Decommodification in action: Common property as countermovement

Abstract

Our purpose is twofold: to contribute to the case for seeing the economy as a rich landscape of practices for producing and distributing livelihood extending beyond the capitalist market and to highlight an important element in the current dynamic of organizational change within that landscape. We focus on a particular set of practices that not only deserve attention as departures from the market model but also exemplify an important interplay in current economic life: the resistance mounted by some elements in economic activity to the hegemony of market capitalism. Our argument sheds light on a form of organizing that is based on a distinctive economic form – common property, and arises in a distinctive setting – the heightened marketization characteristic of neo-liberalism. The factor of commodification binds these two as the force that arouses the organizational reaction. We sketch the neo-liberal environment of current economic life and then outline Polanyi’s notion of ‘fictitious commodities’ in the market economy and the countermovement aimed at protecting and recovering them. We focus on two families of practice that effectively decommodify land and labour – community land trusts and worker cooperatives – and suggest that these represent a widespread interplay of forces in the countermovement. We conclude by outlining a fertile programme of research that flows from our argument.