Link List 3

http://techpresident.com/news/24346/tom-slee-and-omidyar-network-six-degrees-skepticism

http://www.digitalrightslac.net/en/internet-y-democracia-las-manifestaciones-de-junio-en-brasil/

http://www.digitalrightslac.net/en/cultura-de-webbots-o-artesanos-reflexiones-criticas-sobre-la-cultura-libre/

http://www.academia.edu/4342422/The_Autonomous_Roots_of_the_Real_Democracy_Movement

To add to the blog

On the Need for a Integrative Framework for the Provisioning Economy

Pat Conaty, responding to a paper by Marvin Brown:

"Thanks for sharing your paper on new vocabulary. You raise here such a key issue. Vocabulary does matter and indeed it is foundational to co-constructing the Commonwealth paradigm that all of us on this list in somewhat different and complementary ways share as a vision.

I also think you are right Marvin in stressing the need to open up the Big Conversation about What is the economy for? A majority of the public would agree with you I believe that fundamentally it is or should be about provisioning to meet the needs for a good life. Aristotle lives on in his sage perception of this fundamental truth. However not that many understand the Aristotelian analysis about money which is fundamentally barren (especially today as it is weightless and freely generated electronic symbols) and should be confined and constrained by law as a means of equitable exchange and should not be allowed to run riot as an anti-social and usurious rent-seeking weapon.

Your suggestion Marvin to work on a common vocabulary of key words to guide actors, agencies and institutions in ways to civilise the economy and socialise markets is key. I don't agree with your point that property is not an important foundation for building commonwealth. Yes your argument is right about corporations as we know them. But property does matter, just as markets need reframing. The issue for me is how we democratise and equitably distribute property rights and ensure they are inclusive. As John argues the case well on the need for socialising markets and making fair trade the norm not the marginal extra, so we need to do the same with property rights and by extension reinvent the corporation for people and for the planet.

Framing the legal charters correctly for these missing and vitally required new institutional forms viz. banking, exchange, accountancy and collective work is crucial to assemble the new economic democratic systems that are a sine qua non for defending and extending the commons. The vital parts are visible in relation to emerging good practice for building commonwealth to meet provisioning needs, from Community Land Trusts for housing and workspace to large scale Community Supported Agriculture for food systems like Seikatsu Clubs in Japan, but the bringing together of the whole system is not yet what enough people doing pioneering commons work are focusing on. This is a major weakness and unless addressed, good practice will remain marginal and ameliorative and not have the potential to become transformative. Developing a shared vocabulary as you suggest Marvin is a superb place to begin this journey.

A confusion that arises that prevents us building the meta-narrative together is that the exclusive property rights that are dominant are connected with undemocratic political economy of capitalist accumulation. The alternative below the radar screen but that does reappear from time to time during an accumulation crisis in the dominant system (like the time we are passing through) is the democratic and co-operative accumulation road. The problem though among in fact many in the mutual economy sector is that many in the Co-op movement lose confidence in their own mission during the boom periods and end up aping the capitalist model and thus losing the plot." (email, August 2013)

On the Historical and Future Connection between Peer Production and an Ethical Economy

Excerpted from Pat Conaty in a discussion with Marvin Brown:

"The word 'commune' arose in the tenth century from the activities of artisans in Italy that created enclosed spaces to defend themselves and their vernacular peer to peer production from the pillaging of the time by overlords. Commune in the middle ages meant 'to wall together' or in other words to create defensive enclosures to protect and enable the emergence of 'fair trade markets'. Then of course there were the three estates, those who fight (nobles), those who pray (clergy) and those who work (serfs). To become free from serfdom, artisanal workers had to build walls to physically protect themselves and indeed peer to peer exchange systems to co-exist and co-develop. They collaborated dynamically to develop equitable markets. To secure the legality to do so, they had to fight to secure town charters.

Second, therefore I don't think the problem is markets per se. Polanyi in fact separates early vernacular markets marked by local trading from mercantilistic markets involving long-distance trading. To clarity this he was guided by Marx's distinctions between c-m-c and m-c-m' (we might describe as fair trade today) and M-C-M' (obligopolistic capitalism that is destroying people, planet and eviscerating culture like acid). Herman Daly draws out this analysis powerfully in his less well known book, Beyond Growth.

Third, if common artisans invented equitable markets they also understood that productive property is a good thing if limited in scale and so long as it is equitably distributed and all commoners have fair access. For example in the medieval period, a master artisan could only have on shop in a town. So we need to make a similar property scale distinction. Ruskin did this well: between 'wealth' for life and well being versus 'illth' - ill gotten property. The commonwealth guiding idea here being is that if you can't use it, you should lose it. In other words commoners and co-operators need access and indeed ownership/use rights to sufficient productive property to guarantee and ensure their democratic autonomy. Beyond this sufficient level, property rights need to be curtailed. Henry George proposed land value taxation to do so and the Tobin tax is similar. But this implies the State. So how to appraise this?

Fourth, so goverance and government. Gustav Landauer contrasted powerfully the 'political principle' with the 'social principle.' To shrink the domiinance of the former you need to increase the operation and extension of the latter. Martin Buber celebrated this distinction. What this means is that as you develop socially and economically economic democracy, the State can be shrunk to an appropriate scale. JS Mill similarly celebrated and actively promoted economic democracy for this same reason.

Fifth, following this logic, I think we can see that markets need to be designed to be equitable and fair, enclosing space as necessary to preserve and defend the commons including these markets with a small 'm'. To do this requires an understanding of the social physics of co-operative commonwealth and ways to legally structure and protect co-operative property of all sorts. Mike Lewis and I show in our book a plethora of systems for doing this from community land trusts to interest-free banking like JAK and to social welfare via multi-stakeholder social co-ops.

Sixth, Government is a problem when and where it concludes with mercantilism and monopoly. This is self-evident today post 2008 where no serious attempt has been made to bring oligopolistic banking to democratic account. However government with a 'small g' has in the past and can be married positively and practically with markets with a small 'm' and property with a 'small p'.

Seventh, where you can get these public, private and civil society co-actors collaborating, the scope is huge to build Social-Public Partnerships to co-develop co-operative accumulation. Civic Commonwealth requires a new dynamic concept of property. Community Land Trusts do this in that with a CLT, the land is held in common but dwellings built upon the land can be privately owned with a 99 year lease typically and a small ground rent. This exemplifies I think Marvin what Civic Commonwealth and co-operative property (as opposed to standard private property) looks like. The property is co-owned with the land held out of the market by commoners but household able to secure an equitable amount of property on a full repairing lease for their period of residence. So in the CLT system there is a limited amount of private property permitted.

Eighth, the article I sent you all last time on the Co-operative Land Bank shows how this dynamic (We and I) co-ownership system can be co-developed across entire areas of cities and for new towns in a collaborative partnership with local government collaborators. This is the Guild socialist vision in operation and promoted powerfully by GDH Cole, RH Tawney and Bertrand Russell in the 1920s. After escaping from fascism, Polanyi worked with Tawney in London as a fellow Workers Education Association teacher in the 1930s and indeed during the second World War. This collaborative experience fed into his thinking and writing of the Great Transformation. Professor Margie Mendell at Karl Polanyi Institute has provided me recently me her analysis of this link during his period of Polanyi's life. Of course in Shadow Work and other books, Illich refers back to Polanyi. Similarly Fritz Schumacher refers back to Tawney.

Democratic participation and co-design can be forged effectively in this direction but understanding appropriate scale is essential in relation to the market, the state and the commons. With these insights, we can reforge vernacular culture in the ways Illich so beautifully conveyed.

...

The current pervasive and myopic focus on income redistribution via the state is one-eyed. Redistributing ownership is key to securing a well-being, provisioning and a steady-state economy beyond growth. Capital is so productive but it is concentrated in the hands of the 1% and that is why the world's population are on an endless treadmill of work to you drop. Retiring ages are getting longer and working weeks extending despite the massive increases in technological productivity. Guild socialist Bertrand Russell made the case for a 20 hour week based on technical capacity and co-operative redistribution in the 1920s and here we are a century later and we are still going backwards and blind to the ownership question.

Unless we can spread ownership of productive assets, we cannot shorten the working week and get off the growth and debt treadmill. The distributists made this analysis in the 1920s. Ashford is right. Spreading capital ownership in inclusive ways is crucial. A binary income involving wages and dividends is vital but some how we need to make this real and equitable fr all people. Co-operative economic democracy has the solutions here. " (email August 2013)