Their human nature arguments are baseless cynicism—compeerist movements can compete in capitalist markets while gaining support because of their inherently democratic nature

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Coping With Money’s Monopoly on Value.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 143-146. /LJS

It is in light of the shortcomings entailed in the tactics of exit and gifting that the need to engage markets becomes apparent. John Restakis, approaching this issue from the perspective of cooperatives, argues: ‘To cut off a collective, whether a commons, co-operative or the wider social economy, from the world of markets and money is self-delusional and ineffective, it undermines the purpose of these organizations, which is to socialize and democratize the economy’ (quoted in Bollier and Conaty, 2016, p 11). Building on this line of thinking, the compeerist framework holds that market engagement by formal commons-oriented actors makes up a critical source of wealth that is needed to expand the commons and ultimately challenge capital, especially since the feasibility of a revolutionary, forced commonification is rejected. The fundamental proposition here is that compeerist-aligned organizations and enterprises, with the support of tailored emerging technologies and an increasingly commons-centric socio-economic political environment, could usurp the current mode of production by outcompeting capital within the market itself. Despite having market generated revenue, these entities would still be part of the commons realm because of the non-capitalist values they embrace and operate by. We have seen these values play out, for instance, in the way profit is made subservient to the pursuit of the commons and commoning, the focus on worker empowerment and fair remuneration; and the efforts made to include the community as a stakeholder with legitimate claims to economic democracy and revenue sharing. Following from this, the earnings generated should not be understood as ‘profit’ in the traditional sense, but rather as a transvestment of wealth from capital to the commons. Furthermore, and in distinction to gifting, the market engagement that is the source of this transvestment is simultaneously seeking to displace capital in the market of goods, services, and labour, hence offering a fully-fledged alternative to the organization of our productive capacities. The major question begged in this proposal, however, is whether such a compeerist form of production could ever truly thrive to achieve significant scale. On the one hand, following Rosa Luxemburg (2011), there is the issue of non-capitalist economic endeavours failing to achieve critical mass as they refuse to take advantage of extractive/exploitative operational tactics. On the other hand, the obverse corollary of this point (often emphasized by anarchists and autonomists) is that if scale actually is achieved through market engagement, it generally comes at the cost of the motivating values being espoused. The increasingly profit-oriented attitudes and actions of large cooperatives, like the Mondragon Corporation, are here often referenced as a case in point. Nonetheless, the previous chapters have attempted to show that a commons-based trajectory out of capital’s dominance in various economic sectors is conceivable, but it would by no means be given or easy; the inability to match capital’s market-capturing tactics, or becoming corrupted in the process of trying, are both immense challenges. In response to the former, compeerists are tasked with finding non-extractive/exploitative sources of market competitiveness that can match those of capitalists. As we have seen, the focus in such a pursuit has generally fallen on the imperative to leverage boundary-commoning advantages, like peer-property regimes, while additionally seeking government-sourced policies/interventions to establish more commons-friendly market conditions. The critical need to bring about alternative financial/monetary arrangements in such efforts, in turn, is a key focus in this chapter and in the next. Yet the latter challenge identified, pertaining to the corruption of compeerist ideals, has not yet been fully addressed, especially in those instances where it cannot simply be traced back to market exigencies. Indeed, in the case of the Mondragon Corporation covered in Chapter 5, it is, in the end, difficult to assess the degree to which market pressures forced the mega-cooperative to abandon its worker co-op commitments when shifting manufacturing overseas. Given its market positions and overall revenue, it could be argued that such a capitulation to exchange-value driven rationales was not necessary, and hence that this move can be traced to an internal loss of direction. We can, hence, briefly review a number of compeerist-aligned business practices and strategies that can ultimately be adopted to avoid such potential internal digressions, which pose a legitimate threat to the compeerist vision of achieving a post-capitalist future via market engagement. A first critical step here would be for compeerist-aligned enterprises to establish a public mission, vision, and values statement as well as intentionally formulated and legally binding bylaws regulating operational procedures. These foundational documents would include norms against abetting extractive capital actors while supporting the aim of inclusive, boundary commoning. Also, in line with Ostrom’s insights concerning effective commons governance, they would reflect a commitment to openness, inclusion, and democracy both in terms of internal operations and stakeholder relations. Indeed, exclusionary or discriminatory practices, which can also be found in commons production, are not only viewed by true compeerists as inherent ‘bads’ that vitiate the vision of a better, commons-based future, they are also recognized as being antithetical to the overarching strategy of expanding and hence fortifying the commons (Stavrides, 2016; 2019; Pentzold, 2021). In other words, it is only through an intentional openness that the commons can be expected to gain supporters, grow, and hence ever achieve a release from exchange-value’s monopoly on economic organization. In applying this philosophy to stakeholdership relations more broadly, we find there is significant room to expand inclusion within existing cooperative arrangements. Hence, while commons-based worker cooperatives and open value-networks are well placed to look after the interests of their workers, preferably, they would also recognize the community and end-users linked to this production as ‘invested parties’ with rights to participate. Similarly, non-profits, member-cooperatives, and municipalities engaged in commons oriented service provisions should ensure that their members and constituents, as well as the workers themselves, have a say in how these services are generated and delivered. An important consequence of broadening democratization in these ways is that it helps prevent a corruption of values, ensuring that the relevant entities remain focused on serving the community. While establishing an expansive formal commons-based subeconomy operating according to the ideals noted here will undoubtedly take time, the logistical execution of such governance regimes is becoming ever more feasible. For instance, the Loomio app developed by the New Zealand based Enspiral collaborative is designed to help organizations achieve buy-in and manage decision making using various functionalities like proposal-making tools, poll taking, feedback forums, and secure voting (Loomio, nd). As discussed in Chapter 2 when considering the potential of such technology for open-value-networks, it is likely that we will soon see even more capabilities to control operational procedures via the use of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), where the rules and procedures of an economic entity are coded directly into its internal decision-making mechanisms. In sum, then, if compeerists can pursue both the right external and internal tactics to gain market competitiveness without becoming corrupted, then the market engagement response to the monopoly of exchange-value with which we started the chapter, represents a further strategic route to be pursued beyond that of exit and gifting. Yet, the advantage here is that market involvement offers commons-oriented actors both an option to access the resources they need while also directly challenging capital’s grip on consumers and labour; this makes it the lynchpin of compeerism’s overall evolutionary approach to achieving a post-capitalist mode of production.