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in Brazil today. CoopHab is a major housing federation of co-operative savings societies.

During the industrial revolution English working people were excluded from bank lending though pawnbroking was rife. Mutual aid savings clubs developed interest-free lending systems for housing. The most successful were the Terminating Building Societies for buying land and building houses.

Sweden

Operationally, JAK is very similar to a credit union, except that members do not earn any interest on their savings or dividends on their shares.

The total cost of a JAK loan covers four things:(12)loan appraisal and set-up cost at a fee that is 2-3% of the approved loan value.an annual administration fee equal to 1% of the loan.an annual fee of approximately $30 to support the JAK educational system and volunteer services.(13)an equity deposit equal to a 6% of loan value to cover risk on any loan in the portfolio.

Members are strongly encouraged to pre-save in order to qualify for a loan.(15) Members also contract to continue saving while they are repaying their loans.

The Greenbacks would not be backed by gold, but by the farmers’ crops, which would be stored in sub-Treasury warehouses paid for by the government.

Swiss WiR

President Lincoln

free Greenback dollars

Lincoln

he had led the introduction of a paper money not backed by gold or silver, and had shown that the government could create, issue, and circulate by fiat the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.

the privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.

National Farmers Alliance and Co-operative Union, led by Charles Macune, developed the Sub-Treasury Plan.

JAK banking, CoopHab and Community Land Trusts work well but are below national policy radar. This is not entirely the case for co-operative commonwealth systems.

So this was not simply a co-operative currency. It was a new national currency under a co-operative and state partnership to expunge the debt peonage imposed by merchants and bankers.

Infuriated, farmers and workers created their own party in 1891 to carry forwardmonetary reform and a co-operative economy. The new Populist party won some local, state and Congressional elections before falling into decline after 1895.

A.C. Townley launched the Non-partisan League (NPL)

Bank of North Dakota

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison suggested a novel solution.

proposed that new money be created by issuing interest-free government bonds

Frederick Soddy

made the first case for an ecological economics free of debt

“100% money.”

100% reserve requirement.

Clifford H Douglas

He argued that a clear-cut and labour-saving solution would be for Government to create new money, interest-free as “Social Credit.”

First all citizens would receive a National Dividend.

Second, Douglas proposed that publicly-owned producer banks be set up in each region of the UK to provide finance debt-free to industry and enterprises.

From 1929 monetary reform attracted a wide audience In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada with growing grassroots calls ranging from public banking to universal basic income.(34) The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt took inspiration from John Maynard Keynes.

it is the way food is produced and sold for profit, in a process controlled by agri-industrial giants and supermarkets – rather than food consumption or human population growth as such – that pushes at the earth’s natural limits.

food losses at one-third of what is produced, or 1.3 billion tonnes/year

In rich countries, farming practices are more efficient, transport and storage facilities are better, and much less food is lost between farm and shop. But then “modern consumer culture” takes over: supermarkets often “reject entire crops of perfectly edible fruit and vegetables at the farm” – e.g. 30% of the vegetable crop in the UK – because of its size or appearance.

30% of what is harvested from the field never actually reaches the marketplace (primarily the supermarket) due to trimming, quality selection and failure to conform to purely cosmetic criteria”

the estimated average cost to households in the UK is £480/year per household.

The report suggests that it is not food production per se that is unsustainable, but production of food for the distorted market, i.e. the commodification of food. It is “market mechanisms” that deprive poor country farmers of the means to invest in basic infrastructure and “market mechanisms” according to which supermarkets trash millions of tonnes of good food.

■ Average crop yields increased by 20% between 1985 and 2005, “substantially less than the often-cited 47% production increase for selected crop groups”; ■ Globally, only 62% of crop production by mass is for human food; 35% is for animal feed and 3% for biofuels. ■ The land devoted to raising animals – including pasture, grazing and animal feed production – is an “astonishing” three-quarters of the total, and “the amount of land (and other resources) devoted to animal-based agriculture merits critical evaluation”. ■ Most agricultural expansion is in the tropics, where “about 80% of new croplands are replacing forests”. “Slowing (and ultimately, ceasing) the expansion”, particularly in the tropics, is “an important first step” to sustainability. ■ Irrigation accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, which is “of particular concern”. ■ Fertiliser use, manure application and leguminous crops (which fix nitrogen in the soil) have “dramatically disrupted” the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.

Monotheism arose

Merry Mount became a refuge for Indians, the discontented, gay people, runaway servants, and what the governor called "all the scume of the countrie."

it was always a celebration of all that is free and life-giving in the world. That is the Green side of the story. Whatever else it was, it was not a time to work.

Therefore, it was attacked by the authorities. The repression had begun with the burning of women and it continued in the 16th century when America was "discovered," the slave trade was begun, and nation-states and capitalism were formed.

The people resisted the repressions. Thenceforth, they called their May sports, the "Robin Hood Games." Capering about with sprigs of hawthorn in their hair and bells jangling from their knees, the ancient charaders of May were transformed into an outlaw community, Maid Marions and Little Johns.

Thus began in earnest the Red side of the story of May Day. The struggle was brought to Massachusetts in 1626.

Thomas Morton settled in Passonaggessit which he named Merry Mount. The land seemed a "Paradise"

With the proclamation that the first of May At Merry Mount shall be kept holly day

The Puritans

the Puritans were the imperialist, not Morton, who worked with slaves, servants, and native Americans

May Day became a day to honor the saints, Philip and James, who were unwilling slaves to Empire.

The Maypole was cut down. The settlement was burned.

On 4 May 1886

In England the attacks on May Day were a necessary part of the wearisome, unending attempt to establish industrial work discipline. The attempt was led by the Puritans with their belief that toil was godly and less toil wicked. Absolute surplus value could be increased only by increasing the hours of labor and abolishing holydays.

Two bands of that rainbow came from English and Irish islands. One was Green. Robert Owen, union leader, socialist, and founder of utopian communities in America, announced the beginning of the millennium after May Day 1833. The other was Red. On May Day 1830, a founder of the Knights of Labor, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Wobblies was born in Ireland, Mary Harris Jones, a.k.a., "Mother Jones." She was a Maia of the American working class.

The history of the modern May Day originates in the center of the North American plains, at Haymarket, in Chicago

in May 1886.

Virgin soil, dark, brown, crumbling, shot with fine black sand

a green perspective

The land was mechanized. Relative surplus value could only be obtained by reducing the price of food.

It became "Hello" to the hobo. "Move on" to the harvest stiffs. "Line up" the proletarians. Such were the new commands of civilization.

Thousands of immigrants, many from Germany, poured into Chicago after the Civil War. Class war was advanced

Nationally, May First 1886 was important because a couple of years earlier the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, "RESOLVED... that eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor, from and after May 1, 1886.

Haymarket Square

Thomas Morton was a thorn in the side of the Boston and Plymouth Puritans, because he had an alternate vision of Massachusetts. He was impressed by its fertility; they by its scarcity. He befriended the Indians; they shuddered at the thought. He was egalitarian; they proclaimed themselves the "Elect". He freed servants; they lived off them. He armed the Indians; they used arms against Indians.

176 policemen charged the crowd that had dwindled to about 200. An unknown hand threw a stick of dynamite, the first time that Alfred Nobel's invention was used in class battle.

All hell broke lose, many were killed, and the rest is history.

May Day, or "The Day of the Chicago Martyrs" as it is still called in Mexico "belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the revolution," as Eugene Debs put it in his May Day editorial of 1907.

These crises are sharpening our awareness of the existence and importance of the commons. Natural commons are necessary for our survival, while social commons ensure social cohesion, and cultural commons enable us to evolve as individuals.

A reduction in the GDP does not necessarily signal a reduction in the real wealth of a society. Recognizing this fact widens our perspective and opens doors for new types of solutions.

The commons can help us overcome the crisis, but it requires systematic advocacy.

What are the commons and why are they are significant?

Commons

include knowledge and water, seeds and software, cultural works and the atmosphere. Commons are not just „things,” however. They are living, dynamic systems of life. They form the social fabric of a free society.

Commons do not belong to anyone individually nor do they belong to no one. Different communities, from the family to global society, always create, maintain, cultivate, and redefine commons

We have to constantly revitalize our commons, because everything we produce relies upon the knowledge we inherit, the natural resources that the Earth gives us, and cooperation with our fellow citizens. The activity known as „the economy” is embedded in our social fabric.

There‘s something new afoot – a movement to reclaim the commons!

Commons are being rediscovered and defended.

Commons are newly created and built upon. Countless people are creating new things for all and meaningful social and physical spaces for themselves.

Taken together, scientists and activists, citizens and politicians are developing a robust and innovative commons sphere – everywhere.

The usage rights of fellow commoners are the stop signs for individual usage rights.

Neither no man‘s land nor boundless Property

The commons is not only about the legal forms of ownership. What matters most is whether and how community-based rights to the commons are enforced and secured.

Commons are based on communities that set their own rules and cultivate their skills and values. Based on these always-evolving, conflict-ridden processes, communities integrate themselves into the bigger picture. In a culture of commons, inclusion is more important than exclusion, cooperation more important than competition, autonomy more important than control.

Absolute and exclusive private property rights in the commons therefore cannot be allowed.

Each use must ensure that the common pool resources are not destroyed or over-consumed.

No one may be excluded who is entitled to access and use the shared resource or who depends on it for basic needs.

What is public or publicly funded must remain publicly accessible.

The commons helps us re-conceptualize the prevailing concept of property rights.

Our shared quality of life is also limited by knowledge that is excessively commercialized and made artificially scarce. In this manner, our cultural heritage becomes an inventory of lifeless commodities and advertising dominates our public spaces.

We all need commons to survive and thrive. This is a key principle, and it establishes why commoners‘ usage rights should always be given a higher priority than corporations‘ property rights. Here the state has a duty to protect the commons, a duty which it cannot abandon. However, this does not mean that the state is necessarily the best steward for the commoners‘ interests. The challenge is for the commoners themselves to develop complementary institutions and organizational forms, as well as innovative access and usage rules, to protect the commons. The commoners must create their own commons sector, beyond the realm of market and state, to serve the public good in their own distinctive manner.

For a society in which the commons may thrive

The rules and ethics of each commons arise from the needs and processes of the commoners directly involved. Whoever is directly connected to a commons must participate in the debate and implementation of its rules.

Commons are driven by a specific ethos, as well as by the desire to acquire and transfer a myriad of skills. Our society therefore needs to honor the special skills and values that enable the commons to work well. A culture of the commons publicly recognizes any initiative or project that enhances the commons, and it provides active financial and institutional support to enhance the commons sector.

This challenge requires a lot of work, but it is also a great source of personal satisfaction and enrichment.

Our society needs a great debate and a worldwide movement for the commons.

collectively our choices and agency are the ultimate guarantors of any values we may wish to secure

They can create their own cultural spaces to deliberate, collaborate and share resources without market and state structures that are often cumbersome, expensive, anti-social or predatory. 

A key political challenge of our time is to figure out new ways to preserve and extend the democratic capacities of ordinary people and rein in unaccountable market/state power, otherwise known as neoliberalism. 

Neoliberal economics and policy insist upon debt-driven economic growth, extractivist uses of the Earth, consumerism and nationalism

the creative use of new digital technologies on open network platforms could inaugurate liberating new forms of “open source governance.”

The superstructures of law and governance can achieve only so much without the consent of the governed.

Benkler

Rifkin

Tapscott

Mason

Bauwens

potentially transformative Commons Sector

the innovations now unfolding in various tech spaces suggest the outlines of new post-capitalist institutions

new types of group deliberation and governance software platforms such as Loomio and Co-budget; digital platforms that enable better management of ecological resources; and “blockchain ledger” technology, which is enabling new forms of network-native self-organization, collective action and “smart contracts”

online guilds

commons

open design and manufacturing communities

citizen-science

a process of commoning

to create functioning commons

The collaborative communities now emerging on digital platforms do not worry so much about resource-depletion or free riders – problems that affect the management of water, fisheries and land – as how to intelligently curate information from the multitudes and design effective self-governance structures for virtual collaboration.   

The point of the commons paradigm, despite its many different flavors, is this:  It provides “protected” space in which to re-imagine production and governance. 

“digital divide”

more accessible and transparent than conventional state democracy and more solidly grounded through bottom-up participation and ethical accountability

Digital networks are becoming deeply entangled with all aspects of life

our lives with digital technologies are profoundly affecting how we regard property, political life, and economic life

Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb and other corporate “gig economy” players

Unlike these capital-driven enterprises, the collaborations that I am describing are fundamentally non-market and socially mindful in character. They are less defined by technology per se than by the new social forms and political /cultural attitudes that they engender. 

to move people beyond the producer/consumer dyad and formalistic notions of citizenship, and enable people to enact a more personal, DIY vision of self-provisioning and governance. 

The state, having cast its lot with capital accumulation and growth, is losing its credibility and competence in addressing larger needs. 

With the rise of market-centrism and rational choice economics, government was devalued and allowed a role only in cases of ‘market failure.’ 

standard economics today largely ignores the fundamental, affirmative role that government plays in facilitating functional, trustworthy markets.

popular distrust of government has soared.  And why not?  Government has lost its actual capacities to serve many non-market social and ecological needs. 

Given this void and the barriers to democratic action, many citizens who might otherwise engage with legitimate state policymaking have shifted their energies into “transnational, polycentric networks of governance in which power is dispersed,”

the solidarity economy, Transition Towns, peer production, the commons

Thus the impasse we face today:  The neoliberal market/state agenda is inflicting grievous harm on the planet, social well-being and democracy – yet the market/state remains largely unresponsive to popular demands for change.

The (Still-Emerging) Promise of Open Source Governance

commons based on open tech platforms will play a central role in transforming our politics and polity

Electronic networks are now a defining infrastructure shaping the conduct of political life, governance, commerce and culture.

many legacy institutions and social practices continue to exist.  But they have no choice but to evolve

online commons are lightweight social systems that, with the right software and norms, can run quite efficiently on trust, reciprocity and modest governance structures

that enable users to mutualize the benefits of their own online sharing

Rifkin notes that the extreme productivity of digital technologies is lowering the marginal costs of production for many goods and services to near zero.  This is undercutting the premises of conventional markets, which are based on private owners using proprietary means to extract profits from nature, communities and consumers.

We are glimpsing at the outlines of a new economic system based on sharing and the collaborative commons. It is the first new paradigm-shifting system since the introduction of capitalism and communism. 

The “collaborative commons” that Rifkin describes is a hybrid capitalist/commons economy that is able to exploit the efficiencies and higher quality produced on open networks. 

“prosumers”

are able to create their own goods and services

But when some good or service is offered for at no cost, it really means that the user is the product:  our personal data, attention, social attitudes lifestyle behavior, and even our digital identities, are the commodity that platform owners are seeking to “own.”  

To combat corporate exploitation of open platforms, many efforts are now afoot to establish digital commons as viable alternatives.  The new models are sometimes called “platform co-operativism.

Digital commons are materializing in part because it is easier and more socially satisfying to participate in a commons

the most valuable networks are those that facilitate group affiliations to pursue shared goals – or what I would call commons

Open source tools and principles could unleash this value – but it would subvert the business model.

“hacktivists,” makers, software programmers and social media innovators who are consciously attempting to build tech platforms that can meet needs in post-capitalist ways, often via commons

Citing Linebaugh’s book, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Chomsky writes:

With the commons no longer protected for cooperative nurturing and use, the rights of the common people were restricted to what could not be privatized, a category that continues to shrink to virtual invisibility. 

Its goal was to protect the source of sustenance for the population, the commons, from external power -- in the early days, royalty; over the years, enclosures and other forms of privatization by predatory corporations and the state authorities

While the mainstream likes to dismiss Chomsky as an out-of-touch lefty with a cult following, who else is pointing out that the Magna Carta’s basic guarantees are indeed being shredded?

b) to artificially inflate the price and profitability of labour inputs

Things that in all previous eras of capitalism the elite desired to be as cheap as possible—to ease wage pressures—are now made as expensive as possible

capital migrates away from production and from private-sector services towards public sector services.

capitalism being replaced by a stagnant neo-feudalism

central bank, pumping money into the system

the state, propping up effectively insolvent banks

the migrant labour exploiter

the innovator someone who invents a way of extracting rent from low-wage people

But as soon as technology allowed it, we started to create organisations where the positive effects of networked collaboration were not captured by the market.

Wikipedia

Fortunately there is a third impact of info-tech. It has begun to create organisational and business models where collaboration is more important than price or value.

Linux

the platform co-operatives

The technology itself is in revolt against the monopolised ownership of intellectual property, and the private capture of externalities.

We must promote the transition to a non-capitalist form of economy which unleashes all the suppressed potential of information technology, for productivity, well.being and culture.

The strategic aim is: to reduce the amount of work done to the minimum; to move as much as possible of human activity out of the market and state sectors into the collaborative sector; to produce more stuff for free.

If the aim is for humanity to do as little work as possible, you can do it through three mechanisms. One is to automate. The other is to reduce the input costs to labour, so that we can survive on less wages and less work. The third is to push forward rapidly the de-linking of work and wages.

The city is where the networked individual wants to live

First—be overt. Help people to conceptualise the transition by actually talking about it.

Next—switch off the great neoliberal privatisation machine.

We know what it’s there for—to hand public assets to the private sector so that the profits of decaying businesses are temporarily boosted

The next proposal is more radical: model reality as a complex system.

Next—promote the basic income.

The basic income is an idea whose time is coming, because there won’t be enough work to go around. For me the basic income is a one-off subsidy for automation—to un-hook humanity from bullshit job creation and promote the delinking of work and wages.

However, it’s a transitional measure.

Next—actively promote the collaborative sector over the market and the state.

You have to understand the benefits of these entities are not completely measurable in GDP terms.

The building block is the co-op, the credit union, the NGO, the non-profit company, the peer-to-peer lender and the purely voluntary or social enterprise.

You have to promote new ways of measuring activity and progress.

Finally, understand and fight the battle over the externalities.

the state and eventually the commons should have first rights to all the data just the same as in a republic it owns all the land

Ultimately, however, the greatest good comes from the common ownership and exploitation of data, because it establishes the principle that this vast new information resource—which is our collaborative behaviour captured as data—is part of the commons.

Would capitalism collapse?

But you would attract the most innovative capitalists on earth, and you would make the city vastly more livable for the million-plus people who call it home.

No. The desperate, frantic “survival capitalists” would go away—the rip-off consultancies; the low-wage businesses; the rent-extractors.

All the other challenges would remain: the environmental challenge—not just low carbon but the preservation of quality living environments in a city sometimes deluged with visitors. Also the ageing challenge and the debt challenge.

a common platform for the left, for social democracy and for liberal capitalism

I could be completely wrong. But if I am right, it makes sense for all cities to ask themselves: could we become the first city to begin a demonstrable and tangible transition away from neoliberal capitalism, towards a society of high equality, high well-being, high collaboration?

the collaborative city, the city of participatory democracy, the networked city

Local co-ops band together to form larger co-ops of co-ops—power suppliers that run power plants, cooperatively owned mining operations, and democratic banks that finance new projects.

It’s also a neglected democracy

by member-owners of the co-ops

and by a society that forgets what cooperative economic development have achieved.

Electric cooperatives are conservative institutions, carrying out the business of reliability while balancing their members’ interests with formidable inertia. But they’re also poised to lead a radical shift to a more renewable distributed-energy grid. They can be fiefdoms for long-entrenched establishments, but they’re also bastions of bottom-up, local self-governance.

depends not just on the whims of investors or on the promises of presidents, but on the readiness of the people who use it to organize.

We Own It, for instance, is a new network started by young but seasoned cooperators determined to support organizing among co-op members

Heneghan believes that co-ops are uniquely positioned to benefit. Their lean, local, customer-centered kind of business has already made them pioneers in easy, low-risk financing for energy-efficiency improvements and renewables.

Co-ops not locked into G&T contracts have been especially ambitious in switching to renewables.

electric co-ops still lag behind the national average in their use of renewables. The local co-ops are bound to their decades-long G&T contracts, and the G&Ts say they can’t walk away from their past investments in coal anytime soon.

co-op staffs know as well as anyone that their democracy is in some respects nominal—an opportunity, but by no means a guarantee.

According to Derrick Johnson, the president of One Voice and the state NAACP, “Our ultimate goal is to help them understand how to develop a strategy to maximize members’ participation.” Then, he hopes, “they can begin to think about renewable energy differently.”

Without member pressure, for instance, managers often have an incentive to sell more power rather than helping members reduce their consumption, their costs, and their carbon footprints.

In particular, he pointed out the billions of dollars in “capital credits” that co-ops collectively hold—excess revenues technically owned by members, but that often go unclaimed, serving as a pool of interest-free financing.

“There are so many things that point to a structural change in the electrical industry.” He compared the change to what cellular did to telephones.

By way of explanation, a staff member repeated what I’ve been told by the leaders of other big co-ops: Low turnout means that members are satisfied.

“If the members are not involved in any significant way, the directors become very insular, and they can basically do with the co-op as they please.”

As the Trump administration assembles its promised trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, it seems unlikely to unleash a fresh spree of cooperative rural development.