Ecological Foundations of a Market Commons

Discussion

Lukas Peters:

"By defining the market as a commons, we assume that economic activities are primarily to be understood within an ecological framework. The economy is thus not only understood as a subsystem of society, but also as a subsystem of an even larger and more encompassing ecosystem. This notion can best be understood by considering an idea put forward quite recently by Kate Raworth: “doughnut economics” (2017). In order to do justice to the fact that the world’s resources are limited, Raworth pictures economic processes as describing paths that trace out the shape of a doughnut – in contrast to an ever increasing linear movement.

Hence, she portrays the economy in the following manner:

In Raworth’s depiction, the commons exist as one segment of the economy beside the household, market and the state. While I find Raworth’s portrayal of an embedded economy accurate on the whole, I have argued here that a democratic and ecologically sustainable society should expand its commons both in the sphere of the state and the sphere of the market. Nevertheless, a strength of this model is that it embeds economics within society and society, in turn, within a larger ecosystem, which is limited. Here, the dynamic reproduction of systems is understood as the metabolic flow of matter and energy within and between systems. More fundamentally, because matter and energy are limited on planet earth, economic activities are generally understood as a zero-sum game: some people’s gains are other people’s losses. The question that results from this problem is how to minimize the losses and create a relative abundance despite the absolute limitations set by the resources that exist. It is important to bear in mind that when we are talking about a capitalist market, we are talking about both material and symbolic (monetary) relationships. Moreover, the accumulation of wealth in a capitalist context involves both the monetary accumulation of ‘good’ matter and energy in the hands of a few and the widespread distribution of ‘bad’ matter and energy in the form of pollution and ecological degradation. In this way, we can understand profits as the extraction, privatization and accumulation of previously non-commodified goods such as individual labor power (including physical strength and creativity), genomes, water, land or fossil fuels. On a symbolic level, this implies the unequal distribution of access to resources (matter and energy) through one’s purchasing power. One form of such an unequal distribution of symbolic wealth is found in the large asymmetries between creditors and debtors. Similarly, profits earned through speculation can be understood as gains that increase the costs of goods (e.g. food) and, in turn, decrease the access to this resource for numerous other people. The accumulation that results from speculation can thus be interpreted as a form of extraction from other people’s purchasing power and access to a certain good or resource.

In line with this ecological conception of the economy, we might understand the flow of resources with the help of the metaphor of an irrigation system. This irrigation system can either be democratically organized according to the needs of individual users and therefore be very finely tuned in distributing water to all regions of an ecosystem. Or, conversely, it can be organized according to supply and demand, purchasing power and the Matthew Principle in which the irrigation system is modeled with increasingly large levees and dams that contain and accumulate the water for the use of only a few. Using such a metaphor, migration can, for example, be understood as people simply following the metabolic flow of ‘good’ matter and energy on the planet earth. These people are coming to drink from the dam of accumulated matter and energy. If we take an ecological perspective of this kind, we have to abandon the belief that economic growth will solve socio-ecological problems, because, as we have seen, accumulation and the highly unequal distribution of wealth inherently lead to socio-ecological conflicts. In the face of these serious problems, the concept of a market commons provides us with an understanding of markets that attempts to take these ecological limits into account by democratically negotiating the market’s institutional framework and the coordination of its basic activities. Thus, the aim of a democratic market commons is to transform absolute scarcity into a relative abundance through the mechanisms of cooperation, sufficiency and conviviality.

The general point of such a market commons, however, is not merely democratic inclusion, but the reconceptualization of the market itself as an institution that must fulfill basic needs such as the provision of decent, respectable and, ideally, meaningful and fulfilling jobs, as well as access to essential goods and services – within certain planetary boundaries. This is what one group of scholars has described as the “foundational economy” (Bentham et al. 2013), which is “that part of the economy that creates and distributes goods and services consumed by all (regardless of income and status) because they support everyday life” (ibid.: 7). When we conceptualize the market as a commons, we see that the market’s primary function is not to endlessly increase wealth, but to satisfy needs by bringing people who desire things together with people who produce them. This is the basic function of markets that was, at least in theory, originally intended to be realized by open and free markets. Free markets are supposed to fulfill this function better than other markets and better than other institutions such as the state or the community. Yet, in contrast to the intellectuals who believe that this can only occur when the market is self-regulating, I would argue instead that it requires the support of democratic governance mechanisms to perpetually adapt the institutional framework to changing social needs and socio-ecological conditions. Furthermore, a focus on market commons transforms the overarching and often abstract rules and regulations of an open competitive market into decentralized socio-ecological niches in which the default rules of the institutional framework foster cooperation, fairness and the sustainable reproduction of socio-ecological systems. We could call this a type of “democratic experimentalism” (Dorf/Sabel 1998) in economics.

Within the context of open and competitive markets, such strategies are often pejoratively called protectionist. In this critique, protectionism is conceived of as a situation in which one party protects its gains while harming others. In contrast, when the market commons landscape is understood as diverse and contextually interdependent, the rules of a specific market should always attempt to protect the sustainable reproduction of its resource system within its interdependent relationships to other socio-ecological overarching systems. The precise aim of the endeavor is to protect sustainable and (re)generative forms of economic activity that enable the thriving of their members without harming other living beings elsewhere. Lastly, I would argue that a market commons would shift our focus, whenever possible, from global commodity chains to local or regional economic cycles. The relocalization of economic activities and market interactions would not only have a positive ecological effect due to shorter transportation routes, but could also provide affected people with greater incentives and opportunities to govern the institutional framework of their market commons in democratic ways. As with democracy in the political sphere, the more local the relationships and the shorter the chains of accountability are, the greater the trust and the more effective mutual monitoring and sanctioning can be.

Nevertheless, a market commons must not solely focus on the local or regional, but should enable people throughout the world to codetermine and adapt their economic institutional frameworks through networked forms of governance in order to fulfill their similar yet conflicting needs. That being said, it is important to emphasize that an economy built up from interconnnected market commons requires a larger, overarching political framework that fosters the decentralization of ecological economic activities. But as I have already said in relation to the commons-based provision of basic goods and services such as housing and health care, a market commons cannot simply be implemented top-down from a single center of authority, but must be demanded and jointly developed by people who take their own socio-ecological habitats as starting-points."

(https://www.transcript-verlag.de/shopMedia/openaccess/pdf/oa9783839454244.pdf)