This letter was collaboratively written with dozens of aligned groups. As the weeks of action called by Extinction Rebellion were coming to an end, our groups came together to reflect on the narrative, strategies, tactics and demands of a reinvigorated climate movement in the UK. In this letter we articulate a foundational set of principles and demands that are rooted in justice and which we feel are crucial for the whole movement to consider as we continue constructing a response to the ‘climate emergency’.

Dear Extinction Rebellion,

The emergence of a mass movement like Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an encouraging sign that we have reached a moment of opportunity in which there is both a collective consciousness of the immense danger ahead of us and a collective will to fight it. A critical mass agrees with the open letter launching XR when it states “If we continue on our current path, the future for our species is bleak.”

At the same time, in order to construct a different future, or even to imagine it, we have to understand what this “path” is, and how we arrived at the world as we know it now. “The Truth” of the ecological crisis is that we did not get here by a sequence of small missteps, but were thrust here by powerful forces that drove the distribution of resources of the entire planet and the structure of our societies. The economic structures that dominate us were brought about by colonial projects whose sole purpose is the pursuit of domination and profit. For centuries, racism, sexism and classism have been necessary for this system to be upheld, and have shaped the conditions we find ourselves in.

Another truth is that for many, the bleakness is not something of “the future”. For those of us who are indigenous, working class, black, brown, queer, trans or disabled, the experience of structural violence became part of our birthright. Greta Thunberg calls world leaders to act by reminding them that “Our house is on fire”. For many of us, the house has been on fire for a long time: whenever the tide of ecological violence rises, our communities, especially in the Global South are always first hit. We are the first to face poor air quality, hunger, public health crises, drought, floods and displacement.

XR says that “The science is clear: It is understood we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. We are in a life or death situation of our own making. We must act now.”  You may not realize that when you focus on the science you often look past the fire and us – you look past our histories of struggle, dignity, victory and resilience. And you look past the vast intergenerational knowledge of unity with nature that our peoples have. Indigenous communities remind us that we are not separate from nature, and that protecting the environment is also protecting ourselves. In order to survive, communities in the Global South continue to lead the visioning and building of new worlds free of the violence of capitalism. We must both centre those experiences and recognise those knowledges here.

Our communities have been on fire for a long time and these flames are fanned by our exclusion and silencing. Without incorporating our experiences, any response to this disaster will fail to change the complex ways in which social, economic and political systems shape our lives – offering some an easy pass in life and making others pay the cost. In order to envision a future in which we will all be liberated from the root causes of the climate crisis – capitalism, extractivism, racism, sexism, classism, ableism and other systems of oppression –  the climate movement must reflect the complex realities of everyone’s lives in their narrative.

And this complexity needs to be reflected in the strategies too. Many of us live with the risk of arrest and criminalization. We have to carefully weigh the costs that can be inflicted on us and our communities by a state that is driven to target those who are racialised ahead of those who are white. The strategy of XR, with the primary tactic of being arrested, is a valid one – but it needs to be underlined by an ongoing analysis of privilege as well as the reality of police and state violence. XR participants should be able to use their privilege to risk arrest, whilst at the same time highlighting the racialised nature of policing. Though some of this analysis has started to happen, until it becomes central to XR’s organising it is not sufficient. To address climate change and its roots in inequity and domination, a diversity and plurality of tactics and communities will be needed to co-create the transformative change necessary.

We commend the energy and enthusiasm XR has brought to the environmental movement, and it brings us hope to see so many people willing to take action. But as we have outlined here, we feel there are key aspects of their approach that need to evolve. This letter calls on XR to do more in the spirit of their principles which say they “are working to build a movement that is participatory, decentralised, and inclusive”. We know that XR has already organised various listening exercises, and acknowledged some of the shortcomings in their approach, so we trust XR and its members will welcome our contribution.

As XR draws this period of actions to a close, we hope our letter presents some useful reflections for what can come next. The list of demands that we present below are not meant to be exhaustive, but to offer a starting point that supports the conversations that are urgently needed.

Wretched of the Earth, together with many other groups, hold the following demands as crucial for a climate justice rebellion:

• Implement a transition, with justice at its core, to reduce UK carbon emissions to zero by 2030 as part of its fair share to keep warming below 1.5°C; this includes halting all fracking projects, free transport solutions and decent housing, regulating and democratising corporations, and restoring ecosystems.
• Pass a Global Green New Deal to ensure finance and technology for the Global South through international cooperation. Climate justice must include reparations and redistribution; a greener economy in Britain will achieve very little if the government continues to hinder vulnerable countries from doing the same through crippling debt, unfair trade deals, and the export of its own deathly extractive industries. This Green New Deal would also include an end to the arms trade. Wars have been created to serve the interests of corporations – the largest arms deals have delivered oil; whilst the world’s largest militaries are the biggest users of petrol.
• Hold transnational corporations accountable by creating a system that regulates them and stops them from practicing global destruction. This would include getting rid of many existing trade and investment agreements that enshrine the will of these transnational corporations.
• Take the planet off the stock market by restructuring the financial sector to make it transparent, democratised, and sustainable while discentivising investment in extractive industries and subsidising renewable energy programmes, ecological justice and regeneration programmes.
• End the hostile environment of walls and fences, detention centers and prisons that are used against racialised, migrant, and refugee communities. Instead, the UK should acknowledge it’s historic and current responsibilities for driving the displacement of peoples and communities and honour its obligation to them.
• Guarantee flourishing communities both in the global north and the global south in which everyone has the right to free education, an adequate income whether in or out of work, universal healthcare including support for mental wellbeing, affordable transportation, affordable healthy food, dignified employment and housing, meaningful political participation, a transformative justice system, gender and sexuality freedoms, and, for disabled and older people, to live independently in the community.

The fight for climate justice is the fight of our lives, and we need to do it right. We share this reflection from a place of love and solidarity, by groups and networks working with frontline communities, united in the spirit of building a climate justice movement that does not make the poorest in the rich countries pay the price for tackling the climate crisis, and refuses to sacrifice the people of the global South to protect the citizens of the global North. It is crucial that we remain accountable to our communities, and all those who don’t have access to the centres of power. Without this accountability, the call for climate justice is empty.

The Wretched of the Earth

• Argentina Solidarity Campaign
• Black Lives Matter UK
• BP or not BP
• Bolivian Platform on Climate Change
• Bristol Rising Tide
• Campaign Against the Arms Trade CAAT
• Coal Action Network
• Concrete Action
• Decolonising Environmentalism
• Decolonising our minds
• Disabled People Against the Cuts
• Earth in Brackets
• Edge Fund
• End Deportations
• Ende Gelände
• GAIA – Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
• Global Forest Coalition
• Green Anticapitalist Front
• Gentle Radical
• Grow Heathrow/transition Heathrow
• Hambach Forest occupation
• Healing Justice London
• Labour Against Racism and Fascism
• Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants
• London campaign against police and state violence
• London Feminist Antifa
• London Latinxs
• Marikana Solidarity Campaign
• Mental Health Resistance Network
• Migrants Connections festival
• Migrants Rights Network
• Movimiento Jaguar Despierto
• Ni Una Menos UK
• Ota Benga Alliance for Peace
• Our Future Now
• People’s Climate Network
• Peoples’ Advocacy Foundation for Justice and
• Race on the Agenda (ROTA)
• Redress, South Africa
• Reclaim the Power
• Science for the People
• Platform
• The Democracy Centre
• The Leap
• Third World Network
• Tripod: Training for Creative Social Action
• War on Want

Wretched of The Earth is a grassroots collective for Indigenous, black, brown and diaspora groups and individuals demanding climate justice and acting in solidarity with our communities, both here in the UK and in Global South. Join our mailing list by completing this registration form.

Image of Wretched of the Earth bloc with “Still fighting CO2lonialism Your climate profits kill” banner.

Originally published on the Red Pepper website, 3rd May 2019: https://www.redpepper.org.uk/an-open-letter-to-extinction-rebellion/

The post An open letter to Extinction Rebellion appeared first on P2P Foundation.

For instance, when a brand like Nike decides to make ads in favor of Colin Kaepernick, we want to push back. I get it. It’s blatant pandering to Black Lives Matter, right? It’s a dilution of the values of the movement. But it’s also an indication that a big company wants to show its support for an important cause.

So when a corporation decides to back Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, economic equality, or climate remediation, it is making a bet that those are sides that are going to win. This is good.

Or when Pepsi and Kendall Jenner do a zillion-dollar advertisement paying homage to some sort of Black Lives Matter rally, I know it’s inane. It reduces social justice activism to some sort of fashion statement. But it’s also a sign that Pepsi wants to be down with whatever this thing is as best they can understand it. It may have been a watered-down, issueless protest they were depicting, but no one could miss that they were trying to side with millennial angst and social justice in general — just as many millennials do. (As social satire, in some ways it reveals how a lot of activism is really a form of cultural fashion. Maybe that’s the real reason activists are so bothered by their hip representation in a Pepsi commercial. They know that — at least in part — they, too, are suckered by the sexy fun of protests and rallies, stopping traffic, and flummoxing cable news commentators and yet often have trouble articulating what about “the system” they actually want to change.)

No matter how superficial or self-congratulatory their efforts, however, what the corporations are trying to do is get on the right side of history. Think of it cynically, and it makes perfect sense: These giant corporations are picking sides in the culture wars. It’s not short-lived pandering; they can’t afford that. Unlike politicians, who often attempt to stroke and gratify different, sometimes opposed constituencies and appeal to a local base, corporations necessarily communicate to everyone at once. Super Bowl advertising is one size fits all.

So when a corporation decides to back Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, economic equality, or climate remediation, it is making a bet that those are sides that are going to win. This is good. It’s not simply a matter of employees or shareholders pushing management to do the right thing. No, it’s future forecasters telling the branding department where things are headed. Companies are realizing that their futures better be tied to whichever side of an issue that’s going to win.

The problem is that the more we attack people for whatever they did before they were woke, the less progress we’re going to make.

Cynical? Maybe. But, despite the way the Supreme Court might rule, corporations are not people; they’re just corporations. They don’t have feelings; they only have power. They’re putting their money and reputations on racial equality and social justice over white nationalism. This alone should serve as a leading indicator of where things are actually going. A sign of hope.

Instead of rejecting such efforts, we should welcome them. Maybe think of corporations as dinosaurs that can be trained. Their help is worth more than the pleasure of perpetual righteous indignation.

I’ve been likewise dismayed by many progressives’ take-no-prisoners approach to people who working for social justice. Bernie Sanders, perhaps the person most responsible for bringing the Democratic Party home from its neoliberal vacation, recently became the object of contempt for having used the word “niggardly” in a speech 30 years ago. Though the discomfort is understandable, the word has nothing to do with race. It means stingy. It was on my SATs in 1979. And yet, we’ve now moved into an era where we don’t use such a word because it sounds like a racial slur. I get that.

The problem is that the more we attack people for whatever they did before they were woke or, in Bernie’s case, before progressive standards changed, the less progress we’re going to make. Why agree that we should move beyond a certain behavior or attitude if doing so simply makes us vulnerable to attack? How can a D.C. politician, for example, push for the Washington Redskins to change their name when they know there’s footage somewhere of them rooting for the team or wearing a jersey with a Native American on it? Even though the politician may agree with the need for a change, they would have to resist or at least slow the wheels of progress lest they get caught under the cart. Intolerance and shaming is not the way to win allies.

Progressives are mad, hurt, and traumatized. But they’ve got to dismantle this circular firing squad and begin to welcome positive change rather than punish those who are trying to get woke. Truth and reconciliation work better than blame and shame.

The post Time for Progressives to Stop Shaming One Another appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of a global crisis that was born out of historical injustice and highly unequal responsibility.

To do so will require a radical shift away from resource-intensive and wasteful production and consumption patterns and a deep transformation towards ecological sustainability and social justice. Demanding this transformation is not ‘naïve’ or ‘politically unfeasible’, it is radically realistic.

This publication is a civil society response to the challenge of limiting global warming to 1.5°C while also paving the way for climate justice. It brings together the knowledge and experience of a range of international groups, networks and organisations the Heinrich Böll Foundation has worked with over the past years, who in their political work, research and practice have developed the radical, social and environmental justice-based agendas political change we need across various sectors.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice includes the following eight volumes:

A Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production by Oil Change International shows that the carbon embedded in already producing fossil fuel reserves will take us beyond agreed climate limits. Yet companies and governments continue to invest in and approve vast exploration and expansion of oil, coal and gas. This chapter explores the urgency and opportunity for fossil fuel producers to begin a just and equitable managed decline of fossil fuel production in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

Another Energy is Possible by Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) argues that the political fight for social ownership and democratic control of energy lies at the heart of the struggle to address climate change. Along with a complete break with investor-focused neoliberal policy, this “two shift solution” will allow us to address some of the major obstacles to reducing energy demand and decarbonizing supply. “Energy democracy” must address the need for system-level transformations that go beyond energy sovereignty and self-determination.

Zero Waste Circular Economy A Systemic Game-Changer to Climate Change by Mariel Vilella, Zero Waste Europe explains and puts numbers to how the transformation of our consumption and production system into a zero waste circular economy provides the potential for emission reductions far beyond what is considered in the waste sector. Ground-breaking experiences in cities and communities around the world are already showing that these solutions can be implemented today, with immediate results.

Degrowth – A Sober Vision of Limiting Warming to 1.5°C by Mladen Domazet, Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia, reports from a precarious, but climate-stabilized year 2100 to show how a planet of over 7 billion people found diversification and flourishing at many levels of natural, individual and community existence, and turned away from the tipping points of catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse. That world is brought to life by shedding the myths of the pre-degrowth era – the main myth being that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is viable while maintaining economic activities focused on growth.

System Change on a Deadline. Organizing Lessons from Canada’s Leap Manifesto by The Leap by Avi Lewis, Katie McKenna and Rajiv Sicora of The Leap recounts how intersectional coalitions can create inspiring, detailed pictures of the world we need, and deploy them to shift the goalposts of what is considered politically possible. They draw on the Leap story to explore how coalition-building can break down traditional “issue silos”, which too often restrict the scope and impact of social justice activism.

La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by the international peasants movement La Via Campesina highlights how industrialized agriculture and the corporate food system are at the center of the climate crisis and block pathways to a 1.5°C world. In their contribution, La Via Campesina outline key aspects of system change in agriculture towards peasant agro-ecology and give concrete experiences of organized resistance and alternatives that are already making change happen.

Re-Greening the Earth: Protecting the Climate through Ecosystem Restoration by Christoph Thies, Greenpeace Germany calls to mind that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and the destruction of forests and peatlands contribute to global warming and dangerous climate change. His chapter makes the case for ecosystem restoration: Growing forests and recovering peatlands can sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and protect both climate and biodiversity. This can make untested and potentially risky climate technologies unnecessary – if emissions from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions are phased out fast enough.

Modelling 1.5°C-Compliant Mitigation Scenarios Without Carbon Dioxide Removal by Christian Holz, Carleton University and Climate Equity Reference Project (CERP) reviews recent studies that demonstrate that it is still possible to achieve 1.5°C without relying on speculative and potentially deleterious technologies. This can be done if national climate pledges are increased substantially in all countries immediately, international support for climate action in developing countries is scaled up, and mitigation options not commonly included in mainstream climate models are pursued.

We hope that the experiences and political demands, the stories and recommendations compiled in this publication will be as inspiring to all of you as they are to us.

Lili Fuhr and Linda Schneider

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Photo by Jason A. Samfield

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By creating opportunities for exchange, mutual action and sharing, A4C not only operates as a platform but attempts to create a new commons, a synthesis between arts and political engagement.

A4C intends to explore the  interstitial spaces between power and communities, traditional arts system and society, states and territories. We pursue documentation as artistic practice.

In an historical phase of what Antonio Gramsci named “interregnum” whereas we know what we leave but do not know what we will find, A4C is a space for collective search, experimentation, creation of what post-colonial philosopher Homi Babha named ” a third space”, that transcends traditional definitions of arts and politics. Particular attention will be devoted to building bridges and opportunities for collective work, exchange and dialogue between European and Latin American artists and activists.

Our first steps have moved along the issue of migrations and war, starting with the participation at the Nationless Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, to the pop-up exhibition “From the shores of Tripoli to the hills of Moctezuma” in Rome-based gallery Ex-Elettrofonica,  to continue with “Dispacci-Dispatches” an exploration in the history of Italian colonial wars in Libya by means of displacements and re-enactment of historical chronicles and documents read in various locations of the Quartiere Africano (African quarter) in Rome, built to celebrate fascist colonies in Africa.

SHOWREEL A4C #ArtsForTheCommons from Rosa Jijon on Vimeo.

The post Project of the Day: Arts for the Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The New Economics Foundation works to build a new economy where people can really take control. To move towards that goal, we have to think about two things: the process of gaining control, and the resources over which people take control. 

As part of this work, we draw inspiration from growing movements to claim and control ‘the commons’. This refers to resources that are life’s necessities. They include:

• Natural resources: land, water, air, and sources of energy
• Cultural resources: knowledge
• Economic resources: funds for investment in the public interest
• Social resources: relationships and activities through which we help each other participate and flourish

None of these are simply nice-to-haves. They are the means by which we meet basic human needs. That’s why they should never be appropriated by those who have wealth and power, but held in common so that they are accessible to everyone, by right, now and in future.

This paper focuses on the last of these: social resources. We must build the case for a new social commons, and urgently, because we’re in danger of losing what we’ve taken for granted for half a century.  The old order of politics, including the post-war welfare settlement, is crumbling.

If we ever thought we had secure access to things like education or health care, housing or income support, that sense of security is seeping away. In the US and across Europe, the rise of populism signals new depths of anger among people who feel betrayed by the powerful and out of control of their lives.  If people want to throw out the bathwater of established institutions, we must rescue the baby of pooled resources, collective action and mutual aid.

So this is a good time to claim, value and build the social commons.  Our Foundation is committed to enabling people to gain control over life’s necessities.The process of ‘commoning’ reimagines social resources, not as top-down services delivered by the state to the people, but as activities and relationships co-designed and co-produced by lay people and professionals, with control anchored at local level.

photo: Samuel Zeller

We link our vision with movements to claim common rights to natural resources including land, water and energy, which are also life’s necessities. The challenge in both cases is to develop appropriate forms of shared ownership and control, forging new relationships between people, the commons and the public realm.

Our proposal recognises the transformative potential of strong, inclusive and shared local action, supported by public institutions that set standards, distribute resources and ensure equitable access.  Building a new social commons, we argue, will foster solidarity, social justice and sustainability.  It addresses the enduring problems of welfare reform, alongside the challenge of leaving the European Union.

Can we envisage a social commons that people can shape and control collectively, and rely upon for the future? What would it consist of? People themselves must decide.  So we propose that it is shaped through democratic dialogue – with everyday wisdom informed by evidence and expertise, and engaging with elected representatives.

We envisage a statement of shared intent, inspired by a multitude of local initiatives, developed through dialogue and accumulating support and strength over time. The process of claiming the social commons should be inclusive and egalitarian, promote wellbeing for all and aim to meet everyone’s basic needs, now and in future.  It should include, at least, the means by which we collectively provide education, health and social care, affordable housing, a decent job and a living income for everyone.

Together, these common resources make a huge contribution to household income. Most of us would be destitute if we had to pay for them out of earnings.  Without them we cannot hope to flourish.  We must claim, control and build them as a matter of right, shared by all, and secure them for future generations.

1. Introduction

Our proposition

The New Economics Foundation wants to open a debate about the social commons: what they are, why they matter and how they can be claimed and built.  Essentially, the term describes how we act together to help each other by pooling resources and sharing risks, so that we can all meet our needs and flourish – now and in future.

It points to a new deal between people and government, in which we, the people, define and own the social commons, with shared control anchored in local communities and supported by taxation. Equal access, quality and probity are underpinned by law and protected by public institutions.

Crucially, the social commons embodies the collective ideal – both in form and in content.  It is claimed and built by people acting together, and its benefits are equally accessible to all who need them. This matters because risks as well as privileges are distributed unequally.  When certain things happen – such as falling ill, getting flooded at home or losing a job – most of us can’t cope on our own.  Helping each other by acting together lies at the heart of our vision. It is the key to a fair society where everyone has an equal chance to lead a good life.

Our proposition builds on the radical vision set out in People, Planet, Power: towards a new social settlement. We recognise that top-down solutions won’t work, and that change must be driven from the local level, inspired by everyday wisdom and experience. We start with the best elements of the post-war welfare settlement, and consider how these can be transformed and extended to meet current and future needs.  This is not going to happen overnight. We envisage the social commons evolving through continuing local action and democratic dialogue, steadily transforming relations between people and the public realm.  We hope to build a consensus in support of a clear direction of travel – towards a new kind of social endeavour that suits the challenges and conditions of the 21st century.

Why the ‘social commons’?

The ‘social commons’ draws on thinking about natural resources, such as land, air and water, and cultural resources, such as literature, music and knowledge.  In both cases it has been argued that these should be held in common so that they are accessible to everyone and not exclusively owned.

In particular, the concept of ‘social commons’ recognises the vital link between natural and social resources.  Just as everyone needs land, air and water in order to survive, so everyone needs education, health and social care, housing, decent paid work and an adequate living income in order to participate in society and to flourish. This implies that people have a right to such resources, which can be asserted and defended.

The ‘common’ status doesn’t exist a priori, but is achieved through political action and collaborative organisation.  Hence the ‘commons’ is both a thing and a process.  Academic and activist Ugo Mattei puts it this way:

The commons are not concessions. They are resources that belong to the people as a matter of life necessity. Everybody has a right of an equal share of the commons and must be empowered by law to claim equal and direct access to it. Everybody has equal responsibility to the commons and shares a direct responsibility to transfer its wealth to future generations.

‘Commoning’ movements are a contemporary example of people getting together to claim rights to land, water and energy, and to develop appropriate forms of shared ownership and control.   Notably, Elinor Ostrom has studied the conditions necessary for effective management of ‘common pool resources’.

There are lively debates about how far ‘the commons’ and the process of ‘commoning’ represent an ideological alternative to both markets and states, or whether democratic states are themselves held in common by the people and can become a vital support for the commoning process, rather than its antithesis.  For us, what matters most is putting people in control of life’s necessities, with equal access for all as a matter of right.  This requires a new approach to top-down as well as bottom-up politics, and forging a new relationship between the two.

What’s in this paper?

In this paper we draw on learning from rich intellectual debates about commons, rights, power and citizenship, as well as on practical experience in the UK, the European Union and other countries.  We begin by summarising what is distinctive about this call for a new social commons.  We consider: why it is urgent now; what could it look like and who would decide; and what are likely to be essential components of the social commons. We end with questions to fuel the coming debate.

2. What is distinctive about our vision of a new social commons?

• Forwards not backwards. We aim to reimagine and build on essential elements of the UK welfare system without being purely defensive.  The process and content of building a new social commons are geared to the present and future, not the past.
• People in control. The idea of the social commons starts with the ambition of putting people in control, claiming what should be theirs by right, rather than simply receiving (or hoping to receive) public services and benefits.
• Promoting collective action. Our proposal gives priority to the collective ideal. This was embodied in the post-war settlement, but has weakened over time.  We aim to strengthen our shared capacity for collective action to help and support each other.
• A common good, shared by all.  The ‘social commons’ do not represent a safety net or a conditional privilege, but a common good in which everyone has a stake.  The value rests on everyone sharing in the benefits, both directly when they need support, and indirectly because this helps to generate a flourishing society and prosperous economy.
• Shaped through democratic dialogue. People themselves will decide the purpose and content of the social commons: what it includes and why, and where resources should come from. They will do this through deliberative dialogue that includes local councillors and MPs, bringing together participatory and representative democracy.
• With the state, not instead of it. This is about transforming relations between people and the public realm. Public authorities, at national and local levels, have a crucial role to play in facilitating and supporting the social commons.  We want to transform them, not side-step or replace them, so that they guarantee shared ownership and equal access, as well as setting standards and managing resources.
• Flexible and evolving. The social commons can embrace multiple forms of shared ownership and draw on a range of resources, from locally based voluntary action to national institutions such as the NHS.  We envisage a dynamic process where people decide incrementally what they need, then issue declarations of intent, demonstrate what’s possible through practical experiment, identify what rights are required, and work out how best to develop and enforce them.
• Grounded in whole systems. This approach recognises that social, environmental and cultural resources are not separate but interdependent: they are – or should be – commongoods, held in common, for the common good.   They are subject to similar claims and expectations.

3. Why is it urgent now?

The case for claiming and building a social commons has never been more urgent.  Far too many people feel dispossessed and betrayed by the established political order.  That generates anger and desperation for change.  Public institutions no longer inspire much confidence.  The collective ideal – which for 60 years has been expressed in terms of public services, funded through taxation, ‘for each according to need’ – is so closely associated with the old order that it is in danger of being swept up in the general opprobrium.  If people want to throw out the bathwater of established institutions, we must rescue the baby of shared risks, pooled resources, collective action and mutual aid.  And we must make sure that ‘the baby’ can survive and thrive today and in future. This calls for a transformation of the ways in which social resources are defined, controlled, supported and secured.

Beyond this political imperative, there are four main reasons why it is urgent to build a new social commons.  First, it is an expression of social solidarity and collective action.   Secondly, it can support social justice and the reduction of inequalities.  Thirdly, it can underpin the development of a secure and sustainable welfare system, able to meet the needs of future as well as present generations.  Fourthly, it can help to anchor progressive social policies against the shock of leaving the European Union and the growing appetite for radical disruption.

Solidarity and collective action

In the UK and most mature democracies, public resources, contributed by taxpayers, are used to fund services that are universally available and free at the point of use. By sharing resources and helping each other, through institutions that belong to us all, we make all our lives possible.  We are protected from catastrophe when problems beset us that we can’t control. The post-war welfare settlement consolidated the model of free, universal services and through the second half of the 20th century the collective approach became the norm. It was a highly redistributive system, because only a few people could afford to buy the whole package privately, while others would struggle to afford most of it and most of us would be unable to afford any of it. As such, it was an expression of social solidarity – a broad understanding that we flourish better together than simply as autonomous individuals.  And as a shared, state-level institution, it embodied an inclusive solidarity between different groups and across generations.

This key principle of the post-war settlement has since been overshadowed by notions of individualism and competition associated with an increasingly dominant neoliberal politics. Critics have argued that providing services and benefits through the state undermines people’s capacity to fend for themselves and generates a ‘culture of dependency’. Others have pointed out that public authorities, however well intentioned, can behave in ways that disempower people and fail to respond to diverse individual needs. It has also been argued – forcefully, but without much supporting evidence – that problems like these can be solved by introducing market rules such as competition for contracts and customer choice.

With strong ideological currents running against it, the collective ideal has grown weaker and the welfare package has shrunk. Hefty portions of the public realm have been contracted out to private corporations whose profit-seeking tendencies are largely incompatible with social solidarity. People who were once legitimate beneficiaries of a system that shared risks and resources have been recast as individual consumers in a quasi-marketplace or – worse – as skivers and scroungers.  Since 2009, the government has insisted that ‘austerity ’– meaning deep cuts in public services – is the only way to build a strong economy.   Post-school education is no longer free; adult social care, housing for the homeless, and income support for those who cannot earn have become insecure, highly contingent and stripped down to a minimum.  Things we took for granted for half a century are no longer secure.

Meanwhile, public support has been steadily eroded – both by regular experience of failing quality and narrowing accessibility, and by a constant battery of negative messaging, apparently endorsed by all elements of the political establishment.

Many commentators point to the ‘resilience’ of the public welfare system, especially free schooling and the NHS.  It seems unlikely that any government would find it politically viable to abolish welfare services altogether.  However, saving schools and hospitals is not enough.  A stripped-down, commercialised safety net won’t do. What’s really at stake here is the character and scope of the collective ideal.  Our proposal for building a new social commons is a call to embrace, value and defend that approach: pooling resources, sharing risks, looking after each other, and making sure that every one of us has an equal chance to flourish and participate – not just now, but into the future.

This means transforming the way services and other activities are designed and delivered, re-building from the bottom up and forging new kinds of relationship between people and government.

Social justice and inequality

Not all forms of solidarity and collective action advance the cause of social justice.  In some settings, when people get together to share resources and look after each other, they exclude others, by default or intentionally. Those who are better off may be more confident and find it easier to fend for themselves and their own families, friends and networks.  These tendencies widen rather than reduce inequalities.   Populist politics can bind large groups together, but also lead to scapegoating and intolerance towards minorities.  Our vision of a social commons is for everyone on equal terms. Its purpose is to promote social justice and reduce inequalities.   This is why we envisage it not simply as a combination of self-generated, locally controlled initiatives, but as a new deal between people and government, which promotes inclusion and equal access.

Social justice is defined in various ways, but we take it to mean that everyone should have an equal chance to enjoy the essentials of a good life, to fulfil their potential and to participate in society.

To realise this goal, people must be able to claim things to which they feel they are entitled.  Our concept of a social commons therefore embodies an understanding of social rights.

Social justice implies certain liberties, for example, freedom from coercion, unfair discrimination or violence, and being able to vote for representatives in local councils and national parliaments.  These are well-established civil and political rights that underpin modern democracies.  But as Marshall, Sen and many others have pointed out, they don’t amount to much, especially in terms of social justice, unless people also have social and economic resources that render them able to enjoy life, fulfil their potential and participate in society. This points to a need for positive social rights as well as civil and political rights.

There is mounting evidence of widening inequalities, as wealthy elites accumulate political influence as well as resources.  Economic inequality in the UK is at dangerously high levels with the richest 1% of the population owning more wealth than the poorest 50% put together. Households in the bottom 10% of the population have on average a net income of £9,277, while the top 10% have net incomes over nine times that (£83,897). Most people who have power and resources also have a sense of entitlement to what (they think) they need to live a good life, and they can use their existing assets to make sure they get it – good schools and healthcare, decent homes, rewarding employment, a secure income. Beyond the comfortably well off, any such confidence is either very fragile, or absent altogether.  Social justice cannot be achieved when that sense of security is so unevenly distributed.

Collectively provided and funded services that people can rely on amount to a huge cushion against poverty and inequality.  They function as a substantial ‘virtual’ contribution to household income – valuable to all, but especially to those with lower incomes.  As Oxfam notes, on average across OECD countries, public services are worth 76% of the post-tax income of the poorest groups, and just 14% of the richest; this ‘social’ income reduces income inequality by 20%.

‘Social security’ is often taken to mean income support and of course it is vital for people to have an adequate financial income.  But this ‘virtual’ income is every bit as important.  Shared access to collectively provided services and activities, as well as a realisable entitlement and sufficient capacity to utilise them, make it possible for people to participate in society on an equal footing with others.  It makes sense of having freedoms in the first place.  What is the point of being technically ‘free’ to do something if you lack the capacity to do it in practice?

Sustainability and security

Next, our proposal addresses the future viability of enabling everyone to participate and flourish. Central to the idea of building a social commons is that it endures over time – at least for foreseeable decades (say, 25-50 years).  It is not a thing given to people by governments, which can also be taken away, but a process of claiming, controlling and setting in motion a system that evolves through continuing democratic dialogue and design.  As we have noted, our vision of a social commons is linked with the concept of the ‘commons’ as natural resources, including land, water, air and energy, which are increasingly the focus of movements claiming rights of shared ownership and democratic control.

Sustainable development has been defined as meeting ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. It indicates a shared understanding (to the best of our current knowledge) of rights or entitlements that are not only important now, but can endure in the longer term and – crucially – within the resources of a finite planet.  The principles of sustainable development challenge an underlying assumption of the post-war settlement, which was that the economy would continue to grow and expand, taking no account of planetary boundaries.  This can’t go on.  The social commons must be sustainable.

The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence shows that if the last decade’s trends in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue, they will lead to a perilous rise in global average temperatures – well  beyond the goal of 2o centigrade set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, let alone its more ambitious target of 1.5 o. Calculations of the ecological footprint, which measures the pressure of human production, consumption, and waste on finite natural resources, find that the global footprint needs one and a half planets to support current activities, or three and a half planets if everyone were to live like the average US citizen. The Stockholm Resilience Centre warns that the exponential growth of human activities could trigger ‘abrupt or irreversible environmental changes’ that are potentially ‘catastrophic for human wellbeing.’ No wonder this has been described as ‘the single most important challenge facing society today’.

There are three main ways in which the process of building a new social commons could contribute to a sustainable system for human flourishing: by helping to reduce emissions and resource-intensive consumption, by improving value for money provided by services and by preventing further escalations of need.

Moving to a low-carbon (or zero-carbon) economy that uses natural resources sustainably calls for very substantial changes in patterns of consumption, both by individuals and households, and by organisations.   Inequalities help to drive up resource-intensive consumption. Not only do those on high incomes consume more than their fair share of planetary resources, but the consumption habits of the better-off drive up aspirations among lower-income groups and generate resource-intensive living standards that come to be seen as ‘normal’. Our proposal aims to reduce inequalities and to promote solidarity and inclusion. There is evidence that more equal and inclusive societies are better able to achieve carbon reduction and avoid depletion of natural resources.

Second, publicly funded services that are provided collectively through democratic institutions generally give better value for money than for-profit services and have lower emissions, as comparisons of the UK and US healthcare systems regularly demonstrate. A recent analysis of US experience in the British Medical Journal found that market forces drove up prices at the expense of inclusiveness and quality, with significant transaction costs incurred through billing and marketing functions, and inflated salaries of senior personnel.  The authors concluded that evidence from the US ‘should warn other nations from the path.’ The NHS, for all its flaws, remains an example of public sector efficiency, with healthcare in the UK costing half as much per capita as it does in the US. As a result it achieves equal or better results in terms of healthy life expectancy and patient satisfaction and its direct carbon emissions account for less than half the share of those recorded in the US. Other services have also been found to deliver better value for money in public rather than private hands.

A third key aim of our proposal is to promote services and other activities that prevent problems (such as chronic health conditions, social isolation, unemployment or anti-social behaviour), rather than coping with the consequences. As the New Economics Foundation has argued elsewhere, this can not only improve people’s quality of life but also reduce demand for services over time as well as the ecological footprint.  Services that are forged through dialogue and in the public interest are more likely to give priority to this prevention agenda than commercial services, which tend to put short-term shareholders’ interests before the longer-term requirements of communities

A system that can deliver more and better services for the same or less money will be essential for a sustainable economy – where success is measured not by growth, but by the capacity to support a flourishing society within planetary boundaries.

Brexit and the growing appetite for radical disruption

The rise of populism across Europe and the US is fuelled by anger and despair among people who feel betrayed and excluded, who want to overturn a system that seems to be run by powerful elites for their own benefit.  In the UK, people voted to leave the European Union because they felt it was not in their interests to belong to it, and they could not control it.  Our proposal aims to focus the growing appetite for radical disruption on dialogue, shared control and social justice, rather than on plebiscite, intolerance and isolationism.

The Brexit vote makes the case for building a new social commons all the more urgent, because, as we have noted, there is a danger of throwing the collective baby out with the bathwater of established institutions. Of course, the EU grew out of a free trade agreement; but it developed over more than half a century a new vision of transnational citizenship that conferred on Europeans a range of shared social and economic entitlements.  With no written constitution, and without EU membership, people in the UK will be left with a more fragile and tenuous set of expectations about how public institutions will meet their needs and protect them from harm.  The point is not to reinstate the pre-Brexit status quo, but to reclaim social benefits that derive, directly or indirectly, from EU membership.

EU directives in the social field cover –among much else – equal pay and equal treatment for women and men, discrimination on grounds of race and ethnicity, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation; parental leave and working hours; sexual harassment; health and safety at work; education of the children of migrant workers; and a range of provisions supporting free movement across the European Union.  Countries belonging to the EU have been required to follow these directives, with details of implementation determined at national level and varying between member states.

These measures would not be swept away by Britain leaving the EU, as most have been incorporated into national legislation.  But any future UK government would have no external restraint if it chose to dilute or abolish any EU-backed laws or regulations.  Nor would it be under any external pressure to improve or extend its welfare system, by virtue of belonging to group of nations with a shared commitment to ‘improving the social protection and freedom from discrimination required to ensure a better quality of life for citizens and residents.’

Through successive treaties, directives and declarations of principle and intent, as well as through strategic funding, the EU has achieved more than a range of rights for workers: it has created a climate of opinion and built a political consensus in favour of enhancing and protecting the quality of people’s daily lives.  The primary purpose was to strengthen Europe’s economy, but over time, the social means have come to matter almost as much as the economic ends, and have gathered a momentum of their own.

The UK remains (until ‘Brexit’ is implemented) part of a Union of nations that are, by a very large majority, committed to a shared set of rights. This commitment is expressed not just through national governments and EU funding, but through dialogue between civil society organisations, across member states, that is encouraged and supported by the EU.  It includes formalised dialogue with trade unions and business representatives, as well as less formal support for dialogue between a wider range of non-government organisations, for example through the Platform of European Social NGOs.  This enables civil society organisations to meet each other and develop common policy positions, and to lobby their own governments accordingly.

However rigid and rule-bound Brussels may be, however jagged and contested lines of convergence have become, the EU has played a vital role in building peer-group pressure, across governments and civil society, in favour of progressive social policies. Our proposal seeks to build a shared commitment to the principle of equal access to social resources, including protections and benefits that developed through the UK’s membership of the European Union.

4. What would it look like and who would decide?

We envisage a new social commons being built incrementally. It could begin with an expression of shared intent that could gather support over time so that the idea and its practical implications become ‘normal’, with a consensus in favour of strong institutional underpinning.  First and foremost, however, it depends on widespread public and political support, so we propose that the scope and structure of a new social commons are shaped through democratic dialogue.

An expression of shared intent with accumulating force

The process of claiming and building the social commons would, in the first instance, be a powerful expression of what people living in the UK and participating in society should expect in order to flourish.  As such, it is a way of building a political consensus in favour of protections and benefits shared by all.  It can be a touchstone for local activists, campaigners and progressive policy-makers.  It can inspire innovation and practical change – locally and nationally.  It can raise public awareness, invite scrutiny and debate, and act as a first-line defence against encroachment.

However, an expression of shared intent is neither practically realisable nor technically enforceable until it is securely resourced and underpinned by legislation.  Our vision of a social commons therefore implies a range of linked rights and entitlements shared by all. In generic terms, these would include ‘negative’ rights or freedoms, such as the rightto protection from unfair treatment on grounds of gender or ethnicity, as well as political rights to participate in decisions about shaping and allocating services and benefits. These are established in UK law, although often limited in practice.

At the same time, crucially, a social commons would embrace ’positive’ or ‘synthetic’ rights to services and resources: these are not well-established in UK law, but they are vital because they make it possible to participate fully in society.  It would also include ‘procedural rights’, that is, systems and protocols that enable people to know and claim what they are entitled to by means that are fair, accessible, timely and affordable.  These are essential for a social commons that is shared by everyone on equal terms: they are the means by which people take control of the very things that enable them to participate fully in society.

We envisage, then, that the latter two categories would be key institutional underpinnings for building the social commons: entitlements to services and resources, and to procedures for appropriate and equitable access. This begs the question of how things that are claimed can acquire the force of law.

EU experience, noted above, suggests how ‘soft law’ can lay foundations for political negotiations that in turn lead – incrementally – to legislation, regulation and practical provision to realise its intent.  In addition, some EU member states have enshrined social entitlements in their constitutions.  For example Finland’s constitution ‘guarantees economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights’, such as the right to work, education, indispensable subsistence and care, social security and adequate social, health and medical services, which the authorities are required to guarantee and promote. The Swedish constitution declares: “It shall be incumbent upon the public institutions to secure the right to health, employment, housing and education, and to promote social care and social security.”

We can be cynical about the distance between what’s written in a constitution and what happens in practice, but declarations of this kind set out what is agreed to be desirable.  As such they can serve as a touchstone and support for progressive policy makers, local initiatives and social movements.

The UK does not have a written constitution. The 1998 UK Human Rights Act (HRA) incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law and includes a range of measures to protect civil and political freedoms.  The nearest it gets to a positive right is the right to education (Article 2, Protocol 1), although this does not require any new or different provision, simply establishing a right of access to what is already there.  The Act suggests how the kind of intent expressed in the Finnish, Swedish and Belgian constitutions could be given legal status, with detailed implementation devolved to democratically controlled public authorities at different levels.  The Conservative government announced plans in 2016 to replace the Act with a new British Bill of Rights, but it remains uncertain what this would entail or how far, if at all, it would serve to promote or extend social rights.

Shaped through dialogue

The structure and content of a new social commons would be determined through democratic dialogue. This is a key feature of our proposal.  While we expect it to embrace essential elements described below, we suggest that the detail of how this is achieved – the extent and character of provision – is a matter for public debate.

The precise form of the dialogue should itself be subject to wider discussion and we don’t intend to prescribe it here.  To give it the best possible chance of success, we would favour a process that ranges from the local to the national, bringing together formal expertise and evidence, everyday experience and wisdom, and political negotiation.  Indeed, the social commons would need to be co-produced by those who lay claim to it and inspired by countless local initiatives where people are already deciding what they need and taking action accordingly. Crucially, the process must be inclusive, reaching out and engaging disadvantaged and marginalised groups. This is a significant challenge, but experience shows it can be done, with methods designed for the purpose.

We envisage a dialogue that combines lay people along with professionals (in service delivery, for example) and other experts, and with democratically elected representatives. It would thus combine elements of participatory and representative democracy, rather than forms of direct democracy or plebiscite.

The dialogue would be informed by the best available evidence, but not enslaved by it: this is a bold innovation that requires imagination and even risk-taking.  Some ’experts’ will say that it can’t be done, or it won’t amount to much, or that there are insufficient data to support the case, but in the end it is a political process to be undertaken by and for people whose lives and futures will be affected by it.  And because it eventually requires buy-in from those who control public budgets, it cannot – without profoundly altering prevailing arrangements in the UK – float above real politics, but needs to be knitted into formal systems of decision-making, by involving elected representatives.

The main mechanism for dialogue could be a spread of people’s assemblies (or citizens’ forums or juries) across the UK, where lay members consider evidence and discuss relevant questions with experts, as well as amongst themselves.  Their deliberations would be informed by a wider range of local discussions; their findings would be presented to and negotiated with councillors and parliamentarians, aiming to arrive at a broad consensus.

The model of a constitutional convention could be adapted for the purpose.  The New Economics Foundation and others have proposed this as a mechanism for opening up a debate on devolution. It is described as ‘a process for involving members of the public in making decisions’, where they are usually selected in order to give a representative sample of people from across a geographical area in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, class and other characteristics. The model provides ‘opportunities to consider expert opinion and evidence, as well as time for personal reflection, deliberation, and discussion’, and concluding by ‘making recommendations through consensus decision-making.‘  We can learn from practical experience in the UK, such as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which paved the way for the creation of the Scottish Constitution, and from other countries including Ireland, Iceland, Canada and the Netherlands. We can learn from Common Weal’s wide range of suggestions for open, inclusive, democratic decision-making.

The diagram below suggests how locally-generated initiatives and multiple local conversations could feed into people’s assemblies at regional level, which would in turn inform and shape parliamentary action to facilitate and support the process of building the social commons across the country.  Control is anchored locally.  Decisions about local needs and ways of meeting them are generated through deliberative dialogue, with local conversations informing people’s assemblies.  Resources are distributed, standards set and rights of equal access are ensured through legislation and public institutions.  The state works with and for the people to enable us all to work together, share risks and pool resources, in order to claim, build and secure access to life’s necessities.

5. What are the essential features?

As an opening contribution to the dialogue, we propose that the social commons would have certain key features regarding its reach and scope: who is intended to benefit: and broadly what should it cover and why.

Who will benefit?

We propose that all who live in the UK would have a stake in the social commons: as we have said, it is for everyone, on equal terms. Whether there should be conditions attached to certain benefits is a matter for public debate and there are undoubtedly trade-offs between promoting unconditional universal access and winning broad support.  It may be decided that access to some components should be qualified, for example, by specific needs and/or by certain kinds of contribution.

It is worth considering Atkinson’s suggestion of entitlement based on participation. This can be broadly defined as making a social contribution – for example by full or part time waged employment or self-employment, by education, training or active job search, by home care for children or the elderly or disabled, or by regular voluntary work in a recognised association, or a portfolio of activities equalling around 35 hours per week. This marks an important departure from the idea of entitlement by means of formal citizenship, which excludes non-nationals, even when they are active participants, and tends to exacerbate rather than reduce inequalities.

The concept of the participating resident acknowledges, firstly, the fact that qualification does not depend on being a wage earner, secondly that people not in paid employment (and many who are) make a hugely valuable contribution – largely overlooked – to society and to the formal economy through unpaid and reproductive work (what the New Economics Foundation calls the ‘core economy’) and, thirdly, the substantial contribution, not least in terms of tax, made by non-British nationals living in the UK. However, people who are not making a contribution may be among those most in need of support – for example, people with severe disabilities: this must be taken into account.

We should also distance our approach from the notion of the consumer-citizen that emerged in the early 1990s and featured in the Citizen’s Charter introduced by John Major’s government. This cast the citizen as an individual service user, seeking product quality in various personal capacities (as passenger, traveller, parent, jobseeker, tenant, patient etc.). Where the Citizen’s Charter sought to improve standards of customer care, our proposal for a social commons aims to promote local control, reduce inequalities, strengthen social solidarity and promote a collective model of sharing risks and resources.

We see this as a move towards a reimagined social citizenship, based on plural identities and rights conferred on residents rather than on passport-holders. Who’s included should be determined through dialogue, but no qualifying criteria should be accepted that would have the effect of widening socio-economic inequalities.

Broadly, what should be the scope of the social commons, and why?

We propose a social commons that consists of a range of collectively resourced and provided services and benefits – as well as other activities and facilities – which enable people to have an equal chance to flourish.  As noted above, the detailed structure and content should be determined through democratic dialogue. Here, we offer ways of thinking about key concepts likely to feature in that dialogue.

Guiding principles. We have set out what we consider to be the main reasons for introducing a new social commons: solidarity and collective action; social justice and equality; and sustainability and security. These serve as guiding principles.  The social commons should, we argue, foster collective means of sharing risks and resources, serve to reduce inequalities, and promote sustainable ways of meeting needs now and in future.

Wellbeing. The New Economics Foundation’s dynamic model of wellbeing can help us think through the concept of ‘flourishing’.   Wellbeing can be understood as the state produced when people lead a good life, i.e., when they function well, on both a personal and a social level. Functioning well depends on the satisfaction of physical as well as psychological needs, which in turn depends on external conditions such as income, housing, education, on social relationships and connectedness, and on personal resources, such as physical health and degrees of optimism. The factors that contribute to wellbeing interact dynamically, so that they can reinforce each other, as the figure below illustrates.

Need Theory. Another, related, analytical tool is offered by need theory, since wellbeing depends on people’s needs being met. According to Doyal and Gough, every individual has certain basic needs that enable them to participate in the world around them. These are defined as social participation, health and autonomy. How they are met will vary – often widely – between countries and over time. However, certain things (known as ‘generic satisfiers’) are universal and unchanging – including adequate housing, healthcare and education, a safe physical and work environment, a secure childhood, significant primary relationships, and physical and economic security.  Need theory offers objective, evidence-based, and philosophically grounded criteria to guide decisions, and provides a basis for understanding what future as well as present generations will need.  Works by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on human capabilities, and by Manfred Max-Neef on human scale development and fundamental needs are also relevant and overlap with this approach.

The ‘Five Giants’. What it takes to flourish inevitably changes over time, but the ‘five giants’ of the Beveridge Report (Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness) are a useful benchmark. Along with major challenges to have emerged in recent years – widening inequalities and growing insecurity, not least from the threat of catastrophic climate change – they point to essential conditions that the New Economics Foundation and others have identified for achieving wellbeing and meeting basic needs. The post-war welfare state was supposed to vanquish them and yet they still loom large.  Income support, health and social care, education, housing and employment could therefore constitute basic elements of a social commons.  But this is merely a starting point for dialogue: they need not limit the scope of it.

Where will the necessary resources come from?

We envisage a social commons that is funded mainly through taxation. This is not a proposal for massive hikes in public spending, but for transforming the way we understand, design, deliver and control the things that make it possible for us to participate in society and to flourish.  We want to shift investment and action upstream to support ‘early action’ that helps to prevent problems arising or becoming more acute – which can not only improve the quality of people’s lives, but also curb future expenditure. We want to build on assets that already exist in people’s everyday lives and relationships (time, energy, wisdom, love, care, creativity and so forth), because we are convinced that this will greatly expand the pool of resources needed for the social commons. But it must be seen as adding to, but not substituting for, public funds raised through taxation.

It is certainly possible to find more money for social provision, by raising taxes and cracking down on tax avoidance, for example. Sovereign wealth funds could be another promising source of funds.  But public resources are urgently needed for developing renewable energy, cutting emissions and strengthening ‘green’ infrastructure.  So we would rather build a social commons that uses collective resources more wisely, instead of one that calls for more and more.

Services and income: getting the balance right

We envisage the central focus of the social commons being equitable access to collectively provided services, activities and resources, because these are what make it possible for people to enjoy civic freedoms and political rights, to meet their needs and to flourish as fully participating members of society.  In this section, we briefly consider the relationship between collective activities, including services, on the one hand, and income support on the other.

Collective activities as ‘virtual income’

In particular, we want to focus on collectively provided activities (which includes not only traditional public services, but also a wide range of activities through which people help each other.) There are three main reasons for this primary focus on activities rather than on money.   Firstly, as we have noted, they make up a very substantial ‘virtual’ income that is highly redistributive and provides a crucial defence against hard times, especially for those in lower income groups.

Secondly, collectively provided activities offer the best hope for developing a welfare system that is both effective and sustainable over the longer term.  As evidence mounts that market-based ‘solutions’ tend to make matters worse, driving up costs and widening inequalities, we urgently need better strategies for meeting people’s needs and aspirations.  We are not seeking to save the welfare state, but to transform the whole system so that the people who need it are really in control of it and it serves to narrow inequalities.

This is where the potential of co-production can be realised, so that services are designed and delivered with those who are intended to benefit from them, not simply provided to them by professionals. Co-production taps into human and social assets that are always present in people’s everyday lives and relationships, expanding the resources that can be used to meet needs. In place of the post-war system, where top-down services focused mainly on treatment and cure, and relied on a growing economy to remain viable, co-production can form the basis of a more flexible, creative and sustainable system that shares power, uses resources more wisely, and breaks down barriers between groups who used to be described as ‘providers’ and ‘users’. It only works well if it really is for everyone, not just those with deeper pockets and sharper elbows.  At its best, co-production broadens and enriches the collective approach, through which we pool resources, share risks and help each other to flourish.

Thirdly, this approach helps to bind people together and to build resourceful communities; the more that services are localised and co-produced, the greater the effect.  Connected, resourceful communities have been identified as central to local preventative strategies: these are designed to shift the balance of investment and action from coping with avoidable problems (such as chronic health conditions and social isolation) to preventing those problems from occurring in the first place.  Successful early action has the double advantage of improving people’s quality of life and reducing public spending on costly curative interventions. More broadly, the New Economics Foundation argues that the collective approach holds the key to democratic renewal, transforming local economies, and enabling people to take control of their lives and circumstances.

Income as money

Questions about how to ensure that people have enough money should, in our view, be set against this background.  Certainly no-one should be allowed to fall below a broadly acceptable minimum.  The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s work to determine – through public dialogue – a Minimum Income Standard (MIS) is helpful.  For 2016 they found that ‘single people need to earn at least £17,100 a year before tax to achieve the MIS, and couples with two children at least £18,900 each.’. 
The JRF has also supported work to explore how far changes to ‘greener’ forms of consumption may be seen by the public as compatible with preserving a minimum acceptable standard of living, using MIS as a baseline. In this exercise, researchers identified areas where changing behaviour could substantially reduce carbon emissions; they found that people whom they engaged in dialogue were reluctant to change diet or modes of travel, but were willing to reduce the amount of heat and power they used at home. Such attitudes may change over time.  For the longer term, the challenge is to decide how much money people need to live to a standard that is both acceptable and sustainable.  In the meantime, an entitlement to income consistent with the MIS should be our goal.

The New Economics Foundation has set out proposals elsewhere for reform of the social security system.  These emphasise a rounded, preventative approach, linked to a higher living wage and addressing the system as a whole as well as the whole individual, and encompassing much more than transfers of money.  They are summarized in the table below. We support Atkinson’s proposal for Child Benefit to be raised to a rate that is sufficient to ‘make a significant contribution to reducing child poverty’, and to be subject to taxation.  It is also worth considering time banking principles to enable people who care for others to earn credits that can be redeemed as pension contributions.  The main point we want to make here is that it is not enough to think about how much money should be received by whom.  This must be part of a rounded approach to system change.   Access to employment with rights to decent pay and conditions is just as important as income support for those who cannot earn and should be seen as part of the social commons (although beyond the scope of this paper).

Several groups are proposing a universal basic income (UBI) as the foundation of a new social security system.  This would be an unconditional payment made to everyone.  The proposal has some strong appeal, especially among economists, as it seems simple, calculable and apparently radical.  It has enthusiastic supporters on the right and the left of the political spectrum.

In theory, a universal basic income would create rights-based social security, altering the logic of the system and ascribing a different meaning to benefits by providing them as a right for all. In theory again, it could support unpaid activities: with a guaranteed income, people could feel able to spend more time on unpaid activities, such as care and local collaboration, making a contribution to the core economy. By guaranteeing a minimum income, it could help tackle the withdrawal effect of losing unemployment-related benefits (however incrementally) when starting a job. It entails no official enquiries into a person’s activities, household arrangements, or level of wealth, compared with present-day means-tested benefits.

When it comes to putting theory into practice, however, the idea has weaknesses and even its protagonists describe it as a ‘mightily difficult political sell’. First and foremost, all citizen income schemes are either inadequate or unaffordable. A full citizen’s income providing every person with an adequate income at least at current levels would cost a huge fraction of national income. As a strong indication that the idea is impracticable, it is worth noting that almost all existing proposals envisage a partial income well below the poverty line (at which level advocates claim that costs can be covered by withdrawing other benefits and tax relief.) Thus, a range of additional, selective benefits will be required to bring income levels even up to the current minimum standards (in addition to housing benefit and additional disability benefits). This undermines the alleged simplicity of the basic income scheme, reintroducing many of the eligibility criteria and entitlement terms that the proposal seeks to do away with. It will only change the income base on which selective benefits will sit.

No less important for this discussion, is that UBI is an individualised measure, not a collective one, focusing resources on providing money to individuals rather than on pooled risk-sharing mechanisms that provide help for everyone when they need it.  It’s about buying things, not doing things. It serves to atomise and monetise people’s needs, fitting neatly with the prevailing economic paradigm – rather than promoting social solidarity, collectively funded services, and shared solutions. It confers enormous power on the state, which can give and take away. Its growing popularity among high-tech business leaders suggest an interest in making sure that people can keep on shopping as automation drives them out of work: a tame pool of consumers on which their profits depend.

Advocates of UBI usually agree that services are important to people.  But they have less to say about the potentially negative impacts on the prospects for collective services of campaigning for UBI, let alone the impact of putting the idea into practice.   The campaign distracts attention from the need for holistic reform of social security (as indicated in the diagram above) and from the need to safeguard and strengthen collective provision.  Realising the UBI goal – even as a minimal payment – would claim and divert resources from other public goods, such as education and healthcare, as well as from urgently needed investment in green infrastructure and eco-maintenance. The complex underlying causes of inequalities, ill health, social conflict, unequal access to the labour market, and non-financial barriers to social participation require upstream systemic changes, rather than a single monetary intervention.

The current popularity of the campaign for UBI reflects a desire for radical change. We would like to see the energy and passion of that campaign harnessed to the cause of building a new social commons.  From our perspective, the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for people who are not employed, backed up by more generous universal and taxable child benefit, and a time credit system for carers, seems a stronger option: more ethical, more strategically effective, more efficient and more sustainable.  It lacks the elegance of a ‘silver bullet’ solution, but in our view it will make a better contribution to a new social commons.  That said, it is not for us to decide and we offer these arguments to the coming public debate.

Questions for discussion

Our aim is to open a debate.  The New Economics Foundation is inviting responses over the coming months to questions raised by the ideas and options explored in this paper.

Some questions are set out below. Others are bound to emerge as the debate develops.

• Is the concept of a social commons useful as a way of reimagining shared social responsibility and support?
• Who should have a stake in it – and why?
• What is the best way to manage the relationship between control anchored in local communities and support from public institutions?
• In the key areas identified (education, housing, health and social care, income), what could be different about the ways in which services and other activities are shaped and delivered?
• What else could be included and why?
• How should essential elements be underpinned by enforcing mechanisms (laws and regulations)?
• In practical and political terms, how can a transition be made from a statement of shared intent, to a truly popular consensus that is realised in practice?
• Which sectors, groups and organisations are likely to support the proposal and take an interest in developing it further?

What’s the best way of conducting a public dialogue to determine the detailed content of the entitlement?

Our final question is this: if not this, then what?  If we don’t build a new social commons, broadly as described here, what are the alternatives? There is no evidence that market solutions can fix a broken welfare state.  Top-down welfare reforms invariably leave people with a diminished sense of control.  Is it enough to support ad hoc defensive campaigns against cuts in services and benefits? Or should we expect communities to fend for themselves, through a combination of philanthropy and local civic action?   If so, we must be prepared to retreat from the collective ideals of the post-war settlement and abandon the pursuit of sustainable social justice.

The post Building a new social commons: The people, the commons and the public realm appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Francine Mestrum: This article will not bring the much needed clarity, but it will very pragmatically question some of the many implicit assumptions in the debate. When I read something like ‘building an information-commons ecosystem … for the growing P2P/commons movement’ I wonder what the link is between information, commons and ecosystem and why that link is there? Does P2P production automatically imply commons? Are we really witnessing a shift ‘towards post-capitalist practices’? Is value now more than ever ‘co-created in the civic and social sphere’? If we need ‘ethical entrepreneurial coalitions’ how do they come about and are we then not already, per definition, outside capitalism? If we are to get rid of ‘commodified labour’, what are people going to live from? Is there not a contradiction between re-creating communities and generating community value while also counting on a basic income that makes people directly dependent on the state?

In much of the literature I have gone through, many assumptions are not explicited, many links are not explained and many developments are automatically considered positive.

My questions are therefore linked to a double concern. First, I think it can help the movement to clarify its theoretical principles, because it will make the literature more accessible and will contribute to the much needed convergence and the making of coalitions. Secondly, I think it can also help us to clearly define our rules and conditions in order to avoid the appropriation of our concepts by political and economic forces that do not share our desire to shape our future world in a progressive, democratic and emancipatory way.

My questions are mainly inspired by my own research on social justice, a topic that is rarely addressed in the commons literature, again, as if it were a spontaneous and unavoidable consequence of a commons approach, which it is certainly not. I do think however that our social and economic rights can be considered as a topic for commoning.

So these are my questions.

Why only talk about ‘community’?

Many of the initiatives developed in the context of ‘social innovation’ – kindergartens, help for the elderly of for disabled people – take place at the local level, obviously. Repair shops, fablabs, urban agriculture as well. While these initiatives can indeed be very positive, one wonders what their link is – or should be – with the larger society? Especially in the area of social policy, the desire to self-organize and self-manage care can certainly have negative consequences. Not all people have the necessary networks or families to receive the much needed help, the risk of exclusion of some people is real. Moreover, we all do have social rights and the state has a duty to respect and fulfil these rights. An institutional approach, if democratically organized, can give much better care than the non-professional help of neighbours. These rights are also universal, so no one can ever be excluded and the care given from one village or city to another should be comparable.

Similar questions can be put about urban agriculture. We are not all endowed for agricultural activities. Not only is it questionable that the locally produced vegetables have any added-value compared with the vegetables from other cities or countries, food sovereignty at the local level is at any rate impossible. Many countries have no coffee, tea, rice or bananas.

Also, is there any added value in locally produced kitchen-ware? What about the leather or the paper products we use? The books we read? The cars we will continue to use? Yes, we can produce local beer, but what if we prefer the taste of the globally produced brands?

The point is that the limitation to local communities also define the boundaries of what we can do. We cannot become self-sufficient at the local level and will continue to be dependent on others, and most probably to a capitalist system.

Another often forgotten element is that local communities certainly are not necessarily peaceful or non-hierarchical. History and feminism teach us that the constraints of local communities can be suffocating, and I for one, having grown up in a ‘community’, do certainly not want to go back to it. Small and local communities can exist in larger cities, certainly, but if a commons approach needs clear boundaries the problem remains.

The shift from communities to societies has accompanied a division of labour, and I do not see why we should reject this. Many authors seem to dislike the idea and seem to promote a local community, ‘outside market and capitalism’ which then means a barter system, or exchange systems with local money? It sometimes sounds like a self-provisioning polpotisation of our societies. The reference other authors make to ‘transnational tribes’, especially for the design and knowledge production and exchange do not reassure me.

If the commons approach cannot get beyond this ‘community’ level, I am afraid it will not have a bright future, since most people will never be convinced this is the best level to organize and live, however interesting many of the new initiatives are. Even productive commons cannot remain small-scale if we also want to weaken or eliminate the Monsanto’s of this world.

A new economy born within the old?

This question is linked to the previous one. Most of us probably dream of a world without capitalism, the question is, how to get there? Today, we are not progressing towards post-capitalism, in spite of what some authors try to tell us, the system is more powerful than ever, even if the financial system remains vulnerable.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways we can try to abandon capitalism:

The first method is the one that seems to adopt the commons movement: organizing an economy without commodities and without markets, at least that is what I read in several books and articles. It is a group withdrawal from the system. One may wonder whether that is possible and even desirable?

The second method is to try and change power relations within society and work at progressive reforms in order to hollow out the capitalist system and arrive at something different. This does not mean abandoning markets, commodities and money, but to withdraw some goods and services from the commodity market, as well as democratizing societies so as to give more power to people.

The arguments in favour of the first method are weak, since there are no successful and sustained examples to find in history. The self-managed factories that existed as well as the collective domestic work initiatives have all been abandoned after some time, for several reasons, whether it be international competition or the desire of women to limit work within their own families. This is what makes me reluctant to bet on the future of the many wonderful activities in Greece at this moment. In the Latin America of ‘structural adjustment’ in the 1980s, the same happened, but only for the short time of the real crisis.

Also, the commons-produced ‘things’, whether it be knowledge or material products, will still have to find ‘customers’ to use them. Only in the local community? Transnationally? How to value and price them? How to compete with the existing capitalist corporations?

What about private property? Can it exist in a world ruled by commoners? Can public property be an alternative, knowing the sad experiences of the socialist past? Is it enough to limit and democratize the rights linked to private property? Or should we think of a totally different ownership regime?

Many advocates of a commons approach definitely want to make an end to commodified labour, which is understandable. But does it mean an end to wage labour? To what extent the fordist model implied already a way to decommodification of labour? How to guarantee respect of labour rights and avoid exploitation and self-exploitation?

What kind of state do we want?

In some articles and books on commons it seems as if we did not need a state anymore. I would like to ask these authors to explain how our world of seven billion people is going to function without public authorities. I think it cannot.

But yes, we need another kind of state, one that can be considered a public service for all the people. Today, too many governments are at the service of corporations and economic interests and this certainly has to change.

But it is beyond any doubt that we do need a state, not only for internal and external conflict resolution, for defining the framework within which commons can function but also for taxes and redistribution, for public health and public transport, for guaranteeing our universal human rights and for promoting freedom and equality.

I honestly cannot see what the world would look like without states, whatever questions and criticism one may have concerning their current status and practice. I do like the concept of ‘partner state’, one that works alongside with citizens, one that can subsidize valuable initiatives of citizens and their organisations.

States are very much needed for organizing a decent social protection, even if citizens will have to be closely involved in the design and practice of the system. This is also a strong demand of all social justice movements I know in the South. They want public authorities to set the general rules and provide the funding.

Building commons-based ecosystems?

We probably all want this, since the care for nature is as important as the care for people. Moreover, this becomes very urgent because of the threatening climate change. But how can it happen? Many authors seem to think it will be a spontaneous development, and all commons initiatives naturally are eco-friendly? But why would they be? What about P2P networks ignoring extractivism? What about networks of people travelling all over the world?

Do we all agree with the statement that ‘the methodology of nature itself favours the commons as a stable self-sustaining paradigm’? Is society built in the same way and with the same characteristics as nature? This certainly needs a serious debate.

Local food chains will probably be more eco-friendly than imported food from Africa and sharing tools in a local community can be more economic than buying everything separately, but does it mean that all commons are necessarily rooted in sustainable ecosystems? I have doubts.

What about rightwing commons?

All previous questions boil down to this difficult one: why do most of us assume all commons will be progressive and emancipatory? Apart from the obvious risk of appropriation of some very good initiatives by the capitalist system, there is the very direct risk of conservative people and communities taking action and adopting a commons approach. Just imagine the kindergartens for white children, or the faith-based school programmes that limit children’s learning capacities? What about commons in the extractivist sector, think of mining cooperatives? What is the difference between the commons-based – libertarian – communities and the chartered cities emerging in the South?

Once again, I have the impression that many of these questions have not been seriously reflected on. Certainly, the self-determination, self-management and autonomy of people are very valuable objectives, but there is no reason to think that they necessarily lead to eco-friendly or emancipatory practices.

Concluding remarks

Some of the questions and problems I have mentioned are directly linked to the explicit or hidden philosophy of the authors promoting a commons approach, others are probably just naïve and based on wishful thinking.

Much is linked to an overall rejection of modernity giving rise to post-modernity, post-development and post-colonialism. It would take us too far to analyse its causes and consequences here. It seems clear to me that indeed we have to abandon a belief in endless growth and progress and that we have to be aware of the interdependence of humankind and nature. But does it also mean we have to abandon universal claims of equality and human rights? Modernity clearly has to be re-visited, though I would hesitate to fully reject it. Kant’s sapere aude can remain a valuable guideline for trying to understand the world we are living in.

A second characteristic I notice in many writings on commons is a holistic approach that assumes there can be harmony in nature and in societies. Sometimes it seems as if it were enough to look into our inner selves to make a better world. This, I believe, we have to reject. We will never avoid conflicts but have to look for ways and rules to peacefully live together. Also, we cannot forget the major oppositions in all our societies, whatever the words to name them: class, gender, race, rich and poor, diversity, culture, humankind and nature. Many authors focus on soft values such as empathy and affectivity, even spirituality, though we should never forget that equality does not come spontaneously and that structural, obligatory solidarity may be needed to promote justice.

I fully agree with the authors who claim that the commons can not only be a very emancipatory practice, it also can become an enabling discourse to fight neoliberal capitalism. However, the power relations of the current economic system will not disappear if we do not build power ourselves, if we continue to allow capitalism to appropriate our ideas and initiatives.

To me, the commons are extremely interesting in order to democratize societies and economies, to give power to the people not just to take care of themselves, but to take care of societies and economies, to take care of politics. Care can be in the centre of such an approach, but always in a political sense, with the awareness of the conflicts we are faced with. Commons are indeed about the creation of shared value, not only thanks to individual contributions but also thanks to a common, collective contribution in past and present.

I am aware of the fact that all these questions need to be debated. Maybe I overlooked some of the problems, maybe I am focusing too much on others.  If we want to make progress and look for convergence, I think it can help to organize such a debate, not to ignore our inevitable differences but to know what we want and how we can get there together. The current world, I am afraid, is not and will never be as soft as some would like it to be. But ‘commons’ can become a very strong discourse and practice to re-order today’s progressive political forces.

The post Questions for the Commons Movement appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Douglas Rushkoff: I thought long and hard about how best to respond to the thousands of emails I’ve received since publishing Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. People, companies, mayors, cooperatives, towns and big corporations, all looking for ways to distribute prosperity more widely, start local currencies, build platform cooperatives, convert to employee ownership, offer dividends instead of capital gains, or crowdfund a bookstore. I’ve answered more than half – or about 20,000 of them – individually. But I realized that it’s really not me who has the answers; it’s you.

I’m not a one-stop shop for new social and economic strategies. But I know a heck of a lot of the people who have the answers – people who understand we have to stop optimizing human lives for economic growth, and start optimizing the economy for human prosperity. People who want to stop programming people for technology, and start programming technology for people. The people I’ve come to call Team Human.

So I’m going back on the air with a new audio show – my first since doing The Media Squat on WFMU a decade ago. It’s a weekly podcast called Team Human, looking to challenge the operating systems driving our society, reveal its embedded codes, and share strategies for sustainable living, economic justice, and preservation of the quirky nooks and crannies that make people so much more than mere programs.

Team Human is where the conscious beats the automatic. An intervention by people, on behalf of people. All in delightful audio – perhaps the most intimate, enveloping medium yet developed.

My books may have been good for addressing the symptoms of social and economic injustice, and doing forensic analysis of the root causes for our problems – sometimes dating back to things like the invention of central currency and chartered monopolies in the late Middle Ages. But social change requires more than knowledge of where we are and how we got here. It requires a shift in values, in perception, and in the way we understand what it means to be a human being. It’s more fundamental than policy, because it is what animates us in the first place.

If we understand human beings the way the market does – in terms of our ‘utility value’ – then all is surely lost before we’ve even begun. Machines will always have greater utility value than humans. And people are certainly an impediment to a marketplace where assets are abstractions of derivatives, not the stuff that sustains life. To the market, the derivatives on water are worth a whole lot more than water, itself.

Meanwhile, if we look at human beings the way some of the scientists and CEO of our leading technology companies do, then we’re just some temporary stage on information’s journey toward higher states of complexity. The minute humans are outpaced by artificial intelligence – the moment of the ‘singularity’ – we will be officially and effectively obsolete. In their perverted understanding of evolution, human beings should pass the torch. Any effort to stick around as something more than a memory card may as well be hubris.

Well, I don’t buy that. And I know a lot of you don’t, either. It’s time we forge the solidarity we need to press for the human agenda – without shame or embarrassment.

People are cool, in our own weird, clumsy, and ambiguous way. The markets and technologies we’ve created are not new gods. They are not our replacements, but mechanisms we’ve constructed to make our lives better, more just, and more meaningful.

That’s why I’ll be engaging in real-time, no-holds-barred discussions with people who are hacking the machine to make it more compatible with human life, and helping redefine what it means to stay human in a digital age. Members of Team Human such as debt activists Astra Taylor and Tom Gokey, Occupy Wall Street founder Micah White, YesMan Andy Bichlbaum, Institute for the Future chief Marina Gorbis, co-op organizer Esteban Kelly, DNA artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, tech environmentalist Richard Maxwell, and so many more, including, hopefully, you too.

Please join Team Human – both as a listener and as a human teammate. It’s not too late to reclaim planet earth for its people, to give land and labor a voice along with capital, and to share our best strategies for mutual aid, environmental sustainability, and economic justice. In the real world, we humans have the home field advantage. Let’s use it.

Lead image by David Shankbone

The post Douglas Rushkoff’s TEAM HUMAN appeared first on P2P Foundation.

You can now apply for ECF’s third Idea Camp that will take place in March 2017. Deadline to apply is 20 September 2016.

What’s the Idea Camp?

ECF’s Idea Camp is a three-day collaborative working platform organised within the framework of Connected Action for the Commons, a network and action research programme led by ECF together with six cultural organisations from across Europe.

• The Idea Camp 2014 took place in Marseille, France and focused on the topic “Connected Action for Public Space”.
• The Idea Camp 2015 took place in Botkyrka, Sweden under the theme “Build the City”, applying the principles and ethics of the commons.
• The Idea Camp 2017 will take place in Spain on 1-3 March 2017 and will focus on the theme “Moving Communities”.

ECF believes in bold alternatives provided by citizens through their local cultural initiatives. At this time of transition, ECF invests in these local initiatives to help them to become enduring solutions to the challenges facing our continent. Europe as a shifting ‘home’ of changing communities – where people can live together in solidarity, accepting their differences – is an urgent priority in ECF’s focus over the coming years.

Moving Communities

We are living and working in an increasingly complex environment. Across Europe and its neighbouring countries, more and more people are confronted with discrimination and exclusion on a daily basis – whether economically, politically or culturally. As a result, societies are becoming more and more fragmented, extremism is on the rise, and the divisions between people – and between individuals and institutions – are growing ever wider.

Migration, distrust towards traditional institutions and the widening gap between the idea of a democratic Europe and the reality of a divided continent are among the biggest challenges that we are facing at present. These challenges are not new, but they have reached a degree that directly affects existing systems and policies, both at national and European levels.

Entitled “Moving Communities”, ECF’s third Idea Camp will focus on the current positive, radical resistance movements that are daring to counteract anti-democratic practices.

Co-hosted by Platoniq, the Idea Camp will take place in Spain from 1 to 3 March 2017 and will bring together 50 participants whose emerging, groundbreaking ideas demonstrate a firm desire to contribute to fostering political imagination, building bridges and effectively contributing to the development of a society with a stronger sense of social justice. Based on the values of sharing, inclusion and openness, the Idea Camp offers Idea Makers a unique opportunity to meet peers from diverse backgrounds and with different visions from across Europe and its neighbouring countries.

Guidelines and application

Please submit an idea that fosters the Europe we believe in: a Europe of solidarity and openness shaped and nurtured by people

We invite you to apply for Idea Camp 2017 with an idea that:

• brings forward voices that are excluded from public debate and decision-making
• has an open approach to the way people can learn, share and live together
• applies a critical perspective to what could be a more accessible and inclusive society
• strengthens the vision and practice of shared communities and coexistence
• builds bridges across differing perspectives to help counter harmful public discourse
• contributes to discussions about genuine integration opportunities and people’s rights and accountability.
• fosters political imagination and promotes social justice, solidarity and equity among various social groups.

Your idea might reflect one or several of the issues aforementioned.

We invite you to carefully read the application guidelines before submitting your idea. If you have any questions, we are hosting two online Q&A sessions on 6 July and on 7 September, both from 12:00 to 13:00 CET, on Facebook and Twitter. You can join us there.

CLICK HERE FOR APPLICATION AND GUIDELINES

Following the Call for Ideas, 50 participants will be selected according to the guidelines. ECF will cover travel costs and all expenses related to the stay in Spain during the Idea Camp for a maximum of one representative for each idea.

After the Idea Camp, participants will be invited to submit a concrete plan for further research or investigation of their ideas. A total of 25 proposals will be selected and consequently awarded an R&D Grant, up to a maximum of €10,000 each.

The post ECF IDEA CAMP 2017: Moving Communities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Here’s a very inspiring interview with Solidarity St. Louis, an anti-capitalist, social justice and commons-oriented collective out of St Louis, Missouri. We’d like to thank the author, Mira Luna, for encouraging us to republish it.

Since early August, the tragic killing of Mike Brown has caught fire in the news. It’s no surprise that mainstream media has limited the conversation to this one isolated incident. But it leaves a crucial void of voices for change that are working to solve the economic inequalities that create racial injustice in the first place.

Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) is a grassroots organization that has taken the lead in organizing the community around the Mike Brown case, systemic racism and building a solidarity economy in St. Louis through a new project called Solidarity Economy St. Louis. We caught up with MORE Organizer, Julia Ho, to get MORE’s unique take on how sharing projects can support social justice organizing and why we shouldn’t ignore social justice in the struggle to create a new economy.

Why did MORE shift into solidarity economy organizing from more traditional political organizing?

In 2011, the Occupy movement sparked a pattern of people thinking about the economy in a different way, so we shifted our organizing strategy. We asked ourselves, “How can we do decentralized, anti-capitalist work and support what’s already happening?” Around this time last year, we decided it would be most effective to create a campaign working from two angles 1) connecting and sharing best practices for solidarity economy projects and 2) building political and economic power through organizing. We also knew that racial divisions restricted access to resources in the city and felt that a robust solidarity economy network could play a role in addressing those problems.

In St. Louis, a major symptom of racial oppression is the criminalization of poverty, which leads to further economic insecurity and segregation. For example, cities depend heavily on traffic fine revenue to sustain themselves, which creates an unfair burden on the working poor and those affected by racial profiling because unpaid fines often lead to bench warrants and jail time. Currently, we are working on an initiative to get traffic fines paid through community service projects that are managed through our local timebank, the Cowry Collective, while also putting pressure on the municipal courts to stop issuing these warrants in the first place.

Launch event for Solidarity Economy St. Louis

Why did this work lead you to start a new project – Solidarity Economy (SE) St. Louis?

We wanted to build a local network of people who are doing similar projects and could also pull together to fight economic and racial injustice. Our idea was that MORE would help to convene this table, but that the network would consist of groups and organizations that extend beyond our membership.

SE St. Louis currently does campaign organizing, education, and strategy meetings with people affected by bench warrants. We work with the Cowry Collective Timebank, the Organization for Black Struggle, Sistahs Talkin’ Back, the Coalition to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex, Grace Hill’s MORE Dollar Network, Blank Space, sustainable deconstruction and recycling organizations, free stores, art collectives, immigrant rights organizations like Latinos en Axion, the St. Louis Ecovillage Network, and are looking to connect with several urban gardens and neighborhood tool libraries.

Can you explain your plan to address the injustice of bench warrants for minor infractions through the use of timebanking or other alternative economic practices?

Through our work around bench warrants, we’re hoping to shift the conversation around alternative economics to call attention to systems that oppress people and exclude them from the current economy, such as the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). It’s hard for people to participate in the alternative economy if they have to fight daily to survive, to not get put in jail or lose their housing. Recently, a group of local lawyers sent a letter to Mayor Knowles, the mayor of Ferguson, to clear all fines for nonviolent offenses (there are about 3 warrants of this kind per household). The reasoning behind this amnesty initiative is documented in a white paper by the ArchCity Defenders.

As a result of the hard work of these lawyers, combined with pressure from our campaign and national media attention in the aftermath Mike Brown’s murder, Ferguson actually amended its city charter to include several reforms to the municipal court system. Most recently, St. Louis City announced on October 1st that 220,000 warrants for nonviolent offenses will be cleared. These changes were big victories for our campaign, but these are just first steps. Clearly, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done to ensure that people are not being exploited by the courts or the police. In addition to the other work that MORE has been doing in Ferguson, one of our next steps is to start a Timebanking program that will expand throughout St. Louis which will allow people to work off their fines by exchanging services in their community.

Cowry Collective Timebank Meetup

What’s your long-term vision for economic transformation in St. Louis and how do shared resources, the commons and cooperatives fit in?

Ultimately, our vision is to see people having true democratic power over their resources and the decisions that affect their lives. In St. Louis, corporate power rules. Peabody, the largest privately owned coal corporation in the world, is headquartered here. Monsanto is headquartered here. Boeing has a major base of operations here. These corporate powers, along with many others, heavily influence public policy and funnel money into nearly every cultural institution. As a result, people tend to turn a blind eye to the fact that these corporations are robbing millions of dollars in tax breaks per year from public schools and other city services.

Last year, we were working on a ballot initiative campaign called Take Back St. Louis that over 8 months received 36k signatures. Take Back St. Louis was essentially designed to divert tax breaks ($61,000,000 to Peabody alone) to green jobs, community gardens and renewable energy projects. It got on the ballot, but Peabody successfully filed an injunction and even inserted an amendment at the state level that prohibited St. Louisans from passing any initiatives that limit tax breaks to coal corporations. We are in the midst of an appeal process now, but the Take Back St. Louis campaign is a perfect example of how our democracy is currently being subverted.

Another major issue in the city is massive plots of vacant homes and land, which are a direct result of decades of white flight. St. Louis has over 10k vacant homes and many more private vacant lots. Developers see it as an opportunity, the city sees it as a blight, but what about the people that live there? How do we develop St. Louis in a way that’s constructive of a new economic paradigm? People are already doing it, but it’s not being recognized or supported in the ways that it should be. We want people who live in these communities, who are primarily low income people and people of color, to be dictating where the city’s resources are spent.

Map of Shared Resources in St. Louis

St. Louis has been the subject of a lot of media attention around racism lately with the murder of Michael Brown. How does your work address systemic racism?

This moment is significant because it is a chance to push forward a national movement against systemic racism. Mike Brown is not the first Black man to be killed by the police, and sadly he will not be the last–every 28 hours, a Black man or woman is extra-judicially killed. Bench warrants are just one small symptom of the widespread problem of the criminalization of Black and Brown communities. So we are doing what we can to uplift organizations that are already deeply rooted in the community, such as the Organization for Black Struggle and the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, and also support newly politicized and radicalized young leaders off of the streets by training them in their organizing skills.

Do you have any particular models of cities or projects you look to for inspiration?

We originally took a lot of inspiration from Solidarity NYC, their mission and vision. We’re also excited to connect with organizers in Detroit with the Our Power campaign, as well as folks with Cooperation Jackson who are doing incredible work to transform their local economy.

How can people get involved?

• We just organized an event about Mike Brown and the bench warrant campaign and have a upcoming big event called Ferguson October from October 10-13th.
• You can get further updates on campaigns and events from the Solidarity Economy St. Louis or MOREFacebook pages or follow #UnWarranted.
• Donate to the legal support fund for justice for Mike Brown
• Donate to the Ferguson October Weekend of Resistance

Header photo courtesy of Ferguson October

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Christopher Boehm in Moral Origins concludes, after intensive analysis of 50 representative hunter-gatherer cultures, that our ancestors likely experienced a “radical political change,” evolving from a hierarchic “apelike ‘might is right’…social order,” to become more egalitarian. About 250,000 years ago, their survival became a team sport because chasing big-game toward teammates was much more productive than solo hunting. But only if profit-sharing was sustainable. Even with fit teammates hunting needs luck (e.g. 4% success today). Then, as now, the logic of social insurance solved team problems by sharing profits and risks. Productivity gains in interdependent teams radically changed our evolution. Cooperators thrived. As did teams with the best adapted sharing rules, provided they were well enforced.

Boehm says all surviving hunter-gatherers enforce law-like social rules to prevent excessive egoism, nepotism, and cronyism. They use rebukes, ridicule, shame, shunning, exile and execution (typically delegated to close male kin of the condemned, to avoid inter-family feuding). For example, meat isn’t distributed by the successful hunter but by neutral stakeholders. Excessively dominant alpha-male behavior—like hogging more than a fair share of meat—is punished by “counterdominant coalitions.” If the strong abused their power they were eliminated, in a sort of inverted eugenics. Resisting injustice and tyranny are universal traits in today’s hunter-gatherers. They likely run 10,000 generations deep in our prehistory.

Social punishment created powerful selection pressures. Self-control becomes the lowest-cost strategy for avoiding social penalties. Shame and guilt likely evolved as mechanisms for internalizing the logic of team rules—a social contract written into our biology. We intuitively recognize what is considered punishable. And often punish ourselves. Cultures configure shame and guilt system triggers differently. But rules balancing short term individual selfish gain with longer-term or team interests are more evolutionarily productive. Thinking of our evolved urges as irresistible is a deep error, since self-control, especially relative to social rules, has long been needed for survival (see “evo-irresistible error”)

Our ancestors bred themselves to be team players. They used intelligently directed artificial selection of good cooperators as mates (“auto-domestication”). Bad cooperators were less likely to be selected for, or successful at, the hugely costly and highly collaborative business of raising long helpless offspring.”

(http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/05/29/justice-is-in-our-nature/)

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