries and militants of the PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) responsible for relations between the state institutions and these organizations.

The fact is that there has been an extraordinary dependence on the transfer of resources from the state. Most of the popular base organizations had no possibility of autonomy because they lacked their own productive capacity. When the transfers of resources to these organizations declined with the onset of the present economic crisis in 2014, they tended to weaken and many of them went into crisis. Another factor in this weakening has been the creation of the Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP) as a mechanism for the distribution of highly subsidized basic food products to the popular neighorhoods. In practice, these have become clientelist organizational methods dedicated exclusively to the distribution of food and lacking any autonomy, and they tend to replace the Communal Councils.

The policies of Latin American solidarity and cooperation have also been highly dependent on petroleum revenues. To carry out international programs like the subsidized provision of oil to Central American and Caribbean countries, or the financial support to Bolivia and Nicaragua, and various other initiatives taken by the Venezuelan government in the Latin American context, it was necessary to guarantee an increase in oil revenues in both the short and medium term. When Chávez passed away in 2013, petroleum accounted for 96 percent of the total value of the exports, and the country was more dependent on oil than it had ever been.

In the history of the Venezuelan oil industry, the first decade of this century was the moment in which there were the best conditions possible for Venezuelan society to debate, think about, and begin to experiment with other practices and other possible futures beyond petroleum. It was a privileged moment for addressing the challenges of the transition toward a post-petroleum society, a conjuncture in which Chávez counted on an extraordinary leadership and legitimacy. He had the ability to give Venezuelan society a sense of direction, and, with oil prices as high as US$140 a barrel, the resources existed to meet the needs of the population and take, albeit initially, steps to a post-petroleum transition. But the opposite occurred. In those years there was a repetition of the intoxication with affluence, the imaginary of the Saudi Venezuela that had characterized the time of the first Carlos Andrés Pérez government in the 1970s.

No one in Venezuela thought it was possible to decree the shutdown of all the oil wells overnight. But government policies, far from taking steps, even timid and initial steps, to overcome dependency on oil, served to deepen that dependency. In conditions of an over-abundance of foreign exchange, with an end to any attempt to slow down capital flight, an absolutely unsustainable controlled exchange rate parity was established. This had the effect of accentuating the so-called Dutch disease, contributing to the dismantling of the country’s productive capacity.

The income distribution programs and the state political initiatives did improve the living conditions of the population and they helped to strengthen the social fabric, with plenty of experiences of popular participation. However, this was not accompanied by a project of transformation of the country’s productive structure. This marked the limits of the Bolivarian process as a project of transformation of Venezuelan society. It means that the broadly-based organizing processes that had involved millions of people were based on redistribution and not on the creation of new productive processes.

FG: Now, again referring to García Linera (as he sometimes summarizes more intelligently what other opinion-makers, followers, and what I call palace intellectuals are trying to say and write along these lines) – according to this Bolivian sociologist and government leader these tensions between state and self-organization, between government and movements, between the demand for buen vivir and extractivism, in the short term, are normal creative tensions in a long process of revolutionary transformation in Latin America. In his view, the radical left critics of the progressive processes do not understand that they are necessary tensions, and he alleges that they want to proclaim socialism by decree.

ML: One problem is that the progressive governments, to the degree that their members came from social movement processes and protests with a left-wing political identity, have taken on a sort of vanguard identity, as if they know what people need. So spaces for real dialogue and partnership with people of a diverse nature have been lost. And political participation has become a type of applause for whatever project the government leaders are proposing. That’s exactly where there is an impoverishment. There are many examples in European history that incline me to think this is an inevitable dynamic, one that we underestimate a lot. The lefts that come to lead in the state apparatus end up immersed in powerful dynamic characteristic of those apparatuses and they are transformed as persons, through the new spaces in which they move, because the logics of their responsibilities provide them with other experiences and begin to shape their political horizons as well as their culture. Their subjectivity is transformed, they embody the exercise of power. And then, if there is no corrective on the part of a strong organized society, that can complain, correct, protest, and criticize, that necessarily has to divert the project.

On the other hand, it is not so much a question of criticizing the time it takes to change things – because in this, I agree, profound transformations need much time, they need a cultural change and this can take generations. It’s a question of looking at the directionality that a political project takes, that is, whether it is going in the right direction or not, at its rhythm. And here I think the question of deepening extractivism and finishing off nature in a country simply cancels out other possibilities of future transformation. If we are closing off certain future options that mattered to us through more short-term calculations, or because of difficulties that occur at the time, then we cannot say it is a question of a temporary nature; it is a question of directionality. You can commercialize or decommercialize, but if you say first I am going to commercialize everything and later decommercialize, it doesn’t seem to me there is much logic. If you say I am decommercializing but I am going to take more time, however here they can see that I am taking steps in the direction indicated, that would be fine. So that way, I think there is a fundamental difference in the reading of the processes.

EL: In the critical debates on extractivism, one of the things I think is essential is, What do we mean by extractivism? If we think of extractivism simply as an economic model, or as Álvaro García Linera says as “a technical relation with nature” that is compatible with any model of society, it could be concluded that it is necessary to deepen extractivism not only in order to meet social demands but also for the purpose of accumulating the necessary resources to invest in alternative productive activities that can help to overcome extractivism. But if extractivism is undertood in broader terms, if it is understood as a relationship of human beings with nature, that it is part of a pattern of accumulation of global capital, a specific form of insertion in the world capitalist system and the international division of labour and nature, and that extractivism generates and reproduces some definite institutionalities, some state models, some behavioural patterns of the state bureaucracy; and if it is understood that extractivism generates social subjects and subjectivities, that it builds a culture, you necessarily reach different conclusions.

Suffice it to look at the hundred years of extractivism in Venezuela. We have established an extremely deep culture as a rich country, an affluent country. Since we have the biggest petroleum reserves on the planet we deserve to have the state satisfy not only our needs but also our aspirations as consumers. We imagine that it is possible to be a society with rights but not responsibilities. We deserve to have free gasoline. These cultural patterns, once they are firmly rooted in the collective imagination, constitute a severe obstacle to a possible transformation not only to overcome capitalism but to confront the crisis of civilization that humanity is now going through. These imagineries of ever-growing material abundance serve to sustain economist/consumerist conceptions of life that leave out a wide range of fundamental matters that we have to confront today. This blocks the possibility of recognizing that the decisions that are taken today have long-term consequences that differ absolutely from what is proclaimed in the official discourse as the future horizon for Venezuelan society.

Based on this gilded imaginery of a land of infinite abundance, large-scale mining in the so-called Arco Minero del Orinoco, for example, is deemed necessary. Through a presidential decree Nicolás Maduro in early 2016 decided to open up 112 thousand square kilometers, a territory the size of Cuba, 12 percent of the national territory, to the major transnational mining companies. This is an area that forms part of the Amazon forest (with the importance this has in the regulation of global climate systems); an area inhabited by various indigenous peoples whose territories were to be demarcated under the 1999 Constitution and whose culture, and their life, is now severely threatened; a territory in which a major portion of the basins of the principal rivers in the country, the principal sources of fresh water, a territory of extraordinary biological diversity, and in which hydro-electricity dams that produce 70 percent of the country’s electricity are located. All of this is threatened in an opening that has been initiated by a call for tenders issued to 150 transnational corporations. It is being designed as a special economic zone that cannot comply with fundamental aspects of the Constitution and laws of the Republic, such as the rights of the indigenous peoples and the environmental and labour legislation. And this is for the purpose of creating more favourable conditions to attract foreign investment. That is how decisions are being taken that are designing a country-wide project that may have consequences over the next 100 years.

FG: Another essential subject for discussion, as I understand it, is the geopolitical problematic, and in this case the advances in regional integration connected to the assessment of the new strategies of imperialism and its interference on the continent. Left critics (Marxists, eco-social activists, feminists, etc.) are often criticized for allegedly underestimating the impact of U.S. intervention or destabilization, and for focusing essentially on an internal critique of the processes and governments. That is what the Argentine sociologist Atilio Borón, among others, says: a number of his writings argue that we have to understand that, moderate as the progressive governments are, they have opened a new wave of integration without the United States, and that this represents a giant step forward in regional history from a Bolivarian perspective. So what do you think about the state of Latin American integration, what are the advances and the limits as of now in this regard?

ML: Ten years ago there were real initiatives and important and encouraging proposals at a global level coming from Latin America, in the sense that regional integration was posed in a different direction from that of the European Union in its neoliberal constitution, especially in the idea that the Banco del Sur was to promote projects of sovereignty and sustainability and not of development in classical terms. Another example was the SUCRE. Unfortunately, these initiatives have not prospered throughout the decade, above all because of resistance from Brazil, which obviously has an important role in the region and is much more oriented toward its partners in the BRICS and prioritizes its interests as a world power.

EL: In the end, Brazil agreed that the Banco del Sur as such should be just one more development bank…

FG: If we look now at the deep crisis in Venezuela, a subject, a drama that has polarized the intellectuals a lot (as of course Venezuelan society), that polarization was presented to us in translation around two international appeals. The first, with Edgardo’s active participation, originated in Venezuela: “Urgent International Call to Stop the Escalation Of Violence in Venezuela. Looking at Venezuela beyond polarization,”[7] that you both signed, the second, the response entitled “Who Will Accuse the Accusers?,[8] by the members of the etwork of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity (REDH), which is quite hostile. One of the central arguments of the REDH members is that the crisis in Venezuela, in their view, is above all a product of imperialist agression and an insurrection of the neoliberal right as well as an “economic war.” They argue that we are in a regional context of a right-wing return, citing the [parliamentary] coup in Brazil, and that this obliges the left to close ranks behind the governments that are confronting this agression, setting aside “secondary contradictions.” The call that you signed, on the contrary says:

“we do not believe, as certain sectors of the Latin American left affirm, that we should acritically defend what is presented as an ‘anti-imperialist and popular government’. The unconditional support offered by certain activists and intellectuals not only reveals an ideological blindness, but is detrimental, as it – regrettably – contributes to the consolidation of an authoritarian regime.”

At this point, how do you read this debate, which was expressed in a number of other documents and exchanges that were sometimes clearly offensive on both sides?

ML: A short while ago a colleague told me that she thought geopolitical views tend to obscure the interests and voices of the peoples. And I don’t know if that is a secondary contradiction. It seems to me that the form in which this confrontation developed was very regrettable because it tended more to close off spaces for reflection than to open them. I think what we need at this point is precisely deeper thinking, spaces for debate and not for closure, if we are to find some solution to the Venezuelan crisis. And I have the feeling that the more alienated people are from the Venezuelan process the more need there is to affirm a sort of identity in solidarity, which is more a sort of anti-imperialist reflex that is fairly abstract, delinked from what goes on day to day in Venezuela. I think the solidarities that we need to build are different. They should not revolve around ourselves, our needs to affirm a political identity like a profession of faith, but be more a joint search for paths forward among concrete peoples. Solidarity should be with the actually existing people, who often do not have the same interests as the government.

And this brings me to a self-criticism, Recently, I returned to Venezuela and had an opportunity to chat with some sectors of critical Chavismo, and it was only then that I learned how that camp has been transformed in recent years. And how complicated it is to express solidarity, in a critical and differentiated way, in the hyperpolarized scenario that exists today. The call that I signed at best should have been given more thought, more discussion before it was circulated, and I should have taken more time discussing it with the various sectors of critical Chavismo before signing it, precisely in order to be more coherent with my own thinking. While I continue to think that it is necessary to defend democratic institutionality and certain liberal values, as the call does, we have to broaden and deepen them while at the same time defending them as results of past struggles. And above all, I think that external agression can never justify the errors that are being made internally.

This polarization that has occurred in Venezuela and in other countries as well, which does not allow any grey shading beyond black and white, is very negative and very harmful to the transformation. It makes it very hard to express solidarity without causing damage on one side or another. As a feminist, I also feel that the form in which this whole debate is taking place is extremely patriarchal, plagued with simplistic binaries, agressive logics and self-gratifyng egos while what we should be doing is building links and other forms of doing politics, that is, accompanying ourselves in the search for alternative roads.

FG: In fact, it seems that a certain dialectic of critical thinking has been lost in this debate.[9] Concerning the polarization in Venezuela, the unconditional defenders of Maduro argue that the polarization is principally between the right wing allied with imperialism vs. the “people” and the Bolivarian government. This analysis is based, of course, on concrete aspects of the coordinates of the present conflict but leaves no space for understanding the tensions, differentiations, and contradictions internal to Chavismo as well as within the popular camp.

ML: There is a kind of artificial construction of a unity between government and people, as also occurred often in relation to Cuba, for example. That is, the Cuban people is one, and only one, and the one that speaks for the Cuban people is necessarily their government. As if there were no relations of domination and conflicts of interests in Cuban society. Between men and women, but also between state and society, or between Blacks, Mestizos and whites, or between countryside and city. From this perspective, which unifies government and people in a single symbolic bloc, nothing really emancipatory can arise. Finally, the challenge before us is reducing or overcoming these relations of domination, if I understand the task. In this dichotomous construction, polarization, war-like logics reappear, a cultural legacy that has been borne by the left since the Cold War, and that now in this historical moment has enabled us to avoid many of the things we need to learn. It is a legacy that was somewhat partially overcome by the ’68 revolt with its cultural impact on societies, but is now suffering a reactualization that I feel is quite distressing.

FG: Edgardo, on the military logic and the situation in Venezuela. How can an attempt be made to confront the Venezuelan crisis from below and from the left? Personally, I did not sign either of the international appeals, because I genuinely felt that neither responded at the time to the urgency of the situation, to the necessary denunciation of imperialist agression, the right wing and its openly coup-oriented sectors and, at the same time, on the other hand, was capable of issuing an open, clear critical analysis of the authoritarian drift of Madurismo; but away from not only the formal defense of the 1999 Constitution but also from the necessary recovery of the forms of popular power, the experiences of self-organization, the communal project that was still alive, notwithstanding everything, in the interstices of the process….

EL: Obviously, there has been a sustained offensive by the Empire, by the United States. From the beginning of the Chávez government there were attempts by the government of the United States to undermine this process for reasons that were both geopolitical and economic. We know that Venezuela’s oil reserves, and its gold, coltan, uranium and other abundant mineral reserves in the south of the country are essential for the United States, either for itself or to limit access to them for its global rivals. Since 1999, Venezuela has represented a point of entry for changes in the continent, and that is why the US also supported the 2002 military coup and the 2002-2003 business lock-out in the oil industry that paralyzed the country for two months, with the express intention to overthrow the government of President Chávez. We know that groups and parties of the Venezuelan far right have relied on permanent advice and funding from the State Department. The financial blockade and the explicit threats of armed intervention formulated by Trump can not in any way be taken lightly. There have also been important interventions by Uribism and Colombian paramilitarism. This type of aggression is part of the panorama of the current crisis in Venezuela, and no one from the left can avoid it or put it in the background.

Now the problem of the Bolivarian process is: What is it that we want to defend? and How should we defend it? Do we have to defend any government with a discourse confronting the United States? Or are we to defend a collective process of a democratic, anticapitalist and anti-imperialist nature that points to a horizon that responds to the profound civilizational crisis we are going through? Do we have to defend the increasingly authoritarian government of Maduro, or do we have to defend the transformative potential that emerged in 1999? Today, the preservation of power for the Maduro government, clientelism and the threats of cutting off access to subsidized basic goods (in conditions in which for a high percentage of the population this is the only way to have access to food) play a much more important role than the appeal to popular participation. And, in the background, a matter for debate is what do we understand today by the left? Can we think of the left without questioning what was socialism of the last century? When forces that sought to overcome bourgeois democracy ended up being authoritarian, vertical, totalitarian regimes. … Today, in Venezuela, we have to ask ourselves if we are moving in the direction of deepening democracy or if the doors to direct participation of people in the orientation of the country’s destiny are closing.

In Venezuela, in 1999 a Constituent Assembly (CA) was held with very high levels of participation, a referendum was organized to decide whether a CA was to be carried out, the constituent members were elected with high participation, the results were approved by a majority of 62% of the votes, enormous resources were spent to modernize the electoral system, establishing a totally digitized, transparent system with multiple control mechanisms, and audit. A reliable electoral system, virtually fraud-proof, as has been recognized by numerous international organizations and electoral experts around the world. But, in December 2015, the opposition wins the parliamentary elections with a large majority, and the government is faced with the dilemma of respecting these electoral results and remaining faithful to the constitution of 1999, or on the contrary, doing everything possible to remain in power, even if this meant ignoring the will of the majority of the population or sacrificing the electoral system that had conquered such high levels of legitimacy. It clearly opts to remain in power at all costs.

Step by step decisions are made that define an authoritarian drift. The holding of the recall referendum in 2016 is prevented, the election of governors in December that year is unconstitutionally postponed, the attributions of the National Assembly are not recognized and these are usurped between the Supreme Court of Justice and the Executive Power. As of February 2016, the President begins to govern by way of a state of emergency (“economic emergency”), expressly violating the conditions and time limits established in the Constitution of 1999. Assuming powers that under the Constitution are attributed to the sovereign people, Maduro issues a call for a National Constituent Assembly, and electoral mechanisms are defined to guarantee total control of that assembly. A monocolour National Constituent Assembly is elected, its 545 members are identified with the government. This assembly, once installed, proclaims itself supra-constitutional and plenipotentiary. Most of its decisions are adopted by acclamation or unanimously without any debate. Instead of addressing the task for which it was supposedly elected, the writing of a new draft Constitution, it begins to make decisions referring to all areas of public powers, dismisses officials, calls elections in conditions designed to prevent or make very difficult the participation of those who do not support the government. It approves what it calls constitutional laws, which in fact results in the abolition of the 1999 Constitution. They adopt retroactive laws, such as the decision to outlaw those parties that did not participate in the mayoral elections of December 2017. The participation of left-wing candidates different from those decided by the PSUV leadership is prevented. Meanwhile, the National Electoral Council fraudulently blocks the election of Andrés Velázquez as governor of Bolivar State. …

What is at stake here is not the formal defense of the Constitution of 1999, but the defense of democracy, not a formal bourgeois democracy, but the opening towards the deepening of democracy that the 1999 Constitution represented. Without any single milestone defining a clear break with the democratic constitutional order created in 1999, that democratic constitutional order has been sliced ​​up step by step, successively, like a salami, until we find ourselves in the current situation, which is no longer recognizable.

FG: Then, in light of this very complex panorama where progressives experience brusque or gradual setbacks, where the critical or radical lefts fail to emerge as a massive popular force, where the actually existing replacement electoral forces are, at the moment, aggressive neoliberal rightists, even insurrectional in some cases, such as Venezuela, how can we think of concrete alternatives in this end to the hegemony of progressivism and the rebound of a late neoliberalism? From the perspective of buen vivir and ecosocialism, from criticism to the limits and contradictions of progressive governments, from popular or decolonial feminism, how are we to imagine utopias with concrete perspectives for Our America?

EL: In Venezuela, the only source of optimism for me at this moment is the fact that the crisis has been so deep and has impacted the collective consciousness in such a way that it is possible that the charm of oil, of rentism and of the Magical State as beneficient provider is slowly beginning to dissipate. All the left-right political debate in recent decades has operated within the parameters of the oil imaginery, within this notion of Venezuela as a rich country, owner of the largest oil reserves on the planet. Politics have revolved around the demands that different sectors of society make on the state in order to access these resources.

I am starting to see signs, still lamentably weak, of an acknowledgment that it is not possible to continue on that path. There is the beginning of an acceptance that a historical cycle is drawing to an end. People are starting to scratch their heads, and now what? I have had relations for years with what is the most continuous and most vigorous process of popular organization in Venezuela, CECOSESOLA.[10] This is a network of cooperatives operating in several states in the center and west of the country that links a wide network of agricultural and artisanal producers with urban consumers, as well as a splendid cooperative health center and a funeral cooperative. I have been impressed by the presence of topics such as the recovery and exchange of seeds in everyday conversations. The recognition of a before and an after the beginning of the current crisis.

Recently, when someone in a farming community came down from a nearby town, he was told to remember to bring back a can of tomato seed. That was an every day occurrence. These were seeds of imported, selected and hybrid tomatoes that did not reproduce, that were not necessarily transgenic but they were sterile after the first sowing. With the economic crisis, that access to seeds is abruptly cut off. Ancestral peasant practices are resumed. They begin holding meetings between farmers in which it is asked, who has seeds of what? Indigenous seeds that were only preserved on a small scale begin to be exchanged – potato seeds, tomato seeds, etc. This opens up new possibilities. We are going to wake up from this dream (which turned out to be a nightmare) and think about the possibility that we are somewhere else, in another country, in other conditions and life goes on but now it is taking a new path.

FG: Miriam, what Edgardo says is interesting but he describes, for the moment, very small embryos of popular power, which may seem inoperative in the face of immense regional challenges, financial globalization, world chaos. …

ML: Of course, that is, it depends a little from where you are looking at it. I think that here, for example, in Europe, what we have to do is start to become aware of the effects that the intensive consumption lifestyle, which everyone assumes is completely natural, cause in other parts of the world. It seems to me that the scale of destruction that this causes, not only in environmental terms but also in the social fabric, of subjectivities, is much more important than what is assumed in Europe, where it all remains practically invisible, camouflaged by consumer environments that are pleasant and anaesthetizing.

EL: Or the belief that the standard of living of the North does not depend on extractivism in the South.

ML: Some of us call this the imperial way of life, which automatically assumes that the natural resources and cheap or enslaved labour of the whole world are for the wealthiest 20 percent of the world population who live in the capitalist centers or the middle and upper classes of the peripheral societies. And if it’s cheap, that’s good. It provides a sensation that the planet is going to collapse ecologically and socially because of the enormous quantity of gadgets that are produced, which nobody really needs except “the markets” for everything that capitalism suggests as artificially constructed needs. So, here in the capitalist centers there is a very important task of reducing the amount of material and energy that is expended. For example, the movements around degrowth have a good perspective in terms of cultural transformation, where because of the discomforts with neoliberalism that you mentioned before, people rediscover other non-material dimensions of the quality of life, and also the wealth of self-production of clothes, or honey, or other things.

FG: Yes, here in France too, there are currently a lot of alternative rural networks, collective self-managed experiences, areas to defend (ZAD), alternative currencies, etc. but they are still very small.

ML: Of course, they are small networks for now, but the important thing is to transmit to more people these imaginaries of different kinds of well-being, so that the change is made not by force, or not by the crisis, but by the desire itself. So that people can feel, experience in their own flesh that there are other dimensions of the good life that can easily compensate for having less materially, and that a decrease does not have to be experienced as a loss.

EL: Nor as a sacrifice to stop having things. …

FG: In fact, here, there is more and more talk about the necessary conquest of a cheerful sobriety and voluntary austerity in the face of consumer waste. It is an interesting, powerful concept that can be connected to buen vivir and ecosocialism.

ML: I feel every time I go to Europe that there is a lot of discomfort with this super-accelerated lifestyle that prevails here. I have many friends who get sick, if not physically, they get sick psychologically, from stress, depression, burnouts, panic attacks. The dimensions that this acquires are hidden quite systematically in the dominant discourses that continue to associate wellbeing with economic growth, and much more so in what is perceived from the global South. Seen from Latin America, here in the central countries, everything is necessarily a wonder. Then, to visualize these discomforts and make visible the other forms of life that already result from them, would be an important step. Because in the South, curiously, everyone believes that it is better to live in the city, while in Germany or Spain, on the contrary, there is an increase in the numbers of ecological communities that go to the countryside. In other words, it would be a step to help break this hegemony of imitative development, which forces the South to repeat all the mistakes that have already been made in Northern societies, such as clogging cities with cars, for example. But some of these errors, as in the division of labor between men and women here in the North, are being overcome also by the new generations, Now, from my generation on down, it has become more normal to share the tasks of care not only in the couple but beyond the couple, perhaps in the building, in the community where a reduced space for coexistence, can be generated.

This is also another important element, building community against forced individualization, both in the countryside and in the city. I do not mean the community understood as the small ancestral peasant village, fixed in time, but political communities in movement, which incorporate their tasks of care as collective tasks and then reorganize life around what life reproduces, and not around what the market or capital demands. And I think we should make visible all the efforts that are already being made in this sense, where people live relatively well, both in the North and in the South. In the South, in part, they will be ancestral communities, but there are also new ones, while in the North they are usually newly constituted. It’s about changing monolithic thinking and looking at the things that exist, you do not have to invent everything from scratch.

For example, there is a view that urban suburbs are hell, in the global South above all. But if you are going to look closer, there are many logics there that are absolutely anti-capitalist, the logic of not working, of giving priority to fiestas, of exchanges not mediated by the logic of money. … Maybe it’s not the model. Anyway, there is no model and there should not be, that is very important to emphasize. We are not, after 20th century socialism, going to have a new unique recipe which we will all enroll in and follow, but rather it is a question of allowing that diversity of alternatives, so that they can be built from each culture and context, from the people who are involved in them. Buenos vivires in the plural.

We also have to generate a culture of alternatives that allows us to err, to make mistakes, to learn from mistakes. These spaces of social experimentation in which we say good we are going to try that, it does not work, we are going to try something else, but in cohesion and without competing, according to the principle of cooperation and not competition. A book called The Future of Development[11] states that the percentage of the world population actually inserted in the circuits of the neoliberal globalized market is barely half, and that the rest is still in what we would call the margins. That provides hope, it also means that half the world population is in something else, beyond the dominant model, so we should start looking around.

FG: Very good, thank you very much.

Transcription of interview by Alejandra Guacarán (Master LLCER, Université Grenoble-Alpes. Revision, correction and updating by FG, EL and ML.

[1] Some of the papers and videos of the presentations by Pierre Salama, Miriam Lang and Eduardo Lander may be viewed at http://progresismos.sciencesconf.org.

[2] www.rosalux.org.ec.

[3] https://www.tni.org.

[4] Álvaro García Linera, “Conferencia Magistral en el Teatro Nacional de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana,” Quito, Ecuador, 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeZ7xtBJT8U.

[5] Miriam Lang and Dunia Mokrani (ed,), Más allá del desarrollo, Fundación Rosa Luxemburg/Abya Yala, Quito, 2012, www.rosalux.org.mx/docs/Mas_alla_del_desarrollo.pdf.

[6] Edgardo Lander, The implosion of Venezuela’s rentier state, TNI, 2016, https://www.tni.org/es/publicacion/la-implosion-de-la-venezuela-rentista?content_language=en.

[7] http://llamadointernacionalvenezuela.blogspot.fr/2017/05/llamado-internacional-urgente-detener_30.html.

[8] www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2017/06/01/la-red-de-intelectuales-redh-responde-a-una-declaracion-en-la-que-se-ataca-al-proceso-bolivariano-de-venezuela/. For a critical assessment from a Marxist perspective of these and similar statements, see Claudio Katz, “The Left and Venezuela,” http://lifeonleft.blogspot.mx/2017/06/the-left-and-venezuela.html. – RF.

[9] For an initial balance sheet on the Venezuelan crisis, with a plurality of opinions: Daniel Chávez, Hernán Ouviña y Mabel Thwaites Rey (ed.), Venezuela: Lecturas urgentes desde el Sur, CLACSO, 2017, www.biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/…/Venezuela_Lecturas_Sur.pdf.

[10] http://cecosesola.net.

[11] Gustavo Esteva, Salvatore Babones, and Philipp Babcicky, The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto, Policy Press, Bristol, 2013.

Photo by szeke

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Update on the political context in Catalunya (November2017)

Since this interview took place last April shortly after the founding of Catalunya en Comu, events in Catalunya have considerably transformed the political landscape there and have projected this new organisation into the electoral fray much sooner than anticipated. The referendum on independence held on October 1 was declared illegal and severely repressed by Madrid; indeed, the Rajoy administration even went so far as to arrest the leaders of two civil society organisations that had organised the massive pro-independence demonstrations, accusing them of ‘sedition’ and refusing bail. In response, the Catalan parliament, controlled by pro-independence parties, declared independence triggering the destitution of the Catalan government by Madrid, the arrest of its elected political authorities and the announcement of new regional elections for December 21. 

During the entire period, Catalunya en Comu remained true to its founding principle of support for the ‘right to decide’ of the Catalan people, defending the right of all Catalan citizens to vote in the referendum (even though they had opposed holding it in such precarious conditions) and actively participating in the broad movement rejecting Madrid’s intervention and political persecution of pro-independence leaders, despite having taken a stance against the unilateral declaration of independence. It will be one of the seventeen parties and movements on the ballot on Dec. 21, but is the only one not principally defined by its stance on the issue of independence.

The pro-independence government of Catalonia recently sparked a political crisis in Spain by proposing to call a referendum on independence by the end of 2017 with or without the approval of the central government. In contrast, “Catalonia in common” defines itself as an innovative political space of the Catalan left. Initiated by Barcelona in Comù a little less than a year after its election to city hall, ​​the initiave was launched in October 2016. A short manifesto explained its raison-d’être and presented an “ideario politico” (a political project) of some 100 pages for broad discussion over 5 months which culminated in a constituent assembly last April 8.

This new political subject defines itself as “a left-wing Catalan organisation that aims to govern and to transform the economic, political and social structures of the present neo-liberal system.” Its originality in the political panorama of Catalonia and of Spain is its engagement with “a new way of doing politics, a politics of the commons where grassroots people and communities are the protagonists.” In response to those who see its emergence only in the context of the impending referendum, it affirms: “We propose a profound systemic, revolutionary change in our economic, social, environmental and political model. “ 

We interviewed Joan Subirats a few days after the Constituent Assembly of Catalunya in Comu took place. Joan is an academic renowned for his publications and his political engagement. A specialist in public policy and urban issues, he has published widely on the Commons and on the new municipalism. He is one of the artisans of Barcelona in Comù and has just been elected to the coordinating body of “Catalunya en comu”.

NT: Tell us about the trajectory of the development of this new initiative: a lot of people link it to the 15-M, but I imagine that it was more complex than that and started long before.

By Directa (youtube) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Going farther back, there is a phase of intense social mobilisation against austerity policies between 2011 and 2013. If we look at the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior on the number of demonstrations, it is impressive, there were never as many demonstrations as during that period, but after mid-2013 they start to taper off. There is a feeling that there are limits and that demonstrations can’t obtain the desired changes in a situation where the right-wing Popular Party (PP) holds an absolute majority. So the debate emerges as to whether it’s a good idea to attempt to move into the institutions.

Podemos chooses the most accessible scenario, that of the European elections, because these elections have a single circonscription, so all of Spain is a single riding, with a very high level of proportionality, so with few votes you get high representation because there are 60-some seats, so with one million votes they obtained 5 seats. And people vote more freely in these elections because apparently the stakes are not very high, so they are elections that are good for testing strategies. In contrast, here in Barcelona, we chose the municipal elections as the central target because here there is a long history of municipalism.

So this sets the stage for the period that began in 2014 with Guanyem and Podemos and the European elections and in May 2015 with the municipal elections where in 4 of the 5 major cities – Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza – alternative coalitions win that are not linked to either of the two major political parties (PP and the Socialist Party – PSOE). And in the autonomous elections[i] a new political cycle also begins, in which we still are. If we go farther back, to 2011 – there are a couple of maps that show the correlation between the occupation of plazas in the 15-M with the number of alternative citizen candidacies at the municipal level.

So Podemos and all the alternative citizen coalitions all refer to the 15M as their founding moment. But the 15M is not a movement, it was a moment, an event. You must have heard the joke about the stranger who arrives and wants to talk to the 15M – but there is no 15M, it has no spokespersons and no address. But everyone considers it very important. But what was there before the 15M?

There were basically 4 major trends that converged in the 15-M :

First the anti-globalisation movement, the oldest one, very interesting because a large number of the new political leaders have come out of it, with forms of political mobilisation different from the traditional ones.

Then there was the « Free Culture Forum » linked to issues regarding internet which was very important here in Barcelona – with Simona Levy and Gala Pin, who is now a municipal councillor – that is important because here digital culture, network culture, was present from the very beginning, something that didn’t occur in other places.

The third movement was the PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) which emerges in 2009 and had precedents with Ada Colau and others who organised « V for vivienda » (like the film « V for vendetta », but in this case vivienda – housing), an attempt to demonstrate that young people were excluded from social emancipation because they didn’t have access to housing. Their slogan was « you’ll never have a house in your whole f’king life ». And the forms of mobilisation were also very new, for example, they occupied IKEA because at that time IKEA’s advertising slogan was « the independent republic of your home », so they occupied it and slept in the beds there. So this was more youthful, alternative, more of a rupture, but then in 2009 with the creation of the PAH they started to try to connect with the immigrant sector and people who were losing their houses because of the mortgage hype, it was very important because it’s the movement that tries to connect with sectors outside of youth: the poor, immigrants, working class… with the slogan ‘this is not a crisis, it’s a sting’. So the PAH is very important because it’s the movement that connects with sectors of the population outside of youth: workers, immigrants, the elderly… For example, here in Plaza Catalunya in 2011 the only major poster rallying people who weren’t youth was that of the PAH.

And the fourth movement – the most ‘authentic’ 15M one – was that of the « Youth without future ». People who organised mainly in Madrid, typical middle-class university sector with post-grad studies, who suddenly realised that they wouldn’t find jobs, that it wasn’t true that their diplomas would open doors for them, they were in a precarious situation.

So those were the four major currents that converged in the basis of the 15M. But what made it ‘click’ was not just those 4 trends, but the fact that huge numbers of other people recognised the moment and converged on the plazas and overwhelmed the movements that started it. The most surprising thing about the moment was that those 4 movements – that were not all that important – were rapidly overwhelmed by success of the movement they started and new people who spontaneously joined. That was what really created the phenomenon, because if it had been just those 4 movements, if it had been like ‘Nuit debout‘ in Paris where people occupied the plaza but without the sensation that people had steamrollered the leaders. So, when the plazas are evacuated, the idea becomes ‘Let’s go to the neighbourhoods’. So all of a sudden, in the neighbourhoods of Barcelona and Madrid, assemblies were organised where there was a mixture of the old neighbourhood associations that were no longer very active and whose members were older (my generation) and new people who brought new issues like ecology, energy, bicycle transport, cooperatives, water and a thousand different things and who created new spaces of articulation where people who had never thought that they would meet in the neighbourhoods began to converge.

I think this explains the re-emergence of municipalism that followed: people begin to see the city as a place where diverse social changes can be articulated on a territorial basis: many mobilisations are taking place in isolation, in a parallel manner and don’t have a common meeting-point. Water as a common good, energy transition, sustainable transport, public health, public space, infant education… All of a sudden there was something that brought people together which was to discuss the city, the city we want – David Harvey mentions in an article that the modern-day factory is the city. That is, we no longer have factories, the city is now the space where conflicts appear and where daily life becomes politicised: issues like care, food, schooling, transport, energy costs – and this creates a new space for articulating these issues that hadn’t been previously envisaged.

So I think this is the connection : 15-M as a moment of overwhelming, the end of a cycle of mobilisation – remember that there had been a petition of a million and a half signatures to change the mortgage legislation, that Ada Colau presented in the national Congress, where she accused the PP deputies of being assassins because of what they were doing – but that mobilisation had no effect in the law. A PP deputy declared ‘If these people want to change things, then they should get elected’. So people started thinking ‘OK, if that’s the way it is, then let’s get ourselves elected’. This is the initial change of cycle in 2014. So the 4 movements were present in the meetings of Guanyem and BComun, as well as some progressive intellectuals and people from other issue areas like water, transport, energy etc. That was the initial nucleus here in Barcelona – in Madrid it was different. There the Podemos generation had a different logic.  Here, from the beginning, we wanted to create a movement from the bottom up and to avoid a logic of coalition of political parties, this was very clear from the outset. We didn’t want to reconstruct the left on the basis of an agreement amongst parties. We wanted to build a citizen movement that could impose its own conditions on the parties. In the case of Podemos it was different: it was a logic of a strike from above – they wanted to create a strong close-knit group with a lot of ideas in a very short period and as a result an electoral war machine that can assault the heavens and take power. Here, on the other hand, we foresaw a longer process of construction of a movement where we would start with the municipalities and after that, we’ll see.

So Guanyem was created in June 2014, 11 months prior to the municipal elections, with a minimal program in 4 points: we said, we want to take back the city, it’s is being taken away from the citizens, people come here to talk about a ‘business-friendly global city’ and they are taking it away from the citizens, we have lost the capacity to control it, as the first point; secondly,  there is a social emergency where many problems don’t get a response; third point, we want people to be able to have decision-making capacity in what happens in the city, so co-production of policy, more intense citizen participation in municipal decisions; fourth point: moralisation of politics. Here the main points are non-repetition of mandates, limits on salaries of elected officials, etc. So we presented this in June 2014 and we decided that we would give ourselves until September to collect 30,000 signatures in support of the manifesto and if we succeeded, we would present candidates in the municipal elections. In one month we managed to get the 30,000 signatures! Besides getting the signatures on internet and in person, we held a lot of meetings in the neighbourhoods to present the manifesto – we held about 30 or 40 meetings like that, some of them small, some more massive, where we went to the neighbourhoods and we said  « We thought of this, what do you think? We thought of these priorities, etc’. » So, in September of 2014 we decided to go ahead; once we decided that we would present a slate, we began to discuss with the parties – but with the strength of all that support of 30,000 people backing us at the grassroots, so our negotiating strength with respect to the parties was very different. In Dec 2014 we agreed with the parties to create Barcelona en Comun – we wanted to call it Guanyem but someone else had already registered the name, so there was a lot of discussion about a new name, there were various proposals: Revolucion democratica, primaria democratica, the term Comu – it seemed interesting because it connected with the Commons movement, the idea of the public which is not restricted to the institutional and that was key. It was also important that in the previous municipal elections in 2011 only 52% of people had voted, in the poorer neighbourhoods a higher number of people abstained and that it was in the wealthier neighbourhoods where a larger proportion of people had voted. So we wanted to raise participation by 10% in the poor neighbourhoods more affected by the crisis and we thought that would allow us to win. And that was what happened. In 2015, 63% voted, but in the poor areas 40% more people voted. In the rich areas, the same people voted as before.

So it was not impossible to think we could win. And from the beginning the idea was to win. We did not build this machine in order to participate, we built it in order to win. We didn’t want to be the opposition, we wanted to govern. And as a result, it was close, because we won 11 of 41 seats, but got the most votes so we head the municipal council, the space existed. From the moment Guanyem was created in June 2014, other similar movements began to be created all over Spain – in Galicia, in Andalucia, in Valencia, Zaragoza, Madrid… One of the advantages we have in Barcelona is that we have Ada Colau, which is a huge advantage, because a key thing is to have an uncontested leader who can articulate all the segments of the movement – ecologists, health workers, education professionals…. If you don’t have that it’s very difficult, and also the sole presence of Ada Colau explains many things. In Madrid they found Manuela Carmena, who is great as an anti-franquista symbol, with her judicial expertise, very popular but who didn’t have that tradition of articulating movements, and as a result now they are having a lot more political problems than here.

AA: So now Catalunya en comu defines itself as a new political space on the left for the whole of Catalonia. But in recent Catalan history that’s nothing really new: there have been numerous political coalitions on the left, such as the PSUC[ii] in 1936 followed by many others. So what is different about this initiative?

JS: If we open up our perspective and look at things more globally, I think that what justifies the idea that this is a new political space is the fact that the moment is new, we’re in a new phase so it’s very important to understand that if this new political moment reproduces the models and the conceptual paradigms of the old left and of the Fordism of the end of the 20th century, we won’t have moved ahead at all. The crisis of social democracy is also a crisis of a way of understanding social transformation with codes that no longer exist. As a result the measure of success of this new political space is not so much in to what extent it can bring together diverse political forces, but rather its capacity to understand this new scenario we find ourselves in – a scenario where digital transformation is changing everything, where we no longer know what ‘labour’ is, where heterogeneity and social diversity appear as factors not of complexity but of values, where the structure of age no longer functions as it used to – where everything is in transformation, so we can no longer continue to apply ideas – to use a phrase coined by Ulrich Beck – ‘zombie concepts’, living dead, no?, we forge ahead with our backpacks full of 20th-century concepts, applying them to realities that no longer have anything to do with them. It’s easy to see the defects of the old, traditional concepts, but it’s very difficult to construct new ones because we don’t really know what is happening nor where we are headed. The example of the debate in France between Valls and Hamon – at least, I read the summary in Le Monde, where Valls maintained that it would be possible to come back to a situation of full employment and Hamon said that is impossible, that it’s necessary to work towards the universal basic income; in the end, Hamon is closer to the truth than Valls, but Hamon isn’t capable of explaining it in a credible way – and it is very difficult to explain it in a credible way.

Here, we are working at one and the same time on the Commons and the non-institutional public sphere, we are demanding greater presence of the public administration when probably it wouldn’t really be necessary, but since we don’t have a clear idea of how to construct this new thing, we are still acting sort of like slaves of the old. So that’s where I think the concept of the Commons, of the cooperative, the collaborative, new ideas regarding the digital economy, are more difficult to structure, because we’re also conscious that capitalism is no longer only industrial or financial but now it’s digital capitalism, and it controls all the networks of data transmission and at the same time the data themselves, probably the wealth of the future. So, sure we can do really interesting things in Barcelona, out of Barcelona en Comun, but we have GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), and GAFAM has its own logics and that complicates things. So we have to create a new political subject – and it’s obvious that we need something new – but what isn’t so obvious is what are the concepts we need to create this new subject. So if you look at the documents published by Un Pais en Comu[iii] that’s what you’ll see: a bit of different language, a different way of using concepts, but at the same time a trace of the heritage of the traditional left. The journal ‘Nous Horitzons’ has just published a new issue on ‘Politics in Common’[iv] which brings together a lot of these elements. The impression that some of us had in the assembly the other day in Vall d’Hebron (the inaugural assembly of the movement) was that the old ways were still weighing us down, that there was a difficulty to generate an innovative dynamic.

NT: That was clear in the composition of the audience.

JS: Yes, well, the Podemos people weren’t there, of course… they didn’t come for various reasons, because probably not everybody was in agreement with Albano-Dante[v] but they saw there was a lot of disagreement and so they preferred not to come, and that’s a type of public that, as well as filling the hall, also changes the type of dynamic – so it was more the traditional-style organisations that were there (Iniciativa or EUIA[vi]), there was more of the old than the new probably. Perhaps that’s inevitable, but what we have to do now is to see if we can change that dynamic.

AA: When one reads the ‘Ideario politico‘ (the political project of Catalunya en Comu) it’s a sort of lesson in political economy, political philosophy as well, but also a vast programme, and the left has never put forward this type of Commons-inspired programme before, be it in Catalunya or in Spain or probably internationally. How do you see its contribution in the context of the Commons ecosystem? There have been experiences of the Commons without the Commons label, as in Latin America …

JS: Yes, in Catalunya the anarcho-sindicalist movement…

AA: Of course, but more recently, the idea of ‘Buen Vivir’ …

JS: Yes, but when you go to Latin America and you talk about that, it all revolves around the State. But here, we try not to be state-centric. We are trying to avoid the idea that the only possible transformation needs to depend on the State.

AA: But in the ‘Ideario’ a lot of discussion is devoted to public services as well, this implies that the State has to exist. And in the Commons vocabulary there is the concept of the ‘partner-state’, but it doesn’t appear in the Ideario…

JS: Yes, there’s a margin there: the resilience of the new politics depends more on the capacity to create ‘muscular’ collective spaces – public, collective, common – than on the occupation of the institutions. But without the occupation of the institutions, it’s very difficult to construct those spaces. The example that comes to mind for me is from Copenhagen: there it was the cooperatives of the workers’ unions that built the big housing coops that exist now; also, the municipal government when the left was in power built a lot of public housing; then when a right-wing government came to power, it privatised all the public housing but it couldn’t privatise the cooperatives. So in the end, things that are strictly state-based are more vulnerable than when you build collective strength. So if we are able to benefit from these spaces in order to build ‘collective muscle’, using our presence in the institutions, this will end up being more resilient, more stable over time than if we put all our eggs in the State basket. So the Barcelona city government has civic social centres that are municipal property, but what is important is to succeed in ensuring that these centres are controlled by the community, that each community make them its own despite the fact that the property is officially that of the municipality, but they must be managed through a process of community management. So you need to build in the community a process of appropriation of institutions that ends up being stronger than if it were all in the hands of the State.

Now we are discussing citizen heritage, how the city government can use its property – houses, buildings – and it can cede them for a certain period in order to construct collective spaces. For example, 8 building sites that belong to the municipality have been put up for auction on 100-year leases for community organisations to build housing cooperatives. This doesn’t take property away from the public sphere and at the same time it generates collective strength. But a certain sector of the political left here, the CUP, criticises this as privatisation of public space. They think Barcelona en Comun should build public housing instead, state-owned housing. That’s a big difference. And people are aware of that, but at the same time there are doubts about whether this makes sense, whether there is sufficient strength within the community so that this can work. Or, for example, the most common criticism is that “you have an idea of the public, the collective, the Commons, that implies capacities in the community that are only present in the middle classes that have the knowledge, the organisational capacity… so it’s a very elitist vision of the collective because the popular sectors, without the backing of the State, won’t be able to do this.” Well, we’re going to try to combine things so it can work, but we don’t want to keep converting the public into the ‘state’.

Nancy Fraser wrote an article on the triple movement – looking at Polanyi’s work on the ‘double movement’ in the Great Transformation, that is the movement towards mercantilisation, and the opposite movement it stimulated towards protection. Polanyi talks about the confrontation of these 2 movements in the early 20th century, and the State – in its soviet form or in its fascist form – as a protectionist response of society which demands protection when faced with the uncertainty, the fragility the double movement engenders. Nancy Fraser says that all that is true, but we’re no longer in the 20th century, we’re in the 21st century where factors like individual emancipation, diversity, feminism are all very important – so we shouldn’t be in favour of a protectionist movement that continues to be patriarchal and hierarchical. We need a movement for protection that generates autonomy – and there resides what I think is one of the keys of the Commons movement. The idea of being able to get protection – so, a capacity of reaction against the dynamics of the market attacks – without losing the strength of diversity, of personal emancipation, of feminism, the non-hierarchical, the non-patriarchal, the idea that somebody decide for me what I need to do and how I will be protected. Let me self-protect myself too, let me be a protagonist too of this protection. And this is contradictory with the state-centric tradition.

AA: The first theme of the ‘Ideario’ is the economy – you are an economist, amongst other things – how do you see this proposal in terms of the Commons? For example, there is a lot of discussion now about ‘open cooperativism’, etc. What you were saying about the cooperative movement here, that it is very strong but not sufficient…

JS: In some aspects no. For example, the city wanted to open a new contract for communications (telephone, internet) – now there are the big companies Telefoncia, Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, etc: there’s a cooperative called ‘Som Connexion’ (We are connection)- or ‘Som Energia’ (We are energy) that’s a lot bigger – it has 40,000 members – but these cooperatives, it would be fantastic if the city were to give them the contract for energy or for communication, but they aren’t capable of managing that at the moment. So if they take it, we’d all have big problems: faulty connections, lack of electrical power – because they’re growing for sure but they don’t yet have the ‘muscle’, the capacity they need to take this on.

So we have to continue investing in this, it’s not going to take care of itself. On the other hand, in other areas, like home services for the elderly, we do have very strong cooperatives, Abacus for example is a cooperative for book distribution that has 800 000 members, so that is a coop that’s very powerful, and there are others. But in general, the more powerful the coop, the less politicised it is – they tend to transform themselves into big service companies. But now they are understanding that perhaps it would be in their interest to have a different vision; there has been a very politicised movement in the grassroots level coops that is contradictory with the entrepreneurial trend in the big coops. So we’re in this process right now: yes, there are very big, very strong coops and there are also smaller, more political ones but they don’t have sufficient muscle yet.

AA: When we look at issues of participation, co-production of policy and such, it is also a question of culture, a culture of co-production that doesn’t exist. In the neighbourhoods, yes there is a trend to revamping participation, but when we talk to people in the local-level committees they say ‘Sure, people come to the meetings, but because they want a tree planted here…’ and they don’t have that vision of co-creation. So first there has to be a sort of cultural revolution ?

JS: There are places where there has been a stronger community tradition that could well converge with this. Some neighbourhoods like Roquetes for example, Barceloneta or Sants, have very strong associational traditions. If you go to Roquetes to the meeting of the community plan, everybody is there: the people from the primary medical services centre, the doctors, the schools are there, the local police, the social workers – and they hold meetings every 2 weeks and they know everything that goes on in the area, and they transfer cases amongst themselves: “we detected this case, how do we deal with it?” etc. The community fabric in those neighbourhoods functions really well. So what can you add to that fabric so that it can go a bit further? On the other hand, in other neighbourhoods like Ciutat Meridiana, in 5 years 50% of the population has changed, so it’s very difficult to create community where the level of expulsion or change is so high. In Sants, in Can Baro, there was a very interesting experience where people want to create a cooperative neighbourhood – it’s a bit polemical – they want to create a public school without using public funds, instead using money from the participants themselves, because the coop tradition in Sants is very anarchist, libertarian – so they promote the idea of a public school, open to all, but not using public funds. And it would have its own educational philosophy, that wouldn’t have to submit to standard educational discipline. And groups have appeared in different neighbourhoods dedicated to shared child-raising where there are no pre-schools for children between 0 and 3 years, or people prefer not to take the kids to public pre-schools because they find them too rigid, so they prefer generating relationships amongst parents. So what should the role of the city government be with respect to such initiatives? Should it facilitate or not? There’s a debate about how to position the municipality with respect to these initiatives that are interesting but then when, inside Barcelona en Comu or Un Pais en Comu, the person who is in charge of these issues comes with a more traditional union perspective and says “This is crazy, what we need to do is to create public schools with teachers who are professional civil servants. These experiments are fine for gentrified zones, but in reality…’” And they are partly right. So we’re in that sort of situation, which is a bit ambivalent. We’re conscious that we need to go beyond a state-centric approach, but at the same time we need to be very conscious that if we don’t reinforce the institutional role, the social fragilities are very acute.

AA: Another high-profile issue is that of sovereignty. The way it’s presented in the Ideario is criticised both by those who want a unified Spain and by those who want Catalan independence. Sovereignty is simply another word for independence in the view of many people. But the way it’s presented in the Ideario is more complex and comprehensive, linked to autonomy at every level …

JS: Exactly: it’s plural, in lower case and plural: sovereignties. The idea is a bit like what I said earlier about the city, that we want to take back the city. We want to recover the collective capacity to decide over what affects us. So it’s fine to talk about the sovereignty of Catalonia, but we also need to talk about digital sovereignty, water sovereignty, energy sovereignty, housing sovereignty – sovereignty in the sense of the capacity to decide over that which affects us. So we don’t have to wait until we have sovereignty over Catalonia in order to grapple with all this. And this has obvious effects: for example, something we are trying to develop here: a transit card that would be valid on all forms of public transit – like the “Oyster” in London, and many other cities have them – an electronic card that you can use for the train, the metro, the bus: the first thing the Barcelona city government did on this was to ask the question “Who will own the data? “. That’s sovereignty. The entity that controls the data on who moves and how in metropolitan Barcelona has an incredible stock of information with a clear commercial value. So will it belong to the company that incorporates the technology? or will the data belong to the municipality and the municipality will do with it what it needs? At the moment, they are installing digital electricity metres and digital water metres: but to whom do the data belong? because these are public concessions, concessions to enterprises in order that they provide a public service – so who owns the data?

This is a central issue. And it is raised in many other aspects, like food sovereignty. So, we want to ensure that in the future Barcelona be less dependent on the exterior for its food needs, as far as possible. So you need to work to obtain local foodstuffs, control over the products that enter – and that implies food sovereignty, it implies discussing all this. So, without saying that the sovereignty of Catalonia isn’t important, we need to discuss the other sovereignties. Because, suppose we attain the sovereignty of Catalonia as an independent state, but we are still highly dependent in all the other areas. We need to confront this. I don’t think it’s a way of avoiding the issue, it’s a way of making it more complex, of understanding that today the Westphalian concept of State sovereignty no longer makes much sense. I think we all agree on that. We are very interdependent, so how do we choose our interdependencies? That would be real sovereignty, not to be independent because that’s impossible, but rather how to better choose your interdependencies so that they have a more public content.

AA: Talking of interdependence, there is the issue as well of internationalism. Barcelona en Comu puts a lot of emphasis on that, saying ‘There is no municipalism without internationalism’ etc. From the very outset of her mandate, Ada Colau in 2015 in her inaugural speech as mayor said that ‘we will work to build a movement of cities of the Mediterranean’, and as time goes on the approach is becoming clearer, for example with the participation of Colau and the vice-mayor Gerardo Pisarello in the major international city conferences. What do you see as the importance of this internationalism within the Commons ecosystem?

JS: There are 2 key aspects for me. First, cities are clearly the most global political space and zone of social convergence that exists. Apparently when we talk about cities we’re talking about something local, but cities are actually very globalised. Benjamin Barber wrote a book about ‘Why Mayors should govern the world’. And he set out an example I think is very good: if the mayor of Montreal meets with Ada and the mayor of Nairobi and the mayor of Santiago de Chile and the mayor of say Hong-Kong, after 5 minutes together they’ll all be talking about the same things. Because the problems of cities are very similar from one place to another despite their different sizes. Questions of energy, transport, water, services, food… If we try to imagine that same meeting between Heads of State, the complexity of the political systems, cultural traditions, constitutional models and all will mean that the challenge of coming to a common understanding will be much more complex. That doesn’t mean that cities are the actors that will resolve climate change, but certainly the fact that Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Paris agree that in 2025 there will no longer be cars circulating that use diesel will have more impact than a meeting of Heads of State. With AirBnB Barcelona is in constant confrontation, the city has fined them 600 000 euros, but Barcelona on its own can’t combat AirBnB. But New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam and Barcelona have come to an agreement to negotiate jointly with AirBnb: those 5 cities together can negotiate with them. But it isn’t the problem for States, it’s much more a problem for cities than for States. And AirBnB uses digital change to enter spaces where there is a lack of precision – it’s what happens too with Uber, Deliveroo and other platforms of so-called ‘collaborative economy’, which is really extractive economy, but which use the reglamentary voids. The people who work for Uber or Deliveroo aren’t employees, they are independent entrepreneurs but they work in 19th century conditions. Tackling this problem from the level of the city can produce new solutions.

I think when we decided in 2014-2015 to attempt to work at the municipal level in Barcelona, we were aware that Barcelona isn’t just any city: Barcelona has an international presence and we wanted to use Barcelona’s international character to exert an influence on urban issues worldwide. Ada Colau participated in the Habitat conference in Quito in October 2016, before that in the meeting of local authorities in Bogota, she is now co-president of the World Union of Municipalities. So there’s an investment that didn’t start just with us but that started in the period when Maragall[vii] was mayor, a very high investment by Barcelona in participating in this international sphere of cities. This reinforces Barcelona in its confrontations with the State and with private enterprise as well. It plays an important role. There is an international commission within Barcelona en Comu, they are constantly working with other world cities – they have been in France, they have a strong link with Grenoble and will be going to a meeting of French cities in September to talk about potential collaboration, they often go to Italy, they’ve gone to Belgrade, to Poland…

AA: And they’re organising this meeting of Fearless Cities in Barcelona pretty soon ?

JS: Yes, June 9-11 there’ll be a meeting, and the organizers have a very clear vision of the global aspect. So the global dimension is very present, and at the level of Spain as well. The problem there is that there is political interference, for example in Madrid, which is very important as a city, but within the municipal group “Ahora Madrid” they’re very internally divided, so sometimes you speak to one and the others don’t like it. We have really good relations with Galicia: A Coruna and Santiago de Compostela, also with Valencia, but Valencia also has its own dynamic. Zaragoza. Each city has its own dynamic, so sometimes it’s complicated to establish on-going relations.

AA: What about Cadiz?

JS: Of course, Cadiz is also part of this trend, but the group there is part of the Podemos anti-capitalist faction, so there are nuances.

NT: You mentioned 2 points regarding internationalism…

JS: Yes, first there was the general global perspective on cities and the second is Barcelona’s own concrete interest. So the first is more global, that is, any city in the world today has many more possibilities if it looks at its strategic global role and if it wants to strengthen its position, it has to work on the global level. In the case of Barcelona specifically, there is also a will that’s partly traditional, because it was begun by Maragall, you have to remember that here in Barcelona there are 10 districts, and during the war of the Balkans, Maragall created District 11, which was Sarajevo: city technicians went to Sarajevo to work with them, and still today there are municipal technicians who travel regularly to Gaza to work there, or with La Havana – in other words there’s a clearly established internationalist stance in the municipality. Also, the headquarters of the World Union of Local Governments is in Barcelona. The international headquarters of Educating Cities is in Barcelona, so there has constantly been a will to be present on the international scene since Maragall, and now this is continuing but with a new orientation as well. Perhaps there used to be the idea of exporting the Barcelona model, branding Barcelona, but that is no longer the case.

There’s very intense organisation globally, probably if Ada accepted all the invitations she receives, she’d be travelling all the time.

NT: I am struck by the fact that every time we refer to the initiative of Un Pais en Comu, you respond by giving the example of what’s happening in Barcelona: do you see Barcelona as the model for Un Pais en Comu?

JS: No, it’s not that it’s the model, there is even some reticence within Barcelona en Comu that this new political initiative may have negative consequences for Barcelona en Comu. The Barcelona in Comu experiment has worked really well: within BeC political parties continue to exist (Podemos, Iniciativa, EUIA, Guanyem) and all agree that it’s necessary to create this subject, because it’s clear – there’s a phrase by a former mayor of Vitoria in the Basque country who said “Where my capacities end, my responsibilities begin” – that is, clearly, cities are developing roles that are more and more important, but their capacities continue to be very limited and especially their resources are very limited – so there’s an imbalance between capacities and responsibilities. Between what cities could potentially do and what they really can do. Refuge-cities – a thousand things. So within Barcelona en Comu there is an understanding of the interest of creating Un Pais en Comu in order to have influence in other levels of government. And to present candidates in elections in Spain with En Comu Podem because to be represented in Madrid is also important. But of course, sometimes this expansion can make us lose the most original aspect, that is the emphasis on municipalism, in the capacity to create these spaces – so there’s a certain tension. And obviously, when you go outside Barcelona in Catalonia, the local and territorial realities are very different, you find… you no longer control what kind of people are joining and so you can end up with surprises – good and bad ones – so there are some doubts, some growing pains. You have to grow, but how will that affect what we have so far? our ways of working and all that… I always refer to Barcelona en Comu because we have existed for longer, we have a sort of ‘tradition’ in the way we work, and on the contrary, the other day we held the founding assembly of Un Pais en Comu and – where are we headed? how long will we be able to maintain the freshness, avoid falling into the traditional vices of political parties? Xavi (Domenech) is a very good candidate, he has what I call a Guanyem DNA, but it’s not evident that we can pull this through. That’s the doubt.

AA: Coming back to the issue of sovereignty vs independence and “the right to decide”, how does this play out?

JS: The issue of independence is internally very complex with different positions. I think there is a general agreement on 3 things, ie: 1. Catalonia has its own demos and therefore is a political subject which must be recognised, 2. it has to be able to decide how to articulate itself with the other political subjects in Spain and in Europe, it has to have the right, the capacity to decide; 3. this requires the construction of a State of its own. It is on the fourth point that we are not in agreement: whether that State should be independent or whether it should be in some way linked, allied, confederated with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula or with Europe. These 3 initial points are sufficiently important and they are the basis for the fact that Un Pais en Comu or Barcelona en Comu is part of the broad sovereigntist space in Catalonia. What it isn’t part of is the independentist space in Catalonia. Despite the fact that I would say some 30-40% of the members are pro-independence, but the rest not. And that is an issue which divides us. But what we are trying to do is to work out this debate on the basis of our own criteria, not on those of other movements. The criteria of the others are ‘you are independentist or you are not independentist’. Our own criteria are: yes, we are sovereigntists, we discuss sovereignties and we’ll see. Since we agree on what is the most important (that is – an autonomous political subject, the right to decide, an autonomous State), let’s discuss how we can articulate. We have fraternal relations with 4 million people in the rest of Spain who agree with us on the first 3 criteria. So the key question probably would be: Does Catalonia want to separate from the rest of Spain or from this Spain? The standard response would be “We have never known any other. We’ve always seen the same Spain, so there is no other Spain”. So the debate we can have is over “Yes, another Spain is possible”. Sort of like the debate right now over whether to leave Europe: do we want to leave Europe of leave this Europe? But is another Europe possible or not?

NT: How do you assess the results of the founding assembly of Un Pais en Comu? Are you happy with what came out of it?

JS: Yes, I’m satisfied, although I don’t think the results were optimal, but we are squeezed by a political calendar that we don’t control. It’s very probable that there will be elections this year in Catalonia, so if that happens… what would have been preferable? To reproduce the Barcelona en Comu model, take more time and work more from the bottom up, hold meetings throughout the territory – we did hold about 70 or 80, but a lot more would have been better – do things more slowly and look around, build links with local movements, the same ones as in Barcelona but on the level of Catalonia – energy, water, etc: reconstruct the same process. But sure, they’re going to call elections or a referendum in 2 days. What is clear is that we can’t do the same thing as with ‘Catalunya si que es pot’[viii], which was a coalition but it didn’t work. So all this has meant that the process – despite the fact that I think it has been carried out well, is not optimal: within the realm of the possible, I think it was done with great dignity.

NT: And with respect to the deliberative process that was used to arrive at the final document?

JS: Basically the same thing: it could have been done better, with deeper debates in each area, it was done very quickly, a lot of issues in a short period of time. The task was very complex, and I think the result is worthy. We tried to avoid standardised jargon and parameters, to make it a bit different. So now we’ll see – yesterday the Executive met for the first time, and on May 13 will be the first meeting of the coordinating group of 120 people[ix]. So we’ll have to see how this all is gotten underway. I am not convinced that it will all be functional in time for the Catalan elections, for me the key date is May 2019 which are the next municipal elections. Then we’ll see if this has really jelled and if we can have a significant presence throughout the territory. This territorial vision is very important in order to avoid a top-down construction. The key thing in Catalonia is to do it with dignity and not to become entrapped in this dual logic of independence or not, to be capable of bringing together a social force that is in that position.

[i] Autonomous elections are those held in the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain created by the 1978 Constitution.

[ii] The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia or PSUC: Founded in 1936, it allied the main parties of the Catalan left around the Communist Party. It was dissolved in 1987.

[iii] “A country in common”.  The process, carried out in a transparent and well-documented manner, began with a negotiation with certain left-wing parties and movements, and encouraged discussion and new proposals at popular assemblies throughout the region and in online discussion open to the public. More than 3,000 people participated in 70 assemblies and more than 1,700 proposals and amendments were made online with the webpage registering nearly 130,000 hits. The Assembly discussed and voted on the various amendments and agreed on a transitional structure composed of a coordinating body of 120 members and an executive committee of 33 members, each with a one-year mandate to propose an ethical code, statutes, an organizational structure and political options in the unfolding conjuncture.

[iv] “La Politica de Comù” in Nous horitzons (New Horizons) No. 215, 2017. Originally titled  Horitzons, the magazine was founded in 1960 in clandestinity and published in Catalan abroad by intellectuals linked to the PSUC. It has been published in Catalonia since 1972. It recently opened its pages to other progressive political tendencies.

[v] Albano Dante Fachin, member of the Catalan parliament, is the head of Podem (the Catalan wing of the Podemos party). He opposed the participation of his party in the constituent assembly of Un Pais en Comù thus creating a crisis in the ranks of Podemos at both the Catalan and national levels. Party leader Pablo Iglesias did not disown him, but delegated his national second-in-command Pablo Echenique to represent him in the assembly.

[vi]  Coalitions of the Catalan left since the transition period of the 1970s have been numerous and complex for the uninitiated. “Iniciativa for Catalonia Verts” dates from 1995 and was composed of the Green party with Iniciativa for Catalonia, itself a 1987 coalition of the left parties around the PSUC and the former Catalan Communist Party. EUIA (United and Alternative Left) is another coalition in 1998 which includes the first two and all the small parties of the radical left. EUIA is the Catalan branch of Izquierda Unida (United Left) the new name of the Spanish Communist Party.

[vii] Pasqual Maragall, member and later president of the Catalan Socialist Party, became mayor of Barcelona in 1982 with the support of the elected members of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). He remained in this position for almost 15 years without ever having a majority in the municipal council. He then became President of the Catalan government in 2003.

[viii] Catalunya Sí que es Pot (CSQP, “Yes Catalonia Is Possible”) is a left-wing coalition created in view of the Catalan elections in the autumn of 2015. Barcelona en Comù, itself a municipal coalition, was elected in May 2015 but decided not to run in the autonomous elections.

[ix] The election result was no surprise: ‘A country in common’ founder Xavier Domenech will preside the Executive Committee and Ada Colau, the current mayor of Barcelona, is president of the coordinating body. The membership, via an internet vote, chose on May 20 a new name  preferring “Catalunya en Comù” to “En Comú podem”, thus distinguishing itself from  the 2015 Catalan coalition with Podemos, also called “En comu podem” and signalling a reinforcement of the “Barcelona en Comù” wing with respect to the supporters of Podemos in the new entity. The rejection of the earlier name ‘Un Pais en Comu’ may also denote a desire to distance itself from a pro-independence stance.

 An earlier version of this interview was published in June.

Originally published on remixthecommons.org, where the interview is also available in French.

Photo by christopher.berry

The post Catalunya en Comú: Building a country in common(s) – Interview with Joan Subirats appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Such neotraditional approaches, if they are based on a mutual dialogue, are a very important part of a transition to a social knowledge economy. In the following section, we make the case why this is so important.

The Main Argument: the common immateriality of traditional and post-industrial eras

It is not difficult to argue that modern industrial societies are dominated by a materialist paradigm. What exists for modern consciousness is material physical reality, what matters in the economy is the production of material products, and the pursuit of happiness is in very strong ways related to the accumulation of goods for consumption. For the elite, its powers derive essentially from the accumulation of capital assets, whether these are industrial or financial. Infinite material growth is really the core mantra of capitalism, and it is made necessary and facilitated by the very design of the contemporary monetary system, where money is mostly created to interest-driven bank debt.

But this was not the case in traditional, agriculture-based societies. In such societies, people of course do have to eat and to produce, and the possession of land and military force is crucial to obtain tribute from the agricultural workers, but it cannot be said that the aim is accumulation of assets. Feudal-type societies were based on personal relations consisting of mutual obligations. These are of course very unequal in character, but are nevertheless very removed from the impersonal and obligation-less property forms that came with capitalism, where there is little impediment for goods and capital to move freely to whomever it is sold to.

In these post-tribal but still pre-modern societies, both the elite and the mass body of producers are united by a common immaterial quest for salvation or a similar core spiritual pursuit like enlightenment, etc … , and it is the institution that is in charge of organizing that quest, like the Church in the western Middle Ages or the Sangha in South-East Asia, that is the determining organization for the social reproduction of the system. Tribute flows up from the farming population to the owning class, but the owning class is engaged in a two-fold pursuit: showing its status through festivities, where parts of the surplus is burned up; and gifting to the religious institutions. It is only this way that salvation/enlightenment, i.e. spiritual value or merit in all its forms, can be obtained. The more you give, the higher your spiritual status. Social status without spiritual status is frowned upon by those type of societies. This is why the religious institutions like the Church of the Sangha end up so much land and property themselves, as the gifting competition was relentless. At the same time, these institutions serve as the welfare and social security mechanisms of their day, by ensuring that a part of that flow goes back to the poor and can be used in times of social or natural emergencies.

In the current era, marked by a steady deterioration of eco-systems, is again undergoing a fundamental and necessary shift to immateriality.

Here are just a few of the facts and arguments to illustrate my point for a shift towards once again a immaterial focus in our societies.

The cosmopolitan elite of capital has already transformed itself for a long time towards financial capital. In this form of activity, financial assets are moved constantly where returns are the highest, and this makes industrial activity a secondary activity. If we then look at the financial value of corporations, only a fraction of it is determined by the material assets of such corporation. The rest of the value, usually called “good will”, is in fact determined by the various immaterial assets of such corporation, it’s expertise and collective intelligence, it’s brand capital, the trust in the present and the future expected returns that it can generate.

The most prized material goods, such as say Nike shoes, show a similar quality, only 5% of its sales value is said to be determined by physical production costs, all the rest is the value imparted to it by the brand (both the cost to create it, and the surplus value created by the consumers themselves).

The shift towards a immaterial focus can also be shown sociologically, for example through the work of Paul Ray on cultural creatives, and of Ronald Inglehart on the profound shift to postmaterial values and aspirations.

For populations who have lived for more than one generation in broad material security, the value system shifts again to the pursuit of knowledge, cultural, intellectual and spiritual experience. Not all of them, not all the time, but more and more, and especially so for the cultural elite of ‘cultural creatives’ or what Richard Florida has called the Creative Class, which is also responsible for key value creation in cognitive capitalism.

One more economic argument could be mentioned in the context of cognitive capitalism. In this model of our economy, the current dominant model as far as value creation is concerned, the key surplus value is realized through the protection of intellectual properties. Dominant Western companies can sell goods at over 100 to 1,000 times their production value, through state and WTO enforced intellectual rents. It is clearly the immaterial value of such assets that generate the economic streams, even though it requires creating fictitious scarcities through the legal apparatus.

We have argued before that this model is undermined through the emergence of distributed infrastructures for the production, distribution and consumption of immaterial and cultural goods, which makes such fictitious scarcity untenable in the long run. The immaterial value creation is indeed already leaking out of the market system. While we need such a transition towards a focus on immaterial value, it also creates very strong contradictions in the present political economy, one of the main reasons why a shift towards a integrated social knowledge economy, is a vital necessity.

The Second Argument: the nature of post-deconstructive trans-modernism

Industrial society, its particular mental and cultural models, are clearly antagonistic to tradition. The old structures must go: religion is seen as superstition, community is seen as repressive of individuality, and tradition is seen as hampering the free progress of dynamic individuals. This makes modernism both a very constructive force, for all the new it is capable of instituting in society, but also a very destructive force, at war with thousands of years of traditional values, lifestyles and social organization. It attempts to strip individuals of wholistic community, replacing it with disciplinary institutions, and commodity-based relations.

The subsequent postmodernist phase, is a cultural (but also structural as it is itself an expression of capitalist re-organization) reaction against modernity and modernism. Postmodernism is above all a deconstructive movement. Against all ‘reification’ and ‘essentialisation’, it relatives everything. No thing, no individual stands alone, we are all constituted of fragments that themselves are part of infinite fields. Through infinite play, the fragmented ‘dividual’ has at its disposal infinite constitutive elements that can be recombined in infinite ways. The positive side of it, is, that along with freeing us with fictitious fixed frameworks of belief and meaning, it also re-openes the gates of the past and of tradition. Everything that is usable, is re-usable, and the war against tradition ends, to make place for pragmatic re-appropriation. But as the very name indicates, postmodernism can only be a first phase of critique and reaction against modernity and modernism, still very much beholden to it, if only in its reactivity to all things modern. It is deconstructive, a social regression of the collective ego that can only receive ultimate therapeutic meaning if it is followed by a reconstructive phase. For postmodernism to have any ultimate positive meaning, it must be followed by a trans-formative, reconstructive phase. A trans-modernism if you like, which goes ‘beyond’ modernity and modernism. In that new phase, tradition can not just be appropriated any longer as an object, but requires a dialogue of equals with traditional communities. They are vital, because they already have the required skills to survive and thrive in a post-material age.

The Third Argument: the problematic nature of un-changed tradition

Using or returning to a premodern spiritual tradition for transmodern inspiration is not a path that is without its problems or dangers: it can very easily become a reactionary pursuit, a fruitless attempt to go back to a golden age that has only existed in the imagination.

The core problem is that many spiritual traditions all occurred within the context of exploitative economic and political systems. Though the exploitation was different, most traditional spirituality and its institutions developed in systems that were based on tribute, slavery , or serfdom. These systems usually combined a disenfranchised peasant population, a warrior or other ruling class, in which the traditional Church or Sangha played a crucial role for its social reproduction. For example, Buddhism only became acceptable to to the ‘mainstream’society of its time when it accepted to exclude slaves. Despite its radical-democratic potential, it became infused with the feudal authority structure that mirrored the society of which it was a part. These spiritualities are therefore rife with patriarchy, sexism and other profoundly unequal views and treatments of human beings.

Though the logic was profoundly different from capitalism, these forms of exploitation, and their justification by particular religious or spiritual systems and institutions, should prove to be unacceptable to contemporary (post/trans-modern) consciousness. Perhaps a symmetrical but equally problematic approach would be the pure eclecticism that can be the result of postmodern consciousness, in which isolated parts of any tradtion are simply stolen and recombined without any serious understanding of the different frameworks. Another problem we see is the following: contemporary communication technologies, and globalized trade and travel, and the unification of the world under capitalism, have created the promise for a great mixing of civilizations. Though contact and interchange was always a reality, it was slow, and it different civilisational spheres really did exist, which created profoundly different cultural realities and individual psychologies. To be a Christian or a Buddhist meant to have profoundly different orientations towards life and society (despite structural similarities in religious or spiritual organization). But a growing part of the human population, if not the whole part, is now profoundly exposed to the underlying values of the other civilisational spheres. For example, Eastern Asian notions have similarly already profoundly impacted western consciousness. In this context, rootedness in one’s culture and spiritual traditions can no longer be separated with a global cosmopolitan approach and a continous dialogue with viewpoints and frameworks that originate elsewhere. Increasinly global affinity networks are becoming as important as local associations in influencing individuals and their identity-building.

Fourth Argument: the road to differential post-industrial development

I believe it would be fair to say that contemporary capitalism is a machine to create homogeinity worldwide, and that this is not an optimal outcome, as it destroys cultural biodiversithy. In its current format, which got a severe shock with the current financial meltdown, which combines globalization, neoliberalism and financialization, it is also an enormous apparatus of coercion. It undermines the survivability of local agriculture and creates an enormous flight to the cities; it destroys long-standing social forms such as the extended family, and severely undermines traditional culture. Of course, I do not want to imply that all change or transformation is negative, but rather stress that it takes away the freedom of many who would make different choices, such as those who would want to stay in a local village.

It is here that neotraditional approaches offer real hope and potential. Instead of the wholesale import of global habits and technologies, for which society has not been prepared and which is experienced as an alien graft, it offers an alternative road of choosing what to accept and what to reject, and to craft a locally adapted road to post-industrial development.

It reminds us of Gandhi’s concept of Swadeshi and appropriate technology. He rejected both western high tech, which was not adapted to many local situations, but also unchanged local agragrian tradition and technology, which was hardly evolving. Instead, he advocated appropriate technology, a intermediary level of technology which started from the local situation, but took from modern science and technology the necessary knowledge to create new tools that were adapted to the local situation, yet offered increases in productivity.

Neotraditional economics could take a similar approach, but not limited to an attitude to technology selection, but to the totality of political and social choices. In this way, in harmony with local values, those aspects can be chosen, which increase the quality of livelihoods, but do not radically subvert chosen lifestyles and social forms. It represents a new approach which combines the high tech of globalized technical knowledge, with the high touch elements of local culture. For example, it becomes imaginable to conceive of local villages, adapting localized and small-scale manufacturing techniques based on the latest advances in miniaturization and flexibilisation of production technologies, and which are globally connected with global knowledge networks.

Fifth Argument: Adapting to Steady-State Economies in the Age of the Endangered Biosphere

The essence of capitalism is infinite growth, making money with money and increasing capital. An infinite growth system cannot infinitely perdure with limited resources in a limited physical environment. Today’s global system combines a vision of pseudo-abundance, the mistaken vision that nature can provide endless inputs and is an infinite dump, with pseudo-scarcity, the artificial creation of scarcities in the fields of intellectual, cultural and scientific exchange, through exaggerated and ever increasing intellectual property rights, which hamper innovation and free cooperation.

To be sustainable, our emerging global human civilization and political economy needs to reverse those two principles. This means that we first of all need a steady-state economy, which can only grow to the degree it can recycle its input back to nature, so as not to further deplete the natural stock. And it requires a liberalization of the sharing and exchange of technical and scientific knowledge to global open innovation communities, so that the collective intelligence of the whole of humankind can be directed to the solving of complex problems.

The first transformation is closely linked to our contemporary monetary system and alternative answers can be found in the traditional conceptions of wealth of pre-industrial societies.

For example, traditional religions associated with agriculture-based societies and production systems, outlawed interest. There is a good reason for that: when someone extends a loan with interest, that interest does not exist, and the borrower has to find the money somewhere else. In other words, to pay back the interest, he has to impoverish somebody else. This of course, would be extremely socially destructive in a static society, and therefore, it could not be allowed to happen, which explains the religious injunction against interest.

However, in modern capitalist societies, a solution has been found: growth. As long as the pie is growing, the interest can be taken from the growing pie. The problem however, is that such a monetary system requires growth, infinite growth. Static businesses are an impossibility, since that would mean they cannot pay back the interest.

Now that we have reached the limits of the biosphere, now that we need again a steady-state economy, we need interest-free monetary systems, and paradoxically, the religious injunctions again make sense.

This is just one of the connections between the transmodern challenges, and the value of traditional, and religious systems rooted in the premodern era, such as Buddhist Economics, and of course, the traditions of ‘Buen Vivir’.

We could take many other examples: for example, modern chemical agriculture destroys the quality of the land, and depletes it, so that here also, premodern traditional practices become interesting again. However, as we stated in the third argument, and refined in the fourth argument: since tradition is also problematic, it cannot be simply copied, it can only be used in a critical manner.

An example of such a critical approach is the appropriate technology movement. In this approach, it is recognized that traditional technology as such is insufficient, that hypermodern technology is often inappropriate in more traditional settings, and that therefore, an intermediate practice is needed, that is both rooted in ‘tradition’, i.e. the reality of the local situation, but also in modernity, the creative use of technological solutions and reasoning, so as the create a new type of ‘appropriate’ technological development.

Conclusion: Can the ethos of the social knowledge economy be mixed with neotraditional approaches?

With the emergence of the social knowledge economy and commons-based peer production, and practices like open and distributed manufacturing, a new alliance becomes possible: that between the most technologically advanced open design communities, with the majority of the people who are still strongly linked to traditional practices. Through such an alliance, which combines the traditional injunction for a steady-state economy in harmony with natural possibilities, a differentiated post-industrial future can be created, which can bypass the destructive practices of industrial-era modernism, and can create an ‘appropriate technology’ future, whereby more traditional communities can more freely decide what to adapt and what to reject. While on the other hand, transmodern open design communities can learn from the wisdom of traditional approaches. Such an alliance needs an ideological vehicle, and Buen Vivir is its expression.

Extract from “A Commons Transition Plan“.

Photo by kabl1992

Photo by University of the Fraser Valley

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The pro-independence government of Catalonia recently sparked a political crisis in Spain by proposing to call a referendum on independence by the end of 2017 with or without the approval of the central government. In contrast, “Catalonia in common” defines itself as an innovative political space of the Catalan left. Initiated by Barcelona in Comú a little less than a year after its election to city hall, ​​the initiave was launched in October 2016. A short manifesto explained its raison-d’être and presented an “ideario politico” (a political project) of some 100 pages for broad discussion over 5 months which culminated in a constituent assembly last April 8.

This new political subject defines itself as “a left-wing Catalan organisation that aims to govern and to transform the economic, political and social structures of the present neo-liberal system.” Its originality in the political panorama of Catalonia and of Spain is its engagement with “a new way of doing politics, a politics of the commons where grassroots people and communities are the protagonists.” In response to those who see its emergence only in the context of the impending referendum, it affirms: “We propose a profound systemic, revolutionary change in our economic, social, environmental and political model.”

We interviewed Joan Subirats a few days after the Constituent Assembly of Catalunya en Comú took place. Joan is an academic renowned for his publications and his political engagement. A specialist in public policy and urban issues, he has published widely on the Commons and on the new municipalism. He is one of the artisans of Barcelona in Comú and has just been elected to the coordinating body of the new space named recently “Catalunya en comú”.

The Genesis of a New Political Subject

NT — Tell us about the trajectory of the development of this new initiative: a lot of people link it to the 15-M, but I imagine that it was more complex than that and started long before.

By Directa (youtube) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

JS — At the outset there was Guanyem, which was in fact the beginning of Barcelona en Comú: the first meetings were in February-March 2014. Who was involved? this is quite simultaneous with the decision by Podemos to compete in the European Parliament elections in May 2014. Podemos organises in February 2014; Guanyem begins organising in February- March 2014 to compete in the municipal elections of May 2015.

Going farther back, there is a phase of intense social mobilisation against austerity policies between 2011 and 2013. If we look at the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior on the number of demonstrations, it is impressive, there were never as many demonstrations as during that period, but after mid-2013 they start to taper off. There is a feeling that there are limits and that demonstrations can’t obtain the desired changes in a situation where the right-wing Popular Party (PP) holds an absolute majority. So the debate emerges within the social movements as to whether it’s a good idea to attempt to move into the institutions.

Podemos chooses the most accessible scenario, that of the European elections, because these elections have a single circonscription, so all of Spain is a single riding, with a very high level of proportionality, so with few votes you get high representation because there are 60-some seats, so with one million votes they obtained 5 seats. And people vote more freely in these elections because apparently the stakes are not very high, so they are elections that are good for testing strategies. In contrast, here in Barcelona, we chose the municipal elections as the central target because here there is a long history of municipalism.

So this sets the stage for the period that began in 2014 with Guanyem and Podemos and the European elections and in May 2015 with the municipal elections where in 4 of the 5 major cities – Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza – alternative coalitions win that are not linked to either of the two major political parties (PP and the Socialist Party – PSOE) that have dominated the national political scene since the return to democracy in 1977. And in the autonomous elections^[1], a new political cycle also begins, in which we still are. If we go farther back, to 2011 – there are a couple of maps that show the correlation between the occupation of plazas in the 15-M with the number of alternative citizen canadidacies at the municipal level.

So Podemos and all the alternative citizen coalitions all refer to the 15M as their founding moment. But the 15M is not a movement, it was a moment, an event. You must have heard the joke about the stranger who arrives and wants to talk to the 15M – but there is no 15M, it has no spokespersons and no address. But everyone considers it very important because it transformed the political scene in its wake . But what was there before the 15M?

There were basically 4 major trends that converged in the 15-M :
First the anti-globalisation movement, the oldest one, very interesting because a large number of the new political leaders have come out of it, with forms of political mobilisation different from the traditional ones.

Then there was the « Free Culture Forum » linked to issues regarding internet which was very important here in Barcelona – with Simona Levy and Gala Pin, who is now a municipal councillor – that is important because here digital culture, network culture, was present from the very beginning, something that didn’t occur in other places.

The third movement was the PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) which emerges in 2009 and had precedents with Ada Colau and others who organised « V for vivienda » (like the film « V for vendetta », but in this case vivienda – housing), an attempt to demonstrate that young people were excluded from social emancipation because they didn’t have access to housing. Their slogan was « you’ll never have a house in your whole f’king life ». And the forms of mobilisation were also very new, for example, they occupied IKEA because at that time IKEA’s advertising slogan was « the independent republic of your home », so they occupied it and slept in the beds there. So this was more youthful, alternative, more of a rupture, but then in 2009 with the creation of the PAH they started to try to connect with the immigrant sector and people who were losing their houses because of the mortgage hype, it was very important because it’s the movement that tries to connect with sectors outside of youth: the poor, immigrants, working class… with the slogan ‘this is not a crisis, it’s a sting’. So the PAH is very important because it’s the movement that connects with sectors of the population outside of youth: workers, immigrants, the elderly… For example, here in Plaza Catalunya in 2011 the only major poster rallying people who weren’t youth was that of the PAH.

And the fourth movement – the most ‘authentic’ 15M one – was that of the « Youth without future ». People who organised mainly in Madrid, typical middle-class university sector with post-grad studies, who suddenly realised that they wouldn’t find jobs, that it wasn’t true that their diplomas would open doors for them, they were in a precarious situation.

So those were the four major currents that converged in the basis of the 15M. But what made it ‘click’ was not just those 4 trends, but the fact that huge numbers of other people recognised the moment and converged on the plazas and overwhelmed the movements that started it. The most surprising thing about the moment was that those 4 movements – that were not all that important – were rapidly overwhelmed by success of the movement they started and new people who spontaneously joined. That was what really created the phenomenon, because if it had been just those 4 movements, if it had been like ‘Nuit debout’ in Paris where people occupied the plaza but without the sensation that people had steamrollered the leaders. So, when the plazas are evacuated, the idea becomes ‘Let’s go to the neighbourhoods’. So all of a sudden, in the neighbourhoods of Barcelona and Madrid, assemblies were organised where there was a mixture of the old neighbourhood associations that were no longer very active and whose members were older (my generation) and new people who brought new issues like ecology, energy, bicycle transport, cooperatives, water and a thousand different things and who created new spaces of articulation where people who had never thought that they would meet in the neighbourhoods began to converge.

I think this explains the re-emergence of municipalism that followed: people begin to see the city as a place where diverse social changes can be articulated on a territorial basis: many mobilisations are taking place in isolation, in a parallel manner and don’t have a common meeting-point. Water as a common good, energy transition, sustainable transport, public health, public space, infant education… All of a sudden there was something that brought people together which was to discuss the city, the city we want – David Harvey mentions in an article that the modern-day factory is the city. That is, we no longer have factories, the city is now the space where conflicts appear and where daily life becomes politicised: issues like care, food, schooling, transport, energy costs – and this creates a new space for articulating these issues that hadn’t been previously envisaged.

So I think this is the connection : 15-M as a moment of overwhelming, the end of a cycle of mobilisation – remember that there had been a petition of a million and a half signatures to change the mortgage legislation, that Ada Colau presented in the national Congress, where she accused the PP deputies of being assassins because of what they were doing – but that mobilisation had no effect in the law. A PP deputy declared ‘If these people want to change things, then they should get elected’. So people started thinking ‘OK, if that’s the way it is, then let’s get ourselves elected’. This is the initial change of cycle in 2014. So the 4 movements were present in the meetings of Guanyem and BComun, as well as some progressive intellectuals and people from other issue areas like water, transport, energy etc. That was the initial nucleus here in Barcelona – in Madrid it was different. There the Podemos generation had a different logic. Here, from the beginning, we wanted to create a movement from the bottom up and to avoid a logic of coalition of political parties, this was very clear from the outset. We didn’t want to reconstruct the left on the basis of an agreement amongst parties. We wanted to build a citizen movement that could impose its own conditions on the parties. In the case of Podemos it was different: it was a logic of a strike from above – they wanted to create a strong close-knit group with a lot of ideas in a very short period and as a result an electoral war machine that can assault the heavens and take power. Here, on the other hand, we foresaw a longer process of construction of a movement where we would start with the municipalities and after that, we’ll see.

So Guanyem was created in June 2014, 11 months prior to the municipal elections, with a minimal program in 4 points:

1. we said, we want to take back the city, it’s is being taken away from the citizens, people come here to talk about a ‘business-friendly global city’ and they are taking it away from the citizens, we have lost the capacity to control it, as the first point;
2. there is a social emergency where many problems don’t get a response;
3. we want people to be able to have decision-making capacity in what happens in the city, so co-production of policy, more intense citizen participation in municipal decisions;
4. moralisation of politics. Here the main points are non-repetition of mandates, limits on salaries of elected officials, anti-corruption and transparency measures, etc.

So we presented this in June 2014 and we decided that we would give ourselves until September to collect 30,000 signatures in support of the manifesto and if we succeeded, we would present candidates in the municipal elections. In one month we managed to get the 30,000 signatures! Besides getting the signatures on internet and in person, we held a lot of meetings in the neighbourhoods to present the manifesto – we held about 30 or 40 meetings like that, some of them small, some more massive, where we went to the neighbourhoods and we said « We thought of this, what do you think? We thought of these priorities, etc’. » So, in September of 2014 we decided to go ahead; once we decided that we would present a slate, we began to discuss with the parties – but with the strength of all that support of 30,000 people backing us at the grassroots, so our negotiating strength with respect to the parties was very different. In Dec 2014 we agreed with the parties to create Barcelona en Comun – we wanted to call it Guanyem but someone else had already registered the name, so there was a lot of discussion about a new name, there were various proposals: Revolucion democratica, primaria democratica, the term Comu – it seemed interesting because it connected with the Commons movement, the idea of the public which is not restricted to the institutional and that was key. It was also important that in the previous municipal elections in 2011 only 52% of people had voted, in the poorer neighbourhoods a higher number of people abstained and that it was in the wealthier neighbourhoods where a larger proportion of people had voted. So we wanted to raise participation by 10% in the poor neighbourhoods more affected by the crisis and we thought that would allow us to win. And that was what happened. In 2015, 63% voted, but in the poor areas 40% more people voted. In the rich areas, the same people voted as before.

So it was not impossible to think we could win. And from the beginning the idea was to win. We did not build this machine in order to participate, we built it in order to win. We didn’t want to be the opposition, we wanted to govern. And as a result, it was close, because we won 11 of 41 seats, but got the most votes so we head the municipal council, the space existed. From the moment Guanyem was created in June 2014, other similar movements began to be created all over Spain – in Galicia, in Andalucia, in Valencia, Zaragoza, Madrid… One of the advantages we have in Barcelona is that we have Ada Colau, which is a huge advantage, because a key thing is to have an uncontested leader who can articulate all the segments of the movement – ecologists, health workers, education professionals…. If you don’t have that it’s very difficult, and also the sole presence of Ada Colau explains many things. In Madrid they found Manuela Carmena, who is great as an anti-franquista symbol, with her judicial expertise, very popular but who didn’t have that tradition of articulating movements, and as a result now they are having a lot more problems of political coordination than here.

A New Political Subject for a New Political Era

AA — So now Catalunya en comu defines itself as a new political space on the left for the whole of Catalonia. But in recent Catalan history that’s nothing really new: there have been numerous political coalitions on the left, such as the PSUC^[2] in 1936 followed by many others. So what is different about this initiative?

JS — If we open up our perspective and look at things more globally, I think that what justifies the idea that this is a new political space is the fact that the moment is new, we’re in a new phase so it’s very important to understand that if this new political moment reproduces the models and the conceptual paradigms of the old left and of the Fordism of the end of the 20th century, we won’t have moved ahead at all. The crisis of social democracy is also a crisis of a way of understanding social transformation with codes that no longer exist. As a result the measure of success of this new political space is not so much in to what extent it can bring together diverse political forces, but rather its capacity to understand this new scenario we find ourselves in – a scenario where digital transformation is changing everything, where we no longer know what ‘labour’ is, where heterogeneity and social diversity appear as factors not of complexity but of values, where the structure of age no longer functions as it used to – where everything is in transformation, so we can no longer continue to apply ideas – to use a phrase coined by Ulrich Beck – ‘zombie concepts’, living dead, no?, we forge ahead with our backpacks full of 20th-century concepts, applying them to realities that no longer have anything to do with them. It’s easy to see the defects of the old, traditional concepts, but it’s very difficult to construct new ones because we don’t really know what is happening nor where we are headed. The example of the debate in France between Valls and Hamon – at least, I read the summary in Le Monde, where Valls maintained that it would be possible to come back to a situation of full employment and Hamon said that is impossible, that it’s necessary to work towards the universal basic income; in the end, Hamon is closer to the truth than Valls, but Hamon isn’t capable of explaining it in a credible way – and it is very difficult to explain it in a credible way.

Here, we are working at one and the same time on the Commons and the non-institutional public sphere, we are demanding greater presence of the public administration when probably it wouldn’t really be necessary, but since we don’t have a clear idea of how to construct this new thing, we are still acting sort of like slaves of the old. So that’s where I think the concept of the Commons, of the cooperative, the collaborative, new ideas regarding the digital economy, are more difficult to structure, because we’re also conscious that capitalism is no longer only industrial or financial but now it’s digital capitalism, and it controls all the networks of data transmission and at the same time the data themselves, probably the wealth of the future. So, sure we can do really interesting things in Barcelona, out of Barcelona en Comun, but we have GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), and GAFAM has its own logics and that complicates things. So we have to create a new political subject – and it’s obvious that we need something new – but what isn’t so obvious is what are the concepts we need to create this new subject. So if you look at the documents published by Un Pais en Comu^[3] that’s what you’ll see: a bit of different language, a different way of using concepts, but at the same time a trace of the heritage of the traditional left. The journal ‘Nous Horitzons’ has just published a new issue on ‘Politics in Common’^[4] which brings together a lot of these elements. The impression that some of us had in the assembly the other day in Vall d’Hebron (the inaugural assembly of the movement) was that the old ways were still weighing us down, that there was a difficulty to generate an innovative dynamic.

NT — That was clear in the composition of the audience.

JS — Yes, well, the Podemos people weren’t there, of course… they didn’t come for various reasons, because probably not everybody was in agreement with Albano-Dante^[5] but they saw there was a lot of disagreement and so they preferred not to come, and that’s a type of public that, as well as filling the hall, also changes the type of dynamic – so it was more the traditional-style organisations that were there (Iniciativa or EUIA^[6]), there was more of the old than the new probably. Perhaps that’s inevitable, but what we have to do now is to see if we can change that dynamic.

AA — When one reads the ‘Ideario politico’ (the political project of Un Pais en Comu) it’s a sort of lesson in political economy, political philosophy as well, but also a vast programme, and the left has never put forward this type of Commons-inspired programme before, be it in Catalunya or in Spain or probably internationally. How do you see its contribution in the context of the Commons ecosystem? There have been experiences of the Commons without the Commons label, as in Latin America …

JS — Yes, in Catalunya the anarcho-sindicalist movement…

AA — Of course, but more recently, the idea of ‘Buen Vivir’ …

JS — Yes, but when you go to Latin America and you talk about that, it all revolves around the State. But here, we try not to be state-centric. We are trying to avoid the idea that the only possible transformation needs to depend on the State.

AA — But in the ‘Ideario’ a lot of discussion is devoted to public services as well, this implies that the State has to exist. And in the Commons vocabulary there is the concept of the ‘partner-state’, but it doesn’t appear in the Ideario…

JS — Yes, there’s a margin there: the resilience of the new politics depends more on the capacity to create ‘muscled’ collective spaces – public, collective, common – than on the occupation of the institutions. But without the occupation of the institutions, it’s very difficult to construct those spaces. The example that comes to mind for me is from Copenhagen: there it was the cooperatives of the workers’ unions that built the big housing coops that exist now; also, the municipal government when the left was in power built a lot of public housing; then when a right-wing government came to power, it privatised all the public housing but it couldn’t privatise the cooperatives. So in the end, things that are strictly state-based are more vulnerable than when you build collective strength. So if we are able to benefit from these spaces in order to build ‘collective muscle’, using our presence in the institutions, this will end up being more resilient, more stable over time than if we put all our eggs in the State basket. So the Barcelona city government has civic social centres that are municipal property, but what is important is to succeed in ensuring that these centres are controlled by the community, that each community make them its own despite the fact that the property is officially that of the municipality, but they must be managed through a process of community management. So you need to build in the community a process of appropriation of institutions that ends up being stronger than if it were all in the hands of the State.

Now we are discussing citizen heritage, how the city government can use its property – houses, buildings – and it can cede them for a certain period in order to construct collective spaces. For example, 8 building sites that belong to the municipality have been put up for auction on 100-year leases for community organisations to build housing cooperatives. This doesn’t take property away from the public sphere and at the same time it generates collective strength. But a certain sector of the political left here, the CUP, criticises this as privatisation of public space. They think Barcelona en Comun should build public housing instead, state-owned housing. That’s a big difference. And people are aware of that, but at the same time there are doubts about whether this makes sense, whether there is sufficient strength within the community so that this can work. Or, for example, the most common criticism is that “you have an idea of the public, the collective, the Commons, that implies capacities in the community that are only present in the middle classes that have the knowledge, the organisational capacity… so it’s a very elitist vision of the collective because the popular sectors, without the backing of the State, won’t be able to do this.” Well, we’re going to try to combine things so it can work, but we don’t want to keep converting the public into the ‘state’.

Nancy Fraser wrote an article on the triple movement – looking at Polanyi’s work on the ‘double movement’ in the Great Transformation, that is the movement towards mercantilisation, and the opposite movement it stimulated towards protection. Polanyi talks about the confrontation of these 2 movements in the early 20th century, and the State – in its soviet form or in its fascist form – as a protectionist response of society which demands protection when faced with the uncertainty, the fragility the double movement engenders. Nancy Fraser says that all that is true, but we’re no longer in the 20th century, we’re in the 21st century where factors like individual emancipation, diversity, feminism are all very important – so we shouldn’t be in favour of a protectionist movement that continues to be patriarchal and hierarchical. We need a movement for protection that generates autonomy – and there resides what I think is one of the keys of the Commons movement. The idea of being able to get protection – so, a capacity of reaction against the dynamics of the market attacks – without losing the strength of diversity, of personal emancipation, of feminism, the non-hierarchical, the non-patriarchal, the idea that somebody decide for me what I need to do and how I will be protected. Let me self-protect myself too, let me be a protagonist too of this protection. And this is contradictory with the state-centric tradition.

A Commons Economy, Participation and Co-production of Policy

AA — The first theme of the ‘Ideario’ is the economy – you are an economist, amongst other things – how do you see this proposal in terms of the Commons? For example, there is a lot of discussion now about ‘open cooperativism’, etc. What you were saying about the cooperative movement here, that it is very strong but not sufficient…

JS — In some aspects no. For example, the city wanted to open a new contract for communications (telephone, internet) – now there are the big companies Telefonica, Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, etc: there’s a cooperative called ‘Som Connexion’ (We are connection)- or ‘Som Energia’ (We are energy) that’s a lot bigger – it has 40,000 members – but these cooperatives, it would be fantastic if the city were to give them the contract for energy or for communication, but they aren’t capable of managing that at the moment. So if they take it, we’d all have big problems: faulty connections, lack of electrical power – because they’re growing for sure but they don’t yet have the ‘muscle’, the capacity they need to take this on.

So we have to continue investing in this, it’s not going to take care of itself. On the other hand, in other areas, like home services for the elderly, we do have very strong cooperatives, Abacus for example is a cooperative for book distribution that has 800 000 members, so that is a coop that’s very powerful, and there are others. But in general, the more powerful the coop, the less politicised it is – they tend to transform themselves into big service companies. But now they are understanding that perhaps it would be in their interest to have a different vision; there has been a very politicised movement in the grassroots level coops that is contradictory with the entrepreneurial trend in the big coops. So we’re in this process right now: yes, there are very big, very strong coops and there are also smaller, more political ones but they don’t have sufficient muscle yet.

AA — When we look at issues of participation, co-production of policy and such, it is also a question of culture, a culture of co-production that doesn’t exist. In the neighbourhoods, yes there is a trend to revamping participation, but when we talk to people in the local-level committees they say ‘Sure, people come to the meetings, but because they want a tree planted here…’ and they don’t have that vision of co-creation. So first there has to be a sort of cultural revolution ?

JS — There are places where there has been a stronger community tradition that could well converge with this. Some neighbourhoods like Roquetes for example, Barceloneta or Sants, have very strong associational traditions. If you go to Roquetes to the meeting of the community plan, everybody is there: the people from the primary medical services centre, the doctors, the schools are there, the local police, the social workers – and they hold meetings every 2 weeks and they know everything that goes on in the area, and they transfer cases amongst themselves: “we detected this case, how do we deal with it?” etc. The community fabric in those neighbourhoods functions really well. So what can you add to that fabric so that it can go a bit further? On the other hand, in other neighbourhoods like Ciutat Meridiana, in 5 years 50% of the population has changed, so it’s very difficult to create community where the level of expulsion or change is so high. In Sants, in Ca Batlló, there was a very interesting experience where people want to create a cooperative neighbourhood – it’s a bit polemical – they want to create a public school without using public funds, instead using money from the participants themselves, because the coop tradition in Sants is very anarchist, libertarian – so they promote the idea of a public school, open to all, but not using public funds. And it would have its own educational philosophy, that wouldn’t have to submit to standard educational discipline. And groups have appeared in different neighbourhoods dedicated to shared child-raising where there are no pre-schools for children between 0 and 3 years, or people prefer not to take the kids to public pre-schools because they find them too rigid, so they prefer generating relationships amongst parents. So what should the role of the city government be with respect to such initiatives? Should it facilitate or not? There’s a debate about how to position the municipality with respect to these initiatives that are interesting but then when, inside Barcelona en Comú or Catalunya en Comú, the person who is in charge of these issues comes with a more traditional union perspective and says “This is crazy, what we need to do is to create public schools with teachers who are professional civil servants. These experiments are fine for gentrified zones, but in reality…’” And they are partly right. So we’re in that sort of situation, which is a bit ambivalent. We’re conscious that we need to go beyond a state-centric approach, but at the same time we need to be very conscious that if we don’t reinforce the institutional role, the social fragilities are very acute.

The Commons and Issues of Sovereignty, Interdependence and the “Right to Decide”

AA — Another high-profile issue is that of sovereignty. The way it’s presented in the Ideario is criticised both by those who want a unified Spain and by those who want Catalan independence. Sovereignty is simply another word for independence in the view of many people. But the way it’s presented in the Ideario is more complex and comprehensive, linked to autonomy at every level …

JS — Exactly: it’s plural, in lower case and plural: sovereignties. The idea is a bit like what I said earlier about the city, that we want to take back the city. We want to recover the collective capacity to decide over what affects us. So it’s fine to talk about the sovereignty of Catalonia, but we also need to talk about digital sovereignty, water sovereignty, energy sovereignty, housing sovereignty – sovereignty in the sense of the capacity to decide over that which affects us. So we don’t have to wait until we have sovereignty over Catalonia in order to grapple with all this. And this has obvious effects: for example, something we are trying to develop here: a transit card that would be valid on all forms of public transit – like the “Oyster” in London, and many other cities have them – an electronic card that you can use for the train, the metro, the bus: the first thing the Barcelona city government did on this was to ask the question “Who will own the data? “. That’s sovereignty. The entity that controls the data on who moves and how in metropolitan Barcelona has an incredible stock of information with a clear commercial value. So will it belong to the company that incorporates the technology? or will the data belong to the municipality and the municipality will do with it what it needs? At the moment, they are installing digital electricity metres and digital water metres: but to whom do the data belong? because these are public concessions, concessions to enterprises in order that they provide a public service – so who owns the data?

This is a central issue. And it is raised in many other aspects, like food sovereignty. So, we want to ensure that in the future Barcelona be less dependent on the exterior for its food needs, as far as possible. So you need to work to obtain local foodstuffs, control over the products that enter – and that implies food sovereignty, it implies discussing all this. So, without saying that the sovereignty of Catalonia isn’t important, we need to discuss the other sovereignties. Because, suppose we attain the sovereignty of Catalonia as an independent state, but we are still highly dependent in all the other areas. We need to confront this. I don’t think it’s a way of avoiding the issue, it’s a way of making it more complex, of understanding that today the Westphalian concept of State sovereignty no longer makes much sense. I think we all agree on that. We are very interdependent, so how do we choose our interdependencies? That would be real sovereignty, not to be independent because that’s impossible, but rather how to better choose your interdependencies so that they have a more public content.

AA — Talking of interdependence, there is the issue as well of internationalism. Barcelona en Comú puts a lot of emphasis on that, saying ‘There is no municipalism without internationalism’ etc. From the very outset of her mandate, Ada Colau in 2015 in her inaugural speech as mayor said that ‘we will work to build a movement of cities of the Mediterranean’, and as time goes on the approach is becoming clearer, for example with the participation of Colau and the vice-mayor Gerardo Pisarello in the major international city conferences. What do you see as the importance of this internationalism within the Commons ecosystem?

JS — There are 2 key aspects for me. First, cities are clearly the most global political space and zone of social convergence that exists. Apparently when we talk about cities we’re talking about something local, but cities are actually very globalised. Benjamin Barber wrote a book about ‘Why Mayors should govern the world’. And he set out an example I think is very good: if the mayor of Montreal meets with Ada and the mayor of Nairobi and the mayor of Santiago de Chile and the mayor of say Hong-Kong, after 5 minutes together they’ll all be talking about the same things. Because the problems of cities are very similar from one place to another despite their different sizes. Questions of energy, transport, water, services, food… If we try to imagine that same meeting between Heads of State, the complexity of the political systems, cultural traditions, constitutional models and all will mean that the challenge of coming to a common understanding will be much more complex. That doesn’t mean that cities are the actors that will resolve climate change, but certainly the fact that Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Paris agree that in 2025 there will no longer be cars circulating that use diesel will have more impact than a meeting of Heads of State. With AirBnB Barcelona is in constant confrontation, the city has fined them 600,000 euros, but Barcelona on its own can’t combat AirBnB. But New York, Paris, London, Amsterdam and Barcelona have come to an agreement to negotiate jointly with AirBnb: those 5 cities together can negotiate with them. But it isn’t the problem for States, it’s much more a problem for cities than for States. And AirBnB uses digital change to enter spaces where there is a lack of precision – it’s what happens too with Uber, Deliveroo and other platforms of so-called ‘collaborative economy’, which is really extractive economy, but which use the reglamentary voids. The people who work for Uber or Deliveroo aren’t employees, they are independent entrepreneurs but they work in 19th century conditions. Tackling this problem from the level of the city can produce new solutions.

I think when we decided in 2014-2015 to attempt to work at the municipal level in Barcelona, we were aware that Barcelona isn’t just any city: Barcelona has an international presence and we wanted to use Barcelona’s international character to exert an influence on urban issues worldwide. Ada Colau participated in the Habitat conference in Quito in October 2016, before that in the meeting of local authorities in Bogota, she is now co-president of the World Union of Municipalities. So there’s an investment that didn’t start just with us but that started in the period when Maragall^[7] was mayor, a very high investment by Barcelona in participating in this international sphere of cities. This reinforces Barcelona in its confrontations with the State and with private enterprise as well. It plays an important role. There is an international commission within Barcelona en Comú, they are constantly working with other world cities – they have been in France, they have a strong link with Grenoble and will be going to a meeting of French cities in September to talk about potential collaboration, they often go to Italy, they’ve gone to Belgrade, to Poland. In June they’re organising a meeting of Fearless Cities, with the participation of many mayors from major cities in Europe and around the world.
So there is a very clear vision of the global aspect. So the global dimension is very present, and at the level of Spain as well. The problem there is that there is political interference, for example in Madrid, which is very important as a city, but within the municipal group “Ahora Madrid” they’re very internally divided, so sometimes you speak to one and the others don’t like it. We have really good relations with Galicia: A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela, also with Valencia, but Valencia also has its own dynamic. Zaragoza. Each city has its own dynamic, so sometimes it’s complicated to establish on-going relations.

AA — What about Cadiz?

JS — Of course, Cadiz is also part of this trend, but the group there is part of the Podemos anti-capitalist faction, so there are nuances.

NT — You mentioned 2 points regarding internationalism…

JS — Yes, first there was the general global perspective on cities and the second is Barcelona’s own concrete interest. So the first is more global, that is, any city in the world today has many more possibilities if it looks at its strategic global role and if it wants to strengthen its position, it has to work on the global level. In the case of Barcelona specifically, there is also a will that’s partly traditional, because it was begun by Maragall, you have to remember that here in Barcelona there are 10 districts, and during the war of the Balkans, Maragall created District 11, which was Sarajevo: city technicians went to Sarajevo to work with them, and still today there are municipal technicians who travel regularly to Gaza to work there, or with La Havana – in other words there’s a clearly established internationalist stance in the municipality. Also, the headquarters of the World Union of Local Governments is in Barcelona. The international headquarters of Educating Cities is in Barcelona, so there has constantly been a will to be present on the international scene since Maragall, and now this is continuing but with a new orientation as well. Perhaps there used to be the idea of exporting the Barcelona model, branding Barcelona, but that is no longer the case.
There’s very intense organisation globally, probably if Ada accepted all the invitations she receives, she’d be travelling all the time.

AA — Coming back to the issue of sovereignty vs independence and “the right to decide”, how does this play out?

JS — The issue of independence is internally very complex with different positions. I think there is a general agreement on 3 things, ie:

1. Catalonia has its own demos and therefore is a political subject which must be recognised,
2. it has to be able to decide how to articulate itself with the other political subjects in Spain and in Europe, it has to have the right, the capacity to decide;
3. this requires the construction of a State of its own.

It is on the fourth point that we are not in agreement: whether that State should be independent or whether it should be in some way linked, allied, confederated with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula or with Europe. These 3 initial points are sufficiently important and they are the basis for the fact that Catalunya en Comú or Barcelona en Comú is part of the broad sovereigntist space in Catalonia. What it isn’t part of is the independentist space in Catalonia. Despite the fact that I would say some 30-40% of the members are pro-independence, but the rest not. And that is an issue which divides us. But what we are trying to do is to work out this debate on the basis of our own criteria, not on those of other movements. The criteria of the others are ‘you are independentist or you are not independentist’. Our own criteria are: yes, we are sovereigntists, we discuss sovereignties and we’ll see. Since we agree on what is the most important (that is – an autonomous political subject, the right to decide, an autonomous State), let’s discuss how we can articulate. We have fraternal relations with 4 million people in the rest of Spain who agree with us on the first 3 criteria. So the key question probably would be: Does Catalonia want to separate from the rest of Spain or from this Spain? The standard response would be “We have never known any other. We’ve always seen the same Spain, so there is no other Spain”. So the debate we can have is over “Yes, another Spain is possible”. Sort of like the debate right now over whether to leave Europe: do we want to leave Europe or leave this Europe? But is another Europe possible or not?

The Challenges of Scale

NT — I am struck by the fact that every time we refer to the initiative of Catalunya en Comú, you respond by giving the example of what’s happening in Barcelona: do you see Barcelona as the model for Un Pais en Comú?

JS — No, it’s not that it’s the model, there is even some reticence within Barcelona en Comú that this new political initiative may have negative consequences for Barcelona en Comú. The Barcelona in Comú experiment has worked really well: within BeC political parties continue to exist (Podemos, Iniciativa, EUIA, Guanyem) and all agree that it’s necessary to create this subject, because it’s clear – there’s a phrase by a former mayor of Vitoria in the Basque country who said “Where my capacities end, my responsibilities begin” – that is, clearly, cities are developing roles that are more and more important, but their capacities continue to be very limited and especially their resources are very limited – so there’s an imbalance between capacities and responsibilities. Between what cities could potentially do and what they really can do. Refuge-cities – a thousand things. So within Barcelona en Comú there is an understanding of the interest of creating Catalunya en Comú in order to have influence in other levels of government. And to present candidates in elections in Spain with En Comú Podem because to be represented in Madrid is also important. But of course, sometimes this expansion can make us lose the most original aspect, that is the emphasis on municipalism, in the capacity to create these spaces – so there’s a certain tension. And obviously, when you go outside Barcelona in Catalonia, the local and territorial realities are very different, you find… you no longer control what kind of people are joining and so you can end up with surprises – good and bad ones – so there are some doubts, some growing pains. You have to grow, but how will that affect what we have so far? our ways of working and all that… I always refer to Barcelona en Comú because we have existed for longer, we have a sort of ‘tradition’ in the way we work, and on the contrary, the other day we held the founding assembly of Catalunya en Comú and – where are we headed? how long will we be able to maintain the freshness, avoid falling into the traditional vices of political parties? Xavi (Domenech) is a very good candidate, he has what I call a Guanyem DNA, but it’s not evident that we can pull this through. That’s the doubt.

NT — How do you assess the results of the founding assembly of Catalunya en Comú? Are you happy with what came out of it?

JS — Yes, I’m satisfied, although I don’t think the results were optimal, but we are squeezed by a political calendar that we don’t control. It’s very probable that there will be elections this year in Catalonia, so if that happens… what would have been preferable? To reproduce the Barcelona en Comú model, take more time and work more from the bottom up, hold meetings throughout the territory – we did hold about 70 or 80, but a lot more would have been better – do things more slowly and look around, build links with local movements, the same ones as in Barcelona but on the level of Catalonia – energy, water, etc: reconstruct the same process. But sure, they’re going to call elections or a referendum in 2 days. What is clear is that we can’t do the same thing as with ‘Catalunya si que es pot’^[8], which was a coalition but it didn’t work. So all this has meant that the process – despite the fact that I think it has been carried out well, is not optimal: within the realm of the possible, I think it was done with great dignity.

NT — And with respect to the deliberative process that was used to arrive at the final document?

JS — Basically the same thing: it could have been done better, with deeper debates in each area, it was done very quickly, a lot of issues in a short period of time. The task was very complex, and I think the result is worthy. We tried to avoid standardised jargon and parameters, to make it a bit different. So now we’ll see – yesterday the Executive met for the first time, and on May 13 will be the first meeting of the coordinating group of 120 people^[9]. So we’ll have to see how this all is gotten underway. I am not convinced that it will all be functional in time for the Catalan elections, for me the key date is May 2019 which are the next municipal elections. Then we’ll see if this has really jelled and if we can have a significant presence throughout the territory. This territorial vision is very important in order to avoid a top-down construction. The key thing in Catalonia is to do it with dignity and not to become entrapped in this dual logic of independence or not, to be capable of bringing together a social force that is in that position.

Originally published on remixthecommons.org, where the interview is also available in French.

Photo by christopher.berry

The post Catalunya en Comú: Building a country in common(s) – Interview with Joan Subirats appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Commons: Self-organised (re)production as a socio-ecological transformation

About the authors and their positions

We, the authors of this text, Leslie Gauditz and Johannes Euler, are active in the Commons Institute which, among other things, promotes the creation of knowledge and the education on Commons.

We are about 30 years old, with a middle-class background and make our living in academia. We were brought together by the fact that we both practise commoning, and reflect and write about it. In order to give Commoners from our circles the opportunity to collaborate on this text we sent preliminary versions to our mailing lists. Several people have contributed to its development with very helpful comments.

However, this text still reflects our personal view on the Commons movement, and is shaped by our specific position within this movement and the discourses that belong to it.

1. What is the key idea of the Commons?

Commoning: a different way of living and acting together – within capitalism but with a trajectory past it.

Commons are products and resources that are created, cared for and used in a shared way in a great variety of forms. The term has increasingly come into use again over the past decades – “again“ because Commons as concept and praxis are ancient and exist worldwide (see Bollier/ Helfrich 2016). In the German speaking areas the traditional and widely used term “Allmende”, that denotes the shared cultivation of meadows and woods, has been known since the Middle Ages. Today, the research on the shared use of natural resources is mainly connected to the name Elinor Ostrom who received the Nobel Prize for economics for her research in 2009. Ostrom (1990: 58-139) collected best practice examples: self-chosen regulations and locally adapted conflict resolution strategies were some of the design principles of the long-lasting self-governed institutions she described. Differing from Ostrom other authors assume that the main shared features should be looked for in the actual social arrangement, the Commoning, rather than in the institutions and regulations (see Euler 2016; Meretz 2014a).

An ancient irrigation system, cooperatively administrated in Naters, Switzerland. (Image: Johannes Euler)

The spread of knowledge-centred digital Commons (such as Wikipedia) and the development of free software (such as GNU/Linux and LibreOffice) played a decisive part in the rising attention paid to the Commons in the past years.

Currently, Commons can be understood as a concept based on equality and self-governance that is in conflict with the capitalist logic of commodities (see Meretz 2014a). Instead of an exchange of goods it relies on voluntary contributions. In them, there is no equivalent to the division of labour into care activities (that is caring for other people and the environment) and the productive activities as well as the division of production and usage processes which are common in capitalism: for example urban Commons gardens are usually not about producing food for sale but, next to ecological food production, also about cooking, eating and celebrating together. This is not to say that exchange or said division phenomena do not exist in Commons projects. However, Commons mainly work according to a different logic; both aspects are at odds with this logic and are brought in from the capitalist world outside.

We would like to stress that there are no universal blueprints for organising Commons together. We assume that the manners and rules in different times and contexts adapt to the needs of the people involved and thus vary. Nevertheless, we can point out common features. Regarding this it is important to clarify that commoning does not just deal with collective property but rather it breaks with the exclusionary logic of property as such. Instead of excluding others by the means of abstract law (property), Commons concern the actual physical (and potentially inclusive) discretionary options of possession (actual use). Essential to this is a focus on the needs of those affected by the commoning processes, or those taking part in them.¹

The logo of the licence system “Creative Commons”.

The Commons perspective looks specifically at a type of shared living in which people have a great influence on their own living conditions and choose the activities they pursue mainly according to how much pleasure they give, and how crucial they regard them to be.² For example Wikipedia came about because people valued a freely accessible and self-organised form of knowledge and enjoyed writing. Although they may occur, imposed, hierarchical and exclusive organizational structures are quite in contrast to such motivations and are mostly rejected. The aim is to realise rather than valorise one’s own potentials.

For the long-term the self-organising Commons point of view can be the foundation of a society beyond market economy and state. Core principles are: contribution instead of exchange; actual use instead of property; share all that you can (Habermann 2015); use all that you need.
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2. Who is part of the Commons movement, what do they do?

The social movement as part of the Commons world: Who produces what how, why and with which effects, and who uses it (up)?

While there is no Commons umbrella association, there are visible networks such as the Commons Strategies Group and the P2P Foundation, the Commons-Institute in the German speaking countries and the School of Commoning in Barcelona. Which persons actually devote themselves to promoting the Commons world and represent it publicly, who hence makes up the Commons movement, is not easy to determine as there are no systematic studies. Thus this text serves not least a reflection on ourselves as authors: do we even want to speak of a Commons movement? We definitely do not claim to give a comprehensive overview; even less so about what is happening in other parts of the world.

Book-exchange in Büsum in the North of Germany. (Image: Johannes Euler)

Commoning can be found in any imaginable social context and connected to various resources – such as air, seeds and water but also caring for those in need, digital technology, housing, cooking, art and music, modular bicycle construction and means of production. This is due to the fact that it is not inherent to the nature of a resource whether or not it is a Commons. Instead it essentially depends on the way humans deal with them and with each other (see Acksel and others 2015; Helfrich 2012; Euler 2016). If we look at the currently prevailing definitions of social movements (e.g. della Porta/ Diani 1999), they are united by a more or less pointed focus on a connecting self-image (or rather an identity) and the intentional direction of activities towards societal transformation and/ or a political goal. Movements are further identified according to their protest behaviour. Answering the question for the Commons movement thus depends on the political action repertoire and who subjectively sees her/ himself as a Commoner³ – so it depends on who could be considered being a constitutive part of such a movement.

Commoners are people who ”move something”. The only thing we can say for certain about the Commons movement from our point of view is: it is a global movement that is internationally connected as well as locally active. But Commons are more than “just“ a social movement. On the one hand it is possible that Commoners do not explicitly pursue the transformation idea and the critique of capitalism, are not networked accordingly, and neither know nor use the term Commons or claim no Commons identity for themselves. On the other hand there are Commoners who act in a conscious separation from the capitalist commodity and valorisation logic. These we want to call activists and identify them as being the movement. They aspire for a transformation of the world according to Commons principles, organise themselves in respective groups and/ or networks and engage politically.

For many activists it is more important to prefiguratively set an example than to demonstrate on the streets. This means that it is a concern for those who make up the Commons movement to create spaces in which aspects of utopian aims can be lived through their actions in current decision making processes and interpersonal relationships: “In my own life I practise what I want to see in the greater whole.” The important part is that the social practises of commoning, whose rationale undermines the capitalist logic, are in themselves aimed at changing society.

Currently we can make out many movements all over the world for protecting the Commons and resisting enclosures. However, we also need a certain reference to the common features in the struggles for Commons as well as to other alternative economic movements. Even if a lot is moving towards Commons, the bigger picture will hardly change if the similarities between these activities are not recognized.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Commons and degrowth?

The Commons and the Degrowth movement contain each other, and differ in focus and strategy

When we were asked if we wanted to write a text that would put the movement and the concept of Degrowth in relation to Commons, we questioned what its strategic significance might be: this project is called “Degrowth in movement(s)“. Would a Commons contribution not create the impression that Commons are a part of the movements close to Degrowth? Or is it also the other way round: Degrowth is a part of the movements close to Commons? It is a matter of the prerogative of interpretation, a question of the framing, and of the levels: Which theme is overarching and which is a cross-section, and what do we need this interpretation for? We assume that a Commons world is a world beyond growth imperatives – but does the Degrowth movement also automatically include Commons into its considerations in the same way?

In the article “Degrowth: In Movement, Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit“ (Burkhart and others 2016) that is part of this publication, the Degrowth movement is (amongst others) characterized based on the participants of the Degrowth conference in the German city of Leipzig in 2014. At the time many people took part who could rather be placed in the ”Commons“ corner. Hence there were a number of contributions on Commons in the conference program, and Commoners gave several of the plenary talks. The false impression associated with this may well be criticised. However we cannot rule out that the same would happen similarly in the opposite case because in the end, from our point of view, Commons and Degrowth in some way contain each other.

An urban garden in the self administrated “Gängeviertel” in Hamburg. (Image: Leslie Gauditz)

If Degrowth means that we humans have to free ourselves from the bonds of the growth imperative, and if Commons activists advocate more commoning in the world, we have to ask ourselves: which growth do we need to free ourselves from? What do we need more of? How could this come about? Who is promoting it? On the level of the actors there seems to exist a high degree of mutual recognition and sympathy. Especially the critical and progressive part of the Degrowth movement that was strongly represented at the conference appears to harmonize with the part of the Commons movement that is critical of capitalism. Both aim at breaking with old patterns that are founded in the logic of today’s social system and have effect into (and through) the individual foundations of acting and thinking. Degrowth circles denounce growth imperatives. The Commons movement criticises the valorisation pressures in the present society. It is obvious that these are two sides of one and the same coin.

As Degrowth was formed as a counter-movement criticizing the growth model, an idea for an alternative of its own was initially not at the centre of attention. Considering commoning however, one can imagine a world in which our living conditions are (re)produced in a non-capitalist way, beyond the growth imperative. Hence commoning is often seen as an integral part in framing a post-growth society. Especially the considerations on Buen Vivir – living well – that are often drawn upon in the context of Degrowth (see Acosta 2016 ; Muraca 2014) show remarkable similarities with the Commons concepts and principles.

However we can also determine differences. Degrowth circles focus on resilience and sufficiency. In relation to the ecological boundaries of the planet these are rather implicitly included in Commons than vigorously discussed among Commoners. From a Commons perspective one can argue that parts of the Degrowth movement are not critical enough towards the capitalist logics of valorisation, and also depend too much on steering mechanisms of the state. In a way this is a different problem focus (also based in the theory) as well as a different approach in regard to the choice of a strategy for transformation.

Which proposals do they have for each other?

Learning from each other: ecological cycles, critique of state and domination, sustainable technology and self-realisation.

What is missing in the Commons perspective and which impulses can it receive from the Degrowth movement – and vice versa? One field in which the Commons movement can learn from Degrowth is concerned with the ecological cycles in a global context. The description and analysis of local and practical knowledge is strong and deeply founded with Commoners. Yet, the Degrowth academics are relatively stronger in pursuing the research on the planetary boundaries and global ecological cycles. Particularly when looking at the point that activists of the Commons movement consider a Commons world a possible reality, an exchange on this point is fruitful and could prevent inappropriate optimism as well as unrealistic scenarios.

Connected in diversity. How can we draw our common future? (Image: CC – SA, Sarah Klockars-Clauser)

In the other direction the Degrowth movement could let itself be inspired by the Commons perspective. Degrowth is often about abstract indicators on CO2-Emissions, economic growth or resource depletion from which the movement derives its critique of consumerism and demands for the global North to denounce. From a Commons perspective, qualitative differences and structural systemic necessities for change come to the fore. The criticism is voiced towards a consumption that does not seek to fulfil needs, but instead aims for status and / or the production of added value; and there is a general assumption that a full and enjoyable life is achievable for everyone. This means that the primary target is not an individual renunciation but, on the premise of a collective self-development of all, to find an answer to: who produces what how and why, and uses it (up).

Against the backdrop of the principle “contribution instead of exchange“ the Commons discourse fundamentally criticises the logic of money and exchange. There is a discussion on whether a reform of the monetary systems helps to transgress this logic or rather helps to strengthen it. A long-term Commons vision would be a social system that frees itself from exchange as a societal mode of mediation. In addition there is a basic critical attitude towards state institutions – not only because market and state are blamed for playing a substantial role in various enclosures, but also because Commons do not work in a centralized way. This is also a significant delineation of the Commons movement against a Marxist state centred communism. Locating Commons beyond market and state infers that Commons activists want to break with the principles of the market economy as well as the nation state. It can be said that their normative foundation is a fundamental rejection of any form of domination. A greater consideration of such discourses that critically debate state and market as socially determining institutions could enrich the Degrowth movement and contribute to shed light on structural obstacles to a post-growth society.

A fundamental critique of technology, which is present in the Degrowth context and takes its lead from authors like Ivan Illich (1998), is used constructively within contemporary Commons circles by asking: which form of technology corresponds to human needs, and who benefits from technology to what end? Among others, the strong roots in the digital world and a great participation of tech-savvy people from hacker- and maker-spaces as well as the Open Hardware circles form the basis for certain optimism towards technology (see Siefkes 2013). Critique of technology and optimism go hand in hand: while the one deals with criticising current-day technologies that are seen as problematic, others develop new ones that work according to different principles like modularity, repairability or resource conservation – principles that are also compatible with Degrowth demands. For example the project Open Source Ecology has taken it upon itself to develop fifty industrial machines that a small village needs for its inhabitants to lead a sustainable, yet relatively self-sufficient good life.

As mentioned in the beginning, there seems to be a lot of Degrowth in Commons, and a lot of Commons in Degrowth. Similarly, other currents that are united in this project find themselves sharing a lot with the two movements. Many of the inspirations are discussed and put to practise in Commons contexts. Perspectives that aim for equality of humans and nature as they are found in environmentalist and animal-welfare circles as well as various justice discourses play a role; so does the aim of human equality as demanded by No-Border groups who aspire for a world without national borders. Many sovereignty movements in particular (e.g. for food sovereignty) have a lot in common with Commons as their aim is to regain the power to determine one’s own living conditions.⁵ However, sometimes Commons activists relate to other transformation efforts fairly critically; for instance when the means suggested for implementation stand in contrast to the respective aims (e.g. when hierarchically organised political parties promote Commons). Similarly they criticise approaches and ways of handling things that reproduce or manifest without reflection the logic that needs to be transgressed – exchange, valorisation and money – as well as hierarchies and oppressive conditions (e.g. the reform of the money system through an alternative exchange medium such as Bitcoin).
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 6. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Together on the way to a post-capitalist world: emancipatory, need-oriented, resource-conserving and without growth compulsion

A transformation perspective that anticipates the path to a Commons society is described as a “seed form” approach (see Meretz 2014b). This term offers an important reference point, especially in the German-speaking countries. More simply put: it is the idea that a consistent practise of Commons can spread in the here and now while it could, simply due to the current crisis prone societal system, be able to become the logic that determines society in the future. Hence the potential of a Commons society is already a seed within the current commoning that is not yet fully developed. At the same time, Commons projects are always in danger of being usurped. Fights to defend, re-establish and negotiate commonly managed resources are necessary as long as the hierarchical nation state and the capitalist market with their respective logics are dominant. These struggles will be more successful if they take place in the context of a strong, shared and most of all emancipatory movement.

One viable post-capitalist vision is that of a world that is not hierarchical but self-organised like a network of functionally differentiated connection nodes; a world in which everyone’s needs can be met through Commons. This world would also be marked by autonomous and responsible activities that give joy and meaning without over-using resources or destroying eco-systems. The Commons movement puts its trust in the human potential and translates the concept of sustainability into the language of human needs: there is a need to preserve the planet that can only be met if we organise our individual and collective satisfaction of needs in accordance with the boundaries of the planet. Commoning is a practical way to deal with human and non-human nature that is not built on an abstract growth compulsion but acknowledges that we humans are a (re)productive element of the earth.

An Occupy Wall Street activist. (Image: CC BY 3.0, David Shankbone)

Literature and links

Links

> Weblog keimform
> Weblog CommonsBlog
> What is Open Hardware? – Blogpost about Open Hardware

Applied as well as further literature

Acksel, Britta u. a. 2015. Commoning: Zur Kon-struktion einer konvivialen Gesellschaft. In: Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte. Adloff, Frank; Volker Heins (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 133-145.

Acosta, Alberto 2016. Buen Vivir: Die Welt aus der Perspektive des Buen Vivir überdenken. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/buen-vivir/>

Benkler, Yochai 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Burkhart, Corinna; Eversberg, Dennis; Schmelzer, Matthias; Treu, Nina 2016. Degrowth: In Bewegung, um Alternativen zu stärken und Wachstum, Wettbewerb und Profit zu überwinden. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/degrowth/>

Della Porta, Donatella; Diani, Mario 1999: Social Movements. An Introduction. Malden/Oxford/Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing.

Euler, Johannes 2016. Commons-Creating Society: On the Radical German Commons Discourse. Review of Radical Political Economics 48(1): 93-110.

Habermann, Friederike 2015. Commonsbasierte Zukunft. Wie ein altes Konzept eine bessere Welt ermöglicht. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 35-37/2015: 46-52.

Helfrich, Silke 2012. Gemeingüter sind nicht, sie werden gemacht. In: Commons: Für eine Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat. Helfrich, Silke; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 85-91.

Helfrich, Silke; Bollier, David; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung 2016: Die Welt der Commons. Muster gemeinsamen Handelns. Bielefeld: transcript.

Illich, Ivan 1998. Selbstbegrenzung: Eine politische Kritik der Technik. München: C.H. Beck.

Ostrom, Elinor 1999. Die Verfassung der Allmende: Jenseits von Staat und Markt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Meretz, Stefan 2014a. Grundrisse einer freien Gesellschaft. In: Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise. Konicz, Tomasz; Rötzer, Florian (Hrsg.). Hannover: Heise. 152-182.

Meretz, Stefan 2014b. Keimform und gesellschaftliche Transformation. Streifzüge 60: 7-9.

Muraca, Barbara 2014. Gut leben: Eine Gesellschaft jenseits des Wachstums. Berlin: Wagenbach.

Siefkes, Christian 2013. Freie Quellen oder wie die Produktion zur Nebensache wurde. In: „Etwas fehlt“ – Utopie, Kritik und Glücksversprechen. Jour Fixe Initiative Berlin (Hrsg.). Münster: Edition Assemblage. 255-272. Access: 22.06.2016. < http://keimform.de/2013/freie-quellen-1 >

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Rethinking the World from the Perspective of Buen Vivir

1. What is the key idea of Buen Vivir?

We will never create a perfect world.
And we should be aware of that.

Carlos Taibo, 2015

This article outlines the scope and limits of Buen Vivir, which can be translated as ‘good life’ or ‘good living’. This ‘good life’ has always been a pluralistic concept, namely ‘buenos convivires’: different ways of ‘living well together’. This is therefore not about opening the gates to a single, homogeneous, unrealisable good life but far more about people living well together in a community, different communities living well together, and individuals and communities living well with nature.

The good life should be considered as something that is undergoing a constant construction and reproduction process. It is not a static concept, and certainly not a backward one. Buen Vivir is a central element of the philosophy of many societies. From this perspective, it is a design for life that has global potential despite having been marginalised in the past.

In some indigenous communities, there is no concept analogous to the ‘modern’ Western concept of development. There is no concept of a linear life with a former and subsequent state (in this case underdevelopment and development). Nor are there concepts of wealth and poverty based on the accumulation or lack of material goods.

Agricultural diversity of the rural farms. Exchange of seeds Pedro Moncayo (Ecuador)

As such, Buen Vivir entails a world view that differs from the Western world view in that it has community and not capitalist roots. It breaks both with the anthropocentric view of capitalism as the dominant civilisation and with the different manifestations of socialism to date. The latter must be rethought from a socio-biocentric position and cannot be updated by simply changing the name.

The good life entails a process of decolonisation, which should also involve depatriarchalisation (see Kothari et al 2015). This necessitates a profound process of intellectual decolonisation on political, social, economic and cultural levels.

Ultimately, Buen Vivir is highly subversive. It is not an invitation to return to the past or to an idyllic but otherwise non-existent world. It should also not become a kind of religion with its own commandments, rules and functions, including political ones. We can understand Buen Vivir to be persons living in harmony with themselves, with other people in the community, harmony within the community and between humans and nature.

Reciprocity practices in the Andean and Amazonian regions

There are many examples of economic practices involving reciprocity, solidarity and responses based on social action in the Andean and Amazonian region. Without asserting their transferability or generalisability, the following is a brief list of some forms of economic relations in indigenous communities:

Giving thanks to Pachamama (mother nature) in the area of Suscal, with the Pachakutik flag of the political indigenous movement in Ecuador

• Minka (minga): A mutual aid institution in the community setting. It guarantees labour that serves the common good and meets the collective needs and interests of the community, for example, in the execution of projects, such as the construction and maintenance of an irrigation canal or road. It is thus a form of collective work.
• Ranti-ranti: Unlike the specific one-off barter economy found in the economic systems of some mestizos, here barter is part of a chain that leads to an endless series of transfers of value, products and work days. This is based on the principle of ‘giving and taking’, without delimiting this to time, actions or space, and is linked to certain ethnic, cultural and historical values in the community.
• Uyanza: This is a call for communities to live together and in unity. Uyanza also offers the opportunity to thank Mother Earth for her ability to regenerate and provide humans with her produce. It is also an institution of social aid, including families who have made their labour available on loan.
• Uniguilla: Bartering to supplement food and useful objects. This enables improved nutrition, with products from other regions and different ecological niches.
• Waki: In a person’s absence, his agricultural land is allocated to other communities or families, who cultivate the land. The produce is divided between the two families or communities. This system is also used for animal care and breeding.
• Makikuna: A form of support that involves the whole community, extended family, friends and neighbours. It is a type of moral support at the time a family requires it most, particularly in unexpected situations and emergencies.

2. Who is part of Buen Vivir, what do they do?

Buen Vivir: Indigenous movements fighting for alternative ways of life

The origins of Buen Vivir

The thoughts surrounding Buen Vivir have only recently entered public discourse, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia; their emergence can be explained by the battles of indigenous communities, which particularly gained strength at the end of the 20th century. Associated values, experiences, practices and world views in general already existed before the arrival of the European conquistadors. However, they were silenced, marginalised or openly opposed. One should not forget that the good life is not unique to Latin America but has been practised in many different epochs and regions of Mother Earth.

Dance to honor Pachamama (mother nature) on the big seed exchange fair in Pedro Mocayo (Ecuador)

The best-known linguistic references to the good life take us back to the original languages of Ecuador and Bolivia: in the former, there is ‘Buen Vivir’ (Spanish) or ‘Sumak Kawsay’ (Kichwa) and in the latter ‘Vivir Bien’ (Spanish) or ‘Suma Qamaña’ (Aymara), ‘Sumak Kawsay’ (Quechua), ‘Ñande Reko’ or ‘Tekó Porã’ (Guarani). Similar notions exist in other indigenous cultures, such as those of the Mapuche in Chile, the Guarani in Paraguay, the Kuna in Panama, the Shuar and Achua in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and the Maya in Guatemala and Chiapas (Mexico). The African term ‘ubuntu’ (‘sense of community’) and the Indian ‘swaraj’ (radical ecological democracy) are other examples.

This diversity has resulted in numerous movements that further the ideas of the good life. However, one cannot speak of a single good life movement as such. Some groups, despite favouring, defending, articulating and promoting Buen Vivir, do not fly the Buen Vivir flag. Moreover, this is about experiences, values and practices that already exist in different parts of the planet and about gaining strength from different perspectives. There has so far been no effort to organise these processes in a more institutionalised way, in order to avoid rigid dogmatic visions and proposals, which ultimately suffocate the creativity needed to construct buenos convivires. In Bolivia and Ecuador, the concept of Buen Vivir has constitutional status, being included in the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, and the 2009 Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The Ecuadorian constitution contains several fundamental ideas that emerged simultaneously and in a unique way in this small country: for example, the recognition of the rights of nature and of the fundamental right to water, which bans any form of privatisation of this essential resource, and the idea of leaving crude oil in the Amazon below ground. The constitution’s preamble sets out the aim of building a ‘new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumak kawsay.’

At the same time, we must be wary of falling into the ‘trap’ of accepting Ecuadorian and Bolivian official propaganda on the good life. At the government level, this concept has been compromised by being ranked below demands for concentrating power and disciplining societies, while capitalism has been modernised.

Buen Vivir in the context of Latin American history

Understanding the good life requires an understanding of the history and current situation of indigenous peoples and nations, fundamentally a process based on the principle of historical continuity. Buen Vivir is part of a long quest for alternative lifestyles, forged by the passionate battles of indigenous peoples and nations. What is remarkable about these alternative proposals is that they come from groups that have long been marginalised, excluded, exploited or even destroyed. Their long-disregarded proposals invite us to break with a number of concepts that have been taken for granted until now.

The proposals of Buen Vivir are gaining traction in a moment of crisis in the Latin American oligarchic national State, which is rooted in colonialism and neoliberalism, thanks to the growing organisational efforts of indigenous and other grassroots movements. The idea of being in harmony with nature, characterising Buen Vivir, promotes discussion on environmentally friendly alternatives.

The indigenous community in the broadest sense is pursuing a collective project for the future. The utopias of the Andes and the Amazon are currently shaping discourse, political projects and social, cultural and economic practice. This approach should not be exclusionary, however, and should not result in dogmatic visions. It must be expanded with perceptions from other regions of the world, connected to one another spiritually, and potentially also politically, in their fight for a transformation of civilisation.

Yasuní-ITT Initiative – on the difficulty of achieving global utopias

In addition to theories regarding large-scale change, there are also concrete examples, even at a global level. The Yasuní-ITT Initiative’s proposal to leave oil under the ground in the Ecuadorian Amazon was and remains an excellent example of global action that was started by the civil society of a small country. It should not be forgotten that the Ecuadorian Amazon region has been impacted by oil extraction for decades. Consequently, many indigenous people living in voluntary isolation have left the extraction regions for the last remaining forest areas. The indigenous population is concentrated and increasing in an ever smaller area that has already lost some of its original biodiversity. This has led to increasing resistance from these groups to oil extraction, which, in turn, has stimulated growing support from other movements in Ecuador and around the world.

In view of the highly complex situation, the Yasuní-ITT initiative has four aims: 1. To protect the land and thus the lives of the indigenous peoples who live in voluntary isolation; 2. To preserve the national park’s unique biodiversity (the Yasuní National Park has the highest biodiversity recorded on the planet); 3. To protect the global climate by not exploiting large amounts of crude oil, thus avoiding 410 million tonnes of CO2 emissions; 4. To take a first exemplary step toward a post-fossil fuel era in Ecuador.
And that is not all. In addition, there could be a fifth aim: That we humans find concrete solutions to the critical global problems resulting from climate change caused by us, and worsened by the latest period of global capital expansion.

A woman and a child catch the native Cachama fishes in the Amazonas area in Ecuador

In return for the Yasuní-ITT initiative Ecuador expected a financial contribution from the international community, with other countries, especially the more prosperous societies, taking on their share of the responsibility, depending on the environmental destruction they had caused. This was not conceived as compensation for continuing to act in line with the traditional concept of development (desarrollismo). Instead, the payment was meant to be the starting point for the creation of a new scenario in which the severe global imbalances caused by extractivism and economic growth would be stopped and reversed. Unfortunately the initiative has failed because rich countries have not shouldered their responsibility and Ecuador’s government did not respond sufficiently to the revolutionary challenge from civil society (see Acosta 2014a and b).
Nevertheless, one legacy of the initiative should be underlined: The emergence of a strong social movement of young people committed to defending Yasuní, who were well organised and united in their call for a transformation of civilisation.

Currently, there are many concrete alternative proposals, not to be discussed here for reasons of space. What is important is that these ideas have spread considerably in recent years, even beyond national borders ¹ , and that this dissemination is part of the long and complex emancipation process of humanity.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Buen Vivir and degrowth?

Furthering degrowth’s horizons with Buen Vivir

Degrowth in the Global North, post-extractivism in the Global South

We now face the essential challenge of ending the frenzy of economic growth or even achieving degrowth, particularly in the Global North. On a finite planet, there is no room for permanent economic growth. If we continue down this path, we will reach a situation that is no longer environmentally sustainable and is increasingly socially explosive. Overcoming this creed of economic growth, particularly in the Global North, must be accompanied by abandoning extractivism in the Global South. This means that we must develop and pursue post-extractivist strategies.

The relation between these two processes of degrowth and post-extractivism in the global context is obvious: If economies in the North are no longer to grow, demand must fall. In this case, it would no longer make sense for countries in the South to base their economies on exporting raw materials to the North. For this reason, and many others, it is important for poor countries to also take on degrowth in a responsible manner.

However, the convergence of the visions and actions in post-extractivism and degrowth does not mean that poor countries should sacrifice an improvement in their living conditions in order that rich countries continue their unsustainable level of consumption and waste. Not at all.

Buen-Vivir meeting in Intag, Cotacachi, one of the regions of Ecuador affected by industrial mining

Criticism of capitalism as a common denominator

The common denominator in these two perspectives is a severe criticism of capitalism, which involves the increasing commercialisation of societal fabric and nature. Exponents of both degrowth and Buen Vivir agree that the fundamental problem is the way in which progress, development and economic growth are understood and implemented. Both approaches complement each other conceptually: degrowth is a ‘missile word’, destructive, not constructive, while Buen Vivir is constructive at its core (see Unceta 2014).

A move away from capitalism involves transition through a variety of alternative practices. There are many such non-capitalist practices around the world. These include examples with utopian objectives that call for the harmonious co-existence of humans and the environment, combining the good life with degrowth efforts. This is ultimately about abandoning the failed attempt to pursue production-oriented development as a mechanistic one-way street of economic growth, a global mandate and a straight line. This is a radical change. It is not about implementing examples that have allegedly been successful in industrial countries in the Global South. Firstly, this is impossible. Secondly, these examples have not in reality been successful (see Tortosa 2011).

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Achieving a utopia in the indigenous world

The indigenous world was a victim of the conquista and colonisation. These exploitative and repressive processes continue to impact the current situation, colonial and capitalist influence still being evident in many different forms, precluding the possibility of a romantic approach to indigenous reality. The good life, as the sum total of practices that oppose colonialism and its consequences, encourages a certain way of life in indigenous communities – particularly in those that have not been absorbed by capitalistic modernity or that have decided to isolate themselves from it. There are also elements of Buen Vivir in communities that have ‘succumbed’ to modernity. Even in regions that are not directly connected to the indigenous world, community lifestyles are being developed that promote harmony among members and with nature.

Collaborative reforestation of mangroves in Salinas, Manabí (Ecuador)

In politics, or rather, in political decision-making, a different form of governance is being practised with Buen Vivir at community and ayllu level ² in broad areas of the Andean and Amazonian region with the aim of creating a horizontal society. This requires direct democracy, direct action and self-management instead of new forms of top-down and, even more importantly, instead of an individual ‘enlightened’ leader. With broad and participative debates, a consensus is reached by the community. A key element here is that the solution is not the State, and even less the market. Rather, another type of State is needed —a plurinational State as proposed by the indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador³ — which is not hierarchical or authoritarian, and which is controlled from below at the community level. The big question that now arises is how politics can be regained as a dynamic space within society.

Our democracy can learn a lot from these experiences.

Buen Vivir in the urban space

Buen Vivir is not restricted to the countryside, although it originated there. However, today’s urban spaces are very far from dealing with the environment respectfully and with solidarity. One of the greatest and most complex challenges is to conceptualise the good life for and in cities.

In this respect, it should not be forgotten that many migrants living in cities maintain close ties to their original communities. One such example can be seen in the groups that have joined forces to [re]construct forms of Buen Vivir in the Bolivian city of El Alto. In other areas of the world, there are also many interesting practices and approaches. An example from the growing number of alternatives is transition towns, the aim of which is to hand control to communities in order to survive the challenge of climate change and create a post-fossil fuel economy. This movement is active in many countries and has much in common with Buen Vivir.

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2 Ayllu refers to the entirety of families by blood or by marriage.

3 Bolivia has not come far in this regard, and Ecuador even less so

5. Buen Vivir, an inspirational and diverse approach

Buen Vivir integrates various humanist and anti-utilitarian approaches from different regions (at least in theory). Since the beginning of the 21st century in particular, increasing and diverse protest movements opposing the classical understanding of development have gained momentum. The growing environmental movement should be highlighted here in relation to environmental destruction and the signs of exhaustion in nature (see Acosta 2012).

Buen Vivir approaches from the indigenous Andean and Amazonian region can be combined with other approaches to community life, for example, those of the Zapatistas or Kurds, as well as those of feminist, farming and environmental struggles. They all have many things in common with the flourishing degrowth movement.

Ritual to support people who were criminalised by the Ecudadorian government for defending their region and nature

The primary lesson is that there is no one true approach. Buen Vivir is not a synthetic, monocultural proposal. Rather, the good life takes on contributions and knowledge from other cultures that question the implications and requirements of the dominant form of modernity. It thus does not reject modern technologies as long as these are compatible with the creation of harmonious community relations with respect for nature.

Solidarity with both nature and the community is needed

New ethics are needed to organise life in self-managed community spaces without power relationships. The emerging society should be horizontal, open and non-sectarian. An economy based on these ethics will promote the reproduction of life and not capital, will secure the existence of all creatures and move beyond the current human-focused reality, in which humans are the rulers of the universe, in all its variants.

If we are moving beyond the exploitation of nature for the purpose of accumulating capital, there are even more reasons to stop exploiting human beings. We will have to recognise that human beings are creatures that are not individuals by nature but rather part of a community, and that we are that community. These communities, peoples, nations and countries should live in harmony with one another.

This dual solidarity – with nature and within the community – requires that we take the civilising step of recognising applicable human rights and the rights of nature without restrictions.

DiB – Buen Vivir from Raute Film on Vimeo.

Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist and a researcher at FLASCO Ecuador (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences). He was previously Minister of Energy and Mining, president of the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly and a presidential candidate in the Republic of Ecuador.

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Buen Vivir appeared first on P2P Foundation.

It’s a shame that so many brave books that imagine a post-capitalist world surrender to grandiose theorizing and moral exhortation.  It’s an occupational hazard in a field that is understandably wants to identify the metaphysical and historical roots of our pathological modern times.  But critique is one thing; the creative construction of a new world is another.

That’s why I found Thackara’s book so refreshing.  This British design expert, a resident of southwest France, wants to see what the design and operation of an ecologically sustainable future really looks like, close-up.  He is also thoughtful enough to provide some depth perspective, following his own motto, “To do things differently, we need to see things differently.”

How to Thrive in the Next Economy seeks to answer the question, “Is there no escape from an economy that devours nature in the name of endless growth?”  The short answer is Yes!  There is an escape.  As Thackara shows us, there are scores of brilliant working examples around the world that demonstrate how to meet our needs in more responsible, fair and enlivening ways.

He takes us by the hand to survey a wide variety of exemplary models-in-progress.  We are introduced to scientists and farmers who are discovering how to heal the soil by treating it as a living system.  We meet urbanists who are re-thinking the hydrology of cities, moving away from high-entropy engineered solutions like reservoirs and sewers, to smaller, localized solutions like wetlands, rain gardens, ponds and worm colonies.  Other bioregionalists are attempting to de-pave cities and bring permaculture, gardens, “pollinator pathways” and informal food systems into cities.

We also learn about a number of brave experiments in “social farming” – attempts to treat food and as a commons through ingenious new social systems, production value-chains and organizational designs.

The Food Commons in Fresno, California, is one bold attempt to re-imagine how a region links farms to distribution to grocery stores and restaurants.  The idea is to devise a whole-system approach that makes food more than an economic commodity.  It needs to be an integrated social system that aligns the interests of farm communities, local people, the land, watersheds, and biodiversity in one interconnected network.

The key in this particular case was the establishment of a Food Commons Trust that acts as an owner and steward of land, physical infrastructure and other commonly held assets, to be used for the benefit of everyone.  That way, profit can be used to benefit everyone (better working conditions, fewer pesticides, less expensive food for low-income people), instead of all that surplus value being appropriated by the shareholders of profit-driven companies.

There is even a chapter on commoning in the book, with a special emphasis on social money, the Latin American ethic of buen vivir, and “wild law.”

The “green thread” in this and other stories, explains Thackara, is “the efforts of people in diverse contexts to reconnect to their food – where it is grown, by whom, and under what conditions.  These practical, local and human-scaled activities are the seedlings of an alternative to an industrial food system that, as an extractive industry, is as cruel to people as it is to animals, and the land.”

Thackara’s tone throughout is that of a genial host: “Come, let me show you another inspiring initiative that could remake our economy and society.”  He does not over-sell the examples, however, but candidly acknowledges problems and complications.  With a light touch, he notes the thematic similarities among projects, suggesting their affinities.

I appreciated the intelligence and depth that Thackara brings to his examples.  He notes, for example, that the real problem with high-speed trains (HST) is that they don’t really save us time, while also creating lots of other problems:  “The problem – as with the interstate highway systems that came before – is that it [HST] perpetuates patterns of land use, transport intensity and the separation of functions in space and time that render the whole way we live unsupportable.”  HST leads to sprawling suburbs and a “space-time geography” that is alienating and costly in its holistic dimensions.

I do wish Thackara had spent more time speculating on how we might propagate the emergent new models.  We sorely need to accelerate the proliferation of small, local experiments into larger global movements.  We need to better understand how our search for economic and political change is invisibly linked to inner self-transformations that are still unfolding.  This is really the key – how to nourish aliveness.  At a time when everything is fair game for monetized extraction –  not just land and water, but language, culture, knowledge and even consciousness and lifeforms – we desperately need to develop new socio-economic organisms that can regenerate life on its own terms.  Life needs to be honored as our first priority, not as a secondary benefit of commodity-exchange.

But there is no question Thackara understands how a transformation will ultimately come.  He writes:  “Change is more likely to happen when people reconnect – with each other, and with the biosphere – in rich, real-world contexts of the kind I have written about in this book.  This will strike some readers as being naïve and unrealistic [because they presume that governments and policy must drive any change, as Thackara notes earlier].  But given what we know about the ways complex systems – including belief systems – change, my confidence in the power of the Small to shape the Big remains undimmed.”

Photo by PeterVermaercke

The post John Thackara’s Intimate Tour of the Emerging New Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Today’s economy is built on the foundations of a global industrial and financial system with immense productive capacity, but the extractive nature of which has created extreme income disparity and social injustice and wrought devastation on the natural world. There is an increasingly spirited debate about the need for a ‘new economy’, which has fertile and important implications for the legal and philosophical foundations of the current system. What are different visions of the ‘new economy’ and how achievable are they? What possibilities exist at their intersection?

How can we reimagine work, exchange, money, care, law and our relationship with the natural world through the prism of a new economy?

Our two day conference will bring together community activists, social entrepreneurs, economists, academics, lawyers and regulators, to discuss, showcase and weave together the explosion of experiments that are bubbling up around peer-to-peer initiatives, commoning, maker movements, sharing, buen vivir, collaborative economies, solidarity economies, localisation and cooperative movements. The conference will include an interactive plenary session on Day 2, which will enable interested participants to co-design a Charter for a New Economy Coalition in Australia.

The conference will be held 16 & 17 August 2016 — Glebe Town Hall, in Sydney, Australia.

For more information:

Website: http://www.neweconomy.law.unsw.edu.au/conference

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neweconomy2016/?fref=ts

Email: [email protected]

The post Conference Alert: “Building the new economy – activism, enterprise and social change” appeared first on P2P Foundation.