Jem Bendell's Strategy for a Deep Adaptationist Commons Transition
Description
Jem Bendell:
"1. we can’t adequately prepare for collapse from within the system that’s causing it. We must lay the foundations of a new system;
2. we’ll need to produce and distribute food and other essentials, and maintain houses, energy and water infrastructure outside of the corporate system – and that requires working people to do it;
3. modern social and environmental movements in the UK (and beyond) have failed to engage working people;
4. resources owned within the commons can lay the foundations of a new system, by providing affordable, secure housing, affordable utilities and jobs for working-class communities."
Characteristics
Jem Bendell:
1. We can’t prepare for collapse within the system that’s causing it. We must lay the foundations of a new system.
"We need to shift to a new system, so that we can be fed, watered, housed, cared for, and enjoy our lives as best as possible in a more environmentally unstable future. In the West, violent overthrow of the current system is impossible, and electable political parties are corporate, and therefore uninterested in ‘new system’ thinking, which means that it’s not achievable via the electoral process. The co-operative movement may have seemed like a viable alternative in the 19th century, but it doesn’t now (for reasons outlined here). We must build the new system quickly yet incrementally, in ways that bring immediate benefits to the majority. I refer here to ‘working people’ whose income is from the work that they do, not from rent on property, interest on loans, dividends, or speculating on assets. Putting assets into the commons is the one activity I’ve seen that can build that new system in ways that benefit people today.
2. We’ll need to produce and distribute food and other essentials, and maintain houses, energy and water infrastructure outside of the corporate system
– and that requires working people to do it.
The immediate benefits for working people will need to be created by working people themselves (who else?), in ways that provide jobs and all the essentials of life without allowing profits, rent and interest to be extracted from communities and accumulated by the already super-wealthy. Our first steps need to be economic – to provide material interdependence in communities, and to cut off the flow of money to corporations from our employment and consumption. Home ownership has given working people a way to avoid paying rent (but not interest to banks). But now asset management firms like BlackRock can offer investments in packages of thousands of houses as easily as shares for the super-wealthy. After decades of house price inflation due to the mortgage-pump, mass purchases by investment funds risk making it more difficult for working people, and especially young people, to own a home. If more houses can be put into common ownership, we could start to turn the tide. That is why we are doing it in Stroud, a town in the South West of the UK.
3. Modern social and environmental movements in the UK (and beyond) have failed to engage working-class communities.
I’m from a working-class town, and I observe groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Transition Towns through the eyes of working people. They’ve been seen as very middle-class and alien (1), as well as being slightly annoying and out-of-touch (2). The mass media has played a role in giving that impression, but it is not without some truth. My experience was with a Transition Town group in middle-class London. I believe I witnessed a lot of virtue signalling, but little understanding of the need for a new economic system and zero interest in practical steps towards economic alternatives. For instance, I had conversations about how to reduce inequality with members who were private landlords, which is a guaranteed way to transfer wealth from poor to rich. Nice people, but probably much too comfortable to want serious change (3). I’m not saying that working people are paragons of virtue, but they don’t add to economic inequality or have such high ecological footprints, because they can’t afford to. The working class has less to lose from a transformation of the current economic system, and that’s why they can and must play a central role. It’s why this issue of the class profile of activist groups is not an annoying side issue, and should be central to any strategic thinking about pursuing major social change.
4. The commons can lay the foundations of a new system, while providing the essentials in working-class communities.
In a commons-owned project, whatever the business activity, there are investors, who hold commons vouchers, and they’re members of a commons group, who can limit the number any one person holds, as savings or as part of a pension. That means there are no bosses, shareholders, moneylenders or private landlords. Workers in a commons group are also owners of the common resource – we’re all commoners.
There are immediate benefits for people who need economic help. That’s because commons-owned projects can provide strong asset locks, obtain infrastructure without debt, reduce the need for money and banks, and federate to (global) scale. Therefore working-class communities can benefit right now from affordability, jobs, secure tenancies and cashflow solutions for small businesses.
Commons-owned projects involve bringing in investment to pay stewards to run the schemes and maintain the infrastructure – rather than relying on volunteerism like trusts, charities and activist movements, which are then inevitably run by middle-class people (4). Most working people can’t afford to volunteer (5), which has influenced the strategies and priorities of activist groups. Rather than talk about “involving” under-represented groups in a charity or activist group, a powerful movement needs to meet the real needs of working people today, while also building towards the future we want.
I also think commoning gets us past the left/right division in politics. For instance, it’s not about state provision, but it takes important resources, like housing and land, off the market forever. So a commons economy can also unite divided communities. Something that has always been important but is increasingly so now, as we don’t want to be fighting each other as things fall apart.
If the financial system ever goes down, the commons can provide a way to operate a means of exchange, so we can keep doing stuff for each other without their money, accounts and payment systems. We don’t need to make collapse worse by struggling with barter or failed attempts at isolated self-sufficiency. Instead, mutual credit accounting is the way to do it. It is why I helped to build a national mutual credit scheme for the UK – the Open Credit Network. If our technological capacity is significantly reduced by collapse, it can be done with a notebook and pen, or even in people’s heads, as they did in medieval villages. And if you are lucky enough to have money to invest, then you can become a commoner by investing in your community, rather than placing all your bets on the corporate financial system."