Can we create big, ambitious projects without corporations, governments, and bosses?

Nathalia Scherer wants to try. Her organization, DAOstack, is using Bitcoin-like blockchain technology to make tools for self-organizing. Last year DAOstack raised $30 million in a 60-second token offering, but genuinely participatory governance may be easier to raise money for than to actually achieve.

MEDLab’s radio show and podcast, Looks Like New, asks old questions about new tech.

Each month, host Nathan Schneider speaks with someone who works with technology in ways that challenge conventional narratives and dominant power structures. The name comes from the phrase “a philosophy so old that it looks like new,” repeated throughout the works of Peter Maurin, the French agrarian poet and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.

You can hear Looks Like New the fourth Thursday of every month at 6 p.m., or online as a podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.

Originally published on KGNU.org

The post Looks Like New: How Can We Self-Organize at Scale? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Abstract

“Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) is a new model of socio-economic production in which groups of individuals cooperate with each other without a traditional hierarchical organisation to produce common and public goods, such as Wikipedia or GNU/Linux. There is a need to understand how these communities govern and organise themselves as they grow in size and complexity. Following an ethnographic approach, this thesis explores the emergence of and changes in the organisational structures and processes of Drupal: a large and global CBBP community which, over the past fifteen years, has coordinated the work of hundreds of thousands of participants to develop a technology which currently powers more than 2% of websites worldwide. Firstly, this thesis questions and studies the notion of contribution in CBPP communities, arguing that contribution should be understood as a set of meanings which are under constant negotiation between the participants according to their own internal logics of value. Following a constructivist approach, it shows the relevance played by less visible contribution activities such as the organisation of events. Secondly, this thesis explores the emergence and inner workings of the sociotechnical systems which surround contributions related to the development of projects and the organisation of events. Two intertwined organisational dynamics were identified: formalisation in the organisational processes and decentralisation in decision-making. Finally, this thesis brings together the empirical data from this exploration of socio-technical systems with previous literature on self-organisation and organisation studies, to offer an account of how the organisational changes resulted in the emergence of a polycentric model of governance, in which different forms of organisation varying in their degree of organicity co-exist and influence each other.”

Summary (excerpted from preface)

“This thesis presents a study of self-organisation in a collaborative community focused on the development of a Free/Libre Open Source Software, named Drupal, whose model responds to the latter: a Commons-Based Peer Production community. Drupal is a content management framework, a software to develop web applications, which currently powers more than 2% of websites worldwide. Since the source code, the computer instructions, was released under a license which allow its use, copy, study and modification by anyone in 2001, the Drupal project has attracted the attention of hundreds of thousands of participants. More than 1.3 million people are registered on Drupal.org, the main platform of collaboration, and communitarian events are held every week all around the World. Thus, as the main slogan of the Drupal project reflects — “come for the software, stay for the community”, this collaborative project cannot be understood without exploring its community, which is the main focus of this thesis.

In sum, over the course of the next eleven chapters, this thesis presents the story of how hundreds of thousands of participants in a large and global Commons-Based Peer Production community have organised themselves, in what started as a small and amateur project in 2001. This is with the aim of furthering our understanding of how, coping with diverse challenges, Commons-Based Peer Production communities govern and scale up their self-organisational processes.

* Chapter 1 provides an overview of the phenomenon of Free/Libre Open Source Software and connects it with that of Commons-Based Peer Production, allowing the theoretical pillars from previous studies on both phenomena to be drawn on.

* Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main case study, the Drupal community. Throughout the second chapter the Drupal community is framed as an extreme case study of Commons-Based Peer Production on the basis of its growth, therefore offering an opportunity to improve our understanding of how self-organisational processes emerge, evolve and scale up over time in Commons-Based Peer Production communities of this type.

* Chapter 3 provides an overview of Activity Theory and its employment as an analytical tool: a lens which supports the analysis of the changes experienced in complex organisational activities, such as those from Free/Libre Open Source Software communities as part of the wider phenomenon of Commons-Based Peer Production.

* Chapter 4, explores the fundamental methodological aspects considered for this study, which draws on an ethnographic approach. The decision for this approach is reasoned on the basis of the nature of the research questions tackled in the study. Firstly, on requiring an inductive approach, which entails the assumption that topics emerge from the process of data analysis rather than vice versa. Secondly, on the necessity of drawing on a methodological approach which acknowledges the need to understand these topics from within the community.

* Chapter 5 begins the presentation of the findings of this study. It presents the findings regarding the study of contribution in the Drupal community, a notion which is fundamental for the choice of the main unit of analysis, contribution activity, in Activity Theory. The results from this study enabled the identification and consideration, throughout the subsequent chapters, not only of activities which are “officially” understood as contributions, such as those listed in the main collaboration platform, but also of those which have remained less visible in Free/Libre Open Source software and Commons-Based Peer Production communities and the literature on them.

* Chapters 6 and 7 address the study of the development of projects, activities whose main actions and operations are mostly performed through an online medium;

* Chapters 8 and 9 present the main argument that binds this thesis together: the growth experienced by the Drupal community led to a formalisation of self-organisational processes in response to a general dynamic of decentralisation of decision-making in order for these processes to scale up. This research identified these two general organisational dynamics, formalisation and decentralisation of decision-making, affecting large and global Commons-Based Peer Production communities as they grow over time. Thus, throughout these chapters, the means by which these general dynamics of formalisation and decentralisation shaped the overall systems which emerged around these different contribution activities are explored. The exploration of the organisational processes of this case study does not only show the existence of these dynamics, but it provides an in-depth account of how these dynamics relate to each other, as well as how they shaped the overall resulting system of peer production, despite the main medium of the peer production activities studied being online/offline, or the significant differences with regard to their main focus of action — writing source code or organising events. For each pair of chapters this exploration starts with the most informal systems and progresses towards the most formal respectively: custom, contributed and core projects, in chapters 6 and 7; and local events, DrupalCamps and DrupalCons, in chapters 8 and 9. After carrying out this in-depth exploration of self-organisation, the overall identified changes experienced in the self-organisational processes of the Drupal community are brought together according to general theories of self-organising communities, organisational theory and empirical studies on Commons-Based Peer Production communities, in order to connect the exploration with macro organisational aspects in chapter 10.

* Chapter 10 argues that this study provides evidence of the emergence of polycentric governance, in which the participants of this community establish a constant process of negotiation to distribute authority and power over several centres of governance with effective coordination between them. In addition, this chapter argues that the exploration carried out throughout the previous chapters provides an in-depth account of the emergence of an organisational system for peer production in which different forms of organisation, varying in their degree of organicity, simultaneously co-exist and interact with each other.

* Finally, chapter 11 summarises the main contributions of this thesis and provides a set of implications for practitioners of Commons-Based Peer Production communities.”

The full thesis is available here.

Photo by Fernan Federici

The post Essay of the Day: Self-Organisation in Commons-Based Peer Production appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Commons: Self-organised (re)production as a socio-ecological transformation

About the authors and their positions

We, the authors of this text, Leslie Gauditz and Johannes Euler, are active in the Commons Institute which, among other things, promotes the creation of knowledge and the education on Commons.

We are about 30 years old, with a middle-class background and make our living in academia. We were brought together by the fact that we both practise commoning, and reflect and write about it. In order to give Commoners from our circles the opportunity to collaborate on this text we sent preliminary versions to our mailing lists. Several people have contributed to its development with very helpful comments.

However, this text still reflects our personal view on the Commons movement, and is shaped by our specific position within this movement and the discourses that belong to it.

1. What is the key idea of the Commons?

Commoning: a different way of living and acting together – within capitalism but with a trajectory past it.

Commons are products and resources that are created, cared for and used in a shared way in a great variety of forms. The term has increasingly come into use again over the past decades – “again“ because Commons as concept and praxis are ancient and exist worldwide (see Bollier/ Helfrich 2016). In the German speaking areas the traditional and widely used term “Allmende”, that denotes the shared cultivation of meadows and woods, has been known since the Middle Ages. Today, the research on the shared use of natural resources is mainly connected to the name Elinor Ostrom who received the Nobel Prize for economics for her research in 2009. Ostrom (1990: 58-139) collected best practice examples: self-chosen regulations and locally adapted conflict resolution strategies were some of the design principles of the long-lasting self-governed institutions she described. Differing from Ostrom other authors assume that the main shared features should be looked for in the actual social arrangement, the Commoning, rather than in the institutions and regulations (see Euler 2016; Meretz 2014a).

An ancient irrigation system, cooperatively administrated in Naters, Switzerland. (Image: Johannes Euler)

The spread of knowledge-centred digital Commons (such as Wikipedia) and the development of free software (such as GNU/Linux and LibreOffice) played a decisive part in the rising attention paid to the Commons in the past years.

Currently, Commons can be understood as a concept based on equality and self-governance that is in conflict with the capitalist logic of commodities (see Meretz 2014a). Instead of an exchange of goods it relies on voluntary contributions. In them, there is no equivalent to the division of labour into care activities (that is caring for other people and the environment) and the productive activities as well as the division of production and usage processes which are common in capitalism: for example urban Commons gardens are usually not about producing food for sale but, next to ecological food production, also about cooking, eating and celebrating together. This is not to say that exchange or said division phenomena do not exist in Commons projects. However, Commons mainly work according to a different logic; both aspects are at odds with this logic and are brought in from the capitalist world outside.

We would like to stress that there are no universal blueprints for organising Commons together. We assume that the manners and rules in different times and contexts adapt to the needs of the people involved and thus vary. Nevertheless, we can point out common features. Regarding this it is important to clarify that commoning does not just deal with collective property but rather it breaks with the exclusionary logic of property as such. Instead of excluding others by the means of abstract law (property), Commons concern the actual physical (and potentially inclusive) discretionary options of possession (actual use). Essential to this is a focus on the needs of those affected by the commoning processes, or those taking part in them.¹

The logo of the licence system “Creative Commons”.

The Commons perspective looks specifically at a type of shared living in which people have a great influence on their own living conditions and choose the activities they pursue mainly according to how much pleasure they give, and how crucial they regard them to be.² For example Wikipedia came about because people valued a freely accessible and self-organised form of knowledge and enjoyed writing. Although they may occur, imposed, hierarchical and exclusive organizational structures are quite in contrast to such motivations and are mostly rejected. The aim is to realise rather than valorise one’s own potentials.

For the long-term the self-organising Commons point of view can be the foundation of a society beyond market economy and state. Core principles are: contribution instead of exchange; actual use instead of property; share all that you can (Habermann 2015); use all that you need.
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2. Who is part of the Commons movement, what do they do?

The social movement as part of the Commons world: Who produces what how, why and with which effects, and who uses it (up)?

While there is no Commons umbrella association, there are visible networks such as the Commons Strategies Group and the P2P Foundation, the Commons-Institute in the German speaking countries and the School of Commoning in Barcelona. Which persons actually devote themselves to promoting the Commons world and represent it publicly, who hence makes up the Commons movement, is not easy to determine as there are no systematic studies. Thus this text serves not least a reflection on ourselves as authors: do we even want to speak of a Commons movement? We definitely do not claim to give a comprehensive overview; even less so about what is happening in other parts of the world.

Book-exchange in Büsum in the North of Germany. (Image: Johannes Euler)

Commoning can be found in any imaginable social context and connected to various resources – such as air, seeds and water but also caring for those in need, digital technology, housing, cooking, art and music, modular bicycle construction and means of production. This is due to the fact that it is not inherent to the nature of a resource whether or not it is a Commons. Instead it essentially depends on the way humans deal with them and with each other (see Acksel and others 2015; Helfrich 2012; Euler 2016). If we look at the currently prevailing definitions of social movements (e.g. della Porta/ Diani 1999), they are united by a more or less pointed focus on a connecting self-image (or rather an identity) and the intentional direction of activities towards societal transformation and/ or a political goal. Movements are further identified according to their protest behaviour. Answering the question for the Commons movement thus depends on the political action repertoire and who subjectively sees her/ himself as a Commoner³ – so it depends on who could be considered being a constitutive part of such a movement.

Commoners are people who ”move something”. The only thing we can say for certain about the Commons movement from our point of view is: it is a global movement that is internationally connected as well as locally active. But Commons are more than “just“ a social movement. On the one hand it is possible that Commoners do not explicitly pursue the transformation idea and the critique of capitalism, are not networked accordingly, and neither know nor use the term Commons or claim no Commons identity for themselves. On the other hand there are Commoners who act in a conscious separation from the capitalist commodity and valorisation logic. These we want to call activists and identify them as being the movement. They aspire for a transformation of the world according to Commons principles, organise themselves in respective groups and/ or networks and engage politically.

For many activists it is more important to prefiguratively set an example than to demonstrate on the streets. This means that it is a concern for those who make up the Commons movement to create spaces in which aspects of utopian aims can be lived through their actions in current decision making processes and interpersonal relationships: “In my own life I practise what I want to see in the greater whole.” The important part is that the social practises of commoning, whose rationale undermines the capitalist logic, are in themselves aimed at changing society.

Currently we can make out many movements all over the world for protecting the Commons and resisting enclosures. However, we also need a certain reference to the common features in the struggles for Commons as well as to other alternative economic movements. Even if a lot is moving towards Commons, the bigger picture will hardly change if the similarities between these activities are not recognized.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Commons and degrowth?

The Commons and the Degrowth movement contain each other, and differ in focus and strategy

When we were asked if we wanted to write a text that would put the movement and the concept of Degrowth in relation to Commons, we questioned what its strategic significance might be: this project is called “Degrowth in movement(s)“. Would a Commons contribution not create the impression that Commons are a part of the movements close to Degrowth? Or is it also the other way round: Degrowth is a part of the movements close to Commons? It is a matter of the prerogative of interpretation, a question of the framing, and of the levels: Which theme is overarching and which is a cross-section, and what do we need this interpretation for? We assume that a Commons world is a world beyond growth imperatives – but does the Degrowth movement also automatically include Commons into its considerations in the same way?

In the article “Degrowth: In Movement, Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit“ (Burkhart and others 2016) that is part of this publication, the Degrowth movement is (amongst others) characterized based on the participants of the Degrowth conference in the German city of Leipzig in 2014. At the time many people took part who could rather be placed in the ”Commons“ corner. Hence there were a number of contributions on Commons in the conference program, and Commoners gave several of the plenary talks. The false impression associated with this may well be criticised. However we cannot rule out that the same would happen similarly in the opposite case because in the end, from our point of view, Commons and Degrowth in some way contain each other.

An urban garden in the self administrated “Gängeviertel” in Hamburg. (Image: Leslie Gauditz)

If Degrowth means that we humans have to free ourselves from the bonds of the growth imperative, and if Commons activists advocate more commoning in the world, we have to ask ourselves: which growth do we need to free ourselves from? What do we need more of? How could this come about? Who is promoting it? On the level of the actors there seems to exist a high degree of mutual recognition and sympathy. Especially the critical and progressive part of the Degrowth movement that was strongly represented at the conference appears to harmonize with the part of the Commons movement that is critical of capitalism. Both aim at breaking with old patterns that are founded in the logic of today’s social system and have effect into (and through) the individual foundations of acting and thinking. Degrowth circles denounce growth imperatives. The Commons movement criticises the valorisation pressures in the present society. It is obvious that these are two sides of one and the same coin.

As Degrowth was formed as a counter-movement criticizing the growth model, an idea for an alternative of its own was initially not at the centre of attention. Considering commoning however, one can imagine a world in which our living conditions are (re)produced in a non-capitalist way, beyond the growth imperative. Hence commoning is often seen as an integral part in framing a post-growth society. Especially the considerations on Buen Vivir – living well – that are often drawn upon in the context of Degrowth (see Acosta 2016 ; Muraca 2014) show remarkable similarities with the Commons concepts and principles.

However we can also determine differences. Degrowth circles focus on resilience and sufficiency. In relation to the ecological boundaries of the planet these are rather implicitly included in Commons than vigorously discussed among Commoners. From a Commons perspective one can argue that parts of the Degrowth movement are not critical enough towards the capitalist logics of valorisation, and also depend too much on steering mechanisms of the state. In a way this is a different problem focus (also based in the theory) as well as a different approach in regard to the choice of a strategy for transformation.

Which proposals do they have for each other?

Learning from each other: ecological cycles, critique of state and domination, sustainable technology and self-realisation.

What is missing in the Commons perspective and which impulses can it receive from the Degrowth movement – and vice versa? One field in which the Commons movement can learn from Degrowth is concerned with the ecological cycles in a global context. The description and analysis of local and practical knowledge is strong and deeply founded with Commoners. Yet, the Degrowth academics are relatively stronger in pursuing the research on the planetary boundaries and global ecological cycles. Particularly when looking at the point that activists of the Commons movement consider a Commons world a possible reality, an exchange on this point is fruitful and could prevent inappropriate optimism as well as unrealistic scenarios.

Connected in diversity. How can we draw our common future? (Image: CC – SA, Sarah Klockars-Clauser)

In the other direction the Degrowth movement could let itself be inspired by the Commons perspective. Degrowth is often about abstract indicators on CO2-Emissions, economic growth or resource depletion from which the movement derives its critique of consumerism and demands for the global North to denounce. From a Commons perspective, qualitative differences and structural systemic necessities for change come to the fore. The criticism is voiced towards a consumption that does not seek to fulfil needs, but instead aims for status and / or the production of added value; and there is a general assumption that a full and enjoyable life is achievable for everyone. This means that the primary target is not an individual renunciation but, on the premise of a collective self-development of all, to find an answer to: who produces what how and why, and uses it (up).

Against the backdrop of the principle “contribution instead of exchange“ the Commons discourse fundamentally criticises the logic of money and exchange. There is a discussion on whether a reform of the monetary systems helps to transgress this logic or rather helps to strengthen it. A long-term Commons vision would be a social system that frees itself from exchange as a societal mode of mediation. In addition there is a basic critical attitude towards state institutions – not only because market and state are blamed for playing a substantial role in various enclosures, but also because Commons do not work in a centralized way. This is also a significant delineation of the Commons movement against a Marxist state centred communism. Locating Commons beyond market and state infers that Commons activists want to break with the principles of the market economy as well as the nation state. It can be said that their normative foundation is a fundamental rejection of any form of domination. A greater consideration of such discourses that critically debate state and market as socially determining institutions could enrich the Degrowth movement and contribute to shed light on structural obstacles to a post-growth society.

A fundamental critique of technology, which is present in the Degrowth context and takes its lead from authors like Ivan Illich (1998), is used constructively within contemporary Commons circles by asking: which form of technology corresponds to human needs, and who benefits from technology to what end? Among others, the strong roots in the digital world and a great participation of tech-savvy people from hacker- and maker-spaces as well as the Open Hardware circles form the basis for certain optimism towards technology (see Siefkes 2013). Critique of technology and optimism go hand in hand: while the one deals with criticising current-day technologies that are seen as problematic, others develop new ones that work according to different principles like modularity, repairability or resource conservation – principles that are also compatible with Degrowth demands. For example the project Open Source Ecology has taken it upon itself to develop fifty industrial machines that a small village needs for its inhabitants to lead a sustainable, yet relatively self-sufficient good life.

As mentioned in the beginning, there seems to be a lot of Degrowth in Commons, and a lot of Commons in Degrowth. Similarly, other currents that are united in this project find themselves sharing a lot with the two movements. Many of the inspirations are discussed and put to practise in Commons contexts. Perspectives that aim for equality of humans and nature as they are found in environmentalist and animal-welfare circles as well as various justice discourses play a role; so does the aim of human equality as demanded by No-Border groups who aspire for a world without national borders. Many sovereignty movements in particular (e.g. for food sovereignty) have a lot in common with Commons as their aim is to regain the power to determine one’s own living conditions.⁵ However, sometimes Commons activists relate to other transformation efforts fairly critically; for instance when the means suggested for implementation stand in contrast to the respective aims (e.g. when hierarchically organised political parties promote Commons). Similarly they criticise approaches and ways of handling things that reproduce or manifest without reflection the logic that needs to be transgressed – exchange, valorisation and money – as well as hierarchies and oppressive conditions (e.g. the reform of the money system through an alternative exchange medium such as Bitcoin).
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 6. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Together on the way to a post-capitalist world: emancipatory, need-oriented, resource-conserving and without growth compulsion

A transformation perspective that anticipates the path to a Commons society is described as a “seed form” approach (see Meretz 2014b). This term offers an important reference point, especially in the German-speaking countries. More simply put: it is the idea that a consistent practise of Commons can spread in the here and now while it could, simply due to the current crisis prone societal system, be able to become the logic that determines society in the future. Hence the potential of a Commons society is already a seed within the current commoning that is not yet fully developed. At the same time, Commons projects are always in danger of being usurped. Fights to defend, re-establish and negotiate commonly managed resources are necessary as long as the hierarchical nation state and the capitalist market with their respective logics are dominant. These struggles will be more successful if they take place in the context of a strong, shared and most of all emancipatory movement.

One viable post-capitalist vision is that of a world that is not hierarchical but self-organised like a network of functionally differentiated connection nodes; a world in which everyone’s needs can be met through Commons. This world would also be marked by autonomous and responsible activities that give joy and meaning without over-using resources or destroying eco-systems. The Commons movement puts its trust in the human potential and translates the concept of sustainability into the language of human needs: there is a need to preserve the planet that can only be met if we organise our individual and collective satisfaction of needs in accordance with the boundaries of the planet. Commoning is a practical way to deal with human and non-human nature that is not built on an abstract growth compulsion but acknowledges that we humans are a (re)productive element of the earth.

An Occupy Wall Street activist. (Image: CC BY 3.0, David Shankbone)

Literature and links

Links

> Weblog keimform
> Weblog CommonsBlog
> What is Open Hardware? – Blogpost about Open Hardware

Applied as well as further literature

Acksel, Britta u. a. 2015. Commoning: Zur Kon-struktion einer konvivialen Gesellschaft. In: Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte. Adloff, Frank; Volker Heins (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 133-145.

Acosta, Alberto 2016. Buen Vivir: Die Welt aus der Perspektive des Buen Vivir überdenken. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/buen-vivir/>

Benkler, Yochai 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Burkhart, Corinna; Eversberg, Dennis; Schmelzer, Matthias; Treu, Nina 2016. Degrowth: In Bewegung, um Alternativen zu stärken und Wachstum, Wettbewerb und Profit zu überwinden. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/degrowth/>

Della Porta, Donatella; Diani, Mario 1999: Social Movements. An Introduction. Malden/Oxford/Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing.

Euler, Johannes 2016. Commons-Creating Society: On the Radical German Commons Discourse. Review of Radical Political Economics 48(1): 93-110.

Habermann, Friederike 2015. Commonsbasierte Zukunft. Wie ein altes Konzept eine bessere Welt ermöglicht. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 35-37/2015: 46-52.

Helfrich, Silke 2012. Gemeingüter sind nicht, sie werden gemacht. In: Commons: Für eine Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat. Helfrich, Silke; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 85-91.

Helfrich, Silke; Bollier, David; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung 2016: Die Welt der Commons. Muster gemeinsamen Handelns. Bielefeld: transcript.

Illich, Ivan 1998. Selbstbegrenzung: Eine politische Kritik der Technik. München: C.H. Beck.

Ostrom, Elinor 1999. Die Verfassung der Allmende: Jenseits von Staat und Markt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Meretz, Stefan 2014a. Grundrisse einer freien Gesellschaft. In: Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise. Konicz, Tomasz; Rötzer, Florian (Hrsg.). Hannover: Heise. 152-182.

Meretz, Stefan 2014b. Keimform und gesellschaftliche Transformation. Streifzüge 60: 7-9.

Muraca, Barbara 2014. Gut leben: Eine Gesellschaft jenseits des Wachstums. Berlin: Wagenbach.

Siefkes, Christian 2013. Freie Quellen oder wie die Produktion zur Nebensache wurde. In: „Etwas fehlt“ – Utopie, Kritik und Glücksversprechen. Jour Fixe Initiative Berlin (Hrsg.). Münster: Edition Assemblage. 255-272. Access: 22.06.2016. < http://keimform.de/2013/freie-quellen-1 >

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

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

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

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

The post Degrowth in Movements: Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Farm hack – global online platform full of blueprints to be adapted to others’ needs. Screen shot.

Our text is the first product of our effort to think and write as a group. For us, this means that we bring to some analytical aspects of the Manifesto our commoning perspective. It is inherent in such a process that our writing is “not-thought-through”. We see this as an invitation to reflect on the ideas we lay out in this text and on the issues left open or controversial.

Con-vivere

The term “con-vivere” (Les Convivialistes 2014 [henceforth abbreviated as LC]: 24) serves as an anchor for deepening the Manifesto from the commons perspective. The connection between con-vivere and com-mons is visible in the first syllable. Marianne Gronemeyer states that “our habits of hearing and speaking have turned us completely deaf […] to the good sound of the […] ‘cum’, which appears as the preposition ‘kon’ or ‘kom’ in the German language.”  She regrets that:

“ […] most of the composite words we form with these syllables have completely reversed their original meaning. The Latin preposition ‘cum’, which once meant being together as equals in a shared activity, now increasingly serves to describe a harsh and unforgiving ‘against each other’ in the struggle for advantage, power and influence. Kon-kurrenten2 (competitors) no longer run together, but are at war with each other over scarce resources; the English com-petition no longer stands for a common quest, but rather for the effort to strike each other down. Con-sensus is no longer a sense that we create together but rather an imposed equality. Con-sume no longer means that we use something thoroughly in sharing and consideration, but that we use it to raise envy in others by means of the things we consume.”

And con-struction no longer means to layer words and their meanings on and next to each other, to distance oneself from the layers and reconnect them in new ways – as happens in writing processes as well as commoning. Instead, since the sixteenth century, this term has shifted from the realm of grammar to the technical realm of building.

“Being together as equals in shared activity“ – it appears as if this preposition was intended to sum up in three letters the essence of commoning and commons. In fact both terms point us to our always present option to shape our living together in the spirit of the cum/con, which is as commonplace as it is repressed.

These terms express what the prologue of the Manifesto declares to be the core of the conviviality debate: “the associative, civil-society-based self-organization of people is a crucial element in the theory and practice of conviviality. Free and gratuitous exchange between people can serve as the basis for a convivial social order that distances itself from a version of prosperity and the good life defined in purely material and quantitative-cum-monetary terms” (LC: 13).

We want to use our contribution to bring into the debate on conviviality our thoughts on and experiences with commoning as a life practice and the commons as a structural precondition to enable such practice.

At the same time we want to clearly point out that an argument which is mainly based on moral imperatives falls short. From our point of view it seems necessary to change the perspective: peaceful community and free self-actualization of individuals need not contradict each other. We can begin here and now to create the conditions that allow both to go hand in hand.

On commoning and the commons

Commoning is a social practice within a framework set by the commons as a structure and common arrangement. The commons can be seen as the foundation of a convivialist society, commoning as its living expression. Hence commons are not goods even though they are often described as such. And goods are not commons because of their “natural” properties but because we treat them as such. Therefore we can essentially describe the commons as an institutionalised, legal, and infrastructural arrangement for a practice – commoning – in which we collaboratively organise and take responsibility for the use, maintenance and production of diverse resources.  The rules of commoning are (ideally) set by equal peers whose needs are at the focus of a shared process. Opportunities for individual growth and self-development are combined with the search for shared solutions, meaningful activities with extended and deepened relationships, and the creation of material abundance with the care for others and for nature. Living together like this was and still is practised to various degrees all over the world. In the process, commoning has to be repeatedly scrutinised, updated and rehearsed in order to remain embedded in every day life. This can never be taken for granted, and needs a suitable framework which currently we can rarely find.

Common wealth

The results of commoning traditionally consist of the sustainable use of natural resources such as forests, water or soil. For example this is the case with irrigation systems for which the people affected (commoners) give themselves rules for the shared use that enable a long-term fulfilment of needs (irrigation of fields, protection of water quality etc.). At the same time commoning can serve as the basis for the creation of something new: knowledge, hardware, software, food or a roof over the head. Basically there is nothing that cannot be thought of and designed as a commons. In the end our perspective may be to even view human society itself as the shared good – as our Common Wealth – which we have to make our own in practise and shape together according to our needs.

Human hubris or structural opposition?

Under the title “The mother of all threats“ (LC: 23)3 – the Manifesto identifies its central question, “how to manage rivalry and violence between human beings” in the context of the great problems of humankind. This question seems well justified as rivalry and violence are obvious features of our living together. They can neither be ignored nor explained away. However, if we do not delve down to their structural roots, we may get the impression that we should look for the causes solely in human nature. e.g. in the fact that “every human being aspires to have their uniqueness recognized“, while a “healthy society” knows how “to prevent that desire from degenerating into excess and hubris”  (LC: 25). Consequently the Manifesto poses the “moral question […] what may individuals legitimately aspire to and where must they draw the line?” (LC: 26). The authors point out that “we have to make conflict a force for life rather than a force for death. And we have to turn rivalry into a means of cooperation, a weapon [sic!] with which to ward off violence and the destruction it entrains“ (LC: 25). However, they do not address satisfactorily how such a transformation could be reached by means of moral imperatives or political measures.

Living-in-community

Looking through the lens of the commons opens new perspectives because it poses the question how we create our material and social living conditions. This points to fundamental structures and logics for action – and thus sheds light on the question why our living in community so often appears in the form of opposition.

To prevent us from remaining on the level of appearance, we take the daily creation of the basic conditions for our living-in-community as the starting point of our analysis. These basic conditions include everything that constitutes our society: household items, technologies, institutions, languages, ways of thought, world views, and forms of interaction with each other and with nature. On the one hand, these social structures are the result of past human activity while, on the other, they are also the foundation of our current and future actions. The relationship between structures and action is therefore a reflective one. The one feeds into the other again and again. This explains why historical processes can bring about a self-reinforcing dynamic which causes structures to fossilize and become independent of the many intentions to act.

When social structures governing our living-in-community define the opportunities and limits of their own change, people may perceive them as external and unchangeable although in fact they are human constructs and hence changeable. This occurs, for example, if we interpret structural constraints on human action that exist in our current social conditions as an expression of a transhistorical “human nature.” In fact, along with capitalism a vision of human nature has become dominant that makes agents appear “as if they were separate individuals, indifferent to one another and concerned solely to maximize their individual advantage“ (LC: 28).

Modern society is shaped by a self-reinforcing dynamic that leads to money becoming the pivotal point for our living together. Turning more and more areas of life into commodities creates an ever-increasing stream of goods which are predominantly meant for sale in markets. For the producers neither their activities nor the goods they produce serve to fulfil any actual need – they are mainly a means to earn money. At the same time the producers need the money to buy goods and services in their role as consumers. As the goods are produced by companies and self-employed people who compete with each other for a share of the sales, they have to constantly re-invest their gains in order to remain competitive. Money thus becomes an end in itself: it is invested to make more money which then needs to be re-invested so more money can be made in the future. In this function money becomes capital – so it’s not without reason that societies that are based on this logic are called capitalist.

In the exchange of equivalents the market participants (to which the people are at times reduced) are indifferent to each other – just as money is indifferent towards them. Bread costs the same to the poor as it does to the rich. The loss of one is the gain of another. As competitors (in the non-convivialist meaning of the word) people are even potentially an existential threat to each other. Cooperation and partial alliances are not rendered impossible, but these often serve the purpose of enabling survival of the competition more successfully than others. This competition takes places on several levels at the same time: companies compete for customers on the market,4 consumers compete for the best deal, applicants compete for jobs, colleagues compete for promotion prospects etc.

In such roles people have to aim to get the most out of every exchange (such as a material or immaterial good, or human labour) at the expense of others. Personal relationships are preformed by this predicament. “Every area of life, down to emotions, friendships, and loves, found itself subject to the logic of accountancy and management” (LC: 28). In this system one progresses by pushing the other down. Being “greedy”, “corrupt”, “excessive” and “unscrupulous ” is a functional behaviour which is often promoted by society.

This logic of indifference, of structural opposition and atomization is based on the severed way we produce the conditions of our lives: before you can sell something as a good it first has to have been withdrawn from those who have a tangible need.This exclusion usually works legally based on the concept ofproperty, which is essentially a right to exclude. By means of this principle the freedom of the one becomes the limit for the other, and the participation of the one becomes the exclusion of the other. This is why we call this mechanism of asserting-yourself-at-the-expense-of-the-other as a logic of exclusion.5

Solidarity

Relationships of solidarity require explicit struggle against the logic of producing goods for the market, and are therefore always precarious – they only survive as long as they are an insignificant hindrance to survival on the market.

The coercion to act which stems from this logic of exclusion – and which can eliminate any good intention in an instant – can hardly be counteracted by demands for more ethical and moral values. The fear of being outsmarted and exploited can lead to well-founded mistrust, related security-oriented strategies and various forms of exclusion that maintain divisions according to social markers such as class, gender, sexual preference, skin colour, age, education, and language. Because the logic of exclusion rewards exclusionary behaviour, even legal equality cannot truly overcome these divisions. If claims that there is equality of opportunity are used to justify privileges in the name of a so called meritocracy, and to attribute the responsibility for failures individually to the losers, then formal equality can even consolidate actual inequality.

The tragedy of the markets

The exchange and money system we describe contributes to the necessity for growth as lamented by the Manifesto, which is at its core a coercion to extract monetary value in a competitive environment. Capital has to “pay off”, meaning that it has to grow. This can only succeed if one’s own market share is secured or expanded – at a cost to others – by managing to equal or undercut the market price by lowering production costs.

This in turn is often achieved by raising productivity by means of technical innovation and – which is often the reverse side of the coin – lower work input. The increased productivity produces more goods which have to be sold in order to maintain or increase the return on investment. In this way more and more things are produced with less and less effort, using increasing amounts of resources and energy – despite or even because of the increase in energy efficiency. Because every competitor on the market does this, is indeed forced to do this in order to secure his existence, this process results in a coercion for growth which the individual actors within these structures cannot evade. Hence we can speak of the “tragedy of the market”.

Trapped in the capitalist model, humanity has entered a phase of structural debilitation – of resources, of nature and of people and their communities. Therefore we should not criticise the excessiveness but rather the model of only following one standard: the structurally imposed, one-dimensional standard of monetary valuation and the prerequisite that goes with it to reduce everything into countable and measurable units. How many pupils can a teacher manage? How much time can be allowed for combing the hair of a woman with dementia? What is the value of a lost butterfly species? Living together under such conditions is not living in community, nor is it con-vivere, but a collective life in opposition to each other and against nature. It is not sustainable and poses an immediate threat to our very existence in the twenty-first century.

Reproduction

Opposed to this ‘productive’ system of exclusion, accounting, monetisation and exploitation stands the ‘reproductive’ inclusiveness of helping and caring relationships. As a matter of fact so-called ‘reproduction’, the production and maintenance of the basis of our existence, is the basis of every society without which even capitalist structures could not persist. As it is incompatible with the market system of competition and exclusion, this type of work is delegated to the – mostly female – private domain (household).

A convivial society which promotes living-in-community would have to place the foundations of life into the centre of its activities. This includes the natural foundations of our existence which in capitalist contexts are resources that primarily exist to be exploited and commodified.

Humans are part of nature however and cannot live in opposition to it without harming themselves. Therefore, human reproduction in the broader sense can only work if it respects the ecological logic of natural material cycles as a precondition and inherent part of the fulfilment of human needs.

Questions for a change of perspective

Searching for fundamental alternatives and sharpening our senses for a new “art of living together” we have to look for new categories and terms which depart from the basic assumptions and terms we have just criticised in order to approach a society based on positive-reciprocal structural logics.

In doing so we have to address fundamental questions: How do we create our living conditions in a way that leaves no-one behind – including people of future generations? And how can all those affected participate in this process? The “big questions” (LC: 26) which the Manifesto divides into moral, political, ecological and economic categories, are united by this approach because it does not consider them as independent but rather as interlinked with each other, just as we encounter them in the real world.

The Manifesto formulates four principles of the “only legitimate kind of politics”: “common humanity, common sociality, individuation and managed conflict” (LC: 30). Even though it is debatable whether the “social nature of humanity” encompassed by the first two principles is truly a definition of the human condition or a political principle, it certainly makes sense to us to bear in mind that we are one humanity and that people are social beings. Likewise we support the aim connected with “individuation” to allow “each of us to assert our distinctive evolving individuality as fully as possible by developing our capabilities, our potential to be and to act without harming others’ potentials to do the same, with a view to achieving equal freedom for all”  (LC: 31). And last but not least the term “managed conflict” means to “be individual while accepting and managing conflict” (LC: 31).

It is critically important that these four principles are not mistaken forprerequisites to action in the sense of moral imperatives. Given favourable structural preconditions, actions tend to bring about these principles. Experience in many projects shows that commons work best when they not only allow inclusive action which cares for others and their concerns, but actually facilitate such action and make it difficult to act otherwise.

In this way, commons gain a meaning that goes beyond their specific concerns. In the following section we want to illustrate that in successful commons-practice, positive-reciprocal relationships emerge which make it necessary to resolve conflicts peacefully and constructively. Such a culture of relationships enhances individual freedom because the process of commoning foregrounds the unique characteristics of the people involved and the deeply felt fairness in cooperation. People are simply different from each other, they are special individuals, each and every one of them. Hence it does not help to assume abstract or formal equality.

Neoliberal discourse, too, draws on this thought, but it mistakes individual particularity by reducing it to being a mere factor in the fight of all against all. The alternative to a competitive development of individual potentials is not found in equalizing the unequal, but in the development of everyone in all their particularity in a way that does not leave anyone behind. In a practice based on a logic of exclusion, this appears neither thinkable nor achievable. In this logic, the freedom of the other is the limit of one’s own freedom and the transgression of these boundaries lets rivalries escalate on a regular basis in the violent expression the Manifesto rightfully laments.

Taking responsibility and being in relation

As outlined above, the main feature of the logic of exclusion inherent in the production of commodities is the fact that only those advance who push ahead at the expense of others and establish partial alliances along the way.

In contrast to this, the logic of inclusion 6 is the determining feature of the commons. Within this logic, the condition for growth is to find sufficient and suitable co-operators. Its fundamentally voluntary character  – totally contrary to the necessity to market oneself in the logic of commodities – requires structures to be inviting and motivating. Commons projects can only sustain themselves if people feel good in them and can contribute in a way that they subjectively find fulfilling and meaningful. This generally means that it is in the commoners’ interest to consider the concerns of others because this is the only way they can reach their shared goal.

The logic of inclusion of the commons is geared towards the development of the unique qualities of the individual person as a prerequisite for the flourishing of all people. If this succeeds in the context of the commons it could look like this: a person learns a new skill which he or she can then contribute. This will help everyone because tasks at hand can be done better, more easily or by more people. The larger the pool of skills which can be used collectively, the better. This type of relationship of positive reciprocity, of potential promoting reciprocal referentiality, differs fundamentally from that of negative reciprocity in the structurally exclusive logic of commodities.Rather than creating isolation it creates a structural communality(Meretz 2014).

Another essential difference consists in the fact that the production of commodities is essentially determined by external purposes. Commodities have to be designed to be sellable. Commons serve own purposes. The fulfilment of needs can thus also succeed when market or state fail or are blind to particular areas of life. For “the market” the fulfilment of needs is a mere side effect and only relevant when it is “marketable” or can be made so. Needs which do not contribute to sales are left unfulfilled. They are externalized. In capitalist structures the transmission of needs on a societal level takes place via the market or the state ex post, that is after goods and the attributed benefits and damages have been produced and brought to market. Such conflicts of needs cannot be resolved in hindsight. This isolation of the various needs from their fulfilment (and of each satisfaction of needs from the others) brings each and every one of us into a situation of a structural absence of responsibility.

Structural self-hostility

We cannot compensate for these structural deficits individually. No-one can know all the externalities which are promoted by one’s shopping, never mind avoiding or eliminating them. If even the “ecological” detergent contains palm fat from monocultures, the limits of ethical consumption become evident.

Hence the efforts to “shop correctly” fail to bring about the intended effect. Subjectively there may be a “better than” feeling, but that does not make the action emancipatory and self-determined. One might also put it this way: the factual impossibility of acting responsibly results in structural self-hostility. In fulfilling one need I harm another – of my own or of someone else. And vice versa, others unintentionally harm me. Automotive mobility stands against the local residents’ need for quiet, employment against a clean environment, CO2-reduction “here” against rain forest preservation “there” etc. In the end our actions turn against ourselves because they are subject to conditions in which needs are not brought into mutual reference. Structural self-hostility manifests itself in the opposition of differing partial interests which cut through and divide the person.

The problem becomes even clearer when we take another look at the logic of the commons. In this logic people have the opportunity to internalize their various needs and communicate them ex ante. Internalising means to integrate all needs and to look for a way to fulfil them comprehensively. If this happensbefore or in the course of production, of a project or process, it becomes possible to co-ordinate the different ideas and wishes, and to negotiate conflicts in a way that ensures that no-one asserts himself at the expense of others – e.g. due to power imbalances.

This is not easy and the prevailing restrictive conditions mostly put spanners in the wheels of people who are involved in such projects. Fundamentally though, the logic of inclusion in the commons provides a framework for the structural ability to be responsible. This is no guarantee for good solutions. Nevertheless, only those who have at their disposal the productive means and resources forself-determined production of living conditions, even have the option to act responsibly with regard to the whole.  

Designed social relations to nature

On the one hand, externalisation combined with the necessity to continuously expand the return on capital investment leads to a systematic exploitation of natural resources as if they were infinite. The recognition of their limitation merely leads to continuously increased sophistication of exploitation methods. In the market system, solutions to ecological problems are sought in various ways; market instruments such as emissions trading are currently in favour. The protection of nature is supposed to be achieved by turning it into yet another tradeable commodity. However, in this process nature is subjected to the same commodification mechanisms from which the social sphere already suffers.

On the other hand, an approach which focuses exclusively on “nature protection” is often accompanied by the displacement of people who have lived for centuries in territories which are now declared as nature reserves. Their presence is seen as harmful to nature. It is absurd, however, to protect natureagainst or from people. If humans and nature are understood as belonging together, nature can only be protected along with the people. Ever since people have existed, many communities have lived with their non-human environment under diverse conditions. They were not intruders but part of this natural environment and did not only take from nature but also gave back to it and shaped it. Such a relationship between humans and the non-human environment which does not endanger the latter, and therefore humans, is indispensable. But under the current structural conditions it is hardly achievable.

The capitalist economy in its commodification and growth compulsion has taken on a life of its own in opposition to ecology. However, in its original Greek meaning of prudently managing a household, the term economy refers to striving to fulfil everybody’s needs using available resources.

If such an economy is not to destroy its own foundations, consideration for the interactions between human needs and the non-human ecology that satisfies them has to become the basis for all actions. Permaculture, which aims to embed food production in self-maintaining natural cycles, follows this idea. Self-regulatory processes in ecosystems are actively strengthened and used in order to achieve and improve the basis for a sustainable fulfilment of human needs instead of maximising nature’s exploitation in the short term. The prerequisite for this is to consider all ecological and social aspects which are necessary for this kind of relationship to nature. The commons offer a suitable structural framework, because the inclusive and future-oriented mode of action of commoning is all about securing the fulfilment of needs not only in the moment but also in the long-term.

Commons on all levels

As the examples we presented may suggest, commons are mainly associated with local action in specific projects in which people know each other and can interact with each other directly.

An extension of such action frameworks to regional and supra-regional levels hardly seems imaginable due to the necessary (communicative and other) efforts. However, in our view, the time required for the direct – and often redundant – communicative effort to negotiate different needs is regarded as “inefficient” primarily in the context of enforced time saving due to the permanent price pressure in partitioned private production.

Instead, a mode of production of living conditions founded on the commons is likely to be more efficient when we look at it from the point of view of society as a whole. It is efficient in the sense that it aims towards prevention, maintenance and avoiding damage rather than towards follow-up repair, deterioration and coping with damage.

People also experience commoning to be more individually rewarding because quality of life emerges from the actual time spent in productive activities because they are voluntary, rather than being outsourced into the split-off realm of family, marriage, leisure time, vacation etc.

From a commons perspective the path to a future-oriented social system is not built on renunciation; on the contrary it is paved by a permanently good and fulfilled life for all which, due to the comprehensive inclusion of all needs in life, also includes respecting planetary limits.

Some examples

Let’s give some examples to illustrate the great variety of commons projects and their potential to create global networks of cooperation. Wikipedia(wikipedia.org) is an online platform which allows us to create and use encyclopedic articles and thus out-cooperated the proprietary, exclusive counterparts such as the Encyclopedia Britannica or its German equivalent, theBrockhaus.7

Wikispeed (wikispeed.com) is an open project for the production of cars which are designed modularly, need few resources and hand back the power over the goods produced into the hands of the users.

Farm Hack (farmhack.net), Wikihouse (wikihouse.org) and Opendesk (opendesk.cc) are global online platforms to which people all over the world can upload blueprints for machines, houses and furniture that others can then adapt according to their needs and re-create using available locally resources.

This exemplary choice of projects could be expanded ad infinitum. There are exciting developments in all fields of production: electronics, pharmaceuticals, bio-tech, robotics, medicine, clothing, etc. All these projects make their blueprints freely available. Open Source and open cooperation are the design principles which result from this practice and without which such collective activity would be impossible.

The differences in the physical qualities of the resulting products compared to their commercial counterparts are remarkable. The products not only look different, but they are normally designed to be modular, accessible, documented, repairable, durable and produced with efficient use of resources. Criteria that are usually ignored under marketing principles became the guiding design principles from the early stages of development.

Nevertheless we do not want to idealise such projects. All currently existing commons projects have to address problems and sometimes do so in contradictory ways. It has become evident that all these beginnings have to survive in the structurally hostile environment of the capitalist market economy. Therefore financing the projects is an issue time and again. Therefore financing the projects is an issue time and again.Within the real world settings, they keep having to ask themselves the difficult question, to what degree they will engage with the market logic or manage to resist exchange logics even in their financing (e.g. by crowd-funding, foundation financing or donations).

Polycentric self-organisation

Clearly, we consider reforms to alleviate specific excesses of capitalist structures to be insufficient, regardless of whether they are based on the market or on moral appeals. Instead we consider it necessary to think differently and change the structure of our mode of production and of the creation of our living conditions. Commons open up possibilities for such changes, theoretically as well as practically. But can they be generalised? Is it possible to develop a perspective for society as a whole on such a basis? Can we produce the necessary goods, services and social structures as commons and not as commodities? There are a range of indicators that suggest that this questions can be answered with a “yes”.

We can think of a society based on commons as a social macro-net in which the decentralised commons-units represent nodes distributed throughout the net. In the process of internal differentiation, large social networks divide into functional clusters and hubs that are highly connected. This allows them to be flexibly restructured and to tolerate mistakes, so that partial nets that get cut off can maintain their function when important hubs fail (e.g. in disasters).

These properties have already been observed in big commons structures like irrigation systems and have been described as polycentric self-organisation. In contrast to hierarchical systems with a single decision-making centre at the apex, commons structures create many centres which take on the differentiated functions that a society with an advanced division of labour needs (re-/production, infrastructures, co-ordination, planning, information etc.).

The decisive factor is that these specialised functions remain embedded in the negotiating network of society as a whole, as well as being organised as a commons. Social negotiation therefore would work according to a different logic and would no longer be disconnected from re-/production: society is neither governed by the “invisible hand” of the market nor by a state-run planning administration; instead it plans and organises itself guided by its real needs.

A change of perspective is necessary: instead of alienated planning and organisation of the production processes, our aim is self-planning and self-organisation by the people – producers and users alike. Instead of planning and organising these processes for others, the affected people need to create the conditions and infrastructures themselves.

The question is therefore not whether there is planning, but for and by whom, how, where and guided by which criteria. In this sense every society is a “planned society.” Hence market systems activate and demand self-planning, but they do so under the conditions and the logic of exclusion, at full own risk and not based on voluntary engagement and security.

In contrast to market systems, central planning systems have society as a whole in mind, but due to their inflexible hierarchical structure they can only react slowly to changes. People are basically secure but their creative capability to act is restricted by planning specifications. Control by others and threats to existence suppress creativity and motivation.

The change in perspective consists in realising that people can take up their own affairs successfully if they enjoy the appropriate conditions for development, which rarely exist under the conditions of a commodity society – whether market, centrally planned or mixed forms. Replacing the commodity form of goods by the commons can create the preconditions for a societal negotiation based on polycentric self-organisation which in turn can create the precondition for general human self-determination and flourishing.

Conclusion

We are confident that commons can embody the “mode of living together […] that values human relationships and cooperation and enables us to challenge one another without resorting to mutual slaughter and in a way that ensures consideration for others and for nature” (LC: 25). However this is not because commoners are better people or follow ethics that others have not yet understood, but because commons are a qualitatively different way of creating living conditions – a way in which it is functional to be inclusive instead of exclusive, resource efficient instead of wasteful, guided by needs and not by return on investment.

Such living conditions are neither the Land of Cockaigne nor free of conflict, but they provide the prerequisites to live our differences and negotiate our conflicts in a way that does not push anyone down.

COMMONS INSTITUT (GERMANY), BRITTA ACKSEL, JOHANNES EULER,LESLIE GAUDITZ, SILKE HELFRICH, BIRGITTE KRATZWALD, STEFAN MERETZ, FLAVIO STEIN, and STEFAN TUSCHEN 6 March 2016

Translation: Maike Majewski and Wolfgang Höschele

Originally published in OpenDemocracy.net

Literature

Gronemeyer, Marianne (nd.): Convivial. Der Name ist Programm, www.convivial.de/about5.html (Accessed 30.01.2015)

Holmgren, David (2014): Permakultur. Gestaltungsprinzipien für zukunftsfähige Lebensweisen. Klein Jasedow: Drachenverlag

Les Convivialistes (2014): The Convivialist Manifesto: A declaration of interdependence. With an introduction by Frank Adloff. English translation by Margaret Clarke. Global Dialogues 3. Duisburg 2014. Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research. Available online:

Meretz, Stefan (2014), Grundrisse einer freien Gesellschaft, in: Konicz, Tomasz & Rötzer, Florian (Hrsg.), Aufbruch ins Ungewisse. Auf der Suche nach Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise, Hannover: Heise.

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