STIR Magazine

We would like to thank the 160 people who crowdfunded, authored, edited, illustrated and designed this book.
The mass collaboration that has made this book possible is just another reection of the peer production and sharing economies that are emerging as ever more convincing alternatives to the present mess.
AnGer. AnalYsis. ACtion.
STIR Volume One 2012 Cover Design by Josh MacPhee/JustSeeds.org Cover Illustration by Bec Young/JustSeeds.org Back cover illustration by Amy Brazier/amybrazier.com Editors: Jonny Gordon-Farleigh Abby McFlynn Designer: Kieran McCann/www.kieranmccann.co.uk Printers: Calverts/www.calverts.coop STIR is an online magazine www.stirtoaction.com that promotes the inspiring and innovative community-orientated and cooperative alternatives to the nancial crisis, climate chaos and other contemporary challenges. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For licensing information on the photographs and illustrations, contact the creator. This book is also available in an electronic version at www.stirtoaction.com. Please share! STIR needs your support. If you would like to become a nancial supporter of STIR, please email stirtoaction@gmail.com
EDITORIAL
In 2001, when Argentina suffered a nancial crisis and the largest default on sovereign debt in history, ve governments were forced out in the space of two weeks to the publics demand, They all must go! In her book Everyday Revolutions Marina Sitrin describes when protestors jumped over the fence to the Pink House and discovered no one was blocking the doors. The president had ed. Who is the government? What is the government? Should they take over? Is that where power is? They stop. They turn around. They go back to the neighbourhood, look to one another and begin... Weve always been effective in sounding the alarm Stop the World Bank, Ban GM, Occupy Wall Street but are quickly realising the real challenge, as James Bell and J Cookson argue in this volume, is to move past the reactive stage of a campaign and into effective proactive solutions. If anger is the rst political emotion, as Simon Critchley claims in his interview, we need the discipline of analysis to transform it into effective action. This collection of articles and interviews from Stir Magazine shows that politics is really about creating new options: the process of moving from the possibility of change to actually embodying this change. When I interviewed McKenzie Wark last year many people were getting excited about the potential of the protest gatherings in Tahrir Square. He cautiously remarked that the real struggle is not the break with the old order but the creation of a new one and in this book youll nd the anger that brought unprecedented numbers of people to occupy their public squares, the analysis that explains why we are experiencing these economic and ecological crises, but most importantly, what happens next. As is often the case, what comes next is what many communities have already been doing for a long time it is a matter of taking these ideas from the margins to the mainstream as David Bollier discusses in his article. This generation may have divested hope from mainstream politics that predictable routine of hope and despair but are now appealing to themselves for social change. Those who talk of apathy are looking in the wrong place. We cant publish our way out of these problems but we can keep sharing our strategies and stories. Jonny Gordon-Farleigh November 2012
CONTENTS
7
BriNG It to THE Table: CreatiNG JUstice THroUGH Food Guppi Bola & Bethan Graham
13
RaJ Patel iNterVieW by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh
21
THe CoMMoNs: FroM THE MarGiNs to THE MaiNstreaM David Bollier
27
OccUpY THE US: MUsiNGs oN HoriZoNtal DecisioN MaKiNG aNd BUreaUcracY Marianne Maeckelbergh
35
THe Real Food Store Megan Saunders
39
SiMoN CritcHleY INterVieW by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh
47
THe StrUGGle BetWeeN CopYriGHt aNd THE INterNet Glyn Moody
53
YoUr CoMMUNitY is Made of Stories: NarratiVe StrateGY for Social CHaNGe James John Bell & J Cookson
57
MoNopolY PreseNts THE ProbleM. Co-opolY Offers THE SolUtioN. Brian Van Slyke
63
MoNeY aNd WealtH David Boyle
71
Riot CitY: Protest aNd RebellioN iN THE Capital Review by Nina Power
75
CoMMoNs: AlterNatiVes to MarKet aNd state Derek Wall
79
OrGaNicLea: ProfessioNal Radicals Naomi Glass & Clare Joy
BriNG It to THE Table: CreatiNG JUstice THroUGH Food

Guppi Bola & Bethan Graham
Our decisions about food are complicated by the fact that we dont eat alone. Table fellowship has forged social bonds as far back as the archaeological record allows us to look. Food, family, and memory are primordially linked. Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals What do we understand by the term food justice? Is it the search for accessible, affordable and healthy food for all? Or is there a role for food in tackling todays largerthan-self problems? If we think about scarcity, the term food justice describes our reaction to the stark injustices of our food system; one in which more than a billion people live in hunger while more than half of all the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded. The UK alone produces 16 million tonnes of food waste each year, while The Trussell Trust food bank has reported a 50 percent rise in the number of people coming to them for food parcels. At the same time giant multinational companies, banks and hedge funds rake in the prots as food is traded and speculated on like any other commodity on the global markets. The essential role of food in maintaining human life and health is devalued as the system is skewed against the people who need it most. Living in a world of contradictions prevents us from feeling a real connection to, or the power to change, the political structures around us. For activists, our understanding of the problems can be so far removed from what we do and where we live that we nd an added challenge in connecting our personal activity and our activism. Making this connection by rummaging in bins for thrown away food, changing our diets or growing our own vegetables is truly empowering as it represents an active disengagement from the companies we disagree with and a redirection of money and energy to the practices we approve. Yet to do it alone, or only with other activists, can lead to isolation from our own communities as we seek to stay true to our own values yet miss the opportunity to reach outside of our comfort zones and engage with others. Here we look at some examples of exciting projects in the UK that are working with their communities to create food justice, and in doing so are bringing up new ideas and thinking around creating justice through food.
Illustration by Sarah-Jayne Morris
Transition Town Brixton
Our rst project takes us to the bustling streets of Brixton, South London. With its
BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD
10
rich mix of cultures and history, it was also the birthplace of the rst inner-city Transition Town. It is here we meet Emily* (*names have been changed), part-time Brixton Farmers Market manager and part-time London Honey Company worker. Between both these jobs, she spends time with her neighbours growing vegetables in a community garden plot. For her, food is an essential essence of life as it punctuates and structures our day three or more times and gives us the opportunity to enjoy and be good to ourselves. It is a crucible of history and culture; a common thread between everything that lives. When I was at an international school, food was an important means of teaching each other about our cultures, Emily says. Again, it is a chance to give, to show generosity between cultural groups. Food tells stories of religion, climate, abundance or inequality and of historical inuences: why do Brits like curry? It is an excellent way into any discipline you want to teach or issue you want to explore. Living in a highly urbanised area of London, our connection with food is a good way to remind us of our animal nature. All food ultimately comes from nature and we are more removed from this as a society than we consciously realise. I have tried to involve people in my block in growing food and I have been surprised not by the ignorance but the interest, Emily says. Sarah who lives upstairs suddenly started arriving with gardening equipment, old copies of gardening magazines and all sorts of knowledge. I used to nd Tim and Kevin a little scary due to their drinking and sometime loud discussions on the balcony. But when I started growing food in the courtyard, Tim was the rst to rush down and start giving me advice. Little did she know he was a gardener during the week, and his expertise and enthusiasm became the foundation for the others interest in recreating their local space. Emily soon found that by growing food in a neglected corner of the garden in her own block of ats, she had found the common ground that was missing in her interactions with her neighbours. Food provided the context for this to happen, which is all the more poignant in city neighbourhoods where the environment has mostly been concreted over and communities are transient and stratied. The necessity of food unites us, Emily says. This is why I feel it is an important lynchpin in the community. In the food shop where I work, I cherish meeting a wide variety of people. Sharing tips and ideas about food is a conversation starter and the food itself a prop which gives us a reason to interact. People are more inclined to talk when they have an activity they are engaged in. The tactile nature of picking up vegetables and fruit slows you down which is why they are always at the front in supermarkets. When working at the farmers market I have met many people I never otherwise would have. Food shops help people feel less lonely in the community. That the barista knows which coffee you want before you ask, because they recognise you, is a nice feeling of belonging. In the urban jungle we can often miss this.
Foodcycle
When thinking about food injustice, the issue that seems to shock and resonate with people the most is the sheer amount of good food that is wasted. Globally, 50 percent of food stocks are thrown away, and the British food industry alone wastes 18 to 20 million tonnes of food each year. Thats ve tonnes for every person living in food
poverty in UK. While good food goes to landll every day, and malnutrition costs the NHS 13 billion every year, more than 2.4 million people are searching for work, including a million 16 to 25 year olds. These statistics, too, can be seen as waste; it is a waste of human potential that is denied the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. These contradictions are at the heart of Foodcycle, an organisation that seeks to tackle this waste with one simple idea. By providing expertise and lots of support, Foodcycle empowers communities to set up groups of volunteers in their own cities to collect surplus food and turn it into nutritious meals in unused kitchen spaces. The meals are then served to those in need in the community. For Foodcycle each different type of waste wasted food, wasted potential and wasted kitchen space provides a kernel of a solution to the other. Volunteers have the capacity to transform surplus food into nutritious meals for people who need it and in doing so reclaim more than just food. They take back physical space, too, in the form of empty kitchens. More importantly they restore human potential, as people of all ages who have struggled to nd meaningful employment are given the opportunity to develop skills, build condence and take away useful qualications and character references. Regular volunteer at the Bristol Foodcycle Hub, Tristan Pringle explains what attracted him to the project. The thing that inspired me about Foodcycle initially is still what motivates me to volunteer regularly now and that is an appreciation of the essential and unique position that food occupies in our personal and social lives, and its resulting power to bring people together. My experience of attending Foodcycle events and feeling the atmosphere of community and kinship created through the act of communal eating really highlighted how working with food could be a way to make a positive impact. From the creativity of preparation in the kitchen to the conversation around the dinner table, I realised that every element of the process can be a source of enjoyment and good energy. For Tristan, its about communicating the message of food justice in a way that includes everyone. Food isnt the only way you can do this but it is a language that every human being shares. The heart of Foodcycle in Bristol is the Community Kitchen that runs every Sunday in the Easton Community Centre. With no shortage of volunteers or customers, 60 or more people come together to chop, eat and chat. Outreach is particularly strong, and has seen many people from homeless and refugee groups initially come to the project for a free and healthy meal, to then become regular volunteers. The need to generate funds and ensure a steady ow of volunteers for The Community Kitchen has led to the formation of a Student Restaurant a fortnightly event in which student volunteers prepare a three course meal using food that would otherwise go to waste and sell it for 3 to other students. Different student groups take turns to organise the events, bringing with them their own volunteers to help. In this way one organisation isnt stretched beyond its capacity, as the responsibility is taken on by a different group each time. Once costs have been covered, the co-ordinating organisation takes 20 percent of any prot, while the rest goes back to the Community Kitchen so that everyone who puts energy into the project benets. Each organisation has a different cause meaning volunteers learn from each other and new opportunities
11
12
to collaborate arise. Previously in Bristol there had been disparate pockets of motivation, Tristan says, but they lacked a connection between them, and there werent physical events bringing people together to share what they were doing, inspire and learn from each other. Both The Community Kitchen and the Student Restaurant act as hubs for people to meet and talk. Topics of conversation are often centred around ethics and politics; its an opportunity to meet new people and discover new ideas, while the meal ties it all together. The success of the project lies in the way it combines the power of food with creativity to engage a wide range of people in long-term action. Tristan summarises it like this: Its all about making the experience as powerful as it can be so it has a lasting effect.To do this you have to make it as fun and as interesting as you can. In an effort to make this happen the restaurant is now a place for other student societies to display their work, giving them an outlet to play live music, display artwork and screen lms to a large audience. The Photo Societys most recent theme was waste, illustrating how the message behind Foodcycle has been taken and translated into a new medium in a way that helps to spread the message. The impact of the food system on the environment is not only about where wasted food ends up. Its also about where and how it is produced: how far it has travelled, what conditions workers along the food chain have been subjected to, what price farmers have been paid for their product, with what pesticides was it grown, on whose deforested land. The problem is political about who prots and who pays as food now arrives in Britain from countries around the world with appalling human and animal rights records, and trade systems that benet big business and lock small farmers into poverty. Historically, food justice developed during the anti-slavery movement. In Haiti, African slaves were brought over to plantations to raise food and other crops for the French colonisers. After recognising the injustice in which they lived was directly connected with growing sugarcane for their masters, Haitian slaves burned the elds in an attempt to free themselves from oppression. The role of food was not used as an end in itself, but as a means to an end: The sugarcane elds were a representation of suffering and their destruction was a necessity for freedom. Actions echo through history, and on Environment Day in June 2010, approximately 10,000 Haitian farmers protested by setting re to the seeds sent to them by Monsanto, a multinational corporation that gains huge prots from propagating hazardous chemical herbicides and genetically engineered seeds that grow into sterile plants, thereby preventing small farmers from carrying out their tradition of saving seeds from one harvest to the next. For a country that suffered so severely during the 2008 food crisis, to then be ravaged by an earthquake that magnied already entrenched problems, food sovereignty is fundamental. It is an approach that emphasises self-determination for small farmers and rejects the corporate control of the globalised food system.
Leeds Urban Harvest
The last project we will look at, Leeds Urban Harvest, is about highlighting the abundance of fruit growing for free in your local area, entirely outside the capitalist system of food production. In this way it shares the values of the food sovereignty
movement, as the project rediscovers the natural routine of picking unharvested seasonal fruit every autumn. The trees and bushes grow in both public and private spaces around the city, thereby pushing through and creating links between the usual demarcations that separate us from each other. The fruit is distributed around the city to local groups, volunteers and the local community, while damaged fruits, which would otherwise be viewed as unsellable in shops and supermarkets and end up in the bin, are turned into juice, preserves, jams and chutneys. The money raised is put back into the project to help with the running costs. The Urban Harvest project was founded by a group of people who were interested and active in growing their own food. Already engaged in planting fruit trees in nurseries, they began to notice the fruit trees already growing in parks and gardens around them, and the amount of fruit that was available to be picked. Inspired by the The Abundance Project in Sheffield, which hands out free fruit outside supermarkets and uses bike trailers to deliver collected fruit to people in need, Leeds Urban Harvest was formed with the principles of sustainability and sharing free food at its centre. Its a brilliant project, Ben, a volunteer who has been involved since the start, says because people get really excited about it, and anyone can get involved, from all ages and backgrounds. Both projects have an educational aspect, as they seek to show people that home-grown fruit is just as tasty as anything you could nd in the shop. When locating fruit trees in Sheffield, the project came across an old lady who would bag up all the apples growing in her garden and put them in her black bin at home because she thought it wasnt safe to eat them. It is these types of myths that the Leeds Urban Harvest aims to dispel. People come just for apples but end up trying all the other different kinds of fruit that they might never have even heard of: cherries, plums, pears but also quinces and mulberries. In doing this you educate new people about the diversity of indigenous fruit in the UK and start to break down the idea that you need to import tropical fruit for a varied diet. In the supermarket there are sometimes only four different types of apple to choose from, whereas in reality there is so much diversity in the many different varieties of apples that you can sample each one has its own unique avour. The project is also becoming more skilled in developing new ways of preserving fruit, so we can extend the amount of time we can rely on it. The group are also developing a map for their website that shows the location of all the fruit trees in public spaces around the city. They are also dividing the area they cover with local Transition and community groups, as there is too much fruit available for one group to manage. Each group will pick the trees in their local areas, allowing for more sustainable modes of transport as the majority of all fruit picked is taken to the kitchen and storage area using handmade bike trailers. Food is grown locally, eaten locally, and the money that is generated from the project simply allows the process to repeat itself the following year. Its a closed-loop system that allows an urban community to take ownership of food production, and in doing so come to know the city in a whole new way. Food justice issues are complex and communicating them can be difficult. In a country where supermarkets are stacked to the ceiling with food products, how is the population to understand the reality of a global food crisis? The front line of food injustice is felt most keenly abroad, but food projects in this country do have a vital role in addressing the issue here they reinstate the value of food, bringing it to the centre of
13
14
our debates around social and environmental justice, whilst reducing some of the environmental impacts of food production and delivering access to healthy food for the community right now. In doing this, food projects facilitate the discussions and learning that lead to action, and promote the social glue that makes communities more resilient and vibrant in the face of insecurity. The three projects we have looked at are three of hundreds taking place around the UK. They are a small snap shot of the multitude of different ways people are expressing their relationship with food, and in doing so creating positive change. Emily started gardening with her neighbours in order to break through the irony of the isolating structure of an urban block of ats. How it is possible for people to live on top of one another and yet remain strangers until some common ground is found? Foodcycle in itself doesnt demand structural change to the system that creates the imbalance, but allows people to come together, giving time and space for discussion, whilst making a direct, long-lasting, positive impact on the people involved in the project and therefore on the whole issue of waste in the UK. For Leeds Urban Harvest, the map that traces the fruit trees in Leeds are symbolic of the links that are made between people as they rediscover the productivity of the land beneath the city streets. The map is a blueprint for the future, one in which the food system is something we can trace from tree to table and that we work together to create. Food is a way to engage people in complex environmental and societal issues, Emily says. More importantly, my interactions with food allow me to interact with people from different cultures and different age groups that I wouldnt otherwise connect with. Building social capital is vital for our feeling of general well-being. It is simply the ability to phone a neighbour and ask if they could check whether we left the oven on.The more we have of it the more we are able to tackle problems together. In this case, food justice can be said to mean bringing the many issues connected to food, as well as food itself, to a table that is surrounded by the diversity of community. Sharing food creates table fellowship, which does not change the broken system, but can break down the walls that, by separating us, allow a system so broken to survive.
Guppi Bola
and Bethan Graham joined forces after meeting on an organic teaching farm in rural Kent. Both with a passion for health and sustainability they worked together with a group of bright young things in their search to create justice through food. Guppi is a public health campaigner and Bethan is a long-term environmental activist; both are involved in setting up and running their own food projects.
is an illustrator who specialises in editorial pieces. She lives in Norwich, a city the size of a teacup with a grumpy Shiba Inu called Chief, her Macbook, and a box of pens. You can nd her work at sarahjaynedraws.tumblr.com
Sarah-Jayne Morris
RaJ Patel iNterVieW

by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh
With the announcement of the surprising yet increasingly unremarkable fact that the obese now outnumber the hungry, we need to look deeper into the problems of our food system and the industry that has created a world that is stuffed and starved. In his recent books Raj Patel looks at this open secret and the battle between an increasingly aggressive industry and the social movements that are responding to these assaults.
JONNY GORDON-FARLEIGH: You have just published the second edition of Stuffed and Starved, a worrying yet inspiring account of the battle for the world food system. Since the original publication, what new extremes has the food industry gone to and what advances have we seen from the social movements who are responding to this assault?
15
Well, things have certainly gotten worse in terms of the people who are stuffed and starved. When the rst book came out the gures showed that around 800 million people are malnourished and 1 billion are overweight. Now the number of people who are malnourished is around 1 billion and the number of people who are overweight are, by some calculations, nearly 2 billion. In the space of 6 years, more or less, the numbers have gone bonkers.That is a reection of a number of things. There is certainly an increase in power in the food system that has accumulated on a number of points. One of the new problems is the rising importance of biofuels the idea that the way forward is to grow crops, not in order to eat them, but to set them on re. This energy policy makes no sense in terms of carbon sequestration or sustainability. Sustainability has been confused with renewability: the corn comes out of the ground season after season and so its renewable. However, renewable isnt the same thing as sustainable and the difference between the two has allowed a few corporations in the United States to pass off their energy policies as environmentally friendly. Basically, you have a situation in the United States where we are growing corn to turn it into ethanol. This has some serious ripple effects for global cereal prices and this, particularly in 2008 when prices were going through the roof, had some fairly dire consequences for the number of people going hungry. So, what is far more important now, and more so than when I was researching Stuffed and Starved the rst time around, is biofuels.
RAJ PATEL:
Also, the power of the nance industry has increased. It has been growing for a while but we only really saw it during the nancial crisis when food became a plaything in a global casino and nancial entities were speculating on the price of food. They are now speculating on it far more than theyve ever done in the past. This means that the price of food is far more volatile, and with far less predictability it has become a problem for farmers and, indeed, for anyone who eats. This is something that people need to know much more about than we are currently discussing in terms of the food system. Most people do not associate banks as part of the problems in the food system. Normally we just think about supermarkets, or Nestle, or something else like that we dont think about how Goldman Sachs or Glencore are becoming an increasing problem when it comes to sustainability in the food system. I think we should pay better attention to them. It has been exciting to see a range of organisations strike back and thats everything from a thousand farmers being arrested recently in India for protesting land grabs (a new phenomenon, at least in its current incarnation, since Britain had been doing it with some enthusiasm in the 18th and 19th century). The phenomenon of taking land away from the people who are living on it and taking it as ones own, this time using market mechanisms, is something that social movements are protesting against right now. We are seeing a lot of really constructive ideas around the world at the moment. In North America, for example, we have more than 200 food policy councils. They are democratic spaces where people in municipalities can begin to ght hunger and obesity. We are seeing policies that range from soda taxes to restricting the freedom of
Illustration by Michael van Kekem
RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW
corporations to market to children. We are not, sadly, seeing much when it comes to the nancial side of the food system. There is, though, much enthusiasm and interest in the food system amongst young people who quite rightly feel that political parties have betrayed them. They feel like doing something direct and substantive when it comes to the food system. So we are seeing a lot of organic and urban farming. There are lots of interesting ideas when it comes to redistributing food to people who are not able to afford it. There is everything from Guerilla Gardening to burning elds of genetically modied crops. All of these are advances are spearhead by social movements. I think that these actions are having a real impact, and the fact that all of the GM companies are moving out of Europe is a direct result of the social movements in Europe.
JGF: A group in the UK called Take the Flour Back have called for stopping GM crop trials
at Rothamsted. Its a popular argument, often taken as fact, that without GM crops we will not be able to feed the world. How would you respond to this argument? Where to start!? We produce more calories per person than any time in human history. Therefore, the people who argue that we need more calories seem not to understand that the reasons why a billion people go hungry is not because of a shortage of calories, but because there is something wrong with the way we distribute those calories. If you are serious about feeding people then the conversation really has to begin around distribution and entitlement, not around production. Now, that is the very easy answer. That said, there will come a point in the future when population growth, if we keep things the way they are at the moment, will mean that there will not be enough food for everyone to eat well. But luckily, for better and worse, we cannot keep things the way they are at the moment: We wont have the fossil fuels, the stable climate, and access to freshwater reserves that modern agriculture needs. Luckily we can move away from that. We have an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that agro-ecological farming systems will be able to feed the world in the future. The GM advocates are saying, What about drought-resistance and climate-change-ready crops? That seems to be nonsense! To have a crop that is climate-change-ready is ludicrous because change is precisely change it is so many different things. It could be new pests, rains coming at the wrong time; it could be too much rain, or too much heat. It is impossible to have a single crop that is ready for those possible changes. Weve already seen the limits of that because Monsanto has a product called Drought Guard a genetically modied crop that performs no better than any conventional crop in resisting anything but a mild drought. The problem with this is that climate change isnt about mild anything but extreme weather events. As weve learned from looking at the nancial situation, the way to avoid extremities is not to put all of your eggs in one basket but have a broad spread of managed risk. This is why an agro-ecological system is much better than pinning your hopes on a single genetically modied crop. We are also seeing a lot more data from places like Cuba where they are havediversied farming systems that suggest that there are ways to produce more food for the future and be ready for what climate change will throw at us, and which are much better than GM crops. In short, I think the GM argument is specious on many levels: It ignores distribution, it misrepresents what GM can do and distorts the conversation towards a monoculture
RP:
17
RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW
rather than a diversied polyculture that we need for the future.

JGF:
The Zapatistas offer one of the most inspiring examples of food sovereignty to the international community. The formation of the autonomous zone in Chiapas was initiated on New Years Eve 1993 as Mexicos political elite celebrated the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement. This has not been the only response from Mexicans as many, especially since the nancial crisis, have returned to subsistence farming withdrawing their crops from the major markets as part of a shift towards relocalising their economies and some Mexicans have even been wiring pesos north to family members in places like California. How condent are you about the chances of the countrys social movements in continuing to build an alternative form of globalisation to the neoliberal agenda we have seen implemented? Thats a great question but I think its like the Zhou Enlai line on the French Revolution where he was asked, What do you think of the French Revolution? and he answered that it was too soon to say I think its the same for Mexico and the Zapatistas who have been ghting for ve hundred years it would be premature to say, but it looks good so far. These movements are gathering their forces and in electoral politics there is a lot more hope around the possibility of progressive outcomes, but it is too soon to say. I have no doubt that indigenous groups, combined with their allies, are pushing for a transformative politics against a vociferous and much better armed state, market, and narco-traffickers who are pushing back. I do, though, have a great deal of faith in the tenacity of these groups to keep ghting for another ve hundred years if need be.
RP:
18
JGF: Is there nothing to say, though, of the fact that the Zapatistas were prepared for the
economic attack that came when NAFTA was introduced in 1994?
RP:
I do think this is very important and thanks for coming back to this. It is often thought that we the middle-class in the privileged West have the perspective about how terrible trade agreements may be, but the documents on general trade and tariffs were translated into Punjabi in the early 1990s. These documents were being discussed by peasants in rural Punjab long before anybody knew that the World Trade Organisation would look the way it does. Even long before the protesters in Seattle in 1999 understood what the WTO was, there were farmers in Punjab who understood what was coming their way. So, I think the fact that the Zapatistas were prepared is indicative of an insurgent and incredibly well-informed politics amongst poor peoples organisations the world over. This fact is often denigrated and ignored by those who want to stand in solidarity with them. I think its a reminder to everyone, including me, who want to do the right thing: We should be listening to these movements before we take a position. Chances are that they are way ahead of our thinking!
JGF: In The Value of Nothing you reference Alan Greenspans testimony to Congress where he remarked that his whole ideological edice was collapsed by the nancial
RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW
crisis of 2008. Another statement, which also received little media attention, came, this time, from Bill Clinton. He went even further than Greenspan by not only accepting the failure of free markets in this case, where Haiti was forced to drops its tariffs on imported subsidised US rice but by also giving an apology to the people of Haiti for destroying their rice farming industry. We are beginning to hear from some of the ercest free markets advocates that the idea of a self-regulating market has dramatically failed. However, this does not seem to be feeding into public policy in the West. Why is this?
RP:
Bill Clinton is a serial apologist. There are few things that you cant extract a mea culpa and a watery tear from Clinton for in order to continue to do exactly what he is doing now. When Clinton apologised he said that we shouldnt treat food like television sets. Here he almost channeled Karl Marx in saying that food should not be considered a commodity. Thats great but the public policy around the food system and even the banks has changed pathetically little. In the United States the banking system is far more consolidated than it was in 2007 and the food system is equally consolidated. Power is in the hands of increasingly few people and this gives us an indication of why a politician can bewail the fact that they are hostage to big money, even as we enter a $2 billion election cycle, but there is painfully little inclination to do anything about it. Its a fairly simple story to tell about regulatory capture in the United States and the rest of the world: the increasing inequality of a few corporations and individuals to shape entire national and global political agendas. However, I dont want to be on a downer about it. Movements like Occupy have shifted the conversation following organisations in places like North Africa and around the Mediterranean. So, yes, you are right that the great and the good, our wise leaders, have offered a begrudging admission that they were wrong but have no intention of changing policy, but they can be forced to change through popular action.
19
JGF: In The Value of Nothing you give the example of a hamburger to illustrate the books
argument about the difference between price and value. The price of the average hamburger is $4 but the estimated social and ecological costs health costs for dietrelated diseases and climate change-related disasters are externalised and can cost anything from $200 upwards for each hamburger. Do you think we have reached the limits of reform as far as lobbying the food industry goes the polluter pays schemes or should we be putting our energy into relocalising our food systems? Or will it most likely take both efforts? I think youre right that it will take a multiple series of efforts. I dont think its a good idea to spend any time asking the food industry to give us stuff this is just a waste of effort. When you ask Coke, for example, to make their products more nutritious they will give us Diet Coke Plus (which I dont believe was ever on sale in the UK). We already have regular Diet Coke which is a semi-toxic soup and then you add vitamins to it and this is their solution. Youve asked for a more nutritious drink and weve added vitamins to it! What more do you want? This, of course, doesnt answer any of
RP:
RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW
20
the fundamental concerns addressed to the food industry and so I think the food industry will be brought along kicking and screaming. The answer then is not to ask for a compromise but to demand the world that we want, whether this is the food world or any other. I think we often forget this. This may seem like a digression but I was at an Occupy encampment in Canada and some people were asking, Well, dont we want the Glass-Steagall Act back? The GlassSteagall Act was a compromise but also a very important piece of banking legislation that was put in place after the Great Depression to limit the size of banks and to put a rewall between retail and investment banking. My response to this was, No, we dont want the Glass-Steagall act back. We have to remember that the act was a compromise against a much more potent transformation of the banking system and what the banking system actually wanted. We need to demand the world that we think we can live in and not the world that the food industry can accommodate itself to. It is not our job to gure out their business but our business to gure out what we want. So, I certainly think that working on relocalising the food system is important but merely having a local turn is not enough. We do need to remove the impediments to that by taking on food companies directly. We, those of us in the global north, also need to undo the harm we have done in the global south. You cant just localise the economies while leaving the wreckage left by colonialism in the global south and walk away from it. We broke it and therefore we owe a debt of reparation. I also think the local turn can often ignore issues around labour and gender. When I talk about a $200 hamburger in The Value of Nothing, what the $200 doesnt include is all of the unpaid work that makes the economy possible. If you were to gure in the unpaid work within our economy it is more than 50 percent. Our economies rely on care work: the raising of children so that they can become workers; the care of the elderly after they have nished their working lives or building communities. Without that work capitalism could never function but capitalism can never pay for that work. I certainly think that merely worrying about eating local food, which is important of course, also has to be part of transforming the way we think about work itself.
JGF: You make it clear early on in the book that you are not calling for the end of markets
the problem is not a society with markets, but that we have become a market society. You do call, however, for a reshaping of markets. What would this reshaping look like? And is the commons as an economic paradigm part of this project? what is being offered as a solution is the privatisation of the planet in order to save it. The argument is that we have to sell off mother nature in order to protect her. This kind of market thinking is a catastrophe in the making, and we have seen what happens when you commodify nature and business interests only want to prot from it. These are the same interests that caused the nancial crisis. The mistake at Rio is thinking that the only way we can care about nature is through commodication and privatisation. This is not true. The societies that are really good at managing resources if given the freedom to do so, using the idea of the commons, are alive and well today. There is research produced recently that shows that forest commons communities that have enough freedom from government
RP: Lets take the commons rst. At the Rio Summit, which started on 20th June 2012,
RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW
and corporations, and have enough land to survive a mistake or bad weather are much better at sequestering carbon and looking after themselves. The understanding that privatisation is not the answer and that we need to gure out other ways to value together is part of the solution. In terms of what a market would like if we were free to exchange, I would say that the work of dreaming is still to be done in many ways. The kind of market I like is where people approach each other as equals. If you think of a farmers market, a suk, or a Middle-Eastern bazaar, there are lots of buyers and lots of sellers and the prices of buying or selling something is much more an exchange than a purchase. The idea of exchange as opposed to purchase is something I am very keen for us all to explore a lot more because when we turn ourselves into consumers and producers we hive off from ourselves what it is to be human. When you exchange it is about trust, reciprocity and social relations, as well as the commodity and money that changes hands. This is closer to what the future market might look like.
is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. Hes currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeleys Center for African Studies. His rst book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest is The Value of Nothing.
Raj Patel Michael van Kekem, is an illustrative designer based in the Netherlands. He is part of the illustrative collective Studio M. He loves to bike, listen to indie music, create type and uses his spare time to screen print, illustrate, watch movies, and make books as much as he can.
21
THe CoMMoNs: FroM THE MarGiNs to THE MaiNstreaM

David Bollier
Why is it that the commons is so often excluded from official policy discussions about how to manage resources and improve peoples lives? This strikes me as a serious void in our public conversations, one that we desperately need to correct. So much of nature, culture and economic activity utterly depend upon the commons the atmosphere, the oceans, wildlife and seeds as well as the Internet, scientic knowledge and creative works, among countless other commons. And yet corporatedominated markets are doing everything they can to privatise and commodify our commons. After all, there is big money to be made in mining the deepsea ocean oor, patenting the genes of plants and animals, claiming proprietary control of agricultural seeds, owning new sorts of synthetic nano-matter that can replace ordinary substances, and owning mathematical algorithms that power software programs. The great, unacknowledged scandal of our times is the market enclosure of things that belong to all of us. Instead of having free or low-cost access to the shared resources that belong to all of us, companies are privatizing them and forcing us to pay. This story is well-told by such books as Raj Patels The Value of Nothing, Lawrence Lessigs Free Culture, Lewis Hydes Common as Air and my own Silent Theft. Rather than review this history of contemporary enclosures, I want to focus here on what we are going to do about them. How can we be more effective in combating enclosure and in making the commons paradigm more visible and consequential in politics, economics and culture? We must rst recognise that the commons inhabits a political environment that is often quite hostile to it. In fact, the State and Market often have their own very good reasons for disliking the commons. For one thing, both are hungry for the revenues that come from exploiting the commons and both State and Market often nd it useful to support each others political objectives. The Market/State duopoly, as I sometimes call it, has another reason for disliking the commons: The commons often requires signicant transfers of power to the commoners and new forms of social equity. So there is often a shared political interest for doing the wrong thing that is to enclose the commons Many resources that belong to us all are being privatised and commodied because corporations see them as cheap or free fodder for the voracious market machine. At the same time, these resources represent a cheap and convenient waste dump a place to
23
Illustration by Sam Parr
The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM
24
get rid of all the nasty externalities that businesses dont want to internalise into their cost structures. If we are going to raise awareness of the commons and make it a serious element in policy discussions, then we are going to have to talk more aggressively about enclosure because the privatisation of the commons is in fact a profound disenfranchisement of people. Having said this, we commoners need to do a better job of articulating and advancing what I call the value proposition of the commons. Heres what I mean by that. The market has its own well-developed, aggressively promoted story about how material wealth is created and human progress is advanced. Its a story about how private property rights, money and market exchange generate wealth. Its a process that considers Gross Domestic Product a proxy for happiness. The market story is a story of bigger, better and faster, and it is the dominant norm of our time, a global religious catechism that is only now starting to come unraveled, thanks to the economic crisis of 2008. The commons is a very different narrative one that lls out that picture that this mainstream economic narrative omits. The value proposition of the commons cannot be expressed as a bottom line because its all about community empowerment and social equity and ecological security. Unfortunately, this is a fuzzy and complex storyline in the public mind, at least right now. Some other reasons that the commons narrative has trouble going mainstream have everything to do with the intrinsic nature of the commons. Unlike the market narrative, which presumes to be standard and universal, the commons consists of countless distinctive and locally rooted examples, each different. The market celebrates quantitative measures of its performance, and so comparisons about whos best, whos richest, and so forth, are easy. By contrast, the value of the commons tends to be qualitative, social, spiritual, ecologically complex and long term. Needless to say, these values cannot be plugged into a spreadsheet and put into rankings, like the Commons 500. As a result, the commons is harder to see and name as a distinct sector and therefore it can be harder to reclaim a commons or build one from scratch. In addition, the commons storyline is relational, not transactional. While markets are focused on individual initiative, conicts and competition with winners and losers, the commons is focused on stewardship, community benet and sustainability. Guess which narrative is more dramatic and gripping to the media? Paradoxically, the commons does all sorts of work that markets depend upon, but this work usually goes unacknowledged. The caring economy, and other so-called womens work is part of a vast, off-the-books shadow economy that invisibly props up the formal market economy. Nature is also part of this shadow economy. So is the public domain of information and culture. It tells you something about the vaunted productivity of the formal economy that it quietly relies upon so many invisible commons-based subsidies! Of course, many leaders of the Market/State duopoly are not troubled by this. They prefer to keep the commons in the shadows. Why call attention to a valuable off-thebooks subsidy? By keeping the commons unnamed, it is easier to neutralise it as a competitive power base. Without a vocabulary for naming the commons, the commons can be used and abused with impunity. It becomes harder to organise a community to defend it. Commons-based alternatives that might disrupt the status quo can be
safely ignored. Going mainstream with the commons discourse is difficult in many countries most notably, the United States because it clashes with the basic premises of laissezfaire individualism. When the US Government tried to vanquish Native Americans in the 1800s, for example, the rst thing that it insisted upon, as a legal precondition for US citizenship, was that Native Americans abandon their common ownership regimes and assign individual property rights to everyone. I can think of no better way of destroying a people. This enclosure dynamic plays itself out repeatedly today. The strategy is: disassemble the connections that a community has to itself, its resources and its social traditions and rules. Convert commoners into individual consumers and producers for the market system, and make them more dependent on the money economy. We must frankly recognise that free markets may entail a cultural agenda and identity shift. Now, the argument is often made that the commons is simply a vestigial, premodern throwback. They say its impractical, its inefficient, its a tragedy. With the failures of communism and state socialism still hanging in the air, the claim is made that self-organised collective action threatens freedom. We need to ght these myths by asserting the real value-proposition of the commons. I will concede, the critics get it partly right: the commons has pre-modern origins. Ill go a step further. Im convinced that the commons is as old as the human species. It predates the modern marketplace and state and as the great historian of the commons Peter Linebaugh has put it, the commons is independent of the temporality of the law and state. Evolutionary biologists, geneticists and anthropologists now tell us that cooperation is hard-wired into the human species. It is, they say, an evolutionary stable strategy one that confers competitive advantages on homo sapiens in its ongoing struggle to survive. Scientists say that such evolutionary innovations as language, agriculture, altruism and even the whites of our eyes, reect our natural propensity to cooperate and develop social trust. As social order has evolved, so have the institutions that can protect our collective interests. In Roman times, the Emperor Justinian famously established several categories of law to reect collective ownership. Things were considered res communes if they were owned in common by everyone as a whole. The Code of Justinian states: By the law of the nature these things are common to mankind the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea. Another category of property was things that belonged to the State res publicae. Things that belonged to no one, such as wild animals and abandoned property, were considered res nullius. Another landmark in the history of the commons was the adoption of the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D. and a few years later, the Charter of the Forests in 1217. A series of conicts and civil wars between the commoners and barons and the king eventually forced King John to formally recognise commoners rights from due process rights and habeas corpus to the right to use the forest commons to supply their primary subsistence needs for food, rewood and building materials. I recall this history because it is another reason why the commons has been marginalised. Much of its history has been forgotten or bastardised. Consider our skewed remembrance of John Locke, who is responsible for the most celebrated and
25
26
enduring theories of private property. Locke considered it a divine right for people to claim private property rights in things that they made with their own labour. What is usually omitted from Lockes formulation of this right is his signicant qualication so long as there is enough, and good left in common for others. In other words, private property rights can be justied only if the common pool resource is preserved intact. That often requires a commons. Lets just say that the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have forgotten such things. It reminds me of the novelist Milan Kunderas famous line, Mans struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness. Without a coherent, big-picture history of what I call commons law, it is hard for commoners to argue in courts and legislatures for what is theirs. The law frequently ignores or rejects commons-based approaches. That is why I am currently working with a noted international law and human rights professor, Burns Weston of the University of Iowa College of Law, to try to recover and refurbish this history. We want to go back to Roman times, the Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, the public trust doctrine and points in between to regenerate a body of commons law that can provide new legal justications for the commons. We call this the Commons Law Project, a multi-year effort to explore ecological governance in partnership. We need to recover the history of commons law, and regenerate it for our times, so that we can begin to imagine and invent new approaches to protecting our natural ecosystems. Existing law is predicated on the idea that the greatest benets come from maximizing market exploitation of natural resources. It assumes that those resources are inexhaustible and that the byproducts of market activity (e.g., air and water pollution, toxic waste, climate change) are negligible. This is simply not true yet the deep premises of modern law presume that maximizing private property rights, individual self-interest and market exchange will necessarily yield the greater public good, as Adam Smiths Invisible Hand declares. Recovering the history of commons law will show, on the contrary, that human wellbeing is best served by respecting the integrity of regional ecosystems (which may or may not coincide with political boundaries) and the stability of local and regional communities. The market needs to become the servant of these needs, not the master. Within a framework of law and public policy, communities must nd new ways to limit their market-driven exploitation of nature. Thats where a new type of commons-based law can be helpful. It can help us invent new types of socio-legal mechanisms to protect ecological commons. It can also provide a valuable body of moral and legal principles to which contemporary environmental activists can appeal in their political advocacy. In a larger sense, recovering the history of the commons can help us develop a new grand narrative for the commons. It can help us understand how the dynamics of enclosure in the past are repeating themselves today. It can help us recognise who are the victims of enclosure: chiey women, the poor, the elderly and others who depend on the commons for subsistence. The history of the commons is also a source of inspiration. It can validate the creativity of commoners of the past who struggled to protect their shared wealth and self-determination. I only recently learned about the medieval tradition of Beating the Bounds an annual community perambulation around the perimeter of the commons, complete with good food and drink.
The event celebrated the communitys identity as commoners while providing a way to tear down any fences, hedges or other enclosures. I was astonished by this revelation commoners once had the affirmative legal right to knock down enclosures of their shared resources! We need to recover and remember the history of the commons as a way to help understand the challenges facing us today. I see great potential in the commons because it goes beyond political ideology to propose a paradigm shift, a different worldview. It knits together the economic, political, cultural and humanistic into one coherent discourse. It empowers individuals to help themselves. It helps reconnect people with each other, and with the earth. It helps regenerate personal meaning and social tradition. It helps foster sustainable management of ecological resources. For me, it is the ethic of the commons that may be most valuable. Alain Lipietz, a French political gure and student of the commons, traces the word commons to William the Conqueror and the Normans. I love the etymology of the word. It comes from the Norman word commun, which comes from the word munus, which means both gift and counter-gift, as a duty. Munus is related to what the economist Karl Polanyi called reciprocity. I think we need to recover a world in which we all receive gifts and we all have duties. This is a very important way of being human. Tragically, the expansion of centralised political and economic structures tends to eclipse our need for gifts and duties. We rely on money or the state for everything. And so we forget what Ivan Illich called the vernacular domain the spaces in our everyday life in which we create and shape and negotiate our sense of how things should be: the commons. The basic problem is that we need to rediscover commoning the commons as a verb, the commons as a set of social practices. The allure of commoning, Peter Linebaugh has written, arises from the mutualism of shared resources. Everything is used, nothing is wasted. Reciprocity, sense of self, willingness to argue, long memory, collective celebration and mutual aid are traits of the commoner. Now, the really great thing about commoning is that it is not just a gment of history. Its alive and growing! In fact, today we see the rise of countless self-styled commoners people who see the commons as a way of dramatically reframing how they might conduct politics, conceptualise economics and revitalise democracy. In November 2010 in Berlin, some 200 self-identied commoners from 34 countries gathered in Berlin at the rst international commons conference, hosted by the Heinrich Bll Foundation and the Commons Strategy Group. It turns out that agricultural activists from the Philippines and computer hackers from Amsterdam and defenders of urban spaces in Croatia and free culture advocates from Brazil, despite their obvious differences, actually have a lot in common. They all celebrate an ethic of participation, inclusiveness, transparency, social equity and collective innovation. There are some amazingly large and robust trans-national communities of commoners who are making serious progress in taking charge of the common wealth. These include a vast network of free software programmers who created GNU Linux and thousands of other shareable software programs; the Wikipedians in dozens of countries who edit the largest encyclopedia in history; the millions of digital artists and authors in more than fty countries who use Creative Commons licenses; the growing world of open access scholarly publishing, which has bypassed expensive commercial
27
journals to make their work freely available in perpetuity; the Open Educational Resources movement, which creates and shares open textbooks and curricula and learning materials. Beyond this exploding universe of digital commoners, there are self-identied commoners who are recovering urban land and community gardens; commoners who are ghting to keep genetic knowledge free and open; commoners who are building solar energy panels on public rights-of-way; commoners who are building open-source hardware and agricultural equipment; commoners who are ingeniously using Internet technologies to improve ecosystem protection.The list goes on and on. So how do we open some new conversations and build some new alliances? I propose the following strategies: ll Let us recover and remember the history of the commons so that we can appreciate its role in different historical and political contexts. ll Let us develop a grand narrative about the commons that can be popularly understood, so that we can communicate the value proposition of the commons better. ll We should try to bridge the cultural divide between digital commoners and natural resource commoners, because there truly are important synergies between the two. ll We should try to formulate how the commons can work with existing state institutions and policy structures, while inventing new forms that are more appropriate to the commons. ll We must try to reframe mainstream political and economic discourse with a commons perspective, so that some bright, alternative futures can be seen. ll And nally, we must strengthen the linkages between commons scholars, practitioners and activists, so that we can learn from each other and support each others work. I realise this is a ridiculously big wish list, but on the other hand, we have every reason to dream big. Our problems are daunting and our energies are growing. Its time to take the commons to the next level.
28
is an independent commons scholar who works with the Commons Strategy Group and blogs at Bollier.org. He is the author of ten books, most recently Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own.
David Bollier Sam Parr is a largely self-taught artist and illustrator living in Yorkshire. Switching from a career in legal advice, she recently returned to her rst love, starting illustrating in March 2011. You can see her work at www.samparr.co.uk.
OccUpY THE US: MUsiNGs oN HoriZoNtal DecisioN MaKiNG aNd BUreaUcracY

Marianne Maeckelbergh
The year 2011 has breathed new life into horizontal models of democratic decision making. With the rise of the 15 May Movement and the Occupy Movement, horizontal decision making became one of the key political structures for organising responses to the current global economic crisis. While this decisionmaking process has arguably never been as widely practiced as it is today, it has also never seemed as difficult or complicated. At its height there were 5,000 people at the general assemblies in Placa Catalunya in Barcelona and even more in Madrid. Its no longer just activists trying to use and teach each other these decision-making processes but thousands of people who have a far greater disparity in terms of backgrounds, starting assumptions, aims and discursive styles. This is incredibly good news, but its not easy. The current historical juncture requires reection on these decision-making methods and here I explore a few of the important lessons that seem to stand out after participating in these processes in Barcelona, New York and Oakland. First, more awareness of the political values that underlie these seemingly practical meeting procedures referred to as process would be helpful. Second, the link between these political values and the social relations of economics could use some analysis: In order to create new political structures we actually have to let go of certain economic relations which we take as given. For example, horizontal decision making does not work when we assume a) that resources are scarce, b) that we therefore need to compete with each other and c) ownership is an exclusionary relation a proprietary relation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the more we try to set the rules in stone, to nd the golden key, the ideal set of procedures, the more we disengage from the central political questions of how we decide a terrain of politics that has to remain open if it is to remain horizontal. In order for a general assembly to be productive, effective and empowering to participants, the procedures have to maintain a certain degree of exibility as the circumstances in which we nd ourselves shift. Let me explain what I mean.
Whirlwind History
29
Horizontal decision making was, of course, never invented as such. People taking decisions together without any structured hierarchy has always existed. The particular form that horizontal decision making is taking today in the Occupy Movement in the
OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY
US, for example, has a history that can be traced back at least into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the New Left broke off from the traditional political party structures and began (inspired, of course, by those who came before) a long journey on the path towards participatory democracy, inclusion, equal say of participants and a less programmatic approaches to social change. Communism as the main ideology of the Left came into discredit with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and then Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the lacuna created by the decline of Communism as a real alternative to capitalism grew a search for a less ideological, less programmatic approach to social change. Notions of participatory democracy started to merge with practices of consensus, especially in the US, and grew over time into a key aspect of movement culture, in no small part due to the womens/feminist movements, anti-nuclear and peace movements of the 1970s. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Do-It-Yourself culture and environmental movements kept these decision-making practices alive to be reinvented as horizontal decision making in the 2000s, post-Seattle, post-Zapatista uprising, post2001 Argentinian economic collapse, etc. For ten years horizontal decision making was practiced on a relatively large scale, with varying degrees of success, within the global
Image by Brandon Jourdan
networks of the alterglobalization movement during the preparations for the antisummit protests (anti-WTO, IMF/WB, G8) and for the world, regional and local Social Forums. Importantly, these decision-making methods were not just practiced as procedures, but as the building blocks for the alternative models of social and political organisation being proposed by these movements. These same procedures of horizontal decision making re-emerge in the Occupy movement, or very similar ones, as well as the idea that decision-making procedures are not only practical, but also the basis for political alternatives to the current economic paradigm of governance.
The Political Values Underlying Horizontal Decision Making
Perhaps some reections on the political values that have accompanied horizontal decision making in the past would therefore be useful. Here I draw on ten years of experience with horizontal decision making in the context of anti-summit mobilisations and social forums to create some food for thought.
1.
Horizontal decision-making practices are not just procedures, but they are the building block of an alternative form of governance in the making. It is therefore very important that the meetings are as inclusive as possible, as functional as possible and, perhaps most importantly, as empowering as possible. 31
2. Horizontal decision making rests on a transformation in the way we think about equality and how it is created. The starting assumption is that full equality between all participants cannot exist naturally, and therefore structures and procedures are needed in order to continuously challenge hierarchies as they arise whether they be based on gender, sex, race, class, education, skill, job, ability to express oneself, or inter-personal power dynamics based on past interactions. In this model of thinking, equality is not something that can be declared and then forgotten about, as in all men are created equal, but is something that has to be continuously created and worked on. 3.
In order to ensure that equality can be increased between people from different backgrounds, the differences between people need to have room for expression. The aim of decision making cannot be to create the one best solution that is enforced on everyone. Unity of thought, of action, of identity makes this type of equality impossible. This is why one of the key values underlying decision making in the alterglobalization movement is diversity a rejection of unity as the guiding principle of cooperation. What diversity means in this case is not that everyone is different, but that these differences are taken seriously and translated into the outcomes of the decision-making process. There is very little political power in giving each person equal input into a decision if the outcome of the decision only represents the concerns of one group of people (as in a winner-takes-all voting system). This multiple outcomes approach, however, requires that people realise that they have the option to act autonomously. This means that if they dont agree with a decision taken, they dont have to implement it and they can do something else.
4.
Autonomy between participants is essential to keep the general assembly from becoming a source of centralised and hierarchical power. If equal outcomes are multiple outcomes then the best-suited political structure for horizontality is a structure that allows for multiple, separate groups of people to coordinate with only limited unity of purpose. Decentralised network structures are ideal for this. People align themselves based on any number of different interests or activities and only come together with people who share different interests or activities in order to a) communicate about what they are doing and hear about what others are doing, b) coordinate their activities when necessary, and c) make decisions that will affect everyone. Autonomy/decentralisation is necessary to embrace diversity and diversity is necessary for equality.
From Political Values to Economic Relations
32
The task that meeting facilitators face today is considerably harder than the task facing facilitators in the alterglobalization movement. Even before I arrived in the US, I was struck by how often I heard via email, phone, facebook, and via-via complaints about how bureaucratic the process of decision making had become in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. But it was not until I attended my rst general assembly in Zuccotti Park and not until I spent hours having discussion after discussion about the problems with process in new york (with people from the different working groups inside Occupy Wall Street, loosely affiliated activists and people who intentionally reject the Occupy Wall Street label) that I began to understand what was meant by bureaucracy and why it was perceived as such a danger to the movement. Although people themselves were still searching for what they specically meant by bureaucracy and why it was such a big problem, several factors were immediately apparent. Those participating in the general assembly were applying what I would consider a capitalist logic to horizontal decision making. Specically, the three related assumptions that I saw appear, which I classify here as capitalist, were 1) that resources are scarce; 2) that we need to compete with each other to be heard or to get what we want; and 3) what I would call a proprietary attitude between participants: People were claiming domains of activity or knowledge as theirs, as something they were in a privileged position to know or act upon (everything from the kitchen to the gures of the artist or the academic were mentioned in discussions as groups of people who set themselves apart, claimed certain privilege based on knowledge, skill or work hours, and used this claim to knowledge to exclude others). As a result there was a perception that people were placing themselves in a position of control/superior knowledge and were resistant (for what I imagine are a very complex set of reasons) to sharing these tasks, skills or knowledge by creating the forms of constructive communication that are essential to the functioning of horizontal decision making. Part of the appeal of horizontal decision making is that it rests on a different set of values than those of the current prot-driven society. This is also the source of its potential as an alternative to the current economic paradigm of democracy. So it is no small matter when the process isnt working well for so many people. As the weeks carried on, I began to see how interconnected all of these assumptions were. These complaints, when taken together, indicate that far from using the term bureaucracy informally to refer to red tape, those complaining about bureaucracy were expressing
an implicit understanding of the relationship between bureaucracy and capitalism.This insight, which is being both intentionally and unintentionally developed in New York, is crucial to understanding how horizontal decision making works and when it does not work as a political structure. The introduction of so much money into the Occupy Wall Street Movement seems to be at the centre of this problem, but it is not only money. Fame, too, is a big one. So many people want to be in the spotlight and the spotlight is limited and eeting. But Occupy is not the rst movement to have money or to need money, though the precedents in terms of moneys inuence on horizontal movement building are not great. One of the reasons that anti-summit mobilisations worked more horizontally than Social Forum mobilisations was in part due to the different attitudes to money. In the anti-summit mobilisations money was often treated as secondary rst you decide what you want to achieve politically, and then you see how much money you need and where to get it from. In this way political discussions were separated from nancial ones. In strong contrast to this, the general assemblies I attended in New York were equating political points and nancial ones, and as a result the discussion was confused. Someone would make a political point in support of a particular course of action and the concern raised or the block made would be based on there being a lack of money or the need for receipts which cannot always be produced. People did not seem to recognise it as such, but this is a capitalist logic. The idea that you can only act when you have money is based on thinking of money as power and as a restrictive form of power. Sure, if there is no money, you have a practical problem, but it is one that is rather easily solved and one that has rarely impeded people from taking action in the past. (If and when the movement needs more money, an appeal can be sent out and people will donate more, or the movement will nd ways to carry out activities without money, as they did at the start and as others continue to do all over the world). In Oakland on the other hand, the political discussions were separated from nancial ones. First a discussion complete with pros and cons would be had about whether or not to take a certain course of action, or how to take it, and then at a separate meeting a proposal would be submitted for funds for this action. In the case of nance proposals, there were only clarifying questions and then a vote, no pro/con discussions. This structure seemed to work much better than discussing the pros/cons of an action at the same time as the cost of an action.This had the added bonus of making the meetings far more empowering because every meeting was not about nance (which is framed as a limit to action), but many were about potential for action and created a collective proactive spirit. Another damaging aspect of treating resources as limited (when in fact there is no real reason to) is that it leads to competition between actors. If the resources, whether it be money, fame, political options, or decision-outcomes are considered to be limited, then large-scale horizontal decision making cannot work. This is due to the central importance of diversity to the functioning of horizontality. If those participating in the horizontal process perceive their ability to get funds for their activities to be threatened by a request for funds (because it diminishes these scarce resources) then they will of course vote against it, rather than think about the value of an activity itself. The aim of horizontal decision making should be to look for ways to make all activities possible, if need be without money, so that this attitude of competition does not arise.
33
The reason why network democracy is more inclusive than nation-state-based democracy is largely due to the lack of forced centralised unity. A nation-state is a political structure based on the delineation of a geographical area within which everyone must share some aspects of national identity, and within which everyone is subject to the same legal rights and responsibilities. This may seem inevitable within a polity, but within a network there is no clear beginning or end and, as a result, no clearly delineated group of people who are subject to the remit of decisions taken even by the general assembly. Although this can seem out of control sometimes, this is actually the strength of horizontal decision making. Networks can multiply and split without creating divisions.
Flexibility not Bureaucracy
34
In order for the general assembly to avoid becoming a centralised form of authority that attempts to control the behaviour of others (and hence reintroduce hierarchy), there has to be an understanding that when someone or a group of people disagree with a decision they can do their own thing, they can create a new subgroup, a new node of the network within the existing structures. In order for most people especially those of us who are used to the nation-state system of democracy to feel comfortable relinquishing control like this requires us to think through a few questions: Why do we want to control other peoples actions? Do we see their actions as reecting on ourself in some way? Finally, an important question is, where does this desire to control others actions end? Will we try to control everyones actions? If so, the task is hopeless anyway. If not, then you need criteria to distinguish between those who need to be controlled and those who do not, as well as a way to enforce this arbitrary boundary of inclusion/exclusion. The point being, in order to use horizontal decision making participants have to be willing to relinquish their desire to control others. This means that the general assembly would not be a space to control, monitor, or approve of the actions of participants, but it would be a place to discuss, cooperate and create these actions it would be a space for coordination and communication to improve the actions taken. The procedures and structures in place through which to coordinate and communicate work better when they retain a degree of uidity. Once there is a decision about how the meetings are going to run, and that decision is taken to be binding for all meetings, all decisions, all circumstances, all groups, all topics, a great deal of exibility is lost. This makes the process seem rigid and often undermines its effectiveness for dealing with a diversity of people and for adjusting to changing circumstances. And since social movements are usually trying to bring about changes in circumstances, this is a considerable drawback. More important than the practical drawbacks to having procedures set in stone are the political ones. The key lesson from a decade or more of anti-summit mobilisations and social forums was that meaningful political participation must involve an ability to inuence not only which decisions are made and what is decided, but crucially, how the decisions are made. It is in the procedures for how that the lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn, and so continued attention to matters of how and a certain degree of exibility in how decisions are made is essential to ensure that large-scale horizontal decision making is empowering to the participants.
Marianne Maeckelbergh
is lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, Netherlands. She has 15 years experience as an activist, organising and facilitating exactly the decision-making processes that lie at the heart of her study. Her book is The Will of Many: How the Alterglobalization Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy.
Brandon Jourdan is an award-winning independent lmmaker, journalist and writer. His lm, The July War, is based on the 2006 war in Lebanon and the consequences of the war. Jourdan has contributed to the New York Times, CNN, Babelgum, Reuters, Deep Dish TV, Democracy Now!, the Independent Media Center, Now with Bill Moyers, Foreign Exchange, and Free Speech Television. He is currently based in the Netherlands, where he is working on a lm about reactions to the nancial crisis.
35
THe Real Food Store

Megan Saunders
They say, If it aint broke, dont x it. Well, our food system is broken, and it does need xingfast. The cogs of the 21st century global food system turn, but are in need of (sustainable) oiling to help transition smoothly towards a viable and secure food future.The Real Food Store in Exeter, Devon, is helping to unstick some of the global food system problems at a local level. Keeping pounds in the local economy should be something on everyones mind in these dark days of double-dip recession. The importance of spending your hard-earned cash locally was something the New Economic Foundation highlighted in their popular book Tescopoly ve years ago. It discussed the ways in which large businesses, such as Tesco, drain a large proportion of consumers cash away from the local area. They do this through a combination of low wages, loss leaders pushing out local businesses, largely employing staff on exi- and part-time contracts, and centralised nances. Remember those cogs in the food system? Well these are the reasons its no longer running smoothly. New UK grocery retailing data from April 2012 indicates that on average, food and grocery expenditure accounts for 53p in every 1 of retail spending and, despite recession fears over the past few years, the grocery market is still increasing in value. There are now 88,441 grocery stores in the UK, which are split into four subsectors: convenience retailing, traditional retailing, supermarkets/hypermarkets/ superstores, and online. Of this the largest sector was, not surprisingly, supermarkets/ hypermarkets/superstores with 9,192 stores and a combined value of 111.4bn. However, a mere 216 stores and 1.2bn of this were through independent stores. Clearly, The Big 4 supermarkets have a stronghold on our food retailing system and the damage bigchain supermarkets create is multi-pronged and far-reaching. Many believe that we need to work to correct their unsustainable and irresponsible behaviour. Stir Magazine recently got the chance to explore one great initiative that provides positive grease to the growing number of food system alternatives that provide us with sustainable food retail solutions. A strange breed of cow has been residing in Exeter, a quaint rural city in the heart of Devon. It has become a local icon. This cow, or Blush as she was fondly named, is very special not only due to her colour (a lurid pink) but also for what she represents The Real Food Store. The Real Food Store is a unique community-owned local food
37
Illustration by Alicja Falgowska
The ReAL FOOD STORe
store, bakery and caf, opened in March 2011. More than a year on and, through passion and commitment to continually emphasise the importance of buying local produce, The Real Food Store proudly represents the South West regions food culture, and is an example of a practical local solution to our current food system failures. The seeds that grew in to The Real Food Store were rst sown back in February 2009. The idea emerged out of a Transition Exeter Open Space discussion entitled How can Exeter Plan a Sustainable Local Food Economy? This highlighted to members, that despite Exeters central positioning in fertile farmland, there were no real retail outlets for local producers to reach the city-centre consumers a common situation in towns up and down the country that have had their independence swallowed by the national out-of-town supermarkets. Exeter was a local food desert. And thus, a team of seven members decided to action improvements to the local food economy. Three and a half years on this same dedicated team is still active; six of the seven members now sit on the Board of Directors for the business. The Real Food Store is not just any regular business it is for the community, by the community, taking action rather that accepting what they are given.After months of planning the wheels were set in motion for this pioneering retail outlet. Its visions were to become: ll the primary artisan bakery in Exeter ll a food store stocking the best produce the South West can offer ll offer stock at affordable prices for the community ll a caf showcasing locally produced seasonal ingredients ll a community arts/education space for use in relation to food and farming One of the initial great success stories of this venture was the community nancial backing local people saw the value in such an enterprise and were willing to invest personal money to ensure that everybody in the city had access to an alternative food retail outlet that supported local producers. By the end of September 2010, 287 members of the community had contributed shares, ranging from 100 to 20,000 in value. This totalled a staggering 152,776 worth of nancial backing for the project and the dream began to turn into reality. Today the store is busy with regular customers popping in for their daily bread, milk and essentials, and visitors to the area stocking up on local delicacies and offering their words of support for what a great thing you are doing. In recent times, many Britons have abandoned their native gastronomy and little food culture now exists upon our shores. There is an absence of regional food pride, as the entire country is blanketed in mundane meal monoculture. Supermarkets now shape shopping tastes, creating short-lived food trends. They source products globally, relying on cheap imports to stock shelves, and this inevitably reduces the quantity of British food available, causing difficulty in buying British even if desired. Any good food movement is perceived as being elitist and inaccessible to most. This is an unhealthy attitude towards British food and our mindset towards buying local and seasonal food should be reconditioned. Reminding consumers of the pleasure gained by eating diverse locally produced, quality foods and reconnecting with farmers and the land are all important aims. Independent shops, such as The Real Food Store, ghting against the supermarket trend for out-of-town shopping can help make high streets vibrant diverse places
38
The ReAL FOOD STORe
again, injecting regional character. Local food outlets should be at the heart of these independent stores, re-inspiring and educating communities about what is produced nearby and even increasing culinary tourism, bringing increased wealth to the area. Clearly, there are many social and economic benets to buying from these small indie stores, and The Real Food Store is just one great example of this. The general reception and enthusiasm from the community has been positive, and whilst there is always potential for growth and improvements, The Real Food Store is on the road to being one of the countrys nest examples of alternative food retailing. It runs a thread through the local fabric of the community and ties it together, providing an accessible interface for producers and consumers to re-establish understanding relationships. The Real Food Store is an example of a successful local business that is ghting back against the multinationals, and truly cares for both its suppliers and its customers. End Note: Since Blushs recent retirement to the green elds with our farmers, there has been an overwhelming response from the local community airing their concerns for her disappearance. This lively icon has united local people together in a way that faceless supermarkets cannot. The store acts as social glue, bringing the community together. This is just one simple example of the great many ways in which this community-owned enterprise is benetting the local people. 39
Megan Saunders has been working at the community-owned Real Food Store since it opened 18 months ago. She is passionate about supporting local food businesses and is working to promote the importance of supporting local farmers within her local community. Alicja Falgowska
is an artist and graphic designer who lives and works in London. She received her MFA from The Fine Arts Academy in Poznan, Poland. She created the Tactile Book and rst Polish Alphabet Illustration for blind and poor-sighted children.
SiMoN CritcHleY INterVieW

by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh
With the publication of his new book The Faith of the Faithless, I spoke to philosopher Simon Critchley about why a counterfactual faith is so important to modern politics, how it offers an archive of possibilities, why there is still an obsession with big men, and what the true political terrain is today.
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh: It has been argued that the recent theological revival is because of a theoretical decit, not a theological need (Alberto Toscano). Are there more reasons for this unexpected if not unusual upturn in interest in political theology than the catastrophic failure of the communist projects of the previous century? Simon Critchley: The interest in political theology comes out of a dissatisfaction with liberalism.The notion of political theology as a category or term actually originates in Mikhail Bakunin. It originates in Italian thought in the 19th century and is also rst used as an abusive term. When Carl Schmitt picks it up in the 1920s he gives it a different valence, but the object of attack for both Bakunin and Schmitt, on the left and on the right, is the same liberalism. Periodising that, you have the aftermath of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the period in the early 90s when there is a lot of optimism about the potential within democracy for emancipatory energies that quickly exhausts itself. After that, there is a return to the theological concerns at that moment, which isnt so much a return to communist ideas but an attempt to nd something at the level of the deep motivational structure of what it means to be a human self and what selves might be together. If you are interested in that question then the history of religious thought is really a place to look maybe the place to look. For me, Ive never been a particularly secularist thinker and Ive never had a strong faith in the ideas of secular modernity. Ive had a huge interest, as long as Ive been aware of such things, in religious thinkers like Paul, Pascal, Augustine and many others. It seems to me that if you start from the idea that philosophy or theory has to do without religion then you are cutting yourself off from an incredibly useful archive of possibilities. So, I think that philosophy is inconceivable without religion, or shouldnt be done without religion as it shouldnt be done only with religion. I am not a theist in that sense. It means using the best and most powerful ideas in that tradition for other ends. Of the people who have gone back to using religious sources to think about
41
Illustration by Germn Gulln
SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW
42
politics, then I would say that Alain Badious Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism is the most powerful. The question for me is two-fold. Firstly, it is diagnostic: to understand the nature of political forms is to think of them as different forms of sacralisation. In my view, I have this idea that the history of political forms fascism, liberal democracy, Stalinism are different forms of the sacral. There is always a sacred object: the nation, the people, the race, or whatever it might be. So, rather than seeing the history of politics as the movement from the religious to the secular, I see politics as a shift in the meaning of the sacred. For me, that is an incredibly useful diagnostic tool when you are, say, looking at political forms in a country like the one I am living in (the US). Here, an incredibly powerful political theology exists in terms of American civil religion which is able to exert a unusual power over citizens and using this diagnostic tool enables us to nd out how that works. So, there is a diagnostic category that is very important, and then there is a more normative one. Politics for me, to put it in a crude formula, is association without representation. I adapted this from Rousseau. The notion of association for me is not just, but nonetheless still, a religious idea. Religion is linked to the idea of Renegare who asks, What is it that binds fast? What is it that binds fast an association? For me, that is a question that the left has been grappling with for the last couple of centuries. So, I dont think you can just slough off the religious tradition or say its just nonsense. That is a philistine gesture that is counter-productive in all sorts of ways.
JGF: Many of Terry Eagletons forays into political theology have been to argue that faith
is performative rather propositional. Does this chime with your claims in the book about the nature of faith?
to them. His trajectory is one where he started off as a radical catholic and then became a Marxist. In a sense, nothing has really changed because the object of critique is the same: liberal democracy and the secular theology that underpins it human rights, freedom, individuality, and so on. Faith, for me, is not theistic. It does not require a belief in some metaphysical entity like God. Faith is a subjective proclamation. It is a proclamation in a relationship, in my jargon, with a demand. It places a demand on you so that you can bind yourself as an ethical or political subject.That is the way it works. Now, we have a strange situation where there are people, like myself for example, who are faithless but have an experience of faith in relationship to an innite demand, say, the prohibition of murder or the furthering of equality. Then there are people where that faith is underwritten by some theistic reality in their worldview. My view is that it makes no difference at the subjective level: the belief in God is neither here nor there. It is a useless distraction. It does not matter what you believe but rather how you act. I am interested in all of those religious projects that are concerned with doing, action and practice like Black Christianity in the US, for example. I agree with Terry that faith is on a performative plane rather than a propositional plane I believe in X and so on.
SC: I am very close to Terrys concerns and maybe as time goes on I will get even closer
JGF: In Jean Luc Nancys Dis-Enclosure he turns to James rather than Paul for a militant
gure. Instead of the fragility of the will that we nd in Paul, Nancy turns his attention to James where he says, Faith without works is dead.
SC: It is an idea that keeps popping up. It is what the Janists believed in 17th century France and who were a totally persecuted religious minority. They were faith as action in the world. There is a distinction to make between faith as action and spirituality. There is an ideology of spirituality that has grown up in various forms around what we can broadly see as new age belief. Where, in a sense, spirituality becomes that turn inward in order to nd something blessed or divine about yourself, which you can cultivate in a world that is horrible, chaotic and blowing itself to pieces. For me, faith turns outwards and spirituality turns inwards. Ive written about this on Philip K. Dick and Gnosticism, where I argue that there is an ideology of Gnosticism when it is accepted that the world is shit a kind of matrix: a dream factory that is governed by evil corporate powers or whoever it might be (gnostics called them the archons) but that there is a pure divine spark within us. I think all interesting forms of spirituality are forms of passive, nihilistic withdrawal from a world that seems to be out of control. So, I am opposed to that but also think that we need to understand it because when you are dealing with different forms of spirituality, the most general form is the one that has no belief at all. This is why Buddhism seems so amenable you dont have to believe in anything. You can cultivate practices of perfection or vacationing and it allows you to deal with the world that is out of control. I dont just dismiss that. I think passive nihilism makes sense as a response to world, but I think it is the wrong response, and there is a lot of it about. JGF:
43
In The Faith of the Faithless you quote Antonio Gramsci as saying, For socialism to overcome Christianity, it has to become a religion. What does it mean for a political endeavour or project to become a religion? And why is it important for its success?
SC: It is important for its success because it can be that thing that touches people whose interests are not directly affected by the problems of a movement. It could touch them and motivate them to act in a certain way. By religion, I am thinking about what it means to bring human beings into association, into a common front. Now, Gramsci as a gure has always interested me, more than Marx and more than many contemporary Marxists who still have their over-weaning belief in the socioeconomic. Not that the socioeconomic isnt important, that would be ridiculous, but for politics we have to learn to build common fronts, or what Gramsci called the activity of hegemony. This is when people with divergent interests and commitments can come together into a common front, a historical bloc as Gramsci called it. If you exclude religion or religious people from that, youre missing the point. In Gramscis day he is talking about a Catholic Church that is, for the most part, a retrograde and reactionary force, but that contains a left Catholic tradition that can be activated; and more generally, to baiting people into a sort of commonality. It is the formation of some kind of structure that is poetic or religious in that broad sense. It requires an activity of
political imagination. In The Faith of the Faithless what I talk about is in relationship to what I call the supreme ction, namely that we live in a world where the realm of politics is a realm of ction. Its a realm of what Thomas Hobbes called the articial man and the articial soul. But to expose these ctions as ctions so the ction of popular sovereignty, the idea that we the people actually govern ourselves or that we dont live in a plutocracy or an oligarchy doesnt mean we go from ction to fact but that there can be this other idea of which I call a supreme ction: that which we know to be a ction yet we still believe. In many ways it is a way of formulating what might be a political, poetic, and religious project. There are two elements: rstly, a kind of romanticism, and also a kind of pragmatism. The romanticism is the idea about the supreme ction; the pragmatism is the idea that movements are formed not by exclusions or by the cultivation of vanguards, but by a construction of an association that motivates people to join it. I think thats one of the things that we can say Occupy did for a period of time there is the open question of what is happening with that right now.
JGF:
When the facts are against us and the continuation of the unipolar world of capitalism is considered the only credible and plausible political choice, does faith become a more urgently needed political resource than knowledge?
44
SC: We need both but in many ways, yes, it does. To put this in a kind of formula, the Situationists were talking about be realistic, demand the impossible. There is a sense in which to be on the left whatever that means is to exist counterfactually. The force of ideology is such that within the regimes in which we exist, the position that there are alternatives, is one that is perpetually laughed at and scorned. One has to make do with the way things are. Capitalism is the way things are. Get used to it. JGF: This has been called capitalist realism. SC: The point is that there is no alternative and that we have to pragmatically accept it
and modify our demands. So to that extent, any leftist project, any emancipatory project requires a counterfactual faith: a counterfactual and utopian faith in the plausibility of an alternative way of arranging things. Another thing that I try to pick up on in The Faith of the Faithless is the way in which forms of utopians are still out there and we cannot simply reject utopian tradition as an era or a deformation or as a kind of nonsense position. So to come to knowledge, its not that we dont need knowledge that would be ridiculous but that knowledge is sustained by a form of faith. You could also say that about some forms of scientic knowledge. We have a crazy idea of science as an accumulation of knowledge of things. Science is a form of faith. Science is sustained by faith, and its sustained by a form of faith whose enemy is certainty rather than doubt. So to put the idea at its most extreme: We live in regimes where what counts as knowledge is framed and organised a certain way, and the alternatives to that are simply seen as ridiculous. To sustain such an alternative position is to occupy a position of faith.
JGF:
Your debate with Slavoj iek has at the very least helped to clarify two different political positions: anarchism and authoritarianism. While both socialism and anarchism pursue the end of the state, how it will be achieved is ercely disputed. Why is there, as Gabriel Kuhn points out, still such a curious obsession with big men: Lenin, Mao, Castro?
Its a good question. Its this kind of fantasy of political heroism. Its a politics of virility. I nd this all alarming and disgusting. I think the only interesting thing about the debate between me and iek, and why it is a worthwhile debate, is that it focuses that distinction between authoritarianism and anarchism on the left, and it shows how there are still in the left forms of authoritarian Leninist nostalgia for a vanguard or a politics of heroic violence. I nd that misguided, nave, and stupid in the sense in that it reminds me of young men sitting in rooms playing video games and listening to heavy metal and dreaming of some cataclysmic event. The rst thing to say is there is an anarchist tradition. Many people think that a certain Marxist or Leninist communism is all that the left can manage. There is a anarchist tradition that goes back to Godwin, to Bakunin, to Kropotkin and also Malatesta, amongst other gures, and then through a whole English tradition of people like Colin Ward and other gures that really interest me. And its much lower level; its much less heroic and dramatic. It begins, arguably, with The Diggers in the early years of the English Revolution planting carrots. Taking back land, taking back the commons and growing vegetables is not as romantic as the storming of the Winter Palace of St Petersburg. I think theres a kind of nostalgia for a kind of phallic, heroic politics, which I for one want nothing to do with, particularly. Politics is a different activity. As evidence of that, I point to the Occupy Movement. The Occupy Movement was not an authoritarian, heroic, virile, vanguardist idea of politics. It was a well-organised but loose set of people with sets of various inuence. When you went down to Zucotti Park, the thing that was most palpable was how many different groups were there, how many different people. Everybody had their little placard saying whatever they wanted to say and some of that was really quite wacky but thats great! Democracy sort of looks like that. The idea of organised, disciplined revolutionary elite, I think, is a bit laughable. Its simply a way of alienating people. Its simply a way of the left perpetuating its own romantic failure.
SC: JGF: Anarchist
45
ideas, or at least those associated with or adopted by anarchist groups, have been central to the political and social movements of the last twenty years: the alterglobalisation movement, and now most recently, the Occupy movement.Anarchism as a tradition has not been domesticated and institutionalised in the ways that Marxist thought has. Is it for this reason that it suits the spontaneity of political practice and is more adaptable to radically different situations than the principled abstractions and programmed political action that you criticise?
SC: I agree with all of that. I wish Id written that myself, its perfect! Anarchism is about practice, its about doing, and if it has a weakness, its weakness is theoretical. It has a suspicion of theory whereas Marxism by contrast begins with a big thinker with a big beard who does a big theory of everything, and it lends itself perfectly to a certain
46
western idea of scholarship. This is why so many academics are Marxists: its always been good business. Anarchism has always been suspicious of theory and suspicious of that kind of totalising view. I think things have changed a lot in the last ten years, and maybe there are plenty of anarchists in academia now, or a few, but there didnt use to be. It used to be very marginal. Now people like David Graeber are really central and people like him have been arguing this for years. But theres also a problem with anarchisms suspicion of theory. So what you say is right its opposition to the principled abstraction of a certain Marxist world view I think is great, and its orientation to practice is the way politics should be done. It can adapt to different situations in different ways, so it has an adaptability that is incredibly important. I sometimes wish there were a little bit more interest in the theoretical underpinnings of anarchism. For example, David Graeber, who I like a lot, helps himself to very classical ideas of freedom and consensus and all the rest, which really requires a bit more pondering. What I try to do in Innitely Demanding, and in the new book as well, is try to think about some of those concepts in a different way, and try to think about what I was calling a few years ago, a neo-anarchism of innite responsibility, as opposed to a classical libertarian anarchism. I think theres been a shift in anarchism from the 60s idea of anarchism where it is simply a question of liberation, in particular, say, sexual liberation, to a position where anarchism is a response to a role and is taking responsibility for a role. The Occupy Movement is a very good example of that. Whats been so fascinating about Occupy is the way in which techniques that have been used and laughed at, scorned, considered to be impractical and crazy people have seen how this works in practice. In Zucotti Park you have 400 people having a general assembly with no amplication and no obvious means of authoritarian control. Its fantastic. And people can do that. People acting in concert on the basis of goodwill can do amazing things. So I agree with you. Also, the attempt to co-opt the Occupy Movement for some idea of communism just strikes me as a misunderstanding. Its a sort of broad, direct, democratic action with a whole complex set of threads and clusters. The overwhelming effect of the Occupy Movement for me is that people know, pretty much, what to do. In the right circumstances they can take possession of it. They can self-govern. The goals of the Occupy Movement, and indeed the Arab Spring as well, are really socialist in the sense in which its about taking back from those who have nancial capital power in the interest of people. And in the Arab Spring its a question of programs of renationalisation, of reclaiming that which seems to have been taken away. Thats a socialist agenda. The tactics used to obtain it are anarchist and people have now seen how affective they can be. The next spin of this wheel is going to be an interesting thing to think about. What happens next? Im not exactly sure.
JGF:
While the debate about the possible instrumentalisation of the state continues, the increasing boldness of neoliberal privatisation is already withering away the state and delivering it into increasingly fewer hands. While it would be fallacious to claim that there is no such thing as state power and that the nation state is now politically irrelevant, activists are turning their focus towards the nancial institutions and corporations that they believe to be responsible for economic and ecological crises.
Where do you see as the true political terrain today?

SC: Zygmunt Bauman has this lovely image of people being in an airplane and being comfortable in the airplane, going somewhere, watching a movie or reading a book; and then youre told that theres no pilot ying the plane; and then youre told 10 minutes later that the airport that youre meant to land at is not only not open but hasnt even been built because planning permission hasnt been granted, and so on. This is an image of our time. Were moving along so comfortably we think that no one is in charge: theres a separation of politics and power. I think we begin from the idea that there is this separation of politics and power in the sense in which we still think and maybe this is our residual romanticism or cowardice that we still think that politics has power, and the location of the unity of politics and power is the state. We still want to believe that the government actually does things when everything is pointing in the opposite direction. It would seem that the oligarchicisation of society over the last 30 to 40 years has, gradually under Reagan and Thatcher, released the conviction that politics is at the service of a power and that it has no political accountability. So, all that the state is, and is to be, is to serve the interests of capital, which is not located in any state. It is a trans-state, nomadic form because you can take your factory and take it elsewhere if you threaten to tax them. So the political terrain is rstly to create a political terrain. To put this into a slogan would be to say, theres no politics without location. Politics is about location, there has to be a place. Living in New York and the US, the awful thing about the Republican candidacy and the Democratic Party and all the rest is that there is no location. One is just a spectator upon a scene, where one has views this way and that way about who the best candidate is. What Zucotti Park was all about was location. Heres a terrain of resistance, a terrain of resistance organised around a series of really quite vague and fascinating innite demands. For me, the political task is the construction of a terrain. I think that is the case in many contexts, perhaps clearest in whats going on in Europe at the moment. Particularly, whats happening in Greece where the government exists only to serve the interests of international nancial institutions and the EU. So any possible claim or pretention of Greece to be a democracy has been rendered absolutely invalid, no question about that. The question is: whats the objective? Well the objective is to establish a terrain to make a terrain. Id go back to another element in anarchism, which is its strong Federalist credentials. Anarchism is an opposition to the state, not in the name of disorder, but in another notion of order and organisation, which is about forms of local autonomy. What I would like to see and this is not wildly unrealistic I think is that if all of the states in the EU disintegrated in the next 10 to 20 years and people in those territories were able to establish forms of federal autonomous control that would be something. If theres no politics without location, the goal of politics is the ownership and control of where one lives, thinks, works and eats. Its about the establishment of a terrain. However, we live in a world, in a sense, where there is no terrain. The terrain is denied to us because we have ceded power to representatives who do not represent
47
us. I think the entire existing political system is simply redundant, and the sooner it disappears, the better. I suppose what the last year has shown in the most splendid way, starting with the Arab Spring and the rest, is that once you stop fearing it, or once the many begin to articulate themselves over against the few who govern them, then the game is up. In Britain, it could happen very easily. It could happen because who cares about political parties in Britain anymore? I used to be a member of the Labour party in the 1980s with people that came in from the extreme left and worked in the Labour party because we had to remove Thatcherism. But at that point the labour party was still a socialist party with a broad appeal, Clause 4, and all the rest. It just seems that these political parties are husks, memories of something that no longer exists. So why not just take the bold step and get rid of them altogether?
JGF: When people speak of apathy, I think theyre looking in the wrong place: they just
look at parliamentarianism and trade unionism. And if you dont participate in that then youre apathetic. Theyre not seeing the low prole, grassroots, political activity that is present everywhere.
SC: Thats apathy with regards to normal government or politics. JGF: Its a divestment from party politics but also a reinvestment into local actions and
48
community-based political activities.
SC: And that other form of politics is all about pathos. Its about, as you were talking about, anger and all the rest. A line I borrowed from Jean Luc Nancy at the end of Innitely Demanding is anger is the rst political emotion. And, it is. Its a complex emotion. Occupy was an articulation of the pathos of anger. But, so was the Tea Party; and so were those people that vote for the Freedom Party in the Netherlands theyre also angry. So anger is a pathos that gets a subject riled up in order to act, but then it requires a discipline of analysis. Anger isnt enough but its a start.
is Hans Jonas Professor at the New School for Social Research, and a part-time professor of philosophy at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. His many books include Innitely Demanding, and most recently, The Faith of the Faithless.
Simon Critchley Germn Gulln
is a cultural manager, economist, designer and illustrator. Given his restless nature hes in constant change with an active attitude and personal autonomy while developing his adaptation skills. Nowadays hes looking for collaborative projects in order to progress and enjoys working in motivating environments.
THe StrUGGle BetWeeN CopYriGHt aNd THE INterNet

Glyn Moody
January 18th 2012 may well go down as a pivotal date in the history of the Internet and of copyright. For on that day, the English-language Wikipedia and thousands of other websites were blacked out or modied to protest against two bills passing through the US legislative system that were designed to ght copyright infringement. To understand why that unprecedented action took place, and what it means for the future of the Net, its necessary to review the history of copyright briey. Copyright law has its origins in attempts by the governments of Europe to control and regulate the Internet of its day, the printing press, then still relatively new. In other words, copyright was originally a form of censorship. In England, the rst copyright privilege literally a monopoly right to make copies of certain books was granted in 1518. During the 16th century, English printers formed a collective organisation known as the Stationers Company. It was granted the right to require all lawfully printed books to be entered into its register. The printers were thus able to maintain their lucrative printing monopolies and the English authorities gained a convenient central control point to regulate what could be printed. This continued until 1694, when the monopoly of the Stationers Company was abolished. In 1710, the Statute of Anne came into force; this is generally regarded as the rst modern copyright and lies at the root of the entire Anglo-American copyright system. Its key innovations were stated right at the start: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned. That is, copyright was no longer a system of censorship, but was seen as encouraging learning through the business of publishing; the right of the author was recognised, as was that of the publishers (the purchasers in the quotation above) who acquired those rights; nally, and crucially, copyrights monopoly was no longer perpetual, as it had been with the Stationers Company. The Statute of Anne specied a term of 14 years for new books, renewable to a maximum of 28 years. This had the important effect of creating the public domain the body of works that could be used by anyone for any purpose without payment. It therefore dened an implicit bargain: in return for granting creators a time-limited, government-enforced 49
The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT
50
Illustration by India Rose Harvey
monopoly on the publication of their works, the public would at the end of that term be allowed to use those works as they wished. The Statute of Anne established the main contours of copyright law for the next three hundred years, with two important qualications. First, copyright was gradually widened from just books to images, music, photographs, lms, video and software, amongst others. Secondly, the term of copyright has been extended multiple times from its original 14 years. In most countries, including the UK and US, it now stands at the duration of the creators life plus an additional 70 years. That is, copyright typically lasts for well over 100 years. During much of the 20th century, such long copyright terms were simply a matter of extending the commercial lifetime of songs and lms in other words, purely about prot maximisation. The fact that a contemporary work would not enter into the public domain during the lifetime of a typical person was a largely theoretical problem after all, how many people could actually do anything with public domain works anyway? But all that changed dramatically with the arrival of the Internet as a mass medium in the late 1990s. Ordinary people started writing blogs, posting photos to Flickr and
videos to YouTube. The scale of that creativity is now unprecedented: There are around 100 million blogs, and 6 billion pictures on Flickr, while on YouTube, every minute another eight years of content is uploaded. And thats where the trouble starts, for a considerable fraction of that content on YouTube and elsewhere contains pre-existing commercial material. Sometimes its a fragment of a lm from a DVD, posted because somebody wanted to share one of their favourites moments; sometimes its a hugely imaginative re-working of existing material for example, a mash-up of words, sound and music. Its possible because most of our contemporary culture is now delivered in a digital format that makes it easy to copy, modify and combine all you need is a computer and the right software, much of which is freely available as open source. This contrasts with the analogue creations that were covered by copyright in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, which couldnt be copied easily youd need to set up an entire printing press to reproduce or modify the text of a book. Where before copyrights term of life plus 70 years was not a problem, because few had the means to infringe upon it, today copyright infringement is not only universal, it is practically unavoidable. The vast majority of content is still in copyright, which means that most of the things that many Internet users do reexively sharing photos and videos on Facebook, quoting large chunks of interesting articles are probably against the law (fair dealing/fair use may allow material to be shared and re-used in a very limited way, but certainly not in the form of the complete copies that are commonly found online today.) The problem the Internet brings is actually even deeper. It is not just a question of social norms that the younger generation ignores or is unaware of the ner legal points of copyright. Copying is no mere epiphenomenon of the Internet: it lies at its heart. The Internet works by making multiple exact copies of digital bits as it traverses the global network. When you view a text or image, or listen to a song or watch a video, copies of all those artefacts are sent across the network until they arrive on your computer. Thats true even if they are streamed this just means the bits are processed as they arrive, rather than after they have all been downloaded. And once those bits are on your computer, you can do anything with them including making further copies, or modifying them to create derived works. Naturally, this loss of control negates the copyright monopolies on which the lm and music recording industries have been built. In an attempt to regain control, the music, lm and publishing industries have turned to what they euphemistically term Digital Rights Management DRM although this technology is not about managing your digital rights in a helpful, neutral fashion, but about restricting them.The only way to do that is by trying to forbid your computer from making copies essentially taking control of it, albeit in a temporary fashion. But as the last ten years have shown, DRM can always be circumvented: there is no such thing as a perfectly unbreakable digital lock. Finally recognising this, the copyright industries have shifted their attention away from computer code to legal code. Through extensive lobbying in the US, and later in Europe, the lm and music industries succeeded in getting the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the 2001 European Union Copyright Directive approved. Both seek to address the problem that DRM can always been circumvented, and thus nullied, by making it illegal to do so.
51
52
However logical that move might have been to the lawmakers, it had important negative consequences for whole classes of users. It meant, for example, that the DRM on an e-book could not be broken to allow the visually impaired to read it with their special software, or for academics to make excerpts of works for their research. In other words, measures designed to combat a very particular technical issue to do with copyright protection the fact that DRM is never unbreakable had the knock-on effect of reducing the ability of people to carry out legal activities that have been accepted as fair dealing/fair use for years. As well as these failed attempts to lock down content, the copyright industries have gone on the attack directly, threatening to sue members of the public for alleged copyright infringment. Faced with expensive court cases, most have settled, whether or not they were guilty, not least because the risks are high, as the US case of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a Native American mother of four from Minnesota, demonstrates. She was sued in 2006 for alleged copyright infringement of 24 songs, found guilty, and ned $222,000 in statutory damages. Thomas-Rasset appealed but lost again, and this time was ned $1,920,000, later reduced to $54,000. The recording companies refused to accept this sum, and a third trial led to them being awarded $1.5 million in damages. In 2011 this was reduced yet again to $54,000, but the record companies plan to appeal once more, so the nal outcome is still unclear. Not content with these levels of nes, the copyright industries have continued to push for even harsher punishment of copyright infringement. A well-oiled lobbying machine led to the introduction last year of two US copyright bills with bipartisan support: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). As drafted, these would have caused serious damage to the basic running of the Internet and would have allowed copyright holders to call for sites to be censored without the need for a court order or even proof of infringement. Thats because SOPA offers immunity to service providers and payment companies provided they voluntarily block users or even entire sites accused of infringing, with no judicial oversight at all. If they dont, they lose immunity and run the risk of being sued. But something remarkable happened: SOPA and PIPA were put on hold because, for the rst time, the Internet community came together and protested loudly and effectively against these new laws. People woke up to the fact that this was no longer simply about le sharing by pirates, but about fundamental issues like free speech, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a trial before punishment. The current struggle is not so much between big business and frustrated users, as between two different worldviews, with opposing assumptions about creativity and sharing. When the Statute of Anne was framed in the early part of the 18th century, there were very few authors and even fewer publishers. Copyright was designed for the encouragement of learning that is, to provide incentives to writers to produce books, and for publishers to take on the nancial risk of publishing them. Offering a short monopoly was a sensible way of protecting the investment of time and money by writers and publishers. Today the situation is quite different. Thanks to digital technologies like computers and smartphones, anyone can create text, images or videos. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can share those materials online and potentially reach hundreds of millions of people. Because of this high level of background creativity and the ease of distribution,
there is no need for copyrights monopoly incentive: the innate impulse of people is to create, and the Internet makes it trivial to share the fruits of that creation. Professionals, too, are nding that they can make money even though their works are freely shared online. The writer Paulo Coelho even went so far as to pirate his own works because he recognised that sharing them online is a kind of free marketing that can drive massive sales of physical books. As a result, the original purpose of copyright to stimulate a few more authors to write books, and a few more publishers to distribute them is no longer relevant. Copyright was designed for a world of analogue scarcity: there were relatively few books and copying them was hard. Today we live in a world of digital abundance, with billions of texts, images and videos that can be copied perfectly and distributed everywhere for almost zero cost. Legislation like the DMCA and SOPA, or the equally pernicious Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of Europe in early February 2012, are attempts to impose an articial scarcity on a world of abundance. Since the Internet is a global copying machine, the only way to enforce that scarcity is if every act of copying is checked for infringement by copyright holders. That means total online surveillance and the death of privacy in order to allow the music and lm industries to impose instant censorship without judicial oversight. Each successive wave of Internet legislation from the DMCA to SOPA moves us ever closer to that state of affairs, because anything less than total lockdown can always be circumvented. This is the copyright ratchet: the fact that copyright reform only ever goes in one direction towards stricter enforcement, harsher punishments and a more complete control of our online lives. The protests of January 18th and February 11th were the Net community nally drawing a line in the digital sand and saying, no further down that road of surveillance and censorship But SOPA and ACTA are simply symptoms of the underlying issue: the inherent incompatibility of copyright with an open Internet. One attempt to resolve that growing tension without drastic changes to the copyright system is the Creative Commons project. Its licences explicitly grant extra rights to users over and above the very limited scope of fair dealing/fair use. For example, the CCBY licence states that any use can be made of the work copying, sharing, modication, sale provided the original attribution (the BY) is always retained. Similarly, the CC-SA licence allows any use to be made of the work, even without attribution, but demands that users of any derived work must enjoy the same rights (SA stands for sharealike). Drawing up the Creative Commons licences allowed people to share works on their own less onerous terms and has led to a huge owering of creativity based on sharing there are now hundreds of millions of artefacts released under Creative Commons licences. Welcome though that is, it fails to address the central issue that laws designed to punish infringement of traditional copyright monopolies continue to cause collateral damage to both the fabric of the Internet and to civil liberties. The question we must ask is whether the diminishing of key freedoms is a price worth paying in order to shore up copyright monopolies online. The content industries, of course, insist that it is, claiming that online piracy is ruining their businesses, harming creators and costing people jobs. At rst sight, that seems plausible, but a growing body of evidence paints a different picture. The relevant statistics for the book, music, lm and game industries have been
53
gathered in a new report entitled The Sky is Rising, that is freely available from the online site Techdirt (disclosure: I am a regular contributor there). Heres part of the summary: What amazed us in going through every bit of data and research we could nd, was how utterly consistent the results were: the wider entertainment industry is growing at a rapid pace (contrary to doom and gloom messages). Furthermore, more content creators are producing more content than ever before and are more able to make money off of their content than ever before. On top of that, consumers are living in a time of absolute abundance and choice a time where content is plentiful in mass quantities, leading to a true renaissance for them. This does present a unique challenge for some companies used to a very different market, but its a challenge lled with opportunity: the overall market continues to grow, and smart businesses are snapping up pieces of this larger market. The danger is in standing still or pretending the market is shrinking. Therein lies the real threat: missing out on all that opportunity. What is particularly frustrating about the current confrontation between the copyright industries and Net community is that its unnecessary. At worst, the sharing of copyright materials online is simply a side-effect of copyright companies seeking to create scarcity by making it hard to obtain digital versions in a timely manner and convenient form; once they are available, piracy tends to drop. At best, sharing can drive both creativity and protability, as Coelho and many others have discovered. More and more content companies understand this, and are trying to work with the Internet, rather than against it. But the most inuential players continue to seek legislative solutions to what are simply business problems and opportunities. Now, though, the Internet community is no longer content to accept that stubborn refusal to face facts, or the repeated attempts to impose a scarcity-based 18th-century framework on a 21st-century world of abundance. The protests of January 18th and February 11th were the rst signs of a new digital militancy in defence of the online worlds unique properties and possibilities but they probably wont be the last.
54
Glyn Moody is a writer, blogger and speaker. His journalism has appeared in national
newspapers, magazines and online. He writes about digital rights, the commons and all forms of openness open source, open access and open data. He is active on Twitter @glynmoody
India Rose Harvey is an illustrator based in London. You can see her work at www.dontcomplain.co.uk
YoUr CoMMUNitY is Made of Stories: NarratiVe StrateGY for Social CHaNGe

James John Bell & J Cookson
When people act to shut down a situation they put an alarm into action. But saying Occupy Wall Street! or Stop the World Bank! is only an entry point from which deeper solutions must grow in order for transformative change to occur. Manifesting cultural change requires the alarm story we tell our friends to be joined with a solutions story we tell the world of whats possible. Like the difference between emergency and preventative medicine, sounding alarms without proposing solutions can only partially resolve a chronic issue. The classic works of community organizing from Reveille for Radicals by Saul Alinsky to organisations like Citizens UK have all touched on the importance to both advocate for a positive as well as to oppose a negative. When advocating for a positive and opposing a negative there are some critical narrative components to keep in mind as you construct your message: who it is youre directing your communication towards, and how a positive message can be constructed to help pull in community support. However, sometimes being overly positive in your messaging can be just as bad as being branded as the constant bearer of bad news. Writing in The New York Times, Oliver Burkeman explains, in his essay The Power of Negative Thinking how the overly positive still requires the negative. Ancient philosophers and spiritual teachers understood the need to balance the positive with the negative, optimism with pessimism, a striving for success and security with an openness to failure and uncertainty. Thus a positive solution-based message works when it follows after an alarm bell. Again, as Burkeman points out, this has been a well tested multi-millennium experiment of world religions after the re and brimstone sermon comes the ritual of salvation. Political and advocacy communications researchers have been hard at work trying to better understand this phenomena and gure out the ideal alchemical mix of negative and positive energy. A study done on the success of messages to get people to quit smoking backs up this dual approach: The take-away for advocacy campaign work being that people who have no intention in changing their behavior respond best to negative framing, and once engaged and thinking about changing behavior, they respond better to positive framing. The key thing to understand here is that responding doesnt mean they necessarily agree, just that the negative message acts like an alarm bell, so you still need the positive message to engage people in solutions. 55
YOUR COMMUNITY IS MADe Of STORIeS: NARRATIVe STRATeGY fOR SOcIAL ChANGe
56 Getting to solutions is perhaps the greatest obstacle to success for most social change campaigns and organisations. Getting stuck in the alarm phase of a campaign and its group identity is a common pitfall. Most activists are well versed in sounding the alarm to alert a community to a problem, but they struggle to move past the reactive stage of a campaign and into effective proactive solutions. Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution is a hackneyed activist phrase in the US, but it has a point that is missed far too often. In the same way, saying Stop Biotech or Stop Nestl Waters North America or Stop the War is not as effective in reaching a majority of people within a community as saying Protect Our Food, Protect Our Water, or Bring the Troops Home. The rst approach requires the audience to ask, Why ght?, while the latter reaches common values in the name itself and speaks to the audience directly.
Big Brother Never Advertised That They Were Watching the Movement
Illustration by SmartMeme Studios
George Orwell understood the power of making propaganda personal. In advertising there is a truism that a person can only go where they have rst been to in their minds. Thus, as has been explained above, it is important to set up a positively framed story that engages the desire of the recipient of your message. While many progressive organisations understand the importance of this, where their messages tend to fall short on movement building is that a movement doesnt go someplace it has been in its mind an individual does. Author and activist Stephen Duncombe stresses this point in the book Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy:
Theres nothing wrong with the goals of community and solidarity, but we need to acknowledge that this may not be how people currently experience the world. There is more than a grain of truth in Thatchers words, There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women. People experience social forces and social change on a personal level...no mass can feel for you or be constituted without you (that is the fantasy of Fascism). The point of reception even in a crowd, even working with others is the individual. Progressives need to frame their appeals so that they resonate with individuals. Christians gured this out long ago: They never say Jesus died on the cross for the poor or for the lepers or for England they always say Jesus died for your sins. By addressing the individual, and not the collective, they built the biggest book club on the planet. Americas military recruiting huckster Uncle Sam says I want YOU, the US Army says Be all that YOU can be. Among successful brands, addressing the individual is the gold standard of practice. Do you.. Yahoo?, Have it Your Way, Im Lovin It, Guinness is good for you, and on and on. Leading a campaign with an identity of what you are for is critical to establish if you are intent to transform what you are against. Building the support for such transformation requires activists to create a vision that renders the current conict obsolete. It is a strategic act that requires a community sharing and communicating ideas with each other to shape that vision. The unfortunate fact is, the majority of people in any community are not interested in living in conict, and simply wish to avoid it. Without offering an alternative to reduce the current conict in a persons life, they will be far less inclined to join in further conict themselves unless it is presented as a better alternative. And the possibility for an alternate world must be rst shaped in their minds through the introduction of a new narrative context for seeing the world and themselves within it.
Shaping a Strategic Narrative
57
Ternary (three-point) models of change have a long history in psychology, possibly originating from the triangle shape, called the delta, which has long symbolised change. There is a deep philosophical history around the etymology of the delta going all the way back to Pythagoras and sacred geometry. One such ancient philosophical law attests that binaries (two-point) can never change, one side may overpower the other for a time, but in the end always snaps back into a binary. It is the introduction of a third factor that transforms the binary into a ternary and can induce change. This is the basis of the good cop/bad cop routine, which redenes the binary between cop and suspect by having one officer act nice while the other acts aggressively. The binary opposition appears to dissolve, and if done convincingly the nave suspect may talk. The word delta was derived from the Phonecian word dalet, which symbolises a doorway, and thus the ternary can be remembered as the tool used to exit a binary situation. Political struggles tend to get stuck in binaries, with grassroots groups sounding alarms about problems and yelling Not in my backyard!, while power holders attempt to silence their concerns. On the sidelines and disconnected from both points of the binary is the community at large: immersed in their lives, work and lure of entertainment. The trap that activists and grassroots organisations fall into is one of
negatively criticizing the ideological contents of the power holders, and like the famous expression dont think of an elephant end up reinforcing and spreading the message of their opposition. The philosopher Michel Foucault explains this phenomena in his writings on how power functions in society: The essential problem for the intellectual is not to criticise the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientic practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing peoples consciousness or whats in their heads but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth. An example of this can be seen in America during the late 1980s and early 1990s where environmental, grassroot family farm and food activist groups rst loudly sounded the alarm on the dangers of biotech crops. A typical presentation by these groups would comprise more than half or even all of the time spent with the audience on explaining the science of biotechnology. The assumption of the anti-biotech activist was that if the audience learned about the science of biotechnology and heard their ideological argument against biotechnology they like them would be horried. More than a decade later an anti-biotech organiser with the Genetic Engineering Activist Network lamented that this largely contributed to the buzz that promoted biotech by focusing so much of their energy on talking about the science, instead of focusing all that energy on promoting a positive vision for sustainable family farms. One failure of the American anti-biotech movement of the last century was that they focused on only changing peoples ideas instead of changing the conditions of possibility for thinking i.e. constructing through community vision a new context for seeing what is possible, in this instance, regionalised sustainable organic food systems. Today this shift has largely taken place and the new food movement has been planting the seeds for new visions of global agriculture, through networks such as the US Food Sovereignty Alliance and their campaign to Turn the Tables on the Global Food Crisis. While raising the alarm on an issue initiates a tug of war with power holders forming an us versus them binary it is through organizing and the hard work of new context construction that can engage a powerful third element the community in building a positive vision of the future. When activists and communities share their stories of the vision they have for their community a ternary system can be formed, that breaks up the binary between the activists and power holders in the community, and moves the whole all three entities towards consensus and change (see diagram). The new shape taken is one of unity, where all three points become one through the transformation that the new context of a shared vision provides for seeing the world anew.
58
James John Bell and J Cookson founded Smartmeme Studios in Washington, USA. They
provide communications strategy, design, and marketing services to organizations all over North America, from international nonprots to businesses working to go green. You can nd them at www.smartmemestudios.com
MoNopolY PreseNts THE ProbleM. Co-opolY Offers THE SolUtioN.

Brian Van Slyke
In the classic game Risk, your goal is to dominate your rival players by killing them and conquering their territories until your Empire stretches across the globe. In Monopoly, the worlds favorite family game brand (according to publisher Parker Brothers), your goal is to dominate your rival players through economic obliteration until they are penniless while you literally own everything. In a way, the combination of Risk and Monopoly perfectly mirror two of the most destructive pillars of our society: runaway capitalism and uninching imperialism. Their popularity and integration into our culture portrays how the glory of brutal imperialism and destructive capitalism have become normalised, so much so that we can enjoy and celebrate embodying these ideals from childhood on. Whats so wrong with this? These are just games after all. In fact, I grew up playing them alongside others such as Sorry!, Life, Clue, and more. Yet, these are games that essentially allow us, starting at a very young age, to live out the fantasies that make up our supposed societal superiority: military and economic domination. Of course, by no means do I claim that these games are part of an orchestrated system of indoctrination. On the contrary, Risk and Monopoly, and games similar to them, are projections. They make us feel as though we are included in the systems that allow those who are in power to remain quite comfortably in power. Monopoly is an especially interesting case for this new Age of Austerity we are living through, in which the public coffers are ransacked in order to prop up and solidify the wealth of an elite few. At the start of each game, players begin on an equal footing and then scramble to snatch up all the wealth. Eventually someone comes to dominate the board, and the remainder of the period is a slow or quick decline for the other players as they hop around the properties, hoping for something to pay off and turn the tide in their favor. What Monopoly projects is one of the great lies of our economic system: meritocracy. We all start on an equal footing, and if you work hard enough, you will come out on top. If you dont work hard enough, youll end up on the bottom and ruined. Essentially, it is a theory of Economic Darwinism, which in reality is quite funny, as Monopoly is more or less a game of luck with almost no skill, besides haggling for good trades and knowing when to invest and when to save.
59
Defenders of the game argue that Monopoly actually tells a good story and informs players that if they work hard they will succeed in life. Of course, this theory glosses over the fact that in order for you to succeed, everyone else must fail. After all, for someone to win, it has to be at the expense of others. We cant have winners without having losers, right? Whats the fun in that? This is the case for both Monopoly as well as the actual monopoly of power and wealth that an elite few hold. Now imagine a more realistic version of Monopoly where the player with the most money and properties could control which properties the other players had access to, while also being able to lower the amount of money other players collect when passing Go. Perhaps the player in the lead would even have the right to send other players to jail, and hold them there for as many turns as desired. Or maybe the other players would have to bail out the player with the most money if they landed on a bad space, and in order to do so, the losing players also had to give up their own properties. These changes would more accurately reect the economy of our newly imposed Age of Austerity. Of course, the reality of our economic system is also distinctly different from Monopolys supposed positive message of meritocracy in another way: In the real world, there are only a few players who start out with all the wealth and who are, as we speak, scrambling across the board to snatch up more. We are the spectators in their personal game of Monopoly, but we feel the actual pain of losing whether it is through the destruction of existing meager social safety nets or the busting of unions to squeeze out ever-greater prots. Finally, one last element that is especially revealing about the positive message of
Image by Taliesin Nyala
MONOpOLY PReSeNTS THE PRObLeM. CO-OpOLY OffeRS THE SOLUTION.
Monopoly is that in its origins, the game was actually supposed to leave players with exactly the opposite message. A woman named Lizzie J. Magie created the original version of Monopoly during the Great Depression. At rst named The Landlords Game, Magie sought to warn people against the dangers of economic inequality. Her intention was that, at the end of every game, the players who had come out victorious would feel ashamed of their ruthless actions. The game was an organizing tool for tenants to teach each other about how the upper class and the landlords ripped them off while consolidating their wealth in a way that would never give regular people a chance. During the Depression, the game became a huge underground hit and was reproduced by individuals for use in their homes and with their friends. Eventually, a man named Charles Darrow took the game idea, spun it so that it was pro-Monopoly, and sold the game to Parker Brothers. And so, the most popular game in the world, whose positive message is to nancially destroy your opponents through economic warfare, was originally invented to warn of the dangers of such actions. This is surely a comic tragedy. Of course, not all games are hyper-projections of our societys destructive elements. Games such as Scrabble, Qwirkle and Cranium, to name a few, produce winners and losers without reecting runaway capitalism, warfare and so forth. In addition, there are semi-established games that are cooperative, where the group works together for their mutual survival, such as Pandemic. Very few of these games, however, successfully promote alternative methods on how to shape the world in contrast to the likes of Monopoly and Risk. This is why last December, the worker-owned cooperative of which I am a member, The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), published Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. In a way, our intention was to build on Magies message of the dangers of economic inequality. To us, Monopoly offers the problem of economic inequality, just as Magie intended. Yet, our game Co-opoly seeks to offer the solution to this problem. In Co-opoly, players have to collaborate to start and run a democratic business. To survive as individuals and strive for the success of their co-op, players wrestle with tough choices regarding big and small challenges, while at the same time putting their teamwork abilities to the test. Co-opoly is a game of skill and solidarity, where everyone wins or everyone loses. If one person goes bankrupt, everyone loses. If the whole co-op goes bankrupt, everyone loses. In this way, Co-opoly forces players to balance individual and collective interests in order to persevere. (This, in fact, is a fairly original aspect to its cooperative game-play. Many games in which players work toward a collective goal allow certain players to take over. In Co-opoly, players deal with their own needs as well as the groups needs.) The game challenges players to break from the dominance of the Point Bank and to take control over their lives by jump-starting the movement for a truly democratic and cooperative economy in their community. When playing Co-opoly, players discover the benets and challenges of the co-op world as well as the skills needed to succeed as a co-op. Co-opoly has been well received by people who have played it and by professional reviewers. Weve sold the games from our rst pressing to people and organisations all over the world from the United States to Argentina, the UK, Spain, India, Peru, Norway, and many other countries. Despite the initial speculation that a game where everyone wins or loses couldnt
61
62
be fun or tough, people have found that the game is indeed entertaining, while keeping them on the edge of their seats and staying true to life. In addition, we have adhered to cooperative principles in manufacturing Co-opoly it is made entirely in the US, primarily by worker cooperatives, and on sustainable resources. As far as we know, it is the only mass-produced board game to be ethically manufactured in this way. I should make it clear Im not arguing that no one should play games in which one person comes out on top I enjoy these games as well as ones where players must work together for everyones mutual survival. However, games such as Monopoly and Risk do have a destructive impact. They allow us to embody, practice and imagine participating in runaway capitalism and imperialism. Players get a rush from destroying their opponents through forced economic ruin or by taking over their territories. These games arent going away anytime soon, and, in fact, they shouldnt. Theres nothing wrong with presenting the problem, as both Monopoly and Risk do successfully. What we need is to begin offering the solutions through more games. Just like we wont be replacing the economic system of runaway capitalism overnight, we wont challenge Monopolys status as the most popular game in the world in the near future. However, in both cases, innovative game-makers, organisers, educators, and others can build alternatives that demonstrate to people that they can succeed (and have fun) with mutual aid and solidarity and that there are feasible ways they can take steps to building a better world. To us at TESA, thats whats so exciting about cooperatives both in game form and in real life. From India to the United States, the UK, Spain, Argentina, and more cooperatives are transforming lives, communities, and systems. In short, cooperatives are democratic businesses and organisations, equally owned and controlled by a group of people in order to meet their mutual social, economic, and cultural needs and aspirations. In a co-op, no matter how much you have, one member has one vote. There are many types of co-ops ranging from worker cooperatives to consumer cooperatives, cooperatives that are banks, housing co-ops, agriculture co-ops, hybrid or multistakeholder co-ops, health-care co-ops, artist co-ops. Cooperatives exist in every industry as well as every geographic area, including rural and urban alike. Co-ops are fundamentally changing communities and lives around the world and what makes them so important is that they arent a distant theory; instead, co-ops offer practical solutions that can be implemented right now to address many of our social, economic, and environmental problems. Whats more, co-ops are not another form of charity or philanthropy. Rather, they are means for mutual aid, self-help and solidarity between members of co-ops and their community. In fact, one of the distinguishing factors of a co-op is that the members equally share the burden in times that are tough while also sharing the benets in the times that are good. For example, where a mainstream business would lay off workers, co-op members work together to determine solutions. Maybe the solution is to come up with a new product that will boost sales, or maybe if its a worker-owned co-op, the workers will vote to take a temporary pay cut so that no one worker has to lose their job. And because co-ops are democratically owned by community members (as opposed to absentee owners or stockholders), they keep money as well as jobs in their communities. In these ways, co-ops are much more resilient in economic downturns as well as in impoverished communities. This makes them a stronger means for long-lasting community economic development.
Because co-ops bring more democracy, equality and justice to peoples lives, communities and economies, they are an international movement. There are thousands and thousands of co-ops around the world and they are cultivating major changes both globally as well as locally. As a result of their global diversity, there is not a single way that a co-op forms or operates. Due to their democratic and community foundations, co-ops are malleable and can easily t the different needs of various communities and individuals. They come in all shapes and sizes and from thousands of members to only a few. What this means is that cooperatives offer practical and sustainable alternatives for addressing our social and economic needs, as opposed to corporations that exploit both the planet and the people simply for ever expanding prot. Thats the experience you get from playing Co-opoly. Playing Monopoly on the other hand? You get to experience the exploitation of people and the planet for ever expanding prot part. In fact, weve heard numerous stories of people that have used Co-opoly to educate community members about how they can build a more sustainable economy in their region, which was hit by natural disasters and closed down many businesses. Other examples of people employing Co-opoly include long-established businesses considering converting to the co-op model; parents who want their children to get along better; friends who want to explore the idea of starting a co-op; co-op education programs, and so much more. I wonder if we could nd anyone who would argue that theyve used Monopoly in its current form to build stronger communities? It seems unlikely, considering that the lessons of selshness and cut-throat competition dont translate well to democracy, equality and working together to create solutions for common needs and problems. Games are wonderful things. They give us good times (and sometimes unpleasant feelings); they allow us to build relationships, to practice subjects and prepare for issues important to us. They can be used in education, workplaces, communities, organizing spaces and other places. Games can be employed to address a wide variety of issues, from economics to social change, science, individual empowerment, overcoming trauma, fostering friendships, history, community organizing. In many ways the games we play consciously and subconsciously prepare us to participate in the world and interact with other people.After all, human beings learn best by doing.To TESA, that was one reason it was so important for us to create Co-opoly we wanted people to be able to discover, explore, practice and enjoy the art of cooperation and the idea of utilizing cooperatives to cultivate long-lasting change. Now were left with the problem of endless warfare promoted by Risk. TESA is building a game to take that on as well. Keep an eye out for RISE!
63
Written with contributions from Andrew Stachiw.

Brian Van Slyke
is a member of the worker-owned cooperative TESA that designs participatory educational resources for social and economic change.
Taliesin Nyala is also a member of TESA.
MoNeY aNd WealtH

David Boyle
How to Heal the Disconnect
There is no more conservative nation on earth than the British when it comes to money. Let me correct that. The Scots are great money innovators in history. They gave us Michael Linton who invented LETS and John Law who ruined the French government in 1716 by monetising their national debt. No, its the English who are so nancially conservative. When Barings Bank collapsed in 1995 because of the activities of one trader Nick Leeson, who lost $827 million in Singapore betting on currency futures it turned out that his London bosses had no idea what he was doing. They didnt really understand the derivatives market that he was trading in. I was also told rmly some years ago by the Washington editor of a UK national newspaper that money was all based on gold, which hasnt been the case in the UK since 1931. The truth is that the English still believe that their bank manager is at his desk, drinking sherry, umming and aahing about their overdrafts. In fact, he has long since been replaced by risk software. Thats our national failing. It is endearing in a way, but its also dreadfully frustrating because it means were stuck in the oldest fantasy about money there is: We imagine that its real. And in some ways, this is the source of the crisis in the eurozone as well. In England, our politicians never argue about this issue who creates money, where it comes from, what it means for the reasons I say. But in America, its always been at the heart of political debate. Perhaps this isnt surprising. The question of whether or not they could create their own money printing it, like Benjamin Franklin was one of the issues that caused the division with the British. But a century or more ago, the kind of money they should use was absolutely central to the debate. It was the main plank of the now defunct Populist Party, which managed to link Southern and Midwestern farmers, together with the big cities of the Midwest in a campaign for money based on silver rather than the lessplentiful gold. The partys tenets were put together in Omaha in 1892 by a man called Ignatius Donnelly. This was a man who had previously devoted his life to the discovery of Atlantis and proving that Shakespeare never existed.This is Donnelly in his Omaha Declaration:
Illustration by Edd Baldry
65
The newspapers are largely subsidised or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages, labour impoverished and the land concentrating in the hands
MONeY AND WeALTh
of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organisation for self-protection a hireling standing army, unrecognised by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly disintegrating to European conditions. Its enough to send a shiver down the spine European conditions. Ugh. I mention the Populists because one of their most enthusiastic activists was an unsuccessful Chicago journalist called Frank Baum. Baum may have been an unsuccessful journalist, but he was a very successful promoter of spectacle, largely on behalf of the department stores of Chicago. He knew there was a difference between what was real and what wasnt. So it isnt surprising that it was Baum who gave us The Wizard of Oz. As you may know, The Wizard of Oz is supposed to have been a coded diatribe against money based on gold. OZ is, of course, the way we designate weight in gold. You may remember that Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road wearing the Witch of the Easts magic Silver Shoes changed to red in the Judy Garland lm. Nobody understands the power of these shoes: All you have to do is knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go, she is told. The poor residents of Oz have to wear green-tinted glasses fastened by golden buckles. That is important, for reasons I will come back to. And in the end the Wonderful Wizard, the personication of the gold standard, is revealed as a fraud, hiding behind a curtain, desperately twiddling with levers. This was also Baum himself, the impresario behind the great shows that illuminated the Chicago World Fair. The message of the Wizard is that its all fake. It is a show designed to make us believe in the awesome reality of gold. My message is the reverse: we dont have to dig it up to get rich. We can make our own. The Populists didnt succeed. They were undermined by the adoption of Free Silver by the Democrats in the person of the great orator William Jennings Bryan who incidentally ended his life as prosecutor at the Tennessee Monkey Trial in 1925. At the 1896 Democratic Convention, Bryan brought his acceptance speech to a crescendo by raising his arms above his head and then slowly down into the shape of a cross, with the words: You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. Bryan lost the 1896 election, and twice more which must be some kind of record. But this was also a speech that inspired a generation of radicals, portraying gold as an instrument of torture, weighting us down, the very basis of sin. He described it as an object of veneration that has turned against us because there simply isnt enough money for life. Now, my parents live in a little village in England called Nether Wallop. It is quite easy to picture: thatched roofs, retired major-generals, Labradors. A generation ago, it managed to host two shops, a greengrocers, a post office, two pubs, a butchers, a village policeman, a doctor and district nurse, and a railway station connected to a massive local rail network only a couple of miles away. That was during the impoverished years of the 1940s. Now, when we are incomparably richer, all thats left is one pub and a very occasional bus. The conventional reasons for this low taxes, over-regulation, fat cat salaries dont really explain why, despite unprecedented prosperity, it seems so hard to afford the simplest public services, health, post and education, general stores and the life that goes
66
MONeY AND WeALTh
with them. Perhaps the real question beyond that is: In twenty years time or so can we afford what we need to make our society civilised? Because if we cant, I dont think its enough to throw our hands up in despair and give up. Im not prepared for my children to live less civilised lives than me.
Why arent politicians talking about this?
Part of the problem is that if you just printed more money now, there would be a rush of wind, like the Wicked Witch of the East, and it would shoot into the City of London and Wall Street and Frankfurt. But there still wouldnt be enough where its really needed. The second reason is that those who run the world prefer us to believe that money is real, because they are as much in thrall to the gold mind-set as they ever were. And because of that, we are all as much in awe of money as Dorothy ever was as she approached the Emerald City. Of course the euro isnt the Gold Standard, but it sometimes sounds a bit like it. It is about stability of value, about strong money. It makes the same mistake as the The Wizard of Oz it really believes in objective values, and that somehow these values can be reected everywhere the currency circulates. The fundamental problem at the heart of the euro, and any single currency based on the idea of objective value like gold, is this: Single currencies tend to favour the rich and impoverish the poor. They do so because changing the value of your currency, and varying your interest rate for example, is the way that disadvantaged places are able to make their goods more affordable. When you stop them from doing that, you trap whole cities and regions the poorest people in the poorest places without being able to trade their way out. Of course even Britain has a single currency and it doesnt work very well either. We have interest rates (or we used to) set to suit the City of London,while the manufacturing regions of the north struggle as best they can. Across Europe, the effects are similar, as we can see from the plight of Greece. Nor is it just different communities. There are different kinds of economy, and big currencies dont suit them all very accurately. Take the sheer diversity of London. We, all of us nurses and currency traders have to get by using the one currency, the value of which is decided by tens of thousands of youthful traders in braces in Wall Street, Frankfurt and the City. That is ne for the international economy and the nancial services sector. But theres another economy in every city which feeds off the pickings from the rich table above it, but isnt necessarily part of it. Most of us live in this economy and it has nothing to do with nancial services. About $4 trillion goes through the global computers every day, and 95 percent of that is speculation mainly foreign exchange speculation. The remaining ve percent is the money for goods and services that we use. Worse, Londons rich economy threatens to drive out this ve percent economy completely. You can see the same thing happen in offshore nancial centres where nancial services have priced everything else into oblivion because nobody but bankers can afford to live and work there. The problem is that there is no single measure that can sum up all these different kinds of economy at all these different levels. In fact, big currencies dont measure very well. What they miss out gets ignored. Then it gets forgotten. Big currencies are gold-standard thinking. They condemn us all to walk around, like the people in the Emerald City in the The Wizard of Oz, wearing tinted glasses which can
67
MONeY AND WeALTh
68
only recognise what Wall Street says is important. Currencies are not just measuring systems then, they are eyeglasses. They are the way we see the world. If our currencies dont value things, we just dont see them.Then they disappear. If you only measure GDP, then the environment, human dignity, community and family all get driven out in the end.That is what faulty measuring rods do, and currencies are measuring rods. Monoculture money systems drive out other cultures, other species, other languages, other opinions, other forms of wealth. We need new kinds of money that dont drive out life, or we face what John Maynard Keynes called a perigrination in the catacombs, with a guttering candle. And thats why I say this failure of measurement, this blindness, is the real problem of money. Different people need different kinds of money that behave in different ways and value different assets. But we also all need different kinds of money for different aspects of our lives. If we dont get that, some parts of our cities will be rich and some poor. And some parts of our lives will be rich and some poor. The problem with conventional money isnt that it is valueless (though it is). Or that its based on debt (which it also is). Or even really that it doesnt measure well (which it certainly doesnt). It is that no one kind of money can possibly work for the sheer diversity of life. We have to escape from the old idea that money is one, indivisible, totemic, semi-divine, golden truth issued from on high and handed down to a grateful populace. Yet the attitudes lying behind the The Wizard of Oz linger on as if the debts that are weighing down the eurozone were real, not a human construct; as if the mechanisms of economics were laid down by God some time on the sixth day of the creation of the world. New kinds of money, on the other hand, can reveal to us that, even in the poorest places, there are vast living assets ideas, skills, time, love even that can turn our ideas of scarcity on their heads. The Populists put their faith in silver money that only a government could provide, but I think its the self-help message thats really at the heart of the The Wizard of Oz. When the people of Emerald City take their golden glasses off, they nd the place isnt green at all, but its still full of riches they just hadnt seen before. In the end, the Wizard very cleverly makes everyone think he provided them with brains, courage and heart when they actually did it for themselves: How can I help being a humbug when all these people make me do things that everybody knows cant be done, says the Wizard. It was easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they imagined I could do anything. And there lies the conundrum. When it comes to tackling globalisation or currencies, its just like the The Wizard of Oz. We can make the world the way we want it, but not if we wait around for some wizard to fool us. We have to remember that we are doing something ourselves. It all depends where you think the wealth lies. Out there, in the vaults or the trading oors. Or here, with us, in every community. Keynes put it like this: London is one of the richest cities in the history of civilisation, but it cannot afford the highest standards of achievement of which its own living citizens are capable, because they do not pay. If I had the power today, I would surely set out to endow our capital cities with all the
MONeY AND WeALTh
appurtenances of art and civilisation on the highest standards ... convinced that what I could create I could afford and believing that money thus spent would not only be better than any dole, but would make unnecessary any dole. For what we have spent on the dole in England since the war we could have made our cities the greatest works of man in the world. We have the wealth. It doesnt mean borrowing more, as Keynes set out, or even denominating it using the same unit of value. But it does mean monetising our wealth in other ways.
Making Currencies Work For Us
When it comes to creating those new kinds of money there is no one perfect currency that can right all the wrongs of the past and every aw in the conventional money we use. There are currencies t for the job in hand, and which have specic challenges as a result. If you want to encourage mutual support around a doctors surgery, you might use time credits. If you want to encourage people to recycle by using spare capacity on the buses, thats going to require something different something more akin to Air Miles. If you want to provide a backing of commodities for the money we use, or you want to revive the local economy by making it easier to use local assets and skills, rather than distant ones in each of these circumstances, you will choose something different. Each of these will have a design that works best. That is why I am all for a liveand-let-live approach: a multiplicity of currencies and as simple as possible. In my experience, the new kinds of money that succeed have a simplicity about them which means that people can use them in the ways they think best. I rst got excited about local currencies in New Zealand in 1991. Green dollars were then setting up in most cities, backed by the welfare authorities. In fact, if you lost your job you got a leaet encouraging you to join your local green dollar scheme. Since then, Ive had a fascinating time when Ive been involved. I have interviewed Edgar Cahn and Michael Linton, Paul Glover and Bob Swann. I have met Heloise Primavera and Sergio Lub. I have cheered when the multicurrency Europe seemed to be emerging. And when it wasnt, Ive gone off and done something else. But the conversation that brought me up short was right back in New Zealand in 1991. I was on the green dollar island of Waiheke, just outside Auckland harbour, and I got a lift from a Maori back to the ferry. What do you think of these green dollars? I asked, with all the innocent excitement of the true believer. I think its terrible, he said. In the old days, we used to give each other sh or help out or build each others homes. What we never did was measure it all exactly. Now, I think this is important. What happens if you try starting a time bank in a neighbourhood where everyone already helps each other as much as they can? Or start a national smartcard or internet scheme which gives points to people for acting green when they are already practised at exactly that? We have research which suggests what will happen: You undermine the altruistic impulses. So you have to be careful. But there is also no problem about nding the need and the demand. If you live in Greece, and in some ways we clearly all do, the next generation is
69
MONeY AND WeALTh
70
going to be about vacuuming money out of their economy. A huge sucking sound is going on all over Europe and will continue. Of course people will want to nd other ways of meeting their needs, especially as there are resources and time all around them.The Greek government has passed an emergency law encouraging new forms of exchange.The Volos networks are growing there too. I nd this pretty extraordinary. Here are these powerful models of parallel currencies emerging in Latin America. The C3 model in Uruguay which takes bills owed to small businesses and then factors them in return for local currency. The community banking model in Brazil, providing low cost or no cost loans to the poorest neighbourhoods, to individuals and businesses. All of them are learning the lessons from two decades of development in Latin America, and both models have support from the European Commission. Yet here we are, on the Commissions own doorstep, and the Greeks have to laboriously reinvent the tools of exchange, just like the beleaguered and indebted people of Argentina ten years ago. It is time to draw some of these strands together. All this means we are dealing with the source of life in some ways. We have to be careful. Do the wrong thing and we can end up far worse. Do nothing and things denitely end up worse. First, we need to make a coherent case for new kinds of money in the mainstream. The reason for their emergence all over the world is that they are all responses to the same set of problems. Because currencies have become international, ordinary money sometimes carries too complex messages for simple local exchanges to take place using money. Then some vital things are not valued by conventional currencies and market exchanges human skills, local skills, local food and waste, and so on. All these reasons seem likely to continue, so the basic motivation for new kinds of money are going to continue as well. What makes the difference compared to the position in 1991 is that there are now successful and mainstream models running, mainly in Latin America. But there is another reason why it seems likely that new kinds of exchange will become increasingly mainstream in the decade ahead. It is because internet and mobile phone technology makes these ideas much more practical and simpler to manage for individuals. There is also huge innovative energy about exchanges on the internet, from eBay to Bitcoin. It also seems likely that the private sector will catch up with what is happening within the next decade. Mobile phone banking is now mainstream in Africa. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of us will be used to the idea of multiple counting systems, probably on our phones, within a few years. Two of the sectors that have been lagging behind have been the mainstream banks and government. But there are exceptions. I know that the National Health Service is involved with time banks all over the country, and so is the Prison Service. Local authorities have been involved, for example in the development of the Brixton pound, now an electronic currency on mobile phones, too. There has been more involvement by the police and youth services in bigger reward projects like Karrots, Connexions and Young Scot. But we are right up against it now, all of us. At the heart of a nancial storm we can begin to imagine the future:
MONeY AND WeALTh
ll I can imagine a community bank and barter system in every region, offering very low cost loans to small businesses. ll I can imagine a time bank in every public service outpost, every surgery, every school, every housing estate, to rebuild the social networks. ll I can imagine new kinds of health insurance packages which people part pay by helping other members. ll I can imagine time debt owed by students before graduation, which they have to pay off by involvement in local community. ll I can imagine credits based on the value of waste, or on local renewable energy. ll I can imagine cities issuing their own money via their own banks, and providing loans in it at very low interest. ll I can imagine these being bundled together in new kinds of institution, maybe paid for by the big banks. ll Combining local currency, microcredit, business coaching, business mentoring and nance by local business angels. We are still in the dark about some economic questions. Will too much nudging create a reaction against manipulation? Is there a danger that parallel currencies will create ination if they are linked to national currencies? How can they be kept circulating among poor people, in deance of every economic law that suggests that the rich will begin to garner anything that is lucrative and successful? We dont know. What we do know is that we are feeling our way towards more natural kinds of money ones that connect more automatically between what we need and the means to provide it.That is a huge step forward for money and for humanity.
71
David Boyle
is a fellow of the New Economics Foundation. He is author of a range of books including Money Matters: Putting the Eco Back Into Economics and Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash. He has been editor of a number of publications including Town & Country Planning and Radical Economics. is a radical illustrator from London. He makes comics and illustrations for revolutionaries, radicals and people trying to change the world. He blogs at www.eddbaldry.co.uk
Edd Baldry
Riot CitY: Protest aNd RebellioN iN THE Capital

Review by Nina Power
The greatest offence against property was to have none. E. P.Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class The verb form of riot indicates both the taking part in one (or many) and a sense of dissolution he has rioted away his life, as one 1920s posh person might say to another in an ITV episode of Poirot. In its noun form, the sense of merriment is preserved, but the sense of public disturbance is also xed, historically, through media commentary and most brutally, legally a riot took place here; the riots of August 2011. Riot is described in law in the 1986 Public Order Act in the following way: Riot: (1) Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is such as would cause a person of reasonable rmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety or each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot. (2) It is immaterial whether or not the 12 or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously. (3) The common purpose may be inferred from conduct. (4) No person of reasonable rmness need actually be, or be likely to be, present at the scene. (5) Riot may be committed in private as well as in public places. (6) A person guilty of riot is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or a ne or both. Riot as a legal charge has, in fact, been used less often in recent months than people might suppose, given the widespread media use of the term to describe everything from an out-of-hand party to a football match, from protests to a street festival. Most of the people initially charged as a result of the August 2011 events were accused of burglary and if they were charged with a public order offence as well (or instead), it was usually violent disorder (which requires three or more people using or threatening unlawful violence and carries a maximum sentence of ve years rather than ten). This was the same charge overwhelmingly used against the students and other protesters following
73
Illustration by Alex Charnley
RIOT CITY: PROTeST AND RebeLLION IN THE CApITAL
74
the Demo-lition march of November 11th 2010 that ended up near Tory HQ at Millbank and the subsequent protests in the months that followed (amongst which, three more education and cuts protests and the large TUC demo on March 26th 2011). The fact that the rst teenager to be charged specically with riot as such is newsworthy and worth noting. From the standpoint of the law, to charge someone with riot may not be worth it its clearly harder to prove the participation of 12 people than 3, even if the violence is only threatened and no one of reasonable rmness is actually present. There are further implications if riot (and/or injury, stealing or destruction) has occurred, particularly in light of the Riot (Damages) Act (1886), where if a house, shop, or building in a police area has been injured or destroyed, or the property therein has been injured, stolen, or destroyed, by any persons riotously and tumultuously assembled together, such compensation as hereinafter mentioned shall be paid out of the police fund of the area to any person who has sustained loss by such injury, stealing, or destruction It is interesting to note the recent frustration shown on the part of the Association of British Insurers calling for urgent reform of the old act and pointing out that, while the insurers have paid out over 95% of all riot claims, the police fund has not been so forthcoming: While insurers have settled or paid against the vast majority of claims, over half of claims submitted by insurers to police authorities under the Riot Damages Act have been declined. This shows insurers are doing all they can to look after their customers, despite not getting their claims settled by the police authorities. The law is blurry on the strictness of needing to call something a riot before the compensation fund kicks in: Is it the events of the area as a whole? The events of a few days in a city or the country as a whole? The specic prosecutions used against individuals? Whether the media says that it happened? All this is a costly business for the authorities and it remains an open question what would happen if and when police privatisation really kicks in would G4S be happy to pay out if businesses and properties were damaged in a public order situation? Private security and private property, as well as the currently existing authorities, dont always mesh easily together, especially if the property in question belongs not to government bodies but to relatively poorer, and thus insignicant, individuals. Why preface a discussion of Clive Blooms book Riot City: Protest and Rebellion in the Capital with all this stuff about law, insurers and which bit of the public order act has been used lately? Why would we listen to what the authorities have to say about what did or did not happen in the past couple of years? In light of the large number of exemplary (although all sentences are surely exemplary) and extreme prison sentences handed down over the past year and a half (the phrase six months for stealing water worth 3.50 comes to mind), not to mention the 24-hour courts and the Met polices new Total Policing strategy, it seems important to be clear about what we mean when particular words (such as riot, violence, peace, justice, and the public in particular) are used, who says them, and to what end. Bloom in Riot City, despite discussing the student riots of 2010, the inner-city riots of 2011 and, at various points and particularly in an Appendix, the Gordon House Riots of 1780 and the Bawdy House Riots before them, does not ever really clarify what he means by riot. This is a shame as all too often the state and the media have the monopoly of usage over the term, and it is, as we know, relentlessly negative: attempting to explain or justify anger is deemed
to be irresponsible, even when that anger is real, justied and staring everyone in the face: the anger of friends and family over the police execution of Mark Duggan, the anger over daily police harassment, the anger over the criminality and hypocrisy of the rich and powerful. If Bloom is trying to defend and expand the usage of the term, for example, by suggesting that the events of late 2010 surrounding university fees and cuts and the events of August 2011 are all riots, then it would be useful to have a clearer description of the term. Bloom asks, parodying Richard Hamilton parodying a 1950s Ladies Home Journal advert, Just what is it that makes todays riots so different, so appealing? And yet he concludes the book by asking, What are we now to do to stop rioting of this type? What he means by this type is revealed in the preceding sentence [t]he students rioted to restore equilibrium; the summer rioters to permanently disturb it. So, there we have it: there are good riots and there are bad riots in order to prevent the latter from returning Bloom ponders, [w]e do not know if a prison regime would restore the dignity that the offenders have forfeited. We might prefer to see large-scale community work for most, but observing this in practice is disheartening and the results are poor. But which we is Bloom referring to exactly? There are many who supported the riots, and many who wonder why there arent riots more often. Despite the by-now sizeable amount of the Guardian LSE study Reading the Riots, the temporarily banned Riots: In Their Own Words documentary, and the recent Riot from Wrong lm, Bloom asks are we ready to ask criminals their opinion on anything? One might ask Bloom whether we should be more ready to ask the current government and its agents, or indeed the one before that, given the manifest obviousness of their criminality: the police who killed Mark Duggan and many, many others with impunity; the bankers who demanded bail-outs from public funds; the government ministers who stole at-screen TVs and much more in the expenses scandal; and before them Tony Blair, whose prosecution for war crimes would surely have come to pass if he had been anything other than the UK Prime Minister. Throughout Riot City Bloom oscillates between defending what he calls the dirty politics of the street and denying that those on these dirty streets understand why they are there at all: students protested because they were annoyed and frustrated with their own stupidity for having voted for Nick Clegg although one cannot really be called stupid if someone else has lied to you repeatedly and you had no reason to not believe them and those rioters questioned after August spouted a retrospective rhetoric of economic woe and the corruption in high places. However, states Bloom, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, this had been a learned script. Blooms methodological frame is all over the place, but this is openly admitted: My approach is perhaps, holistic, an attempt to combine the latest official documentation, police reports, security briengs, reportage and parliamentary reports with information from the rioters, revolutionary groups and historical evidence. Anyone paying attention over the past year and a half is unlikely to learn much that is new from Blooms holistic approach, and framing Mark Duggans death in relation to chaos theory might strike the reader as bizarre, if not something a lot worse. Bloom also seems to suggest that we are living through some kind of post-political era: since 2000, he claims, the old ideological divisions of left and right have almost entirely broken down (Really? Why since 2000? What happened then?). It is Blooms lack of a
75
76
coherent methodological approach, combined with outbursts of unquestioned received wisdom (the government had no choice but to overhaul the [university] system) and vague generalisations (no two riots are ever the same) that make Riot City appear less the historical account it promises in the preface and more a hasty retelling of recent events that adds little new to existing accounts, other than its length (169 pages plus two appendices on 1968 and the avant-garde and an essay on protest ags, the latter of which has the odd bit of interesting data, but which are seemingly tacked on and bear little relation to the main text). For whatever reason, Blooms main strength lies in his analysis of CCTV and in the role this plays in prosecuting people after events, as well as negatively shaping public space. At a recent talk given by the current Met Police Commissioner, Bernard HoganHowe, his underlying theme was all about technology: total policing requires total technology. A more focused account of the role of CCTV, social media, inltration, information-gathering and surveillance and the criminalising of the image as such is, however, yet to be fully told. Perhaps someone can pick up where Bloom leaves off and tell the story of not only who gets to describe something as a riot and why they might be interested in doing so, but also who gets to control the images of violence. Riots have a spectacular, addictive quality of course, but what lies behind them the violence of the everyday: of exploitation, inequality, and police harassment can no longer be ignored. Riots make visible the truth of injustice, and far from working out ways to make them stop, we should be actively seeking to overturn and destroy the political system that makes them necessary in the rst place.
Nina Power is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University. She is the co-
editor of Alain Badious On Beckett and his Political Writings. Nina has published widely on topics including Iran, humanism, vintage pornography and Marxism. Her book One Dimensional Woman is published by O-Books.
is a political artist and contributor to the Occupied Times of London collective, a free, not-for-prot newspaper born out of the Occupy movement.
Alex Charnley
CoMMoNs: AlterNatiVes to MarKet aNd state

Derek Wall
Capitalism has failed. Leaving the care of society to the market has led to massive inequality, climate chaos and nancial crisis.The system is indeed one of zombie economics, the doctrine is dead but the beast still walks amongst us. It reminds me of the cartoons where Bugs Bunny runs over the edge of the cliff, but not noticing that he has done so, continues to march on air until realisation strikes and the silly rabbit plummets to the ground. However, while capitalism is in crisis, alternatives are not obvious to all. The binary choice has been market versus state. If you have more market you have less state or vice versa. State provision of goods and services seems innately problematic: A central plan reduces choice, fails to promote creativity and may be vastly inefficient. When markets fail, neoliberals can point to the failures of a Soviet-style economy to justify the continuation of a system of supply and demand. There are a number of objections that can be made to this. Fredriedrich Hayek argued, seemingly convincingly, that planners would lack the information necessary for effective planning. Yet markets increasingly provide perverse signals and transmit false information.Think of the way that marketisation has led to commodication of services such as education and housing. Markets lead to speculation and speculation leads to catastrophe. Planning is problematic and imperfect, but marketisation gradually infects an economy with chaos. Planning can be made democratic by measures such as participatory budgeting. Likewise the National Health Service is an excellent example of state planned economic activity that works, although to work better the pharmaceutical companies that make medicine so expensive and the corporations that spend millions of pounds marketing junk food would need tackling. However, what is emerging fast is the alternative of a commons-based economy. Peer-to-peer, social sharing, collaborative consumption, commons, economic democracy are all terms that cover economic activity that moves beyond the market and the state, based on cooperation and harnessing human creativity. The economics of sharing is essential to overcome climate change and other environmental ills. If we can share goods we can reduce our impact on the environment while getting access to the things we need. Car pools might be seen as a good example and there is a role for state provision of shared resources good public transport is an
77
example. Londons Boris bikes are a good example of social sharing: we dont privately own the bikes, its just a shame that the bikes taunt us with Barclays label and only extend to Central London. The commons economy moves us beyond commodication: Goods are produced because they are useful and/or beautiful, not just to generate cash. An economy of free can evolve to replace the articial scarcity generated by capitalism that keeps us insecure in order to get us working and consuming. Commons economies are based on the principle of usufruct which is the concept that we can use something as long as we leave it in a good or improved state for others. Its the key principle to my mind of effective green politics and socialism. Indeed, Marx observed in Capital, Volume III: Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneciaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].
Illustration by Matthew Carey Simos
COMMONS: ALTeRNATIVeS TO MARKeT AND STATe
I dont think utopia or blueprints are helpful and we dont have to answer every question about the practicalities. We must recognise that capitalism has failed and struggle practically and intellectually for an alternative. Its not a matter of imposing a social sharing economy but of ghting commodication. The corporate world is keen to enclose the commons of cyber-space and ghting legislation such as ACTA and SOPA is essential. The battle to re-legalise squatting is another example. Housing in the UK is obscenely commodied and in the USA there are more empty homes than homeless people. Leaving buildings empty as investment chips should be a crime and homeless people showing creativity and using space should be celebrated. To me the key moment of class struggle is the struggle over property rights and those who want an economy that works should focus on property rights. The banking collapse has lead to debt and debt to austerity. The agenda is to use debt to privatise more of the economy so education, health care, water provision are owned by distant owners and swapped around to make prot. A commons-based economy puts these and other resources into the hands of local people to manage not for short-term greed and the whims of bond markets but for long-term need. Politics is essentially about property rights and the often-invisible battles must be made visible and won. There is an intellectual task to show that commons, perhaps termed communism, or democratic ownership of society by communities, works. The two towering gures here are Marx and Elinor Ostrom. In many ways they are polar opposites. The late great Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for her work showing the common-pool property was an effective way of managing natural resources. She came from a liberal background and her work is very much about microeconomics. Her work was based on detailed studies showing how an economy based on cooperation can be created. I would highly recommend both her Governing the Commons and her nal book writing with Amy Potteete and Marco Jannssen, Working Together. Marx was, well, Marx! One of his earliest pieces of writing dealt with the removal of commons rights to German peasants it became illegal for them to pick up fallen wood from forests. In Chapter 27 of Capital Volume I he showed how the English commons had been stolen and enclosed by an elite. His ethnographic notebooks where he focused on indigenous commons were astonishing. For Marx the rational creative society is a self-owned one based on democratic control, i.e. the recreation of the commons. The working class, through revolutionary action, can transcend capitalism and create a communist society. Its about commons for Marx, not top down bureaucracy. Both Marx and Ostrom were true political ecologists, keen to show how the wrong kind of human institutions and practices destroyed the environment. Ostroms work is cautious, pluralistic and rejects panaceas: While celebrating the commons, she does not reject the market or forms of state action. However her work does explore the microfoundations of a non-monetary economics, something most economists would nd unthinkable! While a far from easy read, Working Together has astonishing implications. She spent decades building a more nuanced and creative way of thinking about human economic behaviour revolutionary stuff indeed. The struggle practically and intellectually has to be about rolling back commodication and regrowing a gift economy. Commons economies dont abolish injustice or guarantee sustainability but we can do better than being slaves to an economy which marches to the beat of the bond markets. Whether Syriza in Greece, the work
79
COMMONS: ALTeRNATIVeS TO MARKeT AND STATe
of ecosocialists, the experiments of workers control and solidarity economies in Latin America or a thousand other examples, alternatives to a bought and sold world are emerging.
founder member of Green Left and the Ecosocialist International, his books include the No Nonsense Guide to Green Politics.
Derek Wall is former Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales. He is a
Matthew Carey Simos is an Illustrator/Printmaker who was born in South Africa, raised in Greece and is now based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He received his BA hons in Illustration at Coventry University in 2007 and at the moment is working as a full-time printmaker.
80
OrGaNicLea: ProfessioNal Radicals

Naomi Glass & Clare Joy
OrganicLea stands out as an inspiring urban food project that grows everything from food to communities. While many sustainable and food-focused programs are limited by the fact they only have volunteer staff, OrganicLeas vision to create jobs provides a practical transition from hobby radicals to professional radicals. If the food sector and organics are not automatically a promotion of equality, inclusion and cooperation, then OrganicLea denitely is.
How It All Began
In 2001, we took on an acre of once-derelict allotment land situated on the edge of Epping Forest in the Lea River Valley. At the allotment site on the outskirts of London volunteers would come and share in a days work and also take a share of the harvest. Some of the surplus produce was sold on to occasional market stalls and through North Leyton Surestart. We held training courses to give other growers a chance to increase their organic growing knowledge and skills; we marked the seasons turn with social events and food celebrations. While the allotment site remained at the heart of OrganicLea for many years, there was clearly scope for developing something more than just our small harvest contribution.A stronger local food economy where production and distribution remain within a small geographical area would bring benets in social, environmental, health, economic and cultural spheres. The notion of a local food scheme, which would facilitate the production and distribution of local food within the borough, was born and in 2003 we published a report exploring the desirability and possibility of creating such a scheme in Waltham Forest. These ideas, alongside the burgeoning local activity, enthusiasm and interest in food issues, gradually coalesced into a proposal for a local food hub: a place where local people could get quality local organic produce, nd out about food issues and develop their own food-growing skills. The Hornbeam Centre, a community caf based in Walthamstow, provided a physical base for this hub and a weekly market stall was set up on its street corner from September 2006, was supplied by small-scale organic farmers from East Anglia and their European partners. With a grant from the Big Lotterys Making Local Food Work programme, the Centre was refurbished in 2008, and the food hub activity increased to include a weekly box scheme, support for the Hornbeam Caf, and support for local gardeners and allotment
81
ORGANIcLeA: PROfeSSIONAL RADIcALS
holders to sell their surplus to these outlets through the Cropshare scheme.And, of course, events and workshops to share skills and celebrate local food continued to be popular. In 2007 when Waltham Forest Council closed its plant nursery, located just around the corner from OrganicLeas allotment site, we sensed the tantalising possibility of signicant space outdoors and under glass to increase our own local production and develop a community plant nursery, offering opportunities for all to get involved. The next two years involved lease negotiations, funding applications, and developing permaculture designs for the land, as well as developing the social elements of the project and the co-ops own organisational structure. We renamed the site Hawkwood Community Plant Nursery. In 2009 the Hawkwood steering group planted the rst seedlings in the glasshouses, already supplying a signicant harvest of salad, tomatoes, chillis and squash to the market stall and box scheme at the Hornbeam, as well as a wide range of plant seedlings to help other community growing projects and individuals who didnt have access to protected growing space. In early 2010 a ten-year lease for the site was signed, and with Local Food funding in place until 2013, the Hawkwood Nursery work could shift to a new phase of major indoor and outdoor vegetable and plant production, as well as orchard and vineyard development for future fruit harvests. The sites work was planned to include regular volunteering opportunities for anyone, regardless of their previous growing experience, as well as both formal and informal training and skillsharing workshops involving practical work on the site. OrganicLea nds support from being part of a wide network of like-minded growers, and from its early days has always tried to support others to develop their growing skills, recognising the social, economic, health, environmental and community benets achieved when people grow food together in the spaces around them. As well as offering training and providing seedlings and resources like compost, this support takes the form of specic tailored support to local community groups and organisations that want to start or develop their own food growing projects. The Common Sense Growers initiative, which began in 2007, aims to bring the benets of food growing to as wide a range of people as possible, including excluded or vulnerable groups, providing support that ranges from project planning and design to regular practical training sessions with users.
The Practicalities of Setting up a Co-op: Becoming Professional Radicals!
83
Illustration by Tara Bush
OrganicLea is a workers-cooperative. This means we all give time to running the organisation and working within a framework rooted in transparent governance, mutual aid and collectivism. We manage ourselves and give time to support and manage our peers. Our approach to the organisations design has developed the cooperatives resilience and was shaped by vital input from Cooperatives UK. Since 2009 we have prioritised building the core functionality of the cooperative its governance, nancial and legal organising mechanisms. This has also meant prioritising work on the OrganicLeas vision and aims (facilitated by Turning the Tide, August 2010) and strategy and planning (facilitated by Seeds for Change, October 2011). The guidance and support that all this facilitation has provided, combined with co-op members commitment to these days, has been a fundamental practicality.
There is a lot of support available regarding the governance aspects of setting up a coop, and in practical terms OrganicLea would urge any group that is thinking of starting a cooperative enterprise to take advantage of this support. In terms of some of our learning from this process around practicalities, the below stand out as key inuencing elements in our development: ll Coming together of a critical mass of people with shared vision and motivation. ll Ensuring all have sufficient time, human energy and skills for the work that needs to be done. ll Establishing clear roles and responsibilities as the organisaiton and projects work grows. ll Understanding we are running an enterprise and we want to make our living doing this together. With this realisation comes nancial reality and responsibility. ll Growing real friendships which bring work, activity, laughs, struggles and commitment together. ll Establishing dynamic and effective peer-management and support processes.
How Does OrganicLea Differ from Traditional Producers and Suppliers
84
In all of our distribution work, human relationships and shared vision remain central. We have a range of promotional activities that are educational in nature. For example, in order to interest all in the food we grow we have to change peoples relationship to the food system. For OrganicLea, our marketing work is explicitly linked to education about the real value of food and the essential value of just food systems. The story is relayed at the distribution end, with the majority of our produce sold through our own market stalls and box scheme, and the salad going further aeld to independent catering partners in North and East London. Unlike many rural producers, it is not an aspiration that our box scheme and stalls be stocked with an ever-growing percentage of our own stuff. The bulk of the goodies we market are supplied by the rural members of the OrganicLea family, Hughes Organics. Coordinated by Grahame and Lizzie Hughes, they are a group of organic growers in East Anglia who succeeded the much-loved Eostre Organics. The Hughes stick to Eostres policy of not going through multiples but direct into London via independent and community-based outlets. We also coordinate the Cropshare scheme, affiliated to Wholesome Food Association (WFA), where local allotment and garden surpluses can be traded. This makes legal issues around the term organic a little complex, but on balance it is worthwhile as a stimulus to the local food economy. This is a central aim of Hawkwood; indeed, its the reason we exist. Co-operation is better than conict we work in close partnership with other small suppliers.These are not competitive relationships. We also work directly with outlets, and when we have a relationship with another distributor it is of a mutually supportive and non-exploitative nature. We know those who buy our food and plants, whether it is market stall customers in Wathamstow or a restaurant in Camden. We have a direct relationship with those who we supply as well, and we share a vision for food produced with integrity. Organic and community food producers are inspired by a range of political, economic, ethical and possibly even spiritual stances. Its part of the social and ecological resistance movement not a cunning ruse to sell more. OrganicLea at Hawkwood has been inspired
by the desire of these outlets to share in creating a more sustainable, healthy and honest food system that grows people as well as plants.
From Small to Big
Alongside the graft on the land and in communities, OrganicLea is committed to achieving more fundamental social justice through our very small actions. The decision to realise this vision through community-based food work is essential to our being. Food is of fundamental importance to humans: for our survival, for our enjoyment of life, for our culture. Yet industrial food, drained of vitality, life and soul, is harming us and our planet. So when it comes to improving our lives and our environment, food is a good place to begin. However, community food projects in themselves are not an inevitable force for radical social change that can emerge from reconnecting with the land, and with each other. For this change they also need to embody a broader and deeper praxis of collectivism, inclusion, cooperation, mutual aid, equality and justice.
Clare Joy and Naomi Glass are members of the farming cooperative OrganicLea. Tara Bush is a designer and illustrator based in Manchester. She has been published in
several magazines across the UK, and is available for commissions and collaborations. You can see more of her work at www.tarabush.carbonmade.com
85
With very special thanks to
STIR Founding Supporters
Anonymous friend Jacintha Peeris of The New Earth Works www.thenewearthworks.com Ronnie Hall and Joseph Zacune of Critical Information Collective www.criticalcollective.org Tim McFlynn, Executive Director of Public Counsel of the Rockies www.public-counsel.org

STIR Magazine

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

STIR Magazine

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

We would like to thank the 160 people who crowdfunded, authored, edited, illustrated and designed this book.

AnGer. AnalYsis. ACtion.

BriNG It to THE Table: CreatiNG JUstice THroUGH Food

Transition Town Brixton

BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD

BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD

BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD

BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD

BRING IT TO THE TAbLe: CReATING JUSTIce ThROUGh FOOD

RaJ Patel iNterVieW

Illustration by Michael van Kekem

RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW

RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW

rather than a diversied polyculture that we need for the future.

economic attack that came when NAFTA was introduced in 1994?

RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW

RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW

RAj PATeL INTeRVIeW

THe CoMMoNs: FroM THE MarGiNs to THE MaiNstreaM

Illustration by Sam Parr

The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM

The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM

The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM

The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM

The COMMONS: FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTReAM

OccUpY THE US: MUsiNGs oN HoriZoNtal DecisioN MaKiNG aNd BUreaUcracY

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

Image by Brandon Jourdan

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

From Political Values to Economic Relations

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

OccUpY THE US: MUSINGS ON HORIZONTAL DecISION MAKING AND BUReAUcRAcY

THe Real Food Store

Illustration by Alicja Falgowska

The ReAL FOOD STORe

The ReAL FOOD STORe

SiMoN CritcHleY INterVieW

Illustration by Germn Gulln

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

Where do you see as the true political terrain today?

SIMON CRITchLeY INTeRVIeW

community-based political activities.

THe StrUGGle BetWeeN CopYriGHt aNd THE INterNet

The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT

Illustration by India Rose Harvey

The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT

The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT

The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT

The STRUGGLe BeTWeeN COpYRIGhT AND THE INTeRNeT

YoUr CoMMUNitY is Made of Stories: NarratiVe StrateGY for Social CHaNGe

YOUR COMMUNITY IS MADe Of STORIeS: NARRATIVe STRATeGY fOR SOcIAL ChANGe

Illustration by SmartMeme Studios

YOUR COMMUNITY IS MADe Of STORIeS: NARRATIVe STRATeGY fOR SOcIAL ChANGe

YOUR COMMUNITY IS MADe Of STORIeS: NARRATIVe STRATeGY fOR SOcIAL ChANGe

MoNopolY PreseNts THE ProbleM. Co-opolY Offers THE SolUtioN.

Image by Taliesin Nyala

MONOpOLY PReSeNTS THE PRObLeM. CO-OpOLY OffeRS THE SOLUTION.