Introduction to Generative Justice

* Article:An Introduction to Generative Justice. By Ron Eglash. Revista Teknokultura, Vol. 13(2), 369-404.

URL = http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/TEKN/article/view/52847/49997

Description

Ron Eglash:

"Marx proposed that capitalism’s destructive force is caused, at root, by the alienation of labor value from its generators. Environmentalists have added the concept of unalienated ecological value, and rights activists added the unalienated expressive value of free speech, sexuality, spirituality, etc. Marx’s vision for restoring an unalienated world by top-down economic governance was never fulfilled. But in the last 30 years, new forms of social justice have emerged that operate as “bottom-up”. Peer-to-peer production such as open source software or wikipedia has challenged the corporate grip on IP in a “gift exchange” of labor value; community based agroecology establishes a kind of gift exchange with our nonhuman allies in nature. DIY citizenship from feminist makerspaces to queer biohacking has profound implications for a new materialism of the “knowledge commons”; and restorative approaches to civil rights can challenge the prison-industrial complex. In contrast to top-down “distributive justice,” all of the above are cases of bottom-up or “generative justice”." (http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/TEKN/article/view/52847/49997)

Discussion

Ron Eglash:

"It is common to hear conservative politicians declare that “liberals just argue over who got a smaller piece of the pie—but we want to make a bigger pie for everyone.” While this characterization is often misleading rhetoric, it reveals an uncomfortable truth about the political left: they have historically focused on the “distributive justice” of top-down government intervention. But in the last 30 years, new forms of social justice have emerged that are better described as “bottom-up”. Open source computing is perhaps the best known of these trends: the bloated, proprietary software of giant corporations is increasingly replaced by code that was generated in a kind of “gift exchange” of labor value: free distribution inspires free contributions. Another example is the food justice movement: the networks of community composting, urban gardens, “farm to fork” organics, and other means to establish a gift exchange with our non-human allies in nature. A third is the “maker” movement — a kind of open source network for the material world—which puts technologies ranging from 3D printing to “DIY bio” in the hands of lay citizens. Bottom-up value generation is not only a framework to address wealth inequality and environmental degradation; it also characterizes liberation from authoritarian control over free expression: peer-to-peer distribution of music, arts and other media; grassroots activism for sexual diversity across the globe; and so on. The time has come for a framework to describe these bottom-up alternatives to distributive justice: hence the need for this collection on generative justice.

Generative justice is more than just a list of helpful activities; it is a fundamentally different way of thinking about economics, politics, technology, ethics, and other categories that make up our vision for how societies should be arranged. If we think of the spectrum running from capitalism to communism, generative justice would be orthogonal to that line: open source software, composted soil, and reproductive rights have been just as much a struggle in the context of state ownership as they have been under private ownership. As isolated examples of bottom-up organization we already have “peer to peer economy” movements, “eco-utopia” movements, “restorative justice” movements, etc. But there is no cohesive framework for understanding what they have in common. Generative justice defines that common principle as the bottom-up circulation of unalienated value. This essay will provide a basic understanding of generative justice; a means to recognize its presence and potentials as it emerges; and a vision for how we might nurture its growth from these isolated examples to systems that can encompass an entire technosocial landscape." (http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/TEKN/article/view/52847/49997)

More Information

• Unalienated Value