[ox-en] Commons in a taxonomy of goods
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan meretz.de>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:55:47 +0200
*Commons in a taxonomy of goods*
http://www.keimform.de/2010/commons-in-a-taxonomy-of-goods/
_by Stefan Meretz_
Commons are common pool resources. Commons are common goods. Commons
are social relationships. You can find all of these descriptions for the
term. Which is the correct one? All three versions are valid—at the same
time!
The word „common“ is the best starting point for the analysis. The
common thing within a commons are the resources, which are used and
cared for, are the goods resulting from joint activities, and are the
social relationships emerging from acting together. These three aspects
are so different for all commons, that no one could describe them in a
reasonably complete manner.
Commons are at odds with commodities, although a commodity is a good
which is produced in a specific social form using resources. But it is
usual that traditional economics only consider resources as social forms
of production in a marginal way or even not in any way. I will try to
overcome this limitation by using the following taxonomy of goods
[Illustration 1]. I decide to put the concept of „good“ into the center,
while describing from the triple definition explained above: as a common
good, as a resource and as a social form.
Illustration 1: Proposed taxonomy of „goods“
http://www.keimform.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/taxonomy-of-goods.png
In the adjoining illustration a good is designated by five _dimensions_.
Beside the already mentioned dimensions _resource_ and _social form_ ,
there are _constitution_ , _usage_ and _legal form_ . They will be
presented in the following paragraphs of this document. After that I
will emphasize the characteristics of commons once again.
Constitution
The constitution describes the type materiality of a good. We can found
two types: *material* and *non-material* goods.
_Material_ goods have a physical shape, they can be used up or crushed
out. Purpose and physical constitution are linked with each other,
material goods perform their purpose only by their physical
constitution. If the physical constitution gets dismantled the purpose
also gets lost.
On the other hand _non-material_ goods are completely decoupled from a
specific physical shape. This contains services defined by a coincidence
of production and consumption as well as preservable non-material goods.
In fact, a service often leads to a material result (haircut, draft text
etc.), but the service itself finishes by establishing the product, i.e.
it has been consumed. Now the result is falling into a material good
category.
Preservable non-material goods need a physical carrier. Having non-
digital („analog“) goods the bonding of the good to a specific material
constitution of the carrier can yet be tight (e.g. the analog piece of
music on the audiotape or disk record), while digital goods are largely
independent from the carrier medium (e.g. the digital piece of music on
an arbitrary digital medium).
Usage
The usage has got two sub-dimensions: *excludability* and *rivalry* .
They grasp aspects of access and concurrent utilization.
A good can only be used _exclusively_ , if the access to the good is
generally prevented and selectively allowed (e.g. if a „bagel“ is
bought). It can be used _inclusively_ , thus non-exclusively, if the
access is possible for all people (e.g. Wikipedia). The usage of a good
is _rival_ or rivalrous, if using the good by one person restricts or
prevents use options for other people (e.g. listening to music by
earphones). A usage is _non-rival_ , if this does not result in
limitations for others (e.g. a physical formula).
The usage scheme is used by classical economists as the authoritative
charateristic for goods. But it is far too narrow-minded. It combines
two aspects which in fact occur together with usage while the causes are
completely different. The exclusion is a result of an _explicit_
_activity of excluding people_ , thus closely linked with the social
form. On the other hand, the rivalry is closely linked with the
_constitution of the good_ —indeed, an apple can only be eaten once,
for the next consumption a new apple is needed.
Resources
The production of goods requires resources. Though sometimes nothing is
produced, already existing resources are used and maintained. In this
case the resource itself is the good, which is considered to be
preserved—for instance a lake. We can usually find some mixed case ,
because no produced good can go without the resource of knowledge which
has been created and disposed by others. By resources, we generally
understand non humans sources .
In the illustration, *natural* and *produced* resources are
distinguished. Natural resources are already _existing and raw_
resources which, however, are seldom found in uninfluenced environments.
Produced resources are material or non-material _created_ preconditions
for further use in the production of goods or resources in the broadest
sense.
Social form
The social form describes the way of (re-)production and the relations
that humans commit to each other when doing so. Three social forms of
(re-)production have to be distinguished: *commodity* , *subsistence* ,
and *commons* .
A good becomes a _commodity_ , if it is produced in a general way for
the exchange (selling) on markets. Exchanging has to occur because, in
capitalism, production is a private activity and each producer produce
separated from the others and all are ruled by competition and profit
searching. The measure of exchange is the value, which is the average
socially necessary abstract labor being required to produce the
commodity in certain historical moment. The medium of exchange is money.
The measure of usage is the use value being the „other side“ of the
(exchange) value. Thus, a commodity is a social form, it is the indirect
exchange-mediated way of how goods obtain general societal validity.
Preconditions are scarcity and exclusion from the access of the
commodity, because otherwise exchange will not happen.
A good maintains the form of _subsistence_ , if it is not produced in a
general way for others, but only for personal use or benefit of
personally known others (family, friends etc.). Here, exchange does not
occur or only for exceptional cases, but the good is relayed, taken, and
given—following any immediately agreed social rule. A transition form to
commodity is barter, the direct non-money mediated exchange of goods.
A good becomes a _commons_ , if it is generally produced or maintained
for others. The good is not exchanged and the usage is generally bound
to fixed socially agreed rules. It is produced or maintained for general
others insofar as it neither has be personal-determined others (like
with subsistence) nor exclusively abstract others with no further
relationship to them (like with commodity), but concrete communities
agreeing on rules of usage and maintenance of the commons.
Legal form
The legal form shows the possible juridical codes which a good can be
subjected to: *private property* , *collective property* , and *free*
*good* . Legal arrangements are necessary under the conditions of
societal mediation of partial interests, they form a regulating
framework of social interaction. As soon as general interests are part
of the way of (re-)production itself, legal forms can step back in favor
of concrete socially agreed rules as it is the case within the commons.
_Private property_ is a legal form, which defines the act of disposal of
an owner over a thing with exclusive control over the property. The
property abstracts from the constitution of the thing as well as from
the concrete possession. Private property can be merchandise, can be
sold or commercialized.
_Collective property_ is collectively owned private property or private
property for collective purposes. Among them, there are common property
and public (state) property. All designations of private property are
basically valid here. There are various forms of collective property,
for instance stock corporation, house owner community, nationally-owned
enterprise.
_Free goods_ (also: Res nullius, Terra nullius or no man’s land) are
legally or socially unregulated goods under free access. The often cited
„Tragedy of Commons“ is a tragedy of no man’s land, which is overly used
or destroyed due to missing rules of usage. Such no man’s lands do exist
yet today, e.g. in high-sea or deep-sea.
Commons—jointly creating the life
Peter Linebaugh puts the inseparable connection of good and social
activity into one sentence: „There is no commons without commoning“—
commons can not exist without a respective social practice of a
community. The size of the community is therefore not fixed. It
considerably depends on the re-/produced resource. The re-/production of
a local wood will presumably be taken over by a local community, while
the preservation of the world climate certainly needs the constitution
of a global community. In that case the state can supersede the
community role by fiduciary taking over the re-/production of the
resource. But this is not the sole possible option.
The size of the community as well as the rules depend on the character
of the resource. For a threatened wooded area it is reasonable to agree
upon more restrictive rules of use than for a resource which can easily
be copied. Free software, for instance, can be unhesitatingly determined
to be available under a free access regime, thus a social rule of use
which explicitly does not exclude anybody.
The „freedom“ of plundering and exploitation, which commonly occurs
under the regime of separated private production of goods as
commodities, does find its limitation at the freedom of others to use
the resource. Especially by preventing random plundering of a used-up
resource, the needs of general others who currently do not use the
resource, are included. The community being connected very closely to
the resource is only appointed to produce and reproduce the resource in
a way that is generally useful. It is their „task“ to pass over the
resource to further generations in an improved manner. However, there is
no guarantee that the destruction of the resource will happen anyway.
The history of capitalism is also a history of violent destruction and
privatization of the commons.
Within the commons, production and reproduction can hardly be separated.
The production serves their reproduction at the same time. In case of
used-up resources, rules of usage make sure that the resource can
regenerate itself, or in case of copyable digital goods, that the social
network producing the resource is maintained. However, it has to be
distinguished between a common pool resource as such and goods which are
produced on the basis of a resource. Produced goods can become
commodities if they are sold on markets. It is the goal of socially
agreed rules of use within the community to limit the use of the
resource and to prevent that it is overly used and gets finally
destroyed.
There have always been commons in human history. However, its historical
role and function has changed dramatically. In former times commons had
been a general fundament of human livelihood, while with the uprising of
class societies they have been integrated into different regimes of
exploitation. Capitalism is a climax of exploiting general human living
conditions, which—carried by an abstract notion of freedom—is not able
to guarantee survival of the human species. This is due to the fact,
that common interests are not part of the way of production but have to
be additionally coined onto the blind acting of partial interests via
law and state. Therefore, it is necessary to aim at a new socially
regulated way of production, where common interests are part of the way
of production itself.
Moreover, capitalism has cut off essential moments of production from
societal life and banned it into a sphere of reproduction. Production as
„economy“ and reproduction as „private life“ have been separated.
Private production is structurally blind and only mediated afterward.
Therefore it could only expand at the expense of subsistence and commons
production which in turn are needed to compensate the (physical and
psychic) consequences of „economy“. Private production has always
pointed to a complementing subsistence and commons production, it
permanently takes from the sphere of commons without giving anything
back.
The Commons has the potential to replace the commodity as the
determining form of re-/producing societal living conditions. Such a
replacement can only occur, if communities constitute themselves for
every aspect of life, in order to take „their“ commons back and to
reintegrate them into a new need-focused logic of re-/production.
(Many thanks to Pauline Schwarze and Franco Iacomella for translation
support)
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