Value in the Commons Economy

Continuing this post, see this free report by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros. Some excerpts of the executive summary follow:

"Our common world is faced with significant questions regarding the evolution of value. We consider the following to be among the most important:

"What is value, generally in the context of the allocation of resources in human societies, but more specifically in our ‘digitalized’,‘networked’ societies where emerging knowledge commons are playing an increasingly vital role?

"What ‘should’ value be in a world marked by ecological and resource constraints presently operating at a global scale?

"In a world of social, cultural and institutional diversity, can a new ‘value system’ incorporate the multiple values that are not recognized by capitalism, such as the care economy and domestic work?"


"[A]ccording to many authors, there seems to exist an increasing consensus that we are going through a ‘value crisis’ and that a new value regime must be invented. This crisis is characterized by an increased capacity to create common value through commons-based peer production and other practices of the collaborative economy. In these open and contributory systems, many contributors co-create value as a commons which can be used by all those that are connected to networks, but the income is generated by a fraction of the contributors connected to the marketplace.

"[T]he key underlying shift needed is one from extractive models, practices that enrich some at the expense of the others (communities, resources, nature), to generative value models, practices that enrich the communities, resources etc., to which they are applied. This is what we could call the Value Shift."