Beyond State Capitalism: The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:




Beyond State Capitalism
The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes

By James Quilligan


In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons — the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize. Despite sharp differences in concept and ideology, economic thinkers from Smith, Ricardo, and Marx to Keynes, Hayek, Mises and Schumpeter largely based their assumptions on the worldʼs seemingly unlimited resources and fossil fuels, their infinite potential for creating economic growth, adequate supplies of labor for developing them, and the evolving monoculture of state capitalism responsible for their provision and allocation. Hence, in the Market State that has emerged, corporations and sovereign states make decisions on the production and distribution of Earthʼs common resources more or less as a unitary system — with minimal participation from the people who depend on these commons for their livelihood and well-being. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.

Over the past seventy years especially, the macroeconomic goals of sovereign states —
for high levels and rapid growth of output, low unemployment and stable prices — have
resulted in a highly dysfunctional world. The global economy has integrated dramatically
in recent decades through financial and trade liberalization; yet the market is failing to
protect natural and social resources, the state is failing to rectify the economic system,
and the global polity is failing to manage its mounting imbalances in global resources
and wealth. Without a ʻunified field theoryʼ of economics to explain how the commons is
drastically undervalued and why world society is amassing huge debts to the
environment, the poor and future generations, policymakers and their institutions lack
the critical tools and support to address the massive instability that is now gripping the
global economy. Businesses and governments are facing the Herculean challenge of
reducing climate change and pollution while alleviating poverty without economic growth
— a task for which the Market State is neither prepared nor designed to handle.

Meanwhile, the essential ideals of state capitalism — the rule-based systems of
government enforcement and the spontaneous, self-regulating social order of markets —
are finding direct expression in the co-governance and co-production of common goods
by people in localities across the world. Whether these commons are traditional (rivers,
forests, indigenous cultures) or emerging (energy, intellectual property, internet),
communities are successfully managing them through collaboration and collective
action. This growing movement has also begun to create social charters and commons
trusts — formal instruments which define the incentives, rights and responsibilities of
stakeholders for the supervision and protection of common resources. Ironically, by
organizing to protect their commons through decentralized decision-making, the
democratic principles of freedom and equality are being realized more fully in these
resource communities than through the enterprises and policies of the Market State. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/beyond-state-capitalism

[Demeter]

1. VERY important!