Public-Commons Partnership

Contextual Citation

Pat Conaty:

"We should link up social-public partnership and Commons-Public Partnerships. The important point to highlight is that social or commons must precede the state. Our elected representatives need to become again public servants and arrogant masters need to be rapidly recalled." (email, February 2014)

Discussion

The Public-Commons Partnership is a concept proposed by Tommaso Fattori, Italian commons activist, to replace the concepts of:

- public-private partnership and public-public partnership

Tommaso Fattori:

"The field of Commons can be for the most part identified with a public but not-state arena, in which the actions of the individuals who collectively take care of, produce and share the Commons are decisive and fundamental.

In this sense, Commons and commoning can become a means for transforming public sector and public services (often bureaucracy-bound and used to pursue the private interests of lobby groups): a means for their commonification (or commonalization). Indeed, there are many possible virtuous crossovers between the traditional public realm and the realm of Commons.

Commonification goes beyond the simple de-privatization of the public realm: Commonification basically consists of its democratization, bringing back elements of direct self-government and self-managing, by the residents themselves, of goods and services of general interest (or participatory management within revitalized public bodies). Commonification is a process in which the inhabitants of a territory regain capability and power to make decisions, to orientate choices, rules and priorities, reappropriating themselves of the very possibility of governing and managing goods and services in a participatory manner (1): it is this first-person activity which changes citizens into commoners. Generally, there are a series of circumstances (including living space and time schedules, job precariousness and other difficult work conditions, the urbanization of land and the complexity of infrastructures) which do not physically allow the inhabitants of a large metropolis to completely self-manage fundamental services such as water utilities or public transport, bypassing the Municipalities and the public bodies (or managing without public funds to finance major infrastructure works): it is on the other hand possible to include elements of self-government and commoning in the distinct stages of general orientation, planning, scheduling, management and monitoring of the services. At the same time it is necessary to also give back public service workers an active role in co-management. Which means going the other way down the road as compared to the privatization of that which is “public”.

But there are also other overlaps possible between the idea of public and that of Commons, apart from the necessary creation of legislative tools which can protect and encourage Commons and commoning. Several forms of Public-Commons partership can be developed, where the role of state is realigned, from its current support and subsidising of private for-profit companies, towards supporting commoning and the creation of common value. This can be achieved through tax exemptions, subsidies and empowerment of sharing and commoning activities, but also, for example, by allocating public and state-owned goods to common and shared usage thanks to projects which see public institutions and commoners working together. (2) This is a road which could be the beginning of a general transformation of the role of the state and of local authorities into partner state, “namely public authorities which create the right environment and support infrastructure so that citizens can peer produce value from which the whole of society benefits”, according to the definition of it given by Michel Bauwens (3)."

Notes:

1) Naturally, the commonification of a service presupposes first of all that the collective goods reguired to satisfy their needs and fundamental rights are managed according to a model which is not based on market logic and profits.

2) At the present time there are examples of degraded or unused public buildings which local administrations have targeted for projects of self-recovery and co-housing, which involve social groups who are not “poor enough” to be entitled to public housing programmes but nor are they in a position to buy themselves a house (normally young people in medium-low income brackets). The future residents receive a lease to use the publicly-owned buildings for a pre-defined number of years (in order to allow an actual shared use of the areas recovered) in exchange for a certain number of hours' work on the building site (and a modest monetary contribution): the residents' community is built, centred around a project, even before they live together. Another possible example is that of the repopulating of some abandoned areas in the mountains of Tuscany, where the Regional administration has held to the non-saleability of the common land and has activated a project to reconstitute communities of commoners who, grouped into cooperatives and other forms of association, have been able to buy and restore the abandoned buildings, return the common land to cultivation and take care of the woodland.

3) Bauwens points out that, to avoid the risk that the concept of partner state be confused with plans to dismantle the welfare state, along the “big society” model: “the peer production of common value requires civic wealth and strong civic institutions. In other words, the partner state concept transcends and includes the best of the welfare state, such as the social solidarity mechanisms, strong educational systems and a vibrant and publicly supported cultural life. What the British Tories did was to use the Big Society rhetoric to attempt to further weaken the remnants of social solidarity, and throw people to fend for themselves. This was not enabling and empowering; it was its opposite.” Bauwens M., The Partner State & Ethical Economy, July 2012. See: http://www.shareable.net

More Information

• See also: the Commonification_of_Public_Services

Concept proposed by Tommaso Fattori, Italian commons activist:

" the "commonalization" or "commonification" of the Public (ex the commonalization of the public services, like the water utilities), mainly through democratic participation of the people, transforming the citizens in commoners "