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Communs et autogestion : redécouvrir les pratiques émancipatoires du Québec des années 1960-1980Commons and self-management: Rediscovering emancipatory practices in Quebec from 1960 to 1980
Abstract
Communs et autogestion sont des formes d’expérimentation d’organisations collectives qui émergent en réponse aux différentes crises que nous vivons. Cet article présente différentes approches des communs et en dégage les éléments qui nous semblent essentiels à une articulation avec la tradition de l’autogestion, notamment telle qu’elle s’est manifestée au Québec dans les années 1960 à 1980. En nous appuyant sur le travail de recherche sur les pratiques émancipatoires mené par Gabriel Gagnon et Marcel Rioux dans les années 1980, nous faisons ressortir les pratiques et enjeux organisationnels qui caractérisent les communs et l’autogestion à cette époque. De plus, nous mobilisons leur concept de transférabilité afin d’illustrer le potentiel émancipatoire des organisations autogérées. Nous démontrons que les agencements organisationnels observés (configurations, pratiques, conventions) sont une dimension essentielle et singulière dans la gestion des tensions internes et externes engendrées par la relation conflictuelle entre l’autogestion/les communs et le capitalisme.
... Il serait également intéressant d'effectuer une recherche sur le rapport qu'entretiennent les citoyens de Pointe-Saint-Charles avec la Clinique : sentent-ils vraiment qu'ils peuvent s'impliquer dans la gouvernance de cet organisme de plus en plus institutionnalisé, à l'instar du système de santé plus largement au Québec (Plourde, 2021)? Une enquête de terrain et des entrevues permettraient de comprendre les facteurs qui motivent les citoyens à devenir des bénéficiaires de la Clinique et à s'engager en tant que membres, en contribuant ainsi aux études sur les stratégies de pérennisation des communs et des initiatives collectives émancipatrices (Lachapelle et Marques, 2023). ...
L’économie circulaire fait face à plusieurs enjeux : impossibilité du découplage absolu entre croissance et externalités négatives, effet rebond et faible prise en compte de la justice sociale (Calisto Friant et collab., 2020). La décroissance propose des solutions à ces défis : produire moins, partager plus, décider ensemble (Abraham, 2019). Cet article propose d’illustrer l’apport de la perspective décroissantiste aux débats concernant l’économie circulaire en prenant l’exemple du domaine de la santé. Le système de santé, axé sur le curatif et en croissance permanente, participe à la crise socioenvironnementale. La Clinique communautaire de Pointe-Saint-Charles se pose comme option de rechange au modèle dominant. Elle critique l’importance accordée à la santé curative par rapport à la santé préventive et défend que ce sont les conditions socioéconomiques de vie qui déterminent principalement l’état de santé des citoyens et citoyennes. La Clinique est une organisation qui se rapproche du commun, défini comme un collectif auto-organisé pour répondre aux besoins de ses membres.
Cet article découle d’une recherche qualitative menée auprès de quelques travailleur.euses, salarié.es ou non, de neuf initiatives économiques autogérées fondées en Amérique du Nord entre 1999 et 2019. Cette recherche visait essentiellement à interroger la mise en oeuvre de nouvelles manières de penser les rapports marchands : l’accès aux moyens de production, la rémunération et l’offre de services rendus par ces initiatives.
Alors que les premières analyses révèlent une relativement faible réflexivité sur ces rapports marchands, elles mettent clairement en évidence la prégnance de la frugalité comme élément transversal des propos des enquêté.es.
Une fois mise en évidence cette frugalité, dans ses différentes dimensions (mode de vie, niveau de rémunération, accessibilité du service offert), nous interrogerons sa portée politique. N’est-elle qu’un pis-aller individuel, est-elle réfléchie collectivement et si oui, que révèle-t-elle des expérimentations qui se trament dans ces initiatives?
Prominent radical democrats have in recent times shown a vivid interest in the commons. Ever since the publication of Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom, the commons have been associated with a self-governing and self-sustaining scheme of production and burdened with the responsibility of carving out an autonomous social space independent from both the markets and the state. Since the commons prove on a small empirical scale that self-governance, far from being a utopian ideal, is and long has been a lived reality, a few authors have attempted to turn them into the conceptual matrix of their own account of radical democracy. Negri and Hardt, on one hand, Laval and Dardot, on the other, have jointly coined the term ‘the common’ (in the singular) to suggest that the self-governance quintessential to the commons could be turned into a general democratic principle. Though this is an attractive theoretical prospect, I will contend that it fails to account for an important contradiction between the two theoretical frameworks it connects. Whereas the governance of the commons depends on harmonious cooperation between all stakeholders which in turn relies on a strong sense of belonging to a shared community, radical democracy is highly suspicious of any attempt to build a totalizing community and constantly emphasizes the decisive role of internal agonistic conflicts in maintaining a vibrant pluralism. I will further contend that the short-sightedness of radical democrats on this issue may be partially explained by the strong emphasis in the commons literature on a related but distinct conflict, that which opposes the commoners to the movement of enclosures. I will argue, however, that this conflict is not of an agonistic nature and does little to preserve the dynamism and the constant self-criticism proper to the radical democrat regime.
By conceptualising the commons not just as common goods but as social systems, the book show their pervasive presence in everyday life, mapping out a strategy for total social transformation. From the micro to the macro, this book unveils the commons as fields of power relations -- shared space, objects, subjects -- that explode the limits of daily life under capitalism. The book expose the attempts to coop the commons through the use of code words such as 'participation' and 'governance', and reveals the potential for radical transformation rooted in the reproduction of out communities, of life, of work, and of society as a whole.
A l’aune des luttes sociales et culturelles contre l’ordre capitaliste et l’État entrepreneurial, la sociologie politique du commun théorisée dans l’ouvrage de Pierre Dardot et Christian Laval Commun (2014) entreprend de fonder l’agir politique et militant sur une praxis instituante qui génère des sujets collectifs orientés vers les notions coactivité, participation, délibération et codécision. Ce texte vise à souligner les apports et limites d’une conception radicalement anti-essentialiste du monde social-historique qui, tout en s’appuyant sur une conception dialectique des institutions, prend le risque de verser parfois dans une conception pragmatiste et désincarnée des univers socio-culturels, illustrée par le recours aux « communes » auto-instituées, autogérées et fédérées comme seules entités collectives légitimes.
This article argues that labour can be understood as a commons, located in the discussion of how commons can advance the transformation of social relations and society. To manage labour as a commons entails a shift away from the perception of labour power as the object of capital's value practices, towards a notion of labour power as a collectively and sustainably managed resource for the benefit of society. Given that social change is largely a result of social struggle, it is crucial to examine germinal forms of labour as a commons present in society. I focus my analysis on worker-recuperated companies in Latin America and Europe. Worker-recuperated companies are enterprises self-managed by their workers after the owners close them down. Despite operating within the hegemonic capitalist market, they do not adopt capitalist rationality and are proven viable. Worker-recuperated companies offer a new perspective on labour as a commons.
Despite centuries of enclosure and commodification, the commons remain an enduring way of organising, and one that may have an increasing relevance as we fall further into economic and ecological crisis. After exploringthe ambivalent relationships between the commons and capitalism, the paper argues that the commons are best understood not as a resource but as a social process of organisation and production. The paper begins by consideringthe work of Elinor Ostrom, which has been essential in demonstrating that the commons involve community, some collective organisation for sharing and preserving common resources. Ostrom, however, only considered some aspectsof the commons. She explored how communities organise in commons to share resources between individual members but she ignored the fact that commons may not only be distributed in common but also may be used in commons and in this process may be reproductive of community. The paper moves on to explore these processes of organising forthe commons and of the commons by drawing on three brief examples: a commune, a community of local residents reclaiming their neighbourhood and a social centre. Using these examples, the paper then discusses the mode of organising that underpins the commons in terms of the production and distribution of use as well as the reliance on the principle of 'reciprocity in perpetuity' (Pedersen, 2010). The conclusion suggests that considering the failure of markets and states to address the crises in which we find ourselves, developing and understanding the commons has become an urgent task
Many works on self-managed structures highlight the difficulties faced by this type of experiments but also their inability to last in time.Beyond the innovative devices and practices developped by these organisations, self-management experiments invite us to opt for a dynamic approach of the organizational processes, which must be sensitive to their evolution. Such is exactly the purpose of this text based on the example of two self-managed cooperatives. It aims at questioning the degenerative trajectory of these structures by underlining the rich teachings carried by this dynamic perspective to rethink the organizational phenomena and the processes of social innovation.
Although foundational texts in Critical Management Studies (CMS) pointed to the empirical significance of anarchism as an inspiration for alternative ways of organizing (Burrell, 1992), relatively little work of substance has been undertaken within CMS to explore how anarchists organize or how anarchist principles of organization might fare in other contexts. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on the experiences of a UK Voluntary Sector Organization (VSO) seeking to adopt non-hierarchical working practices inspired by anarchism. The paper analyses this process of organizational change by examining how ideas and practices are translated and transformed as they travel from one context (direct action anarchism) to another (the voluntary sector). Whilst the onset of austerity and funding cuts created the conditions of possibility for this change, it was the discursive translation of 'anarchism' into 'non-hierarchical organizing' that enabled these ideas to take hold. The concept of 'non-hierarchical' organization constituted an open space that was defined by negation and therefore capable of containing a multiplicity of meanings. Rather than having to explicitly embrace anarchism, members were able to find common ground on what they did not want (hierarchy) and create a discursive space for democratically determining what might replace it.
Cet article vise à illustrer les différentes tensions pouvant émerger d’un projet d’innovation sociale émancipateur en
ce qui a trait à la mise en œuvre et la relation au territoire. Plus précisément, nous présenterons comment les trois trajectoires
de l’innovation sociale (néolibérale, sociale-démocrate et émancipatrice) conçoivent leur relation au territoire. Puis, en mobilisant le cas du Bâtiment 7, nous observerons comment ces trajectoires et logiques se côtoient, s’hybrident et se confrontent sous les questions de propriété, de gouvernementalité, d’espace public et de violence. Les membres du Bâtiment 7 devront alors apprendre à jouer avec et contre les structures de pouvoir et de contraintes ordonnées par le marché et l’État, dans le but de développer leur propre espace d’autonomie, préfigurant alors une nouvelle relation au territoire et de solidarité collective.
Based on the study of four self-managed organizations, this article show the atypical and daring practices of these structures of the Social Economy sector which remain very little studied and documented, without neglecting to underline the various limits which they meet. The ahierraristic, egalitarian and solidary principles that they promote favor innovative organizational and HRM practices in terms of governance, corporate culture, work organization, recruitment, training or compensation. We propose here to highlight its singularity and specificity using the organizational configurations of Mintzberg (1986) and the managerial conventions that are attached to it (Pichault and Nizet, 2013). We will thus show that their powerful organizational culture centered on radical decentralization places them at the crossroads of missionary, adhocratic and professional configurations. The articulation of these three conventions / configurations is thus at the basis of the specificity of these structures and original HRM practices, which nevertheless raise many points of vigilance.
People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. In this closely argued and clearly written book, David Harvey, one of the leading social theorists of his generation, builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a "new imperialism" are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see.
Commoning as a postcapitalist politics
Today the planet faces a genuine tragedy of the unmanaged “commons” (like air, climate, water). In this article, we explore how the process of commoning offers a politics for the Anthropocene. To reveal the political potential of commoning, however, we need to step outside of the capitalocentric ways that the commons have generally been understood, and that feminist thinkers have denounced as parallel to phallocentrism. We argue that commons can be conceived of as a process—commoning—that is applicable to any form of property, whether private, or state-owned, or open access. We turn to three examples from the past and the present that provide insights into ways of commoning the atmosphere (air quality in an Australian town, the international response to the threat on the ozone layer, the development of domestic solar energy by Australien citizens). We reveal how a politics of commoning has been enacted through assemblages comprised of social movements, technological advances, institutional arrangements and non-human “others.”
The paper proposes a practice theoretical conceptualization of commons. The first part of the paper asks the question how a convincing conceptualization of commons could look like. Despite of the increased attention to the concept of the commons different notions thereof exist. Ostrom and her colleagues often define commons as common pool resources, a specific type of good. The underlying classification is based on different degrees of excludability and subtractability. In the paper this is criticized for disregarding the importance of the social processes at hand. It is argued that instead of being a type of good, commons need to be conceptualized taking the relevant social dimensions into account. Commons are hence conceptualized as the social form of (tangible and/or intangible) matter that is determined by commoning. Commoning creates commons. In the second part the social practices of commoning are argued to be voluntary and inclusively self-organized activities and mediation of peers who aim at satisfying needs. The abstractness of the proposed conceptualization allows to aim at the core of the practices, at finding a way to find the common characteristics or dimensions of these practices, without defining away their ever specific way of being and becoming in the concrete.
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny-and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture-are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
The present interest in new commons is a very welcome development. It shows that more and more people understand that our
present capitalist world system cannot solve any of the problems it itself has created. Most people who want to create new
commons are looking for an altogether new paradigm of economy and society. Yet I think it is necessary to look more critically
at the main concepts and arguments used in the contemporary discourse on ‘the commons’. Today there is a new hype about the
‘new commons’, including myths about the Internet as a commons and that it has created new communities. In this article I
ask: what do we mean when we speak of ‘new commons’? What can we learn from the old commons? What has to be changed today?
Is there a realistic perspective for new commons?
Since the turn of the century, Argentina has been the scene of a renewal in “self-management”. More than twenty years after the end of the Yugoslavian experiment, a wave of factory occupations and “recuperations” by their wage-earners has unfurled in this South American land, and aroused the interest of those opposed to globalization. This activism represents a major alternative to “neoliberal” globalization. As this exhaustive examination of a symbolic instance of “recuperation” shows however, those involved undertake their actions in the name of a special relation with company directors and out of an “ethos of zeal”. In this sense, their struggle and the implementation of self-management is an example laden with lessons for analyzing activism.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
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