Brussels is a city that’s intimate with inertia. In its center stands the Palais de Justice, a grand 19th-century courthouse that was once described as the eighth wonder of the world. Scaffolding was erected in 1982 as part of a bold plan to renovate the building for the first time since the Second World War, but 37 years later it remains untouched. Political point-scoring and division over budgetary allocations have stalled the project for nearly four decades. Today, the monument serves as an icon for the dysfunction at the heart of Europe’s capital.

For locals, the Palais de Justice is a lesson that it’s often easier to start something from scratch than repurpose an old idea. The city is a hotbed for radical social enterprises, citizens’ initiatives and grassroots activism, each seeking to build alternative business models for a more sustainable and participatory future. Now, a new movement has been born to make them more effective.

Citizen Spring is a network based in Brussels that aims to connect local projects so that groups can identify ways to support each other, coordinate their activities, and promote sustainable and future-facing ideas. It was launched by Xavier Damman, co-founder of Open Collective — a transparent funding platform for open source projects that has attracted donations from big Silicon Valley players like Airbnb and Facebook. During a climate march in the Belgian capital last year, Damman began talking to activists about the support they needed to create a more sustainable Brussels.

“Demonstrating on the streets is the easy thing to do, but it’s also boring. It can be useful, but we should all be asking what else we can do,” he says. “If we want system change, not climate change, we need to recognize the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. We need to bring to the surface the things that people are already doing to initiate change.”

Damman reached out to the city’s community initiatives and invited them to join the first ever Citizen Spring event. He took inspiration from industry open days, where businesses are encouraged to throw their doors open to the public, and decided to recreate the idea for citizen-led efforts.

From March 21st to 24th, the city’s social enterprises and grassroots projects took time out of their hectic schedules to showcase their work. Members of the public were offered tours and presentations of 45 different initiatives where they learned why the projects were founded and how they hoped to improve the city. Workshops were also facilitated to find new ways for social enterprises to work together and pool resources.

“It used to be that big institutions, governments, NGOs and private companies had the monopoly on creating an impact. But citizens are becoming more and more empowered to participate,” Damman said. “We want to accelerate that transition from citizens being passive consumers towards being actors, creators, and contributors. Not just by promoting what they do, but by encouraging people to join them. Opening the doors is just the first step, but it’s an important one.”

The concept is already spreading to other cities in Belgium. Antwerp established its own Citizen Spring network earlier this year, and Damman expects more cities in Europe and elsewhere to join the movement in time for next spring. “There are citizen initiatives in every city in the world, but too often they work in isolation. It’s in everybody’s interest that we connect them so they can find ways to increase the reach and impact of everybody’s work,” he adds.

The municipal authorities in Brussels hope the renovations to the Palais de Justice will be finished sometime in 2028. Political deadlock has prevented the Belgian government from both preserving its history and preparing for the future. Fortunately, the citizens of Brussels aren’t asking for permission to take matters into their own hands.

If you’d like to launch a Citizen Spring network where you are, email [email protected] for more information.

Cross-posted from Shareable

Header image: Communa invites members of the public to learn how they’re transforming disused spaces across Brussels | Image provided by Xavier Damman (CC BY 4.0)

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About This Episode

In 2010, The American Bar Association named Janelle Orsi a Legal Rebel, for being an attorney who is remaking the legal profession through the power of innovation. We agree- Janelle is a rebel with a cause, transforming the way we think about leadership in this shifting economy. From participatory leadership to salary transparency, Janelle is leading by example to expand our definition of leadership. In this episode, Janelle shares examples of how her organization’s leadership practices create opportunities for every level of staff to be engaged in contributing to the organization.

About Janelle Orsi

Janelle Orsi is a lawyer, advocate, writer, and cartoonist focused on cooperatives, the sharing economy, land trusts, shared housing, local currencies, and rebuilding the commons.She is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), which facilitates the growth of more sustainable and localized economies through education, research, and advocacy. Janelle has also worked in private law practice at the Law Office of Janelle Orsi, focusing on sharing economy law since 2008. Janelle is the author of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books 2012), and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo Press 2009), a practical and legal guide to cooperating and sharing resources of all kinds.

Janelle’s cartoons include Awkward Conversations with Babies, The Next Sharing Economy, Economy Sandwich, Share Spray, The Beatles Economy, The Legal Roots of Resilience, Housing for an Economically Sustainable Future, Transactional Law Practice for a Sharing Economy, Governance is Life, and Citylicious.

Janelle is an advocate for a more open, inclusive, and accessible legal profession, and you can see her 10-minutepresentation on transforming the legal profession here. Janelle supervises two legal apprentices — co-workers who are becoming lawyers without going to law school. Janelle and her apprentices are blogging about the process at LikeLincoln.org. 

In 2014, Janelle was selected to be an Ashoka Fellow, joining a robust cohort of social entrepreneurs who are recognized to have innovative solutions to social problems and the potential to change patterns across society.  In 2010, Janelle was profiled by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel, an attorney who is “remaking the legal profession through the power of innovation.” In 2012, Janelle was one of 100 people listed on The (En)Rich List, which names individuals “whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.”

In her words…

“I’ve come to realize, if we cultivate the right conditions, we can end up with communities and organizations where, a lot of people, or even all the people, feel that they have power and agency to just shape the world around them.” “I have a lot of hope and optimism for what I think we can do in this world. I think a lot of my role as a leader has just been to help impart that same enthusiasm. I do that. I really hone my skills as a communicator and I do a lot of speaking, I draw a lot of cartoons, I do a lot of writing in ways that I hope inspire other people. What ends up happening is that when other people are inspired, they’re highly intrinsically motivated to get involved. That’s my form of leadership, it’s spurring a lot of voluntary and intrinsically motivated participation in this work as opposed to coercive. I almost never want somebody to do something if they don’t feel intrinsically motivated to do it. For me, my style is to create the vision and communicate it in a way that people are going to want to and feel really driven to get involved in.” “I think we need to start young and just get everybody used to having more power in agency. I think most people walk around their cities or their neighborhoods and they watch things happen. They see, ‘Oh, that building got bought up by a big developer,’ or, ‘That building’s being torn down.’ They watch things happen and it just sort of washes over us, but we don’t always necessarily feel like we have the power or opportunity to change things or shape the world around us. To the extent that we can start practicing that in small ways and creating opportunities for people everywhere to practicing that in small ways, it’ll, I think, ultimately lead to people doing it in bigger ways and having a bigger impact.” “Sometimes I hear people say, ‘there are too many nonprofits,’ or ‘there’s too much redundancy.’ You know, we don’t need more nonprofits, but in a way, I think that we do, because every organization or every program within an organization is a space in which people are able to have a lot of agency and power and to take things on and to achieve a lot. And the degree of social change that we need, if we really are gonna make it through this next 10 years, we have the UN predicting that 2030 is the year in which basically climate change is gonna be irreversible. These are huge problems to take on and of course, the inequality’s been getting worse. Racism’s been getting worse. We’re on a trajectory where things are getting worse, and so to really turn things around, it’s gonna take a lot. A lot of people really focusing on making that change.” “I think the nonprofit sector will grow and that it should grow and that there should be a diversity of organizations working in the same sector. A lot of people say, ‘don’t just duplicate efforts’. But I think we should duplicate efforts. We need a lot of people doing the same kind of work, but doing it in their unique communities, in their unique ways, trying innovative things. And so I think a plurality and diversity and multiplicity of nonprofits emerging in coming years I think will be important. And I think the highly participatory leadership structure is gonna be really critical to that in order to create that leaderful society.” “I just think the passion and the dedication and the intrinsic motivation of nonprofit workers is perhaps the most valuable resource that we have for social change. That it’s the workers themselves and the drive and the motivation that we bring. That’s what’s really going to make change. And then in order to tap into that drive and into that motivation, we have to be thinking about our organizational structures and our organizational culture. So it could really come down to that. Maybe this is my way of saying that nonprofits that aren’t really thinking deeply about their structure and their culture right now are missing an opportunity to tap into that incredibly valuable resource.” 

Questions Answered on this Episode

• What is shareable leadership?
• Why do you think it is beneficial in the nonprofit sector?
• What issues or opportunities do you see in traditional structures of leadership?
• Cooperatives and shared economy models are seeing a surge in popularity. In many ways, cooperatives, in particular, are creating new economic opportunities for people who may have been previously counted out. How do we invest in those leaders and groups to prepare them as their organizations grow?
• How would you describe your leadership style?
• What has been the overall response to the concept of shareable leadership?
• Are there specific conditions under which the model will thrive or fail?
• What response does “shareable leadership” get from funders? Have they embraced the concept?
• Our current political climate has birthed leaders that haven’t followed the typical trajectory but felt the need to lead in order to create something better. Do you have any predictions about leadership structures and what we may see in the next 5 or 10 years?

The post Legal Rebel, Janelle Orsi, Transforms the Way We Think About Leadership appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Radical Help is about new ways of organising living and growing that have been developed with communities across Britain.

Hilary Cottam. photo by Charlie Hopkinson ©

The British welfare state transformed our lives. The model was emulated globally, setting the template for the ways we think about social change across the world. But this once brilliant innovation can no longer help us face the challenges of today.

Radical Help argues that our 20th century system is beyond reform and suggests a new model for this century: ways of supporting the young and the old, those who are unwell and those who seek good work At the heart of this new way of working is human connection. When people feel supported by strong human relationships change happens. And when we design new systems that make this sort of collaboration feel simple and easy people want to join in.

The vision is big but Radical Help is a practical book. It shows how we can make change and how we can make a transition now towards a new system that can take care of everyone.

For more information:

• www.hilarycottam.com

• @HilaryCottam

• View Hilary’s TedGlobal talk

Book image: Virago/Little Brown

The post Book of the Day – Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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While Ostrom’s work revealed that legal relations governing resources invisibly structure the commons, what those legal relations in fact reveal is our social and economic relations about resources: Who makes what? How much of what? And who gets what?

In the commons, the answers to these questions are embedded in a social logic according to community norms and values. In market societies, the source of these answers are to be found in the non-social economic logic of capitalism. The catalyst for this non-social economic logic, according to social theorists like Karl Polanyi and others, was the separation of people from their means of subsistence through the enclosure of the commons: throwing people off their land, separating them from the basics of life — food, water, and shelter — and charging rent for access. In the feudal commons, access to the means of subsistence was guaranteed by one’s inclusion and social status in a community and territory. In the transition to market economies, one’s subsistence became a matter of one’s ability to pay rent and/or labor for a wage. This new system unleashed a logic of competition for productive land and work, the accumulation of capital to reinvest into labor and time saving technologies, and the expansion of instrumental relations and commodification into every space and sphere of life.

As Polanyi said: “Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.” Or to put it simply, instead of profit serving the needs of people, people came to serve the needs of profit. Polanyi’s optimistic outlook was that through property, welfare and finance regulation — through law — the market could be embedded once again to serve human and social purposes.

So, from this perspective, law is a tool for lawyers, judges, legislators, and most importantly citizens, to wield against the market, to combat the inequities that it produces in its unfettered wake-both top down and bottom up. And law can be utilized beyond property, welfare, and finance law to other domains. Law can be used towards decommodifying our means of subsistence by guaranteeing access to fundamental resources that are crucial to human life, both top down, by naming things like healthcare, education, and housing (just to name a few) as a right, to which access should be guaranteed, but also from the bottom up, by changing the structure of property and contract entitlements, for instance to allow for simultaneous use of shared resources, and curb unrestricted transfer rights. Law can also be used to reorganize work away from wage labor and towards workers’ ownership, by enacting through legislation the recognition of new legal entities like the Cooperative Corporation or the B Corporation that place non-market values at their center, or bottom up through the creation of workers cooperatives (a rapidly growing movement throughout the world). Law can also be used to alter the structure of intellectual property rights in ways that encourage sharing, collaboration, and innovation, top down by policymakers refusing to create certain kinds of property rights in these resources, but also bottom up through legal innovation and resistance through individuals adopting the Creative Commons license or “copyleft” policy over other proprietary forms of copyright.

In this new series on Shareable, “Law: The invisible architecture of the commons,” we will showcase new and emerging legal institutions that offer an alternative system of incentives for encouraging cooperation, sharing, and sustainability. These legal institutions demonstrate how citizens, working together with lawyers and policymakers, can successfully design legal institutions for themselves to decommodify our access to fundamental resources, alter the wage labor relationship through new types of legal entities, and create new ways of stimulating ownership, innovation, and collaboration around knowledge goods.

Cross-posted from Shareable

Photo by Sinéad McKeown

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The world is undergoing a radical social, ecological, and economic crisis. This radical crisis demands radical solutions.

What are the dominant worldviews and stories that underpin the field of economics? Where are the most effective places to intervene in order to address the suffering and harm caused by global economies that put profit before the well-being of people and the planet? How can we build economies that reflect, as writer Charles Eisenstein says, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible?” In this evening talk, we will journey together upstream from the political, economic, and social crises of our time to understand the root causes and their possible systemic interventions.

Della Z Duncan is interested in returning the field of economics to the realm of moral philosophy. She co-produces the Upstream Podcast, which tells stories about the economic challenges of our time through diverse voices and a rich soundscape. Della also facilitates and convenes courses on Economics for Transition, Buddhist Economics, and Gross National Happiness at Schumacher College in Devon, England. Outside of the classroom, she serves as a 21st-century economics mentor and consultant for individuals, local governments, and organizations working to untangle themselves from the stranglehold of capitalism and work to co-create more beautiful, sustainable, and just alternatives.

£5 Suggested Donation (get your tickets here)

• Friday, Nov 10th
• 7pm
• 42 Acres Shoreditch, London
• 66 Leonard St, London EC2A 4LW

All are welcome!

More about the Social Change series at 42 acres:

“At 42 Acres we believe we can change the world, from the inside out and through our work to change the system. We are constantly being shaped by our environment and influencing reality with our thoughts. We are in the midst of a crisis in consciousness, whereby the economic crisis is a moral and ethical crisis more than a physical crisis — we have more than enough resources to feed everyone, and not just that, but to distribute evenly  – and through this we could create more social cohesion and stability.   Our new range of programs, Social Change from the Inside Out, explores that conjunction between science and spirituality, between contemplation and innovation. From grassroots activist to leading thinkers we want to spark conversation and be a space to prototype the beautiful alternatives. Why don’t you join us?”

Made possible with support by the Bertha Foundation.

The post EVENT: Reclaiming our Economy with Della Z Duncan in London, 11/20 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The opportunity?

In the case of the Church of England alone, there are around 16,000 churches in its national network. With recent church reports suggesting that just over 25 percent of churches have as few as 20 parishioners, it’s been described by Guardian journalist Simon Jenkins as the “nation’s grandest unexploited social resource.”

In terms of the church, a combination of under-use, high maintenance costs, and a lack of income generation has created an “unaffordable architectural legacy” — according to the Arthur Rank Centre church buildings can “become a stifling burden and a drain on energy and resources.” But this vast swathes of church property, as Rachel Laurence of the New Economics Foundation acknowledges, has largely been neglected by those working in Community Economic Development (at least here in the U.K.).

Alongside this institutional decline has been the significant loss of local services and public utilities in many villages and market towns, where post offices, banks, and food shops have closed. According to the Commission for Rural Communities, “it is estimated that 70 percent of villages in the U.K. have no local shop.” And in terms of rural banking services, between 1989 and 2012, 7,500 banks closed in the U.K. – more than 40 percent of banks.

In response to this market failure, many communities have worked together to create new initiatives to save shops, halls, and pubs, as well as leisure centers and other vital local assets. There are now more than 350 Community Co-ops in the U.K., a model that is viable and effective, with the Plunkett Foundation’s research showing that “97 percent of the community owned village stores opened over the past 25 years are still open and trading today.”

But is there an institutional appetite within modern churches to uphold their social purpose, meet changing circumstances, and find new ways to engage their communities?

Image courtesy of the Churches Conservation Trust

New Purpose

Our research shows that churches are already showing a will to engage in new ways of repurposing buildings and land. Church Care, the property division of the Church of England, claim there are at least 35 sub-post office services being delivered from churches, chapels, halls and centers, ensuring communities are able to access local facilities. Where communities have been missed by the national broadband rollout, spires are being used to broadcast wifi, sometimes as co-ops, but often through private suppliers.

Churches have also become involved in providing local financial services. In response to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s comments on the predatory lending strategies of Wonga, All Saints Church in Murston, Kent, hosted the first community bank to open inside a church. This is a model that could be replicated as a means of localising banking – offering space for regional and local banks – as well as creating new savers and lenders with local investment interests.

With the housing crisis affecting both rural and urban areas, community-led initiatives such as community land trusts have become increasingly relevant. These models often refer to parish territories in their activities, such as community consultations and neighbourhood plans, but without the express involvement of the church and its assets. By co-producing with church groups actively participating from the initial stages, this approach can be replicated through our efforts to unlock church assets for new and existing community initiatives.

There are many positive examples of repurposed churches, but how can CED inform this process so it’s actually based on community need and ensure local people are involved from the start?

Unlocking the Next Economy

Over the last few years we’ve been working with organisations in the creative sector, local authorities, schools, and community groups, exploring how cooperative models can secure local assets, create economic democracy, and ensure these initiatives are based on local needs.

An important part of this process is co-production – based on the work and toolkit of social enterprise Learn to lead – that involves stakeholders in the process from the start. Alongside this, our three pilot communities will be supported by external consultants who are able to encourage local communities, import new ideas, facilitate consensus in an often divisive process, and offer the co-operative model as an option in their CED.

Our process is primarily about unlocking physical assets to support communities to meet their own needs, not to conserve churches. The only way we’re going to save churches, as Simon Jenkins argues, is by giving them away. If churches survive – architecturally and even as places of worship – it will be because they have become a social resource.

Cross-posted from Shareable

The post What Does it Mean to Unlock the Next Economy? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“For his project In Search Of Europe, Lucas De Man travelled to 17 cities in 8 countries in 30 days. He interviewed more than 20 young creators (creative professionals), who are trying to change the society they live in for the better. What struck him is that there is a new generation awakening in Europe and that they are ready to fight for change. Inspired by this journey, Lucas made and performed a lecture performance De Man in Europe.

In this performance Lucas relates the transition period our continent is in now, to the previous paradigm changing period: the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. At that time a generation of visionaries emerged with Erasmus, Thomas More and Luther, on whose ideas Europe as we know it now was built. Is something similar happening now?

For in Search of Europe Lucas took a camera team and a journalist from De Correspondent with him to look for our current European generation; Who are the visionaries? How do they see our time and society? Where do they stand in current hot issues, such as new democracy, (the enclosure of) the commons and Europe. What do they think should change and, more importantly, what are they doing about it?

In the documentary, In Search of Europe, meeting modern visionaries, Lucas shares the highlights and main insights of his journey. Meet the creators, discover their projects and see how for this generation it’s not about creating a better world, but about creating a piece of society.”

Note: This post presents a trailer for the documentary, which premiered on April 5, 2016, in Pakhuis de Zwijger as part of the program Europe by People, the cultural program organised around the Dutch chairmanship of the European Union. The documentary will be shown several times within the program. For more information, check www.europebypeople.nl.

Originally published on politicalcritique.org. Introduction text by Friso Wiersum. Wiersum works at ECF as project officer communications. He also is a member of urban do tank Expodium. He regularly publishes on art, public space and music.

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Michael McAllum:

“Technologies can engender revolutionary effects. Technology that is disruptive at a civilisational scale, occurs when particular technologies (in the contemporary situation networking, robotic and energy technologies) reorder, replace and integrate, certain dimensions of human life, while excluding others previously used to establish ‘meaning’; how we connect, organise, express culture or enable power. Consistent with this disruptive characterisation Castells postulates, what these networks are doing is redefining cultural and social meaning, in ways that hitherto have been defined by ‘place’ on the one hand and the ‘functionality of wealth and power flows’ on the other. Others like Katz extend exploration of these technology effects. They assert that just as the ethos of mechanical progress influenced the 2nd Industrial Age, so too the design and the use of the technology has assigned a number of new meanings to network technology devices, an Apparatgeist, that was never intended when the technology was created. In a sense, the machines have become us—and for that matter, more than us—to a point where one of the defining characteristics of individuality and our age—what we call ‘work’—“will soon come under threat from forged labourers and synthetic intellects”. So pervasive will be their impact “the future will be a struggle of assets against people, as the resources accumulated by our creations serve no constructive purpose or are put to no productive use”629. As the technologies evolve or are replaced by newer and smarter versions, the revolutionary effects of the never ending redefinition of meaning permeate ever deeper into the existing fabric, eroding what is and providing opportunity to establish what might be (a process previously described as pseudomorphosis).

* Disruptive Technology enables Discontinuous Form

If technologies enable ‘meaning’ to be redefined, and if such reconstitutions are widely shared, then the entire social and economic fabric is also rearranged to an extent that it can only be described as revolutionary. For example, with almost ubiquitous technological connectedness (a central tenet of Rifkin’s sense of revolution) Perez argues what distinguishes a technological (network) revolution from the emergence of interesting but random technologies is the strong interconnectedness and interdependence of the participating technologies in how they influence markets and societies, together with their capacity to profoundly transform economies, institutions and society itself. Figure 5.4 suggests that it is at deeper levels of reality that redefinition, due to the introduction of a particular technology, becomes important. This importance might be measured by the capacities any particular technology creates, to enable transformation; to redefine society at a structural level—thereby reframing worldviews and creating new myths and metaphors—that defines revolution at a scale that is material.

* Why Network Technologies Undermine Continuity

Almost paradoxically, an understanding that it is the reconstitution of meaning that matters in transition and transformation assists in understanding the dialectic tension that exists between the widespread dissemination of network technologies and at the same time the evident capacity of some of those technologies to undermine the existing system (particularly capitalist economic systems). While the implications of this tension and the possibility that it will usher in a post model, will be explored later in this chapter, there are a number of more generalised effects that might be considered.

Firstly, they enable a radical redefinition and rearrangement of transaction costs. This has profound implications, for both margins (on both the supply and demand side) and on the formshape-size of organisations. Secondly, as was alluded to earlier, advances in robotics and cognitive technologies will see the end of work, as we understand it. If this is as rapid, as some argue, then how wealth is socially distributed to allow any kind of economy (be it for accumulation or exchange) will require a different alternative to work as a wealth distribution mechanism. The third reframing reflects the tension engendered by technologies that allow for significant global, and therefore non-state based, economic activity. This allows particular classes of actors to avoid or go beyond the frameworks of any particular nation whose policy settings they perceive are not in their best interests, thereby challenging the close connection that the nation state has with economy. While each of these contentions is important and are worthy of further exploration within the context of this study, what they demonstrate both separately and together is that networking technologies create significant disruption to current arrangements, and the potential for the reconstitution of an economic system or systems that is different from these arrangements.”

Photo by anselm

The post The Role of Technology in Civilizational Transformation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

* PhD Thesis: Making Sense of Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution: Towards a Collaborative Age. McAllum, Michael J C. Thesis submitted to The University of the Sunshine Coast. Under the supervision of Dr. Sohail Inayatullah & Dr. Marcus Bussey. Submitted: June 7, 2016

* Situating the Post Capitalist Proposition

Michael McAllum writes:

Rifkin, in his latest work The , extends his earlier argument that capitalism will move from a vertical to lateral orientation to assert:

[T]he Capitalist era is passing and although the indicators are still soft and largely anecdotal, the Collaborative Commons is ascendant and by 2050 it will most likely settle in as the primary arbiter of economic life.

He contends there are essentially three reasons for this.

Firstly, with the use of network technologies the capitalist system is increasingly able to produce constructs of simplification and efficiency (competitive advantage) that enable near zero marginal cost and “if that were to happen the lifeblood of capitalism [margins] would dry up”6. This proposition suggests that this drive for competitive advantage is inherent in the system and, as each new advantage is obtained, the margins available reduce. Logically, this will reach a point when there is no margin left and the system is at its limits. When that occurs, then the only option is to expand the market into areas of what were considered societal responsibilities (e.g. prisons, health, security) 700 until the same point in the process occurs again.

Secondly, the entropic bill for industrial capitalism has arrived, because the economic model and its related energy system see environmental effects as unaccountable externalities. Consequently, the energy systems on which capitalism depends must rapidly change if Collapse is to be averted, thus “throwing the whole economic model into question”.

Thirdly, Rifkin proposes the emerging Collaborative economy is developing as a viable, perhaps even preferred, alternative to a capitalist model that is, by design, systemically inequitable.

While some of Rifkin’s propositions are still evolving, a prime concern of this thesis (as has been stated) is to determine if there is also a contemporary body of literature that supports his fundamental proposition that the system is at is limits. An exploration of Rifkin and Transformist contentions is important because an understanding of the outcomes (not proof!) to these propositions has implications for mentality, philosophy and narratives of engagement with a global community who currently do not see any viable alternative to a mythology that argues (in a rephrasing of a Churchillian quote on democracy) “as a system, capitalism is not perfect but it is far better than the alternatives”. However, it should be noted that, to date, the use of ‘alternative’ has always been contained within the boundaries of the contemporary discourse (capitalism v socialism). ‘Alternative’ as it is used here describes a transformational imperative, one that stands outside of contemporariness because either the system is at immanent limits, or a better option is in prospect.

* The Post Capitalist Option

As Rifkin’s articulation of his current (evolutionary) understanding of post capitalism architecture has been detailed earlier in this thesis, what remains unresolved is the support that it has. Two issues in particular serve as useful points of reference for considering this support: changes in the dynamics of economic and power relationships, and a repurposing of markets from accumulation to exchange.

Rifkin contends that a reconstitution of the relationships between the actors is central to the post capitalist proposition of how value is created and captured. In post capitalist literature there is explicit support for the proposition that in the current market accumulation model the emphasis is hierarchical, one of control of labour and capital, whereas in the post capitalist system the emphasis is on participation and sharing. This is what Rifkin terms privileging of collaboration over competition. Kostakis and Bauwens describe it as “a model where the relations of production will not be in contradiction with the evolution of the mode of production”. This is now possible because network technologies enable socio-technological arrangements that are not only able to compete (and often outperform), in terms of transaction costs with hierarchical entities, but by design they create a framework for social as well as personal benefit.

The explicit rejection of the mechanistic model permits the development of relationship webs that are unconstrained by previous modes of control as “there is a structural connection between the key defining properties of commons-based peer production and the possibility of engagement in creative, autonomous, benevolent and public spirited undertakings”. The viability of such networks also provides for the development of alternatives for those Dussel describes as they who are not.

It allows:

…an internal exodus by which the autonomous production of social life is made increasingly possible (with non cooperation with the dominant capitalist model) and an outer movement that can muster resistance and strike at the heart of power.

This different arrangement also reconfigures the investor-producer-consumer relationship; what Rifkin terms prosumers. These are either citizens or consumers who have an active role in more than one aspect of the value creation process (hence prosumer) whereas typically, involvement has been only at the point of purchase. Depending on the nature of the value creation process this relationship may focus on how work is done (as exemplified in 3D printing), where and how consumers can give as well as receive (evident in smart grid power production), or in decision making (e.g. by investing and then buying particular types of music they like). It is also encouraging a radical rethink in how services like health are delivered. “The consequence is a new decentralisation of organisation whose base will, in chosen and spontaneous groups, fulfil certain functions and whose membership will be overlapping and not exclusive”. The attractiveness of the ‘prosumer’ archetype is near-zero information sharing costs; little fixed cost prior to production; the ability to customise rather than prototype; no waste, ‘just in time’ production; and the development of relationships that encourage innovation. In essence it is a disruptive logic that redefines value creation in ways that privilege economies of one over scale; can be conceptualised as a ‘space of flows’ across a multitude of public good and private interactions; and distributes control among the actors in a manner that encourages collaboration rather than advantage. Finally, the significance of this technology-relationship congruence in a post capitalist model is that it provides a platform, consistent with Rifkin’s theorising, through which critical environmental, social and economic issues might be addressed.

One of the dearly held mythologies of the capitalist model is that the market is a neutral, non-value driven ‘invisible hand.’ Proponents of markets for exchange, not accumulation, differ. They argue current markets are capricious, ownership-centric and exhibit all the system tensions described above. Instead they propose new models of cooperation (microfinance, co-operative infrastructure, decentralised energy) that operate in pseudomorphic-like arrangements within the existing system as prototypes of market commons. These Commons, manifestations of lateral power, are potentially spaces that “provide opportunities for virtuous behaviour, ones that are more relevant to virtuous individuals and (therefore) the practice of effective virtuous behaviour may lead to more people adopting these virtues as their own”. These are, as Wallenstein suggests, one of the alternatives for a world in a period of structural chaos. They point to a future where the rights of the group, as well as those of the individual, are a permanent feature of society. This evolution of post capitalism is not simply the adaptive evolution of capitalism as propounded by Kaletsky, Picketty and Bryjolfsson, and one that Rifkin in earlier works termed distributed capitalism. Rather, it represents a systemic break, an acceptance that the model has little adaptive capacity left. It makes available through access models what previously could only be owned, be that physical property or knowledge. What emerges, Mason describes as “new forms of society that (through networks) prefigure what comes next”, and Rifkin characterises as ‘ zero marginal cost society’ that can take the human race from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance over the course of the first half of the twenty-first century”.

* Conditions for success of a Post-Capitalist Transformation

However, using a macrohistorical framing, this thesis has deconstructed Rifkin’s narratives into seven theories using CLA as a framework for that deconstruction. It asserts that each of these theories, acting in ways that reinforce the others, provides a logical and coherent, but linear, narrative. It also suggests that these theories (of limits, discontinuous change, stages of history, empathic consciousness, leadership, post capitalism and transformation) explore layers of reality that, while concentrating the gaze on the near future, require consideration of reality that is ‘beyond the litany’ of that gaze. It is postulated that these considerations reveal a range of challenges and tensions that significantly impact both the transition and transformation Rifkin is proposing.

These include the following:

o The entropic effects (the environmental crisis) of the industrial economy cannot be resolved inside an economic system that privileges ‘growth’ and ‘quantity of life’ as prime drivers of society.

o New energy and communication technologies, acting as ‘infrastructure’, are nomothetic in their nature and influence. As such, they challenge the continuation of mechanism and vertical power, and they privilege post-carbon futures, ecological thinking and collaboration.

o At the core of the (theory of) revolution is a reconception of time, form and space that will have three effects. The first is a contest between competing senses of reality in the short term (mechanism v collaboration). The second is to actualise the design of transformed social, economic and institutional fabric so that it does not recreate the issues that created the ‘crisis of limits’ in the first place. The third will include in that design an accommodation and acceptance of multiple senses of time in a way that no one sense of time is more important than any other, but also in a way that any given sense of time does not imperialise itself at the expense of these others.

o If a shift in the nature of empathic consciousness is fundamental to the success of both transition and transformation—that is, from a psychological (individualistic) sense to a planetary level—then it needs to be complemented by philosophical approaches that are ‘beyond the horizon’ of modernity: a way of thinking that does not put the Western episteme, nor the role of humans as masters-of-nature, at the center of the discourse. This reconstitution of identity requires a rethinking of ‘presence’ or being-ness.

Given these challenges, the success of any transition and transformation will consequently be conditional on three dynamics: new kinds of leadership; a different economic model; and the speed of transition.

Therefore:

o As a result of the shift from vertical to lateral power, leadership will necessarily become distributed in scope, and both networked and collaborative in nature (a new cosmopolitanism that can be localised). By definition it will privilege partnership over dominator models, and because of the nature of partnership, it will have many forms.

o The future will require the development of ‘post-capitalist’ economic models that replace a contemporary system that cannot either confront the (unsustainable) limits it has created, nor the consequences of zero margins that many technologies now enable. This will see markets of accumulation replaced with ‘post-growth’ markets of exchange; self-reliant models developing in a revitalised civic sector; and ownership models giving way to ‘access and use’ models.

o The success, though, of this transition will be conditional on its speed. If it fails to occur in a timely fashion, the entropic effects will rapidly overwhelm whatever progress has been made towards a new Collaborative Age.

Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution is therefore conditional. It is an argument that, whilst focused on the near-term future, is binary in its options (Transform or Collapse). Consequently, one of the benefits of placing this narrative within the wider macrohistorical discourse has been to identify other possibilities that might be between, or even outside of, the spectrum Rifkin describes.”

More and fuller excerpts here.

Photo by Donald Lee Pardue

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