Let me make the theory more palpable by relating it to aspects of the long-term project to promote transformative innovation and the transition towards a regenerative culture on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, where I live.

Clearly, even at the relatively small scale and within the defined boundaries of the island, I cannot predict — much less control — all the possible parameters that will affect whether the transition towards increased resilience, sustainability and a regenerative culture will be successful, nor can I force the speed of the transition. Yet I firmly believe that systemic interventions through processes that involve diverse stakeholders will contribute to this deeper culture change.

One useful entry point is the issue of local food production and the link between food and wellbeing, as well as food production and ecosystems health and societal resilience. I can’t control to what extent the transition towards increased local organic food production will result from the systems interventions I engage in. Yet working with unpredictability and emergence rather than against it, I can facilitate the interconnections between certain parts of the system that were previously not talking to each other. The degree of interconnection and the quality of connections (what kind of relationships are established) do affect the behaviour of complex systems and the emergent properties they exhibit.

For example, facilitating meetings between the island’s agricultural cooperatives and a large commercial kitchen that supplies hospitals, schools, business canteens and some hotels helped to initiate a dialogue about how this kitchen could include more local produce in its meal plans. This offered the kitchen and its clients an opportunity to support the local economy and will help to increase sales and eventually even the production of local foods. Since the kitchen has multiple customers, the project initiated a cascade of conversations that in many cases are the first step towards educating the people responsible for procurement about the systemic benefits of choosing regionally produced products.

A relatively small intervention can thereby affect the information flow in the wider system, via the newly facilitated connections and relationships and through the existing networks of the different stakeholders. What kind of information the system relies on crucially affects emergent behaviour. So, to stay with the example, educating farmers, hotel owners, local government, permanent residents and multipliers (like educators, academics, activists and journalists) about the potential impact of rapid increases in transport costs and food price — due to spiking oil proces, climate chaos, terrorist scenarios, food price speculation or economic crisis — will make the system as a whole more aware of its vulnerability to anything that affects cheap imports. Once these possible scenarios are — even only hypothetically — accepted, it will be easier to spread memes like the need for increased local food production and the advantages of an increased level of ‘food sovereignty’ as a risk management strategy.

Different actors in the system might pick this information up in different ways and for different reasons. Some might favour the idea of increased local self-reliance, while others might want to protect the profitability of their local tourism operations from being overly dependent on the availability of cheap imported food. Yet others might become motivated by the overall reduction in environmental impact that comes with increased local production of organic food, including the positive impact with regard to the protection of the beauty of the Majorcan countryside (which tourism also depends on). Local politicians and economists might see the multiple opportunities for generating more jobs through such a shift towards local production.

Entrepreneurial opportunities, protection of cultural heritage, local resilience building, and the link between local organic food, health and education are all additional reasons why the memes ‘let’s decrease dependence on cheap and low quality food imports’ and ‘let’s increase the production of locally generated organic food’ could spread through Majorcan society.

I cannot control exactly how people will respond to my systems interventions — or those of many others like me, but I can aim to work as a ‘bridge builder’ between different factions who previously thought that they had nothing to do and explore with each other. I can illustrate to them the potential for win-win-win solutions and systemic synergy. Once they understand this principle based on the easy ‘entry issue’ of food quality, food security and health, I can expand the learning and this ‘whole-systems thinking approach’ to other aspects of the island system.

For example, this can be done by exploring the benefits of decreased dependence on the importation of fossil and nuclear energy and the shift towards regionally produced, decentralized renewable energy. Apart from keeping the money spent on energy in the local economy and enabling Majorca to become an international example of a renewable energy and transport system, such a shift would help to diversify the local economy away from its almost exclusive dependence on tourism and generate new jobs, while protecting the beauty of the island and the integrity of its ecosystems.

In many ways, the most powerful act of transition design was simply to plant and distribute the seeds of a conversation by asking the following questions: What would a sustainable Majorca look like? How could Majorca become an internationally respected example for regional (island) transition towards a regenerative culture? Why is the current system deeply unsustainable, lacking resilience, and in danger of collapse? How can we co-create a better future for everyone living on Majorca and visiting the island?

By spreading these questions, I begin to work for positive emergence through connecting previously isolated parts of the system and affecting the quality of information in the system. Clearly, I am only one expression of an emerging culture. Some people before and many around me are also spreading their visions of a sustainable Majorca. As these people start to collaborate, we begin to live the questions together.

Education and communication are vital in any attempt to design for positive emergence. Outdated education systems and a media increasingly subservient to corporate interests propagate limited and biased perspectives of the complexity we participate in. The narrative of separation and specialization without integration engender narrow perspectives that can’t do justice to the complexity we are faced with. These valid, yet severely limited, perspectives are influencing the solutions we implement and how our behaviour changes, thereby driving what systemic properties emerge. Regenerative design solutions are informed by a participatory systems view of life that is capable of integrating multiple perspectives. One of the design interventions with the highest leverage potential for the transition towards regenerative cultures is widespread education in eco-social and systems literacy.

Another important influence on the behaviour of complex systems is the way ‘initial conditions’ (like the dominant worldview, value systems or economic system) and ‘iterations’ (the unquestioned repetition of certain systemic patterns of organization and interactions) affect the system. It is important that as ‘transition designers’ or ‘facilitators of positive emergences’ we also take a closer look at the dominant patterns that impede positive systemic change and the emergence of systemic health.

Many of these patterns have to do with established power elites, insufficient education and the dominance of the ‘narrative of separation’. Working with culture change in this way requires patience. One effect of the narrative of separation is to make individuals believe they do not have the power and influence to change the system, but the narrative of interbeing reminds us that every change at the individual level and every conversation does in fact change the system as we are not separate from it.

In my own work on Majorca, I have chosen a place to make a stand and do what I can do to contribute to positive emergence in a well-defined bioregion. Islands everywhere offer special case study opportunities for the regional transition towards a regenerative culture. Many share similar problems, for example their economies tend to be heavily dependent on tourism and their consumption tends to be largely based on imports. While there are limits to the possibilities of localizing production and consumption on an island, these limits can act as enabling constraints that challenge our imagination and drive transformative innovation. They also challenge us to think in a scale-linking, locally adapted and globally collaborative way.

Since local self-sufficiency in an interconnected world is a mirage not worth chasing, these island case studies can serve as experiments that show us how to find a balance between local production for local consumption promoting increased self-reliance and resilience, and local production of goods, services and know-how that forms an economic basis for trade, which in turn allows the import of goods that cannot be produced locally or regionally.

Before moving to the island, I spent four years living at the internationally acclaimed Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Northern Scotland. I also worked with various transition town initiatives to understand how we can create increased sustainability and resilience as well as a deeper culture change at the community scale. In doing so, I realized that while local communities, whether rural or urban, are the scale at which the change towards a regenerative culture will be implemented most immediately, many of the systemic changes necessary require a larger (regional) scale and regional collaboration between communities.

I moved to Majorca to explore how to facilitate a scale-linked approach to transition design, by linking local communities within a regional context, and by connecting them with the support of an international network of sustainability experts and green entrepreneurs. I firmly believe that islands can serve as excellent case studies for the kind of regional transformation towards circular bio-economies that will be necessary everywhere.

…

[This is an excerpt of a subchapter from Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]

Here is a report of a recent SDG Implementation workshop I organized and co-facilitated on Majorca.

This article reports on the recent conference on circular economy and entrepreneurship I spoke at.

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The two-day conference brought together a range of scholars and activists to map some of the different ways the search for just and rapid post-carbon transitions is animating a broad range of interventions—by labor and climate justice activists, designers, architects, academics and artists—and is opening up intersectional spaces across movements fighting for racial and gender justice.

During her presentation at Day Two of the conference (starting at 4:21:15), Bozuwa explained a proposal to take the nation’s energy system into public ownership—from nationalizing the fossil fuel industry to returning energy utilities into community hands. The goal is a rapid transition from a paradigm of fossil fuel extraction to an energy future based on democratic, equitable, community control of the energy system.

Conference organizers and moderators included Damian White, Dean of Liberal Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design; Thea Riofrancos, professor of political science at Providence College, and Timmons Roberts, professor of sociology at Brown University and an associate with the university’s Climate and Development Lab.

Day 1

Day 2

Visit our site: The Next System

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50 million employee-owners by 2050

Fifty by Fifty highlights from 2017

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Although cultivated food is a private food, several food-related elements are yet considered as commons, such as traditional agricultural knowledge accumulated after thousands of years of practices, agricultural knowledge produced by national research institutions, cooking recipes and national gastronomy, ocean fish stocks, wild fruits and animals, genetic resources for food and agriculture, food safety considerations and, more recently, maintaining food price stability and attaining global food security. Food and nutrition security should also be considered a Global Public Good (GPG), since it is neither rival nor excludable – unless we want starve somebody to death – but unfortunately food and nutrition security is yet an aspirational “situation”. But what about food itself?

Food, a limited but renewable resource essential for human existence, has evolved from a common local resource to a private transnational commodity. This commodification process, understood as the development of traits that fit better with the mechanized processes developed by the industrialized food model, is the latest stage of the objectification of food, a human-induced social construct that deprives food from its non-economic attributes just to retain its tradable features (durability, external beauty, standardisation). The nutrition-related properties of food were much undervalued in this process. The value of food is no longer based on its many dimensions (see below) that bring us security and health, including the fact that food is a basic human need that should be available to all, a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to every citizen, a pillar of every national culture, certainly a marketable product that should be subject to fair trade and sustainable production and finally a GPG that should be enjoyed by all humans. Those multiple dimensions are superseded by the tradable features, being value and price thus mixed up. And everybody knows that only fools confuse price with value.

There are several implications of treating food as a mere commodity, and we just name a few of the most devastating. Food has many different uses other than direct human consumption as the best use of any commodity is where it can get the best price; a commoditised food is meant to be speculated with, no moral considerations seem to deter that. An out-of-control race for land- and water-grabbing for food production is taking place in vast areas of Africa and Latin America. Transnational corporations are major drivers of obesity epidemics from increased consumption of ultra-processed food and drink. And hunger is definitely not abated by means of GMOs or patented seeds.

Human beings can eat food as long as they have money to buy it or means to produce it. Some of those means are also considered as private goods (land, agro-chemicals) although not all (seeds, rainfall, agricultural knowledge). The enclosure mechanisms, through privatization, legislation, excessive pricing or patents, have played a role in limiting the access to food as a public good. The conventional industrialised food system is operating mainly to accumulate under-priced food resources and maximize the profit of food enterprises instead of maximizing the nutrition and health benefits of food to all of us.

The dominant industrial food system is increasingly failing to fulfil its basic goals: feeding people adequately and sustainably, and avoiding hunger. The ironic paradoxes of the globalised industrial food system are that half of those who grow 70% of the world’s food are hungry, food kills people (the hunger-related death toll is 3.1 million children per year, the single major cause of child mortality in 2011), food is increasingly not for humans (since more and more food is diverted towards biofuel production and livestock feeding) and food is wasted due to its low price and low considerations (1/3 of global food production ends up in the garbage every year, enough to feed 600 million hungry people). Hunger still prevails in a world of abundance and obesity is growing steadily, already becoming a pandemic. We humans eat badly.

It was amply believed that market-led food security would finally achieve a better nourished population. However, reality has proven otherwise as a food system anchored in the consideration of food as a commodity to be distributed according to the demand-supply market rules will never achieve food security for all. It is evident that the private sector is not interested in people who do not have the money to pay for their services or goods, weather videogames or staple food. None of the most relevant analyses produced in the last decades on the fault lines of the global food system has ever questioned this nature of food as a private good, produced by private inputs or privately harvested in the wild, and therefore the common understanding sees food access as the main problem. If food security is a good thing for every human and cannot be provided exclusively by one state, the two features of the political definition of a GPG, the food and agriculture private sector does not seem to be the best institution to provide that public good, as it cannot completely capture the utilities of its trade.

The standard economic definition of public goods is anchored on non-rivalry and non-excludability features. In political terms, however, excludability and rivalry are social constructions that can be modified by social arrangements. Goods often become private or public as a result of deliberate policy choices and many societies have considered, and still consider, food as a common good, as well as forests, fisheries, land and water. For instances, fishes are continuously produced by nature and by human beings, so it is no longer restricted in number as there is not a limited number of fishes on Earth. As long as the replenishment rate outpaces the consumption rate, the resource is always available and food is considered a renewable resource with a never-ending stock such as air. Therefore, the main features that traditionally have been assigned to food as a private good can be contested and reconceived in a different way.

Food is a de facto impure public good, governed by public institutions in many aspects (food safety regulations, nutrition, seed markets, fertilizer subsidies, the EU CAP or US Farm Bill), provided by collective actions in thousands of customary and post-industrial collective arrangements (cooking recipes, farmers’ seed exchanges, consumer-producers associations) but largely distributed by market rules. These collective actions for food share this multidimensional consideration of food that diverges from the mainstream industrial food system’s uni-dimensional approach of food as a commodity.

The re-commonification of food is hence deemed an essential paradigm shift for the transition from the dominating agro-industrial food system towards a more sustainable food system fairer to food producers and consumers. Along those lines, based on Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance, food as a GPG could be produced, consumed and distributed by hybrid institutional arrangements formed by state institutions, private producers and companies, and self-organized groups under self-negotiated rules. The transition will require experimentation at multiple levels (personal, local, national, international) and diverse approaches to governance (market-led, state-led and collective action-led). This commonification will take several generations and self-governing collective actions cannot do the transition by themselves, as food provision and food security shall involve greater levels of public sector involvement and market-driven distributions. Governments have a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor, so as to maximize the well-being of their citizens and providing an enabling framework to enjoy the right to food for all. Two recent examples of governmental rules that may contribute to facilitate the transition are taxing meat to incentivise a reduction in consumption or overtaxing junk food with high contents of sugar, fat and salt as unhealthy products. Nevertheless, that leading role should gradually be shifted to the self-negotiated collection actions by groups of producers and consumers, as the State provision of food does not surpass the net benefit that consumers would receive through the self-organized and socially negotiated protection, production and use of their own resources.

Civic collective actions for food (or alternative food networks) are key units for this transition and they are built upon the socio-ecological practices of civic engagement, community and the celebration of local food. The commons are gaining ground as a third force of governance and resource management by the people as a supplement to the market and the state. Unlike the market, the commons are about cooperation, stewardship, equity, sustainability, and direct democracy from local to global, and they are mushrooming all over the world, mostly in urban areas and usually at local level.

Nowadays, in different parts of the world, there are many initiatives that demonstrate that a right combination of collective action, governmental rules and incentives, and private sector entrepreneurship yield good results for food producers, consumers, the environment and society in general, and the challenge now is how to scale up those local initiatives to national level. People’s capacity for collective action is an agency that can complement the regulatory mandate of the state and the demand-driven allocation by the private sector. Millions of people innovating have far more capacity to find adaptive and appropriate solutions than a few thousand scientists in the laboratories. It is interesting to note the collective actions for food share a consideration of food as a commons that radically diverges from the mainstream industrial food system that merely considers food as a commodity. Moreover, these collective actions for food also contribute to the reconstruction of the infrastructure of civic life that has been eroded by our individualistic growth-oriented behaviour, as Michael Sandel explains so well.

For those who love to find concrete recommendations out of theoretical narratives, some practical consequences of this paradigm shift would be to maintain food out of trade agreements dealing with pure private goods and thus there would be a need to establish a particular governance system for production, distribution and access to food at global level. That system would entail, among others, binding legal frameworks to fight hunger and guarantee the right to food to all, cosmopolitan global policies and fraternal ethical and legal frameworks, universal Basic Food Entitlements or Food Security Floors guaranteed by the State (i.e. one leave of bread for every citizen everyday), levelling the minimum salary with the food basket, a ban on financial speculation of food, or limiting the non-consumption uses of food such as biofuels. In any case, all those political implications are geared towards establishing a Universal Food Coverage, a social scheme paralleling universal health and education, the very foundations of the social welfare state. If it was possible in the XVIII century to propose health and schools for all, why not such absolute need as food for all in the XXI century? Prof. Amartya Sen is already campaigning for that goal in India.

Finding the adequate equilibrium between this tri-centric institutional setup to govern food production, distribution and consumption will be one of the major challenges the humankind will have to address in the XXI century, as long as the population grows and Earth’s carrying capacity seems to be surpassed by human’s greed for resources, as Ghandi once mentioned. A fairer and more sustainable food system is possible, but we need to reconsider the food narrative to be applicable to transit towards that goal. I do not expect to see this change during my lifetime, but I hope my descendants may.

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The lack of economic opportunities is palpable. Major media outlets are owned and controlled by powerful financial interests. Elections in many parts of the world have been co-opted to such an extent that they offer a mere facade of democracy. And the systemic nature of political corruption has become undeniable for the majority of us, as I have written about here and here and others have written enough about to fill an entire library.

The world is changing quickly and there is great need for people everywhere to visualize how it is happening. If we can see our place in the process, we can consciously and intentionally help it happen faster. I would like to offer a mental image to help us do this:

Imagine the surface of a mountain lake in winter. The air has fallen below freezing and the water has not frozen over yet. Thousands of “tiny islands” of ice form as little nucleation spots — each floating separately and in isolation from the others. tweet

Surrounding these tiny islands is the turbulent mixing of water and air, some above freezing temperature and some below. It is this turbulence that keeps the water liquid even though the air is cold enough to congeal the surface. Then a quickening occurs… a number of the ice pockets bump into each other and begin to float in harmony with each other. tweet

And in a flash the thousands of tiny islands become woven together as the crinkle of ice spreads across the entire lake. tweet

This is called a phase transition. It is how liquid and gas perform a beautiful dance and move the water from fluid to crystal phase. It happens energetically as a mixing pattern that is distributed across the entire lake. It happens everywhere-all-at-once — self organizing in many places and achieving synchronicity as a globally emergent pattern.

Now imagine instead of a lake that we are seeing the physical process of social change in culture for an economic or political system. Instead of water molecules you’ll need to think about stories, social norms, and standard practices — how people think about, make sense of, and go about doing things.

In tiny pockets of humanity, there are individual people going about their lives. Early in the process there are only a few isolated people whose life story is broken and they can’t make sense of the world around them by simply listening to the common sense of others.

Work hard and you’ll get a job. Keep paying your bills and you’ll get out of debt. Study hard and you’ll get into a good school. Graduate and start your career. Buy a house and settle down to raise a family.

This has been the standard life story in our capitalist society for the last three generations. It worked for a lot of people fifty years ago (though success was isolated to mostly Western, white, male, privileged demographics at the time) and seemed to “make sense” for a while. Yet now this story is completely broken — it doesn’t match our daily lives and is useless for guiding how we plan and act in the world today.

As more of us feel the disconnect between how the world is “supposed to be” and how it actually is, we become a nucleation point for new stories. We become tiny islands of possibility for the new paradigm.

And as we experience the turbulence and chaos of uncertainty in this condition, we can easily become overwhelmed. Made worse is the fact that elite control of media is used to tell us that the world is made up of individuals, if you fail it is your own fault, and if you have debts (regardless of how ethically questionable the situations were that forced you into them) that you are morally responsible to pay them. In this way, we become slaves to the monetary systems of capitalism.

The disharmony we feel inside is what happens when a social system has broken down. Massive inequality pits us against each other in an unwinnable game where those who rigged the system (setting up tax havens, buying political outcomes, removing taxes from the super rich, gutting social programs, and more) are the only winners.

All the while, wars continue unabated that transfer wealth from populace to defense contractor and transfer nature’s bounty from local peoples to investor/owners of multinational corporations. We are told to blame ourselves. And the media uses the art of redirection and distraction to hide the Occupy Wall Streets, Arab Springs, anti-austerity political parties, and all other uprisings from being seen — the dots have not been connected and so we continue to feel alone.

And yet, just like the tiny ice crystal islands on that supercooled lake, we have become legion. There are now at least 200,000,000 of us awakened to the social values and organizing principles of a new world. We only continue to lose because the “powers that be” who share the ideology of debt enslavement and wealth hoarding keep us trapped in their stories.

They are well organized and coordinated in their actions. We remain decentralized and unaware that our numbers outrank them by several orders of magnitude. The task before us now is to find resonance in our lived experience and weave the tapestry of feelings, thoughts, and beliefs into coordinated actions. I am speaking here of healing, not warfare. We will win by reaching down deep into ourselves and connecting with our common humanity.

A brief survey of human history makes it seem like we are a warmongering species — but that is only the Story of Conquest from the imperial age for civilizations in the last 6,000 years. Go back farther and you will see that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in egalitarian bands for a hundred thousand years or more. Note the recent studies of empathy in neuroscience, psychology, and sociology and you will see that we are wired for cooperation and capable of inspiring levels of compassion for our fellow humans and the rest of the natural world.

So I offer you this mental image. Be an island crystal of hope. Give structure to your story that speaks the truth of your lived experience. Through this healing process reach out to and engage your fellow men and women in struggle. Find your voice. Speak your truth. And be part of the waves of transformation that will follow.

Onward, fellow humans!

Cross-posted from the Rules.org and written by Joe Brewer.

Photo by AlicePopkorn2

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The weak reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis….the ineffectuality of climate change negotiations over the course of twenty-one years….the social polarization and stark wealth and income inequality of our time. Each represents a deep structural problem that the neoliberal market/state seeks to ignore or only minimally address. As more Americans come to see that the state is often complicit in these problems, and only a reluctant, ineffectual advocate for change, there is a growing realization that seeking change within the system of electoral politics, Washington policy and the “free market” can only yield only piecemeal results, if that. There is a growing belief that “the system is rigged.” People have come to understand that “free trade” treaties, extractivist development, austerity politics and the global finance system chiefly serve an economic elite, not the general good. As cultural critic Douglas Rushkoff has put it, “I’ve given up on fixing the economy. The economy is not broken. It’s simply unjust.”

Struggle for change within conventional democratic arenas can often be futile, not just because democratic processes are corrupted by money and commercial news media imperatives, but because state bureaucracies and even competitive markets are structurally incapable of addressing many problems. The disappointing Paris climate change agreement (a modest commitment to carbon reductions after a generation of negotiations) suggests the limits of what The System can deliver. As distrust in the state grows, a very pertinent question is where political sovereignty and legitimacy will migrate in the future. Our ineffectual, unresponsive polity may itself be the problem, at least under neoliberal control.

The failures of The System come at the very time that promising new modes of production, governance and social practice are exploding. Twenty years after the World Wide Web went public, it has become clear that decentralized, self-organized initiatives on open networks can often out-perform both the market and state – a reality that threatens some core premises of capitalism.[1] The people developing a new parallel economy – sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity, as in Greece and Spain – are neither politicians, CEOs or credentialed experts. They are ordinary people acting as householders, makers, hackers, permaculturists, citizen-scientists, cooperativists, community foresters, subsistence collectives, social mutualists and commoners: a vast grassroots cohort whose generative activities are not really conveyed by the term “citizen” or “consumer.”

Through network-based cooperation and localized grassroots projects, millions of people around the world are managing all sorts of bottom-up, self-provisioning systems that function independently of conventional markets and state programs (or sometimes in creative hybrids). They are developing new visions of “development” and “progress,” as seen in the buen vivir ethic in Latin America, relocalization movements in the US and Europe, and the FabLabs and makerspaces that are reinventing production for use.

The new models also include alternative currencies, co-operative finance and crowdequity investments to reclaim local control….transition and indigenous peoples’ initiatives to develop sustainable post-growth economies….the growing movement to reclaim the city as a commons…. and movements to integrate social justice and inclusive ethical commitments into economic life. The scope of this blessed unrest suggests that even as establishment politics continues as if the 2008 crisis never happened, insisting that austerity policies are the answer, the actual terrain of governance, production, social economics and vernacular culture is shifting radically. For those with eyes to see, serious structural changes are underway.

The challenge facing members of the EDGE Funders Alliance is how to comprehend these tectonic shifts and develop a fresh vision with practical alternatives. How can philanthropic practices nourish the emerging paradigm of progressive change? For EDGE, this inquiry is a natural progression. EDGE has long focused on the need for a Just Transition that can bring forth new configurations of fair, democratic and inclusive governance and provisioning.[2] Still, the complexity and diversity of the system changes occurring suggest that grantmakers need to explore better ways to make sense of innovation at the edge, and to leverage it more aggressively. Progressive foundations need new venues and tools for identifying the most promising strategic opportunities, reinventing grantmaking processes, and collaborating more closely with vanguard thinkers, activists and policy innovators — as well as communities advancing systemic alternatives on the ground. This essay is an attempt to give better definition to what a process of Just Transition might look like in 2016 and beyond – and how progressive philanthropy might adapt to new realities and support transition efforts around the world.

1. Portrait of a Paradigm Shift: The New Emerging from The Shell of the Old

If an old paradigm is indeed waning, then the ways in which we understand new patterns of action cannot unthinkingly incorporate the worldview and vocabularies of The Old. They must reflect a new set of values and operational logics. They must give closer attention to fledging projects and ideas on the peripheries of the mainstream. Our discourse itself must slip the shackles of prevailing economic thought, such as the idea that money and wealth are identical; that the state and policy are the most important drivers of change; and that top-down, hierarchical control structures, whether state or corporate, are the best systems for meeting needs.

The dominant narrative of contemporary politics and public life is, of course, free market economics as the fundamental ordering principle for society. It enshrines the primacy of unlimited growth as an indicator of societal progress, aggressive competition for selfish gain, individualism unconstrained by community, and centralized hierarchies of administration and control. Insurgent narratives attempting to challenge the neoliberal framework, while fragmented and diverse, tend to emphasize certain common themes:

o Production and consumption for use, not profit;

o Bottom-up, decentralized decisionmaking and social cooperation;

o Stewardship of shared equity and predistribution of resources;

o An ethic of racial and gender inclusivism, transparency and fairness;

o Community self-determination and place-making over market dictates;

o A diversity of models adapted to local needs.

If there is a common thread to be seen in the great variety of movements seeking system-change, it is a rejection of a machine-like economy and Margaret Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” System-change advocates assert a humanistic vision of society as a living, biodiverse system. Countless social and moral economies stress the importance of stewarding the earth and all living systems; the priority of people’s basic needs over market exchange; and the importance of participation, inclusion and fairness in successful resource management and community governance.

The Twelve Principles of Permaculture, for example, emphasize that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that we cannot focus on any separate element in isolation. We must focus on the proper relationships within an ecosystem, of which human beings are but one part. As first principles, permaculturists thus urge that any human interventions aim to care for the earth (so that all life systems can continue and multiply), care for people (so that they have access to resources necessary to their existence), and return any surplus (so that the system can continue to meet the needs of the earth and people). From these ideas flow many related ideas such as “catch and store energy,” “apply self-regulation and accept feedback,” “produce no waste,” and “design from patterns to details.” These principles may provide useful guideposts to funders as they consider what types of projects will “break the frame” of the current system and advance sustainable, humane alternatives.

The principles of permaculture complement the design principles for successful commons identified by the late Professor Elinor Ostrom, and highlight the need for focusing on new types of governance. A commons of farmland, a forest or a fishery succeeds, Ostrom found, because people are able to devise their own locally appropriate governance rules from the bottom up. Everyone is invited to participate in the governance, and everyone has access to low-cost conflict-resolution mechanisms. A variety of system-change movements around the world are now exploring ways to re-imagine governance structures – not just for commons, but for the state as well, and its relationship to markets.

Open Networks, Activism and Emergence

What’s notable about so many system-change movements is that their sovereign visions of change are incubating on the edges of mainstream politics and policy. They are often small-scale, grassroots endeavors that go unrecognized by conventional political discourse and policies. Even large progressive NGOs may marginalize or ignore these initiatives (as enumerated in Section 3) as too small or disaggregated to matter. Yet just as the best ideas that emerge on Internet platforms generally arise on the edge, where diverse innovation flourishes, so countless grassroots projects around the world serve as indispensable embryos of system-change. They are focused on building out their distinct vision on their own terms, eschewing reliance on law and macro-policy as their primary drivers. The DIY predisposition stems in part from the sheer difficulty of achieving things through government, the general lack of public funding, and the inherent limits of law and bureaucracy in actualizing change. But it also stems from a recognition of the great creative powers of individuals and communities, which the state and market as now constituted have no use for.

At both the grassroots level and in digital culture, system-critical organizations are reconfiguring themselves to leverage the power of open networks. Examples include the rise of the peasant farmers’ group La Via Campesina, the System for Rice Intensification (a kind of open source agriculture developed by farmers themselves), and transnational collaboration among indigenous peoples. Rather than trying to manage themselves as hierarchical organizations with proprietary franchises, reputations, and overhead to sustain, they are reinventing themselves as flexible players in open, fluid environments – as players in dynamic, collaborative movements. These new modes of network-driven activism succeed through the efficient self-organization of self-selected participants, supple coordination of activities, and fast cycles of creative iteration.

Such convergences can spur system change through emergence. In ecological terms, open networks often resemble “catchment areas” of a landscape in which numerous flows – water, vegetation, soil, organisms, etc. – come together and mutually give rise to an interdependent, self-replenishing catchment area: a lively, energy-rich zone.[3] Social change movements should emulate this dynamic as a way to foster emergence and system-change. As two students of complexity theory and social movements, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, write:

When separate, local efforts connect with each other as networks, then strengthen as communities of practice, suddenly and surprisingly a new system emerges at a greater level of scale. This system of influence possesses qualities and capacities that were unknown in the individuals. It isn’t that they were hidden; they simply don’t exist until the system emerges. They are properties of the system, not the individual, but once there, individuals possess them. And the system that emerges always possesses greater power and influence than is possible through planned, incremental change. Emergence is how life creates radical change and takes things to scale.[4]

The old guard of electoral politics and standard economics has trouble comprehending the principle of emergence (or catchment), let alone recognizing the value of policy structures that could leverage and focus that dynamic power. It has consistently underestimated the bottom-up innovation enabled by open source software; the speed and reliability of Wikipedia-style coordination and knowledge-aggregation; and the power of social media and open platforms. Politicians have been stunned by the swarms of protesters that rallied for “net neutrality” policies in the US, and by the viral self-organization of the Occupy movement, the Indignados and Podemos in Spain, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, and Syriza in Greece. Conventional schools of economics, politics and power do not comprehend the generative capacities of decentralized, self-organized networks. They apply obsolete categories of institutional control, as if trying to understand the ramifications of automobiles through the language of “horseless carriages.”

So, today: If we are serious about effecting system change, we need to emancipate ourselves from backward-looking concepts and vocabularies, and learn new ways of understanding social movements pioneering new patterns of human potential, provisioning and governance. Although system-change is often focused on transforming societal institutions and policies, it is equally an inner transformation — a re-examination of the concepts and words to which we have become acculturated. Wemust learn to change ourselves in light of the unfolding realities. And we need to hoist up new imaginaries as placeholders while we explore the field and experiment with the particulars.

Instead of clinging to the old left/right spectrum of political ideology, for example – which reflects the centrality of “the market” and “the state” in organizing society – we need to entertain new narratives that allow us to re-imagine new drivers of governance, production and culture. The challenge is to popularize new models from the edge that are more inclusive, participatory, transparent and socially convivial – ones that go beyond what is offered by electoral politics, the administrative state and market structures. How can the dozens of loosely associated transnational “tribes,” all sharing aspirations for system change, begin to collaborate more closely and federate themselves? Can they create new types of local/global culture and political power? The answers can only emerge through mutual exploration and co-creation.

These insights underscore the importance of the long view. It takes time to cultivate emergent structures – to learn from experiments, failures, peers, changing conditions, etc. It is therefore important to hold fast (yet flexibly) to a larger vision of society rather than chase isolated transactional reforms that do not contribute to to transformational goals. Many commentators such as Jeremy Rifkin argue persuasively that we are in the midst of epochal transitions in technology, communications, energy, and so on. With commensurate resolve and intelligence, funders must take full cognizance of long-term structural trends and design grantmaking strategies that assure socially equitable, democratic and ecologically sustainable outcomes..

2. Twin Strategies: Starve the Old While Building the New

A major problem in building a “new system” is that so many urgent contemporary problems must be addressed through the “old system” – existing government systems and law; concentrated, extractive markets; and corrupted electoral processes – at least in the short term. No socially concerned person can ignore these arenas of power. Yet it is equally clear that these systems will not self-reform themselves or automatically give rise to the transformational changes needed. Disruptive external catalysts and pressure are essential because “working within the system” tends to diminish the impetus and ambitions for change, as the past fifty years of citizen activism has shown.

It is therefore imperative to break the “attention frame” of the existing system of power – in economics, law, politics, culture — which subtly dictates the spectrum of credible, “respectable” options. So long as the neoliberal market/state remains the governing framework for acceptable change, the range of permissible solutions will be inadequate. Only a structural reconfiguration of power and new sorts of institutions will open up transformative solution-sets. And this can only be achieved by artfully engineering, sector by sector, a new socio-ecological economy with its own efficacy, values and moral authority.

Thus, along with a grand strategy of “Starving and Stopping” (within the Old), serious support must be given to “Building the New.” This means active, informed support for experimentation, outlier projects, deep conceptual thinking and analysis, strategy convenings, relationship building, and movement-building. It means developing an infrastructure to support an expanding web of learning, institutions and affiliations that help Build and Replicate the New. Since the basic goal is to catalyze a paradigm-shifting emergence (which arises in unpredictable, nonlinear ways), it is misguided to try to apply old-paradigm quantitative metrics to the early-stage instances of a new paradigm.

To give a rough sense of the Big Picture, this infographic depicts some key strategic fronts in the struggle to Starve the Old and Build the New. (This image was developed by Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project with the Climate Justice Alliance’s Our Power Campaign.)

As a matter of practical politics, it is complicated to simultaneously try to dismantle the old system from within while also attempting to Build the New. This is well illustrated by the struggle to develop transition strategies for climate change. Moving away from carbon-based fuels and finance capitalism and towards renewable energy and a post-consumerist economy must take place primarily within the old (corrupted, archaic) political and policy apparatus. But the fight to Starve the Old can be greatly assisted if it is connected to and coordinated with efforts to Build the New. The demonstration of feasible alternatives (renewable energy, cooperativism, relocalization, etc.) is itself a way to shift political momentum and the moral center of gravity toward system change. To work, this requires that alternatives incubated outside the existing system achieve a sufficient coherence, intelligibility, scale and functionality.

Two analogues illustrate this dynamic: The rise of Linux and other open source programs were significant socio-economic events because they weakened the market power and stature of Microsoft and other types of proprietary software; suddenly other options were credible and available. Similarly, a constellation of local food and anti-GMO movements, working mostly outside of policy arenas, have pioneered an alternative vision for growing, buying and enjoying food. This has forced agribusiness to change, stimulated new policy initiatives (anti-GMO labeling, e.g.) and shifted the conversation about what’s possible. Political and policy dimensions are not the primary focus but the secondary effects of Building the New. In both of these cases, the impetus for change came from innovative provisioning models; robust participatory communities; and an earned moral credibility that is widely recognized.

So rather than regard the Building of the New as too risky or marginal (because it is seen as peripheral to mainstream politics debate and today’s headlines), it is important to see emergent ventures as the real engine for long-term system change. A focus on Building the New is the only way that we can break out of the logic of the current political and economic system, and begin to validate and develop viable alternative systems. Building the New helps us see the limitations of what can be done within the parameters of existing paradigms while opening us up to alternative systems of knowledge and social practice. We need to draw upon diverse ways of knowing and being – culturally, ecologically, politically – as embodied in indigenous communities, peer production networks, ethnic and gender minorities, urban movements, and others.

The lessons gleaned from Building the New can be affirmatively used to advance a Just Transition. Two examples: Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation is now documenting the thermodynamic efficiencies of peer production (i.e., mass networked collaboration), such as the open design and local manufacturing of motor vehicles, household appliances and countless other products. These findings could help validate a whole universe of actors that are considered fringe phenomena in mainstream climate policy debate. Similarly, various commons activists are documenting how subsistence commons for farmlands, fisheries, forests and water, among other resources, function as more ecologically responsible alternatives to the extractive market economy, while still meeting people’s needs in locally responsive ways. Such commons represent attractive post-growth models. But this theater of action, too, is largely ignored by macro-policy players who prefer capital-friendly pricing of “ecosystem services,” “market solutions” and regulatory approaches.

How to Starve the Old while Building the New is obviously a complicated topic that demands much more scrutiny and debate. But this general framework provides a solid, holistic orientation to the broader challenges. It shifts the focus from individual project silos to the web of relationships among them, and to the larger vision of change. It also makes clear the intimate connections between Starving the Old and Building the New, and the need to align the flow of players and resources to create a new “catchment area for change.”

3. Building the New Requires Different Processes and Institutions — and a New Narrative

Building the New has a special importance in our times because we increasingly live in an institutional void of politics. As Dutch political scientist Maarten Hajer: “There are no clear rules and norms according to which politics is to be conducted and policy measures are to be agreed upon. To be more precise, there are no generally accepted rules and norms according to which policy making and politics are to be conducted.”[5] (original emphasis) The machinery of politics and government still exists, of course, but it has been captured by the large market players and its processes warped. Neoliberal policies have “hollowed out” government over the past generation, literally and politically, by crippling many state functions or transforming them into empty formalisms or distractions. The notional social contract that has stabilized conflicts among capital, labor and the general public is being incrementally dismantled.

Many NGOs and movements persist in “working within the system,” gamely hoping that success there will matter. This path is inescapable, of course; The System is too important to ignore. But it is also true, as massive protests in many countries have made clear, that neoliberal capture of representative government is arguably the biggest structural barrier to change today. The resulting void in legitimate governance, intensified by impediments to democratic participation, makes it even more imperative strategically to Build the New as a way to transform The Old.

Many citizens who in earlier generations might have engaged with politics and policymaking now see that route as pointless or secondary; they have shifted their energies toward “transnational, polycentric networks of governance in which power is dispersed,” writes Hajer. We thus see the emergence of new citizen-actors and new forms of mobilization seeking system change. This consists not just of periodic cultural surges such as Occupy, the Arab Spring, the Indignados and Syriza, but long-term movements focused on cooperatives, degrowth, the solidarity economy, Transition Towns, relocalized economies, peer production, the commons, and countless niche projects. Voting and other classical notions of citizenship now seem archaic and even futile, especially when contrasted with open Internet platforms and local projects that enable more meaningful forms of participation and results.

Much of the political energy for change in the late 1960s and early 1970s came from the invention of a new organizational form, the public interest group – a body of expert-advocates acting as proxies for the general public in various policy arenas, and mostly funded by individuals and institutional philanthropy. In 1969, nearly one-third of the Harvard Law School class applied to work with Ralph Nader in his brand of public-interest advocacy. Nearly two generations later, following the neoliberal takeover of the body politic and the rise of the Internet, creative idealists intent on making social change are far more likely to apply their energies to practical projects in local circumstances and digital apps, wikis and collectives. They are inventing network-based guilds like Enspiral, alternative currencies like the Bangla-Pesa in poor neighborhoods in Kenya, and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to provide online mapping to assist first-responders after natural disasters. In such spaces, there are simply many more opportunities for participation, control, responsibility and satisfying outcomes than conventional politics and policy.

But if the two realms could somehow work more closely together? It could be tremendously catalytic. To be sure, the initiatives of many social entrepreneurs do not necessarily move beyond their niches or transform the mainstream paradigm. The challenge of catalyzing emergence remains something of a mystery and art. However, based on its study of living systems, complexity science suggests that there must be a “requisite variety” before a new order can sufficiently develop and supplant the old. To be able to address the external complexity of the world, the archetypes of the insurgent order must have a corresponding internal complexity of their own; resilience theory and the open source paradigm suggest that the new order will be based on a certain modularity, redundancy and diversity. Finally, as Donella Meadows and her colleagues argue in their 1992 update to Limits to Growth, the old order must not only reach its limits to grow, it must also “run out of the ability to cope” with rising incremental costs, declining marginal returns and soaring (unmanageable) complexity.

This analysis suggests some of strategic points of intervention for Building the New and making social change today. We need to learn more about promising new provisioning and governance models – i.e., new organizational forms. System-change players need focal points around which they can organize themselves, build relationships and learn from each other. New “sense-making” projects and institutions are needed to synthesize and interpret unfolding developments. All of these approaches require new modes of philanthropy to support them. But since Building the New is likely to occur in out-of-the-way, unfamiliar and international locations, some timely questions include: What do some of these efforts look like? What are they trying to accomplish? What new logic and vision are they trying to actualize, and how?

4. Some Key Movements Creating System-Change (An Incomplete List)

While this paper has focused on large conceptual themes, it is important to locate the struggle for a Just Transition within a sprawling universe of concrete initiatives. Specific projects pioneered by grassroots innovators and participation are the engines for system change – complemented, as possible, with supportive policy structures and infrastructure. This grassroots base is arguably the first priority because no political advocacy and policy change will succeed or endure without a diversified foundation of locally engaged practitioners. Moreover, experimentation and collaboration are essential in developing the practical new models for change. So….here are brief descriptions of some salient clusters of system-critical movements (among many others that could be named).

Cooperative Movement: Multistakeholder cooperatives / urban land trusts / cooperative finance / platform cooperativism

Global South Advocacy: Resistance to extractivism / Via Campesina / indigenous peoples / buen vivir / Nature’s rights

Social Inclusion: Racial and gender equity / migration and immigration / wealth & income inequality / Black Lives Matter

Climate Justice: Divestment & reinvestment / renewables & efficiency / North-South equity / finance reform

Post-Capitalist Local, Living Economies: Transition towns / Social and Solidarity Economy / Degrowth / Relocalization

Eco-Responsible Provisioning & Stewardship: Socio-ecological farming, fishing and forestry / renewable energy / decentralized infrastructure

Care Work: Families & eldercare / ecosystem stewardship / community work / arts & culture

Cities as commons: Collaborative cities / Public-commons partnerships

Digital Culture: Creative Commons / Open access publishing / Net neutrality / Intellectual property reform

Commons-based Peer Production: Open Source / Open Design and Manufacturing / Platform Cooperativism

Food Sovereignty: Agro-ecological / permaculture / Slow Food / CSAs / Fresno Common / seed sharing

Alternative Finance and Money: Money system reform / public banks / blockchain ledger / complementary currencies

Transversal Meta-Work: Commons analysis & discourse / post-capitalist economics and culture change / deep research / inter-movement relationship-building

5. Challenges for Philanthropy in Building the New

Building the New poses new challenges for traditional philanthropy because it can be quite difficult to step into the unknown. It’s not necessarily clear how to distinguish between credible and far-fetched plans, or to predict suitable timelines for progress — or even how to define success in a world in which “failure” is often a necessary building block of learning. It can be difficult to make intelligent evaluations of new-paradigm bellwethers, who tend to be idiosyncratic individuals acting in singular circumstances, and among small peer groups and underdeveloped fields. Finally, it can be difficult to assess whether and how a proposed project truly advances system change, or whether it simply modestly improves things within existing structures. There are no definitive answers to any of these concerns, but it is important for grantmakers to ask these questions of themselves and grantees.

If we accept the premise that a new paradigm will be emergent, then the process of fostering the new world struggling to be born will be different than known processes. It will be more of an immersive, participatory process of collaborative discovery and co-creation, rather than something that influential experts will design in advance, implement and impose. Open networks have underscored the point that change occurs through many independent agents operating in a holistic living system. It is not just the Earth’s ecosystems that are interconnected, but our cultural behaviors and political institutions. Thus change-making in a globally integrated world is highly dynamic, evolving and participatory. It is necessarily collaborative, not just with other change-agents, but with a larger web of other grantmakers and institutional allies.

In light of these realities, the EDGE Funders Alliance is structuring its annual Just Giving gathering in 2016 to be less a conference than a facilitated retreat that actively engages all participants. Traditional workshops will be replaced by ongoing “engagement lab” discussions led by EDGE members and many inspiring and thoughtful civil society partners. In other words, the dialogues between grantees and grantmakers will aim to deepen mutual understanding of Just Transition narratives and practice. The goal is to encourage learning from each other and identify timely, strategic opportunities that promote systemic alternatives at the local, national, and international levels. Instead of segregating initiatives by “issue areas” or movements, it is our hope that the interconnected nature of social, economic, environmental and governance challenges will be highlighted. We hope this leads to closer coordination in moving money for resourcing change.

We believe that the struggle to imagine and build a post-neoliberal capitalist system can only emerge through iterative, exploratory processes. It will require many small, decentralized projects that speak to local needs and sensibilities. Top-down policies and infrastructures are often needed to assist this process, but the horizontal connections among frontline innovators, and between them and conventional policy advocacy, must be robust.

Orchestrating a better alignment between these two theaters of action – Starving the Old and Building the New – is likely to unleash new self-feeding energies and collaborations and, one hopes, new catchment areas for change. Conventional politics and advocacy will not rally for paradigm-shifting initiatives unless they are allied with outsider visionaries. Conversely, if these visionaries have only thin ties to conventional political and legal players, their bold new ideas may well wither on the vine, unable to protect themselves in a hostile environment.[6]

Through its Just Giving 2016 conference, periodic retreats and a Co-Learning Collaborative, EDGE Funders Alliance seeks to instigate better ways to stimulate system-change and promote equity and sustainable practice today, within a framework that recognizes the need for deep social and ecological transformation over the long term. These processes are admittedly experimental and some may not succeed. But intelligent forms of mutual collaboration, learning and support are absolutely necessary in building a philanthropy commensurate with the challenges facing the world.

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This essay was developed with generous support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Berlin, Germany.

The post Progressive Philanthropy Needs to Spur System Change appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The following interview was excerpted and shortened from the original.

“1. How did the solidarity movement start in Greece?

The Greek grassroots solidarity movement is the offspring of the Squares’ occupation movement of summer 2011. The Squares’ Movement had a transformative effect on Greece, as it popularized the idea and practice of self-organization and direct democracy. This was novel for the vast majority of the participants. Many thousands of people came in contact with anti-capitalist grassroots experiences and forms of organizing – alternatives to the neoliberal logic. According to a poll conducted by Kathimerini, the largest rightwing paper, 28% of the Greek population (about 3 million) participated in one way or another in this movement. From this one can imagine the kind of cross-fertilization that occurred in these times of intense political fighting and social innovation.

Popular radicalization from, and political resistance to, the Troika-dictated “state of exception” and the Greek political system, took the concrete form of the grassroots solidarity movement. This started after the Greek parliament accepted the mid-term (2011-2016) bailout program (late June 2011). The popular movement responded by attempting to block its implementation. Strikes and government-building occupations – primarily in the public sector – occurred, but most importantly, there was a ‘no pay’ campaign against a new household tax. The tax was included in the electricity bills. Refusal to pay meant you risked having your power cut. The last People’s Assembly of Syntagma Square (end of September) called for the ‘no pay’ campaign. The Assembly stated “we won’t leave anyone alone against the crisis.” This became the banner of the solidarity movement. The campaign employed a diversity of tactics, ranging from appeals against the government to the high court, to (illegal) power reconnections. By late October, it spread through the whole of the country, ultimately including many different actors: from left and progressive mayors, unionists and lawyers, to dozens of neighborhood assemblies and committees, which collectively refused to pay.

This movement acted as the bridge between the Squares’ occupation and the appearance of the self-organized solidarity structures. The ‘don’t pay the debt’ demand amalgamated in the tangible act of ‘no pay’ – refusal to pay – the extra household tax. Over the next months, the mass and militant protests of the 28th October 2011 – the national day of OXI (NO) to the fascists in 1940, now acquiring a new meaning – brought down the Papandreou government. On 12th February 2012, it also brought down the technocrat coalition government of Papadimou. In the meantime, a whole network of solidarity structures and alternative economy initiatives had emerged: solidarity clinics, solidarity free-schools, alternative currencies, barter economy groups, self-managed cooperatives, and the ‘without middlemen’ (basic goods) distribution networks.

2. What is the role and purpose of the solidarity structures? Are they simply a response to austerity? Or something more?

Your question touches on some critical issues. There is an approach, that reads the current crisis predominantly from an economic viewpoint. This overshadows other facets of the crisis by focusing only on the (anti-)austerity discourse. This view, in my opinion, fails to break with the neoliberal concept (and dominant agenda) of politics, which means the reduction of the latter to mere economic logic. My critique does not imply a ‘need to abandon’, materialism, class struggle, or, Marxism, as analytical and practical tools. On the contrary, it refuses to reduce them to merely economic demands, or, issues (including the debate over the currency). Such is to refuse the mostly defensive demands that do not necessarily relate with the attempt to create the material conditions for building power(s) that can enable a movement and a people to apply their own policies and produce change. Such anti-austerity discourse usually regards the grassroots solidarity movement as a response to the collapsing ‘welfare state’, overlooking the different kind of politics and resistance practiced by the solidarity movement. Some view it as an example of an active and compassionate ‘civil society’ (or, NGO sector) that needs to expand, while others – coming from the ‘traditional Modern Left’ – consider it a substitute (and thus a threat) to the role the state-run public services should play.

The solidarity movement transcends those positions. First and foremost, the practice of the solidarity structures holds the potential to synthesize active popular participation – as a response to immediate needs of a population threatened by a humanitarian crisis – while it enables the resilience of this society to stand up and carry on resisting. Beyond supporting the suffering, it aims to engage them in the struggle to change both deeply rooted habits of political ‘assignment’ and the conditions that cause their hardships. Thus, it develops spaces and practices that could form a different paradigm. Specifically, a paradigm for people-managed ‘institutions’.

This implies a different role and practice than that of merely supporting an ailing society. Its modus operandi – based on assemblies and self-organization – can foster new kinds of social relationships, pushing against the disintegration of the social fabric. Moreover, the practices of the solidarity structures develop a favorable terrain for breaking the split between ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘benefactors’. In that manner the medical practice of a doctor in a solidarity clinic differs from his/her practice in a professional clinic. The political context within which this movement emerged has entangled needs, desires and emotions with the will to resist and change matters by becoming active and by creating. This is exactly where the dominant unjust system has failed you. Here lies the transformative potential of the grassroots solidarity movement, which is active beyond the confines of being merely support structures. This is where it differs from charities, NGOs, and the ‘civil society’, which are usually in pain to claim their apolitical, or, non-governmental (supposedly independent) role. In reality, they are instrumental of and to the neoliberal social model, where ‘civil society’ – named ‘big society’ (UK), or, ‘participatory society’ (Netherlands) – substitutes for the welfare state model. In contrast, the solidarity movement does not hide its political role and what it stands for, including its aim to produce social and political change, and to create the material conditions that permit a different democratic paradigm to emerge in order to restructure the existing clientelist public (welfare included) system. Thus, its difference from the ‘traditional Modern Left’ political culture is not in its long-term aims, but in that it goes beyond just demanding and voting. It defends social rights in a very tangible way by trying to develop tools and through standing by the people needs. This means forging enduring social relationships in order to show that there is an alternative based on a different set of principles, ideas (e.g. equality, universal rights), and mode of social organization.

This political practice becomes increasingly important in conditions of emergency, devastation, and crisis of social reproduction, which produced by the ‘state of exception’ regime and the neoliberal agenda still active in Greece. Moreover, it alters the concept of politics (and social policies), highlighting the importance of popular participation and/for a different role of the state. For a state not as a substitute of social action through its representational (political or technocratic) structures, but as a legislative insurer of what society can self-manage. From a social point of view, I find this refreshing and emancipatory. It is a process that underlines the importance of building material capabilities. For any kind of political emancipation and (exercise of power for) change to be successful, it must not be limited to an abstract rhetorical social referent. Political emancipation and change must also be oriented towards real popular participation and social autosuggestion. In other words, a notion of politics that enables and implants democratic processes and responsibilities of power in every aspect of social and economic action as a prerequisite for building the social dynamics and infrastructures that can allow one not simply to take power, but to enable the people to have power to exercise their will. Having said that, I must clarify that this struggle does not exclude the need to take power. It highlights, rather, something obvious to all after last summer’s tragic reversal of the OXI (NO) plebiscite: that you cannot have political power without having set state-independent bases of social organizing, popular power and alternative economic networks.

Unfortunately, this transformative potential of the grassroots solidarity movement has been dwarfed by fighting the ‘big battles’ strictly on the representational level (in the literary meaning of the term). In other words, they have been fought as mere symbolic representations of ‘Real battles’, as simulacra in Baudrilliardian terms. The main reason being the Left’s (and I do not refer to SYRIZA alone) perception about politics and about where political power lies.

So, if the field that the solidarity movement operates within has been defined, indeed, by the eradication of the welfare state, then constitutive for the movement’s formation and practices has been its rooting in the political struggles against the Troika regime. This comes in the form of the fight for democracy and popular sovereignty. A political imperative that has worked as the imaginative glue between heterogeneous attempts that solidified in a loose common front. This enabled the meeting of quotidian politics with the struggle for political power, even if this was expressed through SYRIZA. But, it experimented with collective processes of decentralized, open and participatory forms of bottom-up democratic infrastructures of resistance (today) and power (tomorrow).

4. What are the greatest challenges for the solidarity movement in Greece? For instance, what are some of the obstacles to creating more solidarity structures (such as health clinics, cooperatives, etc.)? And what are some of the problems existing solidarity structures currently face?

The further growing of the solidarity and cooperative movement cannot be reduced to a mere logistical matter, but it should be seen on two levels. First, in relation to their immediate needs in order to maintain the ability to meet the growing needs of a society under constant strain, or, to be economically viable in the case of co-ops. Second, in relation to their political potential as hotbeds of a different paradigm of social organization and popular participation. In my opinion the latter is the biggest, and most difficult, challenge and also the most critical aspect for the solidarity movement if it wants to maintain its vitality. Yet, the former is the most pressing one with ongoing policies of exclusion.

Since 2014 the growth-model of the solidarity movement has entered a different phase. This is distinct from the 2012–2013 period, when the solidarity structures mushroomed throughout the country embracing a vast array of everyday life and needs (food, health, agricultural and solidarity economy, education, culture, legal support, housing rights, solidarity to refugees, etc.). Despite the slowing-down of new formed solidarity structures, the constantly growing number of those affected by the memoranda, led more people to the solidarity structures. This resulted in (a) the growing and imminent need for more resources, as the solidarity structures often stretch beyond their capabilities, and (b) the multiplication of the activities of the solidarity structures beyond their initial field. Thus, solidarity clinics develop also food support projects, or, food solidarity structures try to develop cooperative production in order to meet their needs but also to create job places.

In this context the main challenge for the movement is how to deal with the issue of resources, in order to cope with the exponential growth of needs, without sacrificing its political characteristics. If we allow those practices of mutuality and engagement to wane out, the implication will be a restricted practice of mere provision of social services – a function not much different from the NGO, or, volunteering sector. The greatness of this movement has been that it aims to build the ability of the people themselves, through a culture of self-organization, to resist, not simply to survive and get by. Yet, the latter becomes of primary importance under conditions of violent exclusion, proletarianization, and crisis of social reproduction, as a means to maintain people’s physical and moral strength and resisting capabilities. However, if the practices a movement devises do not foster a different mindset, relations and tools, away from a ‘benefactors – beneficiaries’ model, its scope risks to be reduced to countering the most extreme facets of the humanitarian crisis, instead of contributing structurally to building the potential for its end.

Therefore, despite the pressing and immanent challenge of resources, the most significant challenge is to keep up its role as political energizer and incubator of social transformation. Our ability to respond to this will decide the future character of the solidarity structures as spaces of social self-organization and popular participation. The political atmosphere in Greece after last summer’s shocking developments, which have affected the desire of the people to mobilize – as the (political) aims of the previous period (remember the OXI – NO) have evaporated – make this challenge even more crucial for the solidarity movement.

On the positive side the response of the Greek people to the ‘refugee crisis’ stands as the latest sign of the resilience and the yet available psychological resources of this society to resist, even in times of political frustration and setbacks. Moreover, the solidarity with refugees’ actions have prompted in some cases the creation of new permanent solidarity structures that address the needs of both refugees and local communities. One more indication that the people find the strength to mobilize when something motivates them deeply, when they feel they contribute to, and become agents of, something bigger than mere survival.

Regarding the cooperatives’ growth, as I said earlier, it is linked to the people’s efforts to get out of unemployment and lack of income, while their development stumbles on a hostile and inadequate institutional framework. The main problem is the scarcity of funding and financing options, especially in order to start a cooperative, as cooperatives are excluded from the state’s incentive policies for the creation of new companies (at the benefit of private entrepreneurship). In addition, certain professions (e.g. lawyers, civil engineers) are not eligible to operate under a cooperative scheme. This has led many to create cooperatives with low-level investment in the service sector (cafes, taverns, new-tech support, groceries). There is also the lack of any provision for social use, or socialization, of defunct and abandoned production units, in both private and public sector, e.g., the premises of the old farmers’ cooperatives, that now stand idle and dilapidating. For these reasons, we are in the process of founding a cooperative and solidarity economy forum. This is a collective entity which aims to facilitate (a) front desk information and legal support for anyone wants to start a cooperative, (b) development of tools and training according to the needs and aims – financial, or, political – of the self-managed cooperatives, and (c) to stir, intervene and promote a friendly image for the concept of workers’ self-management and changes in its legal framework.

5. What is the relationship of various solidarity structures to the broader left-wing in Greece? Are there any specific state policies that could greatly aid or clear the way for the strengthening of the Greek solidarity movement?

There may be actions the state could take, not for the solidarity movement but, for those hit by the memoranda, alas those are destined to remain gestures rather than ‘great aid’. Indicative is the example of the government’s ‘parallel program’. It was to be discussed just before Christmas, but the government withdrew in less than 24 hours after it announced it, under the creditor’s pressure and in order the 1 billion euros instalment of the bailout to be released. The program, which included provisions for health care of the uninsured by the public health care units, returned and adopted last week in the parliament, but reduced. Thus it demonstrates that there is a very low margin for maneuver under the regime of creditors’ supervision. In the framework of the third memoranda, everything must be approved, or tolerated, by the ombudsmen of the Quartet (former Troika). As long as the government’s priority, as itself has declared, is the implementation of the structural changes dictated by the bailout agreements, this will determine what in reality can do and what not.

In the cooperative economy, for example, new legislation is on track, indeed. Yet, it is one thing to see it in comparison to the existing problematic one, and it’s another in relation to the economic readjustment policies. The latter – privatizations, markets ‘liberalization’ etc. – in reality drastically diminishes the productive capability and economic stature of the country, undermining its ability for political and democratic sovereignty. In that respect, while the cooperative and social economy can be a tool for promoting a mode of socialized production, the overarching economic conditions move drastically to the opposite direction undermining such potential. It is not a coincidence that, from the government’s (and EU’s) point of view, the cooperative economy is considered as one of the means to counter the huge and long-term unemployment. It is way to enhance alternative forms of social entrepreneurship, instead of being a model for building a different economic paradigm outside the confines of the dominant international division of labor.

By the same token, one can better understand the government’s projects regarding the humanitarian crisis. Financial shortage and bailout commitments allow the allocation only of a certain amount of funds for ‘solidarity tokens’. It is attempted, indeed, a rationalization in the use of the existing funds in order to reduce the exploitation of human need by various speculators. However, these programs are disproportional to the needs and numbers of those who slip into poverty due to the ongoing re-adjustment and austerity policies (with more pensions’ cuts on the way). In this framework I do not think the state can do much.

After all, the role of the solidarity structures cannot be reduced to that of satisfying the social needs produced by the bailout agreements, regardless who administers them. A fundamental principle of the solidarity movement is that it does not want to substitute for the welfare state. Its role is, rather, to create those conditions and paradigms that enable the structural undermining of the bailouts and thus become a force of change outside the neoliberal constrains. In other words, its aim should be not to save the world, but to change it. On that political horizon, it can build synergies with various actors, including the state. Yet, when the state decides otherwise, prioritizing the implementation of the bailout and readjustment policies, any cooperation, even if it addresses emergent social needs, becomes part of a different agenda. For example, if the solidarity clinics are considered by the government as means to reduce its burden to provide universal health care, this provides a framework that may turn them into replacement for what the government cannot deliver. So it’s down to the solidarity movement to decide what kind of relations can have with such policies and institutions. In any case the state cannot replace the function of the solidarity structures as places of social self-organization. Thus, even if universal healthcare is reinstated, the distinct role of the solidarity clinics as a different paradigm of self-managed basic health care centers and generators of people-centered health policies, will come even more to the forefront.

Regarding the relationship with the broader left, I want to repeat that the solidarity movement started and still can be a transversal movement and event, among and beyond the different left factions. Its relationship with the Left (and the antagonistic movement) is a complicated and troubled affair, and not a linear and peaceful one, as many have presented. The fortunate conjunction of the political left with a people’s grassroots movement, and of quotidian politics with the struggle for political power is a moment that does not occur often. It’s a socio-political mix that reveals our potential. It also tests various limits and dominant perceptions of the political left, more specifically its capability to cooperate with and accommodate the desires and forms of action of “oi polloi” (the many). The discrepancy (and mingling) between the discourse of the ‘politicos’ and the common people has been a prevalent trait of these years.

The backbone of this movement consisted by the social left and by many who received their political baptism in the anti-memoranda struggles. Its meeting with the political left was inevitable as long as there existed the common aim to rollback the causes of social devastation. As the stakes of the political conflict rose, and the cracks of the political system grew, this popular discontent met with the alternative SYRIZA represented at the time. This was (and is) a process and a relationship under constant negotiation. One that fosters hybrid forms, as it deals with (creative at times) tensions between old habits and established (dare I say, dated) concepts of politics with an emergent political culture constitutive of new agencies. I am not referring just to the parties and social movements relation, but between what I call “specialists of resistance” (political groups, trade unions, social movements) and the emerging political subjectivities and vocabulary of a popular majority. At the same time, the issue of liaising with institutions – local or central authorities held by the radical left (not only SYRIZA) – has been a critical test for the solidarity movement. The grassroots’ movement and the struggle against those in, or for, power (expressed through SYRIZA, but also in the distinct form of the OXI referendum) followed parallel, cross-cutting and (considerable at times) overlapping routes. But it is a mistake to conflate the two, or, to consider them as two separated autonomous realms.

In a double act, the solidarity movement grounds the struggle for political power in the everyday fights and needs of the people while it highlights the centrality of the struggle to remove those in power, in order to open up possibilities for an alternative. This experience suggests a different viewpoint that transcends the distinction (by fusing) “social movements” vs “political representation”. It draws a different line: between those who understood politics as ideological critique and those who understand it as the effort to create the material conditions in order “to make possible the impossible”, as Marta Harnecker argues.

The potential of this movement, as a multiplier of possibilities and capabilities, has been undervalued, if not ignored. The political left saw it as just another “social movement”, due to its perceptions of change and (through) political power. This movement has laid out a different question, or rather task, than the “take or not take power” (in order to change the world). By building self-organized social structures, it delineates processes to “create power,” which also enable the power to change when one acquires state power. If there is a reason to argue for the transformative potential of this movement, it is exactly due to its capacity as a network of (infra-)structures and as generator of policies designed on the basis of its practices through the deepening of democratic processes and popular participation.

Thus, we speak about a potential public sphere from (those) below, able to produce both alternative policies and the power to exercise (or fight for) it. This is not an ‘optimist projection’ but statement of its strategic potential. Had this movement been considered in its full potential, it could have acted as a counterweight to the creditors’ blackmails. It could have been a means to solidify the political will and perspective of the people. It could have also produced its material backing, had the SYRIZA, as opposition and government, taken it seriously since 2012. Even in the case of being forced into a deal, this movement could have provided SYRIZA with a wider margin to negotiate and move. It could, and still can, foster the potential for a real and pragmatic alternative plan. An alternative plan that extends beyond the impasse of the dilemma of signing onto the purported realism of TINA (“there is no alternative”) and a creditors’ enforced GRexit.”

The post Greece: Solidarity for All (2): an interview with Christos Giovanopoulos appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“Since the beginning of the Greek financial crisis, both the Right and the Left have advanced a narrow set of narratives, policy possibilities, and even political actors. One movement that has largely remained outside of the discourse has been the solidarity economy movement. A key organization within the solidarity economy movement is Solidarity for All. Solidarity for All is an organization that offers technical support, capacity building, and network-scaling for the various grassroots initiatives around Greece.

In a 2014-2015 report entitled Building Hope: Against Fear and Devastation, Solidarity for All draws attention to “the devastating effects of the radical neoliberal experiment on Greek society.” The report also sets out to highlight “another experiment: that of Greek society taking action through self-organization and solidarity, of people standing up and resisting their economic and political ‘saviours.’”

In the report, Solidarity for All cites statistics that are often unseen in accounts of Greece. For example, the organization notes that “If we include the economically inactive population…56.3% of the population are out of work.” Undoubtedly, this number has increased, as it is drawn from 2014 data. Between 2008 and 2013 the youth unemployment rate increased from 21% to 59%. With the increase in the unemployment rate, there has been dramatic reductions in unemployment benefits, both in terms of the nominal support provided, as well as the relative total of the unemployed who receive any benefit at all. While 58% of the registered unemployed received benefits in 2008, only 14% received (reduced) benefits in 2014. With healthcare tied to employment, at least 2.5 million people have lost “their social security status.”

The report goes on to cite skyrocketing increases in the number of people unable to pay their mortgages, taxes, as well as the total amount of overdue bills. With the foreclosure ban lifted in the midst of crisis, banks have been able to seize and confiscate property and homes. Together all these statistics, and many more, provide a startling image of a country that now sees the majority of its population living under the poverty line. It is for this reason that a UNICEF report has referred to this crisis as a “Great Leap Backward.” The economic cost is clear, but the psychological and social impact is immeasurable.

Nonetheless, as the report emphasizes, there are alternatives, and they are sprouting up throughout Greece. These include solidarity healthcare clinics, food solidarity structures and solidarity kitchens, “without middlemen” networks, immigrant solidarity networks and cooperatives. With the crisis bringing the capitalist mode of production into question, these democratic organizational forms are being sought out and created. As Christos Giovanopoulos – member of Solidarity for All – emphasizes in this interview, these alternative institutions are not simply about fulfilling a need, but about building capacity and ensuring all participants have agency within those same alternative institutions.

Thus, one finds a range of organizational designs and setups even with one type of alternative institution. As Solidarity for All states, “There is not one model of solidarity clinics, each one is unique, and the same goes for all the solidarity structures. While all solidarity health centers are self-organized, some are linked with local doctors’ associations and trade unions, some with local political groups, or cultural centers.” The solidarity clinics are nationally aligned in the Cooperation of Solidarity Clinics and Pharmacies. With Attica being the main site of alternative institution building, the region possesses the Coordination of Solidarity Clinics and Pharmacies of Attica. As the report itself states, the aim of these clinics is not to substitute for the state, but to fill a need and work in conjunction with existing health workers’ unions.

Food distribution has also taken different forms with solidarity food structures, solidarity kitchens, and “without middlemen” networks. Without middlemen networks connect food producers directly to consumers through mechanisms such as preorder. The result is reduced prices in food, as well as ensuring a higher income for producers. These networks also provide a framework through which socialization of production, distribution, and even consumption, can be steadily built and scaled. One example of this is that each producer of a given bazaar donating two to five percent of their goods, which are then distributed to families that cannot afford to purchase food.

In the case of cooperatives, the state put in place a social cooperative enterprise law. When I visited Greece in August, I was told approximately 700 enterprises are registered under this designation, however, many of these enterprises are not substantively cooperatives, and instead are NGOs. The real number according to the report, as well as a Social and Solidarity Economy volunteer in Solidarity for All, is between 300 and 400 cooperatives. This includes the high-profile workers’ self-managed firm VIOME, a recuperated enterprise that has endured frequent attempts by authorities to liquidate it and sell off its assets.

Also, expanding due to the rapid inflow of migrants and refugees is immigrant solidarity networks and structures. These have received increased attention in large media outlets, and have been noted for the inclusion of migrants and refugees in the decision-making processes and apparatuses of such organizations.”

This article was excerpted from here.

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Originally published in Shareable, Neal Gorenflo shares his impressions of OuiShare Fest 2015

The third annual OuiShare Fest, hosted with the theme “Lost in Transition” in Paris’ charming Cabaret Sauvage, concluded last Friday. This unique gathering of sharing economy leaders from around the world found itself in at least two ways with their latest edition.

First, the theme brought the elephant in everybody’s room to the fore – the gaping contradiction between the utopian possibilities and the hyper-capitalist realities of the sharing economy. The key dilemma that OuiShare Fest underscored is that while leading platforms like Airbnb and Uber help users create value on an unprecedented scale, they do not share ownership and governance with users and could in fact exacerbate already severe inequalities. OuiShare Fest’s programming, which is largely crowdsourced, reflected a widely held belief that platforms should share ownership and governance with those most responsible for their success — users.

Instead of withering from this heat of this contradiction, the organizers held it. A remarkable number of sessions focused or touched on this contradiction (Ann Marie of Goteo blogged this contradiction in detail). While there were sessions that featured sharp criticism of the sharing economy, most sessions explored solutions to the contradiction, like using the blockchain to share ownership and governance with millions of users.

In fact, Nick Grossman’s keynote, “Venture Capital vs. Community Capital,” was OuiShare Fest in a nutshell. He elegantly articulated the contradiction and put forward the blockchain as a key solution. As Nathan Schneider pointed out last December in his Shareable feature story, “Owning is the New Sharing,” criticism of the sharing economy has catalyzed a counter-movement to create democratic sharing economy platforms. With Nick’s help, the blockchain had its coming out party at OuiShare Fest as the people-power solution to the sharing economy’s contradictions. Everybody was talking about the blockchain from keynotes to side conversations.

Whether or not the blockchain will live up to these expectations is another question. I have my doubts as it doesn’t build durable social relations necessary for communities to go on a new, long-term commons-based developmental path. Blockchain platforms are thin, and so are the social ties. There are no shortcuts, technological or otherwise, to social change. Social change is social, and social takes time. But there’s hope, as Swarm shared its recently released Distributed Collaborative Organization at the fest, a format that combines blockchain and human management of enterprises.

The second way OuiShare Fest found itself is that it seems all grown up in its third year. Things ran more smoothly, it was amply staffed with volunteers, it had all the trimmings of a professionally run conference, yet its organization reflected OuiShare’s values. With OuiShare Fest, OuiShare the organization talks the collaboration talk and walks the collaboration walk, a rare accomplishment. The fest is run in a largely decentralized fashion.

That said, I did come away with the impression that OuiShare Fest’s format and audience may be mismatched. As CrowdCompanies’ founder Jeremiah Owyang commented on Facebook, OuiShare Fest is a community of insiders, meaning it convenes the actors within the sharing economy, not the general public. To mature further, OuiShare Fest may need to create a better balance between keynotes and collaboration. FAB10, the gathering of FabLab leaders, might be a model to emulate. It’s really two events — a symposium for insiders and a festival for the public.

This model would make more sense for us at Shareable. As someone who reads about the sharing economy nearly every day, I didn’t learn much from the formal programming. It would have been great for newbies, however. OuiShare Fest would be more useful to us as an opportunity to convene stakeholders in the Sharing Cities Network. While I was delighted to give an update to a packed house on sharing cities with Nils Roemen of Sharing City Nijmegen and Harmen van Sprung of Sharing City Amersterdam, the three of us would have preferred to use this rare time together to push our work forward. I heard similar things from other attendees.

Thankfully, none of this diluted the best part of OuiShare Fest, the community spirit that brings out the best in attendees. Simone Cicero of Sharitories described the OuiShare Fest as “TED hugs Burning Man.” Like Burning Man, the fest gives attendees the opportunity to try on a new way to be in the world and relate to others.

As such, I had many encounters that exemplified the spirit of sharing, generosity, and love at OuiShare Fest. For example, on day one, Julie Da Vara and Valentine Philipponneau of JeLoueMonCampingCar, a camper van sharing platform, gave me a box of canales, Bordeaux-style cupcakes that are sinfully delicious. Johanna Steuth of Wirfel gave me a compliment card with the inscription, “For your passion for commons, communities and creating places for sharing. I like to see you there!” Ronald van den Hoff, Marielle Sijgers, and Vincent Ariens of Seats2Meet treated a bunch of us including Jen Billock of Couchsurfing and Christian Iaione of LabGov to dinner at a classic Parisian café across from the opera house. My friends Laurel and Quitterie of BioHacking Safari invited me to a lovely dinner of modern Sicilian food at DJoon. Chelsea Rustrum of It’s a Shareable Life and I livened up things at Mangopay’s party by dragging everyone onto the dance floor. Entrepreneur Daniel Goldman treated me, Tom Llewellyn, Chelsea, Benita Matofska, and her team at People Who Share to late night karaoke. And at the conference-ending OuiShare Love party, David We and I went below the surface in a conversation that revealed a similar need to connect authentically with others. It was the perfect way to end the fest – feeling totally accepted for who I am and we are, warts and all, ready to take OuiShare love out into the world.

The post OuiShare Fest Finds Itself While Lost in Transition appeared first on P2P Foundation.