Last week, Katherine Maher, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, published a rather surprising article on the Wired site entitled: “Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia”. The starting point of her reasoning was to point out that Wikipedia content is increasingly being used by digital giants, such as Facebook or Google:

You may not realise how ubiquitous Wikipedia is in your everyday life, but its open, collaboratively-curated data is used across semantic, search and structured data platforms  on the web. Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Home source Wikipedia articles for general knowledge questions; Google’s knowledge panel features Wikipedia content for snippets and essential facts; Quora contributes to and utilises the Wikidata open data project to connect topics and improve user recommendations.

More recently, YouTube and Facebook have turned to Wikipedia for a new reason: to address their issues around fake news and conspiracy theories. YouTube said that they would begin linking to Wikipedia articles from conspiracy videos, in order to give users additional – often corrective – information about the topic of the video. And Facebook rolled out a feature using Wikipedia’s content to give users more information about the publication source of articles appearing in their feeds.

With Wikipedia being solicited more and more by these big players, Katherine Maher believes that they should contribute in return to help the project to guarantee its sustainability:

But this work isn’t free. If Wikipedia is being asked to help hold back the ugliest parts of the internet, from conspiracy theories to propaganda, then the commons needs sustained, long-term support – and that support should come from those with the biggest monetary stake in the health of our shared digital networks.

The companies which rely on the standards we develop, the libraries we maintain, and the knowledge we curate should invest back. And they should do so with significant, long-term commitments that are commensurate with our value we create. After all, it’s good business: the long-term stability of the commons means we’ll be around for continued use for many years to come.

As the non-profits that make the internet possible, we already know how to advocate for our values. We shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for our value.

An image that makes fun of a famous quote by Bill Gates who had described the Linux project as “communist”. But today, it is Capital that produces or recovers digital Commons – starting with Linux – and maybe that shouldn’t make us laugh..

Digital commons: the problem of sustainability

There is something strange about the director of the Wikimedia Foundation saying this kind of thing. Wikipedia is in fact a project anchored in the philosophy of Free Software and placed under a license (CC-BY-SA) that allows commercial reuse, without discriminating between small and large players. The “SA”, for Share Alike, implies that derivative works made from Wikipedia content are licensed under the same license, but does not prohibit commercial reuse. For Wikidata data, things go even further since this project is licensed under CC0 and does not impose any conditions on reuse, not even mentioning the source.

So, if we stick strictly to the legal plan, players like Facebook or Google are entitled to draw from the content and data of Wikimedia projects to reuse them for their own purposes, without having to contribute financially in return. If they do, it can only be on a purely voluntary basis and that is the only thing Katherine Maher can hope for with her platform: that these companies become patrons by donating money to the Wikimedia Foundation. Google has already done so in the past, with a donation of $2 million in 2010 and another $1 million last year. Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google have also put in place a policy whereby these companies pledge to pay the Wikimedia Foundation the same amount as their individual employees donate.

Should digital giants do more and significantly address the long-term sustainability of the Digital Commons that Wikipedia represents? This question refers to reciprocity for the Commons, which is both absolutely essential and very ambivalent. If we broaden the perspective to free software, it is clear that these Commons have become an essential infrastructure without which the Internet could no longer function today (90% of the world’s servers run on Linux, 25% of websites use WordPress, etc.) But many of these projects suffer from maintenance and financing problems, because their development depends on communities whose means are unrelated to the size of the resources they make available to the whole world. This is shown very well in the book, “What are our digital infrastructures based on? The invisible work of web makers”, by Nadia Eghbal:

Today, almost all commonly used software depends on open source code, created and maintained by communities of developers and other talents. This code can be taken up, modified and used by anyone, company or individual, to create their own software. Shared, this code thus constitutes the digital infrastructure of today’s society…whose foundations threaten, however, to yield under demand!

Indeed, in a world governed by technology, whether Fortune 500 companies, governments, large software companies or startups, we are increasing the burden on those who produce and maintain this shared infrastructure. However, as these communities are quite discreet, it has taken a long time for users to become aware of this.

Like physical infrastructure, however, digital infrastructure requires regular maintenance and servicing. Faced with unprecedented demand, if we do not support this infrastructure, the consequences will be many.

This situation corresponds to a form of tragedy of the Commons, but of a different nature from that which can strike material resources. Indeed, intangible resources, such as software or data, cannot by definition be over-exploited and they even increase in value as they are used more and more. But tragedy can strike the communities that participate in the development and maintenance of these digital commons. When the core of individual contributors shrinks and their strengths are exhausted, information resources lose quality and can eventually wither away.

The progression of the “Capital Commons”

Market players are well aware of this problem, and when their activity depends on a Digital Commons, they usually end up contributing to its maintenance in return. The best known example of this is Linux software, often correctly cited as one of the most beautiful achievements of FOSS. As the cornerstone of the digital environment, the Linux operating system was eventually integrated into the strategies of large companies such as IBM, Samsung, Intel, RedHat, Oracle and many others (including today Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook). Originally developed as a community project based on contributions from volunteer developers, Linux has profoundly changed in nature over time. Today, more than 90% of the contributions to the software are made by professional developers, paid by companies. The Tragedy of the Commons “by exhaustion” that threatens many Open Source projects has therefore been averted with regard to Linux, but only by “re-internalizing” contributors in the form of employees (a movement that is symmetrically opposite to that of uberization).

Main contributors to Linux in 2017. Individual volunteer contributors (none) now represent only 7.7% of project participants…

However, this situation is sometimes denounced as a degeneration of contributing projects that, over time, would become “Commons of capital” or “pseudo-Commons of capital”. For example, as Christian Laval explained in a forum:

Large companies create communities of users or consumers to obtain opinions, opinions, suggestions and technical improvements. This is what we call the “pseudo-commons of capital”. Capital is capable of organizing forms of cooperation and sharing for its benefit. In a way, this is indirect and paradoxical proof of the fertility of the common, of its creative and productive capacity. It is a bit the same thing that allowed industrial take-off in the 19th century, when capitalism organised workers’ cooperation in factories and exploited it to its advantage.

If this criticism can quite legitimately be addressed to actors like Uber or AirBnB who divert and capture collaborative dynamics for their own interests, it is more difficult to formulate against a project like Linux. Because large companies that contribute to software development via their employees have not changed the license (GNU-GPL) under which the resource is placed, they can never claim exclusivity. This would call into question the shared usage rights allowing any actor, commercial or not, to use Linux. Thus, there is literally no appropriation of the Common or return to enclosure, even if the use of the software by these companies participates in the accumulation of Capital.

On the other hand, it is obvious that a project which depends more than 90% on the contributions of salaried developers working for large companies is no longer “self-governed” as understood in Commons theory. Admittedly, project governance always formally belongs to the community of developers relying on the Linux Foundation, but you can imagine that the weight of the corporations’ interests must be felt, if only through the ties of subordination weighing on salaried developers. This structural state of economic dependence on these firms does make Linux a “common capital”, although not completely captured and retaining a certain relative autonomy.

How to guarantee the independence of digital Commons?

For a project like Wikipedia, things would probably be different if firms like Google or Facebook answered the call launched by Katherine Maher. The Wikipedia community has strict rules in place regarding paid contributions, which means that you would probably never see 90% of the content produced by employees. Company contributions would likely be in the form of cash payments to the Wikimedia Foundation. However, economic dependence would be no less strong; until now, Wikipedia has ensured its independence basically by relying on individual donations to cover the costs associated with maintaining the project’s infrastructure. This economic dependence would no doubt quickly become a political dependence – which, by the way, the Wikimedia Foundation has already been criticised for, regarding a large number of personalities with direct or indirect links with Google included on its board, to the point of generating strong tensions with the community. The Mozilla Foundation, behind the Firefox browser, has sometimes received similar criticism. Their dependence on Google funding may have attracted rather virulent reproach and doubts about some of its strategic choices.

In the end, this question of the digital Commons’ state of economic dependence is relatively widespread. There are, in reality, very few free projects having reached a significant scale that have not become more or less “Capital Commons”. This progressive satellite-isation is likely to be further exacerbated by the fact that free software communities have placed themselves in a fragile situation by coordinating with infrastructures that can easily be captured by Capital. This is precisely what just happened with Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub. Some may have welcomed the fact that this acquisition reflected a real evolution of Microsoft’s strategy towards Open Source, even that it could be a sign that “free software has won”, as we sometimes hear.

Microsoft was already the firm that devotes the most salaried jobs to Open Source software development (ahead of Facebook…)

But, we can seriously doubt it. Although free software has acquired an infrastructural dimension today – to the point that even a landmark player in proprietary software like Microsoft can no longer ignore it – the developer communities still lack the means of their independence, whether individually (developers employed by large companies are in the majority) or collectively (a lot of free software depends on centralized platforms like GitHub for development). Paradoxically, Microsoft has taken seriously Platform Cooperativism’s watchwords, which emphasize the importance of becoming the owner of the means of production in the digital environment in order to be able to create real alternatives. Over time, Microsoft has become one of the main users of GitHub for developing its own code; logically, it bought the platform to become its master. Meanwhile – and this is something of a grating irony – Trebor Scholz – one of the initiators, along with Nathan Schneider, of the Platform Cooperativism movement – has accepted one million dollars in funding from Google to develop his projects. This amounts to immediately making oneself dependent on one of the main actors of surveillance capitalism, seriously compromising any hope of building real alternatives.

One may wonder if Microsoft has not better understood the principles of Platform Cooperativism than Trebor Scholtz himself, who is its creator!

For now, Wikipedia’s infrastructure is solidly resilient, because the Wikimedia Foundation only manages the servers that host the collaborative encyclopedia’s contents. They have no title to them, because of the free license under which they are placed. GitHub could be bought because it was a classic commercial enterprise, whereas the Wikimedia Foundation would not be able to resell itself, even if players like Google or Apple made an offer. The fact remains that Katherine Maher’s appeal for Google or Facebook funding risks weakening Wikipedia more than anything else, and I find it difficult to see something positive for the Commons. In a way, I would even say that this kind of discourse contributes to the gradual dilution of the notion of Commons that we sometimes see today. We saw it recently with the “Tech For Good” summit organized in Paris by Emmanuel Macron, where actors like Facebook and Uber were invited to discuss their contribution “to the common good”. In the end, this approach is not so different from Katherine Maher’s, who asks that Facebook or Google participate in financing the Wikipedia project, while in no way being able to impose it on them. In both cases, what is very disturbing is that we are regressing to the era of industrial paternalism, as it was at the end of the 19th century, when the big capitalists launched “good works” on a purely voluntary basis to compensate for the human and social damage caused by an unbridled market economy through philanthropy.

Making it possible to impose reciprocity for the Commons on Capital

The Commons are doomed to become nothing more than “Commons of Capital” if they do not give themselves the means to reproduce autonomously without depending on the calculated generosity of large companies who will always find a way to instrumentalize and void them of their capacity to constitute a real alternative. An association like Framasoft has clearly understood that after its program “Dégooglisons Internet”, aimed at creating tools to enable Internet users to break their dependence on GAFAMs, has continued with the Contributopia campaign. This aims to raise public awareness of the need to create a contribution ecosystem that guarantees conditions of long-term sustainability for both individual contributors and collective projects. This is visible now, for example, with the participatory fundraising campaign organized to boost the development of PeerTube, a software allowing the implementation of a distributed architecture for video distribution that could eventually constitute a credible alternative to YouTube.

But with all due respect to Framasoft, it seems to me that the classic “libriste” (free culture activist) approach remains mired in serious contradictions, of which Katherine Maher’s article is also a manifestation. How can we launch a programme such as “Internet Negotiations” that thrashes the model of Surveillance Capitalism, and at the same time continue to defend licences that do not discriminate according to the nature of the actors who reuse resources developed by communities as common goods? There is a schizophrenia here due to a certain form of blindness that has always marked the philosophy of the Libre regarding its apprehension of economic issues. This in turn explains Katherine Maher’s – partly understandable – uneasiness at seeing Wikipedia’s content and data reused by players like Facebook or Google who are at the origin of the centralization and commodification of the Internet.

To escape these increasingly problematic contradictions, we must give ourselves the means to defend the digital Commons sphere on a firmer basis than free licenses allow today. This is what actors who promote “enhanced reciprocity licensing” are trying to achieve, which would prohibit lucrative commercial entities from reusing common resources, or impose funding on them in return. We see this type of proposal in a project like CoopCycle for example, an alternative to Deliveroo; or Uber Eats, which refuses to allow its software to be reused by commercial entities that do not respect the social values it stands for. The aim of this new approach, defended in particular by Michel Bauwens, is to protect an “Economy of the Commons” by enabling it to defend its economic independence and prevent it from gradually being colonised and recovered into “Commons of Capital”.

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With a project like CHATONS, an actor like Framasoft is no longer so far from embracing such an approach, because to develop its network of alternative hosts, a charter has been drawn up including conditions relating to the social purpose of the companies participating in the operation. It is a first step in the reconciliation between the Free and the SSE, also taking shape through a project like “Plateformes en Communs”, aiming to create a coalition of actors that recognize themselves in both Platform Cooperativism and the Commons. There has to be a way to make these reconciliations stronger, and lead to a clarification of the contradictions still affecting Free Software.

Make no mistake: I am not saying that players like Facebook or Google should not pay to participate in the development of free projects. But unlike Katherine Maher, I think that this should not be done on a voluntary basis, because these donations will only reinforce the power of the large centralized platforms by hastening the transformation of the digital Commons into “Capital Commons”. If Google and Facebook are to pay, they must be obliged to do so, just as industrial capitalists have come to be obliged to contribute to the financing of the social state through compulsory contributions. This model must be reinvented today, and we could imagine states – or better still the European Union – subjecting major platforms to taxation in order to finance a social right to the contribution open to individuals. It would be a step towards this “society of contribution” Framasoft calls for, by giving itself the means to create one beyond surveillance capitalism, which otherwise knows full well how to submit the Commons to its own logic and neutralize their emancipatory potential.

Photo by Elf-8

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The Political Economy of the Common. Ed. by Andrea Fumagalli

(as yet untranslated Italian-language book)

Economia politica del comune, collects a series of essays, mostly published elsewhere, which summarize his analysis of post-crisis contemporary capitalism.

Capitalism has changed. Andrea Fumagalli says so. And he said that, for a long time, his school; the tradition of autonomy, starting from the early writings of Mario Tronti and Raniero Panzieri of the sixties, passing through the intellectually fertile experience of Potere Operaio of the seventies and the brilliant analysis of post-Fordism and the new figure of the social worker ‘of the eighties, always with the analysis firmly anchored in the thought of the now internationally recognized master of the Italian Theory Antonio Negri, has developed a Marxism for the digital age, focused on the Grundrisse, and in particular on the famous’ fragment on the machines ‘, more than on Capital. Together with Christian Marazzi and Maurizio Lazzarato, Andrea Fumagalli is the person who most contributed to this perspective, adding a solid empirical basis based on his experience as a professional economist.

The new book by Andrea, Economia politica del comune, collects a series of essays, mostly published elsewhere, which summarize his analysis of post-crisis contemporary capitalism. For the author, the scenario of the last ten years has been a strengthening of a model of biocapitalism where capitalist exploitation is based no longer on the mere theft of working time in factories or on the appropriation of intellectual production – in the form of technological innovation or intellectual property, central to the analysis of cognitive capitalism – but now on the subsumption – that is, the inclusion and putting to work – of the deepest dimensions of the human condition, such as those related to affections or relationships, particularly when they are articulated through the ubiquitous connectivity of smartphones and social media, and even to life itself as an object of biotechnology.

The man-machine union, visible and potential object of criticism or sabotage in the Fordist factories, has now progressed to become part of the human condition and in this way capable of making life itself – la nuda vita, Agamben would say – in its dimensions pre and post human, in vitro as well as in silico, object of appropriation and capitalist valorization.

In biocapitalism, production is based on putting the commons to work, a concept that is different from that of common goods, even if these are part of it, but which also refers to that life in common – made up of elements such as language, the gestures, the affections, the corporality and the relationships – which now, through digital technologies, is potentially put to work in its most varied manifestations: the freelancer who organizes his temporary cooperation with a team for a specific project, the Airbnb guest who strives to offer a positive stay experience or the teenager who posts a selfie with her favorite brand on Instagram.

Capitalist valorization has also progressed far beyond the Marxian model of the bourgeois drinker of the worker’ sweat. Financial markets play an increasingly central role and, through the financialization of life and productive relations, operate like giant vacuum cleaners that suck up crumbs of surplus value from the global productive and reproductive factory – the credit card, the shipping insurance required in the just-in-time value-chain – to then redistribute them, without transparency or democratic regulation, on financial markets. In this situation in which the socialization of the productive forces, the commons that constitute the true source of value – has now left the greedy pockets of the individual bourgeois to circulate on the financial markets in the form of digitized data – communism is already with us, only that does not belong to us. Biocapitalism represents the realization of the communism of capital, the famous concept taken up by Antonio Negri – and by Marx who, although he never uses it, mentions this possibility in the Grundrisse.

What to do then, comrades? There is no longer a factory to be sabotaged, nor a winter palace to be conquered. But, Andrea suggests, we can re-appropriate the tools in the hands of the capitalist class: finance and money. The currency, – writes Andrea – is now a direct expression of capitalist power, without the intermediation of the state. Andrea proposes the creation of coins and alternative financial instruments, suggesting the use of the seductive technology of the crypto-currencies: blokchain and bitcoin, which are able to establish circuits of valorization external to global finance; it would be desirable for a new currency of the commons suitable to finance a new welfare of the commons, triggering processes of local redistribution of wealth, to then let them grow and acquire more and more powerful autonomy. A strategy similar to that of the autonomy of the eighties, the age of the Hakim Beyi’s TAZ’s, the golden age of the Italian centri sociali of the nineties that, among other things, Andrea recognizes as his main source of inspiration.

The book offers a theoretical sum by one of the main representatives not only of the contemporary Marxist thought but of one of its most fruitful veins. As such it should be seen, in particular the introductory essay “The premise and Twenty thesis on bio-cognitive capitalism”, which sums up the subject with admirable clarity. For me it was a very fruitful reading: Andrea is and always has been, since its brilliant analysis of the new forms of self-employment of the second generation in 1994, a Master.

At the same time I think that the book a little exaggerate the grip and power of bio-capitalism. The result is a totalitarian image, where every human activity is immediately subsumed and exploited, from pedaling for Deliveroo to being on Facebook, and, using the same logic – why not -, playing soccer is actually a way to help reproduce the basics of the football market that exploits the fans as well as the television audience. What to me it sounds “weird”, however, it is the astonishing ineffectiveness of contemporary capitalism in exploiting the common which has partly generated. Facebook, Airbnb and Amazon earnings all in all modest, Uber and Deliveroo are at a loss, start-up incubators around the world are abandoning the cash for equity model, finding that they do not make a lot of money by incubating start-ups. Above all, there is a lack of innovation and ideas: large multinational companies have liquid reserves of unprecedented historical size – Apple announces a stock buy back of $ 100 billion – and no one seems able to find profitable use of big data or algorithms that go beyond the completion of the advertising targeting or the advice of other songs you may like on Spotify.

Capitalism like that will definitely not be able to survive the radical challenges that await us as we begin to cross the Anthropocene. To paraphrase another great master of Italian postwar Marxism, Giovanni Arrighi, the problem is not that the cognitive biocapitalism exploits our life, but that it isn’t able to do it well enough. I say this because as long as there is exploitation at least there is a rationality to criticize or sabotage. Instead contemporary biocapitalism looks increasingly like a rotting body that no one has the power to take away, as the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck claims. In this context, the alternative currency will certainly contribute to creating alternative valorisation circuits. My intuition is that the protagonists of this process are not so much those of Macao or Teatro Valle, but rather the entrepreneurs of that pirate modernity that now connects the small Chinese factories with the needs of the popular classes of Lagos or Tangier, passing through Piazza Garibaldi of Naples.

Photo by Lanpernas .

The post Book of the day: The Political Economy of the Common appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Rethinking the World from the Perspective of Buen Vivir

1. What is the key idea of Buen Vivir?

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

Carlos Taibo, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reciprocity practices in the Andean and Amazonian regions

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

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

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

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

Buen Vivir: Indigenous movements fighting for alternative ways of life

The origins of Buen Vivir

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buen Vivir in the context of Latin American history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Furthering degrowth’s horizons with Buen Vivir

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

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

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

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

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

Criticism of capitalism as a common denominator

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

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

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Achieving a utopia in the indigenous world

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

Collaborative reforestation of mangroves in Salinas, Manabí (Ecuador)

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

Our democracy can learn a lot from these experiences.

Buen Vivir in the urban space

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

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

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

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

5. Buen Vivir, an inspirational and diverse approach

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

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

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

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

Solidarity with both nature and the community is needed

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

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

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

DiB – Buen Vivir from Raute Film on Vimeo.

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

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

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

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

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

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