Deliberative Money as a Synthesis of Commons Theory and Solidarity Economy Approaches
Source
* Article: La monnaie délibérée : pour une théorie démocratique de la monnaie articulant les apports et limites de l’ESS et des Communs. Eric Dacheux et Daniel Goujon.
URL = https://base.socioeco.org/docs/2_3_dacheux_goujon.pdf
Text
DeepSeek Synthesis of section 2 onwards:
Introduction: The Monetary Question
In orthodox economic theory, money is merely a "lubricant" for exchanges—a private good that should be managed according to market principles. Keynesian thought, by contrast, views money as an active force requiring public regulation. The 2008 financial crisis highlighted this dichotomy between monetarists (who oppose state intervention) and those calling for strong public regulation. Both positions remain trapped in a State-Market dichotomy that overlooks the crucial role of civil society—a gap that thinkers from both the commons movement and the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) seek to address, even if monetary questions remain marginal in both traditions.
Part 1: Money as a Commons
While contemporary reflections on the commons are abundant, monetary considerations remain limited. Jean-Michel Servet (2015) offers a notable exception, exploring how money might be instituted as a commons. Unlike natural resources that require protection for renewal, money's renewal requires continuous reinjection into financing circuits—yet it remains a resource necessary for the community that can be collectively managed.
Servet identifies three essential rules for instituting money as a commons:
- Defining a group of co-producers or users with clarified roles, functions, and qualities
- Making public the conditions of access, appropriation, exclusion, distribution, and reproduction
- Controlling its usage and the capacity to derive income from it
- A fourth characteristic is crucial: democratic horizontal management, which distinguishes commons-based money from both Keynesian public goods (top-down democratic management) and private money (where beneficiaries are not genuine stakeholders in management).
Servet offers two examples: the Geneva International Guarantee Fund for microcredit, managed by an assembly of contributors and beneficiaries, and complementary local currencies backed by a common Euro reserve.
The main contribution of commons-based money lies in economic efficiency—the community gains access to a fund allowing it to finance production while avoiding private finance constraints. However, this remains within an exchange-oriented vision of money. The community, though democratically managing this commons, cannot create monetary units ex nihilo. Furthermore, such communities rely on reciprocal obligations, making them discriminatory—those who don't fulfill obligations are excluded. This resembles mechanical solidarity more than democratic solidarity.
Part 2: Money as an Instrument of Democratic Solidarity
Within SSE thinking (drawing on Karl Polanyi), monetary reflection exists but rarely occupies center stage. Jérôme Blanc provides an exception, identifying three monetary conceptions: public (active) money, lucrative (neutral) money, and citizen money. Citizen money divides into two subcategories: commercial currencies (complementary currencies, akin to commons-based money) and community currencies (aligning with SSE values).
Community citizen money "activates the principle of reciprocity in a closed system without convertibility or even commensurability with public money, establishing a system of reciprocal exchanges marked by the use of money distancing its circulation conditions from those of market exchange" (Blanc, 2013, p.262).
Three initiatives exemplify this: time banks, local exchange systems (SEL), and "accorderies." In all three cases, users collectively deliberate rules. Money creation occurs upon service delivery, enabling production, measurement, and exchange of activity. Money becomes not a commodity but a sign of "social accounting," concomitant with economic activity—echoing Schumpeterian credit-money theory where banks create money ex nihilo through credit to innovative entrepreneurs.
Unlike capitalism, this system isn't bank-managed but self-managed by exchangers. Monetary creation is entirely endogenous, dependent on neither State nor private banks. Citizen autonomy is strongest in SEL systems compared to time banks, where the accounting unit (the hour) remains based on abstract capitalist time measurement.
While this citizen money establishes democratic solidarity and offers an alternative to money-as-commodity, its economic impact remains doubly limited: by the small size of networks (reaching only activists, unlike complementary currencies addressing all territorial residents) and by institutional constraints (French SSE law requiring social currencies to be commensurable and convertible with the Euro) and market constraints (consumption habits, value representations).
Comparing the Two Approaches
Both approaches share:
Democratic regulation: Money can and should escape the public/private binary
Community obligation: Usage requires voluntary community membership
| Aspect | Commons Approach (Complementary Local Currencies) |
SSE Approach (SEL Systems) |
|---|---|---|
| Money's nature | Prior fund for community activity | Accounting operation of double-entry bookkeeping |
| Economic conception | Exchange economy | Production economy |
| Primary objective | Develop exchanges through circulation speed | Enable production and distribute goods/services |
Complementary strengths and weaknesses:
- Commons strength: Connection to market economy (via complementarity between official and local currencies)
- Commons weakness: Dependence on that economy and institutional rules governing the prior fund
- SSE strength: Autonomy from mainstream economy
- SSE weakness: Marginalization within local community circles
Part 3: Access to Money as a Prerequisite for Democratic Production Systems
3.1 Deliberated Money: Democratizing Monetary Access
Building on the identified approaches, the authors propose three hybrid monetary visions:
Figure N°3: Heterodox Monetary Approaches - Dual Hybridizations
| Hybridization | Name | Main Advantage | Main Disadvantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public / Citizen | Commons Money | Endogenous development | Risk of instrumentalization |
| Citizen / Lucrative | SSE Money | Social innovation | Market isomorphism |
| Public / Lucrative | Institutional Money | Macroeconomic regulation | Technocratic management |
Deliberated Money articulates these three visions around a unifying principle: citizen deliberation.
This approach recognizes:
- The operational necessity of public monetary regulation
- The value of pluralizing money through community deliberation to strengthen local exchanges
- The opportunity for solidarity initiatives to access credit systems managed by citizens themselves
Complementary proposals for each approach:
- For institutionalist reforms: Restore direct links between Central Banks, public authorities, and citizens for genuine democratic control over the financial system. Support "quantitative easing for the people" focused on solidarity initiatives.
- For commons-based reforms: Move from "money of the commons" to "money of the common"—enabling accounting and payment for productive activity of the common. This requires producer self-determination regarding financing, escaping capital/labor antagonism. This supports establishing a Guaranteed Social Income (GSI) as both primary income and commons institution.
- For SSE reforms: Encourage SEL systems, mutualist banks, and solidarity crowdfunding. Social economy organizations, deliberately oriented toward limited profit, cannot access commercial bank credit. They need non-capitalist, democratic credit. Ethical banks like Triodos or Banca Popolare Etica offer possibilities, but struggle to escape market logic imposed by international financial systems.
3.2 Deliberated Money: Embedding Monetization
The authors emphasize that democratizing money access alone isn't sufficient. We must also limit the monetary sphere through collective deliberation on what should or shouldn't be subject to monetary exchange. Values—political and symbolic—have their own criteria and evaluation units distinct from economic evaluation.
Volunteer work exemplifies this: its true value lies not in monetizing time spent but in the political and symbolic values individuals attach to the practice. Monetarily measuring volunteer work economically valorizes it while politically and symbolically devaluing it. Only maintaining an extended sphere of gratuitousness guarantees essential human values—those that are priceless.
Thus, democratic money requires two complementary processes: universal access to money AND preservation of a non-monetary sphere. Both are governed by the same process: citizen deliberation.
Conclusion
The SSE and commons movement represent two modes of civil society self-organization that raise the question of democratizing the economic sphere. Both offer interesting, complementary answers deserving dialogue. However, both struggle to integrate monetary questions into their analysis.
Yet as some thinkers increasingly emphasize (Arnsperger, 2013; Baronian & Vercellone, 2015; Servet, 2015; Blanc, 2013), democratizing access to money is crucial if these initiatives are to scale up—especially from a post-capitalist perspective.
Heterodox monetary thinkers emphasize money's triple nature: political, economic, and symbolic. Contemporary money is profoundly ambiguous:
- Politically: A public institution managed by private interests
- Economically: An exchange medium that strengthens activity, yet also a store of value driving speculation disconnected from economic activity
- Symbolically: An abstract representation of community confidence in itself, yet also a mark of exogenous political power domination
- Money is simultaneously a factor of community coherence and solidarity—and a factor destroying social bonds.
Therefore, any reflection on democratizing money must work simultaneously on two fronts: facilitating access to money AND limiting the monetary sphere. This is precisely the opposite of our current economic system, which reduces monetary access for the majority while seeking to monetize all of life.
Three proposals for democratizing money:
- Pluralize money by encouraging citizen currencies as commons at all levels
- Develop democratic financial systems combining citizen control of central banks with generalization of ethical banks—redirecting quantitative easing from commercial banks to ethical banks
- Foster unconditional guaranteed income—hybrid financing through citizen-controlled Central Banks (as primary source), commons activity (via local currency distribution), and voluntary participation in SEL-type monetary systems
This deliberated money approach envisions moving from neoliberal monetary models toward "deliberalist" models where democratic deliberation determines both monetary access and the boundaries of monetary exchange.