Commons Transition Initiative

= Commons Transition is a initiative of the P2P Foundation

URL = https://www.commonstransition.org

Description

By Giuseppe Feola and Sylvia Jaworska:

"Commons transition (CT) (Commons Transition 2015) “implies developing policies that create common value and facilitate open, participatory input across society, prioritizing the needs of those people and environments affected by policy decisions over market or bureaucratic considerations”. The aim of CT is to realize an egalitarian, just, and environmentally stable society by basing society on the commons. The commons represent a mode of societal organization that evolve away from the competitive market State and centrally planned systems. CT has acquired a global orientation although it originally emerged from the ‘Free/Libre Open Knowledge’ project funded by the Ecuadorian Government to inform a strategy for a ‘social knowledge economy’ in line with alternative visions of prosperity such as Buen Vivir. Central to CT is the re-conception and re-alignment both of traditional commons and cooperative thinking and practice, into new institutional forms that prefigure a new political economy of cooperative commonwealth. This in turn is based on a simultaneous transition of civil society, the market, and the organization and role of the State." (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-018-0631-9)

Discussion

By Giuseppe Feola and Sylvia Jaworska:

"Three characteristics appear to distinguish CT from the three other discourses. First, CT proposes a critique of capitalist modes of production, and more than other discourses it frames sustainability transition as a move away from such economic model and its more recent articulation such as netarchical capitalism (capitalism, capital, capitalist, economy, production, productive). In fact, CT explicitly identifies a sustainable mode of economic and social organization through the creation of an open knowledge economy that is defined by a radical shift from capitalism:

“The essence of capitalism is infinite growth, making money with money and increasing capital. An infinite growth system cannot infinitely perdure with limited resources in a limited physical environment. Today’s global system combines a vision of pseudo-abundance, the mistaken vision that nature can provide endless inputs and is an infinite dump, with pseudo-scarcity, the artificial creation of scarcities in the fields of intellectual, cultural and scientific exchange, through exaggerated and ever increasing intellectual property rights, which hamper innovation and free cooperation.”

A second distinctive element of CT is the focus on the commons (commons-based, common, commons, commoner) (see Footnote 3), and on the mode of action of cooperation (coop, cooperation, cooperativism, cooperative, cooperative) underpinned by civic sense and public ownership (civic, social, distribute, open):

“In this model, peer production is matched to both a new market and state model, create a mature civic and peer-based economic, social and political model, where the value is redistributed to the value creators. These changes have been carried forward in the political sphere by an emerging commons movement, which espouses the value system of peer production and the commons, driven by the knowledge workers and their allies.”

Third, while CT puts less emphasis on environmental sustainability and environmental issues, a core theme of CT is knowledge as a global common (knowledge, service). In this respect, a strong focus is on the actual creation of an open social and knowledge economy where the civil society plays not the role of consumer, but of civic peer- or co-producer:

“The ideal vision of an open-commons based knowledge economy is one in which the ‘peer producers’ or commoners […] not only co-create the common pools from which all society can benefit, but also create their own livelihoods through ethical enterprise and thereby insure not only their own social reproduction but also that the surplus value stays within the commons-cooperative sphere.” (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-018-0631-9)

More Information

Check our Category Page for Commons Transition, i.e. projects that are specifically or more loosely related to a commons-oriented transition for our political economy, society, and civilizational model.

For more Commons Transition-specific resources, please visit our related projects:

• Commons Transition Home Page Contains a general overview on Commons Transition Strategies, articles, videos and a blog. It is the landing page for the Commons Transition Platform.
• Commons Transition Stories Browse through our selection of featured essays, interviews and texts on Commons Transition projects and related initiatives.
• The Commons Transition Wiki The Commons Transition Strategies Wiki is a database for policy papers and proposals related to Commons Transition.