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The London Seminars: Emergence of a Commons-Based Economy

The London Seminars: Emergence of a Commons-Based Economy 
Friday, May 25, 2012 


To judge from James B. Quilligan's recent series of talks in London, Brits are more receptive to, and interested in, the idea of a commons-based economy than ever.  Below, James reflects on his many encounters and dialogues over the course of two weeks.  –David Bollier 

Twelve seminars in twelve days? Each on a different topic? Imagine the angst I felt last winter when organizers in London approached me to make this demanding array of presentations on consecutive days. 

They explained that each of the sponsoring groups had a unique perspective on the commons, ranging from economics, business, politics, democracy, culture and technology to land reform, private property, trusteeship, interest rates, systems theory and spirituality. 

Once I’d grasped the constellation of issues, I welcomed the challenge of integrating them with the commons. It sounded like real fun.  After extensive preparations, the Quilligan Seminars were held from May 7 - 18 at various locations in London. (For reference, my talking points on all the sessions are included here.) 

Co-hosts of the seminars included the House of Commons, Institute for Public Policy Research, New Economics Foundation, Finance Innovation Lab, St. James’s Piccadilly, Synthesis, Civil Society Forum, Working in Trust, Gaia Network, Initiatives of Change, SimPol, School of Economic Science, Henry George Foundation and Hub Westminster. 

Sheepishly, I’d wondered how reintroducing the topic of commons in the nation which invented the name "commons" would go over. Yet what better place to launch the seminars than at the House of Commons? 

On a rainy morning at Parliament, I spoke to seventy people on ‘Political Economy and the Inclusive Commons’. Michael Meacher, Member of Parliament and former Minister for the Environment, chaired the session. 

Over the course of twenty minutes, I described how commons trusts could place a preservation cap on particular commons and determine the proportion of these resources which could be rented to businesses for extraction, production and commerce. In turn, businesses would pay taxes on their profits to government, which would then channel these funds into social dividends and the replenishment of depleted commons. 

“That was really very inspirational,” exclaimed Meacher following the talk. “I have been in politics for a very long time. I don’t think I have been challenged by such radicalism as long as I can remember, a radicalism that is not just a fantasy but a radicalism tied down with specific concepts which are, in the long term, inevitable. I have just learned a huge amount. It is one of those occasions where I feel we are just starting.”

Many others shared this spirit. Lord Maurice Glasman, the Blue Labour Member of Parliament, confided to me, “This is the House of Commons. It’s high time that our leaders live up to that name.” 

All of the seminars were enthusiastically received. They were also well attended, with audiences ranging from thirty to one hundred. Most came for one or two presentations. About twenty people attended six or more of the seminars. 

Along the way, I met with politicos and financiers, lawyers and academics, members of charities and think-and-do tanks, crowdfunders and technological entrepreneurs, advocates for cyber-democracy and global governance, land reform organizers and land trustees, environmentalists and anti-usury campaigners, religious congregations and clergy, neighborhood groups and Occupiers, and a large contingent of activists from Greater London’s civil society. 

I had many memorable dialogues with seminar conveners and colleagues. Some of the most brilliant moments occurred with Lord Glasman on the new economics of replenishment; with Inderpaul Johar on innovative directions in social technology; with Esther Ridsdale on horizontal decison-making in business; with Tim Jenkins on the political salience of trusteeships; with Joseph Milne on the history of property ownership; with Rector Lucy Winkett on sustainability and religious covenant; and with Greg Fisher on complexity theory in economics. All of which were centered on the commons. 

Many people approached me to say how much they had learned and grown from the seminars. But the sessions were really a learning experience for me as well. 

It was mind-stretching to talk with so many different kinds of audiences. The wide variety of people, presentations and questions generated an immersion experience that was highly creative and inspirational. 

To realize how quickly the commons is becoming part of the Western zeitgeist was also deeply humbling and encouraging. When I first spoke in London three years ago, my audience was a bit fuzzy on the significance of the commons. Now Londoners clearly get it and are eager to take action. 

At our final event, working groups organized around many of the issues which emerged from the seminars. These groups are now focused on examining community currencies; designing maps and visual images of the commons; developing commons for health, well-being, gardens and housing; generating outreach for the commons; linking Occupy and commoning; and creating a knowledge ecology of resources through the website Commons Rising, which was recently launched by the School of Commoning. 

The seminars were superbly organized by my colleagues Anna Betz and George Por at the School of Commoning and Peter Challen of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice, with the support of Nancy Roof from Kosmos Journal and many individual donors. 

All of the sessions were videotaped and will eventually be available through Commons Rising, as well as You Tube clips. A datagraph and an e-book of the presentations are also being developed. You can help us meet these goals with a donation at http://www.indiegogo.com/CommonsEconomyRising. 

You can also follow Commons Rising for updates or to get involved with the London working groups at http://commonsrising.ning.com.

To download this article as a PDF, please click here.

by kosmos

An Introduction to the Quilligan Seminars: Rebuilding our Beloved Commons

In reviewing the topics for The Emergence of a Commons-Based Economy, it’s clear that each of the presentations in this series is different. While each of the Quilligan Seminars is indeed unique, they are not discrete or unconnected segments. The greater thematic unity which interlinks them is essentially a “commons of the commons”. More than anything, it is a worldview which calls us to rebuild and restore our Beloved Commons as part of the world renaissance that has now begun.
 
Throughout most of human history, people have lived in deep relation to the meaning expressed in the public life of their societies. The spirit of the people is demonstrated in our common institutions, through which we define our identity. We are what we are in virtue of participating in the larger life of society. But how much longer can we be loyal to the debilitating forms of modern society? The rules and disciplines of the Market State are neither the creation of the public, nor are they the creation of what is best in us and truly ourselves. The public experience of society has become irrelevant and often monstrous. Globalization is about corporatocracy, not the democratic aspirations of the world’s people. Through their homogenization and interdependence, business-controlled governments have become an intolerable imposition on the citizens of this planet. The Market State has trampled our power to gather together, collaborate and produce, destroying the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere it has appeared. The theories and practices of the Market State, expressed through economic and political totalization, are a travesty of our ideals for the public life of the community. 

Those who have chosen to champion a particular view of either the social good or of individual rights have generated an enormous political polarity. The ideal of mass equality has led to homogenization and uniformity of society and submission under omnipotent governments. People today find little value in participating in forms of political decision-making which are merely demonstrative and not substantive. Extreme emphasis on the collective good has undermined the traditional commons because few people identify with the local political units that are carved out essentially to perpetuate social hierarchies and secure our complacency. As the saying goes, “the system is not broken, it’s fixed”. 
 
Likewise, the ideal of mass freedom has become an empty vessel, offering no means for people to identify with their local commons. Only the individual can create change, not society. Societies must nurture the freedom of the individual, but this is often accomplished by abolishing collectivities and returning society to primitive conditions. These upheavals are often carried out by zealous minorities with a vision of militant nationalism or totalitarian ideology. Such reckless programs depreciate and crush the individuality and diversity that arise from the commons, uprooting people and destroying their traditions and means of livelihood. 
 
This duality between the ideals of social equality and political freedom discourages personal and social reconciliation, the transformation of our communities and the creation of a commons-based economy. When the individual is set in competition with the whole, the moral will and creativity of the people are suppressed. Mind and body are seen as separate units. Our being is split from our actions. Our common purpose is lost. 

For those seeking to overcome this alienation through a Third Way, the problem is that in attempting to combine the common good and individual rights in a neutral fashion (by not emphasizing one over the other), a very strong kind of relativism has resulted. This polarity is not transcended through the autonomous and dynamic countervailing power of the people. This is because our middle path for social alternatives is passive rather than active and creative. We have not fully recognized that the society which sees itself as an inevitable polarity between the social good and individual rights destroys the forms of life that are rooted in the commons. We do not seem to recognize how the individual fits in society or how society can support personal growth and creativity. Without a sense of the indivisibility of human existence, the modern ideologies of collective rights and individual rights are both devoid of the realization that people take part in a variety of commons which are the source of our livelihood and well-being. This has left us starved for the equality and freedom which express the interrelatedness of human life and which can arise only through our commons. 

All of this is changing now as a result of the commons movement. The Quilligan Seminars in London underscore various facets of our commoning activities which unite individual freedom and collective freedom through a social order based on Oneness. New Era Economics and the Commons (16 May) describes the most irreducible fact in economics — that resource systems may either be depletable (natural, material) or replenishable (natural, solar, social, cultural, intellectual, digital). This means that economists — and all of us — need to be looking at the complementarity of the stocks and flows of resource systems for a better indicator of sustainability in a world of disequilibrium and instability. In refusing to affirm a preference for the common good or the rights of the individual, while seeing both as important but imperfectly expressed through the Market State, we are creating a framework that is neutral among ends but highly transformative. Our conventional approach to economics needs to be radically reconstructed so that the relationships between individual, institutions and the commons are better understood. 

Political Economy and the Inclusive Commons (8 May) examines how the aggregation of the social good and the radical atomism of individual rights have both eroded the meaning of citizenship and communities. It describes the commons as a third sector that can create a more beneficial balance in society, bringing people a new form of political power. Through the co-production and co-governance of a commons, resource users become the producers of their own resources, allowing the traditional model of property ownership (utility, self-interest, profit) to be eclipsed by a new framework of trusteeship (sustainability, quality of life and well-being). 

Restoring the Commons or Terminal Decline (9 May) describes the enormous costs to planetary society that occur when citizens are not aware of the commons and their responsibilities for stewarding them. This seminar also demonstrates how the principles of Henry George and Peter Barnes may be applied to a commons-based economy, creating a far more representative balance of power and wealth between the commons, business and government than currently exists. In this vision of a new society, private industry provides the public with goods and services which are produced from the surplus resources rented from commons trusts. Government then recycles these rents as social dividends for the public and as funds for the preservation and regeneration of the commons. 

Of course, a new political and social balance is not possible unless the public life of the commons expresses the deep ontological structure that has been missing in the Market State. Democratizing the Global Political Commons (7 May) describes the units and scales of political accountability that are necessary for post-liberal forms of multilateral cooperation, a new international economic system and the creation of a democratic confederation of world citizens. In realizing this ontology for restoring the local and global communities through our commons, a new kind of collective value must arise. This social dynamic — emerging from the shared values and meanings of people’s life-experiences in the organization and production of their commons — includes but transcends the market and state, bringing people new forms of political power. These new political accountability structures involve pluralism, subsidiarity, polycentrism, checks and balances, and horizontalist decision-making. 

Organizational Practice and the Commons (15 May) focuses on what needs to be done to adjust our organizations models, systems and ways of working to better serve the common interests and protect well-being of all. Besides maximizing the power of networks to create greater synergy through cross-sectoral cooperation among existing institutions, many new forms of commons collaboration are emerging, leading to new ways of interacting and coordinating social and economic life. For example, social charters, co-governance, co-production, commons trusts, autonomous civil society initiatives, partnership governments and peer-to-peer job creation are rapidly generating new forms of value and political management, teaching civil society organizations how to adopt new values and structures. 

Financial Innovation and the Commons (10 May) describes how the modern economy can be reconceived as a subsystem of the biospheric commons, providing the long-term signals and incentives (through ecological, energy and exchange rate stability) that businesses are presently seeking. It describes how the global commons — material, natural, genetic, social, intellectual, cultural and digital — provide a range of assets that can create the reserve base for a new global monetary system and standard of value. This, in turn, will create a new dynamic in the world of business and finance, opening broad opportunities for the development of Commons Wealth Funds. 

The emerging commons society rests upon a non-polar framework which does not make the common good more important than individual rights, or individual rights more important than common good, but recognizes the mutual importance of both. We can recover the meaning of citizenship and community — which has been lost through the corporate economy and the bureaucratic state — by focusing on the production and management of our commons. The Great Transition and the Commons (14 May) describes a new epistemology of resource sovereignty, shared responsibility and legal accountability which recognizes the moral and political legitimacy of people’s rights to preserve, access, produce, manage and use their own resources. It demonstrates that all individuals take part in a larger life, since human beings are vitally dependent on one another. No person is either completely socialized or completely separate — everyone has both qualities of existence. Commons trusts can express this understanding through a methodology and political mechanism for the management and valuation of society’s common goods. These trusts preserve the commons for the benefit of both present and future generations. 

As a politically organized community, the commons express the self-sufficiency and indivisibility that underlie society and nature. The commons are a community which, like a living organism, resolve the polarizing distinction between means and ends. There is no difference between what is and what ought to be. Being and doing are one. In this way, Property, Value and the Commons (11 May) demonstrates how self-organizing communities transcend the traditional division of labor by allowing resource users to become directly involved in the process of production. It focuses on the norms and rules that alternative communities have developed to oversee their collective resources sustainably, including both natural and human-created commons and how they correspond (or not) to relevant laws of nature or natural law. 

The Crowd and the Commons (12 May) also describes how deriving value through crowdfunding has the potential of involving resources users in the process of producing their own resources, thereby generating new forms of value, cooperation and trusteeship. Since each of us has roles defined by our communities which are deeply embedded in their collective accountability structures, the commons provide the basis of the individual rights and obligations that already exist in the social good. This greater good is achieved by individuals working collectively on a voluntary basis — freely offering one’s labor for the social benefit. Applying this principle to crowdfunding, financial resources can now be amassed by individuals for the social good without the need for traditional banks or venture capital. 

Covenant Stewardship and the Inclusive Commons (13 May) examines the spiritual dimension of the commons. This is the vision of a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice where brother and sisterhood are realized through all of social life. It is not the competition for resources that we seek, but the demonstration of our common ideals and notions of what it means to be human. The set of practices and institutions which comprise the public life of the community, expressing the norms and purposes essential to the identities of its people, are sustained only through their participation in these practices and institutions. Ultimately, harmony and cooperation between nations is achieved only through the advancement of culture. Evolution emerges through the dynamic of the group expressed by individuals acting together but also voluntarily. Whatever the collective action is attempting to generate, if human free will is not involved, the social good will not be realized because the individual is not invested in the outcome. Society cannot grow unless the individual is also growing. 

Convergence Working Group (17 May) and Convergence for a Commons-Based Economy (18 May) are attempts to provide broader thinking among the seminar conveners and the public on a commons for the commons — not a set of solutions, but a process for reaching such solutions. Obviously, these are deeply challenging and momentous questions. How do we overcome our alienation and revitalize the democratic possibilities of a shared public life? How do we recover our autonomy and return to the norms of a differentiated society and the moral obligations of the community? How do we identify and engage with the decentralized federation of communities producing and organizing their own resources as in the past? 

In sum, reality is comprised of structures that form an interrelated whole. Yet our present practices and institutions are not embodying the kinds of goals, norms and ends which manifest that whole. The public expression of society no longer has genuine meaning. The Quilligan Seminars suggest that individual rights can be achieved only through the ethical norms of the social good embodied in a community where the individual can realize the moral possibilities that are already there, however distorted or repressed they may be. 

The commons recognize the dichotomy between individuals as the sum of their desires and ends (through the common good) and the individual being who is free to make choices independent of those desires and ends (as in individual rights). This shows how deeply the commons are already embedded in the human networks of mutuality and the means of attaining this intergroup and interpersonal living through nonviolent means. We are now realizing how individuals can be separate from others and part of a greater wholeness. This unity or interrelatedness of the commons transcends differences in tribe, race, class and nation, demonstrating that whatever affects one person affects everyone. The commons recognize that the politics of individual rights and the politics of the commons good are both important, but have become highly distorted by the communities of power in the market and the state. The commons reveal how the Market State expresses a worldview in which people are considered more like material animals than transcendent spiritual beings. It shows that the separation or distancing of the human mind from life and matter is the basis of all economic and political dysfunction. We are now recognizing that our Beloved Commons are both the state of individual being and the collective state of the world. The non-dualism of individual rights and the social good is teaching us how to rebuild our commons, create collective intentions for the planet based on sustainability and restore the peace and tranquility of the world. This will lead to a World Renaissance in the Twenty-First Century, including the creation of a federation of global citizens, a common system of government and public services, and a common pool of financial resources. Our task is ultimately to reconcile the mind and the body and advance the consciousness of Unity among all citizens of the planet. 

James B. Quilligan 
Philadelphia 
April 2012

To download this article as a PDF, please click here.

by kosmos