[p2p-research] Fwd: Commons in a taxonomy of goods

[Michel Bauwens]

(james, see the graph request below, many thanks for any assistance)

better translation is forthcoming:

see below the text for context,

it's a great clarification of the commons nomenclature, thanks a lot to
stefan meretz,

I'll publish it on the blog when franco has made an improved translation
from the original german

in the meantime, if someone could upload the graph to a draft article on the
blog, it would be most appreciated,

Michel

*Commons in a taxonomy of goods*

*By* StefanMz



*Commons are common pool resources. Commons are common goods. Commons are
social relationships. You can find all of these descriptions. Which is the
correct one? All three versions are valid—at the same time!*

The best is to start from the word »common«. The common thing within a
commons are the resources, which are used and cared for, are the goods
resulting from common activities, and are the social relationships emerging
from acting together. It is common for all commons, that these three aspects
are so different for the respective 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 concerning
commodities it is usual for traditional economics to only consider resources
as well as social forms of production marginally or even not at all. I try
to change this limitation by using the following taxonomy of goods. I decide
to put the aspect of „good“ from the triple of good, resource, and social
form into the center.

In the adjoining picture a good is designated by five *dimensions*. Beside
the already mentioned dimensions *resource* and *social form* these are *
constitution*, *usage* and *legal form*. They will be presented in the
following. After that I want to emphasize the characteristics of commons
once again.
*Constitution*

The constitution describes the sensual materiality of the good. There are *
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. an apple). 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, but already existing recources are used and maintained. In this
case the resource itself is the good, which is considered to be
preserved—for instance a lake. Often a mixed case is at hand, because no
produced good can go without the resource of knowledge which has been
created and disposed by others. By resources generally only sources outside
of humans beings are meant here.

In the graph 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
humans commit to each other in 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 done privately and thus separated from each other.
The measure of exchange is the value, which is the average societally
necessary abstract labour being required to produce the commodity. 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 produced or maintained for general
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 maintainance 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 favour 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. The property abstracts from the constitution of the
thing as well as from the concrete possession. Private property can be
merchandise, it 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: 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
recource 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 the resource 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 live“ have been separated. Private
production is structurally blind and only mediated afterwards. 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-focussed logic of re-/production.

(Many thanks to Pauline Schwarze for translation support)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Silke Helfrich <Silke.Helfrich at gmx.de>
Date: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 12:39 AM
Subject: Commons in a taxonomy of goods


Hi Neal, Jeremy and Franco,

I really don't know if you can help again, as Jeremy did help editing my
short speech-script.

Attached you find a really helpful article about the commons linked to
the theoretical debate/classification of goods. It also adresses the
difference between a commons (economy), substistence and commodity
production. IMHO top-qualified to be published in the Shareable
magazine!

This article has been discussed among us on keimform.de, so it's the
most advanced proposal of Stefan Meretz (one of the Crottorf Castle
Commoners) on the issue. Very well "designed", it links "our" discourse
and vocabulary to other discourses, in other words. It's a bridge
builder.
Stefan concludes:
"The Commons has the potential to replace the commodity as the
determining form of re-/producing societal living conditions."

I had a look at the translation Stefan did together with his daughter. I
think, they did a really great job in transmitting clearly the ideas.
Now it would be even greater, if this could be done in a more idiomatic
english version. It seems to me, that is a mostly correct text, but a
kind of english text that sounds german.

So, my question is (obviously), can you help? I will (also obviously)
help clarifying any doubt you may have. Stefan as well, I imagine.

I would love to help distribute the english version, take it to the WSF
in Brazil for example and everywhere.

Best regards
Silke



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