The powerful municipalism operating in Naples and Barcelona has concrete lessons for community power in the UK
From cover of “Commoning The Public”
A powerful and subtle paper from the new think-tank Abundance, asking what lessons for the UK can be drawn from city-based municipalist movements in Barcelona and Naples.
Its great virtue is that it points out the differences between these experiments, and the conditions pertaining in the UK. Essentially, that difference rests on the longer and deeper history of privatisation and contracting-out of public services in the UK - which is also connected to the relatively weaker culture of community radicalism in the UK.
Nevertheless, the authors identify ”a key set of policies and practices” from these European examples, which they call public-civic or public-common partnerships. They seem also to be operating with a concept that overarches any prospective new Labour government. Which is that the state “de-risks” enterprises and initiatives, by investing in them early and actively.
The Abundance think-tank wants to argue that this “de-risking” should not solely apply to large corporate investment in projects - but also to communities seeking resources and property to manage, in order to serve local and foundational needs better.
The test cases, richly reported are “the Patrimonio Ciudadano (Citizens Assets) programme in Barcelona” and the “commoning of public assets in Naples”. We encourage you to read the case studies in detail. The innovation is encouraging. For example, in Barcelona’s initiatives they measure progress differently:
The Community Balance metric…is used to “assess territorial roots, social co-responsibility, democratic management, citizen participation, the orientation towards human needs, the commitment to the community and the social return.”
This not only establishes legitimacy for asset transfers, and ensures the program can’t be used as a conduit for privatised outsourcing. It also acts as a form of self-evaluation, helping projects become more embedded in their communities and more universally accessible.
There is also a subtle discussion about the legitimacy that community power needs to establish, before receiving assets from the state - and how a “commons” model of ownership is a way of building and proving that legitimacy.
Their key findings and recommendation very much chime with our political project Spring. They seem to want to construct a parallel polis of cosmolocal enterprise, one that can enlist the state as an “partner” to self-constituting communities:
Participative, democratic models for the community management of assets and public services can not only be effective and efficient but can also be beneficial for democracy more widely. Their operation builds constituencies for their own support and extension while developing the democratic capacities of those who participate in them.
Public-common and public-community partnerships can be constructed to reinforce public services rather than detract from them, particularly if business models which extract value from communities are simultaneously disadvantaged.
•When resolving the organisational logics of the public sector with the more participative democratic practices of communities and social movements, it’s important that the latter isn’t forced to simply conform with the former. The genuine co-production of policy is both possible and valuable.
Social value models which assign economic value to social and solidarity economy activities are effective ways of legitimising those activities to cash strapped local authorities. But they should be supplemented by forms of measure which emerge from and speak to the values of the communities involved.
Legislative and legal activism to establish community usage rights over assets which remain under public ownership should be explored in the UK, as a means for futureproofing both public ownership and common governance.
More here. We recommend a full and careful read.