Utopia Governance and the Commons: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

Within a system of federations there is a reciprocity between the small-scale, grass-roots levels of communities and neighbourhoods and the wider circles of town, county, region and nation. Some decisions inevitably need to be made at the broader levels (so we may have to reluctantly refer to them as top-down). We can think here of large-scale infrastructure, such as power grids and the road network. We also need to consider international interests such as foreign trade, immigration, defence and efforts to mitigate climate change.

Likewise anarchism speaks of ‘assemblies’ rather than institutions. What does this mean? It means that those concerns that span wider society do not become fossilised in hierarchies.

It means that the assemblies that see to things like transport, health care and education will be flexible, open to change and responsive to new circumstances. When it comes to trade, there is an

emphasis

on

contracts,

rather

than

government legislation. These wider forms of governance — the federations of federations —

are where the character of a society comes from. Society is not just a collection of individuals — it’s the organisations and the communities that give us the ‘feel’ of the nation, its cities and its lifestyles. So if we are feeling oppressed, it may well be the forms of government

and

its

bureaucracies

and

135

Utopia Governance and the Commons institutions that are oppressing us.

I must however introduce a caveat here. It is important to understand that the idea of federalism that I am taking from the anarchists is the grass-roots, bottom-up system and it is this form of federalism that I am advocating here and throughout this book. From Proudhon, it is not altogether clear that this is what he meant — and indeed we see the word federalism used by the American government and by the Liberal Democrats in the UK to mean quite a different thing. Murray Bookchin suggests the word ‘confederalism’ as an alternative, to distinguish the two types. (See Bookchin’s essays in The Next Revolution.) Bookchin further contrasts ‘state’ with ‘polity’ (in contrast to AC Grayling, who valorises ‘statecraft’ over politics). Bookchin saw state as the top-down and hierarchical form of governance (and, he suggested, the way the word federalism is used might still suggest this). Meanwhile, for him,

‘politics’ is ‘of the people’ — polis, polity and politics are all related terms. So, whilst we may dislike the word politics, Bookchin was trying to get us back to its true meaning — to simply the way people choose to govern themselves. (In contrast, Bookchin was slightly cynical of Proudhon, because he was somewhat nationalist whilst others dismiss Bookchin as not truly an anarchist

because

they

regard

his

federalism/confederalism as still a ‘statist’ idea.) John Holloway ( Change the World without Taking

Power)

fights

desperately

against

institutions. His argument is that these make

‘doing’ subordinate to ‘being’ — in other words, the institution, once formed, is just accepted as 136

Utopia Governance and the Commons a norm — it just is. Therefore, there is no motivation to create, to do, and by implication to constantly challenge the status quo for different modes of living. Institutions (including governments) are hierarchies frozen in place by ideologies. Assemblies are the more relaxed form of organisation that are flexible to circumstances.

We could also introduce the idea of autarky —

meaning a kind of self-sufficient independence.

With these ideas in mind, here is another list of proposals, in some ways rather similar to the definitions of communism given earlier in the chapter, but hopefully a little closer to what may be arrived at in this process of forming federations:

Rules

of

the

Federation

of

Egalitarian

Communities:

1. Holds its land, labour, income and other resources in common.

2. Assumes responsibility for the needs of its members, receiving the produce of their labour and distributing these equally according to need.

3. Practises non-violence.

4. Uses forms of decision-making in which members have an equal opportunity to participate, either through consensus, direct vote, or right of appeal or override.

5. Actively works to establish the equality of all people and does not permit discrimination on the basis of race, class, creed, ethnic origin, 137

Utopia Governance and the Commons age, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

6. Acts to conserve natural resources for present and future generations while striving to continually improve ecological awareness and practice.

I would probably quibble only with point number one in the above rules. This book suggests that, at most, only ‘land’ (in other words, the natural commons) is held in common and that labour and income are kept or shared as society and individuals decide. But then, if I am to live by my own lights, it’s not for me to say.

With federalism we come to a different form of rule by the many that can be introduced — a genuine polity, if you will. This is known sometimes as ‘deliberative democracy’, or as

‘participatory politics’. It is to choose from amongst ordinary citizens, those who will make decisions for the general population. And this decision-making process is open to everyone, no matter their education, religion, political views, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Whilst a few are chosen out of the general population, and this is representation of a kind, it is not establishing a ruling class elite, who might seek to perpetuate their power. At the same time, it avoids the problems identified above, that just asking everyone to vote on an issue might mean that only a minority will give complex questions the time and effort needed for a good decision.

There may be a system for how those in office are chosen and there may be an element of randomness to this — ‘sortition’ — as with a jury. The chapters that follow explore this in more depth and look at the various ways different forms of deliberative democracy might 138

Utopia Governance and the Commons be achieved.

Deliberative democracy means establishing a political system that genuinely listens and responds appropriately — finding a way of achieving a system that serves us better than the ones we have at present. One of the fundamental divides in our country is between those who have a voice and those who do not.

If we are to seek positive change then good governance is all about engagement. What are the aims? Number one is that we all have a say.

All else follows from this. The more we are willing to participate, the more established and relevant our governance system can become.

And there is an element of responsibility on all of us for this to work. Rather than think cynically that our voices will never be heard and those in power will just do whatever they want (usually for their own self-interest or the interests of big business) we can take responsibility and participate. The options raised in this chapter are presented so that we know what choices we might have — if only we were allowed to choose.

What do the Utopias make of the

Governance Options?

It has to be remembered that values such as freedom, equality, justice and rights, which we have looked at to some extent in this chapter, are ideals. Like institutions, ideals themselves can get frozen in place, and what was once a lively debate about finding the right path forward for a society, simply fossilises into a set of laws and conventions that may become 139

Utopia Governance and the Commons increasingly out of touch with the people they were designed to serve. We noted in Chapter 2

that ideals can lack pragmatic real-world applications that make them concrete to us as we try to live by them. A utopia, by contrast, has the opposite problem — all the suggestions are concrete. As Chapter 2 suggested, we need a balance of the two. This, I think, is why anarchism stresses so much the need to organise ourselves in different ways. As John Holloway suggests above, it avoids being stifled.

Radical devolution allows the problems of power to be dissolved, by seeking out our voices at the grass-roots.

It might seem at first that our current world of Privatopia and future world of Cornucopia would value freedom and lack of interference from bureaucracy above anything else. As such, they might prefer the anarchist views expressed earlier in this chapter. Indeed, we noted that the individualist anarchism quest for freedom is sometimes likened to neo-liberalism. However, I hope I’ve shown in this chapter that this would be a mistaken view, and as we look at neo-liberalism in more depth in a later chapter, we will see just how different they really are.

Anarchism takes the responsibility that goes along with freedom very seriously. Privatopia and Cornucopia may be more complacent about government, or, as we will explore in later chapters, they may offer the impression that they are for freedom, but all the while they are seeking substantial legislation that protects private interests.

Ecotopians, by contrast, would probably fall in with what we have discussed under collectivism 140

Utopia Governance and the Commons above — indeed those not sympathetic to the Ecotopians’ concerns often accuse them of using climate change as a cover for a radical left-wing political agenda. There are exceptions however.

I am thinking especially of philosopher Roger Scruton’s conservatism, described in his book , A View from Somewhere. Perhaps a conservatism not immediately recognisable to the UK political party. Nevertheless, it shows, I think, that Ecotopia can cover a broad range of political opinion.

When we look back at the three concerns raised in the Introduction I hope it’s clear that even in politics there are still utopian visions on offer, and as we focus in on more details of a viable polity, I hope this will become clearer. We have not touched so much on what constitutes a

‘good life’ here — that must wait for future chapters. Also, with regard to the third concern

— trust — I think we see this coming through with the discussion on anarchism. Anarchism puts a lot of trust in the good will of ordinary people and our ability to make good and pragmatic decisions. That’s why anarchist ideas have been such a focus for us here. Rousseau told us: ‘Man is born free and everywhere is in chains.’ Note that he said, ‘and everywhere’, not, ‘but everywhere’. There is always a balance of

freedom

and

restraint,

licence

and

responsibility, involved in any polity and we’ve already seen something of how this might work with regard to ownership and sharing in the last two chapters. If then, as Rousseau seems to have suggested, freedom requires responsibility, are we responsible enough to cope with decision-making — whatever form it might take?

141

Utopia Governance and the Commons Conclusion

The problem with politics is that we can be complacent. When there is a crisis, we notice things, and see how strange and broken the system really is. But for the most part, we are all busy making a living and caring for our families, and don’t often stop to examine the insidious march of changes that are being rolled out under our noses, for which no-one has asked and no-one has been given the opportunity to discuss. I can’t remember anyone asking us recently; what kind of government would you like? Not: What political party should be in power, or: Who would you like as an MP, but: Would you like a monarchy, or to be ruled by an elite, or should rule be by the many — and if so, how

should

this

be

organised?

Most

governments are illegitimate. Meanwhile, in our name, and without our express consent, governments see fit to build weapons of mass destruction deemed illegal by the international community: See fit to start wars with other nations despite mass protest against war by their own people: See fit to allow the destruction of the Earth’s eco-systems and bio-diversity: See fit to allow the warming of the planet and change to climate and weather patterns that could bring flooding and devastation to millions.

The list goes on. Why is it that we are never asked?

But then, sometimes, the need for choice — to assert ourselves, to make decisions, to look at things differently — might present itself. At this point, I suggest, there is a little of the spirit of the anarchist in us. We are all on the anarchism spectrum.

142

Utopia Governance and the Commons Speaking of anarchism, Cindy Milstein says:

‘It implies a lavish boundless sense of generosity, in which people support each other and each other’s projects. It expresses an open-handed spirit of abundance, in which kindness is never in short supply. It points to new relations of sharing and helping, mentoring and giving back, as the very basis of social organization’.

Cindy Milstein — Anarchism and its Aspirations Milstein touches on some concerns that are often neglected by politics. Along with her, this book suggests it is social relations (indeed, pleasure) that are the true base of a society and to realise a vision for a better world, we must wake up to their importance. But most politics automatically assumes the material economy —

production and consumption — as the real base of society: an economy just of transactions rather than compassion and equity. Combating this blindness to social relations is where a more genuine political arrangement may serve us.

Is it time then for a revolution? As I’ve said elsewhere in this work — be careful what you wish for. A developed society depends on stability — almost on a minute by minute basis

— for its continued functioning. Any break in the smooth workings of society is likely to lead to trouble very quickly. Let’s face it, in most developed nations, a revolution is just not going to happen. But as we’ve noted earlier, there are more gradual forms of change and so reform may be the better option, for whatever we may feel is needed for a better world. I have left 143

Utopia Governance and the Commons things open in this chapter and just explored the many options for government that are available to us. Now it’s time to get more specific. And it is to community that, I feel, we need to look to find further answers. We start, in the next chapter, at the smallest of scales, and follow the journey from there.

144

Utopia Governance and the Commons 6. Community on a Small Scale

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

Margaret Mead

‘I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.’

Rufus Jones

‘Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.’

Leopold Kohr — The Breakdown of Nations At this point in the book we have visions of utopia, views on ownership, ideas about the 145

Utopia Governance and the Commons commons and how the natural commons may be more fairly shared and more sustainably managed. In the last chapter, we looked at the question of whether government is necessary, and then we looked at various forms of government that have been proposed. When we considered government by the many, we discussed the need for everyone to have a voice, but also the need to ensure that issues are considered carefully by all those who will be affected by the matters under debate. This chapter and the next look at how this might be achieved in more detail. It is an approach that starts from the very smallest of scales and then builds gradually to take up the bigger solutions of political and economic systems.

Charles Eisenstein ( Sacred Economics) points out that today’s communities are only really about shared interests and hobbies. We

‘outsource’ almost all our immediate needs to strangers — be it for food, clothing, housing, child-minding, education or health-care. If one person does not provide the goods or services we need, then we just go somewhere else. As he points out, it does not really matter who provides these things — they are all paid for by money, so they all become equivalent. There is no relationship in such transactions — except the most superficial of acquaintances. By contrast, community, for Eisenstein, is inevitably local. Without a reliance on our neighbours for our everyday sustenance, there is, for him, no real community. If we are to challenge the current story of Privatopia and propose a new story, then this issue of community — especially small-scale, local community — is especially important.

146

Utopia Governance and the Commons The Issue of Scale

Small-scale organisations — whether they be neighbourhoods, businesses or institutions —

have

the

enormous

advantage

that

the

participants will be known to each other personally. We have evolved as a social species and can relate to a circle of around 150

individuals at most. That is why, I believe, small groups are the key to larger organisations, and hence to our politics and our economy.

People who disrupt meetings or communities are thereby exposed to the possibility of being made to feel guilty and perhaps even excluded; almost the worst fate that can befall us humans.

In Nowtopia, Chris Carlsson looks at specific types of community activity that he sees as emblematic of the coming change to a different social and economic world. His focus is on community garden projects, cycling, DIY fuel sources and festivals. Carlson identifies scale as a potential problem for the types of projects he explores. He observes that, as projects flourish and grow in scale, they seemingly inevitably take on the features of the consumer capitalist corporations that they have initially tried to replace. They become bureaucracies. Perhaps this is not inevitable, and there are examples of businesses that have maintained their style and ethic whilst growing larger (often by breaking up into smaller autonomous units, only tenuously connected). Nonetheless, it shows the power of our current mindset, such that few of us are able to envisage society-wide alternatives, let alone find ways to realise them. Garrett Hardin (him of the Tragedy of the Commons) warned us of the dangers of scaling up. He said: 147

Utopia Governance and the Commons

‘Perhaps no shortcoming of utopian thinkers is as striking as their apparent blindness to scale and its implications. A politico-economic system that works well with small numbers may fail utterly with large. This is one of the most important factors accounting for the ultimate failure of Utopian communities.’

Garrett Hardin — Filters Against Folly So we have to be mindful of this warning as the argument progresses in this chapter and the next.

Notwithstanding Hardin’s warnings, I think small is where we ought to start. We noted above that we relate best in smaller groups. Small-scale is also invariably local and place-based, and I feel this is essential for maintaining the care and respect we need to show to both wild nature and to our own human settlements.

Small-scale is personal. It gives the opportunity for people to deepen as individuals — to gain some wisdom. It allows for small failures, that the local community can forgive and also embrace and learn from. It allows a wider vision to be built up through many smaller visions, even whilst acknowledging that there sometimes need to be larger organisations and bigger plans.

Starting with Ourselves

We might then look to start at the smallest scale of all; that is, just with ourselves. As people, we are both a natural commons and wild nature.

We are natural commons because of our 148

Utopia Governance and the Commons physical and intellectual labour. We are also wild nature in that we are wild in mind, body and soul. We can describe ourselves as a commons because the commons is about more than natural resources, but also about the social relations around these resources, and about individual acts of commoning. It is our deep connection with wild nature and consequently our deep connection with others that is the real basis for compassion — and the real basis of successful societies.

We are not therefore a Privatopia within ourselves. If we are instead a commons, then we can let go of so much baggage. We can give up the defensiveness that so often causes us such stress, even whilst we are trying to protect ourselves. Stepping back from all the petty concerns of life lets us have a broader vision for what our lives are about and what our society might be about. Do we have that view of ourselves at the moment? I’d suggest that often we do not, as we are led to believe that we must earn the respect of society, earn our place in the economy, earn our right to be heard as citizens through education, and so forth. We have become cut off from who we are as persons. To change society means changing people at a deep level and not just changing the politics, or the economics. But arguably the change in ourselves is more about realising who we already are, rather than becoming someone new.

As such, wider society needs to recognise that every person has integrity, dignity and intrinsic worth. There is nothing to be proven or earned.

Society also needs to take responsibility for 149

Utopia Governance and the Commons ensuring that we are reasonably rewarded for our work and help will be there if we fall on hard times. We examined these key factors in relation to governance in the previous chapter.

This is a reciprocal arrangement — freedom with responsibility. The wider community owes us as individuals respect and care. Individually and collectively, we owe respect and care to the natural commons, to wild nature and to human society as a whole.

Personal Change leading to Vision

Such matters as climate change, bio-diversity and defence are broad issues for nations and societies where current governments are failing badly. I suggest that the first thing that is needed is for us as individuals to recognise these and other concerns as being as much about ourselves as it is about people ‘out there’

who perhaps we feel should take responsibility.

As we touched on towards the end of the last chapter, it is the social relations within society that really make towards its best functioning. It is social relations that drive our economics and should drive our governance — not the other way around. I think we can aim high and work with the minority of dissenting voices who seek such a profound change.

When we think of ourselves as part of a commons, then we take on board the need to share a common responsibility for contributing to society. Much of this is simply about ‘re-making’ human culture, through food, clothing, housing and families. (All of which is usually referred to as ‘maintenance’ or ‘reproduction’ in economics.) But we can do even these basic 150

Utopia Governance and the Commons things either well or badly. Beyond this, there may be specific missions to be realised. As well as realising the ‘freedom from’ that good governance offers us, we can realise the

‘freedom to’. It is a freedom to make, above all else, and a freedom to ‘re-make’. Industrial economies have divided us from our ‘making’, as John Holloway has described, and leave us alienated and dependent. Likewise, our re-making has been ignored and diminished, and yet this is also integral to who we are. When we are with friends they re-make us. In conversation, we are re-made. With our partners and children we are re-made. When we take up some satisfying work then we make and we re-make and are re-made in return. In all of this we can be giving pleasure and creating beauty. I think any vision for a new story needs to start from these simple objectives. Re-making then covers a broad spectrum of ideas, from the daily chores of keeping

house,

feeding

and

clothing,

(‘maintenance’ or ‘reproduction’) through to work, relationships, family and love.

In short, the vision can be summarised as: ‘Fall in love with the world.’ Then it is down to our hard work and co-operation that this vision is first explored and described and then brought into reality. We need both the inspiration and the perspiration.

New Missions are formed by

Working Together

The vision is what we wish the world to be like.

The mission is how we set about achieving this.

151

Utopia Governance and the Commons The aims are the smaller tasks that go towards the mission. A governance system known as Sociocracy, which we will discuss later in the chapter, summarises vision, mission and aims by saying: ‘We are dreaming of a world where it is true that… (vision). We work to… (mission), by… (aims).’ (From Ted J. Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez — Many Voices, One Song.) If we can get things right amongst a small group of people then the hope is that we will get things right on a larger scale. Provided the big-scale structures do not become anonymous bureaucracies, it is possible. Big politics can instead be discussions between the right people for whatever task is in hand. Big politics still comes down to a few people in a room together, talking things through. As such, all that applies in this chapter to small communities can remain relevant as we scale up.

To realise a vision for a new story we inevitably have to work together. It relies on people being fully engaged, affirming towards one another and the communities and places where we live.

Those who share our pleasures and our passions are likely to be those with whom we strike up a bond. We work best with people who affirm us.

In turn, we can aim to be the kind of people who affirm others. A willingness to fail and the ability to forgive the failures in ourselves and others is a good place to be. Only then will our utopias be ones that can evolve and adapt to new circumstances and to changes in people and communities.

In working together though, we immediately come up against questions of power and hierarchy. As we saw in the previous chapter, it 152

Utopia Governance and the Commons was often the anarchist reformers who had —

and still have — a particular aversion to the problems that power structures can create. To have a successful means of working together, we therefore have to have a think about how these issues might play out.

Power and Hierarchy

‘Starhawk’ ( The Spiral Dance, Truth or Dare) suggests that our default story is one of ‘power over’ and as such, we often unconsciously adopt a position of feeling ‘dis-empowered’. The default story suggests that we have only extrinsic value, derived from our usefulness, financial status or such like. Such extrinsic values are only relevant to an atomised, individualistic world and only really achievable by some people, some of the time. We need to change the story, she suggests, to one of ‘power within’ and ‘power with’. As people, we have intrinsic

worth

(hence

‘power

within’).

Furthermore, we are connected to others, and hence, ‘power with’. (Starhawk also reminds us that genuine worth — intrinsic or imminent worth — is always embodied.) Other authors contrast Logos power (that seeks to dominate) with Eros power (which seeks to unite and cohere).

We might also usefully look at what’s described as ‘power-under’. Here’s three meanings.

Firstly, there’s power-under in the sado-masochistic sense. I don’t mean in the sexual sense – but the sexual gives us an indication of what’s going on here. Part of us likes someone else to take control — to wield power. It 153

Utopia Governance and the Commons absolves us of responsibility. It becomes a comfortable routine. At the same time though, we resent those that hold power over us. In a milder form, we might despise our leaders but be unwilling to challenge their leadership.

They’re all corrupt and in it for the money, we might think. But at the same time we’re hoping for someone else to shoulder the responsibilities

— and the blame.

The second meaning of power-under is a bit more pro-active. It is to challenge power —

often by way of being cleverer or more subtle than the powerful. It’s a technique sometimes used by artists and poets. They will produce work that has a different take on the world, but one that resonates with people — often on an emotional, even visceral, level. Thus, those in power are challenged, but often not in any obvious

or

direct

way.

Authoritarian

governments of all stripes are, by their nature, paranoid. Authoritarian governments have a particular fear of artists and poets. The artist and the poet may well be on the losing side of this dynamic, but they hold a great deal of freedom. They understand the world in a much deeper and more profound way than their power-hungry leaders. This knowledge might not give them power, but it certainly gives them freedom. Their leaders know this and hate them for it.

The third meaning of power-under I want to offer is, if anything, even more subtle. Our previous meanings were, we might say, just playing with the power dynamic. Someone has the power and someone else wants to drag them down — one way or another — and grab the 154

Utopia Governance and the Commons power for themselves. Or otherwise — as with the first meaning — we just accept the status quo and resent it. What, though, if we were to step outside the hierarchies of power altogether?

That’s our third option. We’re on the brink of it already with the artist and the poet. The art of comedy gets us closer. The clown challenges those in power, not by deeper insight so much as by silliness. One thing the powerful usually find very difficult to do is to laugh at themselves

— to suffer humiliation. Humour steps outside power altogether, treating everything as a potential moment of hilarity.

But clearly we could not all live as clowns! So the key question that our third power-under scenario presents us with is whether we could ever live a meaningful, happy, fulfilling life, entirely free from all the trappings of power.

And here I include power within families and amongst friends as well as in education, the workplace, institutions and government.

Could I just live my life, do my own thing and ignore everything else that’s happening in terms of the power relations, authority, conventions and opinions all around me?

In many ways it’s an attractive prospect. It taps into such terms as authenticity. It is the free-thinker, the entrepreneur, the artisan, the craftsman. It’s very much back with our discussions around anarchism in the last chapter.

So, is this possible?

If someone lived in a hut in the woods and grew 155

Utopia Governance and the Commons all their own food, they might just make it.

Or if someone lived alone, made and sold things themselves in order to make a living and otherwise kept entirely to themselves, then again they might make it.

There’s a pattern there, of course. As soon as we have to involve other people in any significant way, then the insidious wheels of power start to turn once again.

No, if this third version of power-under were to work, then it means changing the narrative of human societies, if not changing human nature itself!

The first thing might be to call out and shame all abuses of power, wherever and however they might occur.

And if that were not difficult enough, it means somehow thinking differently about what life is even for!

Because, yes, worldly success, being right, leaving a legacy, gaining knowledge, gaining skill — even practising compassion — all of these may simply be further ways back into hierarchies of power — further ways in which we

‘get one over’ on the powerful.

There is no easy answer to this – as I suspect is obvious by now. Perhaps one way forward is simply to watch how almost every conversation is an exchange of power. And in watching for this, perhaps we can learn to resist. Resist the temptation to do what power would normally 156

Utopia Governance and the Commons choose to do — getting some subtle, or not-so-subtle, advantage in the power game.

Why not, instead, give up the need to be right?

Why not give up the need to be heard?

Why not keep our opinions to ourselves?

Why not build others up instead of ourselves?

Why not hide our talents instead of flaunting them?

So what does it mean to ‘own our own power’?

Not, surely, to exercise power, far less to abuse it. Only psychopaths exercise power for the sake of it. Only the immature and the stupid use power to harass and to bully. To own power means to hold it in check — to act with humility

— to protect the weak and the vulnerable.

And perhaps one final way in which power-under can be understood. Evil can only be defeated by

‘the powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness.’ (Vasily Grossman — Life and Fate.) John Holloway sums up the divisiveness of power-over relations:

‘Power-over reaches into us and transforms us, forcing us to participate in its reproduction.

The rigidification of social relations, the that’s-the-way-things-are-ness… is not just outside us (in society), but reaches into us as well, into the way that we think, the way we act, the way we are, the fact that we are. In the process of being separated from our done and from our doing, [this is Holloway’s manner of expressing labour being alienated from the means of production] we ourselves are damaged. Our activity is transformed into greed for money, our

co-operation

with

fellow

doers

is

157

Utopia Governance and the Commons transformed into an instrumental relation mediated by money and competition. The innocence of our doing, of our power-to, becomes a guilty participation in the exercise of power-over. Our estrangement from doing is a self-estrangement.

Here

is

no

pure

revolutionary subject, but damaged humanity.’

John Holloway — Change the World Without Taking Power

These competing views of hierarchy are mirrored in our view of nature. Nature used to be ‘red in tooth and claw’ but now symbiosis and ‘mutual aid’ is the order of the day, and this is often as a result of rejecting the old ‘survival of the fittest’

view of nature in favour of one that is more cooperative. (Even ‘fittest’ may have different meanings — such as the ability to fit into a niche and to co-operate, rather than just to compete or conquer.) But both views of nature can be supported. Nature is still as much hierarchical and competitive as she is co-operative and mutually sustaining. Such features carry across to our own human nature. As such, we are as much ‘power over’ as we are ‘power with’.

Let’s face it, hierarchy and power are complex issues. Trying to figure them out can often be an abstract and philosophical exercise (although of course with practical implications). Hierarchy and power may be innate to human nature, or they may have come about because of culture.

Either way, it’s just a plain fact that there are hierarchies. I think a recognition of this basic feature of human nature — and/or human culture — is the way to go. There is likely to always be a need for layers of decision-making in human cultures, so we have to work with this 158

Utopia Governance and the Commons and try to balance things up as fairly as we possibly can.

Equality in Groups

It is reasonable to say that communities of all types were once more hierarchical in nature.

There would be a recognised ‘leader’ of some sort and then a structured authority within which people understood their place. If they existed at all, wider authorities such as kingdoms or national governments, had a more tenuous hold over the everyday lives of an individual. Nowadays, in the majority of societies,

this

has

changed.

Larger

bureaucracies, of whatever political stripe, look after most of our needs. We see small communities as something additional to the immediate concerns of everyday life, so we do not view the idea of community in the same way as we view authority and large bureaucracy. In particular, we seem to have an expectation of equality within a community context. Robert Greene ( Power) has this warning for us:

‘In the past, an entire nation would be ruled by a king and his handful of ministers. Only the elite had power to play with. Over the centuries, power has gradually become more and more diffused and democratised. This has created, however, a common misperception that groups no longer have centres of power —

that power is spread out and scattered among many people. Actually, however, power has changed in its numbers but not in its essence.

There may be fewer tyrants commanding the power of life and death over millions, but there remain thousands of petty tyrants ruling smaller realms, and enforcing their will through 159

Utopia Governance and the Commons indirect power games, charisma and so on. In every group, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two people, for this is one area where human nature will never change: People will

congregate

around

a

single

strong

personality like planets orbiting a sun.’

Robert Greene — Power

Greene’s book is a brilliant, if disturbing, read.

It may look mostly to history for examples of the behaviour of tyrants, but as the quote above warns us, the powerful still behave in much the same way today. Even more disturbing is that so many tyrants are oblivious to their own tyranny. I think that many people — the author included — fear the prospect of a dominant person within a group, who will continually seek their own way and take over conversations, unless constantly kept in check — if indeed keeping them in check is even possible. Or it may be that there is someone in your community who is awkward around people and may struggle to express their feelings and identify their needs. Such a person is difficult for many of us to acknowledge, let alone hear.

Would we listen? The most important aspect of community is that everyone has a voice.

If we are to organise politics on a bottom-up basis, a community’s difficulties will be carried up to the broader structures of governance. So, how to address this issue of the pocket tyrant? I think the most important thing is for the group or community to be very clear about its vision, its mission and its aims. The tyrant’s aims are likely to be on their own personal agenda and likely to be at odds with the wider group. So we have to get things right — or at least, as good 160

Utopia Governance and the Commons as possible — even at the smallest scale.

Humility is called for; the acknowledgement that we might be severely wrong in our opinions and the need to realise that those we most disagree with may sometimes be right.

Whilst communities remain only communities of interest, this is not so much of a problem — we can always just vote with our feet. Our life and sustenance need not depend on a good relationship

with

others

—

and

this

is

increasingly so, as we explored with Charles Eisenstein earlier in the chapter and with the current society I have named Privatopia. If however, we returned to a situation where we relied on the local community to be our chief means of support, and also the place for decision-making,

then

difficult

characters

become much more problematic. And the same is true if we seek to transform society in other ways. Good governance is required to bring wisdom to community relations.

A small group or community is not likely to be running for long before some issue of equality comes up. Having thought about and been involved in various types of community for many years, it is this issue of equality that I have come to see as the most problematic. There are power dynamics within couples and families, and even amongst friends. But in communities the power relations really come to the fore.

Even if there is no acknowledged hierarchy in a community, there will always be a covert hierarchy. As Jo Freeman says in her essay The Tyranny of Stucturelessness, ‘Power denied is power abused’. The stomach has already decided where people stand in hierarchies of 161

Utopia Governance and the Commons looks, charm, strength and power, long before our mind rationalises the gut instinct and/or modifies or suppresses it with what is socially acceptable. Therefore, if the community tries to function on the basis of equality, there can be friction,

because

any

concerns

have

no

acknowledged process of resolution. Problems cannot be referred up a chain of command, because

everyone,

allegedly,

has

equal

authority.

There’s also the strange problem of what we might call denial or avoidance. A group decides not to speak about a particular issue. Gradually it becomes more and more difficult for anyone to mention it. The elephant in the room gets larger and larger until it destroys the whole group.

A solution may be to recognise and contrast

‘dominator hierarchies’ (where ‘power over’ is abused) with ‘reciprocal hierarchies’ (where power is administered with compassion and we are closer to ‘power with’). Power exercised with compassion is really the key here. A community is hopefully an expression of compassion — in fact, outwith families, the principle means of compassion.

Community and Bureaucracy

In A Different Drum, author M. Scott Peck speaks about ‘brokenness’ as the way of forming community. Communities are established for a number of reasons. They may be ‘intentional communities’ of people living together, perhaps with a level of self-sufficiency — set up as an alternative to the surrounding dominant culture 162

Utopia Governance and the Commons of consumer capitalism. Or they may simply be

‘communities of interest’ — people who share a passion in something and who may not even be living locally to each other. Whatever the situation though, the community has various functions to fulfil, and Peck suggests that this can be done in one of two ways: People can be open and honest about who they are and about their real feelings — and so be ‘broken’, in Peck’s terms. Or, they can close up and relate to each other only in order to achieve the community’s aims, without sharing themselves personally.

Peck

describes

this

as

a

bureaucracy, or a committee. It seems to be an all or nothing situation for Peck, with the ‘true’, broken, community obviously very much more appealing to him than a bureaucracy.

Peck has set up a polarity. Either a group will form a community or it will form a committee.

In reality, every group of people is on a spectrum

somewhere

between

these

two

extremes. The most bureaucratically controlled workplace — a call centre perhaps, or a parcel sorting office — must surely retain some vestige of community. (I could be wrong.) Meanwhile, a monastery must have some rules to organise daily chores, for instance, or times of worship.

The committee state then, allows the group to carry out its functions without individuals having to

lower

their

usual

personal

defences.

Community, by contrast, according to Peck, is a state of ‘brokenness’. The hearts of the community members are open to each other and there is a deep sense of sharing. Part of the brokenness of which Peck speaks is a willingness to fail and to forgive failure, as we have 163

Utopia Governance and the Commons mentioned above. Whilst I’ve suggested there is a spectrum between the committee and the community, nonetheless it is probably fair to say more community — thus, more personal connection between people — would be helpful.

Sociocracy

One governance system that I want to introduce here is called Sociocracy. The history of Sociocracy, plus a basic description of its workings, is provided in John Buck and Sharon Villines’, We the People. More detail is given in Many Voices, One Song by Ted J. Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez — contemporary instructors in Sociocracy. Practising Sociocracy is probably easier than trying to describe it. Such simple procedures as ‘doing a round’ (that is, asking each member in a group to speak in turn about a particular issue) form part of Sociocracy.

Sociocracy gives very specific meanings to the terms ‘vision’, ‘mission’, and ‘aim’. I’ve addressed these a little in a preceding section.

The vision is the way we would like the world to be. For instance, a world where all humanity has access to clean water may be a vision. The mission is then related to this: To bring water to those without and to make sure it’s safe. The aims are the smaller acts that will help to fulfil the mission and therefore realise the vision.

Being very clear and straight-forward in defining vision, mission and aims can be a great service to any organisation.

Sociocracy

is

about

continuous

evolution

through feedback. This means that a group’s aims, mission and even its vision, are always open for review. As the group develops and 164

Utopia Governance and the Commons tries out different strategies to fulfil its mission, it reviews progress and makes changes as necessary. Everyone is asked to stay focused on the mission and aims of the group. Everyone has the responsibility of trying to move the group towards its vision. We see these ideas reflected in our discussion of the last chapter, where we looked at the more informal federations and assemblies as alternative governance structures to the rigid hierarchies of institutions, and we will pick up on this again below.

Sociocracy is decision making by consent. Every voice matters and every individual has the power of consent, or dissent. Rau and Koch-Gonzalez say: ‘The definition of consent is that a decision is made if no circle member has an objection.’ Consent does not necessarily mean full consensus. The level of consent can be decided on as appropriate for the particular decision that is being considered. Objections are a ‘gift’ to the group, as these can be fruitful in generating debate as well as sometimes voicing concerns that others share but have not yet felt able to express. Tackling concerns head-on in this manner allows the group to further its aims and be open and receptive to new ideas. Dissenters though, need to be very clear about their reasons for raising concerns.

Participants are encouraged not to leave a meeting with a thought that they have not shared with the group.

Sociocracy is organised on the basis of circles.

(Being a bit nervous about hierarchy, everything is

geared

towards

avoiding

a

top-down

structure!) The central, or general, circle may 165

Utopia Governance and the Commons be enough for small groups. This can then form smaller circles for specific functions as the need arises. Each circle has a leader and a facilitator, also usually a secretary and sometimes a log-book keeper to record an overview of how the group has evolved in its mission over time. The smaller groups will have a delegate who represents them at the general circle level, along with the group’s leader. And the leader and delegate will also be full members of the next wider circle in which they represent their group — a process Sociocracy calls ‘double-linking’. As such, there is always feedback both back and forward between circles and always with at least two people representing the work of one circle to the members of another circle. A mission circle might also be appropriate and perhaps for a corporation, a circle would be formed for the business’s customers and even for shareholders.

Sociocracy is not about making everyone equal, but it does attempt to mitigate the imbalances in human relations, where power dynamics can often

determine

the

way

groups

and

organisations are run. It tries to address the tendency to sometimes seek our own way and the tendency within some people to dominate decision-making processes. So it tries to address those concerns over hierarchy and those power dynamics that we touched on above.

However, it is important to remember that each of us also needs to have some emotional, and even what might loosely be described as

‘spiritual’, development as people in order to be responsive to the style of Sociocracy — to genuinely focus on the group’s vision and mission; to genuinely listen and give everyone a 166

Utopia Governance and the Commons voice. In a sense — especially for larger organisations — Sociocracy is hierarchical, but as we have seen, there is a difference between a hierarchy that dominates and one that is reciprocal (that is, responsive to others’ feelings, needs and opinions). ‘Compromise’ in groups can be damaging, but if there is a written record of what people have said, they can state strong oppositional views, knowing that these have been recorded, even although a compromise may later be reached. In Sociocracy, the log-book keeper serves this wider function. In fact, as indicated above, Sociocracy aims to welcome dissent. The dissenting voice can sometimes express concerns that others share, but have not yet been able to articulate. Sociocracy welcomes dissent as a gift to the group.

Unfortunately I am not aware of any political parties or governments that are run on sociocratic principles, but there are many businesses as well as community housing groups and activist groups that have adopted it.

One of the many good things about Sociocracy is its flexibility. There does not need to be absolute agreement and, built in from the start, is a willingness to fail and to learn from failure.

Sociocracy simply asks: ‘Safe enough to try?’, and, ‘Good enough for now?’ And so it leaves open the possibility of change.

For Sociocracy then, a healthy organisation could be said to be realising its vision, fulfilling its mission and enacting its aims, and this is always a process where changes are taken on board and the organisation evolves to meet new challenges.

167

Utopia Governance and the Commons Local Democracy

As we move from looking at small-scale community in general to small-scale politics in particular, we can introduce here the idea of

‘subsidiarity’. The principle of subsidiarity says that decisions relevant to a particular place or region should be made by the people of that place. So, subsidiarity is very much supportive of the bottom-up type of governance that I am advocating here. Keep in mind though, that some

decisions

will

affect

many

levels.

Sociocracy’s structure of circles (and the equivalent structures of participatory politics that we will explore in the next chapter) allows for this reciprocal decision-making whilst still ensuring, as far as possible, that everyone has a voice.

Some years ago, my home nation of Scotland sought to become independent from the rest of the United Kingdom. Conversations sprang up in even the smallest of towns. It really felt like our voices could be heard. In the end (at least so far) independence did not happen, but still we got a flavour of what a more powerful local democracy might feel like. We have community councils now, rather than the old town councils, but these have very little power. As things stand, individuals and neighbourhoods have minimal

control

over

their

immediate

surroundings. The first layer of government that has any real power — the regional council — is a large and distant organisation. Our planning processes allow for consultation on some matters, but this is often little more than a token gesture. I have attended several reviews of local plans for regions of Scotland and found 168

Utopia Governance and the Commons the process of communication within them rather hidden and obscure. I have heard of groups campaigning for decades for some very simple thing like a children’s play park or a nature trail or a new stop on a railway line.

Local democracy needs a lot more authority —

authority to divert roads, turn waste ground into useful resources or wilderness havens —

authority to have a say in large-scale planning proposals that are often just swept through by government. The neighbourhood and the street need to be the true start of our politics. The smallest level of government could be around 20

houses, making decisions appropriate to their locale and on quite an informal basis. Such measures could be adopted piecemeal. Even if only a few neighbours show up then that is a start. As their voices are heard in the broader structure of governance for the community, then others may be encouraged to join in. If such participation becomes the norm, and children grow up expecting to see this kind of thing happening wherever they live, then eventually it will become part of the accepted story of how things get done.

I know that at this smallest scale of governance all the worries over petty tyrants that we considered above can come to the fore. The neighbourhood tyrant, who objects to hedges being trimmed the wrong way, or cars parked such that their shadows fall in the wrong place, is probably the worst tyrant of all! I can only suggest focusing on the positive. Even for a small cluster of houses or a block of flats there are little improvements that could make life better for everyone as well as bringing 169

Utopia Governance and the Commons neighbours together. We should not lose that out of fear that one or two people might spoil things. The neighbourhood level forms the first circles of a bottom-up polity that we will explore in the next chapter. The decisions of a bottom-up style of governance will of course depend on the vagaries of time and place. However, there are four aspects of society that are picked out in this book for special attention — nature, place, compassion and pleasure — and, later in the book, a chapter is dedicated to each.

Community and Business

Even if we choose to avoid all interactions with groups, most of us are forced to be involved in the community that forms our workplace. Power relations take on an especially significant role here, as, of course, our job and livelihood are at stake if things go wrong. If we’re very lucky the business will be run on sociocratic principles, and hopefully the business will be run as a cooperative. To truly move things forward though, the business owner, and perhaps one or two of its staff, would sit on the neighbourhood council.

They would become locally accountable. They would answer directly to the people who live around their factory, office or workshop. They would have a role to play in cleaning up after themselves. They would have an opportunity to enhance the physical surroundings, perhaps giving some land over to nature. Likewise, the locals would have a say in what happens within the business, especially if they are its customers as well as its neighbours. The business may have a circle for neighbours and/or customers within its sociocratic structure.

170

Utopia Governance and the Commons If a business were genuinely doing all these things, could it even survive? Many would say no — most, if not all, of the above is a recipe for disaster. But even modest efforts towards all these things will mean a very different kind of business and hence a very different kind of life for its staff. In today’s society, this is a counter-culture. But I don’t think the ideas expressed above are totally alien to us. In fact, I think these proposals for business embody values that are within many of us already and which we wish were the values of wider society. Some businesses

that

have

adopted

sociocratic

management have likewise prospered rather than failed. Historic examples of more inclusive and co-operative businesses include mill owner Robert Owen and of course Cadbury’s chocolate.

In current times, consider, for instance, the John Lewis

Partnership,

and

its

associated

supermarket chain, Waitrose, with their profit-sharing amongst all of their staff. Then there is the textile and carpet company, Interface, led by Ray Anderson. Also, there is the story of Lucas Aerospace — a firm facing closure because of a collapse in demand for their products. The workers got together and came up with products that they could make and people would wish to buy, and they saved the business and their jobs.

Also, in the UK, is retail company Iceland’s stance on palm oil. At the time of writing, many companies are pledging to phase out single-use plastics, and some are pledging to become carbon-neutral. Economically there is a potential loss of profits for taking these ethical stands, but a company’s credibility will grow as they stick to their principles and public opinion starts

to

swing

around

to

increased

environmental awareness. This is possible!

171

Utopia Governance and the Commons One further feature of business at the local level is the adoption of local currencies — an idea promoted especially by the Transition Town movement. Money then stays within a community and benefits place as a result.

Sometimes it is only a small gesture, but nonetheless it is again a counter-culture and a move towards a new story.

From Small to Large

We have looked at small-scale communities in some detail, because, despite the warnings earlier in the chapter, the small-scale is really the bridge to the large-scale. If we can get our streets and neighbourhoods working then there is hope for our counties and nations, so it is to large-scale community that we now turn.

172

Utopia Governance and the Commons 7. Community on a Large Scale

‘Democracy doesn’t come from the top, it comes from the bottom. Democracy is not what governments do, it’s what people do.’

Howard Zinn

‘Salus populi suprema lex est.’ (The good of the people is the chief law.)

Cicero — ‘De Legibus’

‘One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.’

Plato — ‘ The Republic’

‘Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’

Charles de Gaulle

173

Utopia Governance and the Commons For many of us our attitude to government can be somewhat complacent and as long as things run along relatively peacefully governments are apt to ignore the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. In order to have a quiet life, there will be little compromises — which someone has described as people getting together to decide to do the wrong thing! Vision and principle are ignored for what is described as ‘pragmatic’.

But this is not pragmatism, it’s expediency.

Genuine pragmatism keeps an eye on the future. Genuine pragmatism is principled.

Perhaps the greatest threat is that there is no vision to a politics premised on expediency —

that careful balance of pragmatism and idealism is thrown out the window in favour of what seems most popular or ‘useful’ at the time, often for the benefit of the careers or pockets of those in power. As such, it is easy for people to be disillusioned with politics and with politicians.

And it is easy, as we sink ever deeper into our own Privatopias, to turn our backs on all such matters and just get on with trying to make the best for ourselves and our families, working the system to our own advantage. If politics is lacking in principle then it is tempting to cynically disregard principles in our own lives.

Parapolity

In the last chapter we looked at small-scale communities and the principle of subsidiarity, where decision-making is relevant to the people who will be directly affected by whatever policies are under consideration. This is the beginning of a participatory politics — for which I am using the term ‘Parapolity’ in this book. As I’ve suggested in the previous chapter, large-scale 174

Utopia Governance and the Commons governance needs to be very much an extension of the small-scale community — the bottom-up politics. We noted in Chapter 5 that this type of governance system is one already proposed by some anarchist thinkers — the federations and assemblies of Proudhon, amongst others. The arrangements are along the lines of Sociocracy

— with wider and wider circles dealing with broader

policy

decisions

affecting

larger

numbers. The scale-up is not so difficult.

Parapolity has different shades of meaning. For instance, it is sometimes used to describe a

‘peoples vote’ for particular decisions, as currently practised in Switzerland. This is known as direct democracy, but is not what I have in mind (although arguably referenda are a step in the right direction).

Parapolity can also be the federations and assemblies model — the bottom-up politics we began discussing in the last chapter. (This form of governance is sometimes described as

‘cellular’ or ‘associationalist’.) The federation model is where people are chosen by the small, local groups to serve in the next wider circle, and so on, right out to the largest circle of governance at national level. It is this bottom-up system of local councils, building to assemblies and parliaments that I am mainly taking to be the core of participatory politics in this book.

Another form of Parapolity is where people are chosen by lot to serve in a Citizens’ Assembly or a People’s Parliament. This process is referred to as ‘sortition’. The two types of Parapolity, cellular

and

sortition

—

are

sometimes

175

Utopia Governance and the Commons collectively

referred

to

as

‘deliberative

democracy’.

So Parapolity is the system where, it is suggested, we can have governance by the many, without the difficulties that are often encountered by democracies. We saw in Chapter 5, that one issue with democracy is that if everyone has a direct vote then we may have a problem in ensuring that decisions are fully considered. We could add here the problem of there sometimes being a large number of people who have voted against a particular decision —

who may indeed outnumber those who carry the decision, if more than two options are being considered. A further problem, touched on in Chapter 5, is the tyranny of the majority issue, where a majority decide to vote for a really bad and harmful decision. To try to address these problems,

in

many

countries

we

have

representative

democracies.

The

representatives can weigh up decisions and try to agree what the people might have chosen, had the people fully considered the questions in hand. Hopefully, therefore, a tyranny of the majority can be avoided. But then there is the problem of those who represent us making decisions without reference back to ourselves.

These problems of democracy are the problems Parapolity hopes to address. In Parapolity everyone decides for everyone. Parapolity offers the opportunity for pragmatic governance that will give everyone a voice. Parapolity will especially give people the opportunity to engage with issues specific to their location. I don’t mean to imply that Parapolity is a perfect system of governance. Sometimes it will still result in poor choices, but with people directly 176

Utopia Governance and the Commons involved, changes will be keenly felt. My hope is that this would result in bad choices being quickly put right.

Thomas Jefferson proposed:

‘Counties be divided into wards of such size that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person.’ He continues: ‘Making every citizen an acting member of government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of his county and its republican constitution.’

Letter from Jefferson to Kercheval of 12th July 1816.

John Stuart Mill was also a keen advocate of what we are describing as Parapolity. Without a share in public life, Mill wrote, the citizen:

‘…never thinks of any collective interest, or any objects to be pursued jointly with others, but only in competition with them, and in some measure at their expense… A neighbour, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival.’ The engaged citizen, by contrast, ‘is called upon… to weigh interests not his own; to be guided in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities… He is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their benefit is also to be for his benefit.’

John

Stuart

Mill

—

Considerations

on

Representative Government

177

Utopia Governance and the Commons Parapolity — Scaling up from

Neighbourhood to Nation

When we looked at community on a small scale we saw that there are ‘dominator hierarchies’

and there are ‘reciprocal hierarchies’. Power-over is a dominator hierarchy. Power-with implies reciprocity. In the ongoing effort to govern ourselves sensibly, we need less of the former and more of the latter. We very much need reciprocal hierarchy. Whatever one’s views on the origins of power and hierarchy, these matters, I feel, need to be addressed. We cannot pretend that everyone already has an equal say — especially in terms of political equality. That is why systems like Sociocracy, and its extension to Parapolity, are so valuable.

The structure of Sociocracy itself, and its broader application in Parapolity, helps protect against the more negative aspects of human nature that may erode our trust. Hierarchy is acknowledged, whilst everything is done to make sure that people do not exploit power and position to the detriment of others. There may well be someone involved in the politics whose views are difficult for most of us to accept. The point of all the checks and balances built into Sociocracy and Parapolity is to avoid such people carrying large numbers of others with them, when, in fact, majorities would find some opinions unreasonable and unjust. But certainly such difficult people would still be heard —

these, after all, are the voices of dissent. As we saw in the previous chapter, Sociocracy stresses the importance of dissent. The opportunity for dissent at all levels is critical. In Parapolity, the local levels seem to offer the greatest 178

Utopia Governance and the Commons opportunity for dissent, but if the system performs well, it should carry outwards to the wider circles. So a concern can work its way through all levels and be fully discussed until it is resolved.

As with Sociocracy, Parapolity might take small circles

of

local

interest

—

the

street,

neighbourhood and town — and carry them outwards to the wider circles of governance. The wider circles of Parapolity would be answerable to their grass roots, in a way that is very much more transparent and reliable than our current systems of elected officials. I am suggesting therefore that it is the grass-roots level of neighbourhoods, streets and communities that would decide on the appointments to the wider circles of town, county, region and nation. If no-one shows up for a neighbourhood meeting, the next wider circle of governance will decide things for them. Some people will be chosen from neighbourhoods to represent at the next level up (next wider circle) and so on. The hope is that this will be on the basis of a proven competence at the more local level — in other words, those who take up positions in wider circles of, say, town, region or nation, will have shown their ability on the more local scales. So, in some ways, there is an element of meritocracy to this proposal, but hopefully without the drawbacks that we discussed in Chapter 5. We could say that the ‘meritocracy’

is on the basis of a proven competence and not some arbitrary measure of intelligence, or indeed, personal charm.

We saw, in the last chapter, concerns over the awkward individual who may disrupt the 179

Utopia Governance and the Commons neighbourhood meeting with petty concerns.

Annoying as this would be, at least it is not going to have any major impact on people’s lives. A neighbourhood would really be about voluntary co-operation, so we also have the opportunity to walk away. As we move to the wider circles of government however, the concerns become more serious. To a certain extent, it would be ordinary people who would be making the important decisions about things that affect everyone. All of this brings us back to the issue of trust. Can we trust ordinary people any more or less than we currently trust politicians to carry out the big tasks of government for us? Some have suggested this is not possible. By contrast, James Fishkin ( When the People Speak) provides strong arguments that deliberative democracy and Parapolity genuinely is effective at allowing ordinary people to understand arguments and move towards making informed choices.

If we are mature enough, and we have the correct systems in place, then all opinions can be voiced, heard and responded to. With the checks and balances of a good system there is a greater level of responsibility and accountability.

I suggest that a nation that adopts Parapolity would be a better place to live because it would allow all opinions to be examined in a clear light.

Government, in its current form, is very much an institution and as such, prey to the problems of hierarchies that become fossilised with time and can be sickly and deadening structures of embedded power. Parapolity would hope to avoid this impasse. So electing people from our 180

Utopia Governance and the Commons grass-roots neighbourhood councils and just letting them get on with it is not enough. As we scale up, from neighbourhoods and streets, to towns and regions of cities, the decision-making and administration necessarily becomes more complex. All of this, of course, ceases to be an occasional

voluntary

meeting

between

neighbours and starts to become part-time and full-time employment for the participants. The Parapolity becomes the legislature, but as with our current systems, there remains the need for administrative and executive branches, to implement decisions (the ‘assemblies’ aspect of the anarchists’ federations and assemblies). So the wider levels of Parapolity have an ‘executive’

arm, responsible for carrying out the day to day implementation of the decisions that are made.

There is a layering of decision-making — from the local to the national — and there is some kind of bureaucracy — administrative and executive staff that carries out the decisions of the

legislature.

Within

the

offices

of

government itself then, there is the need for the types of sociocratic structures we discussed in the last chapter.

The Parapolity is only for the legislative decisions. The assemblies of the executive and judicial powers (in the UK, the civil service and the courts) remain separate, and indeed become more clearly defined. The work of the executive and judiciary is mainly functional — the decision-making is largely with the legislative Parapolity. However, as no-one is above the law, the judiciary would still have the power to oppose decisions of a Parapolity if, for instance, they were contrary to international law or the country’s constitution. After A.C. Grayling ( The 181

Utopia Governance and the Commons Good

State)

another

suggestion

is

an

independent

institution

(we

might

say

assembly) that will assess the performance of the governance body (the legislative Parapolity, or whatever) and ensure adherence to a code of conduct and to the nation’s constitution. All of this

is

aimed

at

preventing

governance

becoming institutionalised — to keep it evolving and pro-active as it deals with real people and real situations.

If we can keep a sensible conversation going, then below is set out the federation of federations we might achieve. Similar proposals were made some time back by David Hume, in his essay, The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.

The reader will see that despite only seven levels of governance, the number of people represented quickly stack up to staggering proportions. Even the smallest numbers result in more households than the roughly 2.5 billion world total estimated at the time of writing: Neighbourhood — 20 to 40 households.

Community/Village — 20 to 40 neighbourhoods

— 400 to 1,600 households.

Town/District — 20 to 40 communities — 8,000

to 64,000 households.

County/City — 20 to 40 towns/districts —

160,000 to 2,560,000 households.

Region — 20 to 40 counties — 3,200,000 to 102,400,000 households.

Nation — 5 to 10 regions — 16,000,000 to 1,024,000,000 households.

182

Utopia Governance and the Commons World — 200 countries — 3,200,000,000 to 204,800,000,000 households.

All this is not without precedence. Richard Sennet ( Building and Dwelling) tells of a system from Brazil:

‘An early example of an open urban network occurred in Porto Alegre in Brazil, home to participatory budgeting — a bottom-up way of distributing economic resources… The process began in loose neighbourhood assemblies which debated how to spend money on school, health clinics and local infrastructure. Access at this level was totally open. The data, never perfect, was organised so it could be debated.

Conflicts between neighbourhoods were dealt with by elected representatives who had to report back to their neighbourhoods. The system flourished for about twenty years, before becoming somewhat squashed by top-down power, but even more by the shear scale of people wanting to be included as the city grew.’

(See also, Erik Olin Wright and Archon Fung —

Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance.) People’s Parliaments and Citizens’

Assemblies

In the foregoing discussion, we have looked at one version of Parapolity. The system discussed was a follow-on from the ideas of Sociocracy, with

ever-widening

circles

of

governance

covering wider areas of geography and larger populations. We could loosely describe this as a system of federations, as alluded to in this and 183

Utopia Governance and the Commons earlier chapters — and, as we noted above —

this type of governance is sometimes known as cellular or associationalist democracy. The circle at the national level, could be regarded as one form of People’s Parliament.

Sortition is the basis of another form of People’s Parliament and for Citizens’ Assemblies. In a Citizens’ Assembly, (sometimes referred to as a

‘mini-public’) ordinary citizens are selected by lot and invited to meet together over a specified period of time to deliberate over a specific issue.

The method has been used extensively, in many countries, although it is often just to gauge the response of the electorate to a particular issue, which will then be further debated and legislated by a more usual form of elected government. A first step towards a more inclusive government therefore might be for elected governments to be obliged to take the decisions of Citizens’

Assemblies as legally binding.

Where a Citizens’ Assembly sits for a longer duration, say perhaps a year or two, then it is performing more like a government and deliberating over a wider range of issues.

Sometimes, this more established form of Citizen’s Assembly is also referred to as a People’s Parliament. So, as described above, these are the two possible types of alternative parliament. One type is the ‘federation’, or cellular type — where members are elected via the grass-roots, neighbourhood, town, and county levels. The further type of People’s Parliament is the sortition type, where members are chosen directly from the general population, by lot. Citizens’ Assemblies are, in a way, the stepping stone to this second type of People’s 184

Utopia Governance and the Commons Parliament. (See, in particular, Kevin O’Leary —

Saving Democracy and James Fishkin —

Democracy When the People are Thinking and When the People Speak.) Rousseau thought that because serving in the government should be a duty rather than a privilege, then choosing our representatives by lot is the only fair way to give us democracy. The process of sortition itself — and the original meaning of ‘republican’, from res publica, of the people — refers back to the ancient Greek principle of choosing members of the agora by lot to serve for a term.

I want to stress again, at this point in our discussions, that all the forms of polity that we have been examining in this chapter and the previous chapter are only suggestions. The very first issue that needs to be addressed, before any new form of governance is adopted, is why we do not have a say in what type of government we have in the first place. It might be, in trying to answer that question, people will want to stay with exactly the system they have now, and we will be touching on this possibility in later chapters. But just to have that choice, in the first instance, is something that most of us, in almost every country in the world, have never been allowed. I think this must make us stop and think exactly what freedom, choice, equality, justice and fairness mean when this remains the case.

Parecon

Much of today’s economics just pre-supposes a market economy, where we ‘consumers’ have wishes that guide our purchases — everything reduced to commodity. The aim of the economy 185

Utopia Governance and the Commons is

to

achieve

‘productive

efficiency’

and

‘allocation efficiency’, so we produce the right amount of stuff and we distribute it efficiently to the people that want it. This sounds reasonable, until we step back and realise that these two mechanisms are based on wants rather than needs. No matter how crazy the wants, someone

will

produce

to

satisfy

them.

Meanwhile those with pressing needs may not have those needs satisfied if they do not have the money to buy the goods. The purpose of the economy is to achieve a state where no-one could be made better off without making someone else worse off. This aim is referred to as the ‘Pareto Criterion’ after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Many economists suggest that a market economy is the best way to achieve the Pareto Criterion. It is difficult to believe, however, that anyone seriously thinks the Pareto Criterion is satisfied by the present state of the world. For one thing, some economists point out that even an extremely unjust distribution of resources could qualify as ‘Pareto optimum’. Sometimes ‘Pareto efficient’ is used as an alternative term, but this is really no better. The profligate lifestyle of Western nations has destroyed the lives of millions in poorer nations and is on track to destroy millions more. So the market economy is very successful within the bounds of consumption and production, provided wider considerations are downplayed or ignored. An alternative might be to look at the economists’ choice phrase, ‘opportunity cost’ and apply it to whole societies and nations, rather than just to individuals. That way, the perfectly reasonable idea of making sure everyone is adequately fed, for instance, would become a priority! Instead, 186

Utopia Governance and the Commons the market, based on individual needs, tends to take over. We may echo Lionel Jospin’s words,

‘Yes to the market economy, no to the market society’. (See Chapter 8 for more on opportunity cost.) In a similar vein, we might ask if the problem is not so much with the market economy itself as with who is running the markets.

The alternative to a market economy is often described as a ‘planned economy’ or a command economy. One form of planned economy, referred to as ‘participatory economics’ — or Parecon — takes up some of the methods described above in Sociocracy and Parapolity and applies them to the more administrative and

executive

tasks

of

production

and

distribution within society. Michael Albert, the activist who has arguably done the most to promote Parecon, has described its potential workings. Albert’s books, Parecon, Practical Utopia, and Realising Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism, provide excellent detail.

Albert to some extent assumes that there has been a significant change to the political system in order to allow Parecon to be fully adopted.

He seems fully supportive of a Parapolity along the lines desribed ealier, but pre-empts the decision to implement the planned economy. I think this takes away from the style of governance we would have under a Parapolity.

If people really are to decide then the very first decision to make is whether we actually want a participatory politics at all, and if so, in what form. Then the Parapolity has to decide if it wants a Parecon. It might stick with a market economy or try to introduce Parecon gradually.

187

Utopia Governance and the Commons I think a gradual implementation of an alternative economic model is possible and indeed desirable. We could, for instance, start with the large infrastructure projects where the political decisions are generally much more prevalent than market forces. Why is it that government can decide on deployment of nuclear weapons in our country without us even having a say (except by voting for a political party that either opposes or accepts them)?

Why can we not be fully involved in decisions over airports, the power grid, the use of fossil fuels, new railways? It is then only a small step towards decisions about planning policies, house design, car design and food supply. If we are happy with the results of Parecon, and see it working out in society, then we may well choose to extend the process. As business changes to more sociocratic and co-operative principles and Parecon determines with local businesses what goods and services are provided, capitalism is not so much overthrown as simply changed over time until it is unrecognisable. The point I’m trying to make here is that it is not a straight choice between markets or a planned economy

— capitalism as it stands or no capitalism at all.

If we are given the opportunity, we can choose to do things differently and see what works.

The Adoption of Parapolity and

Parecon

Ironically it is often the most disadvantaged who regard the status quo as legitimate, so those with the most to gain are the ones least likely to seek change. The spirit of anarchism — that we could do more for ourselves — is worth heeding.

188

Utopia Governance and the Commons Are ordinary people equipped to decide — given enough information? Thomas Jefferson:

‘I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion with education.’

And from Pericles:

‘… our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters, for … we regard the citizen who takes no part in those duties not as unambitious but as useless, and we are able to judge proposals even if we cannot originate them; instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any action at all.’

Pericles — Thucydides II. 40

See also, in particular, A People’s Parliament by Keith Sutherland and A Citizen Legislature by Ernst Callenbach (the author of the novel, Ecotopia) and Michael Philips.

For both Parapolity and Parecon, it goes back to the issue of trust. If the opportunities were there

to

participate

then

the

level

of

participation is up to us as individuals. The government we get will genuinely be up to us and we will get what we deserve. And of course there will be mistakes. Just with the small community, the wider circles of government 189

Utopia Governance and the Commons need to be free to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes. It is only through failure and defeat that a better world can be realised. It is only as broken people that we can grow. So let’s hope we can drop the pretension of being capable — indeed infallible — and own our errors.

If Parapolity’s adoption is a process of reform this raises the obvious and rather awkward question of how it would be integrated with — or replace — the party politics practised in most nations today. What then are the prospects for a system of People’s Parliament or Citizens’

Assembly ever being adopted and could these ever fully replace a government elected in the normal way? The first three estates of government were originally, in the UK, the Clergy, the Nobility and the Commoners, now they are the Monarchy, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In the USA, the three estates are the President’s Office, The Senate and the House of Representatives. Journalism

— the press — is often described as the fourth estate. Perhaps Parapolity could instead be the

‘Fourth Estate’ — knocking the press into fifth place — that would sit alongside the current system? One such system for the USA is described in Kevin O’Leary’s Saving Democracy.

In my own country, it is the step from community council (really, town councils) up to the county level that is the crucial one, as it is here that volunteers are replaced by elected officials. Could, for instance, a circle of representatives from the neighbourhood and town levels sit at the county level, alongside elected officials? These people may still be 190

Utopia Governance and the Commons volunteers, or these may be part-time or full-time paid positions. Likewise, could there be a wider circle (from counties) at the national level, to fully replace one of the existing houses of government, for instance? Parapolity would then be a new house of government, sitting alongside the existing government structure. I think that such a reformed system — with Parapolity sitting initially alongside party politics

— is the main way for change to be achieved.

This might lead to us having both a People’s Parliament and Citizens’ Assemblies to fully replace the current system.

But we should not pre-empt the decisions that a Parapolity and a Parecon might make. The ethics of a Parapolity are not idealistic ethics —

they are not written into the story of Parapolity from the start. Instead, it is the power of conversation and the need to embrace dissent that allows a Parapolity to evolve its ethics. In a world that changes so fast, it could not really be otherwise.

If we were to stick with our current forms of representative democracy, then we could ask, how does a government stay on track? How does it stop creativity hardening into idealism?

Federations

hardening

into

institutions?

Assemblies becoming bureaucracies? The answer is to continually return to clear missions for what government should be about: back to the nation’s constitution, to the UN Charter of Human

Rights

and

the

UN

Sustainable

Development Goals for 2030.

Whether we go for some form of deliberative democracy or stick more closely to our current 191

Utopia Governance and the Commons forms of representative democracy, we might consider a few further safeguards to keep government effective and responsible. We might consider having an independent body to assess the performance of the legislature, whatever form it might take. Also, as we’ve seen, to ensure that the legislature, the judiciary and the executive remain independent.

Also to have autonomous bodies responsible for the commons, which will oversee, perhaps as trust funds, the pre-distribution of our shared wealth. Also to have an independent body responsible for the creation of sovereign wealth.

These ideas lead us into specific areas where I think some comments can be made as regards future policies. So Chapters 9 to 12 take up the subjects of nature, place, compassion and pleasure. Each chapter looks at its subject to see how it might be addressed by a Parapolity and by Parecon. Those four subjects are a big part of answering that key question from the Introduction — How should we live? All of the suggestions are then brought together in Chapter 14, What we might Decide, If we could Decide.

In earlier chapters, we have looked at the material and the cultural economies, and seen how these may be understood more broadly by introducing ideas about the commons and by developing our understanding of nature. In the next chapter, we broaden this discussion out still further and look again at some of the terms that were introduced back in Chapter 4 concerning capital and commons.

192

Utopia Governance and the Commons 8. The Economics of the Commons

‘History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other possibilities.’

Abba Eban

‘Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but… in itself

it

is

in

many

ways

extremely

objectionable.’

John Maynard Keynes — The End of Laissez-Faire

The preceding three chapters have looked at polity and the various options that we have for governing ourselves. We focused in on deliberative democracy in particular — giving everyone a voice — and in so doing, tried to 193

Utopia Governance and the Commons answer

one

of

the

questions

from

the

Introduction — Who Decides? We’ve looked at the material economy in an earlier chapter, and in our chapter on the commons, fitted this into a view of nature, and seen the parallels between it and a further economy — the cultural economy of imagination and creativity. In this chapter we will explore two further economies, and fit them together with the material and the cultural so as to see the full composition of societies. As we bring in the ideas about ownership, sharing and the commons, we will try to relate these to this larger view of society. This in turn will allow us to revisit some of the other questions from the Introduction, What do we own? What should we share? What should we make? How should we trade? We will try to get some tentative answers to these questions, before moving on to that wider question of: How should we live? in the next four chapters.

In our exploration of the commons in Chapter 4, we mentioned that a whole further area of explanation is missing. This I will label simply as ‘re-making’ — and we will explore the term in the course of this chapter. Re-making is the social commons and the emotional economy, and this chapter seeks to explore its importance to us and how we might bring it to light.

The Economic Base of Society?

We have seen that it is often the material economy that is regarded

as

of

prime

importance in society, especially societies of the developed world. When people speak of ‘the economy’ it is usually just to the material economy of goods and services they are 194

Utopia Governance and the Commons referring. Culture, nature, and the commons are all peripheral, for the most part. Or where they are included, there might be an attempt to fit them into the economic model that defines industrial manufacture — such as ‘creative industries’ — or viewing nature as providing

‘environmental services’. We looked at the parallels back in Chapter 4, and especially in Figure 4.3. Whilst economics includes various schools of thought on these matters, they mostly agree that the big factors in a society circle around labour, production, trade and consumption. Ha-Joon Chang summarises the situation neatly. He says:

‘Every society is seen as being built on an economic base, or mode of production. This base is made up of the forces of production (technologies, machines, human skill) and the relations

of

production

(property

rights,

employment relationship, division of labour).

Upon this base is the super-structure, which comprises culture, politics and other aspects of human life, which in turn affect the way the economy is run.’

In earlier chapters I have tried to give a description of this process, seeking mainly to point out the deep reliance on nature and our view of nature, as well as trying to relate things to our understanding of the commons. There are elements neglected or under-emphasised in economics’ description of the material economy, but I am not in any way questioning the basic legitimacy of the description. What this chapter is questioning however, is the idea that the material economy is all that matters — the claim that it is the base of society from which all else is derived.

195

Utopia Governance and the Commons The True Base of Society

I’m suggesting then that the material economy

— material wealth and capital — are not the true base of society. Instead I want to promote the view that it is the social relations that determine the economic relations of a society.

We can therefore introduce a further type of commons, mentioned briefly in Chapter 4, but kept back until now — the ‘social commons’, and with that, what has been described as the

‘emotional economy’, compassion, and what I have covered, for now, by the term ‘re-making’.

Massimo d’Angelis ( Omnia Sunt Communia) describes all this simply as ‘commoning’. Others refer to the ‘informal economy’, or what Ivan Illich refers to as the ‘shadow economy’ — or sometimes it is just called the ‘love economy’.

(See Hildur Jackson — Designing your Local Economy in Gaian Economics — Living Well within Planetary Limits.) Labour, production, trade and consumption are the ‘formal relations’

within society. The suggestion is that these formal relations are ultimately based on the social relations — the social commons. Jeremy Rifkin tells us:

‘Without culture it would be impossible to engage in either commerce and trade or governance. The other two sectors require a continuous infusion of social trust to function.

Indeed, the market and government sectors feed off social trust and weaken or collapse if it is withdrawn. That’s why there are no examples in history in which either markets or governments preceded culture or exist in its absence. Markets and governments are extensions of culture and never the reverse.

196

Utopia Governance and the Commons They have always been and always will be secondary rather than primary institutions in the affairs of humanity because culture creates the empathic cloak of sociability that allows people to confidently engage each other either in the marketplace or the government sphere.’

Jeremy Rifkin — The Empathic Civilization Meanwhile, Arturo Escobar tells us:

‘Of crucial importance … is the recognition that the base of biological existence is the act of emotioning, and that social coexistence is based on love, prior to any mode of appropriation and conflict that might set in.

Patriarchal modern societies fail to realise that it is emotioning that constitutes human history, not reason or the economy, because it is our desires that determine the kinds of worlds we create.’

Arturo Escobar — Designs for the Pluriverse. My emphases.

As we’ve seen above, there are numerous terms we could use to describe the emotional economy. One of the terms I am favouring in this book is ‘re-making’. Why re-making? One reason is the link back to the problems inherent in the consumer capitalist society we have created. The way things are produced has alienated us from our making. To work with our hands, to be meaningfully engaged with what we do and to relate to others through our work

— these things are the basis of genuine making.

And there is a natural affinity between making and re-making, where re-making is the repair and maintenance of our material existence, but also the ‘repair and maintenance’, care and 197

Utopia Governance and the Commons sustenance, of our own bodies and our relationships with others and with the natural world.

The other reason for the use of the word re-making is our alienation from the feminine aspect of life. Just as we are separated from our making, we are also separated from the fact that we are made — and made by women.

Likewise, it is women who do most of the re-making in our societies. So re-making is quite a deep concept — telling us about our needs for connection to our own natures, to Mother Nature and to the cosmos.

There is still some social relations involved in the material economy, for instance, the relationship of workers to their employers, businesses to their customers and suppliers, and employees with other members of staff. Indeed, it is these elements that were of key importance to Marx, so it is not fair to say that social relations are entirely irrelevant to economics as things stand now. For Marx and Engels, it seems to have been a bit of both the formal relations and the social relations. But, as the structure (ie. the economics) came to dominate, and continues to dominate, so it is that

‘economic thought’ (accountants’ truth!) is applied to more and more areas of human endeavour. The structure dominates, the superstructure is ignored or even swallowed up. A better way to describe this would be to say that it is only the purely formal, material and financial transactions that are taken account of in the material economy. (We might add that the relations, as well as being transactional, may also be exploitative, patronising and 198

Utopia Governance and the Commons instrumental.) The rest is downplayed or ignored. By contrast, it is the recognition of the critical importance of the ‘emotional economy’ —

especially

those

neglected

aspects

of

‘maintenance’, and often trivialised factors of creativity — that are important for a new story.

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights estimates that if, for instance, household labour were accounted for in our economies, it would represent between 10 and 39% of GDP.

‘To ask for capitalism to pay for care is to call for the end to capitalism.’ (Raj Patel and Jason W.

Moore — A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things.)

If economics — and especially, the material economy — were really the driving force of society, then changing economics would change culture. But instead the suggestion is that if social relations were to change then economics would follow. Capitalism would morph into a new model. That key dichotomy that we have met in previous chapters — whether we need to change people or change our environment and structures — is therefore back with us in another form. If the social commons is really the driving force of society, and we feel that society needs improving, then we need to look, at least, at how culture might change in order to improve.

And in looking at how we might change culture we may have to look at what we are like as individuals, and how we, in turn, may need to change.

Let’s continue our discussions by looking at what we neglect when focusing only on the material economy.

199

Utopia Governance and the Commons What we Neglect — Wild Nature

and the Emotional Economy

Back in Chapter 4, I suggested that we needed to split our view of nature to include what we need to provide for ourselves as natural resources and what we choose to preserve, untouched, as wild nature. Wild nature, I suggested, is preserved for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the flora and fauna and the more abstract values of human flourishing. I related this split back to garden and wilderness, the reader may remember. We humans need to tend our gardens and leave the wilderness to do what it will. With regard to wild nature, we make two errors. Sometimes, we try to take all of it as resources — make it all garden — and don’t leave enough for the remainder of Earth’s inhabitants to live their lives. The other way we neglect

wild

nature

is

to

disregard

its

importance for keeping everything going.

Although looking at the commons has helped us in our understanding of our relationship with nature we can still end up just seeing the commons as another way of describing natural resources. So we need to broaden the idea of the commons — beyond just seeing them only as shared resources. As described by Massimo d’Angelis ( Omnia Sunt Communia) the commons is also its social relations and our acts of commoning. (Variations on the phrase Omnia Sunt Communia include Iure Divino Omni sunt communia (by God’s will, all things are in common — a moto from Gratian’s Decretum), and Iure naturali sunt omni omnibus (by natural law all things belong to everyone), source unknown.)

200

Utopia Governance and the Commons This leads to our other area of neglect — the whole area of compassion. Compassion sits outside the material and cultural economies, but plays a vital role in their continued functioning.

I’ve taken up the terms from Charles Eisenstein ( Sacred Economics) and from other authors in referring to the role of compassion and caring as the social commons, the emotional economy and re-making. In a sense, the material economy treats both wild nature and the social commons as ‘positive externalities’ — in other words, things

provided

for

free

by

the

wider

environment,

that

material

and

cultural

industries rely on in their production processes.

The terms, emotional economy, social commons, and indeed, social capital, are not ideal descriptions. For one thing, as we discussed above, there is still an element of the social involved with material capital. For another thing, re-making covers a wide range of activities, from maintenance and reproduction, through to conviviality, friendship, relationships, intimacy and love, so describing this as an economy or as capital is a bit strange. Maybe, even those mundane chores that we do for ourselves and for others though, are done in love, as Marjorie Kelly suggests ( Owning our Future). I’ll keep using the terms emotional economy, social commons and re-making as we go forward, and I hope the reader will keep in mind the broad reach that these terms encompass.

I hope that a parallel is now clear between how our economics regards nature and how it regards this re-making that we have been discussing. Wild nature is there all along, supporting

everything

we

do,

but

often

201

Utopia Governance and the Commons unacknowledged. Meanwhile, compassion and caring are there too, supporting the economies, but likewise going unacknowledged. We are

‘wild body’ and ‘wild mind’, but why, it may be asked, should we have to consider such things when talking about economics? Well, the reason is that these two neglected areas of society that we have been discussing, wild nature and compassion, are intimately linked.

What is the ultimate source of what is referred to as ‘labour’ in the material economy and ‘work’

in the cultural economy? It is wild body and wild mind. These in turn rely, for their sustenance, on both wild nature and the re-making of ourselves by way of compassion.

Ultimately all of these things are ‘embodied’.

Our modern societies have however, separated us from our wildness — stuffed us into classrooms,

offices

and

factories

and

institutionalised our minds. Some have suggested that the cultural economy produces things beyond its imputs from nature — that to some extent, our abstract world of thoughts, ideas, imagination and creativity is independent of natural resources. The intention of such an idea is that we could have a sustainable economy without an ever-increasing reliance on limited physical resources. But no, this is not going to work. The abstract economy of culture, is just that, abstract, and cannot produce anything without its reliance on nature. We do the same with the financial economy —

believing it can somehow, in and of itself, produce more wealth. It cannot. Someone, somewhere has to pay for the ‘wealth’ the financial economy claims to create, and that wealth again has its ultimate source in wild body and wild mind.

202

Utopia Governance and the Commons Once again, I’d like to make clear that I am not seeking to change economics, only to expand our view of where all its inputs are coming from, if you will, and to shed some light on matters that are currently downplayed or neglected. If we were to fully address matters in relation to wild nature, be fully responsible in terms of what we take from nature by way of natural resources, and fully cleaned up after ourselves, by way of recycling and stopping pollution, this would not change economics. It would be, perhaps, an additional cost to the economy. As Richard Swift points out ( SOS, Alternatives to Capitalism) these additional costs ultimately get passed on to the consumer, and thus the poor will suffer more than the rich. But does this mean we should not seek the changes? It could be argued that everything and anything that leads to higher costs causes more problems to the poor than to the rich. But that is not a reason for not making the change. Instead, it would be a reason for balancing things out with a fairer distribution of wealth through taxation or by some other means. If the natural commons are not taken properly into account, then the devastation that will be caused in the longer term will be even more of a problem to the poor than doing something about the problems now. And then there will not be a way back — we cannot tax our way out of ecological collapse. We could also point out that the extra costs envisaged by Swift and others could be, at worst, only temporary problems. It might be that an economy that really took proper cognisance of wild nature would ultimately be more prosperous rather than less.

203

Utopia Governance and the Commons Value

One of the discussions about capitalism, that we will pick up on below, is to ask when normal trading turned into capitalism proper. One answer given to this question is related to value.

The idea is that at one time — and even now, in some countries — goods were produced solely for the purpose of being useful, and often by the person who would be using them. So, they had

‘utility value’. There came a point however, when selling goods to others became more important than merely providing for one’s own basic needs, or the basic needs of one’s family or small community. This, in turn, is known as

‘exchange value’. Common sense tells us that we might well spend a great deal of time and effort fashioning some tool or weapon for our own use and, in a way, as our time is not dictated by a financial world, the degree of effort is not too important. Okay, so the tool-maker might have spent the time fishing, or hunting, or just sleeping, but no-one’s counting. In an industrial society however, the costs and time involved in producing goods for exchange become increasingly important. A business has to weigh up how much it pays for materials, labour, its buildings, energy costs and so on, and then determine whether it can still sell its product and make enough money to survive.

Economists see, in particular, the cost of labour to be critically important in this analysis, so, in their terms, it is the labour expended on producing a product that creates its value. (It is

‘concrete labour’ that produces utility value —

and ‘abstract labour’ that produces exchange value. The names given by economists reinforce the idea that we are separated — abstracted —

204

Utopia Governance and the Commons from our making by entering into an exchange economy.) This proposes a labour-based theory of value. For our purposes, in this chapter, this leads to two observations.

The first observation about the labour theory of value is that it is not so obvious that the value of a particular product is really just related to the wages of the labourer, from the buyer’s point of view. Natural assets, for instance, have a value even when there is very little work involved in gathering them. The value of money also affects the price of commodities, so also does the way those commodities are perceived by the buyer — for instance, jewellery, artworks etc, can have a price well above their content in labour, because of the way they are valorised by society. As noted above, the theory separates the worker from their product — we become alienated from our making. And from the buyer’s, or the consumer’s point of view, the product ceases to have anything of the labourer within it — the product has become mere commodity, and as such, holds only a

‘commodity value’ or, ‘extrinsic value’.

The second observation — and most important to our discussion — is that the true cost of labour is not really recognised in this analysis.

The reason is that the wage given to the worker is, in theory, at least sufficient for the worker to

‘reproduce’ themselves, and therefore to return to work the following day and continue in the production process. (The ‘real’ price of labour is the commodities for which the labour can be exchanged. The ‘nominal’ price of labour is the monetary value of those commodities.) But this act of ‘reproduction’ (what I am referring to as 205

Utopia Governance and the Commons

‘re-making’ in this book) is only seen in terms of how much it costs for someone to live a reasonable life in society. As we’ve explored above, it disregards the input of compassion, friendship, love, community, solidarity and all the other elements that go to make up the social commons. As we touched on earlier, the production process therefore takes these as a

‘positive externality’, in other words, it profits from what the wider community provides for it free of charge. In a way, this exploitation is yet another form of rent-seeking. (Pollution, by contrast, is known as a ‘negative externality’, something bad added to society, but for which, again, the economy does not pay.)

The labour theory of value then may be saying that the price of things ought to be a reflection of the level of labour involved — not that this is in fact the case.

In

contrast

to

the

extrinsic

value

of

commodities, there is ‘intrinsic value’. I have mentioned intrinsic value previously in relation to wild nature — saying that nature has a value just for itself. We can expand this idea here to include, firstly, ourselves, as part of wild nature.

Then, from the discussion above, I hope the reader will see that there is intrinsic value to our

‘making’, to the things that we produce, either for our own use or to barter or sell to others.

There is intrinsic value also in the ideas we have

— our imagination and creativity — the cultural commons. And finally, there is intrinsic value in our social relations — what I have called our ‘re-making’ — the social commons. The material economy monetises the natural commons (or that part of it we use as resources). We are a 206

Utopia Governance and the Commons little more hesitant about monetising the cultural

economy

—

or,

creativity

and

imagination — but we have noted the parallels between the cultural and the material economies earlier in the work. What about monetising the emotional economy? A little is already monetised — the ‘services’ side of the material economy, often termed ‘social care’. But the rest is free — or, a gift — it has intrinsic value.

Perhaps care, emotion, affection, compassion and love just have a deeper level of abstraction and will always resist commodification and monetisation.

For economics, every value can be translated into a monetary value — everything is commodified. So some might think it is entirely appropriate for economics to disregard the ideas I have described above. But the danger then is that we disregard the very things that give us sustenance. Anything that stands outside the process of commodification tends to get ignored.

Before we move on, we need to get a handle on how this commodification and monetisation works in practice.

Value and Money — The Financial

Economy

Back in Chapter 3, it was with some reluctance that we noted there is a separate financial economy, and indeed that it is often referred to as ‘capital’. Before we go on, we need to get more of an idea of how money functions in the economy.

Henry George reminds us:

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Utopia Governance and the Commons

‘nothing can be capital […] that is not wealth

— that is to say, nothing can be capital that does not consist of actual, tangible things…’

George continues:

‘…the stocks, bonds, etc., which constitute another great part of what is commonly called capital, are not capital at all; but, in some of their shapes, these evidences of indebtedness so closely resemble capital and in some cases actually perform, or seem to perform, the functions of capital…’

Henry George — Progress and Poverty We should note however that Marx, and many recent economists, make a very close link between capital and money, so the question is not entirely settled.

Money wasn’t always the problem it is turning out to be. As we’ll hopefully see below, the financial economy is there to serve the material economy — to oil its wheels, so to speak — and allow for all the exchanges and operations needed for the smooth-running of society.

Money, primarily, is a medium of exchange — it is a veil between us and the simple exchange of goods and services that it allows. As a medium of exchange, the value of money is itself arbitrary. Setting its value against something else, such as gold, is likewise arbitrary, because the value of that other thing is just a social construct — an agreement within society as to what constitutes stored value. If a society fails, then the value of money can plummet or become non-existent, as has happened from 208

Utopia Governance and the Commons time to time throughout history.

Money is further premised on trust in the future.

Trust in money means that it is a store of value.

Trust in credit, for instance, amounts to believing that someone, somewhere — probably the person who has borrowed the money — will produce goods and services to earn money to pay back their loan. So money is a standard of deferred payment. This process need not involve ‘growth’ necessarily, or indeed the exploitation of non-renewable commons, but, of course, very often it does.

The figure below builds on the figures in Chapter 4, to show the financial economy.

209

Utopia Governance and the Commons Figure 8.1

The figure is really just showing that there is a flow of money around the material economy, keeping the process going, and in this sense, the use of money is a benign use. Changing our views, for instance, with regard to wild nature, would not alter the basic functioning of the 210

Utopia Governance and the Commons economy and would not alter the flow of money to support it — the same structure would still pertain, but society’s increased care of wild nature would nonetheless greatly improve our lives.

With all of the above thoughts in mind, we can return now to some of those questions raised in the Introduction.

What Should we Own?

Whilst governments usually have policies in place to combat monopolies, the biggest monopoly of all is allowed to play out without much comment or criticism — it is, of course, the speculation in land and property. Chapter 3

on ownership looked, in particular, at land. The chapter suggested that ownership itself is less of an issue than the notion of being a steward or custodian of land, and thereby having a measure of responsibility with regard to how the land is used. Chapter 4, on the commons, expanded this thought to include all areas of the natural commons — the oceans, the air, fish stocks, ores, minerals, forests, and so on.

Chapter 4 suggested that since these resources could be considered as held in common by all of us, then anyone who taps into them should pay something back to the rest of the population.

In Chapter 5, on polity, we saw how the question of ownership is an important factor in the type of governance system we may choose to adopt. Some systems reject all forms of ownership and suggest everything in life is shared. Other systems, meanwhile, regard ownership as a primary right of the individual 211

Utopia Governance and the Commons and see governments responsible for protecting that right — even if this means that distribution to the less fortunate members of society is thereby curtailed.

In this chapter, and from the perspective of the material economy, we’ve seen that if owners of land, and all businesses that extract resources from nature, are required to pay something back to the community for this privilege, then this does not change economics, it simply means that additional costs are added to the business as a result. What was once a positive externality is now a further cost that needs to be met. This might mean that the process, whatever it may be, becomes uneconomic, so the business will either have to find ways to reduce costs in other areas of its production, or it will have to change to producing something else that does not incur such heavy production costs.

So, nothing changes in economics, but a lot may change by recognition of a commons. Two points can then be raised. Firstly, if we were given the opportunity to decide on imposing charges on the exploitation of the commons, we may well ask for something given back for the whole population in return for a particular company’s ownership of land, or use of a natural resource. We would then have to accept the consequences — that some products may therefore be more costly and some things may be too costly to produce at all. Secondly, and once again, this is not a new economics of any kind — economics is still the same.

We can ask then, how does the social commons 212

Utopia Governance and the Commons respond to ownership? What impact does the emotional economy have on ownership? Well, the difficult answer is that a recognition of the social commons will mean that people will be more aware of their responsibilities to wild nature, natural resources and the commons.

Even without legislation being put in place, as described above, owners and businesses will voluntarily either stop some activities all together, or change or curtail their business models, because they recognise that social responsibility

is

asking

this

from

them.

Recognition of the commons could then be imposed by legislation (whatever form of government is in place) or it could come about by businesses’ and individuals’ recognition of the commons. In the latter case, this would prompt action from an ‘ethical’ stance on what would be fair for everyone. Such change, being deeper-rooted, would be a more lasting and reliable result.

What Should we Share? Equality

and the Welfare Net

The big difference between the material and cultural economies is that the material economy deals mainly with ‘things that can be used up’

and things that cannot be shared. For instance, if I eat an apple, the apple is not there for anyone else to consume. Culture though, can very often be enjoyed by many people without it being used up — it is still there for others to enjoy. This is part of the story of seeing the cultural economy as a gift, and we can extend this idea into the emotional economy of re-making. We don’t use up our compassion, 213

Utopia Governance and the Commons conviviality, friendship, conversation, harmony, intimacy and love. The apple is an ‘excludable’

good. The social commons is not excludable.

Radio

waves

are

‘rival

goods’

—

one

broadcaster’s use of a particular wavelength limits its use by other broadcasters. The social commons, by contrast, deal in ‘non-rival’ goods.

For instance, Thomas Jefferson said: ‘He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine, as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.’

The goods of the social commons (compassion, conviviality, etc.) are often also termed

‘inclusive, or ‘expansive’.

There are also what are termed ‘network goods’

— for instance, our capacity for speech or contact via telephone, email or social media. If you are the only one to speak a particular language or to have a telephone or an email account, this is of no use to you. The usefulness grows as the number of people who use the resource grows.

In Chapter 4, we looked at the idea that a certain amount of sharing is appropriate, as we are all joint owners of the commons. Therefore, as I’ve summarised in the previous section, exploitation of land and natural resources requires a sharing out of the benefits to the rest of the population. Chapter 4, on polity, extended the idea of sharing, and noted the range of views, from absolute equality — what is described as equality of outcome — through to, at most, a welfare net, to rescue anyone who is so badly off that they risk homelessness and 214

Utopia Governance and the Commons starvation as a result of their poverty. Part of the problem of deciding the best approach here is that there are various different ways of interpreting what equality actually means.

Lyman Tower Sargent tells us that the confusion over the meaning of equality leads to a lot of problems. He says:

‘Equality as a general concept contains five separate types of equality; political equality, equality before the law, equality of opportunity, economic equality and social equality, or equality of respect.’

Lyman Tower Sargent — Contemporary Political Ideologies

In our earlier discussions we saw that ‘equality of opportunity’ is generally accepted as a reasonable goal. In the quote above, we can take ‘economic equality’ to refer to ‘equality of outcome’. ‘Equality of outcome’ is the type of equality that is contested by different types of governance system. As we’ve seen elsewhere, a sense of fairness is often taken to be more important than treating everyone exactly the same — equity triumphs over equality. Or, again to take up Tower Sargant’s terms above, we might say there is a balance between economic equality and political and social equality.

When we looked at deliberative democracy in the last two chapters, we were really dealing with that balance between all the types of equality Tower Sargant has identified. Under a system of Parapolity, everyone has a voice — so we would all be politically equal. Not only that, but everyone’s opinion would be listened to and 215

Utopia Governance and the Commons considered, so, there is equality of respect.

Then it would be down to the governance system to determine our legal and economic equalities and to ensure equal opportunity for all citizens.

Towards this end, a system of Parapolity would decide on the level of welfare net that was thought appropriate and put this in place, probably through the normal means of taxation, or

perhaps

by

‘pre-distribution’.

(P)re-

distribution is a negotiation — a conversation.

Does economics have anything to add to these questions around equality? In one sense, and so far as the material and cultural economies are concerned, no. The economics is only about crunching the numbers, it is not about deciding on whether one outcome is fair or unfair to one particular person or group, or business. If we add in our consideration of the social commons however, we arrive at a different perspective.

The awareness of a social commons means that we will look at the material and cultural economies as primarily about serving the needs of the community, rather than purely about profit. The material and cultural economies are diminished in their role of serving the social commons

when

they

are

so

exclusively

monetised. The books need to balance, of course, so again, the economics is not changed.

But the emphasis has shifted. As with the natural commons above, this is partly brought about by any legislation decided on by deliberative democracy. But again, it might also be by a shift in attitude towards greater social responsibility.

216

Utopia Governance and the Commons What Should we Make? How

Should we Trade?

What should we make? The question of what we produce starts with our use of the natural commons. A particular aspect of natural commons is that some resources are, so far as the Earth is concerned, non-renewable. Fossil fuels, for instance, cannot reasonably be replaced once used. Metals and minerals cannot be replaced, but might be recycled. Wind, solar and tidal power, by contrast, are renewable resources by definition. Some ‘resources’ such as old growth forests are on the borderline between these two. They are ‘replaceable’ in the fairly long-term, but arguably should be retained as wild nature, not used as resources.

Fish stocks are only renewable in so far as enough fish remain to reproduce. We also need to remember that the part of the natural commons that we use as resource relies nonetheless on wild nature for its continued sustenance. Bees must pollinate half of all our food crops. Pollination by a small fly is ultimately what the world relies on for the production of chocolate. Eco-systems must be viable. The play-off between wild nature and the natural commons is always a moveable feast.

This is not the way things are done now however. Care of nature is not the first concern of agriculture and energy production — in fact it is often the last. The market economy — where decisions on what gets made are for the most part determined by what people want to buy —

is the way things happen right now. We don’t 217

Utopia Governance and the Commons even have to go as far as saying that business is often only run for profit. The problem is right there in the market trying to satisfy every whim of an increasingly affluent population. This is fuelled by advertising. The argument made in favour of a market economy is that it really runs itself. The alternative — a planned economy —

has to make decisions about whether people’s perceived needs and desires are reasonable. So we can see that this is a tricky problem. It is so much easier to let the market decide. But to achieve a fair society, and ultimately a sustainable society, it looks like some kind of planned economy is required. And that in turn needs alternative forms of governance system.

When we bring economics into the picture, what changes? Well, ecological collapse and climate chaos, with considerable understatement, has been described as a ‘market failure’! The reason is that there is no ‘opportunity cost’ set against such things as clean air and water, a stable climate and healthy eco-systems. As we have explored

earlier,

these

things

are

just

considered

as

a

given

—

as

positive

externalities. If a resource is non-renewable, then it becomes gradually more expensive, until either a cheaper alternative is found or production ceases. It is only if society puts an extra price on non-renewables, for instance, then the balance shifts to finding alternatives more quickly. If a price were put on clean air, water, soil, climate, forests and so on, then the economics, in just crunching the numbers, would perhaps be able to encapsulate all of these things into ‘the market’ and re-balance the books. At the moment however, economics mainly regards these as outside the market, so 218

Utopia Governance and the Commons outside its domain. It is as a society that we would need to decide to change our approach to certain materials and products and to clean air, freedom

from

pollution

and

a

healthy

environment.

When we look at the economics and the social relations, maybe the problem is less about being separated from the ‘means of production’ as it is about being separated from our making — from the

power-to,

from

the

freedom-to,

the

freedom-to-make. The making and re-making apply just as much to the social relations and to culture as they do to material wealth. Massimo d’Angelis sums it up thus: ‘The freedom that the commons gives you is a freedom you will find nowhere else: that is, the freedom to shape, together with others, the condition of your doing, of your caring, of your commoning.’

When we introduce the idea of a social commons, then we have a similar picture to the previous two sections. People will want to bring about changes of their own volition, and not because of legislation. But when we look at the contrast between the market economy and a possible planned economy, things are a bit more complex. When we discussed Parecon, in Chapter 7, it was suggested that this start with public works, where the market economy would have less influence. It would be up to a system of deliberative democracy to decide how much further a planned economy may be introduced, or not introduced.

When we add the social commons into the mix, then arguably certain products and services may come to be viewed as socially irresponsible and 219

Utopia Governance and the Commons therefore voluntarily renounced. I’d still say economics is unchanged, in terms of the number crunching, but clearly, from the point of view of an individual business, a planned economy could have a huge impact. If demand for a product drops then normal practice would be to try to increase demand by, say, lowering price. But these strategies may not be enough under a planned economy. Businesses may have to change to different products or cease trading.

As with the discussion in the sections above, changing attitudes in the social commons are the driving force that changes our making, sharing, owning and trading, and not some new theory of economics. Social change drives economic change. This view — that our economies must take into account nature and social concerns as well as the normal concerns of production, consumption and markets — is sometimes known as the ‘triple bottom line’.

The triple bottom line is sometimes described as the economy, the environment and social justice

— or, more simply — price, planet and people.

Money making Money

Back in Chapter 3, we looked at the three basic ways wealth is created without working —

through renting land and property, profiting from the work of others and making money from money itself (all of these known collectively as economic rent). We’ve also seen that, whilst these three things have always been around in industrialised nations to lead to disparities of wealth, there are new forms of economic rent emerging. Developed nations are coming to practice a ‘rentier’ capitalism to sit alongside the strange value system of neo-liberalism. So it is 220

Utopia Governance and the Commons no longer the greedy capitalists, or the big corporations or the 1% who are the enemy —

we are all becoming rentiers.

It is often argued that capitalism, to be capitalism, must be premised on debt. Debt, of course, has become ever more complex. It’s even said that no-one really knows what is happening when the various types of financial

‘products’ are traded in micro-seconds. The big banks are a world of their own and proving increasingly difficult to regulate, even if there was a will to do so. (It’s notable, as Marjorie Kelly points out in her Owning the Future, that credit unions and financial institutions whose goal is to serve the public managed to survive the financial crash of 2007/8 almost unscathed.

Meanwhile, the big banks floundered and many needed to bailed out — a process that ultimately, we all have had to pay for.) The figure below is an extended version of the previous figure, showing the financial economy.

The new arrow added within the financial economy represents all those purely financial exchanges that are taking place, which, it is suggested, are increasingly abstract in relation to the ‘real’ economy from which they are supposedly derived. It’s this that is the danger.

As we’ve touched on above, the financial economy seems to believe that wealth can be created independently of nature — and that therefore unlimited growth is possible in a finite world. There is a similar idea proposed for the cultural economy. Its products are arguably abstract, to a degree, and therefore again, infinite growth may be possible. But it is only the way economics evaluates these things that 221

Utopia Governance and the Commons make them seem abstract. The inventor, artist, entrepreneur and educator still need to eat, to live somewhere and to benefit from the care and conviviality of society. All of that — part of our re-making — is ignored or devalued. So there is really no ‘something-for-nothing’ in the cultural or the financial economies. There is no expansion of any economy without the natural commons.

Figure 8.2

222

Utopia Governance and the Commons Neo-liberalism

The key observations of Frederick Hayek — one of the founding fathers and ongoing inspirations of neo-liberalism — was that it’s impossible to balance supply and demand. A market economy, therefore, was for him, the best possible approximation towards getting the balance right. (We may quibble over whether technology has now advanced enough to deal with the level of information needed to achieve the illusive balance.)

Despite what I’ve said above — that the economics is just about number crunching —

nevertheless there is a view that different schools of economics take different approaches to society. Economics may claim to be neutral, but it almost always has an underlying view of the world — and generally a rather negative one

— that underpins its theories. Today, especially, it is what is sometimes called laissez-faire economics that is said to predominate, which, as we discussed above, means essentially to leave it to the markets to settle things and keep things stable. So it is price and what consumers choose that determines how the economy operates. Things, in reality, are a bit more complex than this. Laissez-faire economics is what we are told we have, but underlying this is a whole series of political and social manoeuvres that has come to be known as neo-liberalism.

Neo-liberalism uses the state to try to maintain the stability of markets, so — far from its pretence of letting-the-market-decide — in fact, neo-liberalism often ends up with large amounts of legislation and control, put in place to protect 223

Utopia Governance and the Commons the market arrangements that favour those already wealthy and in power.

Neo-liberalism also encourages the privatisation of all aspects of the state and it encourages autonomy, innovation and what it considers as

‘entrepreneurship’.

But, in supposedly neo-liberal societies, far from having free markets, free trade, privatisation and de-regulation, we have heavily-controlled markets, obscure trade deals, heavy regulation and the supposed freedom of individuals as merely an excuse to put an ever heavier burden of personal welfare onto the individual instead of the state. Instead of ‘entrepreneurs’ we can see neo-liberalism extending the notion of the

‘rentier’ — originally a small elite who owned property and businesses — to a ‘rentier capitalism’ of buy-to-let landlords, AirBnB, Uber and

even

self-employed

delivery

drivers.

Entrepreneurship may be a positive thing for some, but society is increasingly structured so as to force everyone to be their own micro-business.

A

‘gig

economy’

is

not

entrepreneurship, it is another form of slavery.

The Gift Economy

We are already living within gift. The universe itself is a gift. Even if you believe we are here by chance, this too is a gift! (See William James

— The Dilemma of Materialism.) James Hillman reminds us of all the simple things in life that would not be there were it not for people’s efforts to do their work well, quite apart from their paychecks:

224

Utopia Governance and the Commons

‘”Environment”, then, would be imagined well beyond social and economic conditions, beyond the entire cultural setting, to include every item that takes care of us every day: our tires and our coffee cups and door handles and the book that you are holding in your hands.’

James Hillman — The Soul’s Code

Dietrich Bonhoeffer told us that giving is the primary relationship between people. If we returned to the question of value, discussed earlier, we could say that whilst a commodity has value, a gift has worth. To say something has worth is to imply that a price cannot be set against it. By way of contrast to neo-liberalism, the idea of a ‘gift economy’ (as promoted especially by Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics) takes a very different approach.

The reader will recall that it is from Eisenstein that I have adopted the various definitions of commons used throughout this book, including the social commons, which has been our focus in this chapter. Eisenstein, and others who promote the idea of a commons, often do so with the intention of removing or radically changing

the

influence

of

finance

and

transactions from our economies and replacing them

with

co-operation,

free

exchange,

bartering and other systems that are grouped under the term, ‘gift economy’. We have seen, for instance, that in the cultural commons, where pure manufacture, trade and commerce are less clear-cut, the argument is to move towards a ‘creative commons’ (as opposed to creative industries) such that ideas, intellectual property and creative copyright are free exchanges rather than financial transactions protected, as monopolies, under copyright laws.

225

Utopia Governance and the Commons To an extent, the free exchange of the arts (where this still exists) is held up as an example of how the material economy should function.

The social commons is where free exchange still more or less rules, but even this is being eroded by the professionalisation and monetisation of care, for instance. Those promoting a gift economy take the social commons as their starting point and work back towards the point where much more of life is on the basis of free co-operation. The gift economy is about relationship as opposed to transaction. As such, it is best practised at the small-scale, local level.

Here it has the opportunity to be simple and elegant. It contrasts favourably with our current system of high infrastructure costs, health and safety

regulations,

professionalism

and

insurance, much of which has to be held in place because, in a world of transactions, we cannot trust each other.

So can we see the social commons/emotional economy as the basis for a gift economy? It’s certainly true that other people are of value to us just for who they are in themselves. It’s doubtful that many people would disagree, for instance, with the idea that community is a good thing, at least in principle. Most people seem to value the concept of closer community, but as things stand right now, we only get together with

our

neighbours

and

friends

for

entertainment purposes. Is the gift economy then a different kind of economy from the material, cultural and financial economies we’ve been looking at so far? Would the number-crunching of economists come to a halt if all of life were based on the gift? I think, yes, such a change would be so big that we could no longer 226

Utopia Governance and the Commons argue that economics remains unaffected. But, as with all that we have discussed in this chapter, society would need to change first so that the desire to share, the expressions of kindness and compassion and good community will lead potentially towards more of the gift.

This would be a very radical change to make and at the moment it seems far-fetched to think it’s going to happen.

So we have to be clear just how different a gift economy is in its world-view, because it is easy to see it as just an alternative style of

‘transaction’. It can be seen as a ‘you-scratch-my-back’ form of exchange, and indeed, even the term ‘reciprocity’ tends to give this impression. The term ‘commoning’ helps us get beyond this. We could say — and this is a subtle point — that commoning is multiplying others’ gifts, without, necessarily, any literal exchanges taking place. (This definition comes from Massimo d’Angelis. We might also call it the power of enabling.) Remember it is the cost-benefit analysis view of things that we are trying to get away from. Instead, commoning, and the gift economy, is about embodying abundance, trust, generosity and conviviality.

Commoning is inclusive in every sense of the word. Commoning is grace, if you will.

Commoning is the essence of the new story. For more on the gift economy, see Karl Polanyi —

Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, Lewis Hyde — The Gift, Scott Burns — Home Inc., and Edgar Cahn — No More Throw Away People.

Closely related to a gift economy is a ‘resource-based’ economy. The idea here is that the increasingly financialised world has distorted our 227

Utopia Governance and the Commons concepts of value. Abolishing money would mean that our sense of value would relate once more to the usefulness of resources. A fair distribution of resources is all that would be required to live well. The most famous example of a resource-based economic model is ‘The Venus Project’ (nothing to do with the planet), with its chief proponent a French architect called Jacque Fresco.

We have hinted that a gift economy might be the way that re-making — commoning, the emotional economy — is fully realised. But it is certainly difficult to provide examples. There are billions of small gifts, rather than one particular formula for realising a gift economy.

This is where culture can help — by showing how we might build each other up — how we might ‘multiply the gifts of others’ — rather than just live a life of transactions to meet our own needs and desires.

Eisenstein, in his version of a gift economy, is not entirely abandoning money. As discussed earlier in the chapter, he points out that, of course, money is just a socially agreed convention. Its value is based on mutual consent. Because of the interest received, there is a tendency for the rich to hold onto money.

Setting its value against some commodity —

such as, traditionally, gold or silver — does not overcome this. In fact we hoard the useless thing that serves as money. Instead, Eisenstein suggests, if the value of money were linked to something that has genuine worth in its own right, then this may result in changed priorities and different behaviour around finance. So he offers us a very close connection between 228

Utopia Governance and the Commons money and the commons. He suggests linking the commons to the value of money. Money would be related to something of real worth —

land, clean water, clean air, eco-systems. The focus of our economies would be positively focused on things that really matter rather than the environment being simply disregarded. We would then ‘hoard’ the good things of wild nature and the natural commons because they would be the source of value.

Looking at these ideas, it is difficult to get away from the notion that it is just another way of putting a monetary value on the natural commons and perhaps also wild nature — as suggested by Dietar Helm, amongst others —

but presented to us in slightly different form.

The principle seems to be moving us towards preservation of scarce resources, protection of natural habitats and sustaining eco-systems, so, all things we could probably agree as positive. I get the impression that this is not what Eisenstein is really meaning to promote, but it is difficult to be really clear how the value of money can be linked to the commons without the commons thereby being reduced to purely financial value. There is a danger in offering a financial incentive to bring about something that is a ‘moral’ good — the preservation of the commons, abandoning fossil fuels, cleaning up pollution, etc. This has the potential to backfire.

Perhaps it needs to be looked at differently and instead we encourage people to do moral things because they believe in the underlying moral values and not because we are offered financial incentives. A further idea, from Peter Barnes (Capitalism 3.0) is to set up independent trusts, which would be responsible for looking after 229

Utopia Governance and the Commons various aspects of the commons. The trusts would administer the commons in such a way that society would benefit by renting them back to those who use them. This turns the idea of economic rent on its head, by making it serve society rather than exploit it. The commons managers would be the ‘rentiers’ and would be serving the public good. I feel this is broadly in the same spirit as Eisenstein, but it is probably easier to follow how the idea would work in practice.

In Sacred Economics, Eisenstein was writing shortly after the credit crunch of 2008. It seemed likely to him that this was the beginning of the end of capitalism. Whilst we have not suffered a dramatic crash since then, there has not been any substantial improvement in economic performance of Western nations as currently measured. Indeed, it seems that most supposed ‘growth’ may be down to financial transactions and therefore based on increasing levels of debt (which still shows up as a positive growth in terms of GDP). The ‘real’ economy of nations (our material economy of goods and services) has been in decline for many years.

So Eisenstein is coming from a place where he believes in the imminent collapse of capitalism.

This is why he feels the change to a gift economy is viable, even although we seem a long way off from it at present.

The Importance of Corporations

Traditional economics says that individuals are free to act and will generally act in their own best interests. Therefore Adam Smith famously stated that everyone working separately will, 230

Utopia Governance and the Commons like an ‘invisible hand’, make society as a whole more prosperous. Corporations, however, do not seem to act with the same freedom. The solution to this was to give corporations the same moral freedom allegedly enjoyed by individuals — making them ‘persons’ under the law. Therefore, so the theory goes, the corporation, having the same freedoms as people, would have the same stabilising effect on the economy as the individual whilst at the same time working in their own best interests.

The logic seems impeccable, so why might it not work? Well, for one thing (as we have seen elsewhere) individuals do not act in rational self-interest. For another, even if they did, then as we have seen, this can and does lead to the Tragedy of the Commons. So corporations are as likely, if not more likely, to behave randomly and not in the best interests of anyone. The logic is flawed all the way through. Large corporations are effectively institutions. They can be set in their ways, only changing, if at all, when change is forced upon them. Their business practices become a business ethic, which in turn is inflexible — their vision and mission can become set in stone. Such a situation harms a company’s employees and the business owners will eventually fail, even if they are making short-term gains.

We might conclude that it is best just to get rid of bad businesses. But getting rid of a corporation just means that someone else will take their place. A better option might be to seek accountability. Of course, some businesses really need to make massive changes. But perhaps even here it is these companies who are best placed to clear up the mess they have 231

Utopia Governance and the Commons made rather than have them completely replaced.

More

systemic

change

is

needed

before

businesses will be ready to act with better standards. Like families and societies at large, business

needs

to

recognise

reciprocal

obligations. See Paul Collier — The Future of Capitalism. As we saw above, we can choose to legislate to try to curb the problems that are caused by the activities of big business. Also, we can look to the social commons, the emotional economy and compassion to ask for a rethink

about

how

businesses

operate.

Informed customers can vote with their feet and bring dubious businesses to their knees.

Proposals

The basis of the commons, as explored in Chapter 4, is that the commons should not be owned or exploited privately. Instead we looked at recognising commons as shared inheritance and distributing this to the wider population in some way. The most basic way suggested is to introduce a tax for the use of land. A Land Value Tax — to use its normal description — has been proposed many times and in particular by Henry George ( Progress and Poverty) and more recently by Martin Adams ( Land). Here again is the quote from Thomas Paine:

‘It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race… It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is an individual property.

232

Utopia Governance and the Commons Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express this idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from the ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.’

Thomas Paine — Agrarian Justice

In a similar vein, John Locke:

‘Land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage or planting, is called, and indeed is, waste… Let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco, or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value.’

John Locke — The Treatises of Government A Land Value Tax (LVT) does not seem like too big a stretch from the community or council taxes that many of us pay at the moment for local services (although of course, the tax would be paid by landowners and landlords only, not by those who are renting). Martin Adams suggests that an LVT could replace all other taxes. Even Milton Friedman — neo-liberal mentor to Margaret Thatcher — described LVT

as ‘the least bad tax’!

In my own country of Scotland — part of the United Kingdom — a lot of land is owned by just a few individuals who often do not even live on their property. A similar situation pertains in many other nations. This is one of the main 233

Utopia Governance and the Commons concerns of an LVT — the rich elite landowners are likely to bitterly oppose it. Another concern is the effect on property prices, which are currently bundled into the land on which the property sits. Some have proposed a gradual introduction of an LVT to help ameliorate the effect on property price.

Closely related to taxing land would be taxes and incentives related to wild nature. The owners — or rather, custodians — of land may benefit from incentives if they use land in particular ways. This may include; leaving wild land

wild,

returning

‘developed’

land

to

wilderness and planting particular trees or crops. More on this is explored in the next chapter.

When we looked from land to the wider natural commons, ores, minerals, and so on, a sovereign wealth fund is another method for fairly distributing the wealth derived from these activities.

For fossil fuels, and oil in particular, activists in the USA and several other countries have proposed a ‘fee and dividend’ scheme. Under the scheme, companies producing fossil fuels would pay for their extraction — this is the fee.

The resulting revenue would be distributed equally throughout the adult population — the dividend. Hence we would all be receiving payment for the use of natural commons — it would not just be a few rich corporations who would benefit.

If we were to be serious about ‘free trade’ we would recognise this as allowing fully open 234

Utopia Governance and the Commons trading between nations rather than some rather dubious claim to have ‘free markets’. So, it’s the abolition of tariffs that would be the real

‘free trade’. If we are to take seriously the rights of people in every nation then we would see the need to introduce this. The difficulties that would be faced by richer nations as a result are little compared to the enormous benefits that would be afforded to poorer nations. Such difficulties could reasonably be alleviated by governments for those businesses directly affected. In the longer term we in the wealthier nations would benefit from lower prices as goods from poorer countries would be cheaper. One concern here though is that free trade would not see the benefits accrued to poorer nations spread evenly across their populations. It may be the rich in poorer nations who benefit most, whilst the poor get nothing.

However, there is an alternative that’s been suggested to allow manufacturing and more complex industries to flourish in poorer nations.

With the wealth disparities that exist between nations just now, we could summarise this stance by saying poor countries would be better with high tariffs, and rich countries would help poorer nations substantially by having low tariffs.

Another concern, related especially to this second option, is that business is increasingly international.

It

might

be

that

these

agreements

between

nations

are

simply

outdated and we need instead to fight for workers rights and good business across all nations and across borders rather than focus just on tariffs. We have to find ways of 235

Utopia Governance and the Commons encouraging local economies, but might seek to do this in different ways than by adjusting tariffs.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is another idea that has been around for a while. Some schemes have already run successfully and at the time of writing there is a proposal for a trial run in my home county of Fife in Scotland. The idea is simply to give each citizen, no matter their work status, a minimum income sufficient to pay for the essentials of life. People would then be free to choose whether to work and increase their income, perhaps just working part-time. This in turn might help to address the reduction of work opportunities that may come about through increasing mechanisation, AI and robotics. People may choose to improve their

education

and

so

take

up

work

opportunities less prone to mechanisation. UBI is

sometimes

called

‘social

dividend’

or

‘dividends-for-all’. It is also sometimes called the ‘Stipe’ — after Michael Stipe of the band REM —referencing the band’s album, Automatic for the People. Another proposal is a ‘Basic Rental Income’ for everyone who rents rather than owns a house.

Critics of UBI argue that there will be ‘free-riders’ who will never do anything with their lives and giving them a basic income simply rewards them for staying lazy. Whilst this may be true of a small number of people, the trials that have taken place to date suggest that the majority of poorer people gain a lot from UBI.

More importantly perhaps, the UBI gives people dignity whilst the benefits system it would partly replace in many countries very often treats 236

Utopia Governance and the Commons people with contempt.

Closely related to arguments for a UBI are discussions over a shorter working week. With less need to work long hours and the increasing mechanisation of many jobs, this seems almost inevitable. In some countries there is an increasing gap between high earners working very long hours and a lot of often unskilled labour unable to find work. There is a disparity here between the types of work. What Michael Albert would describe as co-ordinator class jobs are often the ones demanding the long hours.

A maximum wage, sometimes defined and set as a multiple of the salary of the poorest paid employee, is often suggested as a means of redressing this imbalance. I have mixed feelings, as it kind of implies a shared work ethic between business owners and employees that may not be there in reality. Far better if there is a very much more substantial sharing in all aspects of the business.

If businesses were run as co-operatives, with profits shared out between the workers, then arguably

this

goes

some

way

towards

addressing that age-old concern of who owns the ‘means of production’. Profits from the business could be shared with all of the staff, not just the business owners, or all income ploughed back into the business in other ways.

For the financial economy, one suggestion is to split up the banks. Stopping banks from holding too many assets would allow some of them to fail without bringing down whole economies.

Bring money back closer to its links with goods 237

Utopia Governance and the Commons and services. Make banking more local and personal. Return it to being a service.

Another idea, known as the Tobin Tax — after American economist, James Tobin — is to tax financial transactions. (A similar idea was proposed by John Maynard Keynes.) In particular it is aimed at reducing the excessive trading in shares as these would arguably be hit hardest by the tax. Money crossing national borders — as it so often does in the financial economy — is especially problematic. It is a symptom of the severe abstraction of finance from the real world of goods and services, people and communities, which it is allegedly supposed to be serving. Perhaps only tighter regulations can address this.

A further idea is to put a minimum term on the ownership of shares. This would return stocks and shares to their original function of investing in the future of a business rather than the casino gaming of the financial economy that trade in shares has become. But there can be drawbacks to this strategy, as it would tend to discourage speculative investment that can aid new ventures.

Another idea (also proposed by Maynard Keynes) is money that is de-valued over time, so could, for instance, require some kind of stamp attached to it (often literally a postage stamp) in order to bring it back up to the bank note’s nominal value. The intention is to prevent money from being hoarded. The greater circulation of money then helps the economy.

238

Utopia Governance and the Commons Another alternative might be that governments could spend money into existence by creating debt-free finance for public goods, sometimes referred to as ‘sovereign money’. (See, for instance, Ellen Hodgson Brown — The Web of Debt and Andrew Jackson and Ben Dyson —

Modernising Money.)

How Do the Utopias View the

Social Commons?

The reader, at this point, may well be expecting me to ascribe the monetisation of the economies to Privatopia and Cornucopia, and suggest that Ecotopia stands out as giving due regard to the social commons, re-making, the emotional economy and compassion. However, I’m choosing to break ranks! I think all the utopias recognise the importance of the social commons in their various ways. In Privatopia, our emotional economy is frustrated — closed in by the system that no longer serves us — but it is still there beneath the surface, waiting to be set free. I’d also like to pick out the Cornucopians, in particular, for their belief in abundance. We often view economics as a dull science of graphs, statistics and confusing rhetoric, but essentially it is about trying to give us prosperity and secure our ongoing viability. The positivity of the Cornucopians at least shares that hunger for a future of security and abundance. In later chapters we will see that this might be realised in a lot of different ways

— most importantly we may work with nature, rather than against her — and see both human flourishing and restored and enhanced eco-systems.

239

Utopia Governance and the Commons Ecotopians are often the promoters of a gift economy, but they also just leave it there, without really getting to grips with what it might mean. I hope this chapter has shown that ‘the gift’ is a lot more prevalent in our lives than we might realise — in fact, transactions are the aberration, gift is the norm. My wish for the Ecotopians is that they would take this more fully on board, rather than bending to the temptation to treat nature as a cost-benefit analysis.

Summary

We could ask at this point, what is the purpose of the economy? Is it to maximise profit? To maximise production? To make the best of scarce resources? Is it even to maximise employment? Economics, at least of the more traditional varieties, would suggest one or more of these alternatives. But in this book I would suggest that the purpose of the economy may best be described as what would serve people most effectively. There is enough for everyone on Earth to have a comfortable life and for nature still to flourish — if we could only sort out our

issues

of

fair

distribution,

sensible

agriculture,

sensible

energy

use

and

consumption. We have grown enough. We have come of age. It is time to work to other values. Scarcity — often regarding as the starting point for economics — is really just relevant to our material economy (if indeed it is relevant at all). Abundance is the rule for all the other economies we have discussed and this is enhanced by our human desires for pleasure and flourishing.

240

Utopia Governance and the Commons Putting economics first puts money first, with all value derived from money. By contrast, putting social relations first puts value and worth back into other things as a priority over finance. We need to be making a life, not just making a living. The social commons, re-making, compassion

and

the

emotional

economy

undergird all else that we do. Compassion is the currency of the emotional economy. It is about pleasure, caring, community, celebration, art, music, humour. The value espoused by the emotional economy is intrinsic value, in other words, things have value just for being themselves. Community and relationships have a worth that cannot be translated into financial transactions.

Could we devise a diagram to show the workings of the emotional economy, to sit within nature and place and alongside the material and cultural economies? Well, to do this we need to step back a little. Look again at the diagrams in Chapter 3. We can note a couple of points.

Firstly, stuff just magically appears at the start of the economy and at the end of the process it seems to disappear — consumption is, on this model, the ‘death’ of stuff. This probably doesn’t seem so strange to us. We have grown up with a narrative of things beginning out of nothing and a further narrative that we can throw things away and that’s the end of them.

But of course, when we look at the later figures in Chapter 4, we see that this is not the case.

Everything comes from nature and from a particular place, and everything, one way or another, returns to her — whether it is

‘consumed’ by humans, or thrown away as 241

Utopia Governance and the Commons waste. So there is a circular economy. Whether or not we intend it to be circular is another matter. If we use nature blindly, it is a bad circle. If we use her resources wisely, it could be a virtuous circle. So, this is our first diagram, the circular economy, and it fits especially well with the emotional economy we have been discussing in this chapter. It fits quite well with culture too, and of course nature is our prime example of a virtuous circle.

Circular economies are the focus of John Todd of the New Alchemy Institute, Masachussets, the book, Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and Walter Stahel of the Product Life Institute in Switzerland. (It was Stahel who coined the phrase ‘cradle to cradle’.) Figure 8.3 The Circular Economy

We can extend the same logic to all of the economies that we have looked at — nature, place (I am using the term ‘spatial economy’

here), culture and the emotional economy. As I’ve hinted at above, thinking of some of these economies as circular may be a stretch, and 242

Utopia Governance and the Commons perhaps it is more of an aspiration than a reality. Nevertheless, I’d suggest they could all reasonably be circular. Furthermore, to provide another view of all these economies, as they have been described in preceding chapters, we can arrange them as nested one within another.

So this gives us our second diagram.

Figure 8.4 Nested Economies

Finally, we can go back and re-visit the discussions on the gift economy, earlier in this chapter. The key idea there is that the gift is given to build others up. Whilst the ideas explored around gift may seem alien to us, I think this is because our culture has immersed us in buying, selling, trading and transactions.

243

Utopia Governance and the Commons I’d suggest instead that gifting is always going on. So, our final diagram shows this idea of a gift exchange back and forth between two economies. The principle could be applied to all of the five economies we have described.

Figure 8.5 Gift Exchange between Two Economies

All of the economies flow into one another. The material economy has elements of the cultural economy, by way of invention and technical know-how. The cultural economy has elements of the material, as many of its ‘products’ are physical things. So we can see maintenance and care — aspects of the emotional economy —

as features of the service sector, that are usually bundled up with the ‘goods and services’ of the material economy. The gift economy is based on relationship, as opposed to our current, limited,

material

economy,

based

on

transaction.

Nature, places, culture and people are all brimming with an abundance of gifts. If we were to be more aware of this then perhaps we 244

Utopia Governance and the Commons would see a great many things in a different light. It is not that I am suggesting that we abandon money. It is rather that we place things into a wider context. The wider context includes

nature,

the

commons

and

our

relationships around place, culture, making and re-making. And it includes a vision of a new story.

The

issues

raised

by

the

social

commons/emotional economy bring us back to the question of changing the system or changing people — a question we have encountered several times throughout this work. But these alternative options are not really so different.

For the system to change, those who make decisions — be it a few people, or all, or most, of the population — must change. Otherwise, if people were already different, the system would already be changing. Could a few people, who just happen to be our leaders, change without some part of society changing as well? It seems unlikely. It seem more likely that a wider change will need to occur, and then our leaders will be forced to follow.

The next four chapters try to put all of the foregoing discussions into some context — in relation to nature, place, compassion and pleasure. The chapter on compassion, in particular, takes up this theme of changing individuals and communities as the key to more structural change. But, as we have explored in this chapter, all of this ultimately leads back to nature. So we start with nature in the next chapter.

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Utopia Governance and the Commons 246

Utopia Governance and the Commons 9. Nature

‘In wilderness is the preservation of the world.’

Henry David Thoreau

‘If you do not rest upon the good foundations of nature, you will labour with little humour and with less profit. Those who take for their standard any one but nature — the mistress of all masters — weary themselves in vain.’

Leonardo da Vinci

The first of four chapters on the themes of nature, place, compassion and pleasure. The focus of these chapters is to explore subjects that I feel are essential for discussion, if a system of deliberative democracy is to be established. As such, all that is expressed here is simply ideas and not necessarily proposals. If 247

Utopia Governance and the Commons we had the chance, we would be allowed to decide on what kind of governance we might like. If we opted for a deliberative democracy, then we might have an opportunity of all being involved in making decisions about the subjects addressed in these four chapters. Until then, this is all just speculation. I hope, nonetheless, that the ideas explored will be by way of an incentive to see what we could all be talking about, if only the opportunity were given to us.

Natural Commons and Wild Nature

As discussed in Chapter 4, it is essential to our existence on Earth that we appropriate nature in some way in order to sustain and reproduce ourselves. I have designated this part of nature that we need to use as the natural commons.

There remain however, features of nature that could be viewed as too important, unique or beautiful in themselves to be exploited as

‘resource’. I have used the term ‘wild nature’ to describe this aspect of nature. How do we differentiate between these two types of nature

— natural commons and wild nature? In Chapter 4, I suggested that this is a matter of attributing intrinsic and extrinsic value. One way or another — whether the choice is seen in these terms or not — there seems no way of avoiding this decision. It is also a ‘moveable feast’.

Some parts of nature that we may use as a resource today we would be best to keep as wild nature, and vice versa, and these decisions may change over time.

We should also recognise our own wild mind, wild body and wild soul; in other words, the wild nature within ourselves. If we were more at 248

Utopia Governance and the Commons home in our bodies, would we likewise be more settled in our minds, souls, relationships and even in our politics? How do we acknowledge these connections in our lives and respect them?

Taking up the ideas of the last chapter, we might view wild body and wild mind as gifts from the economy of nature to our human economies of culture, making and re-making.

Science is premised on dead matter as the basis of everything. As we progress from physics through chemistry to biology and psychology, the assumed dead nature of fundamental reality casts a long shadow. So to make a distinction between natural commons and wild nature —

extrinsic and intrinsic value — is anathema to science. This is not to criticise individual scientists, who may be well-meaning in keeping a sharp divide between their research and the moral implications of its application. But again, that is a difficult balance. We are certainly given the impression that science, just as science, is about dead anonymous matter.

Physics, at least for the time being, has triumphed over biology.

Connection and Inspiration from

Nature

Nature is many things. We humans tend to project onto her the spirit of the age. It used to be competition and survival of the fittest. More recently it tends to be stories of co-operation, which I take as a sign of hope. Some writers (see, for instance, Jay Griffith’s Wild) suggest that nature provides us with a ‘morality’ that is superior to anything that humans have so far 249

Utopia Governance and the Commons devised. (Meanwhile, Mark Rowlands’ — The Philosopher and the Wolf — says that only a truly nasty species would devise a system of justice!) But — whilst the examples of cooperation nature offers us are inspiring — to see her as a root of morality is not, I think, her primary source of value for us. There are, however, moral implications on how we, as humans, put value on nature, and we will look at this later in the chapter. Meanwhile, we look to

nature

for

her

beauty,

wonder

and

enchantment. Encounters with wild places are essential for our well-being. I have no logical argument to offer as to why this is the case, but I think it is critical. I think that even looking out for a tree or a stream or some other small feature of the natural world close to where we live has immense value. One of the writers on deep ecology related his ideas to a small bank of grass near his house. Wild nature speaks to our

‘deeper’ selves — to our inner wildness. To lose this would be to lose something fundamental to who we are. It is often dismissed as romantic or anti-development to wish to have places protected as wilderness. But I would say that without some true wilderness on our planet we are greatly diminished. Without wilderness we will forget how fragile and trivial we are in relation to the forces that have shaped us.

Bill Plotkin ( Nature and the Human Soul) offers us three premises:

‘(i) A more mature human society requires more mature human individuals.

‘(ii) Nature (including our own deeper nature, soul) has always provided, and still provides, the best template for human maturation.

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Utopia Governance and the Commons

‘(iii) Every human being has a unique and mystical relationship to the wild world, and that conscious discovery and cultivation of that relationship is the core of true adulthood.’

Nature then, is arguably our primary source of inspiration.

The

inspiration

fires

our

imagination. David Abram tells us: ‘Bereft of contact with wildness, the human mind loses its coherence, and the human heart ceases to beat.’

So, it is nature that is the ultimate source of our creativity. It is imagination and creativity that give value, both to individual lives and to humanity generally. Our response to nature and beauty is hopefully one of wonder and gratitude.

Our response to our way of being in the world is hopefully one of joy. The enchantment of nature provides us with a ‘radical de-centre-ing’ or

‘lateralness’, to use Elaine Scarry’s terms. ( On Beauty and Being Just.) This, I suggest, is the threshold

between

merely

surviving

and

genuinely

living.

Sharon

Blackie

( The

Enchanted Life) describes enchantment as four things: Participation in the living world, thus belonging and not separation. Wonder and curiosity,

therefore

accepting

mystery.

Embodied experience over rationality. And finally, mythic imagination as the living principle of the world.

There are many groups and movements that are dedicated to protecting nature in different ways.

They

are

variously

described

as

environmentalists, conservationists, ecologists (either ‘deep’ or, presumably, ‘shallow’) and so on. Often these groups will back up their hopes and dreams about the natural world with facts and figures, as if to demonstrate that there are 251

Utopia Governance and the Commons practical or economic reasons for preserving nature. (Essentially, in the terms adopted by this book, regarding all of nature as a resource.) One thing that unites all of the groups though (perhaps more than any of them would care to admit) is a love of beauty. It would be better for us all, I think, if more people would just admit to this heart’s desire and tell us that they care about the small and humble examples of the natural world close to their own lives and how deeply important this is to us. People might say that there are many big and important problems out there in the wider world that need sorting without us fussing over beauty. I suppose that in a world premised on ‘getting things done’, efficiency, and ‘pragmatism’, the ideas I’m presenting here will seem like vague and flaky notions. Our deep connection and reliance on nature might seem odd to introduce as a ‘reason’ for why we might seek to do things differently. I have no concrete explanations to offer. But I would say here, and throughout this book, that if we do not pay attention to the small things right where we live, then we will not be motivated to do anything about the bigger problems in the world. I think the care of nature is the true pragmatism — that our ways of doing things and getting things done today are deeply flawed.

So I am suggesting taking time to savour the little encounters with nature that our everyday lives afford. If a tree or a little patch of garden or a stretch of riverbank or shoreline does nothing for us, then the bigger problems of the world will not actually mean anything to us either. If we do not care about the tree outside our window, will we care about the rainforests of 252

Utopia Governance and the Commons South America or an ice shelf breaking up in Antarctica? Without this connection, we are in danger of losing what is wild — of creating everything as bland and predictable.

Sometimes it is said that we have a

‘relationship’ with nature and that this is the source of joy that it affords us. However, we saw in Chapter 4 that all our human activities are embedded in nature. All production, for instance, is a relationship with nature — even mining or drilling for oil. I’d say that the term

‘relationship with nature’ is too abstract.

Rather, there are specific relations — with our own bodies, with other people, with a dog, a cat, the birds in the garden, with a stream, a tree, the soil in the vegetable plot, the animal taken to slaughter, the crop we harvest for food. We are wild mind, wild body and wild soul — the embodiment of nature. The split that we identified right at the start of this book between Eden and the surrounding wilderness has stayed with us down the centuries and it is difficult to shake off. But, as with several questions we have encountered in our discussion, this need not be an either/or. Sometimes seeing the human world as a protected place, a haven from nature, is beneficial. But sometimes, we can find a haven in nature. Humans have the probably unique ability of seeing it both ways —

of being separate from nature yet embedded within her.

Our Own Wild Nature

The primary encounter with the natural world is through our own bodies. There is little, if anything, in human experience that is not felt 253

Utopia Governance and the Commons through the body. Our physical presence, and our feelings about that presence, makes an enormous difference to how we view the world.

Much of the time our thoughts about our experiences are just rationalisations of our physical reactions — and often very inaccurate rationalisations at that. Our bodies are part of wild nature, so they share that intrinsic value that I have discussed above and in earlier chapters. Every day we spend time and energy

‘re-making’ ourselves. Should we not therefore be honouring that which we spend so much effort re-making? A first step to better acceptance of our bodies may be a compassion for ourselves — compassion in the sense of joy and celebration that we will be exploring in a future chapter. Our pleasure — rather than our power — is what could define our relationship with our embodied selves and the natural world.

But rather than celebrating the body, culture generally has been moving in the opposite direction, towards being more thought-based and abstract. In Western culture, our feelings about our own bodies are, to say the least, ambivalent. Rather than a celebration — as all bodies should be — most of us are made to feel ashamed and embarrassed about who we are.

It’s an open question as to what effect this alienation from our own bodies has on our relationship with each other and with the wider world of nature. Our technology has created even more veils between our embodied selves and the natural world. So maybe it is no accident that our culture often seems to treat the natural world with indifference or sometimes wants to tidy and sanitise nature, as if it is not quite respectable when left to its own devices. I 254

Utopia Governance and the Commons think that our relationship with our bodies needs to be healed before we can make real progress on improving our relationship with nature. It is only one aspect of our wider connection with nature, but I think that it is an important one nonetheless.

Nature and Value

In the previous chapter, we took a look at the different ways that value is understood — in particular by our economics. We noted that utility value is the value that something has to us in its use, whilst commodity value is the value something has in exchange for other things. I hope it is clear from this that natural resources fall, more or less, within the first category — they have instrumental or utility value to us towards the manufacture of products. The way economic value is realised from natural commons is a peculiarity of the way capitalist economies function. Clear felling a forest, for instance, will always appear to generate more profit than managing and preserving it. There seems to be no good economic argument for the preservation of wilderness. In the longer term though, and from a wider, ecological perspective, the forest has value above anything that could ever be described or accounted for in purely economic terms. (Or, to put it another way, there is an opportunity

cost

that

is

missed

in

the

preservation of wild nature — there is a market failure. If we were more savvy, we would recognise that keeping the forest would eventually generate more wealth.)

In this chapter, I have said that there is a 255

Utopia Governance and the Commons further type of value that we need to take into account — intrinsic value. The value that the natural world holds for us in these terms puts it way beyond any calculation of utility value. This is more even than the value we might derive from nature as ‘environmental services’. So I have suggested a split between the natural commons (utility value) and wild nature (intrinsic value).

There is a place, of course, for accounting — but those who most strongly advocate this approach are apt to be very dismissive of the split between natural commons and wild nature.

Dieter Helm, in Natural Capital, argues that, as I’ve noted in an earlier chapter, those I have described as Ecotopians set infinite value on all nature and will therefore not countenance the use of any of it. This is a caricature that I have not seen proposed by anyone else. Helm does not acknowledge the split I have identified above, except perhaps in an indirect fashion.

He does, however, offer a simple formula for managing natural capital — that we should organise our economies such that the amount of natural capital remains at least constant going forward, and should maybe even increase in the short-term, until we achieve a better balance.

In a similar vein, Evan Eisenberg ( Ecology of Eden) suggests, ‘so to manage nature as to minimise the need to manage nature.’

Destroying wild nature might one day be seen as on a par with crimes that we are unequivocal about condemning without need for further justification, such as slavery or child abuse. No-one would seriously do a cost-benefit analysis for the re-introduction of slavery or the 256

Utopia Governance and the Commons legalisation of child pornography. Perhaps, in decades to come, we will look back on the pricing of the destruction of our rainforests with equal incredulity. So the question of value, when applied to nature, might be better if it is not considered to be an economic question. A moral explanation has more hope of success than an economic one. The moral stance has now been taken up for nature by what is described as ‘widening the moral community’.

Nature as part of the ‘Moral

Community’

From the above, it is our human culture that invests nature with either intrinsic value or extrinsic, instrumental value. At the most basic level, we might say that all animals and plants have a ‘right’ to their own life and autonomous existence. Furthermore, as we’ve seen, there is a tendency to think of ourselves as ’outside’

nature, whereas, in fact, we are one community.

We’ve already looked at the ownership of land being

more

about

stewardship

and

custodianship than property, and this is a step towards recognising that the use of land is about seeing

ourselves

as