= this section is dedicated to the development of Commonfare, "a participatory form of welfare provision based on collaboration among people".

Introduction

• Check out the key concept of Generative Justice: An Introduction to Generative Justice. By Ron Eglash. Revista Teknokultura, Vol. 13(2), 369-404.

[1]. How do we evolve towars "relations of open reciprocity, communal sharing, gift-giving and voluntary collaboration allowed value to circulate in its unalienated forms, including labor power, political expression and interspecies ecological exchanges". [2]

• Potentially important for the future, see Distributed Income Support Cooperatives

• Key document from the P2P Foundation: Value in the Commons Economy, our report on the transition in value regime, by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros.

• From the Crisis to the Welfare of the Common as a New Mode of Production. By Carlo Vercellone. Theory, Culture & Society, Volume: 32 issue: 7-8, page(s): 85-99, 2015 [3]

• Solidarities and Collective Action in Post-Industrial Societies [4] : this article describes the evolution of forms of solidarity from craft-based associations to industrial unions, idendity movements and today's networked and swarm-based protocollary organizations.

• A key Report on self-organization by independent workers: Not Alone. Trade Union and Cooperative Solutions To Self-Employment. By Pat Conaty, Alex Bird and Philip Ross. Co-operatives UK, 2016 [5]

• Manifesto for a Common Ground for Independent Workers calls for a new labor statute that combines autonomy and security

[6]

Towards a Social Insurance Based on the Commons

Peter Barnes:

"The present financial base of social insurance — payroll contributions by workers and employers — has essentially maxed out. Nor is it possible to supplement existing labor income by taxing it. So a 21st century system of economic security will have to be built on a new financing model, which I have proposed to be income from common wealth, in the manner of Thomas Paine and the Alaska Permanent Fund (see With Liberty and Dividends For All). Picture, then, a giant “common pot” into which flows money from multiple forms of common wealth and out of which flow monthly dividends to every American with a Social Security account. Such a pot could begin, as Social Security did, with a relatively small inflow and outflow, and grow over time as Americans become comfortable with it. Its funding sources could include fees on pollution of shared ecosystems and use of socially constructed financial infrastructure, as well as new money created in the manner Mellor proposes.

This system, anchored by the common pot, would serve three functions simultaneously. First, it would address the pressing need for lifetime economic security, a need that will only increase as automation and artificial intelligence replace more jobs. Second, it would create demand for more revenue sources which, if properly designed, would advance one of the key goals of the Great Transformation: internalizing the costs of destabilizing nature. Third and perhaps most importantly, it would supply the political juice for the first two functions. To paraphrase Mary Poppins, rising dividends from the common pot would become the sugar that helps the less palatable transformational pills go down." (comments to: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/money-for-the-people)

Worthy of attention and support

• The P2P Foundation supports the convergence of self-organized labor and multi-stakeholder cooperatives and solidarity economy entities on the one hand, with open models that sustain livelihoods and co-create commons. This is convergence of models is called Open Cooperativism and can take special forms like Platform Cooperativism or Data Cooperatives. This calls for mutual support and relations between productive communities based on open contributions (i.e. Commons-Based Peer Production, and post-corporate ethical entrepreneurial coalitions (see http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Post-Corporate).

• The P2P Foundation supports the emergence of Commonfare practices of social solidarity for networked workers who co-created commons and shared resources (see our special section http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Solidarity), as well as their integration with a strengthened welfare system. In particular we support the creation of 'labor mutuals', i.e. freelance coops which already exist in the French-speaking world (Coopaname in France ; SMart in Belgium, Bigre, etc ..; see the project of AltGen in the UK). Read up here at Business and Employment Cooperatives, they are a "legal form (in Belgium, France ?) that allows self-employed to be salaried by their own joint cooperative, thereby obtaining the social protections of the salaried workers".

• The P2P Foundations supports the call for a New Mutualism by Sara Horowitz

• We pay attention to the potential of Distributed Income Support Cooperatives

• This may be the best overview regarding the adaptation of welfare systems, see Sustainable Welfare for Integrated Eco-Social Policies by Katharina Bohnenberger; it contains a very useful Typology of Eco-Socal Welfare Benefits including proposals for a Transition Income and Commons-Innovations Vouchers‎

Citations

Scaled-Up Welfare Systems are rooted in grassroots community experimentation

Ted Howard:

"Solutions start where all fundamental change comes from—which is in communities and from the bottom up. This has been the case with large order change in both the UK and in my own country, the United States. Back home, we call it the laboratories of democracy. As the Great Depression took hold in America in 1929, the levels of pain across the country grew. But the ideology of the then federal government was that the government should do nothing to address the growing depression, that the market would correct itself. And so, in community after community people took history into their own hands and began to address their problems themselves. New approaches were devised that could eventually be lifted up and scaled. America’s primary social safety net, the Social Security System, began in small Alaska and California communities as people grappled with their challenges. When the politics changed nationally, when the Roosevelt administration came into power, and the New Deal began, these small models were lifted up into a comprehensive system of national support. Here in Britain there is a similar experience. When Bevan launched the NHS in 1948, he drew his inspiration from the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, a community based model in South Wales that began in 1890. This small Welsh experiment was scaled up into one of the great health systems of the world." (https://democracycollaborative.org/content/democracy-collaborative-joins-jeremy-corbyns-new-community-wealth-building-unit-advisors)

Key Resources

Key Articles

• P2P Alternatives to Emergency Medical Services (on Street Medics and related initiatives)

• Towards a Post-Productivist Future Based on Universal Basic Services and the Participation Income

Key Books

• Radical Help. By Hillary Cottam. (strongly recommended by Kate Raworth)

• Digital Solidarity. Felix Stalder. Mute Books and Post-Media Lab, 2013

• Cognitive Capitalism, Welfare and Labour. The Commonfare Hypothesis. By Andrea Fumagalli, Alfonso Giuliani, Stefano Lucarelli, Carlo Vercellone. Routledge, 2020

[7]

• Mutual Aid Beyond Communism. Jeff Shantz.

• With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don’t Pay Enough. By Peter Barnes. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014

• Guy Standing. Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens. Bloomsbury, 2014 [8]: discusses how rights - political, civil, social and economic - have been denied to the Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons."

• ebook: The Response: Building Collective Resilience in the Wake of Disasters. By Tom Llewellyn et al. Shareable, 2019 [9] ; interviews, articles, guides, and personal stories of community led disaster response

• Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis. Edited by Marina Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar. Pluto Books, 2021 [10]

Background:

• Hauke Brunkhorst, Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community, trans. Jeffrey Flynn (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2005): " a comprehensive intellectual history of solidarity from Aristotle to the present, with a chapter devoted the related concept of fraternité in post-revolutionary French thought"

• Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism. By Bruce Ackerman, Anne Alstott, and Philippe Van Parijs. Verso, 2006. [11]

• Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

In French:

• Marie-Claude Blais, La solidarité: Histoire d’une idée (Paris: Gallimard, 2007).

History

* Eric Hopkins' Working-class Self-Help in nineteenth century England.

Pat Conaty: "We need to be aware that public services as we know them had their origins in pioneering class struggles by commoners that developed the fundamental social economic innovations."

Key Policy Documents

• Report: Economic Security for the Gig Economy. A Social Safety Net that Works for Everyone Who Works. Etsy, Fall 2016

[12] ; proposes 3 simple principles.

Key Practices

• check the concept of Distributed Income Support Cooperatives

(Neo)Traditional Gifting/Sharing/Cooperative Practices:

Via Co-Creative Recipes:

1. Ayni: a term with a meaning that’s closely related to minga. It describes a system of work and family reciprocity among members
2. Bayanihan: in the Philippines,'communal unity'
3. Córima: The Rarámuri people of Mexico’s Chihuahua mountains use the word “córima” to describe an act of solidarity with someone who’s having trouble.
4. Gadugi: a term used in the Cherokee language which means “working together” or “cooperative labor” within a community
5. Gotong-Royong: in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, Gotong-royong is a cooperation among many people to attain a shared goal with ideas of reciprocity or mutual aid.
6. Guelaguetza: a cross between a potlatch and a tequio. The term describes “a reciprocal exchange of goods and services”.
7. Harambee: a Kenyan tradition of community self-help events, e.g. playdraising or development activities. Harambee literally means “all pull together” in Swahili
8. Imece: a name given for a traditional Turkish village-scale collaboration.
9. Maloka: (or maloka in Portuguese) is an indigenous communal house found in the indigenous Amazon region of Colombia and Brazil.
10. Meitheal: the Irish word for a work team, gang, or party and denotes the co-operative labour system in Ireland where groups of neighbours help each other in turn with farming work
11. Mutirão: This is originally a Tupi term used in Brazil to describe collective mobilizations based on non-remunerated mutual help.
12. Naffīr: an Arabic word used in parts of Sudan (including Kordofan, Darfur, parts of the Nuba mountains and Kassala) to describe particular types of communal work undertakings.
13. Tequio: a very popular type of work for collective benefit in the Zapotec culture. Community members contribute materials or labor to carry out construction work for the community.

Key Statistics

• "Research shows how Gross Domestic Product (GDP – which primarily measures economic growth) and Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI – which measures well-being more broadly, inclusive of economic growth) rise in tandem until about $7k per capita, when the correlation plateaus, before falling – suggesting limits to benefits of economic growth." [13]

Visualizations