-Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity

In two books, “The Book of Abundance” and “The Book of Community” and in Manifesto, Las Indias outline a model of organizing society that could start with the development of intentional communities. A new model of the economy based on the concept of abundance can be already implemented at the group level. On the other hand, the examples of group-level organizing can enrich our understanding of this desired future model. This paper uses empirical data to give some substance to the concept of abundance within an intentional community. The following is an invitation to further reflection and dreaming together. Using the stages from Dragon Dreaming method, one can consider the Utopian writings such as these by Las Indias as a stage of dreaming and the real life experiences as the stages of implementation. This analysis is a stage of celebrating and evaluation to help clarifying the goals in more practical terms.

I will use findings from my research on Acorn community to see what questions the practice raises. Communities are changing over time and their membership fluctuates, therefore it should be noted that the empirical content reflects the interviews conducted in August 2014. More details about this egalitarian community can be found in a series of three articles analyzing how Acorn’s experience can enrich the understanding of peer production model and an article on the personal experience of living in this community – see references below the text.

Making more with less

Acorn community has managed to generate more affluence thanks to sharing resources and living together. Life is cheaper there in comparison to individual living in an urban setting. In this way, communards can enjoy more with less while pursuing a meaningful work. The 42-hour labor quota includes also tasks not related to enterprise directly.

These are some examples of saving money and time thanks to collective living:

1) No one possesses one’s own car, which reduces the costs of insurance. Thanks to the skills within community, maintenance of electronics can be assured without hiring specialists.

2) Buying in bulk, dumpster diving, or exchanging products with other communities, reduces costs of food. One of the communards estimated that they spend about 1,200 dollars per person, per year on food.

3) Time is better used by mutualizing some tasks such as cooking, shopping, or declaring income for taxes.

4) By sharing tools and objects, there is less need of buying them: clothes, books, computers, kitchen tools, bikes, cars, and other stuff.

Furthermore, the communards enjoy some advantages of both city and rural living. Being surrounded by like-minded people within the community and communards from neighboring communities gives an occasion to meet people and undertake common activities. The atmosphere is different than in typical rural settings. On the other hand, they enjoy the advantages of rural living such as access to organic self-produced food, being close to nature, and no need to commute to work.

One of my interviewees reduced considerably the use of antidepressants, another one stopped drinking alcohol because they experienced less stress living in the community than in their previous lives.

The complexities of defining abundance

Las Indias defines abundance as the absence of the necessity “to work out what is produced and what not, and above all, how much access to a given product this or that person will have.” (The Book of Abundance, p.22) One of the criteria for evaluation whether a consumption choice is necessary would be its contribution to “genuine enjoyment of each.” Furthermore, trying to limit the consumption of others goes against the logic of abundance: “A life oriented to the construction of abundance, an interesting life, cannot be based on deprivation or the desire to deprive others.” (Idem, p. 71) The examples below illustrate that this definition of abundance does not take into account other aspects of produced goods. There are many nuances regarding the products: their quality, individual preferences, the environmental impact, ethical considerations, values inherent in a specific consumption pattern.

Consumption is not only about scarcity. Values are expressed by spending community money. One of Acorn’s principles in spending collective resources is that alcohol and cigarettes are bought with personal pocket money – a monthly allowance (so members can buy limited amount of these goods). An interviewee did not like the fact that once alcohol was bought with collective money to celebrate the completion of a project. Another example of this sort of reflection expressed by one of the interviewees is the proposition to count biking instead of using a car as part of labor quota. This would incite using less fuel, which is motivated by environmental considerations and not by saving money.

Food is also an issue of clashing values. Some members are vegan and the rest eats animal products. Both groups have broader reflection beyond the costs of food that are behind their choices. Vegans are motivated by the protection of animals. The carnivore camp envisions that with their diet community could gain a complete food autonomy. The community would not need to buy industrial products to replace animal products. This implies a withdrawal from the money system and the mainstream food system to counter socio-economic power relations. When aggregated, our food choices define the way the system of production is organized.

Spending collective resources to construct a new building or make similar major investment can also be a challenge to the concept of abundance. In Acorn, there were different opinions about what is the most cost-effective and the best way to construct a building. Certain individuals were more successful at getting their opinion implemented. Similar example was an investment into a machine. Some members consider machines as an additional cost with the need for maintenance that does not exceed much the gains of productivity. They are also afraid of being dependent because of the automation of work.

The definition of abundance could be also expanded to the availability of interesting work. One of the interviewees observed the scarcity of enjoyable jobs, not everyone gets to do the cool tasks such as those requiring creativity. Certainly, one could argue that if one wants to pursue some fulfilling activity, one is free to do so. However, usefulness and recognition constitutes part of work satisfaction. In Acorn, there are still some jobs that are necessary but much less attractive. For example, bringing garbage to the landfill is such a job. A person doing it found a way to make it more bearable by being accompanied by another communard. However, still this job is not the first choice. The sense of responsibility for less interesting jobs is different among members. Everyone has a different definition of what an interesting and meaningful activity is. Each activity is accompanied by an individual narrative and interpretation. For example, one of the members considered cleaning as his spiritual practice. Once more, abundance appears as something subjective.

Diverging preferences do not prevent Acorners from living together peacefully. In case of disagreements, many that I have interviewed work on themselves – trying to see the bigger picture like the advantages of staying together.

Abundance and personal development: what role is there for the community to play?

The perception of abundance evolves and can be learned or unlearned. One of the interviewees, originating from US middle class family, shared how her experiences of traveling to developing countries and living in Acorn community transformed her thinking about what one really needs in life in terms of material goods and comfort. Intentional communities in their present forms, namely with a very basic standard of living, can be venues of personal experimentation with abundance. Such an experimentation can be already undertaken in everyday life as the path of inner transformation and getting rid of compulsions that keep us in the current economic system.

If we agree that the perception of abundance is a result of inner work and learning processes, how would this translate into communal or societal practice? Let’s imagine such a situation: someone feels that to be happy, this particular thing is needed. Should the community agree and let the individual pursue it assuming that it takes time for someone to unlearn consumerist wants or rather establish conditions to re-think the want. This question is about the threshold. It is obvious that with the transformation of work, needs, conditioning and cultural context will change too.

Consumption can be chosen and changed but some consumption patterns require healing to be changed. Addictions can have many different forms that are related to consumption and patterns of behavior. Often omitted in the debates on addictions, even sugar or sweetness can be a powerful addiction leading to tooth decay, which results in the demand for dentistry (it defines what is produced). There are different theories about the causes of addictions. Bruce Anderson sees the causes of addictions in destruction of community and human connections caused by the capitalist system. Anne Wilson Schaef describes in her book “When Society Becomes an Addict” that the underlying cause of substance or behavioral addictions is the addiction to powerlessness and nonliving. Addictions serve the addicted to avoid confronting certain problems or shut down certain feelings. These are just two theories that illustrate how addictions reflect a deeper social problem rather than being an individual weakness or a matter of choice.

Acorn community’s way of dealing with addiction seems to be preventive exclusion. An interviewee mentioned that an alcoholic has been rejected in membership application. Living together with an addicted person may be challenging. It seems like this is one of the issues that communal initiatives need to study and prepare for.

The above examples illustrate defining abundance is difficult. There is no objective state of abundance. It is partly a result of inner work. The way to measure whether a community has reached the state of abundance would be to make a survey and prove that there is no frustration or lack in anybody. However, is it the aim of the society or community to never feel frustration? And if yes, what measures of working on our inner world or on our outer world would this involve?

Other articles on Acorn

Gajewska, Katarzyna (September 2016):  Egalitarian alternative to the US mainstream: study of Acorn community in Virginia, US. Bronislaw Magazine

Gajewska, Katarzyna (21 July 2016): An intentional egalitarian community as a small-scale implementation of Post-Capitalism, P2P Foundation Blog.

Gajewska, Katarzyna (10 January 2016): Case study: Creating use value while making a living in egalitarian communities. P2P Foundation Blog.

Gajewska, Katarzyna (27 December 2014): An intentional egalitarian community as a small-scale implementation of postcapitalist, peer production model of economy. Part I : Work as a spontanous, voluntary contribution. P2P Foundation Blog.

Photo by ellenm1

The post Exploring Abundance as future: Questions inspired by the experience of an egalitarian community, Acorn appeared first on P2P Foundation.

By way of background, the Communard Manifesto comes out of the Las Indias Cooperative Group, which is a real-world venture in establishing a phyle — a non-territorial networked economic support platform — of the kind that Las Indias’s David de Ugarte described theoretically in his 2009 book Phyles.

The word “phyle” itself comes from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, describing global networks that serve as support platforms for the local physical enclaves, and the enterprises within them, that constitute the nodes of the networks.

De Ugarte’s concept of the phyle also relies heavily on the concept of “neo-Venetianism” (a networked, non-territorial community with territorial member enclaves, providing various forms of support to local nodes). And like the medieval guilds of skilled trades, the phyle acts as a support platform for member enterprises and territorial enclaves. Examples might include low-interest credit and seed capital, training and certification, low-cost insurance (including against unemployment), legal services, cooperative joint purchasing and marketing, collaboration software, hostels for travelling members, and the like.

The Las Indias Group is, first of all, a community, with physical locations in Uruguay and Spain. Its economic activity — a direct outgrowth of its community life and fraternal relations — consists of a number of cooperative enterprises.

Like the Communist Manifesto of 168 years earlier, the Communard Manifesto begins by contrasting the revolutionary technologies of abundance with the social relations of production within which they are embedded. These social relations are riven with contradictions — inequality, unemployment, and social decomposition. Also like the Communist Manifesto, the Communard Manifesto‘s main concern is the path by which these revolutionary new forces of production will burst out of their capitalist integument and form the basis of a new post-capitalist society with social and economic forms consistent with abundance.

The forces of abundance include not only physical production technologies like micro-manufacturing, but new social means of organizing production — the hacker ethic, commons-based peer production, free information, and horizontal collaboration.

The old capitalist economic system is attempting to enclose this abundance as a source of rents. At the same time, the technologies of abundance are drastically reducing the need for productive labor, and thereby destroying wage and salaried labor as the means to earn sufficient purchasing power to consume naturally free or cheap goods at their monopoly prices. The attempt to impose artificial scarcity on abundance, for the profit of a few, leads to chronic underconsumption, unemployment and depression.

Unlike the Marxists — or at least the Old Left of the mass-production era — the authors of the Communard Manifesto do not see post-capitalist society as a logical extrapolation from large-scale production under capitalism. And it does not envision a transition based on direct assault by revolutionary parties based on the same principles of mass and scale as mid-20th century industrial capitalism.

Rather, the Communard Manifesto is in the same tradition as the autonomist work of Dyer-Witheford, Negri and Hardt (especially the latter two’s emphasis on “Exodus” in Commonwealth), Holloway’s How to Change the World Without Taking Power, and Mason’s Post-Capitalism. In the words of the Manifesto itself, “the new world will be born and affirmed inside the old.”

Profound changes in social and economic relationships—system changes—are not the product of revolutions and political changes. It happens the other way around: systemic political changes are the expression of new forms of social organizing, new values, and ways of working and living, that have reached enough maturity to be able to establish a broad social consensus. As of a certain point in development, a “competition between systems” is established. The new forms, until then valid only for a small minority, begin to seem to be the only ones capable of offering a better future for the large majority. Little by little, they expand their spectrum and their number, encompassing and transforming broader and broader social spaces, and become the center of the economy, reconfiguring the cultural, ideological, and legal basis of society from within.

As the technologies of abundance become cheaper, more accessible and smaller in scale, escape through building counter-institutions — Exodus — rather than attempting to conquer the institutional core of the old system becomes increasingly feasible

The appearance of new ways of producing based on new forms of communal property—like free software—and distributed communication architectures—linked directly to decommodification and the creation of abundance—put forth the notion that we are on the threshold of a new phase in which we will be able to change the nature of that competition between systems.

But, above all, what justifies a new time for the development of communitarianism is an irreversible economic change that has been imposed gradually: the reduction of the optimal scales of production. This decline in the optimal productive scale explains the deep trends that have produced the current economic crises, and why the political and corporate responses are often times counterproductive. And any alternative is not centered on social class or the nation, but on community.

The rapid decrease in optimal scale of production, and in necessary capital outlay for production, has led to a chronic economic crisis in which the enormous masses of accumulated investment capital are unable to find profitable outlets: “fewer new large industries that justify grandiose investments are appearing than in prior periods.” The neoliberal response of financializing markets and generating investment bubbles to soak up investment bubbles — a recurring theme in analyses by the Marxists at the Monthly Review Group since the 1980s — led to the Crash of 2008.

Instead, new technologies require very little in the way of capital outlay and are amenable to cooperative ownership by small-scale producers or local community control — thus rendering finance capital irrelevant.

We can group these new forms around two broad trends: the “P2P mode of production” and the “direct economy.” The P2P mode of production replicates the free software model in all kinds of industries where knowledge condensed into design, software, creativity, blueprints, etc., is central to the creation of value; and can accumulate in a “immaterial universal commons” that can be improved, reformed, and used in alternative ways for many kinds of different projects.

This multifunctionality of tools and value chains—which is what economists call “scope”— is the key to the direct conomy, a way of creating products created by small groups and launching them on global markets by using, on the one hand, low-cost, adaptable, external industrial chains and free software and, on the other, advance sales systems or collaborative financing.

That is, before our eyes, before and after the large financial crisis, a new kind of small-scale industry has developed, which is characterized by being global and by getting capital and credit outside the financial system, some in collaborative financing platforms, others announcing their own pre-sales and getting donations in exchange for merchandising. In fact, it’s an industry of “free” capital, which doesn’t have to give up ownership of the business to the owners of capital because, on the one hand, it reduces its needs by using publicly available technological tools, like free software, and on the other, obtaining the little capital it needs in the form of advance sales and donations.

Taken together, P2P production and the direct economy, two ways of substituting scale with scope, are the leading edge of a productive economy moving more and more quickly towards the reduction of scale. That makes them essential to understanding why communitarianism has a unique opportunity in the new century.

If there’s one point I take issue with, it would be the emphasis on production for the global economy by these small-scale manufacturers. Lean production is ideally suited to short supply chains with production directly geared to demand and collocated as closely to the point of consumption as technical efficiency permits. I believe the great majority of micro-manufacturing, in a post-capitalist economy, would be for neighborhood, community and regional markets rather than globalized supply chains.

Leaving that issue aside, the Communard Manifesto sees the transitional path as prefigurative: creating a demonstration effect of what’s feasible here and now — and thus leaves open the possibility for a rapid adoption curve during the phase transition.

Although we are still far from general abundance, we have a model of the production of abundance for intangible goods and innovation—the “P2P mode of production.” This, in turn, feeds a sector, the direct economy, that demonstrates enough productivity in the market to compete and beat the industry “from the outside,” without the help of over-scaled finance. That is, this new productive ecosystem is capable of competing and gaining ground against a giant that enjoys the advantage of extra-market rents, like customized regulations, grants, or patents. We’re talking about the same extra-market rents that multiplied with neoliberalism and which have produced the simultaneous erosion of state and market, which is to say, social decomposition. So, just to demonstrate that a productive alternative exists is already big news.

This social and productive space around the “new digital commons” or simply, the “commons,” is today’s equivalent of the first cities and markets of the medieval bourgeoisie, a space where new non-commercial social relationships appeared, and the new logic, together with signs of autonomy, begin to show a limited but direct impact on productivity. Throughout the lower Middle Ages, the bourgeoisie was able to drive those cities to turn them, first, into a big “urban workshop,” and later, into “municipal democracies.” A similar historical task, now with a society of abundance as the goal, is what lies ahead for communitarianism.

This is because this whole reduction of scales brings the optimum size of productive units ever closer to the community dimension, and therefore, points to community as the protagonist of a society of abundance.

So, much like Negri and Hardt in Commonwealth, the Communard Manifesto sees the new relations of production as coextensive with our communities and horizontal social relations, and capital as increasingly external and irrelevant to production.

In a capitalist economy, with technologies of abundance enclosed via “intellectual property” and other monopolies, abundance increases the profits of property holders while empoverishing everyone else. In a post-capialist economy, with such monopolies abolished and production controlled by the community, increased abundance benefits everyone by reducing the amount of labor time necessary for enjoying a given standard of living.

The general result will be an increase in our agency, and in our control over every aspect of our lives — a reintegration of our work into the rest of our social life, and reclamation of control over the pacing of work on the pattern that prevailed under pre-capitalist production by self-employed artisans and free peasants. Along with this will come an end to the scarcity mindset that pits us against one another, and the accompanying social authoritarianism. The tools of small-scale production will lead to a society much like that in Kropotkin’s vision, where the distinctions between town and countryside, and between head and hand work, disappear.

Developing this new society within the shell of the old entails expanding along phyle lines from existing nodes.

Egalitarian communities should undertake a path that allows them to go from the current model, based on the resistance and resilience of the “small community,” to another that starts from a large network of egalitarian and productive communities. We must feed the new sprouts, which are capable of maintaining themselves in the market, and at the same time, create more spaces of abundance and decommodification. Additionally, we need to take decommodification beyond our interior, and make it permeate all our surroundings. It’s time to begin the competition between systems.

A time is coming when we will have to learn to grow in many new ways: incorporating new members, incubating communities, teaching community techniques in neighborhoods, or creating popular universities of a new kind, that give tools for multispecialization.

We have to confront a gigantic problem created by over-scaling—from smallness, with smallness, and step by step. We have to use diversity and abundance to break out of the traps that a culture in decomposition tends to constantly fall into, which magnify defeatism, pessimism, and the idea of “every man for himself”. It’s not going to be a stroll through a rose garden, and we’re certainly not going to be able to make headway without encountering serious resistance.

Photo by //lucylu

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This is the third part of a series that presents egalitarian communities, mainly Acorn community in Virginia, to shed some light on the way that the postcapitalist mode of production in the physical world could work. It should be noted that the opinions presented here are not necessarily those of the founders or members of the community where I have done research. I interpret my findings with regard to their significance for this economic change and their reflection on the postcapitalist mode of production. Acorn community does not define itself as a peer production project so the following analysis is not an evaluation of the implementation of peer production theory into practice. It is instead an extrapolation from their practice to how peer production organizations in the physical world could operate in the current system and in the future.

The term peer production refers to various ways of organizing production that are distinct from the state and market logics. The main characteristics of this form of production are: 1) Self-selected spontaneous contribution of participants in the production process;{1} 2) creation of use value rather than exchange or market value, which results in free access to public goods; {2} 3) non-delegation and distributed coordination, in contrast to hierarchical state and market providers. The first article of this three-part series focused on the consequences of self-selected spontaneous contribution as a model of organizing work and the second one presented a model of producing the use value despite the necessity to survive in the capitalist system. In this article, I will examine how the principles of non-delegation and distributed coordination can be translated in the reality of the physical world. Clearly, there are some elements of Acorn’s governance that resemble this model.

Non-delegation and distributed coordination

Peer production organizations operate beyond the principle of delegation, which contrasts with hierarchical state and market providers. Peer production can create nonrepresentational democratic structures. The way the governance is organized in p2p projects has been studied, mainly based on the examples of online peer production and hacker spaces. The question of authority and the mechanisms of control and influence has been in the center of scholarly attention{3}.

Acorn community is an example of a peer production model where the majority of the decisions and execution of the decisions is based on non-delegation and decentralized coordination. In contrast to other examples of peer production, the decisions and the way of functioning of the community affects the lives of the members. In other cases of peer production, volunteering constitutes a small part of volunteers’ lives and does not affect their life conditions. Therefore, studying this example may help to imagine a system where peer production is the dominant mode of production.

During the weekly meetings, community inhabitants propose changes to the life and organization of the community. Issues that affect diverse aspects of community life are discussed. Every member must agree to a proposal for it to be passed, or a compromise must be made that everyone is comfortable with. Full members may block proposals.

Non-delegation implies that there is a small number of fixed rules. The decision making and rules are conversation-based and changeable. One of the rules is the 42-hour weekly labor quota (I wrote about it more in the first post). There are some rules for the counting of one’s working hours (although the accounting is almost purely for personal use as no one requests the report). The community has defined such activities as going to a doctor and exercising for up to two hours per week as labor-creditable. However, some of my interviewees considered the labor quota to be simply a measure to avoid exhaustion. One of the interviewees said that probably a case of physical violence would lead to expulsion but even this is not certain. It would be dealt with during a meeting.

Because of the non-delegation principle, it is impossible to use authority in order to enforce someone’s work contribution and choices. Therefore, members sometimes utilize other means of influence, such as indirect pressure or strike. If certain work is needed for which a specific person has skills, such as reparation of a device, they may feel pressure to do it without being ordered to do it explicitly. Being asked to step in is often enough of a motivation to pursue a task even if it would not be this person’s first choice. Another way of enforcing work contribution is giving up a task with which one feels overwhelmed and wait until other people find it necessary to step in. Or not.

Abundance and redistribution as governance model

David de Ugarte outlines in a post on June 8, 2015, a vision for a community where abundance solves the problems related to decision making on redistribution. By avoiding the conflicts over the use of resources, the need for collective decision making is reduced.
“That is, where one person’s decision does not drastically reduce others’ possible choices, the sphere of the decision should be personal, not collective. Collective choices, democratic methods and voting are ways of managing situations where, more or less explicitly, there is a conflict in the use of resources. They are a “last resort” imposed by scarcity. The point is to avoid, as much as possible, the homogenization that they involve.”

Indeed, collective decision making may consume a lot of time and life energy. One interviewee mentioned that someone’s membership had probably been refused because this person’s personality would imply spending a lot of time on decision-making and discussions. It is not clear whether this was the only reason to exclude this person but mentioning this example shows that members are wary of spending too much time on decision making.

The question about how resources are redistributed in the communities popped up quite frequently when I presented the experience to people curious about the community. For instance, someone asked what if someone eats a lot. Remembering how much food was composted during my stay at the Acorn, I could not imagine that this could be an issue. However, there are latent conflicts over food in the community. Some people are vegetarian or vegan, so they need an accommodation in their menu. There is a consensus that every day a vegan option should be prepared by the cook. For example, the community buys or produces animal products and buys beans to accommodate vegetarians. Some, however, would like the community to be completely self-sufficient and use home-grown animal products rather than buy vegan meat replacements.

The community has not yet arrived at a stage where money is not an issue. There is still a perception that some spending is made at the expense of other possible spending. The way money is spent is a source of discontent for many members that I interviewed. Some wished that certain investments in infrastructure and production tools had not been undertaken. One of the members said that this type of “collective” decision may cause temporary disengagement and frustration but in such moments, he considers what he has: he does not want to have an apartment and a job, so putting up with some decisions is a fair trade off for this comfort.

Voting with hands and feet

Operating with minimum delegation or non-delegation implies that governance is produced in either daily actions or big ruptures. I call it a system of voting with hands or feet.

Voting with hands: Acorn’s members have contrasting views on the extent to which the community should participate in the money economy. While there is a consensus that the community needs to run the enterprise, there is a difference of opinion whether their subsistence should be financed by money or whether the community should engage in self-sufficiency. The members that prefer to limit dependence on money can decide to work less for the enterprise and more for achieving autonomy. For instance, one of the members who deals a lot with food defines the creation of food autonomy for the community as one of the main objectives of his work. Since there are enough volunteers who want to care for animals, the community can produce their own animal food. In this way, people can vote by their choice of activities on where the community is going.

Voting with hands has an impact on the way the community operates, so it can be considered as a decentralized decision making system. A story of a “policeman on strike” can illustrate this point. The community used to have a system of controlling expenses. Someone was “appointed” for the position of an accountant to check the expenses. This person did not enjoy the role of “policeman” and gave up this task. Since no one took over the position, in the end, the expenses are noted by everyone using the community’s money and are accessible for review. A system of transparent decentralized control has emerged. However, voting with hands can cause some animosities, which the example of one member changing the website without anyone else’s permission illustrates.

Voting with feet: Long term frustration may evolve into bringing a new community into being. For instance, some members of Twin Oaks community did not like the structured labor system in there, so they started Acorn to accommodate their more anarchist leanings. Living Energy Farm, a radically environmental community that is being created in the vicinity of these two communities is a response to frustrations about the use of resources in these communities. Voting with feet looks easy on paper but it may be preceded by longish frustration for both those leaving and the ones who stay in a community. Some Acorners told me about a group of members that used to live in the community and then left. They were close together and made well-elaborated proposals that were probably discussed among them. The rest had an impression of being dominated.

The inner transformation for a non-delegation democracy

One of my interviewees described what the governance and work organization implies for the members in emotional and psychological terms. Sometimes it may feel lonely to be the only person caring about certain work domain or project that he committed to. Since there is no way of forcing people to be more interested, he needs to make efforts to promote what he cares about. It takes systematic work and engagement to build up a reputation that gives one more influence and support for one’s project. The non-hierarchical relations imply a lot of self-responsibility but also a feeling of empowerment. There is always a recourse and possibility to intervene. Dealing with difficulties requires more dialogue – more taking into consideration the other side. Non-hierarchy stimulates personal development.

Endnotes

{1} Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Expanded Edition (London: Athlantic Books, 2008), 36. Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (Random House, 2002).
{2} Michel Bauwens and Sussan Rémi, Le peer to peer : nouvelle formation sociale, nouveau modèle civilisationnel, Revue du MAUSS, 2005/2 no 26, p. 193-210.
{3} Mathieu O’Neil, Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes ( London: Pluto Press, 2009); Mathieu O’Neil,, ‘Hacking Weber: legitimacy, critique, and trust in peer production’, Information, Communication and Society, 2014, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 872-888; Kostakis, V., Niaros, V. & Giotitsas, C., Production and governance in hackerspaces: A manifestation of Commons-based peer production in the physical realm?, International Journal of Cultural Studies, February 2014, vol. 13, pp. 1-19.

What is Acorn community?

Acorn community is a farm based, egalitarian, income-sharing, secular, anarchist, feminist, consensus-based intentional community of around 32 folks, based in Mineral, Virginia. It was founded in 1993 by former members of neighboring Twin Oaks community. To make their living, they operate an heirloom and organic seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (“SESE”), which tests seeds in the local climate and provides customers with advice on growing their own plants and reproducing seeds. Acorn is affiliated to the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, a US network of intentional communities that commit to holding in common their land, labor, resources, and income among community members.

Information on sources

I spent three weeks in August 2014 at Acorn community in Virginia where I conducted interviews with 15 inhabitants of this community (accounting for about half of the membership). The interviews will be used in my book analyzing a scenario of a postcapitalist mode of production from a personal perspective. It will be published in Creative Commons license. My research trip has been co-financed by a Goteo crowdfunding campaign. Some inspiration comes from four public meetings with a member of East Wind community, which I organized in October 2014, in Strasbourg, France. In total, 47 people participated in these events.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my interviewees, Couchsurfing hosts, and Acorn community for their hospitality and their time. The following people have contributed to the Goteo crowdfunding campaign: pixocode, Daycoin Project, Olivier, Paul Wuersig, María, Julian Canaves. I would like to express my gratitude to these and eight other co-financers. I would like to thank for the editing and suggestions from GPaul Blundell, communard of Acorn, instigating organizer of Point A DC.

About the Author

Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent writer interested in wellbeing, alternative economy, food politics, and other issues. She focuses on personal and daily life in order to stimulate collective imagination and democratic debate.

For updates on my publications, you can check my Facebook page or send me an e-mail to the address to get updates by e-mail: k.gajewska_comm AT zoho.com

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“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment … all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The House of the Dead

I observe a lot of suffering related to senseless work. David Graeber describes the entire system of “bullshit” jobs that causes emotional suffering. The quest for sense and usefulness has attracted many to peer production projects and to intentional communities. It is one of the elements of the postcapitalist mode of production to enable people to contribute in a meaningful way, to produce use value.

In this article, I will present egalitarian communities, mainly Acorn community in Virginia to examine whether the postcapitalist mode of production in the physical world can be introduced by establishing intentional communities. It should be noted that the opinions presented here are not necessary those of the founders or members of the community where I have done research. I interpret my findings with regard to their significance for imagining the postcapitalist mode of production. Acorn community does not define itself as a peer production project so the following analysis is not an evaluation of the implementation of peer production theory into practice. It is instead an extrapolation from the practice to how peer production organizations in the physical world could operate in the current system and in the future. The main characteristics of this form of production are: 1) Self-selected spontaneous contribution of participants in the production process;{1} 2) creation of use value rather than exchange or market value, which results in free access to public goods; {2} 3) non-delegation and distributed coordination, in contrast to hierarchical state and market providers. The first article of this four-part series focused on the consequences of self-selected spontaneous contribution as a model of organizing production.

In this article, I will examine how producing use value can be translated into production in the physical world in the context of the constraints imposed by the capitalist system. I will describe how structuring production via intentional communities can generate use value at different scales: for members, for the communities movement, and for society at large. I also explore how the production of use value can be accomodated within the necessity to make a living in the present system and what role communities can play in the transition towards a system where work/working produces use value rather than exchange value? How to navigate the pressure to make a living? – this is the dilemma of many in the peer-to-peer movement. Some have already contributed to this subject: Las Indias in their blog post on the fear of selling out or Lars Zimmermann in his post on Sensorica. I hope that the examples described below will widen the range of possibilities that can be imagined.

The main tenet of the peer production model is that one’s self-selected contribution is motivated by the opportunity to pursue public interest. There is no expectation of reciprocity (access is not dependent on involvement in the production process) and the results are distributed for free. {3} According to Benkler and Nissenbaum, peer production is based on and will inculcate a new set of virtues such as self-selection and volunteerism, gift culture, and the will to contribute to a broader community. {4} Currently, most of the peer production projects in which use value is created in the form of open source and open access products results from the involvement of peers who have other sources of income than their involvement in peer production. However, the motivation behind the contribution to open source projects may be also influenced by the fact that many peers can expect a postponed monetary reward because their participation in digital peer production builds their reputation in the domain of software development. Skills development can be another reward. As long as remunerated work is necessary to sustain public benefit work, it will be difficult to see a pure example of peer production in which peers are solely motivated by the production of use value. Ignoring the material bases of survival for the contributors in a peer production project may have dangerous consequences for the entire project because it may induce motivations to overtake the project by its most active contributors. Therefore, organization models that make the for benefit contribution sustainable and meet the logic of survival are interesting to explore.

Acorn Community sustains its roughly 30 members through operating an heirloom and organic seed distribution business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (“SESE”), and through subsistence agriculture. The enterprise is an interesting example that integrates profit making into the production of use value.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the contribution to production is not entirely spontaneous because the members are obliged to meet 42-hour labor quota and because some members may resent people that do not contribute and consequently make it difficult for a free-rider to feel socially integrated. Therefore, the work in the community, especially within the labor quota, is motivated by self-interest, although less strictly than in the classical employment system. My interviewees mentioned that escaping the stress and anxieties of having a job in the capitalist system and sufferings related to having a boss and pursuing senseless activities were one of their main motivations for joining the community. Other individual motivations were to be able to live a healthier life and be part of a community. Many interviewees mentioned that their involvement is part of their pursuit of the struggle against capitalism. As one of them, a former environmental political campaigner, put it, he decided to shift from oppositional to propositional action. Many members see their lifestyle as an experiment that may inspire society to change. One needs to take a selection bias into account, though. The 15 individuals that I have interviewed may have agreed to be interviewed because they consider participating in the community a way of inciting a broader change. Therefore my project of spreading information and further analysis may correspond to their vision and motivation to participate in the community.

Acorn’s members do not receive a salary but rather are granted unconditional access to all the resources and services produced by the members and made available according to their needs (except for tobacco and alcohol). This is supplemented by a small monthly stipend that can cover needs that are not met by the community. All members have the same position in the community. This is one of the reasons why the community calls itself egalitarian. The enterprise produces use value by redistributing its income to all members of the community, even those who do not play a major role in the success of the business in a monetary sense, as is the case in the capitalist mode of production. Although I have not interviewed anyone who does not work for the business at all, in theory it is possible to do only domestic jobs, grow food for the community, and engage in other subsistence-related activities to fulfill one’s labor quota. Since there is no special reward for individual effort or skills, one can define their work as being closer to work for benefit rather than for profit. The system resembles what one could imagine as an advanced form of an unconditional basic income at a group scale with two modifications:

1) Access is conditional on overall conformity with the labor quota (some proponents of an unconditional basic income also are in favor of a social contribution quota).
2) In contrast to a monetary transfer, the same for everyone, almost all goods and services are freely available to all members. Actual consumption varies widely between individuals. The model looks similar to free public services. {5}

This model can be an inspiration in the discussion and imagining of how the production of use value could be imagined at a broader national scale.

Acorn business model: integrating exchange and use value

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, the enterprise run by Acorn community, is an example of how a profit making enterprise can produce a use value. The enterprise sells heirloom seeds and provides services helping gardeners grow and preserve them for the next season. They work with about 60 farms that produce seed for them, which they test for good germination, weigh out, and sell or freezefor future use. The seeds are chosen according to their reproduction potential, by which we mean that gardeners can reproduce seeds from the harvest instead of buying them every season. The enterprise conducts and publishes research on the varieties so that customers take less risks when planting them. The orientation on reproducibility of seeds and increasing food autonomy is certainly an alternative to the major seed distributors who have an interest in generating dependency on their seeds. Instead of creating dependency on their seeds, the enterprise focuses on widening their selection, currently having about 700 varieties in stock. As a result, its promotional activities increase the biodiversity in the region.
One can compare the business model to an open hardware initiative. Expertise and a product that can be reproduced are provided to the customers. However, the customer needs to pay for the material part of the product. This model, being very locally oriented, could be implemented by other enterprises. The promotion of heirloom seeds that is a part of the enterprise’s activity can have broader impact on the environment in the local area.

Benevolent investment: earn money to change the world

The profits from the business are invested in projects that have broader social change as an objective. The material and human resources of this thriving enterprise are invested in the replication of the model in different settings. It distinguishes them from charity funding, which often is oriented on short-term goals instead of sustainable structures that would improve quality of life. Examples of investments include expanding the infrastructure of the community and helping other communities expand creating a complementary network of egalitarian communities which have developed an internal system of labour exchange. One current initiative, PointA, which wants to bring the community-organization to urban areas and benefit from urban-rural exchanges illustrates how the community’s resources can serve to increase autonomy from market forces through sharing and exchanging.

Producing exchange value and participating in the market system may actually contribute to the sustainability of the communities, making more use value production possible. A member of East Wind community in Missouri, which runs an enterprise producing peanut butter, observed that the authorities probably do not bother the community because the enterprise is one of the major taxpayers in the locality.
One of my interviewees thinks that a complete withdrawal from the money system would be the ideal final stage in the intentional community movement because as long as the community takes part in money exchanges this sustains the system. Instead, by operating on “zero dollars” and by setting an example, undermining “faith in money” would contribute to its end. Certainly, this long term vision can be achieved by creating prefigurative practices of postcapitalist modes of production. Participation in them, despite being sometimes motivated by the advantages to one’s quality of life and not necessarily the pursuit of a social change, may be an opportunity to inculcate non-hierarchical organizationalstyles and develop skills needed to live outside of the employment system.

Communities may use their resources to have an impact on society outside their network. For example, Acorn has been involved in a lawsuit against Monsanto. The Midden, an urban egalitarian community in Columbus, Ohio, enables its members’ political involvement by sharing their resources and decreasing their costs of living. A member of East Wind community (another egalitarian community located in Missouri) would like to help the local town next to his community become a place where food is grown in public spaces and accessible to all. For this purpose, the community can donate seeds and help in setting up the initiative.

The same person wanted to become a biologist before joining East Wind community but he dropped out of his studies. Now he works on experiments with aquaponics and growing trees. It is a way of continuing his passion outside of the rigidities of science funding and the limitations imposed on researchers in academia (check, for example, the writings by David Graeber). Since the labour quota in this community is 35 hours a week and includes varied activities, some time and energy may still be left for pursuing passions and creating a use value.
Securing basic needs and freeing time for useful activities by organizing into intentional communities may be a response to the dilemma that the p2p movement is facing. When the contribution is directly linked to profit, this may influence the motivation and produce other disadvantages to the final product (see Zimmermann’s post). However, the movement needs to address the subsistence problem if it wants to thrive. So by rearranging the mode of production, the communities may be places for producing knowledge and science to develop more autonomy. That may be their transitional role.

Endnotes
{1} Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Expanded Edition (London: Athlantic Books, 2008), 36. Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (Random House, 2002).
{2} Michel Bauwens and Sussan Rémi, Le peer to peer : nouvelle formation sociale, nouveau modèle civilisationnel, Revue du MAUSS, 2005/2 no 26, p. 193-210.
{3} Lakhani, Karim R.; Robert G. Wolf (2005): Why Hackers Do What They Do. In: Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, Karim R. Lakhani (eds.), Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Michel Bauwens and Sussan Rémi, Le peer to peer : nouvelle formation sociale, nouveau modèle civilisationnel, Revue du MAUSS, 2005/2 no 26, p. 193-210.
{4} Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum, “Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (December 2006): 394-419.
{5} I appreciate the comment of GPaul Blundell that helped me see the distinctions more clearly. The definition of public services in the model of unconditional basic income is one of the problems to be solved by the movement.

What is Acorn community?

Acorn community is a farm based, egalitarian, income-sharing, secular, anarchist, feminist, consensus-based intentional community of around 32 folks, based in Mineral, Virginia. It was founded in 1993 by former members of neighboring Twin Oaks community. To make their living, they operate an heirloom and organic seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (“SESE”), which tests seeds in the local climate and provides customers with advice on growing their own plants and reproducing seeds. Acorn is affiliated to the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, a US network of intentional communities that commit to holding in common their land, labor, resources, and income among community members.

Information on sources

I spent three weeks in August 2014 at Acorn community in Virginia where I conducted interviews with 15 inhabitants of this community (accounting for about half of the membership). The interviews will be used in my book analyzing a scenario of a postcapitalist mode of production from a personal perspective. It will be published in Creative Commons license. My research trip has been co-financed by a Goteo crowdfunding campaign. Some inspiration comes from four public meetings with a member of East Wind community, which I organized in October 2014, in Strasbourg, France. In total, 47 people participated in these events.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my interviewees, Couchsurfing hosts, and Acorn community for their hospitality and their time. The following people have contributed to the Goteo crowdfunding campaign: pixocode, Daycoin Project, Olivier, Paul Wuersig, María, Julian Canaves. I would like to express my gratitude to these and eight other co-financers. I would like to thank for the editing and suggestions from GPaul Blundell, communard of Acorn, instigating organizer of Point A DC.

Further publications

Another article on a Montreal-based enterprise where I conducted interviews for the book in progress can be found here: “There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montreal students commoning and peering food services.”A longer article on the same enterprise is published by a closed-access academic journal. Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer Production and Prosumerism as a Model for the Future Organization of General Interest Services Provision in Developed Countries Examples of Food Services Collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39.

Please, do not hesitate to ask me for an electronic version at the address: k.gajewska_comm AT zoho.com

I have also published other articles related to peer production and unconditional basic income:

Gajewska, Katarzyna, “Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest,” Journal of Evolution and Technology.

Gajewska, Katarzyna, “How Basic Income Will Transform Active Citizenship? A Scenario of Political Participation beyond Delegation,” Paper for 15th International Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network, June 27th to 29th, 2014, Montreal, Québec.

About the Author

Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent (unpaid) writer and social activist. In her book in progress, she explores potential psychological consequences of transformation towards a postcapitalist mode of production in the physical world. Formerly an academic (precarious) researcher, she builds upon her scientific background in industrial relations and political science and incorporates other lenses in the analysis of a scenario of a potential future. She focuses on personal and daily life in order to stimulate collective imagination and democratic debate.

For updates on my publications, you can check my Facebook page or send me an e-mail to the address to get updates by e-mail: k.gajewska_comm AT zoho.com

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