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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally posted at the Transnational Institute Website

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

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Join us for this intensive two-week study programme with Schumacher College and Synergia Institute. This course offers participants a practical guide on how we can shift our economy to put people and planet first This programme brings together international scholars and experts who will explore all key areas of society; food, democracy, housing, social care, the commons and social finance. This course is useful for people involved in developing social enterprises and co-operative organisations, students, activists and academics.

An intensive two-week study programme with Schumacher College and the Synergia Institute

What is the ethical economy and how does it work?

• Comprehensive exploration of economic democracy and sustainability as viable bases for system change at local, regional and international scales.
• Unique combination of history, theory, and practice.
• Strong focus on personal & professional experience & participation as key elements of the course.

The Synergia Programme will include

The Problematic with John Restakis
How might we frame the historic moment in which we find ourselves from a political economy perspective? This session presents both a historic retrospective on the movement for economic democracy and how the current configuration of global capitalism demands new perspectives, models, and action strategies for change makers world-wide.

The Partner State with John Restakis
The current crisis of the welfare state is the culmination of a process of de legitimation that has been in the making for more than a generation. For many, the very notion of the state as a force for the good is untenable. But is there a way to reclaim and re conceptualize the state as an institution in service to the common good? This session introduces the concept of the Partner State as an extension of the principles that characterize co-operative economic democracy as a political, economic, and social ideal.

Labour and the Precariat with Cilla Ross
With the emergence of revolutionary digital and informatics technologies, traditional forms of labour are rapidly being replaced with the rise of a new class of precarious and atomised work that threatens not only the livelihoods millions but also the very meaning of work itself. This session examines the implications of this revolutionary shift in the forms of labour, what this entails for the well-being of workers, local communities, and society, and how co-operative and human-centred models of work can challenge the dominant paradigm.

The Commons with Michel Bauwens
Over the last decade, the idea of the commons has emerged as a powerful antidote to the prevailing private property and free market notion of how economies, markets, and social relations might be organized. In particular, the rise of digital platforms and the restructuring of online work through the operation of peer-to-peer networks has offered a revolutionary re think of how co-operative and commons-based principles are redefining both economic and societal relations in service to the common good. This session examines what the idea of the commons means for re visioning models of political economy as alternatives to the status quo.

For more information and registration, visit the Shumacher College site

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• June 8th 2018 19:30 – 21:30
• Location: IHECS Brussels School for Journalism and Communication, Stoofstraat 58, Brussel, Brussel, België
• Category: Evenementen denktank

Will cities change the world? At least, cities are becoming a new and hopeful transnational governance level. They are organizing themselves in a whole tissue of networks (Fearless Cities, Fabcities, …), working together in domains like climate policy, renewable energy and urban economy.

At the same time, citizens are developing a whole range of urban commons, based on co-operation and an ethics of care. Tired of only being a powerless consumer or a passive citizen, we get active as maker, urban farmer, solidarity volunteer, user of shared resources, civic or social entrepreneur, etc. This goes along with the establishment of new organisations and infrastructures like fablabs, energy co-ops, co-working spaces, urban food production plots, etc.

Recent years, we have seen cities like Ghent and Bologna moving a step further, establishing structures and processes that aim at building synergies between the public and the commons domain. This is part of a new political vision, the Partner State. So, a partner city sustains and gives incentives to alternative civil and economic institutions, like the commons and cooperatives. Taking these developments of collaborative city-making together, we see the emergence of a prototype of transformative cities, that could be the driving force towards socio-ecological societies.

Thanks to these transitions institutions, research groups and organizations where created to investigate how commons could be sustainable integrated in the vivid networks of cities.

How can a commons transition in cities be realized to create sustainable Eco-Cities? Experts from different projects and institutions will inspire you with their knowledge and findings about sustainable commons in cities. At this conference you can get inspired and motivated to start, or strengthen, your own project, common initiative or cooperation.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Michel Bauwens

Founder and director of the P2P Foundation and expert in peer production, governance and property. Bauwens is a well-known public speaker and thought leader. In 2017 he wrote the Commons Transition Plan for Ghent, after a similar project for Ecuador.

Elena De Nictolis

Research associate at LabGov, the LABoratory for the GOVernance of the City as a Commons. She prepares a Phd thesis on public policies for urban co-governance and the relation with the quality of city democracy at LUISS University of Rome.

Photo by Dominic’s pics

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Michel Bauwens: Karl Polanyi, in his landmark book, ‘The Great Transformation’, famously posited the ‘double movement’ of industrial civilisations, characterized by periodic swings between liberal and more labour oriented periods, such as the welfare state model vs the neoliberal period. Yet, though the latter is in deep crisis, it is not very clear that there are workable alternatives at the nation-state level, that won’t be derailed by transnational capital movements and strikes. Perhaps this means that social movements need to radically re-orient themselves to translocal and trans-national solutions and create adequate counter-power at the appropriate level to counter the increasing corporate sovereignty of ‘netarchical capital’? Just as capitalism is moving from the commodity-labor form to commons-extraction, perhaps now is the time for commoners to practice reverse cooptation? As a case study, we will look at the situation of the thousands of cognitive workers living and working in the global capital of digital nomadic workers, Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, but also about the new solidarity mechanisms being developed by a new wave of labour mutuals (such as SMart) in old Europe, who are organizing solidarity mechanisms for autonomous workers. Reviewing the emergence of new trans-local and trans-national organized networks, including how the token economy is used by sectors of cognitive labor to reclaim surplus value from capital investors, we will inquire into potential alternatives at different scales of governance (urban, bio-regional, nation-state, and beyond).

Our review of the emerging answers will lead to the concept of the Partner State, i.e. a community-state form that enables and scales commons-based cooperation at all levels.

The annual conference of the European Artistic Research Network (EARN) will be hosted in 2018 by the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) and Dublin School of Creative Arts & Media (DSCA) at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT).

Key-note speakers include:

Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation); Conflict Kitchen – Dawn Weleski & Jon Rublin (artists); Bernard Stiegler (philosopher)

This two-day conference seeks to address the impact of contributory economies on tradi- tional understandings of the nation and state. Since the 2008 financial crisis, alterna- tive economies have been increasingly explored through digitally networked communities, artistic practice and activist strategies that endeavour to transgress traditional links between nation and economy. Developed at a crucial time on the island of Ireland when Brexit is set to redefine centre/margin relations the conference seeks to engage with a number of themes within this context: nation and inter-nation; the nation and aesthet- ics; art and economy; P2P networks; digital economies; modes of exchange and modes of production; alternative economies; network aesthetics; populism and counter populism; aesthetics and the imagination; activist practices; geo-politics; island, archipelago and continent; centre and margin.

The guiding concept of the conference ‘Inter-Nation’ comes from the work of anthro- pologist Marcel Mauss, who in ‘A Different Approach to Nationhood’ (1920) proposed an original understanding of both concepts that opposes traditional definitions of state and nationalism. More recently, Bernard Stiegler has revisited Mauss’s definition of In- ter-Nation as a broader concept in support of contributory economies emerging in digital culture. Contributory economies are those exchange networks and peer-to-peer communities that seek to challenge the dominant value system inherent to the nation-state. Such dig- ital networks have the potential to challenge traditional concepts of sovereignty and geo-politics through complex technological platforms. Central to these platforms are a broad understanding of technology beyond technical devices to include praxis-oriented processes and applied knowledges inherent to artistic forms of research. Similarly, due to the aesthetic function of the nation, artistic researchers are critically placed to engage with the multiple registers at play within this conference, and to address these issues through multiple forms as they play out live on this island.

Photo by bookgrl

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Photo by Lynn Friedman

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Peer production is on the rise as a new pathway of value creation, where peer-to-peer infrastructures allow people to communicate, self-organise and co-create digital commons of knowledge, software and design. Think of the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, the myriad of free and open-source projects such as Linux, or open design and hardware communities such as Wikihouse, L’Atelier Paysan, Sensorica or Farmhack.

The commons ecosystem

At the core of this new value model are the ‘productive communities’, which include both paid and unpaid labour. Around these commons, an economy of products and services that are based on the commons pools, but also adding to them, is formed. This is done by enterprises that create ‘entrepreneurial coalitions’ around the commons ecosystem and the productive communities.

These contributions to the digital commons are enabled by collaborative infrastructures of production, and supportive legal and institutional infrastructures, empowered by ‘for-benefit’ (as opposed to for-profit) associations. These foundations may create digital commons depositories, protect against infringements of open and sharing licenses, organise fundraising drives for infrastructure, and assist knowledge-sharing through local, national and international conferences.

Typically, the non-profit foundations of free and open-source communities, such as the Mozilla Foundation, manage and enable the infrastructure of co-operation. They defend the use of open licenses, sometimes provide training or certification, but overall their task is to enable and empower co-operation. These institutions generally function with formal democratic procedures, such as elections.

From communities to societies

These foundations operate as the ‘polis’, i.e. mini-states of the commons-based peer production ecosystems. Moving from what we can see of the existing practice at the micro-level, to the vision of a full social form, we can see that there is also a need for a ‘state form’.

In our vision, a commons-centric society would ideally have:

• a productive civil society that would contribute to the commons,
• a generative market that would create added value around the commons,
• a partner state, which is emerging prefiguratively in some urban practices, such as the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons or some policies of the Barcelona En Comú citizen platform.

In this vision, the partner state would be the guarantor of civic rights, but also of the equal contributory potential of all citizens. Without this function, communities could have unequal access to resources and capabilities, perpetuating inequality. In our vision, the state form would gradually lose its separateness from civil society, by implementing radically democratic procedures and practices.

Public-good institutions like these are necessary in the face of rising individualistic political philosophies, such as anarcho-capitalism or libertarianism, that only see individuals making contracts with each other. Society needs its specific forms of expression. The state is one of them. And the state imaginary we argue for, synchronised with the special characteristics of digital technologies, could be that of the partner state. Watch this space.

Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation. Vasilis Kostakis is a senior researcher at Tallinn University of Technology and a research affiliate at Harvard University.

Lead image: Wikihouse is an open-source library of house-building plans. Photo: Wikihouse Foundation

Originally published in Red Pepper.

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Commons include not only the gifts of nature,like water and land, but also shared assets or creative work, such as cultural and knowledge artifacts. Commons are a shared resource, co-governed by its user community, according to the norms of that community. Considering the historical depths of the Commons, it’s difficult to agree on one definition that encompasses its full potential for social, economic, cultural and political change. The Commons is not the resource, the community that gathers around it, or the rules of how is is managed, it’s the evolving interaction between all these things. Why is the Commons steadily gathering attention as a concept and practice? And what happens next?

The hollowing out of the welfare state has resulted in an increased mistrust in political parties and representative democracy in many parts of the world. On one extreme, the void is being filled by far-right narratives that satisfy the disillusioned by offering over-simplified analyses and demonisation of the “other”, the most vulnerable and least privileged among us, often refugees and marginalized peoples. In contrast, a barely reinvigorated left has seen many of its potential solutions proven unworkable, whether through bureaucratic excess, institutional blockages, or a simple lack of popular commitment.

Meanwhile, the institutional crises of our time persist. Our current world system also suffers from a deeply counterproductive logic. This system, based on infinite growth within the confines of finite resources, was enabled by the false concept of abundance in the limited material world. A second false concept of scarcity in the infinite immaterial world gave rise to legal and technical restrictions on social innovation through the use of copyrights, patents, etc. Overturning these false principles will be key priorities for a sustainable civilization. To this end, we must recognize that our natural resources are indeed limited, and base our physical economy in this recognition to achieve a sustainable, steady-state economy, and at the same time facilitate free, creative cooperation by reforming copyright and other restrictive regimes.

The livelihoods of roughly two billion people worldwide depend on some form of commons, yet many of these commons remain unprotected and vulnerable, in danger of privatization or sale. Similarly, it is not unconceivable to expect that an analogous number of individuals are co-creating shared resources online. These potentially massive affinity networks lack a common identifier or unifying vision, yet we recognise the logic of commoning as a shared thread.

We use the phrase “Commons transition” to describe a process of facilitating open, participatory input across society, prioritizing the needs of those people and environments affected by policy decisions over market or bureaucratic needs. The protection and empowering of existing commons, along with the creation of new ones, are keystones. A Commons transition will also require the creation of a commons-centric economy within the existing capitalist system, but seeking to transcend it with commoners at the helm. This implies uniting the forces which support the commons, generative and ethical markets, and the development of an enabling and empowering state which enables the social production of value, ie: “commoning”. It also means discovering synergies among the prefigurative forces that create the new economy, finding political expressions for them, and enabling them to act at the political level along with other emancipatory social and political forces.

A broad societal transition, different from the classic left narratives of previous centuries, is possible through the integrative strategy of a Commons transition. Why would this strategy be effective?

History shows that political revolutions do not precede deep reconfigurations of power, but rather complete them. New movements or classes and their practices precede the social revolutions that make their power and modalities dominant. How does that relate the idea of a Commons transition? There is ample data to support the kind of prefigurative existence of a growing number of commoners who could form the basis of a historical subject at the forefront of this phase transition — a very strong start.

Factor in the changing cultural expectations of millennial and post-millennial generations, and their requirements for meaningful engagements and work, which are hardly met by the current regime. The increasing vulnerability of work under neoliberalism drives the search for alternatives, and the cultural force of P2P self-organizing and corresponding mentalities fuels the growth of commons-oriented networks and communities.

Also, commons-based peer production is a model that could create a context of truly sustainable production. It is almost impossible to imagine a shift to sustainable circular economy practices under the current intellectual property driven, privatizing regime. The thermodynamic efficiencies needed for sustainable production may be found in the systematic applications of the principles inherent in the commons-centric economy. The watchwords are free, fair and sustainable, the three interrelated elements needed for a shift to more reasonable economy, polity and, ultimately, culture.

Finally, the crisis of the left itself, now relegated to the management of the crisis of neoliberalism itself, points to the vital need of renewing the strategic thinking of the forces that aim for human emancipation and a sustainable life-world. All of the above form a strategy for a multi-modal commons-centric transition, offering a positive way out of the current crisis and a way to respond to the new demands of the commons-influenced generations. The Commons and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime already exist. The commoners are already here, and they’re already commoning; in other words, the Commons transition has begun.

This article is based on A Commons Transition and P2P Primer, a short publication from the P2P Foundation and the Transnational Institute examining the potential of commons-based peer production to radically re-imagine our economies, politics and relationship with nature.

Written by Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, Stacco Troncoso, Ann Marie Utratel for the P2P Foundation. The P2P Foundation (officially, The Foundation for P2P Alternatives) is a non-profit organization and global network dedicated to advocacy and research of commons oriented peer to peer (P2P) dynamics in society.

Photo by Paul-Vincent Roll on Unsplash

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How bad is our present political landscape? Let’s take stock. The crush of “lesser-evilism”? Check. Alt-right’s metastatic spread? Check. Once-radiant left options (like Syriza or Podemos) now tarnished, in part by their inability to make good on promises? Check. Overall, pretty bad.

The excesses of neoliberal capitalism may have finally eroded any remaining trace of its intellectual credibility. However odious, these excesses had become comfortable for many people, offering a false sense of security and predictable margins of action. Prolonged austerity politics and the pillage of the welfare state have left large numbers of people frustrated, hopeless, and angry, though, and the awakened right-populist movements have exploited this with alarming consequences. But without an apparent alternative, political engagement can seem limited to a pointless choice: scramble on loose rocks over the familiar but shifting ground of globalized capitalism, or hitch one’s wagon to a careening carload of 21st century hubris, i.e. Brexit, Trumpism, the alt- or far-right. Is it time to give up on the representative democracy experiment, or are there any active models for more humane, participatory politics?

The political context described above has been outlined in a good many contemporary books and articles, but sadly, there are seldom any viable alternatives offered to stem the tide of inevitable ruin. This article describes an attempt to reimagine our political systems emancipated from rollercoaster markets and bureaucracies. Based in existing, effective political movements that have been winning elections in a variety of locations, this is an account of radical innovations in governance, production, care work, the stewardship of our cultural, digital and natural heritage, and of a politics that lays a bedrock for bottom-up system rebuilding. This is the politics of the commons and peer to peer (P2P), an expansion on the shared creation and management of common resources, and its recent successful eruption in municipal governments.

Commons in the Time of Monsters

As Gramsci said (or didn’t say ^[1]), “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”. After nearly 40 years of progressive neoliberalization and social decomposition, contemporary politics has been very publicly upended by a misogynistic, xenophobic and financially privileged “new right” intent on coupling its politics of hate onto the apparatus of state power.

So, where is the margin for action, if change from within is effectively blocked by the structural constraints of statist politics and the electoral arena? The Leninist notion of achieving state power with or without popular consent, and as a certain precursor to equitable and lasting social change, has proven misguided: the next system won’t just fall into place at the pull of a lever.

Amid this increasingly bleak political landscape, affinity-based networks and communities using P2P dynamics and building commons have been taking action. Small-scale innovations in many fields are paving the way for true, sustainable resource management and grounded social cohesion. In governance, food growing, service provision, science, research and development, education, even finance and currency, these community-enabled developments demonstrate how differently our lives could be organized. Many of these place-based efforts are being documented and replicated worldwide through the Internet, in the process re-seeding the knowledge Commons from which they draw. This is done through commons enabling, aka P2P (peer-to-peer, person-to-person, people-to-people) technologies, which are gaining momentum as forces for constructive change. They enable small group dynamics at higher levels of complexity and enable the reclamation of power.

Unfamiliar with the Commons? Click here to enlarge.

With this power, people can create innovations in production, open book accounting, and the stewardship of natural, cultural or digitally derived commons — but also in governance. Together, all of this forms the building blocks of a truly bottom-up system. Could all this really coalesce into something that, in the future, might be called “post-capitalism”? Only if those who identify as commoners recognize, promote and develop these systems and increase their cultural and, vitally, their political influence, while remembering that there are other players already on the field using similar means towards very different ends.

Prefigurative social arrangements and provisioning approaches are some of the key components for constructing sensible alternatives, but they are not developed in isolation. Instead, they are built within the constraints of existing systems. Likewise, whether through the enclosures ^[2] brought on by neoliberalism or through authoritarian, exclusionary hate politics, the ‘normal’ conditions people expect or aspire to will undoubtedly shrink. This would affect things people have taken for granted to some degree, including job security, pensions, unemployment, sensible working hours and conditions, fairness. As an effect, the ‘wiggle room’ assumed for the operations of those productive communities will inevitably compress.

Seen from outside the Western context, this wiggle room could be considered as ‘privilege’. Under the market-maximizing dictates of Brussels, such privileges seemed like they were on their way out in the EU. But the man behind the curtain was revealed in 2008, and a sudden flare of counter-political activity reached its peak of public attention in 2011. In 2017, the question is not theoretical, but hands-on practical: how do we build the new world in the shell of the old – and before the shell squeezes shut.

The post-2011 protest movements never quite got it together, politically speaking, well or quickly enough to counter the rising hate wave from the right. The contemporary European political landscape shows a populist reaction against global capitalism, but by harking back to a past that never was. Adding insult to injury, we see these xenophobic constructs have built their social base not just with deft internet and social media skills, but also by using P2P tactics. That’s a bit of salt in the wound, given that P2P tactics and tools have largely been promoted by people working for a more inclusive and just world, not one that seeks to “otherize” and exclude.

We cannot afford to forget that financial interests will always favor extreme right wing or fascist options that safeguard their stake, and that any redistributive political options will be harshly and publicly ridiculed, or worse. With the noxious spirit of the thirties rebounding, there’s not a moment to spare; patience now would be a deadly strategy. It’s time to occupy the collective cultural imagination with compelling and practical political alternatives and expose the normalization of neoliberalism as deadly propaganda; to expose the numbing spectacle (Brexit, Trump, etc.) as yet another synthetic opioid addiction.

This is why it’s time for the Commons movement to become more overtly politically active. Beyond self-organized production, care work, ecological stewardship, even beyond ethical generative markets, it’s time for more effective political engagement, not only to protect the essentials of the welfare state model, but to transcend it with a radically reimagined politics that facilitates social value creation and community-organized practices. There are models for this commons-oriented political engagement in Spain’s municipal movements, which the rest of this article will outline. To be clear, “political” describes not only political representation, but also the actionable rights of all those affected by political decisions – the public sphere. There’s a false dichotomy between wanting to build new alternatives now and wanting to enable change by hacking existing political channels. Both approaches, prefigurative and institutional, can work together.

Vanguardism: a 21st century cautionary tale

Now it’s time to look back at the origins of a particularly visible political party, one that offered the promise of a more inclusive, commons-oriented political process, but which eventually failed to deliver. The spirit of the commons was present in its nascence, though, in public assemblies. This factor is one to keep in mind while considering the eventual rise of municipalist parties.

In January 2014, a group of political science professors from the Autonomous University of Madrid found themselves gaining some popularity on Spanish national television. They announced the formation of a new political party, one that would demand:

“…a politics that goes back onto the streets that talks like the majority of people who have had enough. (…) Our demand for a greater generosity from representatives, for a greater horizontality and transparency, for a return of the republican values of public virtue and social justice, for the recognition of our plurinational and pluricultural reality is more real than ever. It is decades since our desire for making our own decisions and answering our own questions was so real.” (Mover Ficha Manifesto)

In the European Elections four months later, the new party won 5 seats in the European Parliament with more than 1.2 million votes.

Of course, that party is Podemos, whose trajectory indicates what a commons-oriented political party can — and more pointedly, should not — do. Their early months impart what is politically feasible in urgent circumstances, and show the power that can be harnessed by appealing to people’s’ hopes while articulating their needs and desires. The early success of Podemos is due to their work on two distinct-yet-related levels: mass media and network media.

Having cut their teeth on prime-time TV debates, Podemos’ most visible figures (chiefly male) made for great entertainment, clobbering the arguments of the chronic political class, which they dubbed la casta (“the caste”, a jibe implying a privileged class).

It wasn’t all show business. They were savvy enough to capture the networked, horizontalist politics of the 15-M movement. A staggering number of geographical- and interest-based assemblies (called “circulos”) were enabled and bolstered online through tools like Reddit, Loomio and others.

With its legion of tactics, Podemos became a totem appealing to many types. One type is the once politically apathetic actor, who sees in Podemos’ secretary general, Pablo Iglesias, a contrarian avatar through which to channel their disdain for the middle-class destroying “casta”. Next would be the old guard leftist, disenchanted with the Social Democrat (PSOE) party’s devotion to neoliberalism and austerity politics. Similarly, there are those who had been disillusioned after placing their bets on the more leftist outgrowths of the Spanish Communist Party. The last type, obvious but worth mentioning, is the activist, who found or rediscovered their political voice in the squares during 15-M and/or the preceding alter-globalization movement.

Of course, we’re not here to tell the story of Podemos. That story has turned darker and duller over time. Once high on the taste of popularity and leadership in the polls, the Podemos ruling committee slanted towards becoming a vanguardist “electoral machine”, taking power on behalf of those left behind. It began to look like Podemos would win the elections at all costs and bring liberation to the silenced masses — whether the masses wanted this imposed from above, or not.

Three years later, the results are plain to see. Surpassed by both the Social Democrats and the somehow-still-ruling Popular Party (a den of Franco apologists and Brussels bootlickers), Podemos failed to make “fear change sides”, as once they boasted.

Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, Greece proffers another cautionary tale: SYRIZA, the party from the “little country that said ‘no’”. Except that, after saying ‘no’, the little country’s political representatives, now disconnected from the social movements that lofted them to power, kept on playing the rigged game rather than build one fresh.

The story does not end here. A new political milieu arose between 2014 and 2015, led by the third profile mentioned above: the post 15-M activists, stepping up and into politics. They wanted to be the creators of representative politics, not its recipients, and to act as facilitators for many other voices to be included. The genesis of Spain’s municipalist coalitions tells a new story, describing keys to a successful commons-based political strategy that creates tangible change.

Proclamations of a movement’s death, greatly exaggerated

The origins of this other story lie in the apparent decay of the 15-M movement. The word “apparent” is key here – as long as we are speaking of visibility, we must acknowledge the Occupy movement as part of this disappearing act.

In 2011, Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” was not Donald Trump, but the protester. This marked the apex of media-visibility for the networked movements demanding attention by standing their ground and announcing their presence through encampments, which provided a compact mass of human profiles against a mainstream media-friendly backdrop. Here, we should draw a distinction between how the 15-M and Occupy encampments disbanded and were disbanded.

In Spain, the activists took a page from the Art of War and voluntarily dispersed their large-scale occupations, decentralizing them into neighborhood assemblies. In the US, the FBI coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, private sector players (notably banks), local law enforcement, and mayors of several prominent cities to first infiltrate and then violently dismantle the occupations. If we limit the import of Occupy to those few, highly visible months in the squares, we can see that it had not so much “died” as it was assassinated.

In both Spain and the US, the media — behaving as if geospatial proximity is the only thing holding affinity networks together— rushed to pronounce these and all their sister movements worldwide to be defunct. So much for the person of the year in 2011! This was not a natural passing but a brutal attempt at disappearing a large movement. However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, “proclamations of the movement’s death have been greatly exaggerated”. If these movements still live and breathe, though, we must ask ourselves with whose complicity and consent they have been labeled “failures”.

Think of a sugar cube. Held in your hand it is compact, with a recognizable shape and texture, easy to measure and describe. Drop the sugar cube into a coffee cup and stir that around. Magic! The cube has disappeared. Take a sip, though, and you’ll agree that the flavor has changed.

In a nutshell, this describes the argument that the 15-M/Occupy/Syntagma/various local movements are alive and well, albeit in distributed and less immediately apparent ways. For those willing to look, their effects are readily identifiable. Remember that not even six years have passed since the occupations; this is not a tale of hippies turning into yuppies. This is the story of a movement that refuses to take the news of its own demise as a binding contract.

In the US, you can perceive how Occupy infused the Bernie Sanders campaign (also undermined by entrenched interests), and recently we can see its influence in the Women’s Marches, strikes and parts of the anti-Trump movement.

In Spain, however, these activists, people with real memories and lived experiences, chose to politically organize, and they actually won – not once, but multiple times in multiple locations.

The Rise of the Urban Commons

In the spring of 2014, spurred on by Podemos’ success in the European elections, a group of activists met in el Patio Maravillas, one of Madrid’s most prominent occupied social centers. “We’re going to win this city”, they announced. They began organizing, enabling unprecedented levels of citizen participation and facilitating a common space for previously unaffiliated and disaggregated political actors. Anyone who agreed with the basic principles and wanted to be present could propose him or herself as a candidate on fully open and participatory electoral lists.

A month or so earlier, activists from Barcelona launched a manifesto to invite existing social movements and political organizations to converge around four fundamental objectives:

1. Guaranteeing the citizenry’s basic rights and a decent life for all,
2. Fostering an economy that prioritizes social and environmental justice,
3. The participative democratization of institutions,
4. To meet an ethical commitment towards citizens.

The call for convergence was an astounding success, and Guanyem Barcelona, publicly represented by anti-eviction and right to housing campaigner Ada Colau, begins its yearlong mutation into Barcelona en Comú, an “instrumental” electoral coalition comprising a variety of actors from social movements and anti-establishment political parties working together to take back the city.

Ignored or decried in the popular media, these coalitions, much like the 15-M and Occupy encampments, replicated themselves in other locales, forming alliances and swarming around shared values and beliefs. The process was messy, effervescent and busy. No one had tried this before and there is no instruction manual; in practice, it can only be written together.

Against poll expectations, a hostile media, and entrenched political interests, these parties overwhelmingly won in Spain’s main cities, not only Madrid and Barcelona, but also in Valencia, A Coruña, Zaragoza, and Cadiz. Podemos, although a participant in many of these coalitions, chose to run the regional (as opposed to the city) ballot on their own. The result? Zero victories in all the places where the citizens’ coalitions had triumphed. In the city of Madrid, where the same census group could vote for the city (Ahora Madrid) and regional (Podemos) ballot, Podemos got just half the number of votes won by Ahora Madrid.

Image by Maria Castelló Solbés. Click here for more on the origin of Spain’s municipalist movements.

Spain’s municipalist coalitions were the result of a number of movements representing changes in cultures, mindsets and relations to power. The most notable among these is 15-M and, unlike Podemos, the coalitions can be considered its true political byproducts. Prior to the 2014-2015 electoral cycle, 15-M had also developed strong transversal relations with movements around housing, public health and education and culture. Known as “las mareas”, or “citizen’s tides”, these were characterized by self-organized protests and capacity building that, although inclusive of traditional actors such as labour unions and political parties, were truly multi-constituent in nature. For example, the public health marea would include healthcare professionals, patients, civil workers, health reformers, hospital staff, specific disease-focused associations and help groups, etc., as well as all supporters of the public health service. 15-M itself was also a product of already existing tendencies, with people who had been working in digital activism, free culture, de-growth, the commons and a host of other movements.

Today, the municipalist platforms coordinate among themselves to share resources and best practices, functioning as trans-local affinity networks. Although mainly focused on providing real world solutions to their constituencies, the coalitions share a number of notable features. One of the most refreshing is that their attitude towards political discourse is considerably more feminized, a contrast to the old guard and masculine attitudes typically found in institutional politics.

The municipalist focus on participation and radical democracy, honed through many street assemblies, has been refined into a shared “código ético” or ethical code, which shapes the platforms behaviors within the institutions. The code acts as both a glue and draw for the participants, again not limited to party staff, but to all who want to feel involved. The main features are as follows:

• No revolving doors (no cycling through public/private positions)
• Salary cuts
• Participative program
• Open primaries — no party quotas, and open to anyone
• Voluntary/citizen self-financing, and rejection of institutional or bank financing

Beyond their local concerns and trans-local alliances, all the municipalist platforms have their eye on the transnational dimension in order to form a network of “Rebel Cities”. This, as a practice, mirrors the locally embedded but globally networked practices of P2P productive communities. In addition, the multi-constituent approach seen in the citizen tides is mirrored within the coalitions, which, although inclusive of established political parties, are notably non-partisan as they all reflect the interests of wide breadth of civil society actors.

And they lived happily ever after? Of course not: the activists-turned-political representatives face an unwaveringly hostile media environment, which exaggerates their blunders (or invents them when convenient) while burying their achievements. After four years of precarity and engaged activism, these individuals face 60+ hour workweeks while clashing against the entrenched realities of horizontalist bureaucracy, holding minority seats within electoral alliances with Social Democrats. The pluralistic nature of the citizens’ coalitions have unsurprisingly led to incoherencies and gaffes and, perhaps worst of all, a noticeable abandonment of direct-action tactics and counter-power building efforts. Still, they soldier on, and the list of benefits and advances (cancellations of public contracts with multi-nationals, participatory budgeting, more gender-balanced literature and representation, increased public spending, anti-gentrification strategies, basic income pilots, direct-democracy mechanisms…) is plain for all to see.

The best of the truly good news is that Spain’s municipalist coalitions are not alone. Progressive cities worldwide are enabling and empowering the act of commoning. Rather than directing what the citizenry can do for itself and its environments, these “Rebel Cities” or, “Fearless Cities” as a recent event called them, are listening to commoners’ voices and creating spaces for ordinary people to roll up their sleeves and manage those matters that concern them most directly. Cities like Ghent, Belgium; Bologna, Italy; Amsterdam, Holland; Frome, England; Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Naples, Italy; Montreal, Canada; Jackson, USA; Lille, France; Bristol, UK and Valparaiso, Chile are examples. Their people are increasing transparency, enabling participatory budgeting, turning empty lots into community gardens, co-creating skill and tool sharing programs, and facilitating the creation of social care co-ops among many other actions relevant in their local contexts.

Beyond the city level, we now also find pan-European efforts to bring the practices of commoning to the institutions, while not losing sight of the necessary mutual recognition needed for the Commons movement to emancipate itself from markets and state as it radically re-imagines these. In November 2016, a group of 150 commoners from all over Europe gathered in Brussels to lay the foundations for a united and strong movement, and the European Commons Assembly was born. Building on several weeks’ collective work in policy proposals, the Assembly sat in European Parliament to explore the ECA as a platform and the commons as a powerful paradigm for policymaking.

Commons Transition: Building the political lexicon of social governance from below

The lexicon and practices of commoning are evident in how these coalitions, Rebel Cities and transnational assemblies have formed and are articulating their governance. With a focus on transparency and citizen participation, and taking advantage of open-source P2P technologies, they prefigure many aspects of the politics of a better future. The challenge ahead lies in applying the network logics that have been so successful in Spain to recover the latent power of Occupy and 15-M and build resilient, more feminized and ethically coherent, transnational political movements.

In the same way that prefigurative strategies incorporate social and environmental priorities into their informal constitutions, without waiting for markets or state to deal with such ‘externalities’, the municipalist ethical code can form the kernel of a set of political guidelines to be hard-coded into commons-oriented coalition principles, bringing fresh accountability to contemporary politics.

Potential success is also about keeping it real and relatable. The old left has traditionally communicated in abstracts, which tends to create rather than solves problems. At the same time, the “new” populist left of Syriza, Podemos and Bolivarian Socialism seems satisfied making grand paternalistic promises, resorting to throwing blame rather than proposing participatory, unalienated and feasible actions. In a culture where the elderly self-organise affinity groups through social networks and informal, participatory communities emerge to address the shortcomings of a decaying welfare state, people are demonstrating that they want to have a say in how things are run. They do not want to have someone paid exponentially more to say it on their behalf. Can a Commons politics address and support this shift towards self-organization?

The vision is to develop the emerging commons and P2P political movement at higher levels of complexity — the regional, national and transnational levels — while preserving the characteristics of local, real-place dynamism. By engaging the creativity and input of those communities most affected by political processes, commons-based practices can nurture a sense of identity that can be harnessed for effective political action. The integrative narrative of the Commons invites citizens’ direct political engagement outside the restrictive bureaucracies of the market state and economies.

Imagine a radically reconfigured and democratically accountable structure. One that, while preserving the more desirable characteristics of the Welfare State — social and public health provision and large infrastructure management and upkeep — radically democratizes them. It would do away with the State’s cozy symbiosis with market entities, while deconstructing its pernicious monopolies over money creation and exchange, and property and judicial rights. A second radical set of measures would prohibit the structural enforcement of inequality and the often violent repression of emancipatory alternatives. This structure would function in much the same way as foundations do in the Open Source software economy: providing the infrastructure for cooperation and the creation and upkeep of commons but not directing the process of social value creation and distribution. In other words, it would empower and protect the practice of commoning.

This enabling metastructure — often referred to as “The Partner State” — would also take on new functions derived from already existing P2P/Commons practices. Among these, we would see a promotion of real, needs-oriented entrepreneurship, bolstered by explicit recognition and support of bottom-up productive infrastructures, such as Open Coops, mesh wireless networks or community renewables through public-Commons partnerships. It would allow commoners to repurpose or take over unused or underutilised public buildings for social ends while giving legal recognition to the act of commoning, whether through copyleft-inspired property-law hacks or through a longer process of gradually institutionalizing commons practices. Its grassroots democratizing ethos would create new financing mechanisms and debt-free public money creation, which, alongside social currencies, could fund environmentally regenerative work and the creation of new, distributed Open-source infrastructure. These would be supported by taxation schemes favouring the types of labor described above, while penalizing speculation, parasitic rents and negative social and environmental externalities. The overall system has to be kept in check through a pervasive culture of participatory politics — made feasible through its attendant pedagogy — to involve a newly enfranchised citizenry in the deliberation and real time consultation of political and legislative issues and budgeting. In issues of power, the Partner State shifts to being a fluid facilitator to assist and emancipate the bottom-up counter-power that keeps it in check.

Is this narrative Utopian? No more than the “what are their demands…?” proposals of Occupy and 15-M. In fact, many of the Partner State practices described above are already being enacted by the Fearless Cities. Accusations of utopianism are used dismissively to enclose the commons of the imagination. People need courage (and encouragement) to imagine something better in human nature, more than inevitable conflict and self-interest. History, despite its observable patterns, is not deterministic. Nothing suddenly materializes from detailed concepts into fully formed realities; there was no group of wise men sitting around in 15th century Florence proclaiming: “…and we shall create Capitalism! And it will progress through creative destruction! And we shall have high frequency algorithmic trading!” or any such nonsense. Instead, if we look, we can identify various socio-technological trends including the rise of the merchant class, the printing press, double book accounting, all of which would proceed from the 18th century to form what we recognize now as “capitalism”.

Back in our present-day chaos, applying a Commons Transition to the field of politics entails creating a new, inclusive political narrative that harnesses the best practices of three distinct progressive trends: Openness (e.g. Pirate parties), Fairness (e.g. New Left) and Sustainability (e.g. Green parties). The optimal game plan for building a new political vision fit for the challenges of our time involves building bridges between these three trends, precisely what the municipalists have achieved and translated into political and legislative power.

This vision for a new politics must also promote other underplayed concerns such as race, gender, and reproductive justice, and radically diversifying political representation in response to increased interest in balance — at the least, being sure that the representative picture is not always and only straight, white men, particularly in leadership roles. Take into account that women spearheaded the municipalist candidacies that triumphed in Barcelona and Madrid.

There is a need for deeper respect towards rural and deindustrialized areas, where P2P dynamics can usher in workable solutions and grounded, bio-regionally based political engagement. Inclusive by nature, the Commons as applied to politics can enable grassroots political participation by affected individuals and communities. However, this new narrative must be grounded in scalable, existing best practices that are accessible to change makers and civil-society organizations, not only to existing institutions.

Taken together, these successful municipalist occupations of power structures show that the logic of the Commons, coupled with democratic, participatory relations enabled by P2P systems, can reinvigorate and instill a new sense of purpose in today’s political field. If we can imagine a commons-oriented future including a commons politics, it practically becomes a moral imperative to do everything in our power to bring that better future to reality. In this fight in the time of monsters, the fight between David and Goliath, why not be David?^[3] He won after all and, after seeing what the municipalists had to overcome, perhaps so can we.

This article expands on themes showcased on Commons Transition and P2P: a Primer, a short publication from the P2P Foundation and the Transnational Institute examining the potential of commons-based peer production to radically re-imagine our economies, politics and relationship with nature. Download it here.

Images: Francisco de Goya, Choon Goon, Melissa Stanley, TOr ghEH, Elena Martínez Vicente, Barcex, Time Magazine, Maria Castelló Solbés, Ars Electronica, Scott Webb,

Footnotes

^[1] Did Gramsci actually say that? This hotly contested quote nonetheless captures the current world juncture.

^[2] From 1776 to 1825, the English Parliament passed more than 4,000 Acts that served to appropriate common lands from commoners, chiefly to the benefit of politically connected landowners. These enclosures of the commons seized about 25 percent of all cultivated acreage in England, according to historian Raymond Williams, and concentrated ownership of it in a small minority of the population. These “lawful” enclosures also dispossessed millions of citizens, swept away traditional ways of life, and forcibly introduced the new economy of industrialization, occupational specialties and large-scale production. Nowadays we use the term “enclosure” to denounce heinous acts such the ongoing privatization of intellectual property, the expropriation and massive land grabs occurring in Africa and other continents, the imposition of digital right management digital content, the patenting of seeds and the human genome, and more. This modern tendency towards enclosures and turning relationships into services, and commons into commodities, has been described by Commons scholar David Bollier as “The great invisible tragedy of our time”.

^[3] This idea was originally voiced by anti-fracking activist Sandra Steingraber.

Originally published at commondreams.org

The post Commons in the time of monsters: How P2P Politics can change the world, one city at a time appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Overview

The country of one’s dreams must be a country one can imagine being constructed, over the course of time, by human hands.”
-Richard Rorty

Among capitalism’s many critics, it is standard procedure to state that neoliberalism has failed and that unless our societies construct a new paradigm for how economies work, human societies will collapse under the weight of an unsustainable and environmentally catastrophic capitalist system.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the most powerful purveyor of neoliberal ideas over the last forty years, has now admitted that perhaps its signature ideology has been oversold, and that the costs of free market ideology may have outweighed the touted benefits. When this happens, we may be sure something has reached a breaking point. Whether this signals a fundamental shift in thinking, or a tactical maneuver to preserve the status quo, is a matter of political perspective. (My money is on the latter.)

In fact, neoliberalism has not failed. From the vantage point of its ultimate purpose—maximizing wealth to the owners of capital—it is succeeding admirably.  As a doctrine, it is true to its principles. The problem is that these principles are not just unsustainable—they are pathological. The deification and normalization of greed and the hoarding of wealth by an ever-shrinking and increasingly predatory minority has brought us to the brink of economic and social collapse.¹ What is more, the dominance of neoliberal ideas in our culture has literally deprived people of the capacity to imagine any alternative. This is the ultimate triumph of ideology. If ever there was a time when alternative visions of how economies might work were urgently needed, it is now. The absence of alternatives from public debate is one clear symptom of the crisis we are in.

If ever there was a time when alternative visions of how economies might work were urgently needed, it is now.

The election of Donald Trump in the US, the success of Brexit in the UK, and the rise of neo-fascist parties across the face of Europe only highlight the continuing failure of leftist movements to present such a vision and to address the massive discontent that is now driving political developments. But it is also true that the direction this discontent can take is still up for grabs. Despite recent disheartening events, the election of Syriza in Greece, the popularity of the Sanders campaign in the US, the rise of Podemos and Barcelona en Comú in Spain, and the success of the Pirate Party in Iceland show that the triumph of right wing reaction is not guaranteed. But the failure of Syriza to challenge the status quo in Europe and the rise of Trump in the US also indicate that a change of political direction is not tenable within the parameters of our present institutions. We have entered an age where it is entirely likely that change—in whatever form—will come not as a result of conscious political effort on the part of social movements, but rather from the collapse of the current system.

What is entirely unknown is what form this change will take. Already, the absence of an alternative to capitalism has given rise to forms of reaction not witnessed since the fascist era of the 1930s. Even more frightening is that the pathology of fascist ideas has taken hold in what were once the strongholds of liberal democracy. In the US, the first weeks of a Trump administration has revealed the face of an Orwellian dystopia in the making. It seems clear that the urgency of our present moment is now primarily political. The consequences of global warming, growing inequality, disappearing civil liberties, and the consolidation of the surveillance state all point to the necessity of political mobilization on a scale not seen since the uprisings of the mid 1800s. It is also clear that any such mobilization must be propelled by a vision and a plan that concretely and radically challenge and transform the underpinnings of our current system.

It means the recovery of economic and political sovereignty by nations, the radical curtailment and redistribution of wealth, the social control of capital, the democratization of technology, the protection of social, cultural, and environmental values, and the use of state and civil institutions to promote economic democracy in all its forms. Above all, it means the evolution of new forms of governance that deliver decision-making power to citizens in an era of global power dynamics. A tall order. But if the grievances that are polarizing societies across the globe are not channeled in ways that offer people constructive pathways to reform, positive visions of society that they can believe in, ways of life that have meaning beyond self-aggrandizement and the worship of money, what comes next will be a nightmare, fueled by rage and resentment. In the US, we are seeing this unfolding before our eyes.

Thankfully, the elements of a new imaginary are all around us.

Thankfully, the elements of a new imaginary are all around us. The outlines of a new political economy that is both humane and in which the fulfillment of the person is conjoined to the well-being of one’s community are already visible in the innumerable examples of cooperative and social enterprises that are showing daily that social values can be the basis for a form of economics in which the common good prevails. Ethics can be a basis for a new economic order. In this essay, I will not dwell on what has gone wrong with late stage capitalism. The seemingly permanent state of economic, social, and environmental crisis that it has engendered is evidence that our economic system is both unjust and unsustainable. Nor can I address all aspects of what a Next System entails. What I will do is describe elements of political economy that I think are indispensable for paradigm change; including, the forms by which such an economy might function; the roles of citizens and the state; the role of technology; and, examples of how these ideas may be realized in strategic areas. These include the provision of social care, the creation of money and social investment, the creation of social markets, and the containment of corporate power. It is true that the rapid regressions that we are now witnessing daily clearly require urgent and immediate action to resist very specific threats that affect real lives and cannot wait for what may come next. These range from the erasure of civil liberties, to the rollback of environmental protections, to the racist discrimination against minorities that is now public policy. But if these regressions are in fact symptomatic of a political order in crisis, as I argue in this paper, thinking about what comes next can ensure that the urgency of our actions in the here and now reflect a vision for the long term that gives meaning and coherence to what we do today.

George Monbiot, “Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of all Our Problems,” The Guardian,
April 15, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot.

This paper by John Restakis, published alongside three others, is one of many proposals for a systemic alternative we have published or will be publishing here at the Next System Project. We have commissioned these papers in order to facilitate an informed and comprehensive discussion of “new systems,” and as part of this effort, we have also created a comparative framework which provides a basis for evaluating system proposals according to a common set of criteria.

Continue reading, download the PDF here.

The post Cooperative Commonwealth & the Partner State appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Click on the image to download

Commons Transition and P2P: a Primer

This short primer, co-published with the Transnational Institute explains the Commons and P2P, how they interrelate, their movements and trends, and how a Commons transition is poised to reinvigorate work, politics, production, and care, both interpersonal and environmental. Drawing from our ten year + history researching and advocating for P2P/Commons Alternatives, the Primer is structured in a Q&A format, providing answers to questions such as “What are the Commons, what is P2P and how do they relate together?” “What are P2P Economics?” “What are P2P Politics?” and, more important, how these different factors can combine together at higher levels of complexity to form a viable transition strategy to  solid post-capitalist system that is respectful of people and planet.

The Primer features explanations for some of the key concepts we handle, as well as various case studies and infographics. It was co-written by Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel and designed by Elena Martínez, from the P2P Foundation.

The Commons Transition Primer is a year-long multimedia project/campaign aimed at making the world of the Commons and P2P more comprehensible and attractive to commoners worldwide. This publication will be followed up by a website, video material and events. In 2018 we will culminate the process with a full-length publication on the Commons Transition co-authored by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis.

Click here to download Commons Transition and P2P: a Primer

BIOS:

Michel Bauwens, co-founder and core team member of the P2P Foundation, is a Belgian Peer-to-Peer theorist. An active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subjects of technology, culture and business innovation, he is the Vision Coordinator for the P2P Foundation.

Vasilis Kostakis is the founder and coordinator of the interdisciplinary research hub P2P Lab that investigates the socio-economic and political impact of free and open-source technologies. He was the Research Coordinator and is now a core team member of the P2P Foundation.

Stacco Troncoso is a core team member and Advocacy Coordinator for the P2P Foundation. A co-founder of Guerrilla Translation, his work in communicating commons culture extends to public speaking and relationship building with prefigurative communities, policymakers and potential commoners worldwide.

Ann Marie Utratel is a core team member of the P2P Foundation working in advocacy and infrastructure. She is also a co-founder of Guerrilla Translation and contributes narrative storytelling and collaborates in strategic alliance building for the larger P2P/Commons ecosystem.

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