Vasilis Kostakis – The field of the commons and the universal income

Based on Peter Barnes’ ideas, developed intensely in his Capitalism 3.0 book, this article analyses the perspectives that emerge through the integration of the field of the natural commons into a political agenda against the environmental and financial abjection that humanity faces today.

Society and capitalism have neither a common origin, nor a common destination. The concept of society has to do with the notion of common interest, while capitalism relates to individual interest, often translated into pecuniary units. We could mention that the preponderance of individual over common interest, leads to poverty, since poverty is certainly not part of our common interest. Even in the famous board game Monopoly, that is seemingly of capitalist origin, every player is entitled a sum of money in each round in order to be able to survive in the game. As far as Monopoly is concerned, however, there is not a natural environment that one could damage. What could link could there be among Monopoly, poverty and the natural environment?

The environment is part of our common wealth, of the “Commons”. More specifically, Barnes, in his book Capitalism 3.0 offers a taxonomy of the field of the Commons, dividing it into 3 categories: the natural Commons (i.e. the air, the water, the lakes, the natural resources etc.), the public Commons (the roads, the universities, the museums, etc.) and the cultural Commons (languages, sciences, the internet, open source and free software, etc.). In contrast with most things in contemporary capitalism, the Commons are neither private nor public: they are characterized by a relational approach, as they include social relations, based on a ethos of collaboration and interdependence, which is distinct from any type of commercialization.[1] Michel Bauwens divides the Commons between those that are human creations (according to Barnes’ classification, mentioned above, these consist of the public and cultural Commons) and those creations that constitute natural resources (the natural Commons). Bauwens goes two steps further, by naming the specific institutional/juridical framework used for the management of common resources also as “Commons” and then by understanding as “Commons” the sociopolitical movements that promote the previous two cases of the Commons.

Inspired by Barnes’ ideas, I argue in this article that the institutionalization and the reinforcement of the field of the Commons constitutes a ray of hope for the fight against world poverty. The natural Commons belong to everyone. Each person has an ownership right to the natural wealth, the ecosystem, the air etc. As Barnes notes, our common wealth still remains an onbscure issue of the “financial universe”: it is everywhere, but we can’t see it. We ignore the Commons because they don’t have a price, they don’t have a label, because they are characterized by an imaginary abundance and because we can’t understand the notion of peer ownership: neither private, nor public, just peer. It belongs to everyone, without discrimination. If it doesn’t belong to everyone, it can’t be called peer. The natural Commons don’t belong to the system (be it capitalist, or socialist, or hybrid, or else), but to human beings. To all humans, without discrimination. The value of the Commons is infinite and it can’t be easily interpreted in financial terms, because the natural wealth doesn’t only serve some specific needs, but it is also the precondition for our existence as biological beings. Furthermore, as it concerns the ownership of the Commons, future generations have an equal share with living human beings. Those who will inherit from us a natural wealth that includes the water they will drink, the air they will breathe, the earth they will cultivate. Their survival and their quality of life depends, to a high degree, on our actions.

The need of adopting a new environmental policy is imperative, but there is a common understanding that whatever we do, we can’t eliminate pollution. It is a part of the system’s entropy that, fortunately or unfortunately, will always exist. The reduction of the level of environmental pollution to a viable frame is our responsibility. In addition, whether they pollute the environment or not, many financial activities use our common wealth for producing services and goods and making profit (while this profit is not re-distributed back to society-even a part of it-and it is accumulated by a few people, despite the fact that for its creation a part of the field of the Commons was used as a means of production). The radio station uses air frequencies for its operation, whereas hydroelectric companies use water wealth for electric energy production, which will be later sold to consumers. Coming back to one of the questions of this special issue, I will try to answer tentatively how can environmental policy become connected to the fight against world poverty.

Based on all the above hypotheses, I argue that a new environmental policy that will include the institutionalization of the field of the Commons, can contribute to the fight against local and world poverty, through the establishment of a universal income. Enterprises, states, and even individuals, that pollute the environment through various ways (waste, nuclear tests, etc.) or television stations and telephone companies that use the air (the air consists a means of production for them) for the transmission of their signals, will pay a large amount of money to a Commons fund, as they use or affect, directly or indirectly, part of our common wealth. The money that will be raised through this process, will create a reserve fund, which will support the distribution of the basic universal income targeting poorer social groups. An example of environmental protection (it has to do with the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions) and, at the same time, of fundraising for the universal income is the cap and dividend system, that is being developed by the Onthecommons Organization. The idea behind this method is relatively simple: a limited number of pollution licences is issued (according to official reduction objectives), and then sold through auction to the pollutants through, while the money raised are not spent by governments, but distributed equally to all citizens. As the poorer social groups are those who pollute less, they benefit more by such a policy measure, according to Barnes. In a few words, the cap and dividend system is a way for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and protecting household incomes with one stroke. The pillar of this system is the creation of a trust that can be run either by the government, or by a non-profit company. This trust will issue pollution licences and will distribute the money raised through their auction to all citizens.

The forms of the institutionalization of the Commons require rigorous discussion and research. First, the institutional integrity and independence has to be ensured, in any case. Who will control the common fund and how are they going to be elected? Moreover, considering this proposal in macroeconomics terms, we will have to control to which degree these rents that companies, enterprises, municipalities, countries, etc. will be obliged to pay, won’t provoke inflationary tendencies, conveying the cost to the consumer. An additional argument against the proposal of this article, could be that the amount of money which will pour into the common fund, seems to depend on the scale of the pollution that will take place. It is a fact that the larger the scale of the pollution, the more the “polluting factors” are going to pay. Well, theoretically, this forces the “polluting factor” to pollute less, as more pollution means higher rent. How then are we going to guarantee the universal income, when pollution is reduced? We can find the answer to this question in the following proposition: supposing that for a level A of pollution, the reserve value of the common fund reaches 100 pecuniary units, 50 pecuniary units are going to be shared to 25 dividends, 25 people, with the value of 2 pecuniary units per dividend. In the case of pollution reduction by half (i.e. A/2), the reserve value of the fund will also be reduced by half (i.e. 50 pecuniary units) and henceforth the whole reserve fund will have to be shared to 25 dividends of the same value. Even if the current example is awfully simple it, nevertheless, indicates the importance of appropriate planning to the smooth function of the common fund.

When we refer, however, to the reinforcement and institutionalization of the field of the Commons, we are not confined to the natural Commons. Knowledge and technology, which are a possession of the Commons, are means of production and culture. Open access to knowledge and information and the adoption of peer ownership licences for the products of intellectual production, contribute to the financial reinforcement of the field of the Commons, but this is a different dicussion. In addition, the common fund could secure resources from other areas, as well, but these proposals lie outside the limits of this text. The current article wanted to bring out a new, or more accurately a forgotten objective of an alternative political struggle. The struggle for the institutionalization and the reinforcement of the field of the Commons. The idea for a universal income idea is not charity. It is simply the assertion of what belongs to us.

References

[1] Thompson. Ε.P, (1968). The Making of the English Working Class, New York: The New Press; Thompson. Ε.P, (1968). (1993), Customs in Common, New York: The New Press; and Neeson, J.M., (1993), Commoners: Common right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Special issue: environmental justice
Tags: commons, environmental-justice, michel bauwens, p2p, universal-income, vasilis kostakis