After Eleonor Ostrom’s work on the commons was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, interest in the concept, which promotes the viability of community-centred resource governance and control in place of private or state options, has seen a resurgence.
One critical approach that has since emerged argues that the commons are not only distinct from capitalism but are directly opposed and in conflict with it. Some early renditions of this line of thinking focused especially on digital technology’s potential to challenge capitalism’s foundational assumption of scarcity. More recently, this somewhat techno-determinist view has evolved into more nuanced analyses of how commons-oriented collaboration, sharing and democracy, executed across the economy more broadly, could potentially outcompete capitalist forms of production. To get a better sense of what this more far-reaching embrace of ‘commonification’ entails, we can consider just one particular sector of the economy: the critical material buttress on which the digital realm depends – electricity provision.
Like the internet, electricity has often been viewed as an empowering technological breakthrough. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan claimed that ‘electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes’ – electricity provides people with the opportunity to do anything almost anywhere. Yet, as with the internet over 100 years later, the potential of electricity has been fundamentally coopted by capitalist rationales, as reflected in two key geographical realities. One is the presence of peripheral zones hosting sacrificial mining wastelands on which the ubiquitous energy consumption in distant, privileged zones depends. The other is that even in these favoured locales, and contrary to Luhan’s vision, electricity production and consumption is largely controlled via a centralised infrastructure operating under the singular logic of making profit.
What, then, could an alternative, commons approach to our electricity provision look like? A first step, rooted in a commitment to reevaluating our current economic logic, would be to critically evaluate our relation to energy more broadly. Think, for instance, of the millions of wealthy citizens of the Global North who regularly feel compelled to go camping in an effort to leave their stressful, energy-fuelled lives behind. Clearly, the assumption that more energy always leads to greater wellbeing is flawed, opening up the opportunity to weigh the value of ever-increasing energy use against other things such as leisure time, justice, social sustainability, and the pursuit of quality and beauty.
Still, some energy needs/wants will nonetheless remain. To begin, we should avoid the common notion that the answer here is simply to slap copious amounts of solar panels and wind generators onto roofs and fields. In such an outlook, energy remains dissociated from our natural and human worlds. To avoid this pitfall, an intentional commons-oriented framework acknowledges the inherent power asymmetries and injustices at work in our energy-centred commodity chains, including in the provision of greener energy forms. Abundant reports on the horrors of mining associated with renewable energy are a testament to this. A commons-oriented alternative, therefore, must ensure that the material basis of energy provision is sourced conscientiously. While we must start by seeking enforceable human welfare and sustainability standards throughout the supply chain, the longer-term effort would necessarily centre on fundamentally empowering the workers and land residents themselves, giving them control over the process and reward distribution of any raw material extraction.
Similar commons-based thinking comes into play in the actual delivery of electricity, where the primary imperative centres on bringing the requisite infrastructure under community control. This intentional exodus from corporate Big Energy could then unleash electricity as a universally enabling tool as conceived by McLuhan. Such an exodus could, for instance, take the form of intentional off-gridding via microgeneration, as emphasised by the tiny house movement. In other cases, where grid independence is unfeasible, greater energy self-determination can be pursued via increasingly affordable renewable energy production/distribution networks at smaller scale, often in the form of more democratic municipal or cooperative utilities.
A recent referendum in Berlin seeking to create such a community-centred public utility included demands for transparency, worker and resident representation on the board, and options for neighbourhood input and decision making through assemblies and petitions. It is, in the end, only through such forms of ‘commonification’ that communities would be allowed to pursue their own relation to energy, one that often goes beyond capitalist values and imperatives. The Nez Perce tribe in Idaho managed to establish their own solar-powered municipal utility as a way to hasten the removal of four downriver hydroelectric dams. Doing so would once again allow salmon runs on ancestral lands, a critical component of their tribal identity.
There is no doubt that energy commonification remains an uphill struggle for most communities, especially where efforts remain localised and limited to grassroots activism. The role of the state in such struggles must come to the fore. Lest we forget, New Deal policies were a primary driver for the expansion of electricity cooperatives and public utilities in the United States. Granted, most of these still fall short when it comes to demands for true democratisation, which is where local/grassroot pressures become important. Nevertheless, in terms of creating the macro-level conditions that would allow for non-corporate utilities to become dominant, the importance of state support is hard to ignore. Commoners, who are generally quite wary of the state, would nonetheless do well to keep this in mind when thinking through their bid for a commonified economy.
Hannes Gerhardt is Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia.
From Capital to Commons by Hannes Gerhardt is available on the Bristol University Press website. The ebook is £27.99 and the hardback £90.99. Order here.
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