Andrea Fumagalli on the Five Criteria To Distinguish a Progressive Interpretation of the Basic Income

Basic Income presents different and contradictory definitions. That is why the terms can mislead. On my opinion, we can speak of Basic income only when the following five criteria are verified:

1. Individuality criterion: the basic income must be paid at the individual level and not familiar. It can then discuss if children under 18 years will have the right or not.

2. Criterion of residence: the basic income must be paid to all / the people who, residing in a given territory, live, rejoice, suffer and participate in the production and social cooperation regardless of their marital status, gender, ethnicity, religious belief, etc.

3. Criterion of unconditionality: basic income must be provided by minimizing any form of compensation and / obligation as a free individual choice as possible.

4. Access criteria: the basic income is paid in its initial phase of experimentation to all / the people who have an income below a certain threshold. This threshold may, however, be greater than the relative poverty line and converge toward the median level of the personal distribution of existing income. Moreover, this level of income must be expressed in relative terms, not absolute, so that increasing the minimum threshold (as a result of the initial introduction of the measure) the range of beneficiaries will increase continuously until to rise to graded levels of universality.

5. Criteria for funding and transparency: the modalities of financing of basic income must always be set out on the basis of economic viability studies, detailing where resources are obtained based on an estimate of its cost necessary. These resources have to fall on general taxation and not on other assets of origin (such as, for example, social security contributions, sale of public assets, privatization proceeds, etc.). Basic income is complementary to welfare systems and never substitutive. On my opinion, basic income should be a conflict tool not a compatibility tool with respect to the existing contemporary neo-liberalist capitalism. That is why, the criteria of total unconditionality and an enough level (> relative poverty line as minimum) just to say “NO” to halting conditions of work and exploitation without blackmail, are more important than an immediate universality (may be, providing a insignificant amount of money).

Link to original discussion on Facebook

Photo by Thomas Hawk

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Whilst truly wild woodlands are ‘climax vegetation’ that has achieved a balance between death and renewal, these generally need to be at a scale much bigger than any of our remaining woodlands to thrive independently of humans.

Here in Britain, “the wildwood” has a central place in our culture and imaginations, but the reality is that active management has shaped our woodlands since the ice age, providing supplies of food, fuel and timber, and creating diverse habitats amongst the trees. Unmanaged woodland lacks diversity and can result in poor tree health and increase the spread of tree diseases.

Whilst most of that unmanaged woodland is in private ownership, the future management of our public forest estate also remains uncertain. Attempts in 2010 to sell off the national forest estate were abandoned in the face of a public outcry, but austerity has resulted in many local authority woodland teams being disbanded and the future for the management of the national public forest estate – at least in England – remains unclear.

It is in that gap between the market and the state that we find the commons and, increasingly, a diverse range of community businesses, co-operatives and other forms of social enterprise creating value and livelihoods from its management. So does social and community business have a role in reinvigorating our woods and forests and rebuilding our woodland culture?

In 2012, in the aftermath of the failed forestry sell off and in the wake of the Independent Panel on Forestry’s report, a number of organisations came together to discuss alternative approaches to the management of our woods and forests.

There was already a well established sector of community woodlands and voluntary groups involved in woodland management across the UK. There were also some examples of social enterprises managing significant-sized woodlands, particularly in Scotland where community buyouts meant communities in the Highlands and Islands already had ownership and control over their local woodlands and a focus on sustainable local economic regeneration.

Could these approaches provide new models for managing our woodlands in ways that created livelihoods, improved their quality, and produced useful resources such as woodfuel?

That 2012 meeting led to the establishment of the Woodland Social Enterprise Network and, over time, the development of a proposal for a project to support the development of social enterprise in woodlands. In 2015, funding was secured from Big Lottery to deliver Making Local Woods Work, a pilot programme to provide technical assistance, training and peer networking opportunities for woodland-based social enterprises across the UK.

The programme, which runs until Autumn 2018, is providing support to 50 woodland social enterprises right across the UK, each of which embed woodlands or woodland products into their core activity whether that is the production of woodfuel and timber, or delivering educational or health and well-being activities in a woodland setting. It provides technical advice on woodland management and finance, support in developing business plans, choosing legal structures and strengthening governance, and advice on leases, tenure, and a wide range of other issues. It also provides training, webinars and peer networking opportunities, many of which are available to the wider network of woodlands social enterprises as well as those who are part of the formal support programme.

Austerity has resulted in many local authority woodland teams being disbanded and the future for the management of the national public forest estate – at least in England – remains unclear.

Case studies:

Vert Woods Community Woodland in East Sussex is a 171 acre woodland that is owned and managed for community and wildlife benefit. Much of the woodland is recovering woodland, substantially affected by the Great Storm of 1987 and includes mature tall pines, oak and beech, as well as under-managed chestnut coppice, and unmanaged birch and willow. With support from Making Local Woods Work, Vert Community Woodland has registered as a Community Benefit Society (CBS) and is looking to widen its community membership and issue shares to enable the community to collectively own the woodland.

Elwy Working Woods in North Wales is a co-operative and social enterprise set up in 2010 to create sustainable employment by managing local woodland to produce good quality timber for construction and joinery. North Wales has seen the demise of several small sawmills in recent decades and Elwy Working Woods is looking to create new models for the business that can provide sustainable employment and add value to local natural and renewable resources. They aim to provide a one-stop shop capable of supplying everything from complete house frames to kitchen tables, using locally-grown timber and providing local training, employment and volunteering opportunities.

Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park manage London’s most urban woodlands in a densely populated and rapidly growing borough. The park is located in of one of London’s Magnificent Seven Cemeteries and owned by the local council. The Friends maintain the site under a Service Level Agreement and provide a wide range of public events, short courses and heritage activities as well as managing the woodland. In order to expand their activities, increase their commercial income, and ensure a sustainable long term future for the Cemetery Park, the Friends are being supported by Making Local Woods Work to review their business plan and explore opportunities for more secure tenure on the site with the council.

The forestry and timber processing sector already support around 43,000 jobs in the UK. It directly employs around 14,000 people in more than 3,000 separate enterprises, suggesting that the vast majority of forestry business is undertaken by small and medium-sized enterprises.

Community and social enterprises operate to a triple bottom line, ensuring that the way they manage woodlands is good for people and good for the environment as well as good for the economy. As well as providing social benefits such as health, education and wellbeing through the activities they deliver in woodlands, the very act of managing local land and resources is one that supports longer term community empowerment.

This aspect of community management is recognised and supported by programmes that enable community management, and even ownership, of the public forest estate in Wales and Scotland.

In 2011, Natural Resources Wales launched the Woodlands and You (WaY) scheme, which enables communities and social enterprises to operate long term projects through Management Agreements and Leases. Forest Enterprise Scotland’s Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS) provides asset transfer rights for communities who want to take on ownership or leases on Scotland’s National Forest Estate. This builds on the previous Scottish National Forest Land Scheme that gave community organisations the chance to buy or lease National Forest Land where they could provide increased public benefits.

To date, no such scheme exists in England, making it harder for community and social enterprises to secure leases or management agreements. Harder, but not impossible. Neroche Woodlanders are an example of a social enterprise that has secured a 10-year lease from Forestry Commission England to inhabit, manage and harvest wood from 100 acres of woodland near Taunton in Somerset.

Our woodland commons have always provided for basic human needs and securing access to them forms a rich part of our history. This November marks the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest that restored the rights of free tenants to access and use the Royal Forests that were being enclosed. The Charter protected practices such as ‘pannage’ (knocking acorns from oak trees for pigs) and ‘estover’ (collecting wood). Whilst our expectations of what woodlands can provide for us may have changed over the centuries, the issues that the charter sought to address remain familiar.

Celebrations for the 800th Anniversary range from the call for a new Charter for Trees, Woods and People being led by the Woodland Trust, a public meeting under the Ankerwycke yew at Runnymeade to call for a new Doomsday book of the Commons, and a black tie dinner at Lincoln Cathedral. However you celebrate it, the anniversary provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of our woodlands and the potential for communities to manage them in ways that work for everyone.

You can find out more at Making Local Woods Work and on Twitter @localwoodswork. The Woodland Social Enterprise Facebook page is also open to anyone with an interest in the sustainable  management of woodlands and provides a great place to connect online with what others are doing to make woods work for everyone.

The Making Local Woods Work / Community Woodland Association Conference will be held on 20-21 October 2017 in Westerwood Hotel, Cumbernauld, Scotland. More information.

Mark Walton is the founder and Director of Shared Assets, a think and do tank that supports the management of land for the common good. He currently acts an advisor to Defra, and Charity Bank on issues such as working with civil society, asset transfer, and social investment.

Republished from STIR magazine

Photo by FraserElliot

The post Making Local Woods Work appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The only caveat from the P2P Foundation point of view is that, it still assumes that capitalism is the only system that creates value, but counter-balanced by investments of the state in the human economy. What is still lacking is an understanding of how the commons itself is a value creation engine, that needs to be recognized.

See our own approach via our report: Value in the Commons Economy.

And without further ado, here is …

Marc Saxer:

Ever since the Second Industrial Revolution petered out, global capitalism has faced a demand crisis. If you think that all we need now is to stop austerity and spend our way out of the crisis, think again. Over the past few decades, developed economies were kept alive through artificially created demand. The inflation of the 1970s, the public debt of the 1980s, the private debt of the 1990s and the quantitative easing of the 2000s were all strategies to inject future resources for present consumption. Even if the dystopian vision of a world without work does not come true, workers’ waning consumer power can no longer fuel growth. This means progressive hopes for a Keynesian revival or a return to Fordism are misguided.

Progressives must find new answers to the challenges posed by the digital revolution. In a global economy, rejecting technological innovation is not an option. But the new technologies should also be embraced in their own right: the automation of dirty, dangerous, physically demanding tasks is set to improve workplace safety and satisfaction.

Yet, digital capitalism is ripe with potentially fatal contradictions. Mass un- and underemployment could aggravate the demand problem to a point where the world economy implodes. If digital automation continues to threaten the security and dignity of the majority population, the current revolt against globalism will only be a small foretaste of what is to come.

What we need is a new development model for the digital age. Front and centre of this new model must be the need to create decent livelihoods. Our best chance to create decent livelihoods in the digital age is the Human Economy.

The Human Economy is composed of two interwoven economies. The digital capitalist economy, which generates the surplus needed to remunerate work for the common good. And the human commons, which creates the consumption demand needed to keep the digital capitalist economy going.

Decent jobs: Make the workforce fit for the digital economy

In the digital economy, entrepreneurs will hire humans to perform new tasks. Human work also continues to be in demand in the service industries, from tourism to entertainment, from design to fashion, from food to arts and crafts and from research to development. To realise this potential for decent human jobs, the skills of the workforce will have to be permanently upgraded.

Decent livelihoods: Remunerate work for the human commons

The human economy needs to be built around the recognition of human contributions to the common good. Millions of livelihoods could be generated in the human commons, from health services to elderly care, from child raising to education, from providing security to generating knowledge. However, many of these tasks, which are beneficial for society, do not generate enough income in the capitalist economy. In order to create decent livelihoods, remuneration mechanisms for these tasks must be created.

Five policies to bring about the Human Economy

1. Level the playing field for human work. Under fair conditions, there is still a need for humans to work together with Artificial Intelligence, robots, and algorithms. By shifting the tax burden from labour to capital, the playing field can be levelled for human workers. We need to explore how robots and data can be taxed with the aim of delaying the rationalization of work until new livelihoods are created.
2. Invest in full capabilities for all. Humans excel at communication and social interaction, creativity and innovation, experience and judgement, leadership and foresight, flexibility and learning. Harnessing these talents is the industrial policy of the Human Economy. To fully explore human talents, our education systems need to be fundamentally overhauled. To allow for the necessary public investment in public goods, the austerity paradigm must be reversed.
3. Boost consumption demand through basic income. The debate over the best way to boost consumption demand has sparked the first political battle of the digital age. The opposing camps in the debate over basic income run counter to the left-right formation characteristic of the industrial society. On one side, Silicon Valley techies who seek to boost consumption demand, Davos billionaires who fear the coming of the pitchforks, neoliberals who want to cut back the welfare state, corruption fighters who seek to cut out the middleman, and Marxists who dream of the end of alienating work in the leisure society; on the other, unions who defend their role in collective bargaining, socialists who smell a Trojan horse to do away with social security, economists who warn against moral hazard and social justice advocates who fear social exclusion. As the debate shows, the usefulness of basic income schemes will depend on their design, and many alternative approaches are being introduced. The Institute for the Future calls for Universal Basic Assets, e.g. entitlements to open source assets such as housing, healthcare, education and financial security. Yanis Varoufakis calls for a Universal Basic Dividend, financed by a Commons Capital Depository.
4. Distribute sources of wealth more evenly. If robots replace humans, then the question is: who owns the robots? In an economy where capital increasingly replaces labour, capital ownership needs to be democratized. Richard Freeman suggests a ‘workers share’ could spread the ownership of companies amongst employees to make them less dependent on wage income. An alternative can be Sovereign Investment Funds which could re-socialise capital returns.
5. Remunerate socially beneficial work. If the digital capitalist economy fails to create enough jobs, the state needs to play the role of employer of last resort. This economic necessity may become politically useful. In the vertigo of change, more effort is required to strengthen social cohesion. The state can encourage such contributions to the common good by remunerating them.

The social democratic path to the human economy

Creating decent livelihoods in the digital age will require massive investment in public goods. Generating the revenue to pay for these investments is not an easy political task. While the rich too often find ways to dodge taxes, the poor cannot afford to pay them. The middle classes, feeling abused by the “self-serving elites” and the “entitled poor,” are in open revolt. This is the political reason why the tax burden must be shifted from labour to capital.

In the political economy of today, however, the proposed policy shifts will certainly be an uphill battle. Whether the political economy of digital capitalism will be more conducive for the Human Economy is an open question. On the one hand, distributed technologies and the networked economy have the potential to democratize the means of production. On the other hand, the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of digital platform companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon points to the opposite direction.

The bizarre alliance around basic income schemes indicates a window of opportunity. Digital capitalism is reshuffling political fortunes, and progressives should go out of their way to build coalitions around the need to boost demand. After half a century of supply-side economics and cost-cutting politics, putting incomes back into the centre of economic thinking is an opportunity progressives must not miss.

Building the Human Economy is not a technical task, but the outcome of political struggles. Only a broad societal coalition will be able to implement the necessary policy shifts. To build this transformative alliance, we need a platform onto which as many communities as possible can come together. This platform cannot be a smorgasbord of policies, but a narrative which explains how we can make the digital transformation work for everyone.

What could this narrative sound like? Amidst the conflicts over sovereignty, identity and distribution transformation, we need to strengthen the foundations of solidarity among all members of the society. This can only be done through a new social contract for the digital society. This social contract needs to be brokered around a compromise between all stakeholders.

The Human Economy offers such an inclusive compromise. In essence, it transcends the conflict between capital and labour by making human capital the engine of the economy. For capital, the Human Economy offers a solution to the existential threat of collapsing consumption demand. For the working population, the threat of mass unemployment is mitigated through decent livelihoods. And for political decision makers, the looming threat of social unrest is relieved.

The social democratic path to development, in other words, creates the necessary demand to sustain the digital economy, the social security people need to embrace permanent change, the political stability required for the implementation of disruptive reforms. The social contract for the digital society, in a nutshell, is to provide full capabilities to everyone who is willing to contribute to the common good.

Originally published on socialeurope.eu

Photo by fumi

The post The Human Economy: Creating Decent Livelihoods In Digital Capitalism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Fighting for Care Work Resource

1. What is the key idea of the Care Revolution?

Care Revolution wants to shape care and self-care according to needs with a fundamental change in societal direction

Care Revolution activists are working for a good life in which all people’s needs can be met in full without excluding anyone or exploiting others. Building on insights from feminist politics, Care Revolution puts the fundamental significance of care work at the core of its social critical analysis and political action. From birth, people are dependent on the care of others, without which they could not survive. Beyond childhood and youth, and times of sickness and frailty, people are also dependent on others in their everyday lives. The possibility of getting help and support in a difficult situation is an important criterion for a good life. This also applies to the possibility of being able to care for others without having to be disproportionately disadvantaged.

Care work is an activity that all people carry out. They care for themselves, for their health, for their education, they cook for themselves or for other people, bring up children, advise friends, and care for relatives who need support. Some care work is paid, for example that carried out by carers or nursery school teachers. Most of this work however is done within families by women and is unpaid; often it is not considered to be work at all.

“Day of invisible work” at the 1.May demonstrations in Freiburg in 2014.

Currently, more and more people face the increasingly difficult task of mastering the balancing act between employment and unpaid care work for themselves and others. They live with the constant threat of failing to meet demands. In their employment, they are confronted with increasing demands on flexibility from the company, continually rising performance pressure, as well as salaries, which are often too low compared to the cost of living. According to the neoliberal credo of individual responsibility, each individual is required to combine high professional requirements with increasing self-organisation tasks and the growing demands of familial care work.

This situation is aggravated by the fact that, in order to reduce costs, many state welfare services, for example in the health or education system, are being cut rather than expanded. It is primarily many women who suffer in this deficient state infrastructure as they carry out most of the socially necessary care work in the home alongside their paid employment. In high-earning families, part of this work is passed on to poorly paid migrant domestic workers who do not have social security. In this way, high earners solve their problems on the backs of those for whom even this precarious work means an improvement to their catastrophic position. State tolerance of these working conditions in private households, which fall below societal minimum standards, is aggravating a global division of labour that ignores the basic needs of care workers from countries in Eastern Europe and the global south.

Care Revolution as a political strategy

The obvious response that meets needs is to organise and carry out the work needed in families and institutions together and without discrimination. For those in the Care Revolution network, attending to people’s needs, space for empathy and solidarity, as well as genuine democracy in politics and the economy are essential. With the following steps, it is possible to come closer to the aim of good care and a good life:

• Sufficient income for all in order to secure a sustainable livelihood: This primarily means a substantial minimum wage without exceptions, an unconditional basic income and a significant improvement in pay for work in care careers.
• Sufficient time to be able to care for one’s close ones and oneself alongside paid employment, and maintain time for leisure. This primarily means a considerable reduction in working hours for full-time workers, special arrangements for people with a lot of care responsibilities, and a non-discriminatory division of care work between men and women.
• A social infrastructure that truly supports care and self-care: This primarily means an expanded and free education and health system, affordable accommodation, free local public transport and support for self-help networks and commons projects. This can be realised by redistributing societal wealth.
• Real involvement in societal decision-making: This means comprehensive self-governance, starting in the care sector. This can be effected via a council system that enables national coordination and democratic control. Many care projects, such as health centres, nurseries or educational establishments can also be organised decentrally with local self-governance in districts or neighbourhoods.
• Non-discriminatory society: This means that there is no exclusion, no discrimination and no privileges owing to one’s ethnic origin, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability or occupational skills.

Care Revolution’s aim is a society based on solidarity. Those in the Care Revolution network understand this to be a radically democratic society, oriented towards human needs and, in particular, towards caring for one another. In a society based on solidarity, the needs of all people in their diversity are met, without people from other global regions being discriminated against. Correspondingly, Care Revolution means that it is no longer profit maximisation but human needs that are the focus of social, and thus also economic action.

2. Who is part of the Care Revolution? What do they do?

Care Revolution network actors call for more time and resources for paid and unpaid care work.

In the Care Revolution network, there are initiatives from different areas of society and with different political priorities. These include organisations of caregiving relatives, disability groups, parent groups, migrant groups, ver.di and GEW trade union site groups in the field of care and childcare, social movement organisations, queer feminist groups and radical left-wing groups. In March 2014, sixty such initiatives came together in Berlin for the first time to prepare and hold a conference, which 500 people attended. Shortly after this, these and other initiatives founded the Care Revolution network. Currently, the network is limited to Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Logo of the Care Revolution network.

Examples of groups represented in the network

A significant proportion of the initiatives represented by Care Revolution come from a feminist or queer feminist background. Some have fought since the 1970s, as part of the second wave of feminism, for a revaluation of unpaid reproductive work. Today, older and younger activists in the Care Revolution network again want to comprehend the feminist agenda as a more general form of social criticism, including through their struggles for improved care resources. Here, priorities are quite varied. Some highlight the gender gap in care work and demand recognition of this socially necessary work. Others are active in groups that combine anti-capitalist and feminist positions and discuss their own life circumstances in relation to structural crises. The latter involved Care Revolution in the Blockupy protests.

Women in Exile, which also participated in the first Care Revolution conference, calls for refugees to be housed in apartments rather than in camps where there is no privacy or protection against attacks. The initiative is demanding this for women and children as a matter of urgency but also calls for all camps to be dissolved. The initiative combines its public relations activities for this aim with informing refugees about their rights, and positions against racism and the migration regime.

In recent years, labour disputes regarding paid care work have made the headlines. These disputes have been innovative in various ways. For example, the ver.di site group and the staff council at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin demanded a collective agreement regarding minimum employee coverage from the company that operates Berlin’s university hospitals. This labour dispute was supported by the association Berlinerinnen und Berliner für mehr Personal im Krankenhaus (‘Berlin residents for more hospital staff’) with actions to demonstrate solidarity; it did this explicitly in the interests of potential patients. On 1 May 2016, this collective agreement was achieved after over four years of disputes. A second example are the disputes in German municipal nurseries. In the 2015 strikes, there were calls for a societal revaluation of care work in nurseries and social services, as well as an increase in pay to reflect this. There were increased and partially successful efforts to gain parents as allies for this cause.

Care revolutionaries at the 1.May demonstration in Hamburg in 2015.

There are also labour-managed companies that support Care Revolution’s ideas. One example are the carers at Lossetal care centre, which is a working part of the Niederkaufungen commune. Other members of the commune, neighbours and relatives are involved as much as possible in the care facilities for care-dependent individuals and people with dementia in particular. This should improve quality of care. It is also an expression of the social objective that people in neighbourhoods should provide each other with mutual support. The care centre complements this with the required professional input.

In familial care work, the initiative Armut durch Pflege (‘Poverty through care’) can be mentioned. This initiative created the association Wir pflegen – Interessenvertretung begleitender Angehöriger und Freunde in Deutschland (‘we care – interest representation for accompanying relatives and friends in Germany’). The aim of the initiative is to give a voice to those affected by difficult situations and their demands, and to bring about material improvements for relatives who are carers, for example, through a substantial care allowance. As such, the association’s demands also relate to the human dignity of the people being cared for, which should not be dependent on their ability to pay. The organisation Nicos Farm pursues the same aims by different means: Children and young people who are dependent on lifelong care owing to a disability should also be able to have a dignified life if their parents themselves are in need of care or are deceased. The organisation aims to implement a project involving accommodation, employment opportunities and therapy at Lüneburger Heide in Germany.

Framework conditions for joint action

The Care Revolution conference in March 2014 was a moment where mutual interest, as well as the different needs and difficult situations were as evident as the desire for a joint explanation regarding the social suffering experienced. At the conference, the widespread weakness in the implementation of the individual initiatives became evident, as did the reasons for this: because no economic pressure can be established in that kind of care work, because the work is frequently carried out by isolated individuals, and because, in neoliberal discourse, completing care tasks is the responsibility of the individual. Above all, the conference underlined a desire to address these issues through joint action.

Moved care revolutionaries.

Cooperation between the different initiatives is not easy: There are real, varied struggles and alternative projects on care work. There is recognition of the similarities between them and the desire to support one another. However, individual, often existential battles are necessarily at the heart of the initiatives’ work. Activists’ lack of flexibility due to care responsibilities, precarious living conditions, and lack of time and money further impede joint action. Additionally, there is still a lack of experience of joint action actually resulting in more success. All of this is currently preventing Care Revolution from gaining more of a public presence.

Cooperation between the different initiatives is not easy: There are real, varied struggles and alternative projects on care work. There is recognition of the similarities between them and the desire to support one another. However, individual, often existential battles are necessarily at the heart of the initiatives’ work. Activists’ lack of flexibility due to care responsibilities, precarious living conditions, and lack of time and money further impede joint action. Additionally, there is still a lack of experience of joint action actually resulting in more success. All of this is currently preventing Care Revolution from gaining more of a public presence

3. How do you see the relationship between Care Revolution and degrowth?

Care Revolution and degrowth can fight for a society based on solidarity together

In terms of content, we see an important link between Care Revolution and degrowth in the fact that both concepts relate to prospects for a good life. This also applies, as far as we can judge, to the other movements that are represented by and brought together under the Degrowth in Movement(s) banner.

At first glance, there appears to be a fundamental contradiction in that degrowth places emphasis on ‘less’: It is about combining less use of resources with a good life for all where everyone’s needs are met. In this scenario, a necessary decrease in economic growth should not be a threat to standards of living but rather represent an opportunity. In contrast, Care Revolution is ultimately seeking more: More time, a more supportive social infrastructure and more material security are unavoidable prerequisites for an improvement in the position of care workers. For the health, care, education and childcare sectors, it is also about more employees and higher wages.

It gets politically interesting when these two aims are combined: less use of resources by society and more care resources. Then this is about reducing all areas that are destructive to humans and the ecological foundations of human life. Examples include armaments manufacturing, coal power stations or the current structure of individual transport. At the same time, it is about growing specific areas that are necessary for self-care and care for one another and creating the conditions for this. It is about developing concepts for how a reduction in soil sealing can be combined with an expansion of nurseries, how a reduction in the consumption of consumer goods can be combined with more material security and support for relatives who are carers, how more employees in healthcare and education can be combined with a societal reduction in working hours. In general, it means thinking about how a society can be structured to meet people’s care needs and preserve the ecological foundations for human life at the same time.

We believe that bringing together degrowth and Care Revolution is worthwhile because of the parallels between the two concepts. Both make one uncompromising demand of a desirable society: It must make a good life possible for all people globally and for subsequent generations. This premise brings with it the idea that a society that cannot guarantee this should be changed. Against this backdrop, degrowth and Care Revolution can meet precisely where they both place a pointed emphasis on anti-capitalism. For the degrowth approach, there is the central idea that an increase in the efficiency of energy and resource usage is not enough to sufficiently reduce consumption. Not only must production processes change but the production scope and the way one uses consumer goods must too. Mobility, access to washing machines, tools or libraries, as well as the use of gardens will have to be much more collectively managed in order to enable access for all. If successful, such a transformed economy would not mean a sacrifice, but would mean having other, richer social relations. This equally positive reference to the interdependence of human beings is very similar to Care Revolution’s thinking on care and care work. To be dependent on one another is a fundamental part of human life. As such, it is also immensely important to focus on human collaboration and solidarity in political actions and in the development of societal alternatives.

Poster for the action week Care Revolution in Erfurt in May 2016.

A joint effort with other movements is an especially attractive notion, as is fighting together. Both Care Revolution and degrowth can identify with the topic of ‘a society based on solidarity, a life based on solidarity’, which touches on the need for changes in societal institutions as well as changes in one’s own lifestyle. Both analyse the destruction of the human being as a social being and ecosystems in capitalism and contrast this with the principles of a society based on solidarity. As such, both are anti-capitalist projects at their core. If this is true, then both movements also pose questions about social transformation: How do individual struggles, experiments and political changes intensify to the point that an alternative to capitalism, based on solidarity, becomes reality? We consider the search for transformation strategies to be part of a joint project for needs-oriented social movements.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Care Revolution’s strength is that very heterogeneous initiatives are calling for comprehensive social changes together.

One strength of the initiatives under the Care Revolution banner is their heterogeneity, as the topic of care speaks directly to people from different backgrounds with different political ideas, life concepts and desires. At the first conference in March 2014, it was impressive to see how this diversity was combined with mutual respect and curiosity.

We believe this relates to the fact that care has reference points in all social and political settings. Care addresses vital needs, which underlines the absurdity of wanting to treat, teach, advise or care for people according to the principle of maximum profit. People with different life experiences and different life situations are coming to the conclusion that society must be entirely redesigned, at least with regard to care. It is relatively easy to imagine alternatives in care as the necessary social infrastructure can largely be realised decentrally, in local districts or villages.

Nurseries, healthcare establishments and social centres can be organised with forms of direct democracy. All those directly affected by negotiations regarding care institutions can be involved. This is primarily possible because care workers of different kinds are meeting on a level playing field: both those for whom care is a career, and those who are involved in care within families or self-care. They can meet each other as experts who are pursuing the same aim of organising care well with different skills and interests. Experiences in the care sector and in struggles for better care conditions can also make comprehensive socialisation, which goes beyond the care sector, appear more realistic and more desirable. Freeing all areas of production and how we live together from the framework of valorisation and market competition is also a condition for protecting the ecological foundations of life.

Care Revolution action “DIE-IN” on the major shopping street “Zeil” in Frankfurt in 2013.

With regard to commons projects, we believe Care Revolution activists can learn a lot from movement approaches such as those who participate within the Degrowth in Movement(s) project. Unlike in the care sector where initial efforts are being made, there are already multiple projects there, where people are jointly developing and living out part of a more liveable future on a small scale. We are thinking here of community repairs, fab labs (public workshops equipped with 3D printers), communal gardens or the many projects in community-supported agriculture.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Needs-oriented movements can develop a liveable alternative to capitalism together where they combine their alternative projects and transformation strategies.

The different movements and practices under the Degrowth in Movement(s) banner have certain features in common: The centrality of human needs, attentiveness to life in general, the importance of real social relationships and fair social framework conditions make up a shared core, with quite different emphases. From this core, the consequences of capitalist development, which destroy the ecosystem as much as human beings as social creatures, may be criticised. Projects promoting a life based on solidarity can be brought together in discussion and in practice. Individual efforts can be linked and societal alternatives developed.

Strengthening these links to one another is perhaps what is most urgent. This involves the different movements developing a liveable alternative to capitalism through exchanging ideas. It is also about them finding a shared focus in their projects and in their solidarity-based lifestyle. If this is successful, the movements can achieve something together that each individual cannot.

Partial movements also have something to contribute. For example, if migrants are caring for people at home in miserable working conditions, this creates an opportunity for a needs-oriented movement based on solidarity with different reference points: the right of the person requiring care to be well cared for, the right of the relatives to not be solely responsible for care, the rights of the migrant carers to good working conditions and good pay, the rights of the migrants’ children or relatives and the people in their home countries who care for them. It is necessary to account for all these justified demands, which affect the care system here, as well as the unfair distribution of work globally. If movements focusing on migration, care or the global division of labour work closely together, they can support each other with a comprehensive overview of the situation.

Redesigning towns and villages based on solidarity also requires joint action. Organising a collective social infrastructure in districts entails removing the care sector from valorisation. Communal gardens require free access to land. Experiments in co-living, shared repair workshops, community kitchens or policlinics should not be restricted or impeded by the fact that their rental payments have to generate sufficient returns. Reducing private car use requires a correspondingly developed local transport network and thoughts on how urban sprawl and the spatial separation of life and work can be addressed. By bringing together the many individual projects, a new, more strongly contoured image of liveable towns could emerge; discussing necessary conditions should enable us to determine more clearly how a societal alternative could function. By the very different activists from different individual movements meeting and becoming politically active together, they can support each other in thinking of and practising alternatives without old and new exclusions.

Links

Interview with Gabriele Winker on the book ‘Care Revolution. Schritte in eine solidarische Gesellschaft’ (in German)
Care Revolution homepage
Care Revolution’s partners (including all groups and initiatives mentioned in the text)
Care Revolution regional groups
‘Her mit dem guten Leben für alle weltweit! Für eine Care Revolution’ (information on the Care Revolution conference in Berlin in 2014, in German)
Video documentation of Care Revolution actionconference in Berlin in 2014

Applied as well as further literature

Biesecker, Adelheid; Wichterich, Christa; Winterfeld, Uta v. 2012. Feministische Perspektiven zum Themenbereich Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. <http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/sonst_publikationen/Biesecker_Wichterich_Winterfeld_2012_FeministischePerspe.pdf>

Fried, Barbara; Schurian, Hannah (ed.) 2015. Um-Care. Gesundheit und Pflege neu organisieren. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
<http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Materialien/Materialien13_UmCare_web.pdf>

Praetorius, Ina 2015. Wirtschaft ist Care. Oder: Die Wiederentdeckung des Selbstverständlichen. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Schriften zu Wirtschaft und Soziales 6). <https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/2015-02-wirtschaft-ist-care.pdf>

Winker, Gabriele 2013. Zur Krise sozialer Reproduktion. In: Care statt Crash. Sorgeökonomie und die Überwindung des Kapitalismus. Baumann, Hans and others (ed.). Zürich: Edition 8. 119-133. <http://www.tuhh.de/t3resources/agentec/sites/winker/pdf/Krise_sozialer_Reproduktion.pdf>

Winker, Gabriele 2015. Care Revolution. Schritte in eine solidarische Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript.

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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The main concern in a commons economy is not to compete or think in terms of business models, but rather to make the best use of shared resources so that no one is left behind. In this interview, commons scholar Silke Helfrich discusses the connection between degrowth and the commons, and how these two concepts can help us build a sustainable economy.

Bio: Silke Helfrich works as an independent author, activist and scholar, with a variety of international and domestic partners. She is the editor and co-author of several books on the Commons, among them: Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons (2009), Wealth of the Commons (2012) and Patterns of Commoning (2015). From 1996 to 1998 she was head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Thuringia and from 1999 to 2007 head of the regional office of Heinrich Böll Foundation in San Salvador and Mexico City. She is cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group and the Commons-Institut e.V. and the primary author of the German-language CommonsBlog. This interview has been expanded upon from its original publication at the Green European Journal.

Q: In an interview with Transition Culture, you have said that the commons are more than just resources that we have to share: they are based on the notion of communities or networks that are sustainably managing and sharing collective resources which were given to us by nature, or which were produced collectively. Can you give us some successful examples of these commons?

A: Sure, but first of all, let us look at the idea of the commons. You cannot think about the commons if you don’t ask yourself at the same time who creates them, who cares for them, who protects them and who reproduces them. I used to say that commons don’t fall from the sky; they do not simply exist, but need to be “enacted”, so to speak. And this is why you cannot think about the commons without thinking about the notion of community. Community, in a very modern understanding of the word, ranging from intentional communities to global networks. Or even huge, loosely-connected networks of communities, i.e. not necessarily the kinds of small communities that are based on everyday face-to-face contact. This is one of the important aspects.

Another important thing to know is that commons are not automatically managed in a sustainable way. That would be wishful thinking. Nevertheless, research has shown that community forests, for example, or fisheries are at least as, or even more sustainable when managed as commons, in contrast to privately managed examples.

A third important aspect is that, even if imperfect, commons-based solutions are more down-to earth and more bottom-up than the ordinary management of resources. This also means that they are more democratic than solutions dependent on decisions partaken by external entities. So, all affected people have a say in the management of the resources that they need to make use of. That makes a big difference to me.

For example, the Nepalese government decided in 1990 that it would hand over – or, more precisely, give back – complete control over their forests to the communities living within and sustaining themselves through these forests. So, one could say that 100% of forest stewardship in Nepal is commons-based; while in Mexico, more than 60% of the forests and lands are community lands. There are similar endeavours in Europe: I met a researcher from Romania, currently doing a mapping of traditional commons in her country. She said she had already counted 1100 forest commons. They are called “Obstea” there.
This, however, is not obvious to most people: one of the tragedies of the commons is that they remain largely invisible to them.

Q: Commons are, according to your definition, generally not based on money, legal contracts, or bureaucratic fiat. But can they (at least temporarily) coexist with a capitalist, growth-driven and growth-oriented economy?

A: In a way, there is no choice. Commons have to coexist with capitalism, simply because we live within capitalism so, inevitably, we create our commons nested within capitalism. If we want to create a commons-based society, we need to start from where we are. So, we need to do it by growing out of capitalism. And that is why the question of protecting the commons from a takeover by market logics is so crucial. Once you have created a commons and are able to manage it as such, you need to make sure that this market logic doesn’t undermine it. You need to protect it from corruption within the commons and co-optation by external forces. This can be done through legal hacks, such as copyleft , or simply through sticking to your goal and mobilising the power of communities and networks again and again, consistently defending and protecting the commons.

Q: But hasn’t there been a history of backlash, because there are too many who would prefer to protect their current economic model?

A: Yes. That is why designing and strengthening commons at an institutional and infrastructural level is so important. We need to make sure that external forces aren’t governing that which needs to be governed by the people themselves. The good news is that if you strengthen the commons, you will have an impact on the whole. There is an interdependency: by widening the sphere of the commons you undermine the sphere of the market.

Strengthening the commons means that state powers should pay more attention to supporting a commons approach, in contrast to an approach driven by “more, better and faster than the other”.
One thing that is very helpful in understanding how “strengthening the commons” might work is to make the ongoing enclosures visible. We have been observing enclosures taking place for the last 1000 years. During the last three centuries they have principally been carried out by market and state, but, also in some cases, by the people themselves due to lack of awareness, not-knowing how to common (understood as a verb) or for simply being brain-washed. To resist enclosure, you need to make sure that you understand the very concept and its subtlety.

The use of certain technologies seems to be one of the most dangerous tactics of enclosing our opportunities for self-determined production. Enclosing by imposing certain technologies means that the devices we use are designed to prescribe specific usage. For example, if you forget your laptop’s charger you probably can’t use your friend’s one, because it doesn’t fit your computer. Making things incompatible is enclosure by design. The same happens if you use proprietary software. This will only permit you to use it for the things allowed by the software licencers. However, with the case of free software, you can copy it, share it, or further develop it without experiencing restrictions. This is a great difference, which affects the freedom and self-determination of the people (it’s called “free software”, but in fact, it’s not about the freedom of the software, but about the freedom of the people).

In many cases, it’s the technology itself – legally protected – that puts us onto a certain track of doing things. Say, using the same software over and over again. And then we get used to it, and forget that out there we had way more options and different ways of acting more in accordance with our needs and less dependent on a provider with commercial interests. So, the first thing we need to do is to make visible that enclosures are literally everywhere. There are even enclosures of our minds. They are so subtle and internalised that we don’t even perceive them as such.

Enclosures are enacted in many different ways: by transforming our language (and our minds); using politics as well as state and market/economic power; certain legal tools; and by designing deterministic technologies. Just think about the market-based terms we are used to; for example, that we don’t want to “sell ourselves short” on the labour market.
And we end up speaking a ‘marketised’ language and believing that people were born to compete.

Q: Today, private property is seen as a precondition for our autonomy. Will the commons also change how we look at private property?

A: You cannot think about commons if you don’t rethink property. Thinking about property is thinking about access, use rights, and so on. In the commons economy, we need to switch from thinking about property as connected to the notion of “dominium” in Roman law (which means complete control over something, allowing you to sell and buy a certain resource) to the notion of use rights, referring back to the concept of “possession” (meaning: people who actually need and use the resource should be the ones who have a say in their management).
In any case, it is important to understand that the commons do not imply a denial of property regimes. “Each commons is somebody else’s commons” is a sentence I learned from Vandana Shiva. Rethinking property means rethinking our relationship with these “somebody elses.”

Q: Can the commons be tools that help our societies finally think beyond growth?

A: Sure. There are many reasons why – let me just mention one of them. Growth is partly driven by debt based-money economy. So, if the way you make a living is completely based on the current monetary system, there is also a certain need to grow in order to compete and succeed within this debt-based economy. But this is contrary to what’s at the core of the commons.
The main concern in the commons economy is not to compete, but to make best use of a collective resources while finding ways to reproduce and crystallize these in such a way that no one is left behind. That implies that the main concern is not to build a business model out of the commons, but to meet the needs of as many people as possible. And if you don’t need to build a business model, everything is possible.

Q: How can we make ‘degrowth’ part of the vocabulary of the Left, if many of today’s Left-wing parties still formulate their messages by referring to economic growth?

A: Through creating ‘memes’ (for example, converting the commons into a meme). Memes spread by word of mouth and once this happens they trigger cultural change.The problem is that the Left relies on the same idea of “the economy” as most political players. They think that goods need to be produced via private entities in competition with each other, and they believe that the main thing that needs to be changed is the distribution of wealth after production. But if you really want to make degrowth or the commons a core idea, you need to think of a radical shift in the production modes, while focusing on pre-distribution instead of re-distribution. You need to start talking about the commons as a new mode of production, and as a different way of understanding the economy. In a commons economy there is, ideally, no division between production and reproduction, producer and consumer. You put, at the centre, forms of reproducing our livelihoods, which are not mediated through the market, money, or private agents competing against each other. How does this take shape? Through gifting; bartering; lending; co-using; co-producing; etc. This can be done in our community and beyond; it’s about federating the commons, so to speak. Creating Commons-Networks or Meta-Commons.

Let me give you an example: what makes community-supported agriculture structurally different from market-based food production? It produces vegetables, dairy products and the like, but it doesn’t produce “goods” or “products” to be sold on the market. In contrast, it produces “shares” distributed according to the self-determined rules of the participating community. This goes beyond sharing the harvest, as they also share the risk of production and if there is a bad harvest the whole community shares the burden. They cannot insist on “getting their product” for “the price they pay”.

Q: Is this also possible at a global scale? Can someone in Belgium share the risk with someone in Romania, or with a peasant in Nicaragua? Can we form a community with someone who is 2000 kilometres away?

A: The question points to something historically interesting. There is a new way of producing commons in the 21st century. If you think about food production, there is absolutely no need to share the risk of production with a peasant in Nicaragua. Peasants in Nicaragua can and should produce their own food. And we should too, instead of, say, importing soybeans to feed our pigs. If you think of food production or natural resource management, there is no need to share the physical means of production with people in other parts of the world. We should just get out of the way, allow them to produce their own food and protect their knowledge systems, which are tied to food-production.

However, in terms of producing machinery, hardware, cars, design, knowledge etc., we are seeing a new way of what I call “Commons Generating Peer Production”. We have digital infrastructures which allow us to follow the basic rule: “what is heavy is local; what is light is global” (Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation). Knowledge, code and design are “light”. If you take into account that the lion’s share of the market value of cars, machinery, clothes, and so on is based on knowledge, code and design, we can share these globally. This doesn’t presuppose taking it away from someone else, as knowledge, code and design tend to become “more” when we share them. Such an approach can revolutionise production and enable local communities to produce locally what they were unable to produce in the current economy. Thus, we will see less transportation around the world.

Q: But that also means that we need to adjust our demands, as for example, we won’t be able to eat so many bananas in Romania anymore.

A: On the one hand, we need to make a distinction between real needs and what economists mean when they say “demand,” and ask ourselves: what do I really need in order to make a living; what do I really need to thrive as a human being? On the other hand, I can think of a scenario where we truly explore the option of producing locally what’s heavy and sharing globally what’s light. We might then keep still 10 or 20% of the international trade we have, without leaving the same carbon footprint that we have right now.

Q: Do you think the societies of austerity-stricken countries of the south of Europe have started to successfully embrace the potential of the commons? Could “guerilla gardening” be such a phenomenon (as argued in an article by Orestes Kolokouris)? According to Kolokouris, the rapid development of urban gardening in Greece “coincides with the rapid deterioration of living standards in Greek society in recent years due to the deep crisis.”

A: I think, that you cannot even understand how people would survive austerity if they didn’t apply commons-based solutions. How can you otherwise become almost disconnected from the flow of resources and the flow of money in the market and still make a living? People can survive because they are connected to each other and they find common(s) solutions to their problems. The terminology may vary, but still: there are commons and commoning everywhere. Commoning shows one way out of the crisis, which also disconnects us from its drivers and direct causes. In the south of Europe, there are many examples from the last few years, such as the solidarity clinics (citizen-run health clinics) in Greece.

Q: There has been, for many decades, an ongoing discussion about finding an alternative quantitative measurement to GDP; for example, gross national happiness. Even renowned economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, have worked on this issue. Are these ideas compatible with the commons?

A: In a very deep sense, I would say that one of the major flaws of our modern way of thinking about the economy is the idea that everything can and has to be measured. And if you want to measure something, you need to make sure it is measurable. So you start “making” it measurable, which is a slow and often overlooked encroachment.

But how would you measure the commons, if they are about thriving communities, good livelihoods, autonomy and self-organisation? These are hardly measureable. The idea of alternative measurements is certainly interesting and important in order to show that the economy is about more than just stocks and flows, but it would not be the silver bullet to enable a commons-based economy and society. I very much appreciate what these researchers do, but I would appreciate it even more if they used their enormous creativity, energy and knowledge to enable a different mode of production and to rethink the whole.

Photo by Riccardof

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