NOAM CHOMSKY: WHAT NEXT FOR OCCUPY?

Much as Hindus see divinity in a multitude of forms, and Taoists in all paths, i hold the dream that someday a critical mass of humanity will treat the Earth and all her children — minerals, plants, animals, humans… including all Earth’s systems and cultures — as treasured spiritual teachers.  We will then begin to appreciate what it means to have unity in diversity, interconnected global citizens.

Stop Tar Sands: A Carbon Bomb equal in destructive power to an atomic bomb

So when i received these creative messages of upcoming action from a fellow Earth Activist, i felt moved to share it … he astutely perceives that there will be myriad paths towards building the comprehensive global movement for justice and sustainability that many of us wish to foster.

His writing from Down Under helps us to honor yet another perspective (and seasonal cycle!), and he celebrates the fact that we will have many approaches to address our global crises.  I wrote from a similar angle recently about the varied and complementary means for system shift of the World Social Forum, Occupy and the Commons Movement.

My friend, Derek, gives an overview of the major happenings across movements: Occupy (May 1-12), the Climate Impacts Day (May 5), and the Freedom Train of the First Nations (April 28-May 9) drawing attention to the tragedy he has dedicated his life to stopping — the exploitation of the Canadian Tar Sands (ISTSD, May 5).  The Tar Sands development is considered by many to be an international crime of Ecoside.

Derek and his partner Cheree have spared no effort, and like so many young people i have met in Occupy and other environmental and social movements of today, they have dedicated their lives to transitioning this broken global system towards one of greater justice, sustainability and unity.  Who knows what dreams May come of these high aspirations and earnest efforts, but one thing is sure, all can contribute to this global transformation…  And i’m betting it will be bigger than anyone imagines!

From left: Occupy.com cofounders Seth Adam Cohen and David Sauvage, manager Samantha Pastor, and social-media editor Justin Wedes. Photo by Alex Fradkin

“A new media channel that will amplify the voices of Occupy. We use media to call for social, economic and environmental justice. We seek to inspire resistance, engagement and the creation of the new world we imagine… We consist of a small but growing group of dedicated occupiers working in solidarity with the movement. We are supported by a combination of donations and volunteerism. There is no GA or Spokes Council overseeing us, but we are morally accountable to the movement as a whole.”

Does it sound like The Future of Occupy collaborative describing itself? It sure does, however those sentences are not from the FoO site but the About page of Occupy.com, a new sister node in the growing and thickening ecosystem of Occupy media. The goals of Occupy.com that we, at The Future of Occupy, enthusiastically share are:

• Replace the mainstream media with the voices of the people. That’s the long term goal.
• Short term goal is to think together about how to do that.

There are some similarities between what they do what we’ve been doing since last September (e.g. news curation), but there are also many important differences. They are bringing a very unique color to the Occupy media landscape, and doing so, contributing to the tide that raises all boats.

Occupy.com presents its content organized by what people can read, watch, see, and listen on the site. That way of structuring its content will certainly speak those who seek information not as much about something but by the preferred mood of accessing it in a given time.  So when I want to watch good, curated Occupy vids, I know where to go.

There’s also good writing on the site, which may even become a hallmark of it. For example, the “Occupy Wall Street Bridges the May Day Divide” article masterfully mixes little-know historical trivia of May day with passionate call for creative collective action. While the “The American Spring” piece republished from the Nation of Change shows the editors’ taste for using the talents of progressive professional journalism.

We particularly appreciate the contibution of Occupy.com to the musical universe of the movement. Some of our contributors commented on that, as follows.

“Joan Baez performing for OWS on 11/11/11 Revival of deep solidarity, beauty, and passion… I felt transported back to the days of the Vietnam protests, and my teenage years when listening to Joan Baez inspired courage, and hope for a united and peaceful world. Her voice is as clear and strong as it ever was, full of spirit.  When I hear her sing, I hear love, freedom, and a deep conviction that the good will win if we stand together in solidarity.

It reminds me of a saying by Confucius: “Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” Music is a universal language that transcends boundaries and bonds people even when thousands of miles apart. On peace marches in the late 70s and early 80s we didn’t have the internet but we had music and each other. We composed and shared songs.  Songs from the soul that made us feel deeply united around a common cause. Where is this kind of music today? Who is inspiring solidarity and helping us all feel united even when we are far apart?”

Another of our fellow bloggers wrote, almost in response to the above, by commenting on Makana’s “How I Occupied a Dinner with Obama:”

“I was particularly drawn to the LISTEN section of Occupy.com because we do need music!  Makana’s “We Are the Many” has been a highlight for me since I first came across his anthem last fall. I was also drawn to his comments in the video about performing that song for President Obama and other world leaders at the APEC dinner in Hawaii. I was very moved as he talked about how he overcame the fear of singing his defiant original song in front of this influential group.

I see Occupy.com being of immense importance reinvigorating the movement going forward, as the genuine, heartfelt messages continue to resonate with millions of people in ways that haven’t been experienced like this before. Welcome Occupy.com!

As the team at Occupy.com points out, “perhaps no one could have anticipated the emergence of the Occupy Wall St. Movement or the cultural renaissance that would bring new life to the worlds of journalism, art, film and, of course, music.” Yes, it is a cultural renaissance in the broadest sense of “culture”:  a set of shared “views, values, goals, and practices that characterize a group, organization, or nation in a specified time period” (Wkipedia)

We’re witnessing a viral awakening to human dignity, freedom, the joy of co-creation and solidarity, as our non-alienable birthright. It is driven largely by the youth and enabled by the power of “electronic media, one of love’s most powerful and effective tools of transformation during the last days, facilitating education and catalyzing widespread awakening.” – The Third Millennium: Living in the Post-historic World (1991)

Human desire for a better life for all and our technical capacities to make it so, co-conspire and foment a “long march through the institutions.” What Gramsci meant by that metaphor is achieving “cultural hegemony,” by taking back cinema, theater, schools, universities, media, courts, etc. from the elite. It will be a long march, indeed, into an era of new, liberating social and economic practices and relationships.

Welcome Occupy.com, and thank you for being among those ushering that era in!

“Suppose, says Marx, a capitalist begins production with $1,000 in capital and in the first year manages to gain $200 surplus value from laborers mixing their labor with the land, and the capitalist then uses that surplus in personal consumption. Then, after five years, the $1,000 should belong to the collective laborers, since they are the ones who have mixed their labor with the land. The capitalist has consumed away all of his or her original capital…

While this logic might sound outrageous, it lay behind the Swedish Meidner plan proposed in the late 1960s.

A tax on corporate profits, in return for wage restraint on the part of unions, was to be placed in a worker-­controlled fund that would invest in and eventually buy out the corporation, thus bringing it under the common control of the associated laborers.

Capital resisted this idea with all its might, and it was never implemented. But the idea ought to be reconsidered.The central conclusion is that the collective laboring that is now productive of value must ground collective, not individual, property rights. Value, socially necessary labor time, is the capitalist common, and it is represented by money, the universal equivalency by which common wealth is measured. The common is not, therefore, something extant once upon a time that has since been lost, but something that, like the urban commons, is continuously being produced. The problem is that it is just as continuously being enclosed and appropriated by capital in its commodified and monetary form…

The point is not to fulfill the requirements of accumulation for accumulation’s sake on the part of the class that appropriates the common wealth from the class that produces it. The point, rather, is to change all that and to find creative ways to use the powers of collective labor for the common good.”

By Jan Inglis

As local and global citizens, we need to take actions to care for our commons

V

However, before taking action, there has to be decisions to take the actions.

V

Decisions about actions need to include the voices of those most impacted.

V

Before these decisions can be made, there need to be good options to decide upon.

V

Before these options for solutions are identified, there needs to be shared understanding regarding the diverse causes of the problem.

V

Before we agree to causes and options for solutions, we need to know that different people will have different experiences about what caused the problems and how to resolve them

V

We need to see these different experiences as legitimate perspectives that may contribute to effective actions and solutions

V

Using forums designed to have citizens analyze their issues from different perspectives means we have a better chance of creating considered and comprehensive solutions together.

V

This is called designed deliberative democracy: it is useful for engaging local and global citizens to make agreements needed to co-govern their commons through social charters and trusts.

Jan Inglis is a Public Decisions Facilitator with Global Commons Trust, 3Ddemocracy@telus.net

By James Bernard Quilligan, Commons Economist & Advocate                

Beyond the Market State

There are two operating systems involved in the provision and allocation of goods and services in modern society. Each has familiar roots in history. Adam Smith’s legacy is that the self-interest of individual producers and consumers competing through the market automatically maximizes their welfare and that of everyone else. The legacy of Thomas Hobbes is that the self-interest of individuals who maximize their own welfare inevitably leads to social chaos and conflict, requiring state authority and the legal use of coercion. Since the Industrial Revolution, these seemingly divergent philosophies have fused into a single center of authority — the Market State – with the market responsible for economic productivity and the state for social control. Unlike decentralized systems which lead to disorder, inefficiency and waste, this monocentric order is said to optimize efficiency through centralization and the division of labor. Yet there is much evidence to the contrary. Modern markets and sovereign states are highly inefficient in providing and allocating resources simultaneously at different levels of human need and demand. By suppressing cross-scale linkages of common goods and profiting from mismatches in scale, the world’s hierarchical distribution structures prevent individuals from sustaining long-term productive use of their own resources.

The Market State cannot effectively provide goods and services to meet the needs of people for two reasons. First, through its bureaucratic rules and institutions, the Market State separates resource producers and providers from resource users, resulting in a division between individuals and groups which produce goods and services and those who consume them. When goods and services are not produced and consumed by the same people, they degenerate into meaningless commodities with negligible value. Second, by focusing mainly on aggregate data in their decisions on resources, modern markets and public administration exclude the intrinsic value of human and ecological well-being. When the primary source of human meaning is mediated by prices, commodities and private property, individuals are cut off from the natural wealth of their local/regional ecosystems and global commons; the social wealth of families, voluntary associations and communities; and the ideas, beliefs and cultural practices of others.

Co-Production

Presently, the market creates value by enclosing a common area with fences or borders (to extract its resources for production and deposit the ensuing waste), while the state defends this privatized property through its monopoly powers of enforcement. Yet there are a variety of institutional domains that foster and maintain collective resources outside of this framework. Many alternative systems have developed parallel sets of norms and rules to oversee their commons sustainably, preserving the autonomy and freedom of individual choice and generating higher efficiency than can be gained through distributive enterprises operated as private monopolies or state hierarchies. These resource communities incorporate the underlying principles of the Market State — the spontaneous, self-regulating social order of markets and the rule-based systems of state enforcement — yet go beyond them by rejecting privatization, centralization and the idea that institutional change can come only from the top of a social hierarchy. People in traditional communities generate resilient and effective resource management based on local ideas, learning, imagination and deliberation. Emerging commons such as the internet demonstrate similar properties of shared administration and value creation through social innovation and open designs. Such centers of decision-making, focused on the choices of individuals and the institutional context of those choices through dialogue and negotiation, enable individuals in diverse communities to discern their common interests for self-corrective action. Hence, the institutional structures of the commons — formally independent of each other yet guided according to social rules — create a new level of production and governance beyond the modern division of labor.

The key is involving resource users in the process of production. This should be self-evident, since users are often the first to recognize problems and identify solutions in the allocation and provision of common goods. Praxis is the process by which a theory or skill is enacted or realized. In contrast to the Market State’s model of the ‘delivery’ of goods and services to a passive public, when consumers are co-producers of the goods and services they receive and organize, their practical and applied knowledge is embodied directly in their commoning. As co-producers, the motivations, knowledge and skills of resource users become part of the production praxis, leading to new ways of interacting and coordinating social and economic life. By enhancing the effectiveness of resource provision and allocation and the creation of value, these new forms of co-production have the potential of transforming much of the present system of economic, political and social decision-making. This praxis of the commons — the participative and power-sharing forms of organization among resource users and producers/providers — isn’t really new. It’s the ancient but much-neglected foundation of community.

 Co-Governance

When resources are mismanaged, the development of covenants and institutions by consumer-producers is a critical step in protecting and sustaining them. A social charter is a formal declaration which outlines the rights and incentives of a community — involving both local jurisdictions and the multijurisdictional environment — in the supervision and protection of a common resource. The charter describes patterns of relationships between the resource and its users, managers and producers, allowing them all an opportunity to voice the mutual interests and responsibilities emerging from their rights to these common goods. The social charter empowers a geographical group and a broader association of stakeholders to hold a commons in trust for its beneficiaries, thereby safeguarding these vulnerable resources from the growing pressure to exploit them. This ensures that marginalized groups have access to common goods and that the benefits arising from their use are distributed in a fair and socially cooperative manner for present and future generations. Effective maintenance and preservation of a particular commons is thus generated through the collective action of citizens, customary representatives, social networks, academics, scientists, bilateral donors, development partners, regional organizers, intergovernmental organizations, independent media and other stakeholders — with limited input from government and the private sector.

By encouraging a range of self-organizing capacities, social charters give substantial discretion to individuals in designing effective institutions matched to the local, regional and global scales of vital goods and services. This enables a diversity of individuals and officials to make rule-based adjustments for the stewardship of their commons through multiple centers of power and decision-making. Social charters have been developed for forests, pastures, irrigation systems, water, fisheries, internet, knowledge, genetic resources, public health, energy, landscapes, historic sites and other domains. Examples of commons-based social charters include WANA (West Asia-North Africa) Forum, Charter of the Culture Forum of Barcelona for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge, Praja Foundation, Pacific Youth Charter, People’s Charter for Health, and the Sky Charter proposed by State of the World Forum. Resource communities like these express the values of democracy, equity and justice by managing their commons as directly and locally as possible. Through their transparent decision-making and decentralized control, these social chartered initiatives generate an entirely new context for collective action.

Rights of the Commons

Social charters are based on commons rights. Commons rights differ from human rights and civil rights because they arise, not through the legislation of a state, but through a customary or emerging identification with an ecology, a cultural resource area, a social need or a form of mutual labor. By expressing the rationale behind a group’s collective actions and the importance of understanding who shares what, how it is shared, and how it may be sustained for future generations and species, commons rights affirm the sovereignty of human beings over their means of sustenance and well-being. Instead of seeking individual and human rights from the State, people now claim long-term authority over resources, governance and social value as their planetary birthrights, whether at a local or global level. As an initiative of citizens and officials for governing the use and disposition of resources, those who create a social charter thus ensure that administrative power is decentralized in order to maintain community access to — and sovereignty over — their own commons.

Galvanized by the increasing awareness of commons rights across the world, governments will ultimately give as much attention and support to the local institutions of the commons as they currently extend to private companies. Through the assertion of people’s inherent rights to their common goods and the creation of their own formal declarations and institutions, the role of the state will become much more balanced between enabling the people of the commons and enabling corporations. After all, commons and businesses are the world’s two primary sources of value creation. Instead of regulating commerce and finance in the public interest (while also regulating the commons for the benefit of commerce and finance), a new responsibility of the state will be to recognize people’s locally developed rules for a commons by confirming and upholding their social charters. This allows resource communities to enforce their own rules and coordinate their sources of sustenance, livelihood and collective wealth without being challenged by external authorities.

To Create a Social Charter

With the growing interconnectivity of people, goods, technology and institutions, a new approach is needed for a new world. Instead of the unitary decision-making, monitoring and enforcement of the Market State, social charters focus the praxis of a commons upon the characteristics of goods and services and the freedom of choice of resource users in production and governance. This expression of autonomy, intentionality and intelligence around the shared values of collective production and consumption represents a new ontology of social order. When people discover or invent a commons, their self-interest aligns with collective interests and relationships, and their personal engagement and independence are distributed throughout the social network. The framework of a social charter operationalizes these emerging interests and practices, generating higher efficiency, more secure livelihoods, and greater personal and social meaning than enterprises which presume that individuals must be supervised through the command structures and exclusionary boundaries of private and state property. Since every commons varies by its specific resources, history, means of governance and production, and the social and cultural character of the community which uses or produces these common goods, there is no universal template for social charters. But a practical baseline is emerging. A social charter for a particular commons would include:

1. Vision and Mission Statement

2.  Historical Claims

•   a description of the existing users, boundaries, power and control of a commons

•   a summary of traditional or emerging claims to legitimacy and responsibility for   preserving the common resource

•   a notice of claims to reparations or re-territorialization of resource boundaries

3.  Rights to Fair Access and Use

•   a declaration of the users’ rights to organize and participate in the development of new institutions and rules

•   a statement of the entitlements and responsibilities of users, managers, and producers of the commons

•   a statement of equitably shared benefits, quality standards and safeguards

•   a code of ethics and common values

4. Resource Management

•   a quantifiable set of non-monetized metrics for measuring the common resource

•   a means of matching the rules of provision and appropriation to local conditions

•   a framework for democratic and transparent decision-making and participation

•   a structure of accountability for conflict resolution and redress of grievances

•   a process of monitoring and evaluation

Note:  Social Charters can serve as framework for by-laws incorporation in a legal trust entity.  Social Charters developed in a deliberative process of stakeholders are the first major step in reclaiming sovereignty which can be legally recognized in a Commons Trust.  For more information on Commons Trusts, see Global Commons Trust website below.

 James Bernard Quilligan, commons advocate and economist, has been an analyst and administrator in the field of international development since 1975. He has served as policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand, Edward Heath, Julius Nyerere, Lopez Portillo, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Jimmy Carter, and Prince El Hassan Bin Talal.

He has been an economic consultant for government agencies in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Tanzania, Kuwait, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada,
the United States. He has also served as an advisor for several United Nations programs and international development organizations, and has articles in numerous national and international publications under his own name and serving as ghost writer.  Quilligan is the Founder and Director of Global Commons Trust.

Want to learn more? Global Commons Trust provides information and support for creating social charters and commons trusts:  www.globalcommonstrust.org

Many know the game is rigged, and to change things will certainly require  more effort than signing a MoveOn.org petition or attending a formulaic training.  Politicians don’t like to quote this little gem from  William Penn, “let the people think they rule, and they will be ruled”.  Instead, politicians say hopeful things that mainly end up in quagmires of partisan politics and judicial preference for big business and limited private interests.  How can we reclaim our sovereignty, and find new ways to balance government and business interests in service to the 99%?  

Occupy reminds Government where sovereignty originates… with the people.  The May 1st general Strike in support of the workers of the world is a major opportunity to claim our sovereignty.  See what OWS is planning.  The global impact MAY be bigger than anyone expects.

So here’s the rub: we can’t fully reclaim sovereignty unless we begin to practice subsidiarity, ie making deliberative decisions about precisely how we want to see things change.  I was with Ben Price, Democracy School Instructor for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, on Oct 15, 2011 — CELDF is the group that helped Bolivians and Ecuadorans write their “Rights of Nature” legislation, and they’re helping many US towns with their Community Bill of Rights — I’ll never forget what Ben said when we marched with thousands of people that day… “these folks have the power right here and now to stomp into City Hall (we were in Pittsburgh), and start writing legislation that benefits the 99%.”

And here’s where subsidiary deliberative processes are so essential — and why the folks on the ground need to be backed up by the information commoners… the network-developers, bloggers and story-tellers among us — to distribute the ideas and develop means for feedback and input… AND inspire those on the fringes to attend more actions, GA’s and People’s Conventions/Congresses.  This is key for local legislation and will become increasingly necessary as the various local movements cooperatively tackle national and global initiatives.

But legislative change alone is not enough!  Can we leave our systems in this state of bi-polar — Market State — decision making?   Aren’t Market State structures proven vulnerable to monetary corruption?  So how can we grow a third sector strong enough to rebalance governments and markets,  holding our sovereignty intact and lending our subsidiarity a consistent institutional voice that can develop to check government and business over-reach, at any scale?  

Organized people power is the only solution.  We know that true deliberative democracy must always be vetted locally with the utmost transparency to maintain integrity, even when it associates and cooperates across scales .  This is the horizontalist spirit, what Occupy has modeled and nurtured from Day 1.  The Occupy Movement continues to develop many tools for these horizontal processes. Two good tools proposed here can add to that cache:

1. Designed Deliberative Processes (one page): This is a prioritized list of considerations for deliberative processes where 100% of the legitimate stakeholder perspectives are welcome to the debate, and the people together consider ways forward that might not be possible until the many options are explored and the best integrated collective decision-making emerges. The initial deliberation helps to create a design and framing from which new directions and solutions can emerge as the deliberation evolves.

2. Social Charters build on this exploration of many stakeholder perspectives via deliberation, helping to clarify where the role of government must evolve in support of the people in their local places, and where the limits of business must be set to ensure benefits, not liabilities, for communities.  Social Charters formalize the people’s claim to sovereignty, emerging authentically in each locale to manage and protect what must not be left to the excesses of the Market State.

This comprehensive tool (three pages) describes the role of Social Charters:

• Social Charters  protect natural, social and cultural resources (from energy to information systems, education to healthcare, and so on…).  
• Social Charters enable communities to claim the higher preservation value of their resources beyond the simple-minded monetization and enclosure regimes of the neo-liberal model.  
• Social Charters develop co-governance guidelines to preserve the natural and social capital of resources for current and future generations 
• Social Charters make provisions for economic production of a resource in right-relationship to human and natural communities.

Emissions permits are rights to use the atmosphere – a resource which gets a scarcity value equal to the carbon price. Current schemes like the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and Cap & Tax assume the carbon scarcity rent should go to polluters or governments – but doesn’t it belong to us all?

Since the earth’s atmosphere belongs to us all, a rapidly shrinking number of permits to sell fossil fuels could be issued… to the public per capita….and then the companies selling oil, gas and coal would be obliged to buy the permits from the common  people before they were allowed to sell fuels…. we the commoners would capture the carbon rent, and we would set the timelines and investment levels for transition away from fossil fuels.

Ostroms eight rules for commons management: Elinor Ostrom recently won the Nobel Prize for her studies of commons management practices around the world, and how they support sustainability and justice.

Here, her principles have been applied to the idea of global and subsidiary commons institutions (in each nation), run by the people’s trustees and supported by governments for enforcement of the carbon cap and distribution of the shares.

1.Clearly defined boundaries (in this case, targeted and precise measurements of up-stream carbon units that can be effectively monitored… this is generally assumed to be at the source of extraction)

2.Effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties [or illegitimate use] (“leaks” in the carbon measurements must be identified, and primary producers of fossil fuels brought into compliance)

3.Rules regarding the use of common resources are adapted to local conditions; (each national climate commons institution would decide how much to pay out as dividends to citizens, eg. for poverty alleviation or home energy system transformation, and how much to invest in transition projects and infrastructure)

4.Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource users to participate in the decision-making process; (a deliberative social charter process with engagement by many citizens will set rules and governance for subsidiary institutions in each nation, including collaboration on global atmosphere institution)

5. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to users; (some of the global revenues would go towards monitoring and enforcement of the global cap on emissions)

6.There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource users who violate community rules; (funding would be cut to national level institutions that were not adhering to the by-laws of their charters, companies would be fined for emitting GHG’s w/o the needed pollution permits)

7.  Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access; (devised as part of designed deliberative democratic  processes that can create social charters for local, national and global scales)

8. The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities (Nation States and the UN must uphold the rules set by such a global atmosphere institution and the subsidiaries in each nation… the process can begin with a few progressive countries leading the way)

Resources for local, regional and global climate organizers…

1. Feasta, Irish Think Tank working on details of a Global Atmosphere Trust (these principles are adapted from the work of Feasta members).  Feasta put together this excellent policy overview…

CapandShare.org (pdf model for deliberation on global trust with national subsidiaries, http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/Cap-and-Share-May08.pdf )

2. Who Owns the Sky? By Peter Barnes (modeled after USA’s, Alaska Permanent Fund… oil revenues go to the people), ISBN: 1-55963-854-0

3. OnTheCommons.org, resources, stories and projects on the commons movement around the world

4. GlobalCommonsTrust.org, info on creating social charters to inform commons institutions and trusts to protect local rights, resources and value

5. Commons Course, building awareness and connections for cooperation across the commons movement, sponsored by School of Commoning (SoC), http://www.schoolofcommoning.com/

MBS does research & outreach with Global Commons Trust, teaches on the Commons Course, and writes for the Future of Occupy, a site following Occupy & allied movements for peace, justice + sustainability for the 99%.  MaryBeth.Steisslinger@gmail.com

Jean Lievens: You describe Occupy as an example of peer producing political commons. In what way is this different from historical ‘anarchist’ or ‘communist’ movements like the Paris Commune, Barcelona 1937, or perhaps even the Russian Revolution?

Michel Bauwens talks at Tent City University
December 10, 2011

Michel Bauwens: If you observe an occupation, you see a community that is producing its politics autonomously, not following hierarchical or authoritarian political movements with a pre-ordained program; you see for-benefit institutions in charge of the provisioning of the occupiers (food, healthcare), and the creation of an ethical economy around it (such as Occupy’s Street Vendor Project). This is prefigurative of a new form of society in which the commons is at the core of value creation; these commons’ are maintained by non-profit institutions, and the livelihoods are guaranteed through an ethical economy. Of course there are historical precedents, but what is new is the extraordinary organisational, mobilization and co-learning potential of their networks. Occupy works as an open API with modules, such as ‘protest camping’, ‘general assemblies’, which can be used as templates and modified by all, without the need for central leadership. We can now have global coordination and mutual alignment of a multitude of small-group dynamics, and this requires a new type of leadership. The realization of historical moment of Peak Hierarchy, the moment in which distributed networks asymmetrically challenge vertical institutions in a way they could not do before, forces social movements to look for new ways of governance… but these are not given, and have to be discovered experimentally, and of course, there will be valuable lessons to learn from predecessor movements!

It seems to me that P2P is creating a sort of ‘whole new world’, but without any references or links to the present political system. If Occupy represents an alternative way to engage in politics, what is the link between peer politics and bourgeois democracy and political parties?

Michel Bauwens: That is a very difficult question and results from a paradox. One is the increasing social awareness that our present democracy is a facade, and that the state has been taken over by a predatory financial faction, while classic politicians see no other way out than to succumb to their blackmail. But the other side is that people’s freedoms and rights and private and social income is increasingly under pressure, which leads to political and social mobilization as well as effective policy engagement. The first aspect leads to continuous democratic innovation from the new p2p culture, think about the peer governance mechanisms in peer production communities; new inventions such as dynamic voting, and while these mechanisms operate outside the mainstream, they are also embedded in the new forms of value creation, new p2p social institutions, and therefore, poised to grow. The second aspect leads to new political and social forces that work within the present system, such as the emerging Pirate Party. In Brazil, I heard that the vibrant FORA DO EIXO cultural movement, which has a functioning counter-economy around music, is also politicising and engaging with local politics. The second leads to what I call diagonal politics, i.e. mutual adaptation between emerging p2p forces and practices, and the old institutional realities. To the degree that this is ineffective, it pushes from the solution coming from the first aspect, i.e. prepares for a more radical and revolutionary re-ordering of our institutions. Tellingly, a Swedish pirate party member once wrote that the Pirate Party is the last chance to avoid revolution. To the degree that the present system refuses adaptation, to that degree they heighten the need and push for more radical transformations.

You claim that P2P makes a new, ‘higher’ form of society possible. Before, that was not the case because the technology did not exist. Marxists make this claim already for more than 150 years. Do you think they were wrong then, perhaps correct today, or it P2P something ‘completely different’?

Michel Bauwens: I consider Marxism, and the other forms of socialism and anarchism, ultimately as an expression of a dichotomy within the industrial capitalist system, and proposing other logics to manage the industrial model. But P2P is the expression of the evolving class and social dynamics under cognitive capitalism. And while the former was essentially anti-capitalist, and could not really point to a new hyperproductive model of organising production (socialism was a hypothesis, and its real life examples inevitably disappointed, there was no emergent socialism within capitalism and only ‘state capitalism’ outside of it), what is different for the p2p movement is that it can point out to already existing models that are outcooperating and outcompeting classic capitalist models, i.e. it is already post-capitalist. Marx was right about capitalism, but wrong about socialism and I believe the politically driven model of social change, when not based on an existing prior new productive model, was ill-conceived. The P2P movement is therefore poised to realize what the 19th and 20th century social movements couldn’t, because the hyperproductive alternative was not available to them. The politics of P2P flow from an already existing social practice, that is a really key difference.

I was impressed by the well designed interview style and by the insights  the movement organisers so passionately shared  about organising in the 21st century.  The essence in a few words: It is about connecting the dots, connecting all the civil rights groups and movements by linking them, by co-working and collaborating on projects we care about.  It can be very powerful when individuals, groups and movements that have different and diverse starting points come together and collaborate for a common purpose finding their higher shared goal. Collaboration does not mean that our different and individual starting points loose their value and importance. Instead, an appreciation of difference must be built into the collaborative working process if we are working for a healthy global community.  Such a community  approaches difference with curiosity and respect and builds tolerance for ambiguity into the process of community building rather than competition.  We can only really understand our individual place  and what part we can play in the bigger scheme of things when we play together like a powerful orchestra that includes and transcends what every single player brings to the shared performance. The added value is that by working together in this way  we can create uplifiting and inspiring experiences for others.

Organisers of the 99% Spring aim to train 100,000 Americans to teach about income inequality in homes, places of worship,campuses and the streets. Government no longer fixes thingsfor us. It resonates  strongly  when they say:  We need to organise ourselves differently and collaborate .

Towards the end of the broadcast (48:51) the issue of airwaves as commons is raised.  In theory no private enterprise should be able to buy and control our airwaves but in practice news channels are controlled and inaccessible to those whose voices need to be heard. We are robbed of our airwave highways and need to reclaim them. We will do that by working together and by putting our bodies out on the line in the name of a new economy according to the organiser of the 99% Spring .

Georg Goehl is a 99% Spring co-organizer. He is executive director of  National People’s Action, a network of grassroots organizations using direct action to battle economic and racial injustice.

Ai-jen Poo, director and co-founder of the 10,000-member National Domestic Workers Alliance, led the fight for passage of The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in New York State, the first of its kind in America.

Sarita Gupta is executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor organization in 46 cities and 26 states working to create a broad, global movement for economic and social justice. Poo and Gupta are also participating in an economic campaign for domestic and homecare workers of all ages called Caring Across Generations.