Article by Ruby van der Wekken, RIPESS Europe
In its process towards the third Nyeleni global forum, the forum which in its previous editions focused exclusively on food sovereignty has been making alliances towards other movements and struggles in an acknowledgment of the interlinkedness and dependency between struggles, as also to amplify today’s marginalised voices of farmers and other small scale sustainable subsistence producers that the Nyeleni forum is wanting to bring to the centre stage.
Beyond interdependence, there is an empowering recognition in the connections between actors in the Global North and South—not only grounded in empathy or a shared pursuit of justice, but also in the remarkably similar ways they organize to confront inequality. These efforts reflect struggles for the right to see essential resources as commons, and for the right to engage in the act of commoning around them
Seeing things as a Commons
For many of us, the word ‘commons’ will bring up associations to natural resources as land, and perhaps to earlier times when the commoners, the lay people as peasants were called, were allowed to use the commons to find firewood, whilst the enclosure of those commons with the onset of privatisation in the 18th century putting an end to this. But the commons can actually be referring to so much more, in fact to a paradigm shift taking us in the very opposite direction of capitalism.
The late activist and writer Silke Helfrich of the Commons Strategies group put forward a working definition of the commons, which suggests that commons can function as lenses to the approaching of economy. From such a point of view, fishing waters, food, genetic inheritance, cooperatives, language, oxygen,community supported agriculture, minerals, currency… all of these can be commons, referring to when things are held in common and co-produced in different ways.
So we can then speak of for instance ecological, social and network commons. Ecological commons including oxygen and water are the basis of life, the existence of which is being eroded by destruction and privatisation processes. Social commons then can be thought of as language and feelings, working and doing together. Network commons will be used to refer to different information technology which has seen a rise, with the issues of open knowledge and open source having been core debates. Co-production is a core concept here, based on voluntary contributions to a common production process.
The commons, whether it is forest or ideas, are said to be best understood by referring to the social practices of commoning, a term coined by historian Peter Linebaugh. This refers to the process of co-producing, co governing, co-managing by a community or network of commoners of a commons, whether these are natural resources or ideas, whilst including the principles of sustainability, fairness and social control of the users (as for instance often found in Vernacular law). As such there are no commons without commoning. And as such seeing things as a commons refers to allowing for direct democracy processes around a commons, for fair distribution.
Seeing things as a commons in practice also means getting clarity on relations to state and market. Commons can be seen as being about use value being created without the interference of state or market, something which has been described by Helfrich as going beyond state and market, whilst this need not mean without state and market. What is important then when seeing things as a commons, is to make a distinction whether a commons is corporately sustained and ultimately benefited from, or whether increased commonifying and commoning is the outcome of solidarity economy development: the increased linking up of economic actors which have other values than monetary profit at their core.
Seeing Food as a Commons
A fundamental issue which will also quickly come to be referred to in any discussion about global inequalities is food. Again, the issue of seeing food as a commons takes us beyond the notion of equality as being an issue of mere redistribution.
To see food as a commons with commoning around it, can be seen in the want for food sovereignty in both South and North. The concept of food sovereignty was put forward by La Via Campesina in 1996, which is today arguably the world’s largest social movement, being made up of some 200 million small scale farmers’ organisations, rural workers, fishing communities, landless and indigenous peoples globally.
As will be explained by movements writing about the history of the concept, agricultural policies and agribusinesses were becoming globalized, peasants in the South were up against competition from cheap exports from the hyper productive, highly subsidised European and American agriculture. Small farmers in the South needed to develop a common vision and struggle to defend themselves, and to participate directly in the decisions that were affecting their lives. Food sovereignty put agricultural producers and consumers at the core of the debate, and wanted to support all peoples in their right to produce their own food, independent of international market conditions, and to consume local foods. Food sovereignty is then the right of all people to democratically decide how food is produced, distributed and consumed, which brings us to the notion of food as a commons.
In the last decade, also people working in the food system in the ‘Global North’ have come to realise that food sovereignty is also relevant to them, in the face of the expansion of the agroindustrial model of food production, and increasing corporate control (global institutions, WTO etc) over many aspects of the food system.
Food sovereignty importantly refers to a paradigm shift, to systemic change, As Jukka Lassila (farmer of Oma Maa food cooperative, Tuusula, Finland) puts it: “Food is a core societal thing. Food is first of all what joins all of us. And in whose hands the control of our food system is, including of course water, in those hands the control of society lies. In other words, people can more govern their own lives, if food (the food system) is in their control. In that sense, all efforts done to get food back under the control of people is very important for the development of society, and only by addressing this, we can change our society into being more just and fair.
Working towards Food as a commons – a powerful tool to work towards systemic change: Grow your own Food!
It is empowering to be opening up what this quote signifies. Firstly, by changing our basic needs systems – meaning by changing the production, distribution and consumption of our basic needs as food and energy – we can be developing pathways towards more socially, ecologically better and healthier communities and society locally and globally. Our food system is such a pervasive thing in society, changing the food system evidently changes a whole lot.
Secondly and importantly, this systemic change in society is to be rooted in peoples processes around their daily needs and is not to be captured nor left to financial profit seeking markets, for they do not deliver. In other words, changing the systems of our basic needs such as food and energy can lead to systemic change, IF and WHEN these processes are in the hands of people. If and when they are a commons.
Thirdly, this reaches beyond the local. Whilst food sovereignty isn’t a one-size fits all approach, but in fact specific to people and places, and whilst the circumstances in which struggles for food sovereignty often seem to differ substantially, these struggles can be seen as engaged together and interdependently for the right to see things as a commons, which is then ultimately also a struggle for justice. No food sovereignty in the South can be reached if there is no food sovereignty in the North. In other words, it is the answer which farmers responded in India to Niklas Toivokainen when he asked them in 2013, after listening to their stories of extensive hardship, of the suicides, what it is we in Europe, in Finland should do : Grow your own food!
An example of a process which aims to make food more as a commons, is for instance Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). In a CSA, members are making a commitment to share the risks and the bounty of ecological farming, to strive for socially (importantly wages for the farmer) and ecologically sustainably produced food. In this way the farmers and families form a network of mutual support. Within this general framework there can be wide variations as to how organised, but a CSA does provoke us to see our involvement with food, to engage in the commoning around our food commons. But beyond the particular example of a CSA, the commons as a paradigm provides us with a basis from which to reflect on and develop our critique of existing relations in a capitalist society.
Seeing currency as a commons
Global Inequality will also for many give rise to thoughts with regards to richness and poverty in terms of monetary wealth. The commons lenses shed light on the issue of money going beyond that of equality produced by redistribution.
As is today no secret anymore, and as was nicely summarised by Jem Bendell (Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria) during his talk at the Commons conference in Berlin in 2013, 97% of money is created by private banks as they issue loans to us, and because almost all money is created through instruments which require repayment and interest, there is always more debt than money. Loans are issued to serve economic activity, and as such a growth imperative is created which purports the need to increasingly exploit (commodify) more of life, of resources, to pay back the interest on the debt.
This debt based money system also shapes our relations, basing them on notions of scarcity and competition, whilst producing massive inequality. “We think that wealth is scarce, that we must all compete for a share of it , when actually the wealth is us”. As Bendell put it, the current money system as we know it, represents almost the total enclosure of our ability to trust each other. To come to a different economy in which values of social and ecological sustainability are determining, means we need new forms of money.
One approach in the discussion around the need for new forms of money puts forward that in a commons economy going beyond artificial scarcity, money as we know it and markets have no place, and promotes demonetization. The issue of equal exchange is contested, and whilst that premise holds a good basis to think of co-production and stigmergy (selforganisation), it does bring up questions as to how to make for an inclusive process.
Another approach is concerned with redesigning currency itself as a commons, and poses as a central question, how do we design currencies to foster human relationships? Out of the experiences of the development process around Helsinki Timebank (which had a very active (development) fase from 2009-2013, after which its development slumped due to taxation rulings) another angle can also be discussed, namely that of the development of a currency and the currency itself as a pedagogical process and tool, bringing people together to learn and engage in commoning (in the case of currency as a commons the co-governing and carrying of responsibility for our currency commons). In the case of Helsinki Timebank, the community of users developed a charter of principles which among other set out what values economic actors joining the timebank must adhere to. This points to the fact that when a currency is a commons, the community of users gets to set the rules as an answer to the question: What is encouraged and facilitated through a currency?
An excellent concrete example of a successful complementary currency commons for instance in Africa, is coming from the work of Will Ruddick and comrades of Grassroots Economics organisation, with the Bangla Pesa, a complementary currency in the Bangladesh slum of Mobasa, Kenya. The currency was launched in 2013, and wants to support the economy of the informal settlements by organising small-scale enterprises into networks, through which members can utilize a community currency to mediate trades. Credits are issued in the form of paper vouchers as payment for goods and services.
Currency as a commons, unlike the commodity it is in our mainstream financial system which produces a great deal of inequalities, can come to construct relations increasing equality.
The Food social security initiatives – drawing in on food and currency as a commons
In an interesting manner drawing both on Food and Currency as a commons are the Food social security experiences currently ongoing in Belgium, France and Geneva. The basic idea is that citizens are invited to come together to take on a political process in which collectively pulled together resources are redistributed every month in equal amounts to all participants, to be spent on the purchasing of food from sustainable local food producers. The principles of the process – the pulling together of resources progressively according to income, and where the funds can be spent are deliberated up and determined by the participants. Support form for instance local municipal actors can also be sought, to top the budget to not put all the burden of subsidising of lower income participants on fellow citizens. In the context of the Nyleni forum a webinar was organised on the Food social security initiatives, https://www.socioeco.org/bdf_fiche-video-5941_en.html.
Strengthening the right to see things as a commons, and thus the right to be commoning around it, means to move beyond the circulating of commodities for capitalism to the circulating of commons for another kind of system.
This writing has been edited from its original publication in Peruste Lehti, 24.4.2018 (in Finnish).
Photo by Sonja Siikanen.
