21 Oct 24

This movement needs a common identity.

By Rob Callender

There are many alternatives. Opposition to a system that suffocates communities and ecosystems by concentrating wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands must, by definition, be pluralistic. But, despite their "manyness", real alternatives have some defining elements that might form the basis of a common identity, enabling the alternatives to be more than the sum of their parts and finally bring about a system by the many for the many. That is the hope.

What makes an alternative "real"? Some organisations campaign for reform and succeed in creating better conditions in the real world and in the absence of radical change. These can be necessary but they are not alternatives since they are not creating new structures that can replace the old ones. Alternatives are creative. There are fake alternatives which appear radical or emancipatory but directly or indirectly reinforce the structures of current systems. Many of the well known cryptocurrencies are fake alternatives. A real alternative contains the incorruptible potential to replace exploitative structures with different ones that benefit the many. That does not mean a real alternative is bound to succeed or impact more than a small area but it will cease to exist as a real alternative if it is transformed into anything else.

Uprooting proprietarian foundations

A thing becomes property when it is exchanged for something that is already a property of known value, often money. This is how humans become owned as slaves and that is how data became a thing to be mined, when at other times and in other places, they were not. The point is that a thing becoming property is a choice, not a natural law.

As Katharina Pistor describes it, the law creates wealth (and inequality) when it"encodes" a thing with private ownership rights and obligations. Money, and the threat of punishment by debt, enforces the new ownership contracts. This is how a thing that was never owned before becomes capital. This brought about the enclosures of common land of the 18th and 19th centuries and the poor laws and other reforms that laid the groundwork for what we call capitalism. It was once a novel concept of ownership that made labour a thing to be sold.

The foundation of modern company law states that one privately-owned share in the stock of an enterprise should guarantee one vote. In other words, more money equals more votes and when a company is profitable it is the shareholders that are rewarded with more money and, therefore, more votes. This unsubtle mechanism works like an engine to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who already have it. This has ruinous effects. By the logic of capital and company law, wages and dealing with pollution are a drain on profits and ecosystems cannot be valued except if they are traded for something with existing value, i.e., as private property with "development potential". Powerful companies take a great interest in the laws that govern them, which are created, changed or struck down by national governments, and it follows that they take an interest in what the people who elect those governments think and do.

The law can also redistribute wealth through taxation and state-owned services and law can act as a buffer, declaring the rights of certain things or persons and that they cannot be capitalised. It is not a coincidence that at the same time as the laws that led to the capitalist period were being put into action, alternatives began appearing in Rochdale and New Lanark - the first co-operative societies. The Rochdale society severed the connection between wealth and influence and, therefore, the incentive to depress wages, raise prices and expand endlessly. It was owned by the community and operated for the community. Real alternatives share a concept of ownership that is different to the one on display in Canary Wharf or Foxtons.

Recently, someone said to me, "we were talking about Rochdale and Mondragon thirty years ago, what has changed?" implying that if the cooperative model was going to transform society, then it would have done it by now and, instead, we should look for something new. I cheer for the friends who fight for progressive taxation, universal basic income, services and more, but for those not to be repealed by the next administration, we need to build foundational structures with the capacity and legitimacy to defend themselves. Regardless of whether co-ops will succeed in igniting widespread change, they provide a platform and more than a century of experience from which to iterate and every new co-op is an iteration.

Growth isn't a dirty word when we're saying grow the commons

Just in the last few days I have spoken to innovation.coop, a new co-operative business incubator and CRUSH, a group fighting to save rapidly closing venues in London through collaboration. Today, every community business starts from scratch: finding space, setting up payroll, developing fundraising plans, tracking investments, marketing, web services and more on top of doing the business they were established to do. They can pay for these services and reward the shareholders of a private company or they can work with other mutuals if they can find them. Innovation.coop is building that network of mutuals. CRUSH is a CIC (Community Interest Company) looking to turn more and more venues into community-owned assets because that is how to foster collaboration, not competition, attract great artists and turn ?8 pints into ?4 pints - and this is how to get people back into venues.

In spite of the obvious swell in the co-operative movement right now, there remain major blocks, not the least of which is access to money. The company model was designed to attract investment by rewarding shareholders with more money and influence. Community owned businesses can legally only pay investors a limited amount for the use of their money and investors never have more than a single vote. They must rely on the wealth in communities rather than the greed of venture capitalists. Luckily, recent FCA data show 81% of adults want their investments to do some good as well as provide a financial return. But how do people know what is good?

Kin, the organisation I am working in, is working with a number of other co-operatives to develop a federation of community businesses who will raise money and share resources together. As more wealth is brought into community businesses, the production of goods and services moves from being privately owned, where the landlord can up the rent and lower the wages, to commonly owned, where the community is the landlord and the worker. It is a short leap from common ownership to not thinking in terms of ownership at all but "to each according to their need". Conversely, less wealth will be in the hands of the largest shareholders, thus choking the fuel line of the inequality engine.

Access to money is part of the equation and nothing is possible without the passion of people focussed on creating alternatives. However, I believe the thing with the greatest multiplier effect would be a common identity, or, more crassly: a commonly owned common identity about expanding common ownership. Of course, I'm making a lot of assumptions: first, that we share a desire to change the current economic arrangement; second, that we share an understanding of its defining elements; third, that you agree with me in the need for a constructive solution. None of this is to say we do not need to fight for reform in the meantime and we will certainly need a massive popular movement that can amplify changes in public opinion. But opinion looks to real models. While people cannot name all of the thousands of community businesses reclaiming power, rebuilding community wealth and local ecosystems, through a common identity that both preserves and enhances their manyness, more people can know that power is being reclaimed now, on a huge scale and consciously.

An act of creation and a call to action

"Co-ops aren't cool" exclaimed one of the co-founders of Kin at an early meeting. "When people think of co-ops they think of an expensive supermarket that isn't as good as some of the others." How do we excite people about transforming ownership and collective decision-making? Art. Real alternatives can never grab the imaginations of the many if the many do not understand the roots of their emancipatory potential. That means education from the history of Miner's Welfare Associations to the history of contract law, from the regulatory changes that have privatised public spaces and made it harder to cooperate to the spaces of hope that need the support of the public today. Without creativity we cannot win.

Look around today and imagine what it would be like if every business was owned by the community and the land they rented from (or owned equity in) was owned by the community, and the banks were owned by the community. Imagine the transactions between people, imagine the economy and who would benefit from such an arrangement. Imagine how the community might look after ten years of that. Now look at Canary Wharf and Foxtons and say, I'm going to own you, and by I, I mean we, the community.

There are many alternatives being built right now. They need your help. How can you find them? If only we could all share a part of our identity in this world of private brands. Let's have a part in common. Let's have a name.