Presentton Subtitle
Summary
Rethinking Economics
From Social Welfare State to Neoliberal
Competition State
Human costs of Austerity
Efficiency and Productivity: failure of
conventional economic theory (managerial
economics) to name and manage ‘value’
Feminist economics: non-monetised social
reproductive work
Managing Vulnerability
Rethinking Care
Formulating an alternative to commodification
Broader lens on care
Core economy: inverted sense of ‘value’ in
economic affairs and governance
Co-Production to Commons
Peer-to-Peer
Partner State
•State/Market/Civil Society/Household
•Developing a social market
•Alternative Organisation

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From Social Welfare State → Neoliberal Competition State
How the role of Citizens and the functions of the State have been refashioned:
➢ The Care Act 2014 has refashioned care giving ‘as a fundamentally economic enterprise which
supposedly liberates care recipients by enabling them to engage as economic actors in the market of
social care.’ (Koch, 2018).
➢ The social welfare state from the end of World War II to the 1980s had three functions (Kratzwald, 2012):
➢ Redistributing wealth by means of taxation;
➢ Ensuring protection from individual risks through insurance or transfer payments;
➢ Providing goods and services that were to be available to all for free or at affordable prices;
➢ The purpose was to ensure the sustainability of (unsustainble) market economies (continued growth)
while offering social and economic protection to the most vulnerable.
➢ ‘As the neoliberal economic model prevailed around the world, the role and functions of the state were
redefined (Kratzwald, 2012):
➢ ‘Now the most important task of the state is to ensure competitiveness in the global economy. By
default, the provision of goods and services occurs according to market criteria, or this responsibility is
delegated entirely to private companies with the expectation that they will improve efficiency and
customer responsiveness. This has been an unfulfilled promise, however.’
➢ The state is not a neutral actor but reflects societal power relations.
➢ The State as poor trustee of the public goods entrusted to it

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Why Rethink Care?
• Human costs of austerity. Rising demand and
costs of care against council budget cuts.
• Councils threatened with going bankrupt.
• People in need of support, families and
carers strugglingas they try navigating the
arcane, constantly shiftingand often faceless
fundingsystem.
• Vulnerable people forced to move as care
homes have closed; poor standards of care;
those with no families to fight for them going
without care; selective application of
eligibility criteria to meet savings targets.
• Proportionality: small sums of money relative
to what is being spent elsewhere. Therefore…
• Criticism: lack of calling those responsible to
account or focus on root causes of the crisis?

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Key Quotes:
➢ Friends and relatives provide by far the
biggest volume of adult social care, on a
largely unpaid basis. While it’s value is offset
by the carer’s allowance, it contributes
around £57 billion to adult social care;
equivalent to 75% of the annual budget for
the NHS (Newman et al, 2008)’.
➢ ‘In the UK, there are 6.3 million unpaid carers,
more than 10 times those in paid home
caringroles’ (Conaty, 2014)

Presentton Subtitle
Raising productivity and ‘efficiency’: If you can’t
measure it, you can’t manage it
➢ McKinsey instructedby the Department of Health to provide advice on how
commissioners might achieve greater productivity. Three key themes – driving through
cost efficiencies in provider organisations; optimising spending and ensuring compliance
with standards; and, shifting care into more cost effective settings.
➢ Driving provider productivity is a major focus, with a stated aim to provide more care with
the same level – or less – of staff and resources.
➢ Increasing ‘contact time’is seen as contingent on productivity gains and efficiencies (e.g.
reducing sickness absences).
➢ Improvements in care are seen as an ever increasing efficiency in resource allocation-
expanding labour market flexibility and commodity production.
➢ Other large scale efficiencies that need to be made reducing dependency, optimising
the supply chain and procurement of supplies, and better management (managerial
economics).
McKinsey’s vision for raising productivity in the NHS By Mike Broad - June 9th, 2010
(https://www.hospitaldr.co.uk/)

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Raising productivity and ‘efficiency’
➢ The contribution of feminist economics:
➢ Highlights the treatment of care as a
commodity
➢ Some characterististics that distinguish care
from commodities (Himmelweit, 2018):
➢ Supply and demand for care influenced by social
norms concerning people’s need for care and how
and by whom care should be provided.
➢ Personal relationship between provider and
receiver meaning raising productivity is
problematic (e.g. increasing the number of people
cared for by a care worker). Reducing quality is not
a real productivity increase. Also affected: pay and
conditions of care workers. Trying to increase profits
can only be done at the expense of people
supported and care workers (e.g. keeping wages
low or providing lower quality).
➢ Continuity is of vital importance: care workers learn
how to care for particular people and are not
interchangeable. Changing this is a costly
procedure in emotional terms.
➢ Care workers motivation to care intrinsic to the
quality of care.

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Key Quotes:
➢ ‘It is profoundly false to refer to care as a
product, or to the recipients as clients...It is
the unthinkable urge in a market society to
commodify human and social relations.
Neither state bureaucracy, which
depersonalizes social service recipients, nor
private sector firms, which instrumentalize
recipients as a source of profit, can ever be
suited to the provision of relational goods."
(Restakis 2011).
➢ “Efficiency and productivity thinking has
taken over the sphere of intimacy. There has
been a dramatic destruction of social
knowledge and skill, of autonomous cultures,
and this type of knowledge has been
‘appropriated’...and re-soldto us as
commodities”(Bauwens)

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Vulnerability and the Human Condition (VHC)
➢ How neoliberal economic reforms impact intimate forms of human care (Koch, 2018).
➢ The state, the public, governmentality: Realms referred to as "public“ but manifest through the
state.
➢ Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative (Martha Fineman):
➢ Space where citizens can imagine state support that focuses on the commonalities of the
human condition.
➢ Strategies by which we can mitigate our vulnerability.
➢ Vulnerable not due to characteristics or different stages of life, but that we experience this
with different levels of resilience”
➢ “The inequality of resilience is at the heart of vulnerability theory. No one is born resilient.
Rather, resilience is produced within and through institutions and relationships that confer
privilege and power. Those institutions and relationships, whether deemed public or private,
are at least partially definedand reinforcedby law”
➢ Systematic (and cultural) processes of denial and fear of dependency and vulnerability
(Dartington, 2012).
➢ ‘The most important characteristic of vulnerability is openness to experiences in which outcomes
cannot be known in advance.’ (Huffington Post)

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What are the alternatives?

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Key Quotes:
➢ ‘Care both of the self and others are
meaningful activities in their own right;
they involve us all, men and women, old
and young, able bodied and disabled.
Care is an ethic that binds all’. (Jackson,
2018)
➢ ‘...caring for others is a moral activity,
one which is founded on a recognition
of shared vulnerability. It is precisely by
reconnecting the moral value of care
with the political and
economic conditions in which [carers]
perform their labour that we can begin
to formulate an alternative...’ (Koch,
2018)

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Co-Production: Radical Critique of Public Services
➢ Coined at University of Indiana in the 1970s by Elinor Ostrom to help explain to the Chicago Police
Force that they needed communities as much as the communities needed them. Emphasis is on a
sense of interdependence: relationality between the public (citizenry) and the state.
➢ People who need support becoming active participants in its design and delivery.
➢ Co-Production is based on a vision of the Core Economy, a vision that inverts the ways in which
economics often falsely see care as holding no value (as it can’t easily be reduced to a commodity
with a price, calculations of efficiency or productivity).
➢ “An economy based on relationships and mutuality, on trust and engagement, on speaking and
listening and caring – and above all on authentic respect.”(Kahn, 2008)
➢ “The core economy is made up of all the resources embedded in people's everyday lives – time,
energy, wisdom, experience, knowledge and skills – and the relationships between them – love,
empathy, watchfulness, care, reciprocity, teaching and learning.” (Kahn, 2008)
➢ “This Core Economy is comprised essential social reproductive work no state could afford - usually
non-monetized - and often referred to as reciprocity in the informal care or community services,
odd jobs, sharing problems, acts of kindness; association which fosters our human qualities and
guard against community breakdown.” (Sutton, 2018)
➢ Scarcity: neither the Economy nor the Welfare State could function without the abundance of this
core economy.

Presentton Subtitle
Co-Production: Possible shortfalls
Co-Production:
➢ Power relations? Current reality is awkward synergy of dysfunctional Market-State and myth of
rational, economic Citizens (Homoeconomicus);
➢ The whole of work? How to overcome the structural divisions between productive work and care
work (includingeducation, health, household, etc.);
➢ Liberal-individualist notions of ‘the social’ (marginalization of sociality/relationality?Conservative
notions of welfare dependency)? Public goods are not concessions, but belong to the people as a
matter of life necessity (Mattei, 2012);
➢ Critical recognition of both ecological and social value? Strategies needed to keep surplus value
within the cycle of production itself to address a failure in much conventional economic
organisation to take into account negative externalities (e.g. the environment, social costs, future
generations).
➢ Division of labour? Hierarchical distinction, separations of producers and consumers that can
impede effective co-production / self-provisioning of citizens and communities.
➢ Entrepreneurship? Distinguishing creativity and innovation from Capitalism.
➢ Doesn’t distinguish commons goods from public goods (see Quilligan, 2012). Citizens must have the
capability and power to make decisions, choices, rules and priorities based on the commons.
➢ BUT ‘…what is lackingis the blend of organizational form and public policy that can combine
empoweringand socializingdelivery models on the one hand with new economic and power
sharingrelations with the state on the other’. (Retakis, 2011)

Presentton Subtitle
Key Question
James Quilligan (2012): Does this particular
resource require management as a social
mandate or is it an expression of social mutuality
and collaboration?In other words, is this
property best maintainedby government or the
public?

Presentton Subtitle
The Commons
➢ ‘...has been steadily gathering increasing attention and advocates [as] a key ingredient for change in diverse
locations and contexts around the world…rethinking work, politics, production and care, both interpersonal and
environmental’ (P2P Foundation).
➢ ‘Shared Resources Co-governed by its user community, according to the rules and norms of that community’
(Bollier, 2014):
➢ Subsistence Commons: land, water, forests, fisheries;
➢ Knowledge Commons: Proprietary vs. open access. Knowledge in the public sphere: gains value though
open access, sharing, and collaboration. Subject to ‘enclosure’ and artificially imposed scarcity: intellectual
property rights, patenting, licensing, overpricing.
➢ Digital / Internet Commons (e.g. Wikipedia, ‘commons-based peer production’ platform): Knowledge in
digital form. Access to information through the Internet.
➢ Business / Organizational Commons: New types of market structures embedded in communities / socially
embedded businesses. ‘Communities of users’ democratizing innovation and entrepreneurship.
➢ Labour Commons: democratized organization of productive and reproductive work, e.g. worker
cooperative (associated labour, workplace democracy, surplus redistribution, cooperation among
cooperatives) - requires interconnection with other commons. (De Peuter & Dyer-Witheford, 2011).
➢ Social and Civic Commons: Cooperation to develop new types of self-provisioning; relationships and
activities through which we help each other participate. Time Banking, public libraries, parks, social care
cooperatives and land trusts:
➢ Commonfare (‘Welfare of the Commons’): ...distributed solidarity mechanisms. Open-source,
democratic, and multi-constituent social provision networks and practices. Labour Mutuals, freelancer
coops and prefigurative solidarity networks are in the vanguard, but Commonfare mechanisms would
ideally be financed by a Partner State. (P2P Foundation).
➢ State as Trustee: Stewardship to better manage resources for public benefit (BUT belongs to the people).

Presentton Subtitle
Peer-to-peer (Source: P2P Foundation)
➢ Commons are created and maintained by a relational dynamic called peer-to-peer through which
peers freely collaborate with one another to create value in the form of shared resources.
➢ Peer-to-peer describes the capacity to contribute to the creation and maintenance of these
shared resources.
➢ A mode of relationshipthat allows humans to be connected and organised in (often digital but not
always) networks to collaborate, produce and share in an open and contributory way, in ways that
nourish the commons.
➢ P2P is essentially about non-coercive, non-hierarchic relations, could be said to be a means of
facilitatingthe process of collectively managed resources by building capacity to contribute to its
creation and maintenance.
➢ As a new social value logic, it also signifies a break from capitalism: “In Capitalism, value is mostly
related to things, that is commodities, and is expressed in their exchange…In the realm of P2P,
value is attributed to contributions as a shared effort among peers, and is reflected in the shared
significance of those contributions as recognised by those peers” (Bauwens et al, 2019)
➢ Diverse Skills and Motivations: Work organised by allocating resources through price signals, or
through hierarchical command. In contrast, [P2P] “is in principle open to anyone with the skills to
contribute to a joint project: the knowledge of every participant is pooled” (Bauwens et al, 2019).

Presentton Subtitle
Care as a Commons
Economics and the Commons Conference 2013:
➢ Recognizes “the whole of work”, which means to overcome the structural divisions between
productive work and care work (education, health, social care, household, etc.)
➢ Not a product that is bought and sold in the market, but managed as a commons.
➢ Overcome structural causes of gender inequality and the markets externalization of care and
nature
Peer-to-Peer Foundation:
➢ Long-term: Care is a process, not an isolated feeling or a momentary relationship. Care is relational:
mutual trusting, patience, honesty, humility, hope and courage. A way of being in the world.
➢ “In the context of a person’s life, caringhas a way of ordering other values and activities around it.
When this orderingis comprehensive, there is a basic stability in one’s life; one is ‘in-place’ in the
world, instead of beingout of place. Through caring...a person lives the meaning of his or her own
life...not through dominating, or explaining, or appreciating, but through caring and being cared
for”. (Mayeroff, 1990)

Presentton Subtitle
Q1. Could the Commons be a more participatory
and empowering citizen-led principle for social
care and public welfare? (tapping into people’s
intrinsic motivation to care and inclusive of
carers and care work livelihoods).
Q2. Could Peer-to-Peer (P2P) support this by
building capacity and by facilitating open
contributory processes among peers
collaborating (multi-stakeholdership) based on
new understandings, distributed networks and
commons-based care infrastructures?
Q3. To what extend could the state be a partner in
this?
P2P-Commons Governance and possible outcomes
➢ Pool Knowledge and understanding;
➢ Transform social relations within and between
organisations;
➢ Connections between peers;
➢ Conviviality: reduce isolation and loneliness;
➢ Enhance Co-production: revolutionise relations
between citizen and state.
State support?

Presentton Subtitle
Partner State: Supporting the development of Commons
➢ The Partner State (various: Bauwens & Restakis):
➢ ...is the concept whereby public authorities play a
sustaining role in the ‘direct creation of value by civil
society’;
➢ ...is an opportunity to salvage what is good and
necessary in the apparatus of government while
opening it to those civic values that alone can
restore legitimacy to it;
➢ ...empowers the social creation of value by its citizens
[protecting] the infrastructure of cooperation that is
the whole of society.
➢ ...would include, not oppose, the welfare state
model. It would retain the solidarity functions of the
welfare state, but eliminate bureaucracy in the
delivery of its services to its citizens (e.g. See Bauwens
et al 2019)...enlarging the scope of social economy
activities throughout the economy;
➢ ...active citizenship for the common good;
➢ ...the political expression of a society in which
knowledge, economics, and social policy are all in
service to civic values and the common good.

Presentton Subtitle
Partner State: Commoning (Mike Hales)

Presentton Subtitle
Partner State: Developing a Social Market in Care Services
(Social Coops)
➢ Shifting the production of social care delivery from government to democratically structured civil
institutions, with government retaining its role as prime funder to these services.
➢ Government funding should flow direct to people who need support who would then select services they
need from a choice of accredited organisations. Independent consumer cooperatives should be funded
to assist people (e.g. without mental capacity) and their families in the identification, evaluation and
contracting of care services.
➢ Social care organisations must have the legal ability to raise capital from members and civil society more
generally on the basis of social investing.
➢ Surpluses generated by these social care organisations with public funding would need to be held
as social assets and a reserve held for the expansion and development of that organisation and its
services.
➢ The primary role of government would be to continue to provide funding for social care and establish the
rules of the game, in partnership with service providers, caregivers and people who need support.
➢ Service design and the assessment of need would take place at the community and regional level of
delivery. This decentralisation must include the democratisation of decision making through the sharing of
control rights with people who need support and care givers.

Presentton Subtitle
Partner State: Alternative Organisation
Open Cooperativism: Combining Commons and P2P approaches with cooperatives
Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives based on the Common Good:
➢ Critique of cooperatives (commonstransition.org)...
➢ Prone to developing competitive mentalities;
➢ Can resemble corporations in their organizational behaviours, cultures and management.
➢ Work for members; not common good;
➢ Not necessarily producing or reproducing commons;
➢ Local, not necessarily global.
➢ Proposals...
➢ Cooperatives must work for the common good, a requirement that must be included in their own statutes
and governance documents (see Social Solidarity Cooperatives).
➢ Cooperatives must include all stakeholders in their management. not necessarily producing or reproducing
commons.
➢ Cooperatives must (co-)produce commons of two types: Material and Immaterial.
➢ Address the issue of global social and political power the creation of global phyles. A phyle is a global
business-ecosystem that sustains commons and their community of contributors.

Presentton Subtitle
Partner State: Alternative Organisation (Robin Murray)
➢ Buurtzorg: social enterprise under Dutch law and managerless network of several thousand District
Nurses formed by Jos De Blok in 2006. This not-for-profit organisation is drawing interest both in the
Netherlands and elsewhere as a genuinely person focused and democratic organizational form,
born out of former District Nurse De Blok’s passion and frustration with his profession falling foul to
managerial principles of productivity, protocols and administration – losing its social value.
➢ Some key features:
➢ Distribution of management to informal networks around any individual - friends, family,
volunteers - who become part of a more democratic process of service design, planning and
delivery.
➢ This sets free the motivation of the carers: ‘The Economy of Motivation’ is central to the success
of Buurtzorg.
➢ Pooling resources: People who need support help generate and assemble resources around
their particular needs; a structure that enables people to go from passive consumers to real
participators.
➢ Support for the teams themselves come from Team Coaches as sources of advice and support.
➢ Peer-to-peer: Access to the collective intelligence in the organisation via the platform:
Buurtzorgweb. This enables people to connect on a peer-to-peer basis; space for discussion,
innovation and new ideas
➢ Nurses aren’t stuck in admin. High level of care receiver and worker satisfaction, low labour
turnover, crucial for consistency and relational basis of care. The key feature is trust.

Presentton Subtitle
References
Bauwens, M (2005)Peer t o Peer and Human Evolut ion Integral Visioning
Bauwens et al. (2019) Peer t o Peer: The Commons Manifesto London: Universityof Westminster Press
Bauwens et al. (2017) Commons Transit ion: A Primer Transnational Institute
Bollier, D (2014)Think Like a Commoner Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers
Bollier & Weston (2013)Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Humans Rights and t he Law of t he Commons New York: Cambridge
Boyle, D (2008)Co-Product ion: A Manifesto for Growing t he Core Economy New Economics Foundation
Broad, M (2010)McKinsey’s vision for raising product ivityin t he NHS https://www.hospitaldr.co.uk/
Conaty, P (2014) Social Co-operat ives: a Democrat ic Co-product ion Agenda for Care Cooperatives UK Website
Dartington, T (2010) Managing Vulnerability: The Underlying Dynamics of Syst ems of Care London: Carnac Books
De Peuter, G & Witheford, N (2010)Commons and Cooperat ives Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action
Fineman, M (2008) The Vulnerable Subject Volume 20 Issue 1 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism
Fineman, M (2012) 'Elderly' as Vulnerable: Ret hinking the Nature of Individual and Societ al Responsibility Emory Legal Studies
Himmelweit , S (2018)Feminist Economics (Ret hinking Economics) New York: Routledge
Hales, M (2019)Unpublished ret rieved from email correspondence
Holmes, L (2017)8 Habits of Act ivelyVulnerable People Huffington Post
Jackson, R (2018)Reforming Social Care The Centre for Welfare Reform Sheffield: Centre for Welfare Reform
Koch, I (2018) The Labour of Care Blog April 2018 LSE
Kahn, E (2008) Co-product ion: A manifesto for growing t he core economy (Foreword) New Economics Foundation
Kratzwald, B (2012)Ret hinkingthe Welfare State in Light of t he Commons (WOTC) Amhurst: Levellers Press
Mattei, U (2012) First thoughts for a Phenomenology of Commons (WOTC) Amhurst: Levellers Press
Mayeroff, M (1990)On Caring New York: Harper Collins
Murray, R. (2015) Unpublished report on Buurt zorg ret rieved via email correspondence
Newman et al. (2008) Beyond modernisation? Social care and t he t ransformation of welfare governance Journal of Social Policy
Quilligan, J (2012) Why Distinguish Commons Goods from Public Goods? (WOTC) Amhurst: Levellers Press
Restakis, J (2011) Humanizing the Economy: Cooperat ives in t he Age of Capit al Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers
Restakis, J (Unknown)The Part ner State and t he SolidarityEconomy http://www.geo.coop/story/partner-state-and-solidarity-economy
Spash, C (2018) Ecological Economics (Ret hinking Economics) New York: Routledge
Sutton, J (2018) Asset -based work with communities Dartington: Research in Practice for Adults

Presentton Subtitle
Contact: thomasallan2000@hotmail.com

The Partner State

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