David Bollier

It’s an open secret that political parties and “democratic” governments around the world have become entrenched insider clubs, dedicated to protecting powerful elites and neutralizing popular demands for system change.  How refreshing to learn about Ahora Madrid and other local political parties in Spain!  Could they be a new archetype for the reinvention of politics and government itself?

Instead of trying to use the hierarchical structures of parties and government in the usual ways to “represent” the people, the new local parties in Spain are trying to transform government itself and political norms. Inspired by Occupy-style movements working from the bottom up, local municipal parties want to make all governance more transparent, horizontal, and accessible to newcomers. They want to make politics less closed and proprietary, and more of an enactment of open source principles. It’s all about keeping it real.

To get a clearer grasp of this phenomena, Stacco Troncoso of the P2P Foundation recently interviewed two members of Ahora Madrid, a city-based party comprised of former 15M activists who forged a new electoral coalition that prevailed in Madrid in 2015. (The full interview can be found here.)  The coalition’s victory was important because it opened up a new narrative for populist political transformation. Instead of the reactionary, anti-democratic and hate-driven vision embodied by Brexit, Trump and the National Front, this one is populist, progressive and paradigm-shifting.

Below, I distill some of the key sights that surfaced in Troncoso’s interview with Victoria Anderica, head of the Madrid City Council’s Office of Transparency, and Miguel Arana, director of Citizen Participation. The dialogue suggests how a social movement can move into city government without giving up their core movement ideals and values.  Implementation remains difficult, of course, but Ahora Madrid has made some impressive progress.

First, a clarification:  To outsiders, the political insurgency in Spain is usually associated with the upstart Podemos party.  That is a significant development, of course, but Podemos is also much more traditional.  Its party structure and leadership are more consolidated than those of Ahora Madrid, which considers itself an “instrumental party.”  It qualified to run in the 2015 elections as a party, but it does not have the internal apparatus of normal parties.

Across Europe, a vision of the commons has been emerging in the margins for many years.  But now, as the credibility of conventional politics and neoliberal economics plummets, commoners are becoming more visible, assertive and organized. The latest evidence comes from the first meeting of a newly formed European Commons Assembly. More than 150 commoners from 21 countries across Europe gathered in Brussels for the three-day event, from November 15 to 17.

The Assembly was organized by Sophie Bloemen and David Hammerstein of the Berlin-based European Commons Network, in collaboration with other commons advocates and organizations. Two sets of Assembly meetings were held at the Zinneke collective, based in an old stamp factory in Brussels that the nonprofit collective had reclaimed.  Another meeting was held in the stately European Parliament building, hosted by supportive members of the European Parliament who sit on the Working Group on Common Goods, within the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services.

Bloemen and Hammerstein recently wrote about the meetings:

This movement of commoners has been growing across Europe over the last decade, but last week it came together for the first time in a transnational European constellation. The objectives of the meetings were multiple but the foremost goal was to connect and form a stable but informal transnational commons movement in Europe. The political energy generated by bringing all these people together in this context was tremendous.

On a visit to Barcelona last week, I learned a great deal about the City’s pioneering role in developing "the city as a commons."  I also learned that crystallizing a new commons paradigm – even in a city committed to cooperatives and open digital networks – comes with many gnarly complexities.

The Barcelona city government is led by former housing activist Ada Colau, who was elected mayor in May 2015.  She is a leader of the movement that became the political party Barcelona En Comú (“Barcelona in Common”). Once in office, Colau halted the expansion of new hotels, a brave effort to prevent “economic development” (i.e., tourism) from hollowing out the city’s lively, diverse neighborhoods. As a world city, Barcelona is plagued by a crush of investors and speculators buying up real estate, making the city unaffordable for ordinary people.

Barelona En Comú may have won the mayor’s office, but it controls only 11 of the 44 city council seats. As a result, any progress on the party’s ambitious agenda requires the familiar maneuvering and arm-twisting of conventional city politics. Its mission also became complicated because as a governing (minority) party, Barelona En Comú is not just a movement, it must operationally assist the varied needs of a large urban economy and provide all sorts of public services:  a huge, complicated job.

What happens when activist movements come face-to-face with such administrative realities and the messy pressures of representative politics? This is precisely why the unfolding drama of Barelona En Comú is instructive for commoners. Will activists transform conventional politics and government systems into new forms of governance -- or will they themselves be transformed and abandon many of their original goals? 

The new administration clearly aspires to shake things up in positive, transformative ways.  Besides fostering greater participation in governance, Barelona En Comú hopes to fortify and expand what it calls the “commons collaborative economy” – the cooperatives, commons and neighborhood projects that comprise a remarkable 10% of the city economy through 1,300 ventures.

For the past several months I've been having conversations with a friend, Dave Jacke, who is a long-time designer of landscape ecosystems via his firm, Dynamics Ecological Design, of Montague, Massachusetts. In his long career in permaculture circles -- he's the author of a classic book Edible Forest Gardens -- Dave came to realize that a "landscape-only" approach to ecosystem design is inadequate. It doesn't deal with human social dynamics and their effects on ecosystems. For my part, I have come to realize that I need to know more about the deep, long-term functioning of ecosystems. I am especially interested in learning concepts and vocabularies that some in permaculture circles use.

So Dave and I decided to share our mutual interests and ignorance, and host a public workshop to investigate this critical nexus between nature and humanity (which of course are not so separate and independent, after all). Our workshop is called "Reinventing the Commons:  Social Ecosystems for Local Stewardship & Planetary Survival."  

The event will consist of a Friday evening talk by each of us on January 20, 2017, and an all-day participatory workshop the next day, January 21, at the Montague (Massachusetts) Common Hall ("Grange"). Pre-registration is required; the public lectures will be $10; the workshop & public lectures $85 to $125.  More details here or by writing Dave Jacke at davej@edibleforestgardens.com. Or register through Brown Paper Tickets (fees apply) at ReinventingCommons.brownpapertickets.com.  

Here is our overview of the workshop and the ground we wish to cover.  

For all its benefits, the dominance of capitalist economics has also generated a world of predatory, extractive markets based on short-term self-interest that is literally destroying the planet. What feasible alternatives exist? This workshop will explore the potential of the commons as a practical and fair system of local provisioning, governance, and culture for transforming society.

From early in human cultural evolution until only a few centuries ago, the vast majority of resources was held and managed in common. Certain groups of people formed agreements about how to use and manage specific shared resources, from woodlands and farm fields to pastures and water, and they managed those resources sustainably for generations. It took the privateers hundreds of years to consolidate their power, control the structures of the state, and exploit cheap energy to destroy the commons systems of Europe and the global South. The unbridled privatization and commoditization of commons that inaugurated the Industrial Revolution continues today, with catastrophic results for planetary ecosystems and social well-being.