Re: [ox-en] Commons in a taxonomy of goods
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:33:35 +0200
Hi StefanMz and all!
6 days ago Stefan Meretz wrote:
*Commons in a taxonomy of goods*
Thanks for posting this!
I'd like to make some comments with the goal of improving and
completing this and posing a few questions.
Commons are common pool resources. Commons are common goods. Commons
are social relationships.
In English there is another meaning of the word commons which is
"Bürger" in German. Think of the House of Commons in UK. This meaning
is also a reason why I'm a bit sceptical using this word because it is
clearly linked to (early) capitalism.
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.
I think there is also a type of goods in the middle I'd like to call
symbolic material goods. I'm thinking for instance of holy things
which are clearly physical but their physical constitution is more or
less irrelevant for their societal meaning. Often they are also not
used up but may be destroyed.
A bit in the same direction I think is the prestige value of certain
material consumer goods like Porsche's (though they *have* a certain
constitution enabling them to do certain things on certain roads
;-) ).
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.
A nice idea to capture sustainability!
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.
I'd not limit this to capitalism but every social form which is based
on abstract exchange.
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.
As a result all those alternative projects like self-governed
companies are in the category of subsistence - where they are not
subject of market. In fact an idea which explains my long-standing
feelings in this regard very well.
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.
I'm not completely happy with the relationship thing. What is the
relationship between me as an Ubuntu user to the Ubuntu community? In
which way is it different from me as a Windows user [1]_ to M$?
.. [1] I'm sorry for this coming out but I'm forced to be a Windows
user at times by my job :-( . And believe me: I hate it! [2]_
.. [2] Ok, I'm not representative here because my relationship is
really emotionally different ;-) . But there are others who
have less emotions in this regard. What about their
relationship?
Contrary to you I'd say the relationship of a user of a commons good
is the same as the relationship to a commodity - minus the exchange
relationship of course. In both cases the use and the flow of the
goods are subject to societal regulation and though the regulation is
different the relationship is the same.
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.
I'd not make this distinction. To me legal forms are only a
crystallized form of concrete socially agreed rules.
That in (modern) commons we see mostly the non-legal form of rules to
me is a result of the germ form state they are in. I can imagine very
well, that if peer production took over the now non-legal forms are
transformed to legal code.
_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.
So where would you locate peer products here? Collective property? Or
even private property? Unless they are in the public domain they are
certainly not free goods - or?
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.
I'd like to emphasize that plundering and exploitation make sense
mainly when the results of plundering and exploitation can be used in
an alienated way. If you can't sell tropical wood on a world market
there is simply no reason for plundering tropical jungle for it. In
other words: The separate private production - as is the case in peer
production as well - is not the main reason why plundering occurs.
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.
By "appointed" and "generally useful" you are assuming that their is
an institution outside the community which controls the community. Can
you tell us more about this?
I'd also like to emphasize that it is a political decision to use
resources in this way or another. Although the environmentalist
fraction doesn't like it: You can politically decide to use up mineral
oil before switching to another form of energy. There is nothing wrong
with such decisions if they are made decently - which nowadays is
certainly not the case for mineral oil. May be this thought gives
hints for my question above?
In fact I'm still fascinated of the idea of Greenpeace being the ozone
hole maintainer brought forward by StefanMz many, many years ago. How
does this idea fit into the equation?
Within the commons, production and reproduction can hardly be separated.
The production serves their reproduction at the same time.
I'm not sure what you mean by the distinction in this regard. I'd
understand reproduction as a production where the result improves or
maintains the (common) infrastructure whereas production is for
non-infrastructure like consumption.
In a commoditiy based society this distinction makes sense because the
reproduction is not per se productive while production is. In a peer
production based society I don't see this distinction making any
sense.
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.
Again because this important to me: This can be decided differently in
a political process.
Grüße
Stefan