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Dr Thomas Smith
Community Economies of Manufacturing:
Materials and Makers
16/04/19
Dr Thomas Smith
Aims of the class:
• Question terms such as ‘post-industrialism’ and the ‘consumer society’
• Understand issues related to skilled production in the modern world
• Introduce community economies literature
• Make visible two cases of community-led manufacture
Dr Thomas Smith
1. Background and Context: Production in the 21st Century
2. Community Economies
3. Making Culture I: The Maker Movement
4. Making Culture II: Freetown Christiania
Dr Thomas Smith
1. Background and Context: Production in the 21st Century
2. Community Economies
3. Making Culture I: The Maker Movement
4. Making Culture II: Freetown Christiania
How should we make, and what skills are needed to make, given the
looming spectre of economic and environmental crisis?
Carr & Gibson, 2018, p. 61
Key Question
Production – “the application of human labour to materials taken from
the natural world and their transformation into socially useful products.”
(Hudson, 2012, p. 374, after Marx)
Production is always socio-ecological.
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Global North now increasingly dubbed ‘post-industrial’, constituted of ‘consumer societies’
(Masculinist?) Resentment and post-industrialism
What and how we produce has been at the heart of modern radical thought, since the
beginning:
Work and the Ownership of Production
“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production,
and with them the whole relations of society.”
The Communist Manifesto
As a result, modes of production are always changing
Packard Automotive Plant, Detroit
“Modern…society, with its relations of production, of exchange
and of property…is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to
control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up
by his spells.”
• Environmentally: resource constraints, ecosystem degradation GHG emissions,
pollution
• Socially: Vast inequality, debt, poor working conditions, stagnant quality of life
Linear Model
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The issue of production is not just social, but also personal.
For Marx, under capitalism the worker “[d]oes not feel content but
unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but
mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels
himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.”
Estrangement and Alienation Peak Factory: Taylor’s Scientific Management
Peak Factory: Taylor’s Scientific Management
Lenin before coming to power:
Taylorism is “man’s enslavement by the machine”.
Peak Factory: Taylor’s Scientific Management
Lenin after coming to power:
“[The] Russian is a bad worker [who must] learn to work. The Taylor
system... is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois
exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in
the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination
of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct
methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting
and control, etc.
The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the
achievements of science and technology in this field.“
Modern Taylorism: Algorithmic Control
Alienation, routine, and micro-management continue
Algorithmic Taylorism – Isaak System
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Productivity has increased but working hours are still getting
longer
Up to 40% of the workforce
secretly believes their jobs
probably aren't necessary or
socially useful.
Two Responses to Alienation in Production
Abolish work Reform work
Therefore, work and sites of production continue to lie at the heart of postcapitalist
alternatives:
Work Abolition:
“…new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a
society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation…is instead the path to a
world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone.”
“Man shows his best when he is in a position to apply his usually-varied
capacities to several pursuits in the farm, the workshop, the factory, the
study or the studio, instead of being riveted for life to one of these
pursuits only.”
Reforming Work
Reforming Work
Arts & Crafts Movement, late 19th and early 20th Century
Nothing should be made by man's labour which is
not worth making; or which must be made by labour
degrading to the makers.
William Morris, Art & Socialism
Sennett (2008: 8): “We can achieve a more humane material life, if only we better understand the making of things”.
Adamson (2010: 5): “[craft] entails irregularity, tacit knowledge, inefficiency, handwork, vernacular building,
functional objects and mysticism. Further, craft's association with gendered, ethnic and local identities could be seen
as inherently resistant to (or, potentially, critical of) modernity's homogenous transcendentalism.”
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Work remains a contentious and crucial topic. Therefore, we can ask:
How best can communities take back control?
How should society reproduce itself?
In summary
Dr Thomas Smith
1. Background and Context: Production in the 21st Century
2. Community Economies
3. Making Culture I: The Maker Movement
4. Making Culture II: Freetown Christiania
“Any challenge to the
glories of the free
market … is to be
mercilessly put down
or mocked out of
existence”
Harvey, 2001: 97–8
‘Capitalocentrism’
Economics
Primarily associated with questions of money. Often portrays itself as a
‘hard’ quantitative science.
However:
• Modern conception developed out of ‘political economy’.
• The social science
• Term originates in Greek ‘Oikonomia’
• Oikos = Household / Nomos = Management
Ethics of a Community Economy
Community economies return to this root, while moving away from
masculinist ideas of ‘productive’ labour
Not just profit at all costs:
Labour: Surviving Well
Enterprise: Distributing Surplus
Transactions: Encountering Others
Property: Commoning
Finance: Investing in a Future
“A project of rethinking economy, opening to and being practically
affected by the wide diversity of economic activities that offer
possibilities of livelihood and well-being, within and beyond the
ostensibly global purview of capitalist development.”
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Capitalism co-exists with non-capitalist alternatives in nearly all parts of life,
even our homes:
Fickey (2011: 240) “diverse economic practices often
play a significant role in subsistence strategies and the
significance of diverse economic activities may be
increased if formal economic institutions fail.”
Dr Thomas Smith
1. Background and Context: Production in the 21st Century
2. Community Economies
3. Making Culture I: The Maker Movement
4. Making Culture II: Freetown Christiania
What is the Maker Movement?
• A network of multi-purpose spaces and workshops brought into being
by communities of makers in order to build, make, fix, craft and
engage socially with the world around them.
Design Global, Manufacture Local
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Design Global, Manufacture Local Efficacy of ethical economies
Open source (Linux, Open Office/Libra Office, Firefox)
Voluntary labour/Cooperatively Created (Wikipedia)
Communal Property Rights (Creative Commons)
Design Global, Manufacture Local Design Global, Manufacture Local
Design Global, Manufacture Local Design Global, Manufacture Local
Repair Café Brno
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Design Global, Manufacture Local Design Global, Manufacture Local
Design Global, Manufacture Local
Farm Hack Community
Design Global, Manufacture Local
• Relationship- and knowledge-rich sites
• Can lead to problem solving for very concrete contexts
• Often focused on re-use, repair, and material gleaning
• Cultivate adaptability, material competence and imagination
• Hubs for sharing ‘sticky’ knowledge in communities of practice
• Repositories of equipment and knowledge for resilience.
However: gender and access issues? Material sourcing?
Dr Thomas Smith
1. Background and Context: Production in the 21st Century
2. Community Economies
3. Making Culture I: The Maker Movement
4. Making Culture II: Freetown Christiania
August 26th,
2018
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Objective of Christiania (1971)
To build up a self-ruled society, where every single individual can freely develop
themselves under responsibility for the community. That this society shall rest
economically in itself, and the common strife must still be to go out and show
that psychological and physical pollution can be prevented.
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Denmark as ‘Foreningsland’ – Forening Country
The co-operatives in Denmark have caused a peaceful social, economic, and political revolution of
tremendous and far-reaching significance. They have aided in the creation of an "extra-socialistic"
economy which is designed to aid the Danish people in meeting the challenges of a modern society.
Co-operation in Denmark is not a detached thing, as is characteristic in England or the United States,
but is very strongly ingrained in the very life of the people. The economic structure of the nation has
been altered; capitalism has been weakened, but the edge of the Marxian sword has also been
greatly dulled.
Bernhard, 1951
Constitutionally guaranteed since 1849
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• Formed and overarchingly managed as a commons
• a shared resource, co-governed by its user community according to the
community’s rules and norms
• A maker/workshop economy from the start
• Innovation meeting concrete community needs – Christiania Bikes
• ‘Deep’ Economic Democracy – Not just intra-firm democratic
control
• Pragmatic experimentation with economic forms
• Facilitated by concept of forening
• Accessible to varying demographics and education levels
• Lack of property ends speculation and slows growth
Thanks for listening!
smith@fss.muni.cz