Let’s return briefly to the central problem of government commons management (at least as a monolithic systems). We’re going to restate it a bit differently here so that we can walk through a way to mitigate it. Let’s start by returning to the basic forms of domination as outlined in Dawn of Everything:

1. control over violence (sovereignty)
2. control over information (bureaucracy)
3. and charismatic competition (politics)

Government as a commons manager aligns with the second form of domination. Any organization that manages the commons has the power to restrict the commons. In order to keep such an entity from doing that, there may be restrictions placed on the organization. But whomever maintains and enforces the list of those restrictions could simply take over the system and bend it to their will, So there must be restrictions placed on the oversight group. This continues infinitely, thus there can be no real oversight. This is not a new problem, it was stated a thousand years ago as “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who will watch the watchmen?) But it dates back almost 400 years earlier still to concepts brought up by Plato in some of the earliest political writings.

Although this question points to the root cause of oppression and authoritarian collapse multiple times through history, it’s largely ignored, suppressed, or treated as a curiosity. It is considered unanswerable, and thus rejected before consideration. In the previous section we solved this problem by inverting authority. This gave us the option to leave any system, which could then collapse it, if required. But it would be better if we could find a solution that doesn’t risk systemic collapse.

Fortunately, there are additional steps we can take to mitigate the risk of facilitating coordination turning into a system of domination. In computer security, we think about the concept of “attack surface.” In essence, the more stuff a program can do, the more things can go wrong. The more complex a system, the harder it is to implement in a safe way. To reduce risk, we recommend minimizing the specific things any given application can do. We can, then, chain together small applications to make a larger application.

Rather than having to understand the whole system all at once, we can analyze each component as an individual piece, with specific focus interfaces. The more we can simplify interfaces, the fewer scenarios we need to analyze to determine the security of an application. An application that can do everything has an infinite attack surface and thus can never be secured. An application that can only do one very specific thing may be possible to not only secure, but to mathematically prove that security.

This is roughly the reason behind the concept of “microservices.” These are small and reusable systems that can be more easily understood than a large complex system. We can leverage a similar concept. In fact, this isn’t even a new idea. It predates computers entirely.

The majority of the Netherlands is below sea level. Over the course of hundreds of years, the Dutch have reclaimed land from the sea and kept it dry using a series of pumps and dikes. Very early on people realized that water management was far too important to entrust in “normal” government. Political incompetence could wipe out entire towns. So, almost a thousand years ago, they created a distributed micro-bureaucracy with the sole purpose of managing water.

Because this micro-bureaucracy is extremely limited in scope, because it only exists to managed one shared resource, it can’t really be leveraged for other power. But since it’s outside of the normal government, it also can’t be held hostage for other political projects (as Republicans hold SNAP and Social Security hostage to achieve their goals in US politics).

In the last section, we introduced a structure that included 4 such micro-bureaucracies:

• the dispensary to provide consumable goods,
• the library, to provide access to shared durable goods,
• the works committee, to build, (own,) and maintain infrastructure such as housing, and
• the services committee, to identify and provide services, such as child care, for its members.

Using to the VSM (that we discussed earlier), these micro-bureaucracies would all be operational units of the social organizations (affinity groups, collectives, clusters, and federations) that we described in the last section. These organizations would themselves be systems with their own metasystemic functions (and the ability to autonomously create subsystems), while interactions between these systems would be managed at by metasystemic functionality at the level of the social organization.

Let’s first talk through these micro-bureaucracies in a bit more detail, then talk through systemic interactions. Remember that these are only suggestions. Nothing that follows is to be taken dogmatically. These are based on my own organizing experience, historical research, and other sources. All of these have been filtered through my own perception. This list may not be complete. It divisions may be wrong for your situation. There may be any number of reasons these are not optimal. They should be considered a starting point for anyone who doesn’t already have a better idea.

There can be no perfect recipe for every situation. You will always be the ultimate authority on what is best for you. Take what follows for what it’s worth.

The Dispensary

A dispensary provides consumable goods. It can start simply as a shared pantry, stocked with the products of guerrilla gardening or food preservation by canning or pickling. It can be foraging, processing, storing, and sharing horse chestnuts for soap and acorns for flour to make acorn grits and bread. It can be as easy as shared bulk purchases from restaurant supply or warehouse store, or as crust-punk as rotating dumpster run shifts. It could even start as small regular potluck or shared dinners. It could simply be an agreement between members to volunteer with a local chapter of Food Not Bombs on a rotating basis.

As your network grows, so can the dispensary system. A federation of four or five covens could start a coop for themselves. A federation of 20 may even be able to open a storefront.

As much as people would like to live their daily lives without inflicting suffering on ourselves and others, capitalism cannot seem to provide for the needs of people without committing atrocities. From sweatshops to toxic byproducts, union busting death squads, unnecessary packaging, micro-plastics, and landfills full of fast fashion, simple participation is a minefield of harm.

One reason many of us wish to escape is so that we can live our lives without inflicting suffering on others. Since no similar objective can exist within capitalist markets, operating a collectively owned dispensary as a coop style business for non-members offers a harm-reduction opportunity that capitalist markets cannot fulfill. We can do what the market cannot: offer products that people can buy without having blood on their hands.

Taking notes from the successes and failures of the Russian revolution, a group of anarchists (including Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist militant who was critical in defeating the Tzar’s army and who later also fought the Red Army) wrote a document titled “Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.” This document came to be known as “The Platform.” It remains one of the most important first-hand revolutionary documents, outlining a clear revolutionary plan. The Platform identifies the problems of production and consumption as core to the success of a revolution:

Without doubt, from the first day of the revolution, the farms will not provide all the products vital to the life of the population. At the same time, peasants have an abundance which the towns lack.

Within the capitalist system, production, acquisition, transportation, and distribution (logistics) are all handled by markets. As we move away from this system, the dispensary system (perhaps with the support of the services committee) will need to address production and transportation logistics. Starting within the capitalist market provides a low-risk proving ground from which we can iterate and improve. If a social organization can operate a business within capitalism while planning beyond it, there’s a good chance it will be able to transcend its capitalist roots.

The technology that made the short supply chain-based capitalism, which dominates the world today, also makes capitalism itself irrelevant. By attacking this problem as a swarm, we will come up with multiple competing solutions. Good solutions will merge or replace bad ones and the best solutions will spread across the federation. Like the open source software movement, we may, and probably will, end up with multiple systems. This is not a problem as long as those systems can interoperate with each other.

The Library

A library is a shared set of objects, often (but not always) located in a specific repository. Americans are most familiar with municipal library systems where the objects are books and occasionally other media. The simplest library for us to build is a tool library. A library consists of inventory and a way to track that inventory.

The simplest library can be ma e up of tools owned by members and a simple spreadsheet to track them. A library could create a shared bank account for purchasing new tools for the library. Libraries will also maintain objects that belong to the collective.

While give-away or free-stores exist and do work in some situations (they are not uncommon in the Netherlands), these can be exclusionary in the US context. They can be seen as “charity” or “for people less fortunate” rather than a shared resource. While a library can choose to operate in exactly the same way as a free-store (not tracking what comes in or goes out), the conceptual framework of a library is more aligned with American sensibilities (outside of existing punk and anarchist spaces).

A library also doesn’t need to be specific to a given organization. This is something that can be organized first outside of a social organization, or something that could be managed by a social organization but have open membership. There’s no reason not to have a tool library shared with your neighbors, even if they don’t share your politics. There’s no reason not to share a media library with your friends (you probably already share books).

If you’re wanting to convince people that things could be better, there is no argument more powerful than proof.

The Works Committee

Works Committee is responsible for identifying, acquiring or producing, and managing infrastructure needed for the operation of the organization and the lives of its members. The mechanism by which it does this is up to the social organization. Management of infrastructure such as vehicles or housing may be handed off to the library system once acquired.

The Works Committee is responsible for organizing work parties to maintain infrastructure. One easy example is a garden party where organization members design and implement a garden either on property they own or via guerrilla gardening. The Works Committee would then be responsible for regular maintenance, harvest, and delivery of goods (harvest, processing, etc) in coordination with the dispensary.

In most cities horse chestnuts (buckeyes) trees are common in parks. The nuts contain chemicals that can be used as soap. Four of these crushed and thrown in a sock can be used in place of commercial detergent. In the fall, these nuts are easy to collect from sidewalks and parks.In the spring and summer, their leaves can be picked and processed into hand soap. Many other soap producing plants are common, and invasive in much of the US, such as English ivy. A works committee could organize foraging and processing parties to make things for the dispensary.

The Services Committee

The two most critical permanent purposes of Services Committees are to coordinate leadership of regular meetings, either by a specific appointed member or by rotating ordination, and to organize collective defense. There may also be a third critical service if the social organization is also a legal entity: accounting. The committee must ensure taxes are filed on time and correctly, that any shared expenses are paid, and that all money has been accounted for.

Beyond these, the Services Committee identifies the needs and capabilities of its members to provide services. The Services Committee should operate on the principal “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”

The most important goal of any entity that wishes to continue to exist is reproduction of itself. Therefore, the most important objective of the organization must be supporting the reproductive labor of the collective, especially supporting members with children.

For organizations with children, rotating childcare eases the burden on families, making the organization more stable, and setting an example for members too young to start their own organizations. Some members may have technical skills and can provide tech support or automation of tedious tasks performed by others. Those with mechanical skills may be able to repair objects for The Library.

Within an urban area, municipal services take care of many things that rural people have to take care of themselves. Trash collection and disposal may make sense for a rural organization where it wouldn’t be imagined by an urban coven outside of a disaster.

As an affinity group grows to a collective or federation, new services will become available. At each coordination level, it becomes more and more important to provide a mechanism to discover capabilities and protect people with specific skills from being overburdened.

A Services Committee of a large enough federation could provide much more complex services that further free it from the constraints of capitalism. Insurance pools, banking via credit unions, and other services can all be organized by a Services Committee of a big enough federation.

As with the Dispensary, services may also be externalized to offer things unavailable under capitalism. A services committee may decide to take on organizing protests, gatherings, or other events where other community organizations are not taking on the task. The Services Committee may also identify external organizations that organization members can coordinate with to fulfill organizational objectives and fill operational gaps.

Systemic Interactions

Each of these operational units, these micro-bureaucracies, exist to fulfill specific objectives that align with the greater objective of the organization. In cybernetic terms, the (system 5) identity of each of the above organizations aligns with the (system 5) identity of the social organization.

As described in each section, these systems have a lot of interaction opportunities. But they can also conflict. There is a set amount of time that members have, so it’s important to keep some kind of shared calendar to make sure actions of one don’t conflict with others. There may be shared money, which could be claimed by one or another group, so they also may need to keep a shared budget.

The very most basic mechanism to support this type of coordination is a regular (perhaps weekly) meeting. Each operation unit gives a brief report on what they’ve done, a high level status of anything worth noting (low inventory, some blockers, etc), and any requests they have (money, time, etc). This must be kept short. Humans tend to lose focus after 90 minutes, so meetings over that tend to rapidly lose productivity. Most things should be handled locally, so there shouldn’t be a lot to report. Anything beyond a high level report back must be something that requires action. Including the action as part of a request can make sure everyone understands what’s being asked.

In the next section we will describe the metasystem in greater detail, including some recommended meeting outlines and structures.