Pat Conaty - Research associate at Co-operatives UK looks at the 'commons' throughout history and argues that the 'commons' are more relevant than ever in the 21st Century.

1. The Commons and Co-operative
Commonwealth
Pat Conaty
new economics foundation and
Co-operatives UK
4-5 November 2013

2. Resilience and Transition
Building a Co-operative Economy Closer to Home
BASIC NEEDS:
Food
Energy
Shelter
Reclaiming
the Commons
Democratizing
& Localizing
Ownership
KEY FUNCTIONS
Reclaiming
Finance
2

3. Four-fold crisis: a Volatile Cocktail
1.
Economic: The Great Recession and the Euro-crisis - Greece an
indicator of things to come.
2. Ecological: Global warming, climate change and food shortages.
3.
Social: rising inequality, housing crisis, rising cost of energy, food
and basic needs, huge cuts in public services, growing social
unrest.
4.
Political: widespread distrust of parties and politicians. Capture of
the state by a global financial elite. Big Brother and Brave New
World are pervasive.

4. The Ownership Question? 300 billionaires are
wealthier than the poorest 3 billion citizens
• 2 billion people secure
their livelihood through
natural commons
• Over 3 billion microenterprises globally
• One billion people are
members of cooperatives
• 1 to 2 million Civil Society
organisations globally
working for sustainability
and justice

5. Commonwealth - a Provocative Thought
1. 400 US billionaires hold more wealth than
180 million Americans (the bottom 60%)
2. If this wealth was spread equitably, each
American family of four could share an
annual income of $200,000 or alternatively
opt for $100,000 (twice the median family
income) and choose to work a 20 hour week

6. The Commons and co-operative networks offer a
a democratic way of working and living
• Commonwealth is
wealth beyond measure
– when times get hard
co-operative solutions
are always unearthed
• Micro-change agents
need to think of how to
connect mutually
• History and struggles to
build co-operative
commonwealth provides
guidance on the How
question

7. The Commons we Share
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Air and water
Parks
Libraries and books
The internet
Streets and sidewalks
The airwaves
Languages
Traditions
Dance steps
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Music and games
Outer space
Stories and jokes
Open-source software
Biodiversity
Food and recipes
Seeds and tools
Know-how
Caring and friendship
Much, much more……

8. Silence as a Commons
‘People called commons those part of the
environment for which customary law [‘usually
unwritten’]…… recognised claims of usage, not
to produce commodities but to provide for the
subsistence of their households.’
Ivan Illich

9. Mutual Aid origins of the Company
Guilds – earliest companies, rooted in ‘Fair Trade’ practice
1. From ‘collegia’ in ancient Rome: mutual aid groups of
artisans for social insurance and burials: similar systems in
India, China, Islamic Cordoba and west Africa
2. ‘Con pagus’ and ‘con panis’: companions
3. Charters for delegated self-governance powers in exchange
for taxes: Guild of Guilds and Guildhall
4. Local town management – just price, holy days,
prohibitions, trade marks from the Guildhall
5. Oaths: mutually and to the town (social, economic,
religious, political and military obligations)

10. Communal Markets
Typical Guild rules for flour and bread:
1. Guild members agree what the price of grain will be
with the Justice of the Peace (appointed regulator)
2. Grain may only be sold on market days and during
fixed hours
3. Purchases must be for the household’s own use and
limited in quantity to two bushels
4. Grain may be sold later in the market day to resellers
(bakers and brewers) who must be licensed by the
Justices of the Peace

11. Great Transformation
Karl Polanyi thesis: communal markets replaced by
the commercial Market
1. Medieval economy: ‘just prices’ regulated by guilds locally
but long-distance trade was unregulated
2. Long-distance free trade linked increasingly with plunder and
colonisation under Merchant banking houses
3. Mercantilism: early modern development of international
trade and nation state empires
4. Royal Charters from 1407: The Merchant Adventurers
5. Property rights created by private acts of enclosure that
commodified work (wage-labour), land (real estate) and
money (debt) – legitimated in law by John Locke. Roman law
displaced ‘commons’ custom and practices

12. The Loss of the Commons
1. Commons land was widespread until the 14th century in
Great Britain and Ireland – open fields, no stone walls or
hedges and land stewarded based on customs and practice
2. Ancient Roman land law: the law of ‘dominium’, private
property precedent that sanctified conquest and plunder
3. First enclosure in England, the Statute of Merton 1235 ‘to
approve [improve] the land in order to extract greater rent.’
4. 4000 Acts of enclosure - Commons and waste land today is
only 8% of land in the United Kingdom
5. 40,000 people (0.06% of the population) own nearly half of
all land in the UK

13. ‘Common rights’: Past and Present
Bodmin Moor, Cornwall: Local commons, existing rights
1. Pannage: to graze pigs on acorns
2. Estovers: to take underwood, loppings, braken and
furze
3. Turbary: to cut turf (peat) for fuel
4. Piscary: to fish from local streams and lakes
5. Pasture: to graze other animals
6. Soil: to take sand, gravel, stone or minerals

14. Land Enclosure
Linked with development of commercial farming:
1. The medieval wool trade – under the Tudors
2. Exclusion of serfs and peasants from the land
3. Creation of vagabonds and wage-labour
4. Pre-condition for the development of capitalism:
‘primitive accumulation of capital’ (debt-based
money) and creating the ‘dependency of wagelabour’

15. Market Economy and Land Enclosure
‘What we call land…..invests man’s life with stability…
it is a condition of his physical safety…
‘We might as well imagine being born without hands
and feet as carrying on life without land…
‘ yet to separate land from man and organise society
to satisfy the requirements of a real-estate market
was a vital part of the utopian concept of market
economy.’
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944)

16. Struggles against Enclosure and for
Co-operative Commonwealth and ‘the Vote’
1. Levellers and Diggers – Arguments to Cromwell for Land tax,
franchise, annual Parliaments, co-operative
commonwealth: Gerrard Winstanley and ‘Law of Freedom
Platform’ (1652)
2. Thomas Spence – Parish Land Trusts for land stewardship
locally and capturing rents for community benefit: ‘real
rights of man’ (1775)
3. Chartist Land Company (1847) – to secure ‘the vote’ and
develop co-operative villages, community facilities and 2-4
acres per family – 60,000 investors and several co-op
villages developed

17. Thomas Spence – Parish Land Trusts
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(iii)
1774: Inspired by grass roots campaign to stop enclosure of
Newcastle Town Moor
1775: Parish Land Trust Plan to capture the ‘unearned
increment’ and differential rents for the people
Co-operative Land Society model – ‘you use the land, or
lose it’: community is the landlord and leases to citizens
Aristocratic and commercial rents are transformed into
community income
1793: Real Rights of Man – disagreed with Tom Paine,
argued that ‘all dominion is rooted and grounded in Land’ –
real democracy needs a ‘commons rights’ foundation

18. Citizen Corporate Charters – USA (1780 to
1860)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
US Declaration of Independence against colonial oppression
Company charters issued by US states from 1780
Charters of companies were time limited (3 to 10 years usually)
and revocable - both for profit and not for profit companies –
charters regularly revoked or not renewed by citizen groups
Banks had the shortest charters and private banks banned in
Indiana and Illinois
Jury trials for company directors for corporate malfeasance
- Unlimited liability and Directors prosecuted for disobeying their
charter conditions
Shareholders only had one vote (no voting shares)
Political donations illegal and limits to land and property holding

19. Co-operative Commonwealth Movements
Re-forged in times of Depression since 1815
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1820s: Birth of co-operative movements in Britain and France
1840s: Hungry 40s and ‘Rochdale principles’ developed
1870s: Long Depression - Knights of Labor and Greenbacks
1890s: Syndicalism, Guild socialism, Garden cities
1920s: Movements on the rise but repressed brutally
1970s: New wave internationally spreads
2010s: A rebirth………La Via Campesina, P2P Foundation, New
Economy Coalition (USA and Canada)?

20. 1844: Joint Stock Companies Act (UK)
• Curtailed Parliamentary charters in the UK – companies
could be just registered
• Limited requirements: to keep accounts, complete an annual
audited balance sheet
• 1855 subsequent law introduced limited liability
• 1862 law abolished accounting requirements, only one
obligation to maximise shareholder profit
• 1929 crash brought back the requirement of audited
accounts

21. 1844: The Rochdale Pioneers
Developed Co-operative law and the 7 Co-operative Principles
(i) Democracy: one-member, one vote
(ii)Open and inclusive membership
(iii)Distribution of surplus in proportion to trade
(iv)Payment of limited interest on capital
(v)Political and religious neutrality
(vi)Cash trading and provision of pure, unadulterated goods
(vii)Education of member households from a levy on surpluses

22. Commonwealth Economy Thinkers
Co-operative political economy ‘Heretics’
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Robert Owen and the Utopian socialists
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill
Ruskin, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement
Henry George, Tolstoy, Kropotkin and Martin Buber
RH Tawney, Bertrand Russell, GDH Cole - the Guild Socialists
Karl Polanyi and Erich Fromm
Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and JP Narayan
Ivan Illich and EF Schumacher
Jane Jacobs, Vandana Shiva and Elinor Ostrom

23. John Stuart Mill: Co-operative Economist
1. Principles of Political Economy (1852) – Book 4
2. Supply-side economist: studied Sismondi
3. Banking defect: argued in 1841 that depressions caused by
failure of businesses to access productive capital
4. Faulty markets: markets good at creating economic values
but poor at distribution – distribution is a social and political
matter
5. Solutions: Producer Co-ops, land reform, suffrage (men and
women) and inheritance tax
6. Inspired development of municipal land reform in Europe,
Single Tax on land and helped pass first law for Co-ops

24. Henry George – Land Value Tax
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Progress and Poverty (1879): inspired by JS Mill proposals and vision
Mill and Leon Walras in France argued for land nationalisation – Single
Tax is a pragmatic reform devised by Henry George to achieve this
Mill inspired public land creation to clean up cities, develop municipal
energy companies, parks, allotments for food and affordable housing
George active in the American co-operative movement: showed links
between land values, homelessness, poverty and costs for small
business – strong support in USA, UK and Ireland
Land Value Tax (LVT) implemented in Liberal People’s Budget of 1909
(rejected by House of Lords and dropped) – Lloyd George and Churchill
LVT implemented in some cities of Pennsylvania and in Hong Kong (38%
of tax revenue from a land value tax)

25. Wealth v Illth
John Ruskin – Unto this last (1862) – ‘co-operative economy’
vision – a ‘Political Economy of Art’ inspired Tolstoy, Gandhi,
RH Tawney and the Guild Socialist movement
1. Chrematistics : the usurious manipulation of money,
property and wealth to maximise exchange value (‘illth’)
2. Oikonomia: the wise management of resources and use
values for the well-being of society – ‘wealth is life’
3. Guild of St. George: social economy venture from 1871 for
preserving vernacular skills, bringing land and buildings into
co-operative trusteeship and reviving the commons by ‘tithes
of property’ – inspired by medieval craftsmanship
4. Non-profit housing (1870) pioneer with Octavia Hill

26. RH Tawney – Guild Socialist
1. Acquisitive Society (1920): ‘Property and Improperty’ – need
to replace ‘absentee ownership’ with up close, and dispersed
ownership of productive assets
2. Francis Bacon: ‘Wealth is like muck, it works best when it is
well spread.’
3. Evolutionary theory of Democracy and Property Rights
Stage 1: Rights to trade (early charters to artisans)
Stage 2: Religious freedom (freedom of thought)
Stage 3: Civil rights – bill of rights: press, vote, speech, etc
Stage 4: Economic democracy (workplace and public ownership
and governance) – highest stage and ‘mutual liberty’

27. 1920-40: Destruction of Co-operatives
- Italy: Mussolini (1921-24) seized assets of 8000 Italian co-ops
and took them over, killed leaders and burned shops
- Russia: Lenin repressed them but allowed them to revive
before Stalin destroyed agricultural co-ops (65% of food
provision) and then urban ones in the 1935
- Germany: Hitler seized their assets and nationalised them –
1100 consumer co-ops, 21,00 credit unions, 4000 co-op
savings banks and 7000 agricultural co-ops
- Austria: following Hitler’s invasion leaders replaced by
fascists
- Spain: Franco arrested and killed leaders, many took exile in
Latin America

28. Co-operative Commonwealth Development –
‘Convivial Tools’ for Economic Democracy
1. Co-operative land reform
2. Democratic corporate reform
3. Co-operative money and co-operative capital
Sources:
1. Ward Morehouse, Bob Swann, George Benello and Shann Turnbull,
Building Sustainable Communities, 1989, Bootstrap Press.
2. Mike Lewis and Pat Conaty, The Resilience Imperative –
Co-operative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy, 2012, New Society
Publishers.

29. Trusteeship Companies
Gandhi’s idea of Socialisation (1931)
1. An alternative to nationalisation and privatisation
2. Co-operative economy path between capitalism and
communism
3. Builds on Ruskin’s ideas of co-operative trusteeship in Unto
this last – a co-operative economic solution
4. Developed by Vinoba Bhave and JP Narayan after Gandhi died
– Bhoodan and Gramdan land reform movements
5. Inspired Martin Luther King and the Community Land Trust
movement in the USA

30. Land Trusteeship in India
1.
Bhoodan: ‘land gift’ movement (1951-57)
- Vinoba Bhave led campaign in 1950s to get large landlords to gift one
sixth of their land to the rural poor
- Movement raised significant acres of land in 1000 villages but much
land lost when recipients borrowed on it and it was repossessed
2. Gramdan: ‘village gift’ movement (1952-70)
- Another strategy to persuade gifted land and other small plots to be
organised as village trusts – overcome the risk of repossession
- Both Bhoodan and Gramdan together secured 5 million acres of land
over 20 years
3. Big barrier that impeded progress – access to low-cost finance for cooperative economy development

31. CLT Pioneer in Scotland
Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust – Land for People
(i) Community buy-out of the island for £1.5 million: struggle
by the islanders with absentee landlords and corporations
(ii) CLT established in 1997 – has developed community
owned businesses: including shop, tourist facilities,
workspace, hydro power plants and wind farm (energy now
98% renewable)
(iii) Successful struggle led to Community Land Unit and Land
Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 giving communities a preemptive ‘right to buy’ – See Alastair McIntosh’s book, Soil
and Soul: People versus Corporate Power
(iv) 250 CLTs in the USA and 50 CLTs in the UK

32. Enclosure – The End Game
• Mega-corporations, China
and global banks are buying
up increasingly scarce
“natural and public capital”,
removing equitable access
and accelerating ecological
destruction
• There is a life and death
battle to protect land,
water, atmosphere and
social security.

33. Beyond the Fragments?
• Alternatives exist
everywhere in small,
dispersed communitybased local approaches.
The Blessed Unrest of
Paul Hawkins.... But??
• How do we resist, unite
and democratically build
a social and ecological
economy?

34. The Commons and co-operative economy
networks: Brian Davey, Feasta (Ireland)
• Consider these
diagrams as three
stages of knitting
together a more
powerful relationship
between civil society,
co-operatives and
commons
organisations without
compromising their
diversity and
uniqueness, and
without creating a top
down hierarchy?

35. Co-operative Economy – Inverting the
Paradigm
The Need to create ‘Co-operative Oceans’
‘Co-ops in the West are a bit like sea water fish in a
freshwater pond. The capitalist world in the last 200
years has evolved its own institutions, instruments,
political frameworks, etc. ………Economic democracy
needs its own institutions.’
Professor Jaroslav Vanek, Cornell University

36. Co-operative Sector – Latent
Transformative Power
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I billion members worldwide
Providing services to 3 billion people weekly
More employees than the multinationals
Involved in all sectors of the economy
Co-ops UK: Trust in corporations only 18% by citizens
compared to 79% trust level in Co-op business
• Co-op sector growth of 20% in the UK 2008 -2012
compared to economy growth of 2%

37. ‘For Service’ – the Co-operative Motto
1. For profits (investor owned corporations)
2. Non-profits (NGOs: due to their legal structure have
restricted legal potential for citizen investor membership)
3. Not-for-profits (Co-operative movement motto: ‘not for
profit, not for charity but for service’)
4. ‘Foundational economy’ (Prof. Karel Williams) is hard wired
locally to regions: for ‘provisioning of food, housing, utilities,
finance, repairs, maintenance, health, social services,
education, advice, knowledge transfer, etc)
5. Strategic opportunity for the Co-operative movement:
because in OECD countries over half the jobs are in services

38. Guild Socialism and Associative Democracy
Movement in Great Britain: 1907 to 1949
(i) Co-operative strategy to organise industry democratically – national
guilds (railways, mines and construction) and local guilds – active work
1919 to 1929
(ii) Agricultural guilds for farming and the food sector
(iii)Garden cities and towns – for regional self-reliance
(iv)Social credit proposals for monetary reform (Major Douglas)
(v) Agricultural guilds, Garden City movement advanced and National
Construction Guild established that built affordable housing in many big
cities
(vi)Access to low-cost finance was a problem
(vii)Movement leaders led work to create the Welfare State and the NHS in
the 1940s

39. Pluralist Commonwealth
Gar Alperovitz (USA) strategy: What then must we do?
1. An agenda for ‘evolutionary reconstruction’
2. Lack of countervailing power: Trade unions 36% of workers in 1946 and
today only 12%; but Co-ops 130 million members in the USA – 4 in 10
citizens.
3. Pluralist strategy for Systems Change – ‘America After Capitalism’ and
Paradigm Shift
4. Key elements of the strategy include:
- Democratic ownership (Co-ops, ESOPs, municipal)
- Checkerboard strategy for decentralisation: municipal-social
partnerships (e.g. Evergreen Co-ops in Cleveland)
- Public banking and social finance systems

40. Evergreen Co-operatives (USA) – The
Democracy Collaborative
‘Green Economy’ Co-operative Partnership
• Cleveland, Ohio: a city that has lost half its population through deindustrialisation over recent decades
• Partnership backed by anchor institutions including the City, universities,
hospitals, the Ohio Co-op movement and the Cleveland Foundation
• $200 million social investment fund set up to invest at 1% to capitalise
worker ownership co-ops using a Mondragon model
• Co-ops created for solar energy installation, local food enterprises and a
low-carbon laundry for hospitals
• Largest urban farm in the USA set up with a wind power heated
greenhouse (3.5 acres) and growing annually 7 million heads of lettuce
and 500 tons of herbs

41. How can we spread Co-operative Networks?
1. Network co-ordination is a mutual service function – not
imposed by top-down management
2. Co-operating units are semi-autonomous and activate cooperative network activities in the interests of a greater
whole/narrative rooted in common values and co-operative
principles
3. Co-operative Consortia connect the nodes together at city,
regional and national levels
4. Co-operative finance and mutual insurance systems comanage risk and social investment

42. Co-operative Consortia, Mutual Guarantee
Societies and Social Co-op Investment
1.
Co-operative Consortia in Italy unite co-ops in specific trade
sectors (280 sub-regional ones have been developed for social coops); provide legal advice, training, regulatory, back office
administration services, tendering and negotiating power through
a federated structure of service provision to their co-op member
firms
2. Mutual Guarantee Societies (MGS): pool finance risk among coops and enable lower cost capital to be secured from Co-op banks
and social investors
3. Co-op investment systems:: Consorzio Gino Mattarelli Finance
(national – consortium for the social co-op movement) and CGM
(the national consortium) does research, national development
work and training for provincial consortia trainers

43. Social Co-ops – An emerging international movement
1.
Italian Social Co-op movement growth transformative over 20 years
- 14,500 in 2013: 360,000 paid workers, 40,000 disadvantaged paid
workers, over 31,000 volunteers and 57% growth since 2005
- more than 50% of the non-profit sector workforce
service provision for almost 5 million people and annual turnover of €9
billion
- typical social co-operative size of 30 worker members
2. Social Co-op legislation and growth in other countries: France (1997
law), Poland (2003 law), Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Quebec (1997
law)
3. A Public-Social Partnership model for England and Wales – Co-ops UK
research being completed

44. Commonwealth Reconstruction
‘Convivial tools are those which give each person the
greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with
the fruits of their vision. Industrial tools deny this
possibility and they allow their designers to
determine the meaning and expectations of others.’
Ivan Illich (1973) Tools for Conviviality

45. A Commons – Three Elements
1. a Resource
2. a Community of stakeholders
3. an agreed set of rules for provisioning and
stewardship

46. Elinor Ostrom – Commons Design Principles
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Clearly defined boundaries which defines who has access.
Appropriation and provisioning rules tailored to local conditions.
Collective choice arrangements that allow resource appropriators to
participate in decision-making.
Effective monitoring and accountability to appropriators.
Graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate operational
community rules.
Conflict resolution mechanisms that cheap and rapidly accessed.
Self-determination of the community and recognition by higher-level
authorities.
Larger common pool resource systems are organised in the form of
nested enterprises of multiple levels with smaller ones at local base
level.

47. Closing Thought
‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.’
Margaret Mead