Hear about a guide to reclaiming the commons, and you’ll likely think about reading it one future day — then forget it entirely. But make that guide freely avaliable online, and you’ll likely download — and hopefully read — said guide.
That’s exactly how I came to read Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, a book written by Peter Barnes, the former president of Working Assets — my current cell phone company. Yep, you can download it, freely and legally.
Capitalism 3.0 gets its title from Peter’s contention that we need to “upgrade our operating system.” According to Peter, Capitalism 1.0 — when demand outstripped supply — ended around 1950. At that point, we entered our current Capitalism 2.0 — “surplus capitalism” — which “devours nature, widens inequality, and fails to make us happier in the end.” In this era, corporations can take advantage of public rights and properties, externalize their costs to the commons, and distort democracy, disrupting the role our government’s intended to play.
2.0’s tough to fix, according to Peter. Pollution taxes won’t work; those taxes’ll not be paid by corporations but passed on to consumers, and the government can’t be trusted to use the money well, in his view. Shareholder activism won’t work, because “ethical” investment funds still face the same financial pressures as “regular” funds. A mandate for corporations to consider a triple bottom line — people, planet, and profit — won’t work, because corporations will undertake the cheapest initiatives that’ll yield the greatest PR benefits with little consideration as to the initiatives that really might have meaningful environmental and social impacts. Fixing up the government to play a tougher regulatory role won’t work, because government’s too easily bought by corporate interests.
Which is why Peter proposes we enter Capitalism 3.0, complete with a new third sector — the commons sector — joining the current corporate and state sectors. He writes: “What we need today, then, along with more common property, is a set of institutions, distinct from corporations and government, whose unique and explicit mission is to manage common property.”
Basically, what Peter proposes is more numerous, larger-scale versions of existing public trusts, like “land or easements held in perpetual trust, as by the Nature Conservancy, and corporate assets managed on behalf of a broad community, as by the Alaska Permanent Fund.” Such trusts’ll act as a corrective to the corporate sector: Corporations will have to pay rent to these trusts for using natural resources — sort of like today’s voluntary purchase of carbon offsets made mandatory. Furthermore, Peter suggests we require corporations to pay for other “free” resources too — like the cost of government enforcement of copyright laws.
All of this sounds good to me from a theoretical viewpoint — but how will this play out in real life? Peter does tries to answer the burning question I had while reading the book: “How can we be sure trustees [of the commons] won’t succumb to corporate influence, just as politicians have?” Peter says we need to set the trusts up well, making trusteeship an honorable, long-term role that’s immune from outside pressures, installing “strict conflict-of-interest rules for trustees and managers,” mandating financial transparency, and authorizing external advocates such as nonprofits to take an active role.
That all sounds good, but aren’t those things we sought (and still seek) in our government? In fact, Peter contends that “Until it assigns responsibility for a commons to someone else, government is the default trustee, and should be held to trusteeship standards.” And he says we can rely only on the government to set up all intergenerational compacts.
Which begs the question: What exactly makes a commons sector different from the government sector? I’m puzzled because Peter first points to the short-sightedness of pushing for improvement or change from the government — then fully relies on the government to make the improvements and changes he seeks. His seeming pessimism about the government’s ability to do its job’s followed by an optimism about the government’s ability to create an entire new sector that’s immune from the pressures of its own sector.
All of which leaves me thinking not so much that we need a new commons sector, but that we need more serious civic engagement in our governmental processes to preserve our commons –
Maybe what Peter is looking for – though he doesn’t seem to know it – is the co-op model. They’re businesses, subject to all the real-world discipline of the marketplace (eg they have to create more value than they consume), but they’re democratically owned and governed by the people they serve, whether its a farmer co-op like Organic Valley or Oceanspray, or a worker-co-op like Equal Exchange, or a retailer/marketing co-op like True Value or Ace Hardware. (You don’t see anyone complaining about “Ace Hardware” killing mom-&-pop local stores, ’cause they are they mom-&-pop local stores, but working together with other locally owned stores across the country. )
And there’s no question about “could it be done?” because it already IS being done. For example, the number of people employed by co-ops worldwide exceeds that of the number employed by Fortune 500 companies.
I could elaborate, but it’s late. So check out this info page from the National Co-op Business Association: http://www.ncba.coop/abcoop.cfm
Comment by Rodney North — May 18, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
Barnes is part of a movement centered in the Bay Area relooking at the idea of the commons.
The idea of commons goes back to England where peasants had the right to have their sheep pasture in the commons, lands that can be used by all. Also the peasants could take wood for fuel from the commons and have their pigs forage for food in the commons. Other cultures have commons. Mexico had ejidos, common lands where all the villages could use. Other European countries had commons. Tribal Native American and Africa had commons.
In England the enclosures ended the commons: large landowners claimed the commons as their own private property, and made it a crime for the poor to use it. The enclosure of the commons bankrupt the rural poor in England who were then forced to go work in the new factories or stare. The commons is not a co-op, a worker owned business. The commons is publicly owned. People negotiate how to use a commons, and sometimes that works well, but right now the ocean commons is not being well negotiated. Right now many people we are dealing with new enclosures as corporations are trying to take public things–seeds, air, water, knowledge–and market them.
I just gave a speech on the desert commons at the Crises in the Commons Conference in Berkeley sponsored by the California Studies Association. It was a wonderful conference. All the speeches are online at Crises of the Commons Conference. crisesofthecommons.org and see their audio archive.
Comment by |Julia — May 19, 2007 @ 8:28 am
The following is an excellent review (critique) of Peter Barnes’ new book, “Capitalism 3.0″. I would further argue that the successful creation of a “commons sector” (or “SOCIAL sector”) to offset the “corporate sector” would eventually set up two oposing economic systems within the same society — a situation that cannot last for long without Civil War or some other violent means for the “emerging class” to seize control.
Moreover, if capitalists wanted a “third bottom line”, then they wouldn’t have settled for ONE bottom line, about 500-years ago. Under capitalism, the solitary question is about “shareholders value”, not what “managers” are capable or willing to manage. We can’t impose limits on individual power, under capitalism. As soon as we do, the system is no longer capitalism at all, but hopefully a far more equitable — “operating system”.
Under capitalism, individual power is not derived from personal merit or innovation, but rather from the exloitation of others, who have less access to the abundant resources generated in economies of scale. The exploiters dispose of the surplus to increase their individual power, regardless of larger societal needs.
To contrast, James K. Galbraith recently presented another alternative:
“If you are a business in Sweden or Norway, there is one thing you are not free to do. You are not free to cut wages. You are not free to compete by going after cut-rate workers, either native or immigrant. You are not free to undercut the union rate. Successful businesses must, therefore, find other ways to compete. They do it by keeping productivity high. This means that advanced industries thrive in Scandinavia, while backward ones die out. (And that progressive businessmen prosper, while reactionaries fade away.) As a result, the economies stay competitive. The tax and welfare systems then make sure that everyone has enough to live on”, (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/05/james_galbraith.html).
This is called the “Scandanavian Model”, according to Mr. Galbraith, and Sweden’s government is unfortunately the largest in the world by far. Years ago, I believe it was his father, John Kenneth Galbraith, who proposed a “guaranteed minimum income” that would “make sure everyone has enough to live on” AND minimize the size of government. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a vocal advocate of guaranteed minimum income, (“Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”, pg 161-166).
But regardless of which plan we choose — Barnes, Galbraith I, Galbraith II, or something of our own creation — the plan must unfortunately be legislated and enforced by some form of — government. Moreover, who will BE the “trustees” of the “commons sector” that Mr. Barnes proposes? While I haven’t read the entirety of his book, I can take a fairly educated guess at something like — “We The People”, who suffer from a poverty of both time and income as a result of corporate domination.
Therefore, as Dr. King suggests, we as a society must collectively agree on at least a few very fundamental values, and organize against irrational authority by means of “economic withdrawal”. Whether we do this now or later doesn’t really matter. As Peter Barnes recommends, we must plan ahead for a new model. We must have an economic model to fall back on. But once that new model seems viable, “economic withdrawal” from the old model is probably the only way to — “Git-R-Done” — and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Ever take a toy away from a two-year-old brat and tell him to lay down and take a NAP? How would it be if that “two-year-old brat” had most of the resources and power in the world at his disposal? What would his multi-trillion-dollar “tantrum” look like then?
Welcome to “Capitalism 3.0″, and thanks for reading.
Comment by David Kendall — May 19, 2007 @ 10:16 am