Utopia Governance & the Commons by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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 co-operative. (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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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 co-operative. 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.

 

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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!

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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,

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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 super-structure 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

 

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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.

 

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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.)

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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 —

 

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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

 

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‘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

 

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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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‘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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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,

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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:

 

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‘”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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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,

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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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

 

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