Commons-creating Society

1. Introduction

This paper will treat the commons discourse conducted in the German language. This discourse can be seen as quite a challenging approach within the field of commons research. It builds upon and transcends the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom in numerous ways, particularly through combining their pioneering work with insights from the free software movement and various critical theories. Commons will be conceptualized as a counterpart to the commodity form based on self-organization and autonomy. This makes it possible to present commons as the potential foundation for a radically different form of society based on needs-orientation, self-determination, decentralized ex-ante mediation, and structural communality. The ideas presented here can serve to go beyond conventional thinking and challenge much of conventional science and politics. It can be taken as an important approach for future radical thinking and critical activity. This paper will shed light on the processes and advances made in the discourse in the German-speaking countries as well as refine and develop some prevailing thoughts. The conceptualization of the commons will be continuously processed and enriched throughout the paper. The background of these ideas will be discussed in the next section (section 2). The following sections will then deal with the conceptualization of the term commons (section 3) and its further demarcation (section 4). The topics “internal principles” (section 5), “commons as a logical form” (section 6), and “potential social dimensions” (section 7) will be discussed before the concluding remarks in section 8.

2. Background

The story of the little village, where shepherds solely focus on their own interests and thus have strong incentives to take more and more sheep onto the common grazing land until it becomes overcrowded and overgrazed, is one of the most influential thought experiments in economics. The “Tragedy of the Commons,” as the biologist Garrett Hardin called his story in 1968, served to declare that all common management is doomed to failure. In conjunction with the Coase Theorem, which states that externalization problems can only be efficiently solved through the assignment of well-defined property rights, Hardin’s view influences beliefs, policies, and science through to this very day.

E. Ostrom had spent much of her life as a scientist showing that in real life many cases of successful and enduring common management can be observed. She, along with her husband Vincent and their Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, thoroughly compiled case studies allowing them to extract the famous design principles that are rather robust across cases as well as cultures and can explain certain instances of failure (E. Ostrom 1990, 2010). E. Ostrom’s work, which was honored with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ¹ in 2009, can be seen as pioneering in the sense that it challenges dominant theories and views with the possibility of successful self-organization without having to rely on competitive markets or centralized bureaucracies. In practice, people have shown that the preservation and use of resources does not have to be a contradiction in terms. Hardin (1998) himself admitted the omission of the crucial qualification “unmanaged” in his tragedy. He asserts that managed commons may in fact work, but that, one might say obviously, “the devil is in the details” (Hardin 1998: 683).The deconstruction of the so-called “tragedy” of the commons, based on the analysis of the “Ostrom School” and the reference to the design principles of commons institutions, is the first building block of the German discourse. The second one is the new manner of production demonstrated through the development of so-called digital commons such as Wikipedia and open source software. Just like the compilation of encyclopaedic knowledge in Wikipedia, open source software is originally programmed by volunteers who do the work because they enjoy what they are doing and find it useful. A distinctive feature of open source as compared to conventional software production is that in the latter case all the program code, the core of the respective products, is kept secret and unchangeable for users, while in the former case it is freely accessible for everybody. People can download the programs, use them, and improve them. In many cases this is associated with a copyleft license ² (e.g. GNU General Public License or some of the Creative Commons licenses) that allows these activities only as long as what comes out of that process remains freely accessible. The advantage of such licenses is that they can ensure that the modifications and extensions that are made will remain free. Using copyright legislation, they protect the licensed products against enclosure attempts. This allowed well accepted and widely used free web browsers such as Firefox, free office packages such as Libre Office, and even free operating systems (Linux) to be created, improved, and distributed. This is particularly interesting since software is not only a pure consumption good but also a means of production that has become increasingly crucial for many production processes.

This (slightly misleadingly dubbed) immaterial production is supplemented more and more by material production projects such as Open Source Ecology (OSE). OSE develops and tests the “Global Village Construction Set,” a set of (the presumably most important) tools and machines that will serve the population of an entire village to sustain themselves and live a good life with a high degree of autonomy. The construction plans are freely accessible and the products are designed and constructed around modularity, reparability, reducing pollution, and the sparing use of natural resources. ³ This is in sharp contrast to conventional constructions (and knowledge management) that mainly focus on profitability.

The developments of and around open source software production and the free software movement was the trigger and basis for the Oekonux project ⁴ 1999 in Berlin, Germany. It started out by asking what relevance this new mode of production could potentially have for future production activities and the way society is structured. One central hypothesis that was formulated was that free software can be understood as a seed form of a radically different society. The Oekonux project was a platform for the development of the respective theories and visions. Christian Siefkes and Stefan Meretz, two figures in the discourse, approach the commons from this rather Marxist angle. The German language commons discourse offers different approaches to this one, however. For example, Friederike Habermann and Brigitte Kratzwald, further key contributors to the debate, also depict critical and feminist approaches to the issues at hand. The author, scientist, and political activist Andreas Exner works with Ulrich Brand on urban commons. Johannes Heimrath, editor of the magazine Oya, comes more from the ecological and cultural-creative spectrum, and Silke Helfrich approached the commons during her occupation in the field of international cooperation, which is still reflected in her current theoretical and activist work. More recently, people such as Denis Neumüller, a critical psychologist, and myself have become involved more intensely in these debates that are mainly conducted on blogs, ⁵ in newspaper articles, books, and academic articles as well as at conferences ⁶ and in other (online and offline) discussions. In 2012, the first commons summer-school was arranged by Helfrich and Kratzwald, which is now evolving as an annual event where people with practical and theoretical knowledge about commons get together to share, discuss, and experience insights into the abundant diversity of the commons world. Additionally, the Commons-Institut was founded in February 2014. Its aims are to conduct collaborative theoretical and practical research on the commons, promote the core ideas and principles, as well as to cross-link commoners and provide a platform for sharing experiences. ⁷ In general, much of the discourse seems to focus either on the empirical cases of old and long-enduring “offline” commons such as those described in E. Ostrom (1990) or to be mainly engaged in making sense of the developments of different forms of “online” culture and sociality (Bruns 2008), governance of the World Wide Web (MacKinnon 2012), intellectual property rights (Boyle 2008), and collaborative forms of digital knowledge and information production (Ghosh 2005). The particularity of the German language commons discourse ⁸ lies in the variety of approaches attempting to overcome this divide and find the common of offline and online, tangible and intangible, old and new, green and social commons with the explicit aim of transforming society. It is clear that for the commons to become the foundation of a free society, neither one can be without the others.

3. Commons: Resources and Social Relations

E. Ostrom focused her research activities on what she called common-pool resources (CPR). She describes the term as referring to a “natural or man-made resource system that is sufficiently large as to make it costly (but not impossible) to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from use” (E. Ostrom 1990: 30) with resource systems as the stock variable and resource units as the flow variable. “The actual process of appropriating resource units from the CPR can be undertaken by multiple appropriators simultaneously or sequentially” (ibid.: 31) while joint use and joint appropriation are excluded. All appropriators, she claims, benefit from improvements and maintenance efforts simultaneously. Common-pool resources are distinguished from (pure) public goods in terms of the dimension of subtractability. While in the latter case use does not reduce the resource system, the former allows for the extraction of resource units to reduce the available stock. This is part of the classical goods classification ⁹ .

Subtractability of use is high when the goods used by one person cannot be used by another person or, put differently, if use subtracts from the stock. High (low) excludability means that it is easy/cheap (hard/costly) to exclude potential beneficiaries from accessing the resource. The critique that can be put forward against this typology aims at the underlying naturalistic and objectivist understanding. The argument is that it is not an inherent feature of the good to be either excludable or not, but it is dependent on the social relation which might make it so (Helfrich and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung 2009: 24).

An illustrative example often presented to back this critique is water. It can be free to use for everybody but it can also be bottled and sold and thus transformed into a private good. Technically, everything might be made excludable one day (for much of this is already the case). Further, the question of costs is also a social relation. It is only costly to exclude others if demand for the use is high, if possibilities of substitution are limited, if there are technologies available for exclusion, etc. Additionally, exclusion will only be attempted if it promises profits, which is clearly another social relation. Hence, if the dimension of excludability is a social one, determined by society, it cannot serve as part of such a classification targeting the nature of the goods. What is left is the question of subtractability (conventionally also rivalry), which is indeed a qualitative difference according to Helfrich (2012: 85). One might add that this quality is not as clear-cut as often thought. For example, living in a shared flat may be more (a different quality) than simply sharing the kitchen and living room. It can have a quality of its own to live with other people, build up social relations, cook and eat together, and so on. Thus, the subtractability in use also has the potential for different interpretations depending on the social conditions. However, eating an apple clearly makes it impossible for another person to eat the very same apple.

E. Ostrom (1990) showed that with CPRs it is possible to find arrangements that allow for long-lived and stable common use. It is obvious that if it is possible to find those ways for resources of high subtractability, it should in principle be much easier for goods that stay the same or are even enhanced when shared and used (i.e. knowledge). Ultimately, however, it all depends on the social and societal relations and the corresponding form of livelihood production. ¹⁰ It became clear that we cannot use the properties of the resources to say what can be considered a commons and what not (Helfrich 2012: 90). The same problems are at hand for approaches which claim that something is a commons because we as a society (or some subgroup) have a right to manage a particular resource. The rights-based approaches run into the same “naturalistic” pitfalls as the resource approach. Why should we have a right to water, but not to soil? Not to crops? Not to culture? Not to computers? It is always societies (or subsets) that grant rights. Hence, rights do not serve to conceptualize commons convincingly.

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Table 1.

Conventional classification of goods (adapted from E. Ostrom 2010: 645).

	High subtractability of use	Low subtractability of use
High excludability	Private good	Toll good / Club good
Low excludability	CPR / Common good	Public good / Collective good

One quite logical approach to the question what a commons could then be is the frequently launched idea that (for example, but not necessarily, common-pool) resources are but one building block needed to establish a commons (e.g. Helfrich et al. 2009: 11). The people involved in the process of transforming and using the resources, often organized in communities, constitute the second pillar. Third, rules and norms for structuring the relations among involved people (commoners) and the relevant resources are necessary. Those rules vary greatly across cases, but congruent (with specific conditions) and largely self-given (by the people involved) rules have been shown to be best suited to forming appropriate institutions (E. Ostrom 1990: 92f.). Hence, commons can be seen as resources that are embedded in a specific form of social relation.

The problem with this conceptualization is on the one hand that it is not clear how many of the rules must in fact be self-given and by whom those rules are actually determined. The fact that the community decides does not say anything about the internal structure of those communities (e.g. hierarchical or patriarchal structures would also fall under this notion). It is furthermore not clear as to what exactly constitutes a community. On the other hand, virtually all production processes have something to do with resources, with people, and have some degree of freedom to decide about their constitution. Thus, this conception remains rather trivial and not convincing.

Meretz (2013a), while focusing on the generative potential of the commons, builds up a different conceptual triad consisting of resources, commoning, and resulting products. ¹¹ The term commoning (to common) can be traced back to medieval England (Linebaugh 2008) and was used for the common pasturage of communally owned land or the access of the rural population to the forests. Commoning can be described as commonly engaging in an activity. It is production, reproduction, cultivation, and care; it is coordinated activity on an equal footing. This social practice can be distinguished from hierarchical command structures in feudal and slave-holder societies as well as in patriarchal families. Being on a par with the others (as peers) and a good degree of voluntariness are important features of this “doing in common.” Meretz’s conceptualization has the advantage of being focused on the dynamic, productive, and transformative aspects of the commons. This conception is not subject to all of the criticisms as was the case with the previous one above as it gives a good notion about the internal proceedings with the term commoning. However, on the part of the social relations, the commons associations ¹² one might say, the external relation is not sufficiently dealt with. Collectives commonly producing for the market might be classifiable as commons in Meretz’s conceptualization and even conventional capitalist corporations may be as well. They clearly involve resources; internally they may also include some sort of commoning, and they produce some output. Thus, this conceptualization is not much more clear-cut and unambiguous than the first conceptualizations.

Before digging deeper into the matter of the commons as such, let us turn to the question of the social relations surrounding them. I propose the term “self-determined institution of commoning” to more accurately conceptualize these social relations. Including the term institution makes it possible to take into consideration a) the possibility of organizational forms (or at least some commitment and accountability), b) the importance of established laws and practices, and c) the active process of instituting (in the sense of establishing or introducing) commoning. Institutions include something regular (in the sense of rule-like) and something enduring. The conceptualization implies the aspects of being peers and inherent voluntariness (commoning). It is (like Meretz’s attempt) shifting the conceptual focus away from the rather static substantive matter-orientation towards the action-oriented, living, people-centered term “commoning” that disallows naturalist reductions. Following that idea, commoning can also happen outside of “institutionalized” commons, but is a constitutive part of the latter. The same holds for the commoners, who can also engage in “non-commoning activities” and be part of “non-commons institutions” but are obviously a necessary condition for a functioning commons. Accordingly, “non-commoning activities” can occur in commons. Two crucial questions for determining if something can be considered a commons are whether or not commoning is (at least in large part) the end of the institution (not merely a means), and if commoning is the dominant (vastly prevailing) practice of social interaction. If both conditions hold true, we can speak of an “institution of commoning.”

The aspect of self-determination will emphasize the external aspect of being principally able to determine its own ends as well as the means to achieve those in a way free of both personal and structural domination. It does not mean social non-relatedness or isolation, however. For example, producing merely for the sake of profit-making, as is common in capitalist societies, contradicts the concept of self-determination as commodity production imposes certain methods of production on the producers. Producing for the market makes the producers follow that specific alien logic and is reflected in the production process, in the nature of the resulting products, in the entire social relations among people, and in the goods at hand. The conceptualization of commons as a product ¹³ embedded in “self-determined institutions of commoning” has the additional advantage of also including intentional commons associations that are very aware of their specialty and differ from conventional forms of production. Supplementarily, this conceptualization can include certain forms of indigenous and traditional livelihood production.

4. Traditional and Emerging Commons, State, and Market

As the titles of the works by both E. Ostrom (2010) and Bollier and Helfrich (2012) already clearly indicate, commons is a concept that goes beyond the widely used dichotomy of market versus state as the only possible forms of governance and societal organization. Most of the time when people argue against an involvement by the state or some sort of centralized authority/bureaucracy, the only other option they think of is the market. Liberals tend to criticize the state for being oppressive, inefficient, and ineffective. So-called government failures such as, but not limited to, rent-seeking and principal-agent problems are frequently used argumentation tools to principally call into question the ability of governments to provide desired solutions. The market is seen as the only and better alternative. Market failures such as (natural) monopolies and externalities are an important part of the counter-argumentation by socialists, where the traditional solution is to get the state involved in a responsible position. Socialists, liberals, but also Keynesians, neoliberals, etc., normally fill particular positions in the state-market dichotomy by criticizing one of the two poles and suggesting a shift towards the other (with different intensities and partly differentiated by spheres/fields).

The respective critiques are backed by a fair amount of empirical evidence and are theoretically rather sound. There is a good reason for taking the respective critiques seriously. This does not, however, validate the included recommendations at the same time. Commons, as a potential third method being different from markets and equivalent exchange on the one hand, and from central planning and bureaucratic hierarchies on the other, can principally be an alternative that does not necessarily include either of those failures just mentioned because interest structures largely differ.

Breaking the state-market dichotomy allows many conventionally used and largely unchallenged terms and concepts to be questioned. One of these is the term “public.” “Public” can on the one hand mean “state-governed” and on the other “society-governed.” Rainer Rilling (2011) differentiated these meanings nicely on the basis of the German term “öffentlich.” The argumentation can be made analogously for the English term, however. In German, the distinction could be made more visible with recourse to the terms “öffentlich” and “gemein” (even though the latter has a historically grown negative connotation), while in English the concurrent pair of terms could be “public” and “common.” Instead of talking about a public debate and public opinion, one could talk about a common debate and a common opinion, and use “commonly available” instead of “publicly available.” This differentiation of terms can serve to dissect the spheres in everyday language and avoid confusion. Furthermore, it can serve to illustrate the distinctness of the common logic from the public (in the sense of state-governed) logic.

The “common domain” is obviously strongly influenced as well as being partly structured and determined by the societal system it is confronted with. Commoners, commons, and commoning are all embedded in capitalist restraints and conflicts. On the one hand, this point is frequently stressed (see e.g. Meretz 2010b) to make clear that present-day commons are potentially in permanent conflict with market and state interests, evidently depending on the historical circumstances and the kind of commons at hand. The first large-scale enclosure movement can be said to have arisen during the course of the institutionalization of the market society (cf. Linebaugh 2008; Polanyi 1944: 35ff.) and the second is arising right now with respect to knowledge, information, and even the mind (cf. Bruns 2008: 398; Boyle 2008: 42ff.). Enclosure, even though coming in waves, is a continuous process of suppressing and preventing the logic of the commons from unfolding. It excludes people from accessing resources (and in doing so, creates an artificial division between people themselves). Where commons are, the market logic loses vigor, and where commoners govern themselves, the state loses power and legitimacy as a centralized authority. Commons have the potential to push aside market and state. On the other hand, commons open up a perspective for an emancipatory societal project, for a free society. To explore this potential and promote a society, in which commons-based commons creation is the dominant mode of production, can be seen as the aim and embraced task of the German language radical commons discourse. It is hoped that it will become a transformative grand narrative as Bollier and Helfrich (2012) write in the editorial introduction to their book.

Important for realizing the novel potentiality of the commons is Meretz’s (2012b) dissection of commons into two broad categories: traditional commons and emerging commons. The first are analyzed by what one might call the “Ostrom School.” This is, according to Meretz (2012b), where the definition “commons = resources + community + rules” applies. Traditional commons are largely focused on the preservation of existing natural resources. One might add that the long-term use and exploitation of those resource units are in focus here. The resource systems are to be protected and not transformed as such. Meretz (2012b) describes the new, emerging commons as being centered on the creation of something new. It is product-directed and construction-oriented. That is why his concept is rather “commons = resources + commoning + products.” I believe that the term “self-determined institution of commoning” suggested above can grasp both traditional as well as emerging commons without covering too much of the differences and could thus serve as a bridging conceptualization. Regarding the concept not as binary (yes/no) but as ordinal (more/less) would make it possible to point out that some commons have more self-determination and others more commoning. One could therefore hypothesize, for example, that traditional commons tend to have more of a problem with the internal relation, and emerging commons with the external relation.

Meretz (2012b) claims further that the difference between the two types is a difference of social practices where the traditional commons use their production as an important aspect of their reproduction, while for emerging commons reproduction is but one issue of production. The differences in productivity play a crucial role in this matter. The fact that there are new commons that start producing a diversity of things in an extensively different way compared to capitalist modes of production can be taken as a decisive step towards the commons becoming a society-determining social form. According to Meretz (2012b), the new quality of emerging commons (compared to traditional commons) is the possibility to connect universally. Products of one commons are more frequently the resources for other commons, and that makes a societal structure on the basis of commons imaginable. ¹⁴

5. The Character of Commons-based Peer Production

E. Ostrom has extracted well-known design principles or best practices (E. Ostrom 1990: 90ff., a modified version in E. Ostrom 2010: 653) from the studies she conducted. Those best practices are clearly focused on what Meretz (2012b) called traditional commons. “Peer production,” on the other hand, is associated more with the notion of emerging commons. Yochai Benkler (2006: 59), who coined the term, calls this phenomenon of openness and collaboration “persistent” in advanced economies, but “one that should not be there, at least according to our most widely held beliefs about economic behavior.”

Inspired to a great extent by emerging commons and conceptual reflection, some principles that try to embrace the emancipatory potential of the commons have emerged. Siefkes (2007: 9f.) argues that exchanges (of equivalents) are not the fundamental basis of commons, but that rather contributions characterize the social practices of giving, taking, using, and sharing. This can be seen exemplarily in Wikipedia, where people write and improve articles without usually receiving an equivalent direct (e.g. monetary) benefit from it. ¹⁵ Siefkes takes the second principle from the very same field. In market economies, social position and status are crucial driving forces and criteria to evaluate and rank others. This “sticky currency” is not of much importance in commons associations, however, where reputation plays a more crucial role. If a person contributes to the development of software packages or helps other people in online forums and does a proper job, this will usually enhance his/her reputation on the relevant platforms (sometimes in forms of virtual beans, stars, or the like to signal trustworthiness and commitment). Initiating an appreciated new project can enhance a reputation just as much as fair and competent work as a project maintainer (Siefkes 2007: 15f.).

Free cooperation or association is another crucial principle (Siefkes 2007: 14f.) including the possibility of “forking,” which means to found a new project that does a similar thing (but differing at decisive points) while the old project may still exist. This happened, for example, when some people from the office software project “Open Office” were not happy about some decisions taken in the development and communication processes. They founded the counterpart “Libre Office” and in doing so forked the project “Open Office.” Knowing about the differences between the projects, people can freely decide which project they want to join and which product to use. ¹⁶ That gives great incentives for maintainers to take decisions that are supported by the people using the products, and to an even larger extent to take decisions supported by the contributors. One could call this “structural focus on stakeholders” as opposed to shareholders. ¹⁷ On free software projects it is quite common to rely on maintainers to take a relevant degree of decisions. This has proven pragmatic and not necessarily authoritarian. People can “fork,” they are not dependent on the jobs they are doing, so there is no functional drive for authority to become authoritarian. This maintainer authority is mainly based on reputation, initiative, voluntariness, and practical knowledge and acts instead of structural and personal power (cf. Siefkes 2009).

Additionally, needs orientation is a basic underlying principle of peer production. As there is no direct exchange, the structurally antagonistic interests of producers and consumers disappear. Producers do not become active through some abstract value (money/profit) or mere force, but rather through their own (intrinsic) motivations ¹⁸ to do the tasks that are needed, which of course is enhanced if people actually need and thus appreciate the products. The distinct separation of paid and unpaid activities (often described as production and reproduction labor) is a fundamental building block of the capitalist method of production. Ideally, this is not the case with commons production as the abstract evaluation mechanism is absent, and there is no money or another equivalent involved. ¹⁹ It is about contributing voluntarily, and taking what is needed, not on (equivalent) exchange relations. Hence, an equivalent is neither needed nor functional. ²⁰ Furthermore, production and reproduction cannot be said to be separated into different spheres as the production process becomes needs-oriented and ceases being profit-oriented. Thus, we can say that commons are not only based on both production and reproduction, but also that the distinction might even vanish and a transcendence of the two take place. We could name this new category (re)production (cf. Löschmann 2013).

Another social separation prevalent in today’s societies is the antagonism between consumption and production (Siefkes 2007: 17ff.; cf. Korsch [1919] 1980: 109ff.). Producers have the incentive to sell for a high price while at the same time to use input factors that are as cheap as possible. ²¹ The more pronounced the difference between the two, the greater the (commercial/economic) efficiency. This leads to low quality products, planned obsolescence, externalizations (e.g. pollution), and so on. The interest of consumers is, on the other hand, buying good quality and long-lived products at the lowest price possible. ²² This conflict does not persist when the material well-being of producers does not depend on their ability to sell products on markets and to make a profit from them. If production is actually needs-oriented, and producers produce out of intrinsic motivation, it will be possible to create products that obey other laws than money- and price-based efficiency. Usability, reparability, resource efficiency, etc. could be in the interest of both consumers and producers because it can be supposed that creating high-quality, use-oriented products satisfies the human productive motivation much more than low-quality, short-lived products.

The terms “produser” or “prosumer” ²³ can be used to describe a person who is at the same time the producer and user of the product, which is normally not the case in capitalist production, at least not structurally, but is a constituent part of, for example, open source software production. In commodity production, this trend can also be depicted as individual consumers’ (voluntarily revealed) preferences start having more influence on designs and configurations (individualized on-demand production). This makes them part of the production processes, even though they are only determined to a very limited degree by the consumers. Under capitalism, the extent of consumer involvement is determined by its functionality for the corporations’ profit-making efforts. However, it hints at a development towards more needs orientation. In this context, one often speaks of prosumption, which includes the process of production and the process of consumption. Löschmann (2013) combined the two concepts of (re)production and prosumption to create the term (re)prosumption ²⁴ which again accentuates more explicitly the reproductive aspects of production (and consumption) activities and includes the possibility of transcendence (see above).

All this can only work if the category “property” is challenged as well. In peer production, the focus lies on possession (Siefkes 2009: 38ff.) as opposed to property or ownership. ²⁵ In this context, property is described neither as the things that belong to a person, nor as the domination of a person over an object, but rather as a relation of people with reference to an object (Meretz 2010a). While possession is the factual, real, physical access and control, such as the apartment one rents, property is the abstract right that society gives one person to sell, rent, and exclude others from using or accessing the good in question. ²⁶ The claim is that any kind of property has to be regarded as being critical, no matter if it is individual or state and other collective property such as stock companies, family property, and even cooperatives’ ownership. This is quite ambivalent, however, as property gives protection in a world hostile to alternative projects and lifestyles on the one hand, while on the other it reproduces societal relations that lead to conflicts and separation.

6. Commons as an Inclusive Seed Form

Meretz attempts to challenge capitalism at its very foundation. He sees the commodity form as the core, the elementary form of capitalism. In order to find a way out of it, he argues that this form has to be challenged. Meretz (2013a) claims that the commons are the seed form of a free society. To make the distinction between the two micro-logics clear, it is helpful to look at a comparison of the two. Meretz (2013a) hypothesizes that the logic of the commodity form is one of exclusion, while the commons display an opposing logic of inclusion. The rationale behind this hypothesis is depicted in Table 2.

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Table 2.

Micro-logics compared: Commodity and commons form (Meretz 2013a, translation J.E.).

Logic of exclusion (commodity form)	Logic of inclusion (commons form)
Ex post confirmation of needs	Ex ante mediation of needs
Conflicting aims are externalized	Conflicting aims are dealt with internally
Production for an alien end	Production for their own ends (end in itself)
One-dimensional end (profit)	Ends as a multi-dimensional plurality
Saving time as unavoidable force	Spending time as quality of life
Generation of expulsion and separation	Generation of positive reciprocity
Competitive logic	Cooperative logic
Homo oeconomicus: Abstract equality and formal justice	Human being: Concrete distinctiveness and perceived fairness
Structural singularization	Structural communality
Structural irresponsibility	Structural ability for responsibility
Separation of production and reproduction	Unity of production and reproduction
Reproduction for production	Production for reproduction
Development of each is at the expense of the development of all	Free development of each is the condition for the free development of all

On the one hand, commodity production is always the result of speculative production, while on the other hand the processes of production and allocation are confirmed ex post, through the equivalent exchange on the market. Producers speculate that their produce will be sold at a favorable price on the market. If that does not happen, producers are in trouble (i.e. make losses or even go bankrupt) and the produce might be even thrown away (as seen occasionally with foodstuffs such as corn or butter). Commons, on the other hand, offer the possibility to mediate supply and demand beforehand. This is feasible through the involvement of users in the production process and the assessment of needs with respect to design, quality, quantity, etc.

The conflicts of objectives, production, and protection of the environment for instance, or cheap consumption goods and absence of child labor in the production process, are externalized in the case of commodity production. The buyers do not pay the “full price” (if something like that even exists) and the producers do not have to pay the full price for their production either. Meretz (2013a) claims that this is a structural necessity of capitalism. Conflicting aims, also among different people, can be handled differently within the commons. They can be resolved internally (when the stakeholders are involved, I would say). At the same time, the process of commodity production is aimed at alien ends, namely making money. Under capitalism, this is a structural imperative for making a living, for living in the first place. In the commons, production can be performed by people not forced to do exactly this at that very moment, in that manner, and for so many hours a week. People produce out of their own motivation, as an end in itself. That gets us to the aims: while commodity production aims at making more money out of money, at making profit (uni-dimensional), the aim of producing commons is more varied and concrete rather than abstract. It can be the vaccination, the house, the time spent with a friend, the pleasure of producing, the academic work, and the theater play. The conflicts about what to produce, for whose use, and which means to utilize, can be (at first glance) quite complicated in the commons as there is no simple mechanism as is the case with commodity production (money). But precisely that gives the structural possibility and necessity to talk about the conflicting aims and to solve them not via economic and political domination or structural constraints, but via self-given decision-making procedures and deliberation, as peers.

Under conditions of commodity production, saving time (the running time of machines and working time of workers) is a structural necessity, whereas if commons production is to the greatest degree voluntary, spending time can be seen as being positively connoted, as quality of life. Production can be aimed at the produce itself, it can be the process of producing, the skills learned, the knowledge obtained, the satisfaction of the own productive needs, the favors done to others, the friends made, and much more. Production processes could also be rearranged so that abstract efficiency is not the focal point of the configuration, but the fun while doing it, or the communication possibilities, or whatever pleases the people involved (stakeholders).

Currently, separations are very common, be it along the lines of gender, skin color, age, sexual orientation, income, nationality, etc. According to Meretz, these are structural necessities in capitalist societies because they are a means to gain ground in competitive struggles. This is not the case with commons. People are not in permanent and existential competition with each other; instead they benefit from other people, their talents, knowledge, and their ability to get involved in some tasks at hand. This creates positive reciprocity, as Meretz (2013a) puts it, and allows for a great degree of openness. Structurally, no people have to be excluded. Commodity production is dominated by the logic of competition, the commons by the logic of cooperation. The logic of competition, Meretz (2013a) claims, is at play when cooperation is conducted as a means of increasing competitiveness. ²⁷

The homo oeconomicus is, according to Meretz (2013a), not only a concept far away from reality, but also displays part of the requirements we need to face in a commodity-producing society that is based on abstract equality and formal justice, both claims of many social movements. But circumstances that treat different people in different positions equally can create large inequalities. Similarly, having the same possibility to participate in a system creating injustice can be perceived as being just, but only formally just. It has nothing to do with past grievances or special needs. Meretz (2013a) sees the inclusive logic as being based on human beings in their concrete (as opposed to abstract) distinctiveness and on perceived justice. Different people need different things and feel different about the same things. Thus, no abstract notion of justice, equal for all, should be implemented because that treats different people in the same way. Instead, people should be able to create their respective livelihoods as collective individuals based on what each person perceives to be just. Conflicting interests, again, can then finally be debated impartially.

Structural singularization means that the society builds on isolated individuals and furthers processes of social disintegration, whereas structural communality is the case that communality (bonding with other people and respecting the needs of others) is functional in a society. The first case is strongly linked to structural irresponsibility, which occurs when people are not able to bear full responsibility for the acts they support or commit. When buying cheap shoes from a low-wage, but high-pollution factory, we might not be able to satisfy our need for shoes differently because of a lack of financial means. Even if we were able to do so, things would probably not be much better as other producers have the same incentives. It is not personal misconduct, but a structural problem. When dealing with commons, people are (structurally) able to be responsible as there is some form of deliberation about conflicting aims, as mentioned above. The questions of production and reproduction have also been dealt with extensively, so what remains to be stated here is the last point, where Meretz (2013a) claims that in a society where commodity production is dominant, the development of each is at the expense of the development of all, as all lose in terms of their competitiveness as it develops. On average, people are forced to commercialize more and more aspects of life as capitalism advances. The structural necessity to sell, to be more productive, to be in a better competitive position than the competitors, the advance of one necessarily goes hand in hand with the relative deterioration of all the competitors’ chances on the market, and consequently with their competitiveness. Hence, it is functional to try stopping competitors from developing. In the logic of inclusion, the free development of the individual is the condition for the free development of all. People are potential contributors rather than competitors. Contributions may be of better quality, people may act more as what they are, and the free development of all (relieved from personal as well as structural domination) can be the basis of the dominant mode of (re)produsage.

7. Commons-creating Society

If the above described logics are indeed so distinct, and if they can actually be attributed to the commons and the commodity form respectively (in other words, if this conceptualization is appropriate), then the commons form may actually be the foundation of an entirely different form of society. Nick Dyer-Witheford argues: “If the cell form of capitalism is the commodity, the cellular [seed] form of a society beyond capital is the common. A commodity is a good produced for sale, a common is a good produced, or conserved, to be shared” (Dyer-Witheford 2007: 82). Commons could thus be seen as the constitutive elements of a new mode of production. Modes of production can be historically distinguished between traditional, subsistence production (e.g. traditional commons), commodity production (dominant today), and the new mode of production associated with emerging commons (cf. Meretz 2013a, 2013b). To answer the question as to how a new mode of production could, in general, become the dominant one, the one largely determining the way society is structured, Meretz (2013b) uses a concept developed by Klaus Holzkamp, the founding father of Critical Psychology, in which he attempts to explain the emergence of the human psyche. Meretz (2013b) argues that the same line of argument can be used to analyze other historic-dialectic developments. According to this concept, a system qualitatively changes if one determining aspect changes its quality. For society as such, the mode of production can be seen as one of the (or in the materialist tradition even the) determining aspects. However, production should not be seen as only including material production, but as also including all other kinds of produce such as knowledge production, cultural activities, and social relations. The argument goes as follows: first, there needs to be a logical seed [cellular] form (possibly with different material realizations revealing (parts of) the form). It might have been there all the time, in some niche, and needs to contain important aspects of the “new.” As a second logical step, the “old” system falls into a crisis; it cannot sustain itself on its own grounds (Meretz 2013b). The current financial crisis could be seen as such a momentum, where the capitalist system has problems sustaining itself on the basis of commodity production. ²⁸

The first qualitative leap, the third step, is the shift or change of functionality. The seed form starts becoming more important, leaves its niche, but still remains subordinate. The functionality of the seed form is twofold. On the one hand, it contributes to the preservation of the dominant system (Meretz 2013b). This might be exemplified with reference to open source software and the so-called “sharing economy” of today where large car manufacturers begin operating their own car-sharing divisions and many companies use Linux operating systems. This increases the potential of the new form because it advances the spread and development of the new. People get used to the new way of production and increasingly adopt that unconventional social practice. On the other hand, the new logic is incompatible with the old logic; it cannot be entirely absorbed or taken up (Meretz 2013b). For example, car-sharing implies a different way of using cars (sharing with others) and open source software can only be produced openly.

The fourth step could be called the second qualitative leap and contains the shift of dominance. In this phase, a reversal of the rank order, of dominance, takes place (Meretz 2013b). This could be the point where network effects start occurring, where people stop being materially dependent on the “old” mode of production. The new logic can unfold itself on the basis of the new logic, on its own basis, and starts becoming dominant. The old form does not necessarily need to disappear entirely or immediately, however. The fifth and last step is one of restructuring. The new form becomes dominant in vast areas and the structure of the system is arranged largely according to the new logic. We could imagine this as cleaning up environmental damage, recycling materials, changing production facilities, and so on. This could be the starting point of a new cycle.

This so-called “five-step model” (Meretz 2013b) can be regarded as a possibility for grasping how the current mode of production could be changed towards a new dominant mode of production, which transforms the quality of society during that process. This approach gains empirical plausibility through real-life examples such as Wikipedia, which outperformed (some people like saying “outcooperated” instead) conventional alternatives in the commodity form such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica or its German equivalent Brockhaus. There is some reason to believe that we are currently in the beginning of the third step.

How could such a society be considered at the macro level? The network effect has been mentioned before. Ultimately, the commodity form is only one way of framing (and determining) the way people transform their environment and use the produce, as well as the question who does what and at whose disposal the produce will be. This can be seen as a large network with certain specificities. A network that is not specified according to the commodity form, but determined by the commons, would have to look rather different. The links, the relationships at hand, are not based on equivalent exchange but on contributing and taking what is necessitated, on needs and wishes.

In traditional commons, this is often solved through personal relations. People know each other, trust each other, and have a common faith. This constitutes some form of direct reciprocity. It often takes the following form: I give something to you today and have good reason to believe that you will give me something I need at some other time. A society decisively determined by direct reciprocity is faced by the problem of scalability. Groups cannot become too large because the human capacity of having direct and good relationships of trust is limited. But the critical mass of networks is normally a relatively large number and as societies are not limited to quasi-autarkic little groups (which brings potentially disastrous problems of group identities, etc.), but to exploiting the potential of a division of tasks (in the good sense, not in the current irrational, alienated, and heteronomous sense), on average large networks work better.

This can be seen again with open source software. If more people read, write, comment, and modify the programs, the result is likely to be better. This is because “more eyes see more” and because the probability that one person has (and shares) the missing knowledge increases with the number of contributors. ²⁹ Relations of indirect reciprocity function as follows: I give something to somebody belonging to one of my network today and have good reason to believe that when I need something at some other time, somebody from that network will help me out, not necessarily because I gave something to “the network” beforehand, but because I need something and I am part of the network. ³⁰ This makes the scaling problem disappear, or even reverses it. The larger the network, the greater the chance that somebody is able and willing to help me out with just what I need right at the moment I need it. This by no means implies that relations of direct reciprocity will wither away. The opposite might be true. But relations of direct reciprocity need not be the determining feature of the societal mediation of who does and who uses what, when, and how (cf. Meretz 2013a).

One way to imagine such a form of mediation based on indirect reciprocity can be observed with Wikipedia and is called stigmergy. The term is based on the Greek word “stigma” which means “sign” (cf. Siefkes 2009: 7). When a task that some people believe should be done (e.g. to write a new article about something still missing) is still due, the link to the article appears in red. This sign says: if you know something about the requested topic, please write an article. The result is freely available and the person contributing to the completion has contributed something to the network. These signs can additionally be compiled on “to-do lists,” which can be configured so that the most urgent, the most wanted, or the most recent signs are highlighted (i.e. through ranking). This allows people to contribute exactly what they want and when it is needed and to prioritize according to needs. ³¹ Stigmergy is imaginable for many other projects, not just Wikipedia, even though it will then look different. Ultimately, stigmergy is a sign-based organizational mechanism that makes communication and dispersion of information (i.e. on tasks and their completion) possible without the necessity of personal, time, or spatial meetings. The aim of the stigmergic method is the coherent and comprehensive organization of local actions, or put differently: merging micro-activities to create macro-coherence (Meretz 2013a). This could be a system that is not only serviceable for mediating people’s activities within, but also across commons-associations. It could thus be part of different, larger (meta-) commons projects such as an open university, an urban garden, or an orchestra. As part of the latter, we follow the signs of a sports club and give a concert on its 25^th anniversary. Hence, commons associations can “communicate” in this manner as well.

Polycentricity could be considered appropriate for structures of such complex decentralized network systems based on indirect reciprocity. “many centers of decision making that are formally independent of each other” (V. Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961: 831). Through this, the functional differentiation of commons can be exerted and the nature of the commons can find its equivalent at the macro level with respect to self-determination, multi-dimensionality, and needs-orientation. Polycentric systems are based on partial dependence and allow for a high degree of flexibility. This makes it very appropriate for the multi-dimensional plurality and concrete distinctiveness of the commons. Stigmergic mediation and polycentric connectivity could thus be the foundation for a commons-creating society that creates its own basis (commons-based commons creation) and allows for decentralized, self-planned, and self-organized production structurally free of domination.

8. Conclusion

This contribution attempts to give an impression of the main arguments of the radical German language commons discourse. After elaborating on the theoretical background based on the heritage of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, the argumentation continues with dissecting traditional and emerging commons and the respective academic approaches. The German language discourse is presented as trying to find the common denominator in those and at the same time their potential for societal transformation. In this paper, commons are conceptualized as being the logical counterpart of the commodity, as tangible or intangible products embedded in self-determined institutions of commoning. Commoning refers to human practices based on needs-oriented, self-organization of peers, free of domination. For the sake of argument and readability, I attempted to make a consistent story out of it, which should not lead to the impression that all the issues discussed here are unanimously accepted and undisputed. It is work in progress. The discourse aims at envisioning a world, modes of production, and a society that transcend today’s liberal democracy and capitalist form of production as dominant features. The commons can be considered to be the key to that attempt. Commons depict a different logic as compared to the currently dominant mode of production. It is about contributions instead of exchanges, reputation instead of status, stakeholders instead of shareholders, maintainer authority instead of structural and personal power, needs-orientation instead of profit-orientation, and possession instead of property.

Meretz (2013a) conceptualizes the commons as a seed form of a free society depicting a vastly different logic as compared to the commodity, namely an inclusive rather than an exclusive logic. It is important to emphasize that the logical, conceptual form of commons presented here can be taken as a yardstick for commons, but it must be clear that under current historical conditions no commons can satisfy this ideal entirely. They can contain more or less elements of the commons logic.

A crucial point in the effort to unfold the societal potentiality of the commons is to cross-link different commons associations. Stigmergy and polycentric self-organization could be seen as being potential foundations for accordingly corresponding societal mediation based on indirect reciprocity. For now, commons can be regarded as an enabling and empowering form based on structural communality, allowing us to practice as well as experience the glint of an emancipated, free society.