[Pil-pc-oceania] A Pattern to mimic/Design Methodology required

Thu Apr 10 14:39:07 EST 2008

A Bit more detail on this.  This is from my article "Anarchist and Hybrid Strategies"

The other problem for environmentalists is that the strategies of the social movements now - I mean their NGO and personal lifestyle strategies - are actually best seen as hybrids. But environmentalists see them as perfectly adequate as they are now conceived. The way they envisage an environmentalist utopia is as a capitalist economy in which local money and right livelihood and community banks and sustainable land cooperatives have replaced all those nasty big companies motivated solely by greed. There is still money, there is still wage labour, there is still a state (for a typical example see Mollison 1988). What is necessary to bring this change about is merely a change in culture and the personnel to carry out these strategies on a wider scale. With this kind of vision, environmentalists find it difficult to understand why their jee-whiz you-beaut new economic forms seem to fall apart with amazing regularity despite the best intentions of the founders. Why do land sharing cooperatives get taken over by power and money hungry individuals who manipulate the popular vote? Why do LETS schemes and cooperatives fade from lack of interest? Why do eager proponents of right livelihood end up doing something unthinkable? Half the time these schemes crumble as capitalism reclaims their resources and their personnel. 

In fact each of these strategies is a hybrid that inevitably participates in aspects of the capitalist economy and struggles to implement its more radical aims against the pressures of the real constraints of capitalist work, money systems and engrained cultural norms. It is only the latter that get a look in when environmentalists explain these failures. Even here they usually miss the mark, talking always about greed and consumerism rather than habits of obedience or patriarchal masculinity. Environmentalists can never admit the economic problems of these ventures because the utopia itself is envisaged as continuing on with money, employment and the state. Instead, environmentalists turn to human nature and capitalist culture - it is a failure of moral purity, a failure of will, a lack of strength to make the necessary sacrifices. They call upon the population at large to tighten their belts, invoking a puritan moral position that has little credibility in the postmodern world. People are scared by this and few vote for their solutions. Anyway, these calls to moral purity have been a constant feature of capitalism from the beginning and always act as a useful restraint to keep the system chugging along rather than actually leading to a mass social movement of abstinence and altruism. 

Definition of the Gift Economy - A Reminder

A gift economy is one in which there is no money and no wage labour. Instead people produce things for their own consumption or as gifts for other people. An economy like this would be a vast extension of the kinds of voluntary work now done by citizen groups such as Lions' Clubs or Cleanup Australia. It would not be a return to some earlier pre-industrial tribal society. Clubs and associations would still produce technologically complex goods and services. But these would be produced as gifts, not with the expectation of financial returns. People would be motivated to give by desires for social status and the social pleasure of giving. The standard of living would be the effect of multiple gift networks (Vaneigem 1983). There is no state in a gift economy utopia. Coordination of activity is by links between collectives of producers and consumers, and by collectives of researchers, media and administrative workers.

In terms of ethics, the gift economy operates with an ethic of generosity and egalitarianism. Pleasure is taken from giving to those who are in need. This ethic is not just extended to the human species but also applies to the natural world, with other species being regarded as having ethical value and appreciating gifts of care and concern. 

What is A Hybrid?

A "hybrid" is a radical strategy for situations where capitalism has been not been overthrown decisively. In distinction from a TAZ, a hybrid is not a small island of commendable anti-capitalist practice isolated from the global economy. Instead, "hybrids" are situations in which aspects of capitalist economic, political and social structures are mixed with aspects of a different kind of social and economic structure - that of the gift economy. If advocating hybrids is any kind of anarchism at all, it is definitely a reformist anarchism. That is, it aims to reform capitalism now, the point being to improve experience in a way that fits with anarchist ideals. The point of the exercize is not necessarily to bring about a revolution, although you would have to hope that sooner or later, the revolution - as a complete change in the mode of production - would take place. Hybrids speak directly to the new age critique of "political" strategies. They are not about sacrificing "the now" to long term goals but about making the best out of what is currently available. 

My feeling is that hybrids are the reality of the practice of what have been called the "social movements" - feminism, queer politics, environmentalism, anti-racism, development NGOs. On the other hand, how these practices are conceived, especially in the environment movement, can be a problem. Within the environmentalist movement, the alternative social and economic structures which have been pioneered by the social movements are generally considered as varieties of capitalist practice. They are "civil society", "interest groups", "voluntary organisations", "consumer choice", "career development", "non-profit organisations", "political lobbying" and so on. None of this sounds particularly threatening and it easily appears that capitalism could readily accommodate the demands of the environmentalist movement, given an adequate change in consciousness and a bit of mild political reform - again, nothing new in view of the systems of regulation and government provision that already exist. While this all makes a certain amount of sense empirically, on the ground, what I am recommending is that we view these organisations as hybrids of two types of modes of production - they are attempts to realise some of the goals of the gift economy mode of production in the specific context of capitalism as it now is. They participate in aspects of both of these modes of production. Why am I suggesting what may seem like an excessively complicated approach?

>>> Terry Leahy <Terry.Leahy at newcastle.edu.au> Thursday, 10 April 2008 9:51 am >>>
Hi all,  I am not sure that you can really specify the kinds of systems that can work in any general way (as Bill attempts in chapter 14).  My own view is that what all these attempts (and more recent ideas such as transition towns) have in common is that they are some kind of hybrid between capitalism and the gift economy.  These are in a sense two ideal types of social system that have certain features.  In the present period (prior to a probable major change in social organisation) what we get is mixtures of these two systems which are the means by which social change is moved forwards.  The gift economy represents what society would be like if the vast majority were operating according to the ethical principles of permaculture.  The hybrids represent the kinds of accommodations and partially reformed structures that we have to set up now to advance these ideals in a context where the vast majority of social institutions work according to the principles of capitalism.   

I go into these issues in a fair bit of detail on my website.  http://gifteconomy.octapod.org/ .  Probably the most relevant article is "Anarchist strategies" and especially the second half of that, where I talk about hybrids.  Do not be put off by the title, it is not anarchism as you have probably heard about it!   

Cheers,

Terry

>>> ian lillington <ian at masg.org.au> Tuesday, 8 April 2008 11:10 am >>>
Hi Lawrence, Russ and everyone

The last chapter {#14} of the designers' manual is an interesting essay on this subject,
tho needs updating as it is 20 years old.  Over a number of conversations in the 1990s,
I discussed the idea of permaculture people needing to take chapter 14 and 'flesh it
out' - which some have done in their own ways, but it's not been a coherent [or at least
not very visible process] to me. The APC8 and 9 organisers, in using small groups of 2
or three [troikas] as the main building blocks were taking a leaf from that book

I believe that if permaculture is to have more impact, it does need more focus on the
structures and processes (people stuff) as well as the land-based stuff.  If
permaculture design has NOT reached its limits, I feel the new work [new edges] are in
this area, because [although we could wish for much more of it], permaculture has
proven, demonstrated solutions to [almost] every land-based challenge.  

The people stuff may well be driven, in richer countries, only by fossil fuel becoming
much less available - something that really concentrates the mind and the action....i
liked the review of Albert bates book - thanks Fern.   Seems I will finally have time to
learn to knit.

Ian

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RussGrayson
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Subject: Re: [Pil-pc-oceania] PC Organisation:- A Pattern to mimic/Design Methodology
required

Hi Laurence...
I've seen little conscious design applied to the formation of community
associations. What seems to 

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