Mike Hales: When I first read Gary Werskey’s 2007 ‘three movements’ article – four years ago – I was sceptical. He discussed two British movements of radicals around science, in the 30s-40s and the 70s-80s, and speculated on the possibility of a third (which might possibly have an environmental impetus).

I was particularly unconvinced about the possibility of a Marxist movement, like the other two. But now, in 2018, I do have the sense that, yes, the peer-to-peer commons movement may be the thing that is in fact standing in that place. It would be worthwhile, at least, to proceed on the basis that it is – with substantial (if, for activists, secondary) implications for the field of science and technology studies (STS). I’m in no doubt that P2P-commons is the biggest thing I’ve seen in my activist lifetime . . and that it mobilises the stuff I’ve been cultivating these past 50 years, as a libertarian socialist with an orientation to the politics of knowledges and technologies.

It would be worth proceeding on the basis that P2P-commons is ‘the third radical science movement’

‘Radical science’ in the 70s wasn’t essentially about science?

The movement for P2P-commons may be significantly ‘cultural’ and profoundly ‘materialist’, in ways that might be facilitated and clarified

The P2P-commons movement seems to be carrying forward – expanding – the organic intellectual impetus that began to be apparent in the 70s, ‘in-and-against the PMC’

P2P-commons is way bigger than ‘radical science’ was

Photo by pedrosimoes7

The post Peer-to-peer-commons – The historical ‘third movement’ of radical science? It can only get better appeared first on P2P Foundation.

David Bollier and Silke Helfrich: If there is one recurring theme described in this book, it is the importance of exploring the inner dimensions of commoning as a social form, moving beyond economistic notions of the commons as a mere resource to be managed. Commoning is an attitude, an ethic, an impulse, a need and a satisfaction – a way of being that is deeply inscribed within the human species. But it is up to us to make it thrive. We must choose to practice commoning and reflect on its impact on our lives and the Earth, the more consciously, the better.

The great appeal of commoning is simultaneously a reason for its invisibility: it calls on us to see the world from a fundamentally different perspective, acknowledging that the self emerges from relationships with others and can exist only through these relationships and as a result of them. Failing to perceive the diverse types of “we’s” that exist and their complex dynamics and logics is tantamount to trying to live on Earth without an atmosphere. Our lives are enframed and defined by “we’s.” These collectives are not merely the sum of individuals, but distinct systems of organization that emerge from our encounters with each other and committed joint action.

More: a commons is dynamic and evolving, and therefore proposes a more realistic idea of human life. It does not propose a static economic perspective that assumes what we supposedly are; it recognizes that we are always becoming. Commoning draws upon our distinct, situated identities, cultures and roots as essential elements of governance, production, law and culture. This perspective helps us grasp that we not only create the world; the world in turn shapes and creates us. So we must attend to the larger, holistic consequences of our own world-creating capacities, to make sure that the selves that we each cultivate through our relationships and world-making are the selves that we truly wish to be and worlds we wish to live in. Or as Lau Tzu put it with such wisdom, “Be a pattern for the world.”

The commons quivers with aliveness precisely because it is a reflexive, open system that resists attempts to make it schematic, regularized and tightly controlled. The commons is alive because it offers space for people to apply their own imaginations and energy to solve problems – and human ingenuity and cooperation tend to produce many surprising results. In their self-created zones of freedom, commoners have the latitude to build their own worlds without the tyranny of the Market/State, bureaucratic procedures or confining social roles (consumer, seller, employee, expert).

Needless to say, an economy and society that truly respects commons requires a re-imagination of politics itself. They require social processes that invite collective participation and express collective sentiments, not “leaders” who may be only crudely accountable to people and captive to capital and its imperatives. Commons require a primary focus on meeting everyone’s needs, not on catering to the ever-proliferating wants of the few. Expanding the scope and scale of commons so that they can become a powerful alternative to capital driven markets, and spur mutual coordination and federation, introduces a whole new set of challenges, of course. It requires that we work for new configurations of state authority and clear limits on market power. Yet there are many promising scenarios of policy, law, governance and politics that seek to advance this vision: the focus of our next anthology.

Photo by bruskme

The post Patterns of Commoning: A Finale 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.
—————-

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.

David Bollier: What is “value” and how shall we protect it?  It’s a simple question for which we don’t have a satisfactory answer.

For conventional economists and politicians, the answer is simple: value is essentially the same as price. Value results when private property and “free markets” condense countless individual preferences and purchases into a single, neutral representation of value:  price.  That is seen as the equivalent of “wealth.”

This theory of value has always been flawed, both theoretically and empirically, because it obviously ignores many types of “value” that cannot be given a price. No matter, it “works,” and so this theory of value generally prevails in political and policy debates. Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same.

Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.”

My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value.  Could we develop a theory that might have the same resonance that the labor theory of value had in Marx’s time?

Marx’s labor theory of value has long criticized capitalism for failing to recognize the full range of value-creation that make market exchange possible in the first place.  Without the “free,” unpriced services of child-rearing, social cooperation, ethical norms, education and natural systems, markets simply could not exist.  Yet because these nonmarket value-regimes have no pricetags associated with them, they are taken for granted and fiercely exploited as “free resources” by markets.

So we were wondering:  If modern political/economic conceptions of value are deficient, then what alternative theories of value might we propose? In cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Foundation and anthropologist David Graeber, who has a keen interest in these themes, we brought together about 20 key thinkers and activists for a Deep Dive workshop in September 2016 to explore this very question.  So much seems to hinge upon how we define value.

I am pleased to say that an account of those workshop deliberations is now available as a report, Re-imagining Value:  Insights from the Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace and Nature (pdf download). The 49-page report (plus appendices) explains that how we define value says a lot about what we care about and how we make sense of things – and therefore what kind of political agendas we pursue.

Here is the Contents page from the report:

Introduction

I.  THE VALUE QUESTION 

A.  Why “Value” Lies at the Heart of Politics

B.  Should We Even Use the Word “Value”?

II.  TOWARDS A RELATIONAL THEORY OF VALUE

III.  KEY CHALLENGES IN DEVELOPING A NEW THEORY OF VALUE 

A.  Can Abstract Metrics Help Build a New Value Regime?

B.  How Shall We Value “Nature”?

C.  Should We De-Monetize Everyday Life?

IV.  COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION: A FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT IN UNDERSTANDING VALUE?                       

A.  Practical Strategies for Building New Systems of Value

B.  The Dangers of Co-optation and Wishful Thinking

C.  But Peer Production Still Relies Upon (Unpaid) Care Work and Nature!

V.  NOTES TOWARD A COMMONS THEORY OF VALUE 

CONCLUSION 

Appendix A:  Participants

Appendix B:  A Commons Theory of Value

Appendix C:  Readings for Value Deep Dive

Excerpts

Below, some excerpts from the report:

The absence of a credible theory of value is one reason that we have a legitimacy crisis today.  There is no shared moral justification for the power of markets and civil institutions in our lives.  Especially since the 2008 financial crisis, the idea of “rational” free markets as a fair system for allocating material wealth has become something of a joke in some quarters.  Similarly, the idea of government serving as an honest broker dedicated to meeting people’s basic needs, assuring fairness, providing ecological stewardship and advancing the public interest, is also in tatters.

“We cannot do without a value regime,” said Michel Bauwens, founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation and cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group.  “Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live.”  Consider how the labor of a nurse is regarded under different value regimes, he said:  A nurse working as a paid employee is considered value-creating – a contributor to Gross Domestic Product.  But the same nurse doing the same duties as a government employee is seen as “an expense, not a value-creator,” said Bauwens.  The same nurse working as a volunteer “produces no value at all” by the logic of the market system.

Bauwens said that his work in fostering peer production communities is an exploratory project in creating a new type of “value sovereignty” based on mutualism and caring.  An important aspect of this work is protecting the respective community’s value sovereignty through defensive accommodations with the market system.  “The peer production system lives a dichotomy,” explained Bauwens.  “It is based on contributions for which we don’t get paid.  We therefore have to interact with the market so that we can earn a living and get paid for what we have to do.”  Maintaining a peer community within a hostile capitalist order requires that the community “create membranes to capture value from the dominant system, but then to filter it and use it in different ways” – i.e., through collective decisionmaking and social solidarity, not through the market logic of money-based, individual exchange.

…. One participant, Ina Praetorius, a postpatriarchal thinker, author and theologian based in Switzerland, asked a provocative question:  “Do we need to use the word ‘value’ at all?”  She explained that as an ethicist she does not find the word useful.  “Value is not part of my vocabulary since writing my 2005 book, Acting Out of Abundance [in German, Handeln aus der Fülle].  It’s perfectly possible to talk about the ‘good life’ without the notion of value.”  Praetorius believes the word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about money and markets.  But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition.

Praetorius is also suspicious of “value” as a word associated with the German philosophical tradition of idealism, which she regards as “an unreliable authority because of its strange methodological origins” – “Western bourgeois men of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, who created an invisible sphere of abstract concepts meant to denote certain qualities, as a means to forget their own belonging to nature and their own basic needs, especially towards women.”

But ecophilosopher Aetzel Griffioen, based in The Netherlands, regards the word “value” as “a necessary abstraction that can be used in some places and not in others.”  In his dealing with a labor union of domestic workers, for example, Griffioen considers the word too philosophical and abstract to use.  However, “for commoners trying to tackle what so-called economists call ‘value-creation,’ it is a practical necessity to use the word in trying to create commons based on their own values.”

Again, the value/values dichotomy cropped up.  Economics claims the word “value” for itself while everyone else, in their private and social lives, may have their own personal “values.”  This rift in thinking and vocabulary is precisely what this workshop sought to overcome.  Economists are eager to protect their ideas about “value” as money-based and make them normative. Commoners and others, by contrast, want to broaden the meaning of the term to apply to all of human experience.  This conflict prompted Ina Praetorius to conclude, “Language is politics.”  For herself, she has no desire to contest with economists over control of the term.  Others, however, are determined to continue that very struggle.

Towards a Relational Theory of Value

The conventional economic definition of “value” has a significant rhetorical advantage over other notions of value/s.  It can be encapsulated in numbers, manipulated mathematically and ascribed to individuals, giving it a tidy precision.  Value defined as price also has an operational simplicity even though it flattens the messy realities of actual human life and ecosystems.  It purports to precisely quantify and calculate “value” into a single plane of commensurable, tradeable units, as mediated by price.

Through discussion, workshop participants set forth a rough alternative theory of value based on a radically different ontology.  This theory sees value arising from relationships.  Value does not inhere in objects; it emerges through a process as living entities – whether human beings or the flora and fauna of ecosystems – interact with each other.  In this sense, value is not fixed and static, but something that emerges naturally as living entities interact.

“In a commons, value is an event,” said Silke Helfrich of the Commons Strategies Group.  “It is something that needs to be enacted again and again.”  The difference between the standard economic theory of value and a commons-based one is that the latter is a relational theory of value, said Helfrich.

According to Nick Dyer-Witheford, this idea aligns with Marx’s thinking.  While some observers say that a Marxist theory of value ascribes value to things, Dyer-Witheford disagreed, noting that “Marx condemned the idea of value inhering in objects as commodity fetishism.  He believed in a relational theory of value – the relations between workers and owners – even if Marx may not have considered the full range of social relationships involved in the production of commodities.”….

Everyone agreed that a relational theory of value has great appeal and far-reaching implications.  It means that the “labor” of nonhumans – the Earth, other creatures, plants – can be regarded as a source of value, and not definitionally excluded, said Neera Singh, the geographer.  Indeed, this is a point made in a John Holloway essay on Marx’s ideas about “wealth”:  the nonhuman world produces such an excess of wealth that it overflows what capitalism can capture in the commodity form, said Sian Sullivan, a co-investigator with the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value in the UK and Professor of Environment and Culture at Bath Spa University.  “This of course leads to the paradox of capitalism trying to use commodity form, an engine of accumulation, to solve ecological crises that the commodity form created in the first place.  It does not know how to protect intrinsic value.”

The report deals with a wide variety of other issues related to the “value question”:  Can abstract metrics help build a new value regime?  How shall we value “nature”?  Should we attempt to de-monetize everyday life?  The report also includes a major discussion of commons-based peer production as a fundamental shift in understanding value.  This point is illustrated by open value accounting systems such as those used by Sensorica, and by organizational experiments in finance, ownership and governance.

While workshop participants did not come up with a new grand theory of value, they did develop many promising lines of inquiry for doing so.  Each prepared a short statement that attempted to identify essential elements for a commons theory of value.  (See Appendix B in the report.)  We hope that the record of the workshop’s discussions will help stimulate further discussion on the question of value – and perhaps bring forth some compelling new theories.

Event photography by Pedro Jardim

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Bauwens: Silke, could you first give some background about yourself and your collaboration with David Bollier in editing your books about the commons?

Helfrich: I feel cosmopolitan, but my roots are in the hilly countryside of East Germany, near the German border — the “system border” between capitalism and socialism until 1989. I currently live in Jena, Germany, and will soon move to the South where I will try to remodel a house that is exactly 500 years older than I am. This is an experience that makes me feel humbled because it brings me face-to-face with the realities of making something “sustainable.”

Since 2007 I have work closely with David Bollier, an American activist. We often describe what we do (along with you, Michel Bauwens, the third member of the Commons Strategies Group) as “seeding new conversations.” Just like farmers, we cannot really know how big and copious the harvest will be, or when exactly it will come. But we keep seeding to help making the commons visible at different levels:

1) as collective resources, both material and immaterial, which need protection and require a lot of knowledge and know-how;
2) as social processes that foster and deepen thriving relationships; and
3) as a new mode of production that I call the Commons-Creating Peer Economy, or Commons-Oriented Economy.

I’d even say that there is a fourth level: the Commons as a worldview, as the expression of an ongoing paradigm shift now underway.

B: Is Patterns of Commoning an effort to sow seeds that will make the commons visible?

H: Absolutely! It is the second of three books that explore different aspects of the commons. The first began in 2010, when together with David and almost 80 contributors from all over the world, and thanks to the tremendous support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, we started to work on an anthology called The Wealth of the Commons. That book was originally planed to sketch out the philosophical and policy foundations for a commons-friendly politics. But we quickly realized that we first had to introduce the commons and explain why we believe that commons having very different practices and resources – so-called traditional commons of land and water, for example, and digital commons on the other hand – are in fact related. They may look very different based on the resources managed, but in essence they have a lot in common – a social commitment to manage the resources responsibly, fairly and in inclusive ways.

The Wealth of the Commons became longer and longer, and so we ended up doing what commoners often do when there is an unsolvable conflict: we forked the project. David and I started thinking about a volume 2, which in 2015 became Patterns of Commoning, an anthology of profiles of successful commons and an exploration of the inner dimensions of commoning. Mid-way through this book, after maybe a dozen of concept versions of it, we realized that all good things come in threes, so we committed to a third volume, this one on the macro-political, economic and cultural dimensions of a commons-based society.

So, our basic ideas have been to:

• Develop a more contemporary understanding of the commons, and show how the enormous diversity of commons projects and and resistances to enclosures are connected (volume I);
• Probe the inner dimensions and logics of commoning, including the subjectivities of commoners – the consciousness of how to think, learn and act as a commoner. (This is not an easy thing to do, either in theory or practice!) We also wanted to break down some of the dichotomies of thought that we take for granted, such as the binaries of public and private, collective and individual, rational and nonrational. In the commons, all of these categories start to blur and become a new category entirely (volume II).
• Embed the commons-world in a context of wider transition towards a society that is free, fair and sustainable. It is important to deal with these three dimensions together, as an integrated whole, because, for me, it defines the commons as a narrative. The commons approach is the only one I know of that connects environmental stewardship with claims for justice and the strengthening of freedom. In our next book (volume III), we want to show how we need to re-imagine public policies by taking account of our fuller humanity and capacities, and not just look to cardboard notions of human beings such as homo economicus or “consumer.” We hope to publish this new book by mid-2018.

B: So do the three books on the commons build on one another? Did any “emergent lessons” from the first book influence the themes of the second book?

H: Each book builds on the preceding one, and yet each also is a standalone work. The same is true for each of the contributions in the books – altogether, about 130 essays. You can read them separately, but you will also enjoy reading them as a collection. :¬-).

Let me give you two examples: In The Wealth of the Commons, we focused on connecting commons that supposedly belong in different categories, such as “digital commons” and “urban commons” and “traditional commons,” etc. But we wanted to identify the many strategies of enclosures and show how people around the world are resisting them in self-organized ways. We also focused on some good practices that might inspire policy making. The German title for this volume was Commons. For a new Politics beyond Market and State. But the very moment I sent it to the printer it became crystal clear to me that this was and still is a pretty misleading title. It’s about culture, in the first place. Not about politics. And if we bring it down to politics, we would need to redefine what we mean by “politics” from a commons perspective and probably come up with a new concept. We have come to realize that you cannot describe the commons for the 21st century with some of the conventional words we use for economy and politics, which often have embedded, archaic meanings. We need to show how a new type of politics could be enacted instead of merely suggesting good ways to foster the commons via outdated political institutions, legal processes and policies.

So, when you write about the commons, you write about a deep cultural transformation. This first volume should have been named Commons: For a New Culture… , or something similar. That was not entirely clear to us by the time. So we went on with our explorations of commoning, and in volume two, we began to develop a deeper understanding of the commons-world. We began to see that many of the epistemological categories for talking about commons are too limited. For example, every commons, also ones that revolve around land or water, are knowledge commons, because the commoners must learn and apply knowledge in managing them. And all “knowledge commons,” even ones based on digital systems and intangible creativity, are based on natural resources – the minerals needed for the computers, the electricity generated from fossil fuels, and so forth. The common denominator among commons is that each one is first and foremost a social commons – a social process.

These insights move beyond the categories we had used in the first volume. In our second volume, instead of talking about “cultural commons,” for example, we point to “bio-cultural commons.”
We also started to wonder to what extent a commons-creating world builds on different core-beliefs? In several essays, prestigious anthropologists from different continents helped us dealing with this issue.

B: But this doesn’t explain the title, Patterns of Commoning. Is it in any way related to the pattern language model originally developed by the architect and philosopher Christopher Alexander?

H: Of course! Alexander’s contribution to the cultural transformation we need is breathtaking. His approach – which he magnificently explains in his four books about The Nature of Order – can help us to deepen our understanding of commons. Once again, it is not enough to understand commons mainly as “collective resources” or to focus on the institutional side of it, as the Nobel Prize winning political scientist and economist Elinor Ostrom did with her “Design principles for commons institutions.”

Both framings are very very helpful, but they don’t address many of the subjective, social and personal dynamics within commons-based institutions. Is there a inner logic woven through human interaction that holds a commons together? And if so, what can we learn from it? How can we assess and describe it without seeing commons as panaceas? I think, that formulating a more fully developed “pattern language of commoning” – something that is yet to be done – can help people become more conscious about the “commoner within me.” Hence the title Patterns of Commoning. Such patterns will help us to make commoning easier as we apply them to overcome problematic situations that occur over and over again.

B: What do you mean by “pattern”?

H: A pattern is a kind of “reusable problem-solution-core-idea.” Alexander puts it that way: “…a pattern describes the core of the solution to that [a] problem [that occurs over and over again], in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.” That fits very well to the commons approach, because each commons is one of a kind. Each commons is unique. If you connect many of such patterns, you weave a so-called “pattern language.” Hundreds of pattern languages already exist for specific fields of design such as software programming, education and transition economies. They are like mental toolboxes.

This helps us understand the social process we call “commoning” as a process that needs to be carefully designed and shaped. Understanding and learning how to “do commons” through a patterns approach helps a great deal. Why? Because the very same questions and problems come up again and again:

“Who is in and who out?”, which points to the problem of exclusion – a topic of growing importance in the wake of global migration.

“Who takes the decisions and what are the principles of decision making?” Majority vote? Certainly not. It leaves too many people behind.

“How to make sure that everybody who is affected by a commons is involved in the decision making process?” This is one of the key claims we find in the commons. It is a radical democratizing approach! But how to put it into practice?

“How to resolve conflicts in a commons?”

“How to identify and punish free riders?”

“How to relate to other commons?”

…and most importantly:

“How to shape the conflicted relationships with ‘the market’ and external authorities such as state power?”

Patterns help us to avoid reinventing the wheel over and over again without insisting upon rigid, standardized “models” or “recipes.” The bad news for us is: that’s precisely what politicians and journalists want to impose. They assume that legislatures and bureaucracies must mandate universal, one-size-fits-all, top-down policies that will “fix” a problem. But patterns are just this – patterns. If you really want to use the commons as a problem solving tool, you need to identify the underlying pattern of commoning, get involved with it as a practitioner and adapt it to your context.

B: Does the patterns approach work with the newer digital commons? Did you notice any difference in those patterns as compared to the older “material commons”?

H: Actually, the patterns approach is especially widespread in the digital commons world. Software programmers are used to working with design patterns. Take Wikipedia, which is unthinkable without its core pattern, the wiki. Ward Cunningham created the first wiki in 1995. His “WikiWikiWeb” lets software developers create a library of “software patterns,” which brought order into a highly complex, open and never-seen-before process. One can safely say that design patterns are an essential feature for design and making sense of the digital world, including digital commons.

B: How was the book materially produced and distributed? I have heard that you experimented with a new model.

H: Indeed, for the English version (the case of the German one is very different), we decided to bypass commercial publishers. We realized that none of them would find our book commercially attractive – or if they did, they would want to assert too much control at too high of a price to us, the editors. There is simply no level playing field between most commercial publishers and authors. Publishers reject books like ours with arguments like: “It’s an anthology, and anthologies don’t sell.” “It’s too international in focus.” “Don’t you have any big-name contributors who are markable?” “What is the commons, anyway?” And so on.

It became clear that the old-school business models used by publishers – even the politically progressive niche presses that share our values – were not prepared to engage into what we’d call: “publishing as a commons.” So we opted for a combination of self-financing and working with a workers’ printing cooperative in Amherst, Massachussetts. How did we produce an affordable, highly shareable 400-page book? By applying one of the most important patterns in the commons: Build community first! We have been working for years with scores of commoners activists, academics and networks of people. We’ve somehow built a global community. Now, we could rely on our international community of commoners! We did a private crowdfunding campaign to solicit advance bulk orders of the book — $10/copy in increments of ten. This raised enough money to finance about half of the cost of the print run of 2,000 copies. David and I personally paid for the rest of the print run, which we expect to recoup after selling a few hundred copies.

With this plan, supported by commoners, we were able to reclaim control over what would happen with our book and avoid the constraints that conventional publishing business models usually entail – a high sales price, copyright restrictions that diminish access to the book, an inability to use a Creative Commons license, and even limits on content and the number of pages. On the other hand, by publishing through a commons-based model, we have had to deal personally with the distribution of the book. This is a tricky challenge, especially for a book with international appeal. But it has worked! We found a London-based distributor, Central Books to sell books to readers in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. It is all built on the logic of commoning, however: First, build community (which took years of work), then support each other and share the benefits.

B: How has the book been doing in terms of distribution and critical engagement?

H: We have sold nearly half of our print run of 2,000 copies in the first year. We recently put all of the book chapters online at http://www.patternsofcommoning. We have had a lot of publicity through commons networks, but less publicity through conventional marketing channels in the book trade. However, sales of the book continue steady – and we expect that posting the book on its website will spur greater visibility and interest in it. We put all of the chapters from The Wealth of the Commons online, and that website consistently gets more than 3,500 visits per month – four years after its publication!

B: What are your plans for the future? In the context of your collaborations for the Commons Strategies Group (of which I am also a partner, in the interest of disclosure), how do you see the third and final (I presume) volume? What will be your focus when all the books in that series are completed?

H: This next book will certainly be the final one (for the moment). But together with Commons Strategies Group, I will continue seeding new conversations and try to explore open outcomes. I personally want to focus on developing a pattern language of commoning while spending time in my 500-year-old house…and travel less!

B: What do you see as the main weaknesses of the commons movement and how could they be overcome?

H: Its lack of self-consciousness about its own activities, successes and unmet potential. It is something that we can overcome by turning the commons into a meme… slowly but persistently. Another weakness is the risk of being overrun and eclipsed by populist movements, which – if you look at them closely – recycle stale old stews of oversimplified answers. The commons offers fresh approaches. But its success will require wider attention and focused action.

Silke Helfrich’s BIO

Silke Helfrich has studied romance languages and pedagogy at the Karl-Marx- University in Leipzig and is currently finishing Economy and Social Science studies (with focus on the Commons and Patterns Theory) at Cusanus University. Since mid of the 1990s activities in the field of development politics, from 1996 to 1998 head of Heinrich Böll Foundation Thuringia and until 2007 head of the regional office of Heinrich Böll Foundation in San Salvador and Mexico City for Mexico/Central America/Cuba, focusing on globalisation, gender and human rights. Since 2007 she works as independent author, activist and scholar. Helfrich is the editor and co-author of several books on the Commons, among them: Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons, Munich 2009, editor of Elinor Ostrom: Was mehr wird, wenn wir teilen, Munich 2011. Together with David Bollier and hbf: The Wealth of the Commons beyond Market and State, Amherst/MA, 2012 and most recently with David Bollier and Heinrich-Böll-Foundation: The Patterns of Commoning, Amherst/MA, 2015). She is cofounder of Commons Strategies Group and the Commons-Institut e.V. and the primary author of the German speaking CommonsBlog.

Cross-posted from CommonsTransition.org

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On August 6, 2000, I happened upon an unadorned website with valuable knowledge and interesting discussions. Every page had an edit button that gave me access as a contributor and coauthor with the same rights as everyone else. That was new and exhilarating, like receiving an unexpected present. I didn’t know that this was the first wiki prototype, a more advanced version of which was to achieve worldwide recognition as Wikipedia a few years later. And I had no idea that in 2001 I would be one of the first German speakers to register and contribute. I found out that this prototype Wiki Wiki Web had been invented so that people could jointly collect and elaborate software patterns and that as the Portland Pattern Repository, it was playing a part in revolutionizing thinking about software development. At the time, I had no way of knowing that I would be involved in organizing the first Wiki conference WIKISYM, that I would later write a book on pattern theory, and that this and many other events would permanently change and influence my thinking – especially about community and society.

The present chapter cannot tell that story, but elaborates important aspects to help people interested in the commons (the participants in the commons movement) to become acquainted with the concept of patterns. Using patterns enables people to communicate common ideas about complex relationships more easily and to seamlessly combine theoretical research with its practical application.

In 1977, architect and unconventional thinker Christopher Alexander published the book A Pattern Language that became a nonfiction bestseller in the English-speaking world (Alexander et al. 1977). The book describes important architectural structures. Although the second volume The Timeless Way of Building forms a whole with the first one, it had a much smaller audience (Alexander 1979). It describes universal design processes. These two books together deal with top-quality design at scales large and small, with the goal of creating living cities, living regions and life-supporting architecture.

The ambition is that all people should feel full of life and be able to live well in freedom. This requires their involvement in the design process and in making decisions about architecture. When developing his theory, Alexander studied architectural history in its entirety, and he demonstrated that this kind of practice was possible in his own projects. His work rejects mainstream archi­tecture, which usually follows the rules of the capitalist construction industry, and step by step, he provides the building blocks and connecting pieces of an alternative program.

Transferring these ideas from architectural structures to other structures in their own cultural and societal environments suggested itself to many readers. This resulted in reform-minded approaches for design and decisionmaking in all kinds of areas: democracy, the education system, organizational design, the health system and personal development. Wherever something is designed or shaped, it seems plausible to apply Alexander’s ways of thinking. In almost every area of society, people have the feeling that a change toward more community-based rationality and participation is needed. In the summer of 2015, as this book went to press, the international conference “PURsuit of Pattern Languages for SOcietal Change” (PURPLSOC) convened scientists of all disciplines for the first time to reflect on patterns for societal change (PURPLSOC 2014).

A professor at the renowned University of California at Berkeley, Alexander spent decades conducting research, working as an architect, and writing a dozen books. In particular his final four-volume magnum opus The Nature of Order (Alexander 2002) should be mentioned here; it integrates the research of biological systems and finds far-reaching parallels between natural and cultural structures and processes.¹

At this point in the chapter, which is a translation from the German, the translator and the author would both like to inform readers about an English language problem. Alexander’s research made him understand complex systems – such as cities and works of art and culture – as living sys­tems, as growing and unfolding like biological organisms and biospheres. Both kinds of systems, biological living systems and non-biological complex systems, as well as combinations of those two, follow the same principles.

Having no English word for the quality of such living systems in a general sense, Alexander wrote about a “quality without a name,” which gave his texts a somewhat mystical touch. Other authors abbreviated this to the acronym QWAN. This quality is central because a designer should optimize for it. Alexander tried to define this quality in twenty pages of The Timeless Way of Building, using words like alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, eternal, not simply beauty, not only fitness for purpose, and slightly bitter. In later books, he used the word wholeness instead.

Other authors talk about systems being lively, vivid or life-supporting, or refer to their vitality or liveliness. These replacements never work fully: readers have to build a concept in their minds without having a single cor­responding word. This is difficult for most people, at least in the beginning. Oddly enough, this problem doesn’t exist in German because it has the adjective lebendig in a non-biological sense that fits Alexander’s concepts exactly. In German, people talk about “einen lebendigen Unterricht” (a lively/ vivid teaching) or “die Lebendigkeit einer Geschichte” (the wholeness/vitality/ power of a story). Therefore, the theory of complex living systems, in the tradition of Christopher Alexander, is much easier to understand, teach, and write about in German. In the following text, such circumscribing words are italicized to support readers in grasping that they point to a common general concept.

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But back to the story. In A Pattern Language, Alexander describes fund­amental architectural knowledge modules and wisdoms. The book’s 1,171 pages are jam-packed with 253 problem-solving, reusable concepts that he calls patterns. Presented on roughly three to six pages each, these patterns are sometimes called design patterns, especially in the field of software development, and they describe expert knowledge in a form comprehensible to laypeople and students. The descriptions of the patterns follow the same format. Each can be read and understood on its own and can be used like a building block for learning about and designing very different projects and processes. We can select those patterns that are important to us at a particular moment, just as we take individual tools from a toolbox. Alexander enables each of us to take our own path of learning through this body of knowledge, similar to the way we use a cookbook or an encyclopedia. Just as the words in an encyclopedia attain their expressive power only in the fabric of their rule-based relationships and thus become language, so do individual patterns become a pattern language, a device for expressing design ideas, only in the fabric of the other patterns and their functional relationships (Figure 1).

Figure 1: A pattern language as a network.

In practice, most projects are inevitably “works in progress,” so it is easi­est to speak of “patterns of X (e.g., X=commoning)” to identify a collection of patterns of continuously improving quality. Over time, the completeness of patterns and the quality of their descriptions will improve until a pattern collection really deserves the label “pattern language.” Then, it amounts to a toolbox equipped with everything required. However, the terms “pattern col­lection/collection of patterns” and “pattern language” are often used uncritically and practically synonymously.

From Pattern Description to Pattern Language

The descriptions of the individual patterns in a pattern collection follow a certain outline that thus becomes a standard for descriptions to be applied by everyone working on that particular pattern collection. Such outlines are often taken on by other groups of researchers, but are sometimes changed when the original group applies them; a new standard can emerge in this way.

Alexander selected one format for architecture, Kent Beck a different one for software programming, Rob Hopkins a third for transition processes, etc. (Figure 2). Someone who develops a pattern language must outline certain aspects for the description and then stick to the outline selected. If neces­sary, it is always possible to expand and change it. What is important is that each piece of information has its precise place and that the different aspects are not mixed when deriving statements. This makes it easier for individuals and groups to collaborate, both in a particular field of application and across disciplines and topics.

Figure 2: Example outlines for pattern descriptions.

Pattern collections are a foundation for dialogue between everyone in­volved. Our world can be understood as if it were interwoven by conscious and unconscious patterns, whereby each pattern is linked to other patterns. Changes in our world appear in new patterns emerging or existing ones changing. All design patterns taken together as a whole form humanity’s cultural heritage, which can only belong to all of us together. Pattern descriptions are a form of sharing this heritage with others and making it accessible to all people in their own lives and surroundings. Pattern descriptions are tools for involvement in decisionmaking as well as participation in continually making the world a better place in a common, creative, cooperative and consensual process. However, we have yet to begin doing so rationally and at a larger scale.

Christopher Alexander became very well-known to his readers and fol­lowers. He demonstrated both theoretically and practically how people can jointly design parts of the world in a life-supporting way, rejecting profit as the goal of optimization, which is why he is considered a moral authority in the field of architecture. Yet only a few individual architects have been able to liberate themselves from the capitalist rules of the construction industry. The construction industry as a whole remains captive to the strictures of capital­ist economic logic and thus on a collision course with the reality of a world that cannot be exploited limitlessly. It exacerbates the problems of our day: environmental devastation, overexploitation of resources, and climate change, to mention just a few. In other words, the desired architectural revolution has not yet taken place, but the approach – to arrive at life-supporting structures by means of participatory design – has in the meantime proven fruitful in many other areas beyond architecture.

Figure 3: The variety of publications following the influential book, “A Pattern Language.”

From Pattern Research to the Design Process

Hundreds of books about patterns have been published in various disciplines (Figure 3). More and more theses and dissertations as well as scientific articles are being published as well. Working with patterns in software development is being taught at some universities and has become mainstream. One indicator of the significance of thinking in patterns is Wikipedia, which would not exist without Christopher Alexander and his theory of patterns, as sketched out in the introduction above.

The path to patterns consists in starting with practical experience and using it as the basis for elaborating useful experiential knowledge in a joint process, and reflecting on it, refining it, and deepening it with reference to theory. Once the patterns exist as a collection of texts and data, also called a repository, they can be worked through and prepared for practical work in different ways (Figure 4).

Figure 4: U-shape workflow model for researching and publishing patterns, pattern collections and pattern languages.

The end result is not necessarily a book. Lighter-weight forms may also be appropriate for making pattern knowledge more widely known and helping it take effect: brochures, websites or stacks of seminar cards. The latter are popular for workshops in particular because they can be used flexibly to help people talk about experiences, ideas and concepts, and put what they’ve learned into practice. Figure 5 shows a group of students at Keio University in Tokyo elaborating “patterns of presentation” during class (Iba 2012).

Figure 5: A group of students developing patterns. Photo courtesy of Takashi Iba.

Patterns are just one side of Alexander’s approach, albeit the one that is perceived and discussed most intensively. In addition, Alexander provided a circular model (Alexander 1979) of an ideal-typical creative process which can be imagined as forming the basis of every instance of design (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: An ideal-typical model of the creative cycle.

It is comprised of six sectors. In sector 1, the system is perceived holistically; in sector 2, a point for approaching the next developmental step is sought out; in sector 3, a pattern from the relevant pattern language is selected, which in sector 4 is adapted to the concrete problem situation at hand; in sector 5, the newly developed system situation is tested for success or failure; and finally, in sector G, the transformation – the result – is either accepted or undone. Then, the creative cycle begins again.

Alexander’s Ethics – An Ethics of Design

This creative circle, as an ideal-typical model, must be powered by ethical principles to work and bear fruit for everyone (Figure 7). Otherwise it is just a value-free and value-less mechanism that can be misused like any other tool.

A first requirement: Successful design requires holistic perception of the system at hand and its potentials. This can succeed only if one gets involved in the specific features of the situation on the ground as well as the people affected and their needs; and what is more: the people affected should best be involved in the design process as well. Thus, Alexander was an early representative of participatory building and design. However, he did not advocate it as a moralist; his reason for doing so was an empirical insight on the part of designers: optimal design is possible only by means of participation. Our states, democracies, communities, schools, universities, organizations, etc., are sustainable only to the extent to which they make this idea a reality – by opening up to people, their commitment and their creativity. This theoretically founded openness is the reason why open source, open knowledge, and open everything are successful. One reason for the success of the open project Wikipedia was the intentional application of Alexander’s principles of stepwise improvement and openness for participation. The closed project that had preceded Wikipedia, Nupedia, with its concept based on articles written by experts, had previously been a hopeless failure.

Second, as mentioned above, patterns are our common cultural heritage. Each and every person draws upon this age-old source, whether or not he/she is aware of it. Whether patterns are used explicitly or implicitly is irrelevant. By imparting competence in the use of patterns, the explicit descriptions of patterns and pattern languages simply enable people to enhance their self-organization and creativity.

Third, the evaluation of a system-changing transformation in step 5 is oriented toward the vitality of the system. Vitality is the value upon which the search for system improvements, the selection and adaptation of patterns, and the final decisions about all transformations, is founded. Understood properly, this concept of vitality includes concepts such as sustainability, support of life and resilience, and rounds them out.

Fourth, this design theory results in priority for humans and for life in its totality over efficiency and profit maximization. This permits the formulation of a creative imperative: “Always design and act in a way that people and life have priority over individual interests and profit.” In short: “Design for people, not for profit.”

Figure 7: Ethical aspects of the creative cycle.

Alexander systematically opened up the creative realm to all people; he urged for everyone affected to be informed and emancipated so that they can participate in designing the world. The message: “Everyone is a designer.”

Paradigmatic Overview

I will stop here and do a visual summary of what has been shown so far. Pattern research can be far more than formulating patterns for solving problems and the corresponding pattern languages. The following pyramid (Figure 8) illustrates the fields of application.

Each level builds upon the level below, but does not necessarily require progressing to the next-higher level. For example, software developers are currently happy with level 2, while in pedagogy, for example, the ethical topics of level 4 are of particular interest. Each field of application has its own char­acteristics in addition to the common features.

Figure 8: A four-level pyramid model of pattern research.

Patterns and the Commons Movement

In the future, the commons movement will be faced with a development that must be connected to further mobilization and dissemination of the knowledge that is alive within the movement and its actors. The situation seems complex, especially because of the diversity of historical and current manifestations of commons projects in all cultures. It is a challenge to identify fundamental concepts – ideal-typical models for all commons projects – in all this diversity. As if that were not already complicated enough, there is the additional task of conceiving of important problems of contemporary life – e.g., climate protec­tion – as commons projects and arriving at solutions by this route.

The situation is complicated, yes, but the necessary concepts and methods are available. Work is in progress to connect the theory of patterns and the practice of the commons. Another two important parts of Alexanders’s theory help us to understand in even more detail the properties of living structures and the principles of living processes. In the following essay, Silke Helfrich will apply the principles from this introduction to patterns and show their relevance for the commons movement.

“What is the most powerful force in the world?
A big pattern-change idea.”

– Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka

References

Alexander, Christopher, Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press. Alexander, Christopher. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building, New York: Oxford University Press.

——— . 2002. The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, 4 Volumes. Berkeley, California: The Center for Environmental Structure.

Iba, Takashi. 2012. “Pattern Language 3.0: Writing Pattern Languages for Human Actions.” http://de.slideshare.net/takashiiba/plop2012.

Leitner, Helmut. 2007. Mustertheorie – Einflihrung und Perspektiven auf den Spuren von Christopher Alexander, Graz, Austria: Nausner & Nausner Verlag.

Leitner, H. 2015. Pattern Theory: Introduction and Perspectives on the Tracks of Christopher Alexander. Graz, Austria: Helmut Leitner. Printed by CreateSpace.

PURPLSOC. 2014. Conference PURPLSOC, July 3-5, 2015, Krems, Austria, http://purplsoc.org.

Schuler, Douglas. 2008. Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: MIT Press.

1 Editor’s note: The author of this chapter has published an accessible introduction to Alexander’s work: Helmut Leitner, Pattern Theory: Introduction and Perspectives on the Tracks of Christopher Alexander, Graz, Austria, 2015.

Helmut Leitner (Austria) is a natural scientist and graduate in chemistry from the Technical University in Graz, Austria. He works as an independent software developer, systems analyst and consultant. In 2000, as a pioneering user of wiki sys­tems, he started to research online communities, the precursors of social media, using approaches based on patterns. His recent work focuses on the dissemination of the pattern approach and on supporting the growth of the pattern research community.

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 website for more resources.

The post Patterns of Commoning – Working with Patterns: an Introduction appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In Valais in the Swiss Alps, an elaborate system of irrigation canals has existed for half a millennium. In the high-altitude Sacred Valley of the Incas, in Peru, the Quechua people have cultivated the richest diversity of potatoes anywhere on the planet since time immemorial. Since the time of Stephen the Great in the late 1400s, people in the Eastern Carpathians have managed their forests jointly through community-based institutions known as ob?tea, a tradition that has even survived fifty years of state dictatorship in the twentieth century. These examples demonstrate that commons are nothing if not enduring. Yet at the same time, they are highly vulnerable because nation-states claiming absolute territorial sovereignty tend to see commons – with their focus on collective governance, use-value over exchange value, and indifference to political jurisdictions (e.g., bioregions, Internet communities) – as perplexing or threatening. For their part, global corporations commanding vast resources and legal privileges often seek to destroy commons because they are seen as an alternative regime for meeting needs and thus a threat to the hegemony of the market system.

Despite such challenges, human beings show an irrepressible impulse to work together to create, maintain and protect those relationships and things that are dear to them. The impulse is evidence of a deep need and satisfaction as well as of pride and the will to survive. The process of commoning – of joint action, of creating things together, of cooperating to meet shared goals – is ubiquitous. It can be seen in modern urban skyscrapers as well as in remote rural villages destroyed by earthquakes in Nepal; in artistic communities and educational and research settings; and in the community forests of India and the many self-organized communities of cyberspace.

Commoning may be a hardy social phenomenon with an ancient pedigree, but in modern industrial societies, it enjoys only modest understanding and respect. We still seem to venerate and fear those people of monetary wealth and power and dismiss people who cooperate to come up with successful solutions that can benefit everyone. The latter remain largely nameless or are even belittled as starry-eyed dreamers because they do things that do not make money. “That won’t work in the real world,” people often say dismissively, ignoring the diversity of actual commons. Also ignored: the many different caring activities (usually performed by women) that are the basis for the “real economy,” the social construct otherwise known as “the market.” This fixation with achieving all goals through market exchange is producing a moribund global monoculture of homogenous social relationships – a culture that disdains innovative types of social interaction and collaboration unless they can generate money. The drive to commercialize everything from genes and water to sounds and words, and to create human dependencies on proprietary technologies and their manufacturers, is fracturing our social and ecological landscape – our common spaces. Time itself and consciousness are subordinated to the elaborate systems devised to accumulate capital. The dominant market culture tends to cast individualism as the ultimate fulfillment and to denigrate collective-action solutions, whether in rural communities or peer-to-peer networks, as “impractical” or “utopian” – as if individual and collective interests were somehow mutually exclusive.

In fact, the opposite is the case. A thriving individuality is not only essential to successful commoning, as many stories of commons in this book show, it is a condition for “being commonable,” or capable of participating in a commons. Conversely, commoning contributes to strengthening and stabilizing the individual self; it nurtures identity and long-term commitments. In other words, it is not only possible to align strong individuality with strong commons; the two are necessary for each other. They generate and enhance each other. The question is not whether we can align strong individualism with strong commons, but how. And here is where Patterns of Commoning seeks to provide insight by examining some remarkable forms of commoning in the most varied places in the world.

It is customary in many social science circles – especially in economics – to equate commons with resources managed jointly. Yet commons are not things, resources or goods; they are an organic fabric of social structures and processes. They may be focused on managing a certain resource – land, water, fisheries, information or urban spaces – and those resources may have a strong influence on how governance structures and economic production occur. But excessive attention to the physical resources or knowledge that a commons relies upon can distract us from its beating heart: the consciousness of thinking, learning, and acting as a commoner.

Commoning as a Living Process

The drama of commoning is an active, living process – a verb rather than a noun. We consider it to be an aspect of the human condition, an ongoing social process that never repeats in exactly the same way. This is one reason that trying to define the commons using definitions and methodologies from the natural sciences is futile. Commoning involves so much idiosyncratic creativity, improvisation, situational choices, and dynamic evolution that it can only be understood as aliveness. It defies simple formulas or analysis. Any theoretical framework for understanding commons must therefore enter into a deep and ongoing engagement with the everyday practices and experiences of commoning. Theory and practice must be in intimate conversation with each other. They might be compared to the fluid complementarity of a musical score and orchestral performance, which exist only in relation to one another and together produce a symphony. Just as it is impossible to learn to play the violin from simply reading music, the commons (or any social phenomena) is fundamentally an experiential practice that cannot be understood through theory alone.

If the primary focus of commons is not on resources, goods and things, but on interpersonal and human/nature relationships, then institutions of any kind – business, political, civic, educational – must reliably promote three things: respect for ecological boundaries, stable community and voluntary cooperation. Many economists who consider commons to be a specific class of goods struggle to identify regularities or “laws” that supposedly govern them, with the goal of recommending appropriate institutions or policy measures. Behavioristic schools of thought in other disciplines tend to share this outlook and try to use methods taken from the natural sciences to understand social processes, systematically ignoring the importance of empathy, social relationships and culture. These traditional approaches are utterly unsuitable for understanding the social phenomena of commons, which are at their core “relational social frameworks.”

This perspective may abandon the universal regularities that conventional science aspires to identify, but it opens up a rich, empirical field of vision for devising innovative solutions to old problems. Instead of seeing “the environment” as something separate and distinct from humanity, the commons can help us realize that we are part of nature and that because of this, we destroy ourselves if we destroy nature. Instead of focusing on resources as stocks of things that a price mechanism transfers among people, we can focus on complex flows of resources that are accessed and used according to the rules made by commoners themselves. Instead of looking to impersonal market transactions as the only way to meet needs, we can see that commoning is a practical alternative that can emancipate people from the pathologies of market culture and its logic.

There is no convincing reason to assume that the commons can work only within small networks or face-to-face communities, and not at societal or transnational levels. We have already seen the rapid scalability of network-based institutions across the globe (free and open source programming communities and Wikipedia, among countless others), and institutions to support location-specific commoning (of fisheries or permaculture, for example).

This book initially deals with another important strand in the commons narrative: the personal and social dynamics of concrete practices, values, rituals, traditions and experiences, all of which generate meaning and identity for people. A commons can survive only if it can nourish and protect this deeper level of commoning, because it is what makes a commons enduring, flexible and resilient. This is why policymakers and “experts” cannot simply design and build commons, let alone institutionalize them in a cookie-cutter way. Commoners must do this work themselves (although not necessarily alone and without support). The outcomes will reflect their particular history, geography and culture.

In this volume, we will not be able to explore the theoretical significance of diverse forces that shape commons, whether they be intentional communities or digitally based peer networks, but we do wish to show how important the inner social dimensions of commoning are. These include a sense of shared purpose, congruent talents and interests, common experiences in a given locality, simple affection, and simple necessity. The range of commons described suggests that there are few parts of life or production that could not be structured to work as a commons.

In a book that we published in 2012, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State, we offered a panorama of perspectives on commons around the world, the enclosures that threaten many of them, and the productive forces that they can unleash. In this book, the second of a planned trilogy, we wish to probe more deeply the internal dynamics of commons, in contrast to standard economics. In so doing, we reject the standard economic repertoire of analytical constructs and categories based on an idealized fiction of homo economicus. We human beings are more than “rational” economic agents and maximizers of individual utility. It is not widely appreciated that the archetype of homo economicus, mostly thought of as a male, and significantly, as an isolated individual, is still considered an ideal, even though it has nothing to say about our common humanity or our essential sociality. In addition, homo economicus is a human being without a history or personal development; it has obliterated the idea that we become what we are. It fails to recognize our need to belong to a larger society and its traditions, language, laws and so forth.

This book is based on precisely the idea that human beings do not develop and mature as isolated individuals, but only as creatures in relationship to others. “I am because we are,” as the Nguni Bantu expression “Ubuntu” puts it. It is pointless to construct an idealized abstraction as a counter-image to homo economicus because the actual realities are so myriad. Hence our desire here to explore the realities of commoning as a complex human experience, a phenomenon that is carried out by real people situated in unique places and living unique histories.

What unites the many commoners you will encounter in this book is their desire to have the freedom (and the societal conditions) to meet their needs in creative, fair, self-devised ways, without being dependent on markets or the state. This desire reflects their instinctual need and desire to work with others – an idea that is seen as secondary in modern, market-oriented cultures where people are so often seen as utterly autonomous and “self-made” individuals. This mythology ignores the actual dependence of individuals on money and therefore on the market. The commons paradigm helps us recover some elemental human truths – that we learn to be individuals through relationships and that autonomy itself is nested within a web of relationships. Autonomy can only be learned and lived through relationships, and commons provide an appropriate framework for this to happen.

Of course, individual endowments and personalities do not disappear in webs of relationships, but it is important to note that they do originate in social and cultural contexts, in real physical spaces, and the time/world concepts that frame our social existence. Our personal skills, outlooks, language and identities emerge and develop only through participation in larger collectives. Happiness research has elicited the insight that when people imagine a good life, they do not imagine themselves as calculating individuals constantly seeking to maximize their own utility at the expense of others. They see happiness as a social state of grace.

It should be no surprise, then, that our sense of social ethics arises from our engagement with larger networks of relationships. Our morality does not fall from the sky, nor can it simply be announced and promoted. Ethical values emerge through our interactions. When children begin to grow beyond egocentrism and understand the perspectives of others, they begin to develop ideas of right and wrong. Similarly, scientists regard sharing food and lending aid to a neighbor as contributing to evolutionary success. Experiencing such humanity ultimately contributes to developing a morality that honors socially constructive attitudes and behaviors. It is not a stretch to conjecture that, through a commons, we can find the means to reinvigorate a vibrant, functional social ethics – something that the nation-state and market culture have been singularly unable to achieve.

Patterns of Commoning is an attempt to show that these dynamics are not some historical curiosity from medieval times, but a robust contemporary reality. More than a sampler of eclectic, interesting instances of commons – which, incidentally, stand on their own and can be read and reflected on as separate essays – this book seeks to depict patterns of commoning. Our approach is inspired in part by the work of the architect, urbanist and philosopher Christopher Alexander, whose 1977 book A Pattern Language sought to identify the attributes of buildings and architectural spaces that have an “aliveness” to them – a theme he developed further in his 2005 book The Nature of Order. Alexander was searching for a quality that was elusive and still without a name, but which he attempted to describe using words such as “vitality” and “wholeness” and “eternal” to point to the essence he had in mind. He developed pattern languages as a tool to understand and solve complex problems, and as a heuristic for expressing not simply the principles of design, but the artful relationships among the individual elements of the whole that mysteriously generate a sense of aliveness.¹

This rigorous yet open-ended focus on relationships inspired us to apply the pattern approach to the commons. The commons, too, is about complex, living systems and how they emerge and grow. Just as a footpath may emerge over time because it serves the interests of thousands of walkers, so a commons may emerge, and persist, because its specific “social morphology” is pleasing and effective for participating commoners. In a commons, a biophysical resource – a forest, a body of water, an energy source, emotional energy, labor, knowledge – becomes co-mingled with social practice and diverse forms of institutionalization, producing a single, integrated system that must be considered as a whole. Patterns help us to identify similarities among diverse commons without homogenizing or oversimplifying them. Patterns of commoning help us avoid analytic frameworks that are generally too rigid, reductionist, totalizing or alienated from the messy dynamics of life. Of course, we are taking only a first step in this book to delineate patterns of commoning. We hope that this rudimentary effort will initiate the development of a richer pattern language of commoning and the commons.

The Score for this Book

We have tried to structure this book as a kind of musical composition. This overture is the prelude, after which we introduce in Part I the main topic – commoning. We link commoning to the term conviviality, which social critic Ivan Illich popularized as a concept to describe versatile, user-friendly tools and institutions that people can adapt to serve multiple needs and interests. Patterns of Commoning is organized as three thematic movements, each of which is connected by an “intermezzo,” before concluding with a finale. Our hope is that, like any serious piece of music, we can convey the power and eloquence of certain striking motifs as they recur in different variations and contexts.

Part I will help orient the reader by explaining at greater length the idea of patterns of commoning. Key motifs here include the struggle of people to devise reasonable, effective rules and institutions to stabilize and protect their commoning; to reconcile the tensions between individual and collective interests; and to develop cultures that honor fairness, responsibility and accountability.

Commoning is at bottom a process by which we enter into a participatory culture and can sketch an idea of how we want to live together as a society. We will also see throughout the book the ways in which shared emotional commitments and a sense of identity are essential to commoning – and how commons, over time, subtly change the inner lives and behavior of commoners.

An inescapable theme for any commons is the daunting challenge of protecting it against enclosure and destructive interference, whether the threats come from markets, the state or free riders.² We deliberately decided in this book not to focus on enclosures, in part because we dealt with that extensively in our previous anthology, The Wealth of the Commons. The focus in this volume is more on constructive acts of reclaiming endangered commons and creating new ones as well as the ceaseless struggle actively to protect them.

In Part II, we present brief profiles of more than fifty different commons. Our goal here is to show the incredible range of commoning across time, geography, resource domains and cultural tradition. We intentionally departed from the usual classifications of commons such as natural resource and knowledge commons, or material and immaterial commons. There were several reasons for this approach. The most important one is simply that every commons requires both a material and an immaterial basis, and every commons, no matter its core focus, is always based on producing and sharing knowledge. Material resources and knowledge are the bases for all commons, and so the familiar habit of dividing them up based on these criteria strikes us as specious.

Instead, we have divided the profiles in Part II into loose groupings of similar commons: long-lasting commons, neighborhood commons, biocultural commons, arts and culture commons, collaborative technology commons, code and knowledge commons, exchange and credit commons, tools and infrastructure for commoning, spaces for co-learning and omni-commons. Of course, this classification is not intended as a new taxonomy; it is simply our attempt to bring together generally related commons.

If there is a strong emphasis on open source projects and digital platforms among the profiles of Part II, it is because this realm is surely one of the most robust vectors of commoning in contemporary life. The open source paradigm is a fiercely effective and popular form of commoning – on the Internet, in Fab Labs, hackerspaces and elsewhere – precisely because these spaces welcome innovative minds concerned with positive social change. Because open platforms and infrastructures are so hospitable to self-organized commoning, conventional institutions of governance and commerce are eager to capture and control them, as we see in the growth of the commercially oriented “sharing economy,” attacks on net neutrality, and corporate and governmental surveillance and data collection.

In the commons profiled in Part II, it becomes apparent that commoning transcends the misleading mental dichotomies that modern cultures have invented. It lets us re-integrate that which seemed to have been divided into “public” and “private,” “objective” and “subjective,” or “tangible” and “intangible.” This has far-reaching consequences because our categories of thought limit the spectrum of imagined possibilities for action. If we think only in terms of “public” and “private,” we will see only public (governmental) or private actors and, if state coffers are empty, we will see few options beyond “public/private partnerships.” We will literally have no language to imagine “public/commons partnerships,” for example.

In Part III, we ask how commoning can become deeply rooted in our world and to what levels it can penetrate. Seven notable contributors probe these questions by exploring “the inner dynamics of commoning”– the title of this concluding section. These interpretive essays depict the foundations of commoning in different cultural and historical contexts – for example, the inland fisheries of Scotland, the current struggles in the shanty neighborhoods of South Africa, the sea-faring Maori people of modern New Zealand, and land-use issues in West Africa and France.

It becomes clear from these analyses how commoning helps us develop a worldview that integrates who we are with what we do – and that has the power to shape our world. In this sense, the essays of Part III resemble bright spotlights that carefully explore a recently discovered cave: We see many strange and glorious things illuminated in this deep cavern of human experience known as commoning, but we have barely begun to probe its deeper reaches. As yet, we do not really know what we are capable of achieving collectively. Immersed as some of us are within our digitized and thoroughly monetized lifeworlds, the potential expansion of the many and diverse forms of commoning is still in its infancy. The same is true of efforts to re-imagine commons-based governance, law and production.

By considering the ontological dimensions of commoning – that is, the basic experiences of being, seeing and knowing as a commoner – the essays of Part III point to the necessity of rethinking the very categories and notions that we use to describe the world. We learn how “pluriversal” ways of knowing, acting and being lie at the heart of the commons paradigm – and how these new perspectives and categories of thought can help us build a new world. Instead of simply imagining “a democracy fit for the market” – a stunted, cynical exercise that dominates contemporary politics – the commons can help us re-imagine democratic self-determination and freedom in sweeping new ways, helping us expand the scope of what is thinkable and therefore doable. Much further research – and new experimental projects – will need to be done to explore these possibilities, of course.

The Role of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity

Academic scholars of the commons will notice that the way we approach and frame the commons differs from the metatheoretical research framework known as Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD). This framework was developed by the pioneering commons scholar and Nobel Prize Laureate Elinor Ostrom, working with others, as a tool to assess numerous variables in far more than one thousand commons institutions across disciplinary boundaries. Making sense of variables in commons is a vexing challenge for research design because it is often unclear which internal dynamics are significant and defining for successful social processes, and which are incidental and contextual.

Our focus is not intended to challenge or displace the IAD approach, but rather, to enrich and extend it. That is, we wish to set aside what we find less compelling, (for example, the modeling of social change inherent to it) and to introduce and explore the animating role of subjectivity and intersubjectivity as central elements of commoning. We believe that commons must be “seen from the inside” – through the experiences, feelings, histories and cultures of every participant. This helps explain why it is not really possible to “design” a commons from the outside and import a specific set of “best practices” or “golden rules” to manage a particular commons. A commons must arise from the personal engagement of commoners themselves. It is unavoidably the product of unique personalities, geographic locations, cultural contexts, moments in time and political circumstances of that particular commons. Yet finding a workable common language to generalize about commons remains an important challenge. It can help commoners draw connections between their experiences and the aspirations of others, and help all to see the wider ramifications and potential for societal transformation.

To be sure, there will be many legal, financial and organizational forms that are useful to advance the principles of commons at larger scales. But it is important to distinguish these legal and administrative forms from the social practices of commoning itself. They should not be confused as the essence of a commons or as necessarily producing commons. History shows us that legal and organizational forms can be captured and co-opted, and made to serve very different purposes. For example, many co-operatives today have become so driven by managerialism, market competition and profit orientation, that they are oblivious to their members and co-operative principles. Capital-driven logics now dominate so many microfinancing projects that the sovereignty and emancipation that once came through commoning have been lost. Similar dynamics have afflicted other administrative forms such as credit unions, indigenous councils and nonprofit organizations, not to mention state-managed institutions that are ostensibly intended to serve the public interest. The clear lesson is that legal and administrative structures, no matter how well-designed, cannot serve as reliable substitutes for commoning and its social norms and practices. The future will surely see new attempts at “common-washing” by projects parading the forms of commons without living the realities of commoning.

There is nonetheless an important role for law and public policy to play in making commons administrative structures more trustworthy, well-managed and accountable. Indeed, the state must help promote the social construction of commons by fostering hospitable conditions for commoners to do what they do. Even bureaucrats and politicians working within traditional conceptions and structures of the state and law can  support the development of commons to solve problems that neither the market nor state can solve. In the end, it is only when leaders “think like a commoner” that the state can actually become more commons-friendly; yet to do this, it must liberate itself from the logic of the market and bureaucratic “rationality.” Hence the mind-bending conundrum of living within an archaic normative system of existing governance, production, law and culture – the market/state – while simultaneously trying to transcend it by creating a new, more cooperative order. This is a topic we intend to explore in our next anthology about the commons.

The Commons as a Different Worldview

Commoning is a radical concept because it insists upon the active, knowing participation of people in shaping their own lives and meeting their own needs. A commons is not just about allocating a common-pool resource, something that a computer algorithm could arguably achieve. A commons requires active, ongoing participation with others in implementing and maintaining a shared purpose. Just as market culture makes and shapes specific ways of being, so does commoning. Thinking in categories of commons and generating action from that thinking (and vice versa) helps to develop personal capacities and competencies that are essential to a happy, flourishing, creative life. A person’s intentionality and affective, emotional labor matters. All this cannot simply be designed into an organization or a procedure through legal or administrative means.

In other words, commoning is a form and process that flows through us, similar to “calculative thinking” (K.H. Brodbeck). Through countless acts of commoning, we develop essential capacities and competencies that self-replicate and spread throughout an entire collective. The resulting culture becomes a kind of emotional and cognitive “air that we breathe” – a way of perceiving and experiencing the world that flows through us and is taken for granted. Until such time as the culture of the commons becomes a richer collective experience, the language of the commons is a valuable tool for helping us to (re)discover this different way of being, knowing and doing. It helps us become self-aware of commoning as a learned practice that is simultaneously as old and as modern as making music.

The fact that commons are timeless raises profound questions about many premises of modern civilization. It is worth quoting Étienne Le Roy in his essay “How I Have Been Conducting Research on the Commons for Thirty Years Without Knowing It.” He writes that once you begin to take the commons seriously, “the whole edifice on which modern Western civilization is based, previously believed to be well-founded, collapses onto itself: the state, the law, the market, the nation, work, contracts, debts, giving, the juristic person, private property, as well as institutions such as kinship, marital law and the law of succession, is suddenly called into question.”

For example, the commons calls into question the idea that discrete individuals and objects are the self-evident, privileged categories of analysis. We need a procedure that systematically takes “more than one” into account. Methodological individualism is unable to sustain this, as is the already criticized thinking in either/or patterns or the whole symbolic apparatus of mainstream economic thinking, which derives from the Newtonian worldview and its linear paths of causality and supposed regularities. Significantly, “the economy” is seen as an objective machine that somehow stands above us and apart from our combined actions and consciousness – as if human beings did not exist.

Set against the powerful global dominion of the market and nation-state, which are conceived of as abstract entities (and which are by no means as old as is commonly assumed), it is tempting to see any single commons as an insignificant mote. Yet acts of commoning, by connecting us with the deeper circuits of living systems and with other commoners, have their own inexorable power, especially when those circuits begin to interconnect and expand, as they are doing now.

It is our hope that Patterns of Commoning will hasten this process of rediscovering commons and developing a deeper understanding of them. They are a precious platform from which to defy the stalemate and despair of our time with living, creative and durable alternatives.

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 website for more resources.

Photo by Brandon Giesbrecht

The post Patterns of Commoning: Overture appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Amsterdam. September 2-3, 2016

Peer Value: Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy is a conference integrating conversations and plans of action for shaping and connecting the Commons on a global level.

Our final program is listed below,  please join us in Amsterdam!

The conference is organized along three tracks:

• Track 1: P2P: Inclusive Politics, Activism and Law for the Commons
• Track 2: Decentralized Tech and Beyond:Global Design,Local Production
• Track 3: From Platform to Open Cooperativism

We will explore questions such as:

• What are the conditions that encourage communities to work as peers, creating commons?
• What are the best practices communities can adopt to safeguard their resilience?
• Decentralization – why is it important, and how is it implemented and maintained?
• How can the working methodologies honed by well-established digital communities act as transitional guidelines for sustainable “material” manufacturing?
• What about social innovation and livelihoods – how does contributory and open accounting work with the systems of value creation found in CBPP?
• How can civil society participate in recommending policy proposals that support CBPP for governments at the local, regional, national – even global – levels?

Join your peers, add your voice and take part in the growing conversation about the Commons as an important, emerging collaborative social model.

Register here

SCHEDULE:

Day One: Friday 2/9/2016

8:30: Registration and Welcome coffee
9:00: Opening and Intro Day 1, Frank Kresin
9:30: Commons policy for collaborative economy & knowledge Plenary Session – Mayo Fuster, moderator. Steve Hill, Vasilis Niaros, Speakers.
9:30: Blockchain for the commons and Foundups – Amanda Jansen
10:30: Break
11:00: A Lab for the Urban Commons and the City as a Commons: LabGov AMS and the CO-Ams process. Debate – Moderator: Sophie Bloemen. Speakers: John Grin (UvA), Stan Majoor (HvA), Faiza Dadi (Gemeente Amsterdam), Christian Iaione (LabGov Bologna), Thomas de Groot (Deelraad Amsterdam West, Piraten Partij), Joachim Meerkerk (Pakhuis de Zwijger).
11:00: Online Participatory Cultures Plenary (90min), Q&A (20min) – Moderator: Frank Kresin. Speakers: Lisha Sterling, Craig Ambrose, Rachel O’Dwyer, Samer Hassan, Pablo Oranguren.
11:00: Design Global, Manufacture Local Plenary (90min), Q&A (20-30min)
13:00: Lunch
14:00: Is the EU only a problem or can it also be part of the solution?
Debate – Moderator: David Hammerstein. Speakers: Sophie Bloemen, Michel Bauwens, Carmen Lozano, Mayo Fuster, Melanie Dulong, Jaromil.
14:00: From Platform to Open Cooperativism.
Plenary – Moderator: Josef Davies Coates. Speakers: Jessica Gordon Nembhard , John Restakis, Alex Pazaitis, Douglas Rushkoff (VOIP), Trebor Scholz (VOIP).
14:00: A Lab for the Urban Commons and the City as a Commons: LabGov AMS and the CO-Ams process.
Presentations and panel
14:00: Design Global, Manufacture Local.
Plenary – Moderator: Michiel Schwarz. Speakers: Vasilis Niaros, Tiberius Brastaviceanu, Lisha Sterling.
15:30: Break
16:00: Policies and Law for the Commons. Presentation and panel – Moderator: Lisha Sterling. Speakers: Janelle Orsi (via VOIP), David Bollier.
16:00: Licensing for the Commons.
Plenary – Moderator: Vasilis Niaros. Speakers: Bruno Carballa, Baruch Gottlieb, Michel Bauwens.
16:00: A Lab for the Urban Commons and the City as a Commons: LabGov AMS and the CO-Ams process.
Workshop – Joachim Meerkerk
16:00: Empowering People: Renewable energy as a commons. Workshop
16:00: Workshop Pro commons policy & collaborative economy. Workshop – Moderator: Mayo Fuster.
16:00:  EU and the Commons: Proposals for European policy to promote the common. Workshop 2
17:10: Wrap up of Day 1, Frank Kresin
17:30: Closing drinks.

DAY 2: Saturday 3/9/2016

9:00: Registration and Welcome coffee
9:30: Welcome and Intro day 2, Frank Kresin
9:30: Sustainable Livelihoods and Alternative Financing Plenary – Moderator: Stacco Troncoso. Speakers: Sarah de Heusch, Carmen Lozano Bright, Lisha Sterling.
10:00: (Em)powering People: Renewable Energy as a Commons
Plenary. – Moderator: David Hammerstein. Speakers: Cecile Blanchet, David Bollier, Abdelhulheb Choco (tbc), Zuiderlicht (tbc).
11:00: Break
11:30: State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship Plenary
11:30: Workshop (Em)powering People: Renewable Energy as a Commons. Workshop. – Host: David Hammerstein.
11:30: Meta Economic Networks. Plenary. – Moderator: Stacco Troncoso. Speakers: Dmytri Kleiner, George Dafermos, Genevieve Parkes, Stephanie Rearick.
13:00: Lunch
14:00: From Platform to Open Cooperativism. Plenary, – Moderator: Josef Davies Coates. Speakers: Donnie Maclurcan, Josef Davies Coates, Nathan Schneider (VOIP), Pat Conaty.
14:00: State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship. Plenary. – Moderator: Alex Pazaitis. Speakers: David Bollier, Michel Bauwens, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, John Restakis, George Dafermos, Mayo Fuster.
14:00: State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship. Q&A Lounge
15:30: Break
16:00: Introducing the European Commons Assembly. Plenary. – Moderator: Lisha Sterling. Speakers: Martin Kirk, Bayo Akomolafe, Hilary Wainwright.
16:00: Ditigal Democracy for the Commons by Oview App. Plenary. – Moderator: Amanda Jansen. Speakers: Coby Babani.
16:00: Sustainable Livelihoods.
17:10: Closing remarks. Plenary. – Speaker: Michel Bauwens.
17:50: Wrap up, Frank Kresin
18:00: Closing drinks

The post Peer Value: Advancing the Commons Collaborative Economy Amsterdam. September 2-3, 2016 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

My colleagues and I at the Commons Strategies Group puzzled over such questions last year and decided we needed to convene some serious minds to help shed light on them.  With the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, we convened a Deep Dive workshop on February 28 through March 2, 2016, called “State Power and Commoning:  Transcending a Problematic Relationship.”

Now a report that synthesizes and distills our conversations is available. The executive summary of the report is published below (and also here).  The full 50-page report can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

Participants in the workshop addressed such questions as: Can commons and the state fruitfully co-exist – and if so, how? Can commoners re-imagine “the state” from a commons perspective so that its powers could be used to affirmatively support commoning and a post-capitalist, post-growth means of provisioning and governance? Can “seeing like a state,” as famously described by political scientist James C. Scott, be combined with “seeing like a commoner” and its ways of knowing, living and being? What might such a hybrid look like?

These issues are becoming more important as neoliberalism attempts to reassert the ideological supremacy of “free market” dogma.  As a feasible, eco-friendly alternative, commoning is often seen as posing a symbolic or even a political and social threat.  It is our hope that the report will help inaugurate a broader discussion of these issues.

Silke Helfrich and Heike Loeschmann deserve much credit for helping to organize the event, with assistance from Michel Bauwens. I wrote the report, and Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel have produced a beautiful publication and webpages.  Thanks, too, to the workshop participants who shared their astute insights.

STATE POWER AND COMMONING: Executive Summary

Transcending a problematic relationship

By David Bollier. A Report on a Deep Dive Workshop convened by the Commons Strategies Group in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Kloster Lehnin, near Potsdam, February 28 – March 2, 2016

“State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship” Download the full 50 page report here (PDF). Consult and comment on the full report in the Commons Transition Wiki

Executive Summary

Commoning is often seen as a way to challenge an oppressive, extractive neoliberal order by developing more humane and ecological ways of meeting needs. It offers many promising, practical solutions to the problems of our time – economic growth, inequality, precarious work, migration, climate change, the failures of representative democracy, bureaucracy. However, as various commons grow and become more consequential, their problematic status with respect to the state is becoming a serious issue. Stated baldly, the very idea of the nation-state seems to conflict with the concept of the commons. Commons-based solutions are often criminalized or marginalized because they implicitly challenge the prevailing terms of national sovereignty and western legal norms, not to mention neoliberal capitalism as a system of power.

To address these and other related questions, the Commons Strategies Group in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation convened a diverse group of twenty commons-oriented activists, academics, policy experts and project leaders for three days in Lehnin, Germany, outside of Berlin, from February 28 to March 1, 2016. The goal was to host an open, exploratory discussion about re-imagining the state in a commons-centric world – and, if possible, to come up with creative action initiatives to advance a new vision.

Participants addressed such questions as: Can commons and the state fruitfully co-exist – and if so, how? Can commoners re-imagine “the state” from a commons perspective so that its powers could be used to affirmatively support commoning and a post-capitalist, post-growth means of provisioning and governance? Can “seeing like a state,” as famously described by political scientist James C. Scott, be combined with “seeing like a commoner” and its ways of knowing, living and being? What might such a hybrid look like?

1: UNDERSTANDING STATE POWER

Silke Helfrich prepared a framing paper synthesizing some of the relevant scholarship that theorizes the state. Her paper introduced key issues that arise when we begin to talk about “the state.” One of the first insights is that “a theoretically valid general definition of the state” is not really possible. “The state appears as a complex institutional system that solidifies power relationships in society, and potentially has the capacity to shift them,” writes Helfrich. “Thus it is not ‘the state’ as such that acts, but in each case specific groups with concrete interests and positions of power act.” These groups and interests will, of course, vary immensely from one instance to another.

Despite this variability of “the state,” there are four basic aspects of statehood that seem to apply in every case: Political control of territory; functional power in setting and enforcing rules; institutional capacities such as bureaucracy and organized power; and social control in subjecting people to state authority. These criteria of states and “statehood” were formulated by Professor Bob Jessop in his 2013 book, The State: Past, Present and Future. Based on this understanding, Helfrich notes, “the state” consists of “territorialized political power over a society that is exercised on the basis of rules and norms, but also by procedures and practices and accustomed ways of thinking about things whose socially constructed functions are accepted as binding by the people governed.”

State power introduces distinct principles of order that shape how we experience and understand the world, said Helfrich. In modern states, human society tends to be separated between the private and public spheres, with the state asserting control over the latter. State power also separates the worlds of production and reproduction and tends to give them a binary gender association (males involved in production/work, women with reproduction/family). Finally, state power separates public life into “the economy” and politics, casting the “free market” as natural and normative and politics as the realm for subjective disagreement and (presumptively illegitimate) social intervention.

No state rules and institutions are permanent or a priori; they are always the result of societal struggle and debate. So a state is less a subject or entity in itself than an ongoing expression of political power (state power) that expresses a culturally determined web of changing social relationships, writes Helfrich. In this sense, one might say that “The State” does not really exist as a thing because state and statehood must constantly be re/produced. For this reason, Professor Bob Jessop, a workshop participant and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster in the UK, suggested that it is more useful to talk about state power than “the state,” and about commoning than “the commons.” This shift in vocabulary helps underscore the fact that “the state” is constituted by dynamic social and power relationships, and helps us avoid reifying “the state” and “commons” as fixed, concrete entities.

Why State Theory Should Matter to Commoners

In an opening presentation on state theory, Professor Jessop outlined his “strategic-relational” approach to understanding the state, which rejects the idea of a unitary, fixed state and focuses on the power and social relationships among elites in a given nation. He writes that “states are not neutral terrains on which political forces struggle with equal chances to pursue their interests and objectives and with equal changes of realizing their goals whatever they might be. Instead the organization of state apparatuses, state capacities and state resources [….] favor some forces, some interests, some identities, some spatio-temporal horizons of action, some projects, more than others.”

Jessop noted that the very juridical language of the state creates distinctions that establish structural antagonisms even before getting to classic ‘others’ such as class, race or gender. Take the commons, for example: “Is the commons to be defined within a state or does it transcend the state itself?” asked Jessop. Answering this question is extremely complicated, he said, “because there is no general theory of the state and commons.” The two tend to have little or no formal juridical relationship. Because “state power and commoning” is such a complex relation, Jessop believes it is inappropriate to rely on only one analytic approach in assessing it: “The topic invites multiple entry points for different purposes. In adopting one, you will not be able to see others. Multiple perspectives provide a more rounded view of the subject.”

It is clear that the state is an instrument of social and power relation and that state power is a jealous, self-perpetuating force. It is an enabling mechanism for certain factions, especially capital and business, to further their interests. What does this mean for commoners who seek to use commoning to develop a better world, one of greater ecological responsibility, social and gender justice, and personal security? How might commoners use the state to advance their interests and freedom?

Variations in State Power

It bears emphasizing that the recurring patterns of state power play out in different ways around the world. State power among the agrarian states of Africa, for example, expresses itself in very different ways than in it does in Latin America, Europe or the United States. This stems largely from basic geographical and resource differences among nations, but also from the diverse policies, cultures and social norms for blending state power and markets. The most salient variations in state power include: Authoritarian and neoliberal state power in Latin America; the agrarian states of Africa; fiscal austerity, enclosures and the crisis of the European Union; and the United States and its aggressive role in promoting the neoliberal state.

2: COMMONING AS A COUNTERFORCE TO STATE POWER

A recurring subject of the Deep Dive was how commoning might serve as a counterforce to check state power and possibly reconfigure it. “What are we going to do with the state?” asked Pablo Solón, former Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations. Clearly one of the first goals in modifying state power would be to decriminalize and legalize acts of commoning; this would at least open up new spaces for alternatives to neoliberalism to emerge. A longer term goal would be to use state power to creatively support commoning and the value(s) that it generates.

This entire terrain is treacherous and tricky for the reasons illustrated by the left’s takeover of the Bolivian state: power tends to change those who begin to wield it, and states tend to be more responsive to other nation-states than to their own people. In the end, there is also a question about whether the state and conventional law have the capacity to assist commoning. Can large, impersonally administered systems of the nation-state actually foster commons-based governance and human-scale commoning? Is it possible to alter conventional bureaucracies to recognize and support commoning?

Tomislav Tomašsevi? of the Institute for Political Ecology in Croatia noted that “the state is a playing field for different types of actors,” with commoners one among many others. So it is logical for commons movements and players to try to re-appropriate and redefine the state, to change the power relationships. This task then needs to go transnational, he said: “Once you manage to redefine the state, how can this be done in other states? How to scale up commons-based society to other countries? How to go global, and not just local? What notions of universality are needed to govern the commons through the state? The commons movement cannot ignore this challenge,” said Tomašsevi?, if only because the ‘crisis’ of the state is going to persist unless we re-imagine the state and statehood.

The group identified three basic questions of state power and commoning that must be addressed in transforming state power: What is preventing commoning within the context of the state? What do we want to change to enable commoning to exist and expand? How are states and governments standing in the way of commoning today?

Commoners must develop a compelling vision that incorporates a structural analysis, strategy and tactics into one integrated package – but with political questions as our point of entry. Commoners must also clarify their relationships with those on the political left; clarify their notion of citizenship and thus how commoners should relate to the state; and reinvent law to decriminalize and support commoning. All of this should be based on the idea of the commons as “an important form of transpersonal rationality and coordination,” said Silke Helfrich of the Commons Strategies Group. “The commons must be understood as a new category that describes the individual-in-relation-with-others.”

3: RECONCEPTUALIZING STATE POWER TO SUPPORT COMMONING

The preceding discussions – about the nature of state power, its variations among different nation-states, and the nature of commons and commoning – lead us to the central question of this Deep Dive: How can state power be re-imagined and altered in ways that support commoning? What are the strategies for the “commonification” of the state? How might a commons-based state work?

Silke Helfrich offered a starting point for answering this question: “It may be true that ‘there is no commons without commoning,’ but there can be contributions to a commons without commoning. This is where the state comes in. The state can contribute to commons without necessarily participating in commoning. It should also secure the rights of all citizens, not just the rights of commoners and support constructive relations among commons,” said Helfrich.

One must immediately distinguish between how a political progressive might imagine the state aiding commons, and how a commoner would. A commoner sees commoning as a way to provide nearly every type of good or service, from hospitals to water systems to social services, said Helfrich. In principle, it provides new ways to empower people and tap into new generative capacities. A liberal, by contrast, may see commoning as a threat to progressive values and the welfare state because commoning could encourage the state to shirk its responsibilities and expenditures.

Bob Jessop, the political theorist, said: “If we’re interested in commoning, the question is not how we bring the state apparatus in to aid commons – as if the state were somehow outside of our activities – but to identify which strategies might transform state power by altering the balance of forces inside and outside the state system. We need to talk about ‘revisiting state power and commoning: mutual learning for strategic action.’ ” Or as Pablo Solón put it: “The issue is about power and counterpower. How can commoning build counterpower? We can’t transform state power otherwise.”

It is an open question whether representative democracy is still the operational framework for pursuing political change, said Stacco Troncoso, the P2P Foundation’s strategic director and cofounder of Guerrilla Translation – or whether the strategies for aggregating political power must take place outside of “the system.” Former SYRIZA member Andreas Karitzis recently made the persuasive argument that “popular power, once inscribed in various democratic institutions, is exhausted. We do not have enough power to make elites accept and tolerate our participation in crucial decisions. More of the same won’t do it. If the ground of the battle has shifted, undermining our strategy, then it’s not enough to be more competent on the shaky battleground; we need to reshape the ground. And to do that we have to expand the solution space by shifting priorities from political representation to setting up an autonomous network of production of economic and social power.”

Public Services and Commons

An unresolved issue is how the commons shall relate to the concepts of public services, public goods and the public domain. “The state oversees these functions,” said French economist Benjamin Coriat, and “it has the right to determine access rights or pass on ownership to private companies. But the idea of a common asset introduces the idea that the state cannot privatize the resource or service. It introduces new protections for the commoners because the state is a privatization machine today.” The larger question is how we might “commonify” our understanding of public services and goods. He stressed that the idea of common goods is not simply about “re-municipalization” of assets and services, but about the transformation of public goods into common goods” – a new conceptual category. This creates new rights of protection for commoners.

Imagining a Paradigm Shift in Governance and Law

Can we imagine a paradigm shift in state power with respect to commoning? Such a paradigm shift would require new and different circuits of power, new types of governance, and in a larger sense, a widely recognized idea of the commons that could serve as a counterpoint to the idea of the state — Staatsidee — mentioned earlier by Bob Jessop. Developing different circuits of power require that we clarify how the internal governance of commons can work and how state/commons relations could be structured. For starters, a commons must become effective and legitimate as a form of governance, and this generally requires:

• Development of an inclusive ethic and shared goals (while retaining certain rights of exclusion and even expulsion of troublemakers);
• Systems for accountability;
• The ability of commoners to initiate and participate in rule-making;
• Benefits that accrue to the group in mutually satisfactory, respectful ways; and
• The right of all members to challenge the assumptions of current rules and practices.

CONCLUSION

Clearly state power and its complicated relations with commons will only grow more important in the future as the advocates of neoliberal policies seek to prevail over resistance and as commoning itself becomes more widespread and stronger. Progress on this topic will necessarily take time and further deliberation among commoners. In the near time, it will be quite instructive to learn how different nations attempt to carve out legally sanctioned commons within their borders, whether it is a “Plan C” in Greece, concrete policies to promote buen vivir in Latin America, court rulings protecting natural resource commons in India, or expansions everywhere of the commons as a parallel, post-capitalist economy.

Taking stock of such developments will require region-specific “deeper dives” and new conversations with the traditional left and labor to find some sort of working rapprochement on issues of livelihoods, basic income, public services and economic policy. Can the commons be integrated politically and legally with traditional liberalism and state authority? It may be too early to know what specific steps should be taken, but it seems clear that the crises of our time will not be resolved without serious changes in the topography of state power.

Download the full report here
All images by Stacco Troncoso

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This video is a very personal testimony how Alanna and other co-founders of Enspiral wanted to change towards a more ethical economy that is generative to people and the earth:

“Alanna Krause of Enspiral tells the story of how Enspiral created a system for participatory budgeting, and a new internal economy between a community of 300+ entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers and change-makers dedicated to working on “stuff that matters”. After working in the financial sector through the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, Alanna left the sector and succeeded in helping create a model for a new economy that works for everyone.”

The post Alanna Krause on Enspiral’s Ethical Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.