Interstitial Commoning
Discussion
Lukas Peters:
"Because confrontational ways of reclaiming commons can, in some cases, be challenged with severe opposition by the state and politico-economic elites, it is important to support these activities with more subtle, yet just as important ‘interstitial’ commoning. In his book Envisioning Real Utopias (2010), Erik Olin Wright describes interstitial strategies and activities as “various kinds of processes that occur in the spaces and cracks within some dominant social structure of power” (Wright 2010:322). The aim of these activities is to “build […] alternative institutions and deliberately foster […] new forms of social relations that embody emancipatory ideals and that are primarily created through direct action of one sort or another rather than through the state” (ibid.: 324). From a historical perspective, traders and entrepreneurs have used this strategy to open markets in highly regulated feudal social arrangements (Braudel 1986). Considering the pressing socio-ecological injustices we face today, I would argue that it is therefore of the utmost importance to not only focus on confronting and transforming the state, but also on independent and interstitial forms of commoning.
With reference both to the inability of our
limited political options to deal with the problems we face within the existing political and legal frameworks and to the injustices that result, I agree with James Tully that
- the remedy to this injustice is not only to exchange public reasons in hopes of influencing governments, for this has its limits. For cooperative democrats, the response is to non-cooperate with this undemocratic mode of production and consumption, to withdraw one’s producing and consuming capabilities from commodification and to exercise productive and consumptive capabilities ‘in common’ in democratically run cooperatives and community-based organizations that are re-embedded in social relationships. Such grass roots democracies then produce and distribute the basic public goods that are privatized under the dominant form of democracy: food, shelter, clothing, health care, clean water, security and so on. (Tully 2014: 91)
As in my discussion of Amartya Sen, Tully argues that “this tradition [of civic cooperative democracy] is also practice based and ‘realization focused’, yet in a more immediate way, and it works around, rather than within, the basic structure” (Tully
2013b: 223). Obviously, such activities must also be understood as ways of reclaiming commons, yet the focus has shifted from confrontative re-appropriation to the collective creation of commons – irrespective of state support and the existing legal
structure.
Here, the goods that we have generally understood up until now as objects of
a basic right to satisfy one’s needs and that originally should, in some form or
another, be provided for by the state are now provided as commons by the people
themselves through collective civic activities. Again, in the words of Tully:
This is the tradition of democracy as non-violent cooperative self-government: of
the people exercising the capabilities of self-government together in their social
and economic activities on the commons. This is the classic meaning of democracy: of the demos exercising kratos (political capacities) in public reasoning and acting together for the sake of public goods. (ibid.; original emphasis)
Here, Tully interprets public goods as commons because these goods are created
through democratic, collective action. As he emphasizes, this activity is non-violent because the cooperation necessary for democratic self-governance can only occur through non-violent means of communication and interaction. It is clear
that one should, however, not over-romanticize these commoning activities, since
they often arise when people are in distress and misery due to the breakdown of
older forms of provision, whether through communal ties, the market or the state
(Karaliotas 2016). Yet, whatever the motivation for these activities may be, they still
must be understood as a central answer to the unresponsiveness of the state and
politico-economic elites to the basic needs of people. But as I have already said,
the goal is not for the state or economic elites to paternalistically provide goods
and services for people, but for citizens to be able to democratically provide for
themselves – ideally with the support of a democratized state and the aid of what
we have previously called eco-law.
In this sense, I must reaffirm more generally that democratic and socio-economic rights themselves were rarely, if ever, simply granted to people by those in power, but were often developed by people in need and finally realized through noncooperative confrontation with state authorities. For example, the development of
the welfare state since the times of Otto von Bismarck should be understood not as
a well-intentioned and benign gesture, but as a bribe that was intended to pacify
the masses by increasing their loyalty to the state and by simultaneously undermining workers’ demands for more democratic self-management over their living conditions (Palier 2010: 36-7). Put in this perspective, although the satisfaction of
basic needs could be understood as a basic right that should be provided for by
the state, state provision can, ironically, if not organized in a democratic manner,
easily undermine the democratic skills and institutions necessary for a commonscreating society. For this reason, interstitial commoning activities are of fundamental importance not only for people to be able to satisfy their own needs, but
also to cultivate the experiences, skills and institutional examples necessary for the
widespread development of commoning and commons – both in and against the state."
(https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Commons,_Markets_and_Democracy)
Source: Chapter 7 of the book: Commons, Markets_and Democracy