Now for the most basic principles of a college - or actually, *patterns* of college practice. These are patterns of *commoning*, and patterns of *livelihood* in commons production.
**Patterns and practices of commoning in the college** The mutualist, collaborative ethos that is fundamental in the basic practice of pods is an instance of commoning. Commoning was introduced early in this exploration of formaciòn, in developing Robin’s map of ‘four economies’. As regards the partner organisations of the college, commoning comprises the skilful, literate, freely available *enjoying* (mobilising) of the pattern language commons; and - as regards the college schools - both the enjoying and the *curating* (assembling, making) of that commons.
There are in fact three kinds of commons in the college:
- *Digital means* - a commons of running code: the complex infrastructure through which digital media are handled: pattern descriptions, federated wikis, video calls, emails and other asynchronous and synchronous communications; the administrative documentation and interaction of the college too. As an intrinsically distributed organisation (‘without walls’), a large proportion of the activity of the college hinges on digital means.
- *Pattern descriptions* - a systematically curated collection of (largely digital) documents, distributed across schools and faculties, widely mobilised. But as noted earlier (discussing practice rather than theory as a container and crucible) it’s not the documents that are the containers of capability, so much as the *practice* that curates and mobilises them. Thus the commons here is in fact a commons of **pattern language(ing) capability** (aka labour power).
- Labour power of *making the living economy*. This commons doesn’t reside within the college, it lives in the web of collaborative partnerships that the college has - curating, mobilising and stewarding - with its partner enterprises who are making the living economy: *coops, social enterprises, mutuals, regional food networks, taxi collectives, care collectives, utilities, waste handlers, health workers, city planners, city farmers, biodiversity cultivators and defenders*, etc etc. With regard to this commons - the fundamental commons - the practice of the college is a practice of **dual power**, and the patterns at stake are those implicated in the dance of provisioning that is highlighted in Robin’s map of ‘four economies’ and a ‘new social economy’, with its tacit *altered relations of production* that put commoning at the hub.
Each of these pattern families has its school in the college: ‘Digital means’ in the Faculty of subsistence work, patterns and ‘Pattern language(ing)’ in the Faculty of formaciòn work and ‘Dual power’ in the Faculty of stewarding work.
Alongside its exterior contribution, each of these schools has a major interior contribution in the operation of the college. This inside-outside duality is true of all schools, but particularly so of these, which have a direct operational bearing on the material practice of the college.
What makes a commons is **stewarding**; unstewarded, a ‘commons’ is simply an unregulated common pool - the kind of thing parodied in Garrett Hardin’s ill-conceived, rational-actor parody of commons as ‘a tragedy’. Thus stewarding of commons is a particularly important family of patterns to be curated and mobilised in the college.
This is not simple, since, as underlined for example by the investigations of David Bollier and Silke Helfrich \[Bollier & Helfrich xxx], each commons is particular: its own means to curate and contribute, its own patterns of enjoying and mobilising; and its own necessities and traditions of stewarding.
*Several traditions for designing stewarding* In my own engagement with commons governance of digital infrastructure, it’s become clear that several traditions bear strongly on this, but that none is adequate or mature enough, and some kind of hybridising across quite distinct (sometimes contradictory) radical traditions is called for in the theory and practice of the college. In addition to the self-identifying movements for new commons, we need at least to consider . .
- The P2P/Git production tradition, recently emerged under post-Fordism in *free software* - The eight-generations old consumer (actually, multistakeholder) *coop tradition*, and - The post-soviet dual power traditions of *‘movement’ organisations*.
These latter are generally too ‘political’ and not ‘economic’ enough, over-concerned with assemblies and debates, and too little with matters of material practice and direct articulation of material practice, which typically is relegated to ‘the roots’ in the name of autonomy and spontaneous creativity (or is arrogated to the State in collectivist State socialism).
The foprop pattern language does not trust in a simple way to spontaneous creativity and recognises that commoning calls on far more than autonomy; this is why there are Faculties of Care work and Subsistence work - literacies here need to be refined and cultivated. They are not low-hanging ripe fruit, waiting to fall when the tree gets shaken.
Democratic assemblies of familiar kinds - in consumer coops, in movement organisations - are nowhere near capable enough, in handling counter-intuitive systemic complexity and the design and mobilising of infrastructures - partly because they reproduce the separation of decision making and making that is part of the architecture of the liberal-democratic state, creating a ‘political’ domain distinct from life and work.
There is hope that recently emerged *‘solidarity economy’* formations \[Razeto xxx, SolidarityNYC xxx, RIPESS xxx] are learning to move systemically upscale in these 'dual power' dimensions, combining social justice, resistance, economic re-weaving and regime-change, in a dance of trans-local *collaborations of provisioning*.
Commons traditions themselves seem to pivot on ‘care work’ of an intimate and intensive kind; but given how *many* commons are implicated in the conduct of life (three, even in the college!). If ‘care fatigue’ isn’t to be endemic, bringing confusion and systematic over-extension of capability, there’s clearly a need to develop a refined capacity (ie a pattern repertoire) for stewarding *commons-of-commons* (in the Faculty of stewarding work), and a subtle recognition (in the Faculty of care work) of different legitimate *orders of contribution*, greater and lesser.
**Patterns of livelihood and contribution in commoning - Political economy in the mutual sector** This last matter of care work and its balance (aka dance) with other modes of work is the generator of the second basic family of patterns of college practice: patterns of livelihood and contribution. There’s an inescapably complex political economy of . .
- *Funding* - the ‘grant-funded’ labour that Robin over-emphasised in his ‘four economies'; the world of foundations and NGOs; and the world of ‘accumulation in the commons’ (which Robin almost refers to in sketching ‘intentional ecologies’ \[Murray 2013, *Strengthening alternatives systems*, 8], and engaged with a couple of years later, as ‘democratic money and capital for the commons’ \[Bollier & Conaty 2015, xxxx];
- *Livelihood* - inside or outside of wage work and markets;
- Volunteer contributions - the generous mutuality or *‘gift economy’* of the mutual sector (based on waged income? pension income? basic national income? state benefits? Hardly to be taken for granted as free-standing);
- ‘Free’ *household* labour - typically under patriarchy, filial duty, and other modes of supremacy and dependence, although sometimes genuinely under 'gift'; and
- *Community service* expectations among commoners, specified under commons governance: care work in enjoying and curating the commons . .
. . all of these, coupled *inter alia* with . . - “the dull compulsion of economic relations” \[Marx 1867 *Capital* vol 1, ch 28: ‘Bloody legislation against the expropriated, from the end of the 15th century’] - the relentless shit work of just keeping stuff in order, which moth and rust and the Third Law of Thermodynamics doth corrupt, and - the emotional and material labour of care for those members of the community who are dependent.
This is a *very* complex political economy. Its emergent and eventually established patterns will be crucial.
Marx’s critique is utterly apposite to the challenge of stewarding among commoners, since his ‘dull compulsion’ phrase appears in the context of his account of primitive accumulation in England: enclosure, systematic pauperisation and the historical instituting of wage labour under the aegis of the emerging bourgeois state.
> These matters of economic justice and resistance in the face of brutal class strategies are at the heart of ‘solidarity’ economy formations (where pauperisation is central and absolutely alive right now) and, specifically, in the emerging engagement with present-day ripples (and social relations) of ’plantation capitalism’ in the ‘global South’ and in the economic organising of people of colour in the USA.
As noted earlier, this challenge - through the practice of contribution accounting - is at the heart of the DisCO form of work-practice governance. Through the school of ‘Livelihood and contribution’ in the Faculty of care work, this cluster of patterns (and radically altered relations of production) constitutes a pivotal part of the curriculum of the college. Like the families of commons-related pattern highlighted in the first part of this section, this is powerfully reflexive. It is at the centre of the conduct - and the very *possibility*, as mobilised living labour, under commons governance - of the college itself.
--- Finally in this section : Schools of the Faculty of stewarding