What do we do, right now, at this moment in the transition?

by Michel Bauwens

Jun 26, 2025

Recapitulating the evolution of the commons

In our last Substack article, we attempted to provide a full historical overview of the evolution of the commons as an institution and practice. But looking at the past is one thing, applying these patterns to the present to craft a better future is altogether a different endeavor.

No individual or group controls human reality, notwithstanding conspiracy theories. There are of course many different conspiracies, as human interest groups strategize for their advantage, but not a single overarching one, except of course perhaps the permanent of the majoritarian power networks to stay in power as long as they can.

Let’s first recapitulate the situation today, as we are faced with a triple crisis of all human institutions:

Our current market system(s), the political economy of capitalism, which is today digitized, financialized and planetary, is not able to account for damaging externalities and is endangering our very survival
Our political systems, which exists in different varieties all over the world, while generating its own liabilities, are no longer able to regulate the runaway market excesses, and are themselves currently disintegrating, facing a fundamental crisis of trust (at least in the Western world).
Our commons-based institutions, although somewhat reviving, are still weak and immature, not yet able to replace or regulate the failing market-state world order.

All this culminates in a inter-related meta-crisis that affects:

Our management of scarce resources, which are not recognized by the current for-profit dynamics and not protected by our state systems: the ecological crisis.
Our management of freely shareable abundant resources, both natural and human, which capitalism as a scarcity-engineering system tends to render artificially scarce, slowing down or even making impossible the most obvious solutions to the meta-crisis: a crisis of shared knowledge.
A social crisis, as the conditions for welfare provisions are undercut where they did exist, while most of the world population is as yet unprotected
As resources are dwindling and access becomes more competitive and exclusionary, geopolitical tensions rise and creates higher risk of warfare between power blocks.

An analysis of the temporal cycles affecting human societies also suggest additional fracture points, and our own thesis is that we have reached a ‘concatenation of crises’, i.e. this transition period is affected by and affects many cycles at once. We may be <at the same time>, at the end of the Western cycle of planetary domination, perhaps even of the civilizational model as ‘geographic rule’, itself. We are certainty at another cusp of polarity between centralization and decentralization (which doesn’t exclude an exaggerated phase of dysfunctional centralization on the way to decentralization); we are at the end of the 100-year hegemonic cycle of American power; at the end of a hundred year ‘civic’ cycle, and at have faced the end of a Kondratieff economic cycle in 2008, without a new economic form consolidating. I’m leaving the impact of AI in accelerating all of this to the side right now.

So let’s review these cycles once more:

The first, ‘ very long cycle’ suggests that the market-state system itself is at stake. We moved from tribal, kin-ship based hunter-gathering systems, to complex agricultural societies, to industrial societies, but the emergence of digital networked systems, including AI, challenges the civilizational order itself, since it adds distributed trans-local self-organization to what was essentially a geographic arrangement between town and country. So we are either moving to a new form of more complex organization, else the very title of our substack, or even potentially, to a post-civilizational arrangement. This is obviously a tall order.
If Spengler and Toynbee and other macro-historians are right that there is a civilizational cycle of about one thousand years, and if the current system under (now failing) western hegemony started just before the second millennium, then the western system is obviously at an end, but since all cultural areas have adapted to it, this is now a planetary crisis.
The 500-year cycle between decentralization and centralization, and with the 500-year nation-state based centralization endangered, we may very well be at the cusp of a decentralization or disintegration crisis. Hence the ever stronger call for distributed and decentralized structures, fighting it out will all those that want more authoritarian responses to keep the centralized system alive.
The end of the 100-year ‘hegemonic’ cycle, with the breakdown of the post-WWII Pax Americana, suggests a struggle between rising and descending world powers
The 100 year generational phase, and the crisis of confidence in civil institutions that characterizes its last phase (aka the ‘Fourth Turning’), suggests civil unrest and deep institutional change.
The 50 year ‘Kondratieff’ cycle, which is operative in the economy, suggests a deep economic re-arrangement.

Every cycle has its own agenda as it were, a particular ‘problematic’ that it needs to solve before it can move on to a new positive cycle. When we speak of a poly-crisis, we mean that these different crises are inter-related, but a meta-crisis goes deeper, it suggests a common causality for the different domains that are marked by crises, hence the need to go ‘meta’, to the deeper layers causing the different problems ‘at the same time’.

I am suggesting additional aspects of the current meta-crisis:

The crisis of the nation-state is a crisis of politics itself. Empire was ruled by universal world religions, but the Westphalian system was based on secular principles. And so the age in which disputes were religious disputes ended symbolically in 1789, with the French Revolution, which inaugurated the split between left and right, the Age of Politics. What if that age has ended as well, i.e. that would mean that we are now already in a different temporal era, marked by the differences in constructive networks, rather than ideological mass movements. Let’s take 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union, as the end of the age in which political mobilizations could be seen legitimately as part of any solution to systemic issues.
The huge cultural wave which started in 1968, marked by the ascent of the Boomers and their counter-cultural values, has equally fizzled out, and we are at the cusp not just of an age of deep transformation, but also of a great age of restoration.

We have also suggested that we are at the end of a particular ‘Spiral’ development, which has run its course.

If you take this idea seriously, then the spiral of development of civilization itself could be embedded in a larger spiral, i.e. the one that saw hunter-gathering societies morph into agriculture, then industrial, then cognitive, but it makes way for some kind of ‘new start’. This is of course what Kojin Karatani also suggests, when he argues that we are striving for a return to mode A, based on gifting and commoning, ‘at a higher level of complexity’. In a different way, the same idea is described in the book, Second Sapiens, by Saïd Dawlabani.

But also see this much larger ‘cosmo-logical’ framing by Frank and Walker, suggesting a very large time scale spiral related to the relation between the world of matter, the Cosmos, the world of Life, and the world of human culture (the Noosphere).

Their article proposes a four-stage model:

This article proposes a four-stage evolution, three of which have already evolved:

a planet with a immature biosphere: no planetary intelligence

a planet with a mature biosphere: emergence of planetary intelligence through cooperation amongst species

a planet with a immature Technosphere: humans produce technology that endangers the biosphere

a planet where humanity is able to manage the effects of its Technosphere for long-term sustainability of the biosphere

But let’s get practical. What needs to be done today ?

What would a Commons-centric strategy of social change look like ?

Here is a very general outline of thinking about strategies and tactics towards commons-based transformations.

The first thing to consider is to start thinking about society, no longer as a binary arrangement between market and state institutions, with civil society as a rest category, but as a triarchic arrangement. This means that when we are faced with solving complex problems, we should start thinking in arrangements that combine the three institutions that humanity has developed. So now we have a set of market practices and institutions, a set of public or state institutions, AND a set of commons-based institutions, and this at all levels of geography and virtuality. Neither markets nor public authorities responsible for the common good are going to disappear, but they are going to be embedded differently in a new form of meta-governance that will involve the three institutions. If you count tribal forms of organizations, both on kinship and the new ones based on infinity, we can also see the three former forms of hegemonic governances, Tribes, Institutions, and Markets, to use David Ronfeldt’s language, will be co-existing and embedded in larger structures that are organized around cosmo-local ‘networked commons’.

With this as a given, each institution transforms already:

The market moves from extractive to generative forms, i.e. we must favor practices that no longer destroys the very conditions of life; and in a very pragmatic way, this also means tethering generative market coalitions to phygital commons, that they are tasked to preserve and even improve. Since access to commons makes market entities more powerful than those without such access, think of a new breed of commons-friendly market entities. I have suggested a new type of market institutions, Open Cooperatives, which are cooperative entities which are structurally enabled to support ‘Commons’. They should be distinguished from the worker-capitalist cooperatives that were the creation of the 19th cy labor movement.
The state moves from being a top down institution that provides services for a population of citizen-consumers, as in the welfare state model, or from being a corporate state that serves private interests, to the model of a “Partner State”. A partner is a state which is dedicated to stimulating the individual and collective autonomy of its population, making sure it heightens the equipotentiality of its population, i.e. it promotes a ‘Commons of Capabilities’. It is also likely that new forms of virtual autonomy and sovereignty may emerge, reflecting the new digitally-native translocal cooperations. A way to conceive new forms of cooperation between public authorities and commons-based initiatives is to think of public-commons partnerships, or even public-commons-generative market players partnerships. Elsewhere, I have proposed ‘Real-Time Public Ledger Organizations’, as new ways to recognize ‘contributive’ value.
Regarding commons-institutions themselves, our first task is to develop and strengthen them, and to increase their social power so that they become credible partners and actors in society. From now on, commons must also focus on strengthening their capacities, for example in terms of access to common infrastructures and resources. Eventually, resource- and life-preserving ‘regenerative’ commons alliances must achieve some kind of parity with state and market institutions, but eventually, the commons must themselves become an agent of regulation in a new cosmo-local world order.

Bear in mind that as the main extractive institutions weaken, self-reproducing seed forms become a unique survival mechanism for the distressed citizenry.

Commoners must work at every level of scale

Regenerative work must start at local territorial levels. This is of course where bioregionalism comes in. The nation-state is a historical, cultural, and political institution, but not an ecological one, it does not have the appropriate scale for dealing with ecological issues. Thus territories must start becoming responsible for their own survival by mapping, defending and regenerating their own resource base. Bioregionalism is the domain of horizontal solidarity between different actors doing different things to regenerate their own territories.

The role of the ‘ partner state’ and or regional public authorities who operate in the same spirit, is to assist bioregional regeneration as a vital asset for their own well-being.

Cosmo-localism, on the other hand, is the capacity for specialized groups to share knowledge and experiences at the translocal level, with other players ‘doing the same thing’, elsewhere on the planet.

This is also a dual power play to create solidarities that operate both geographically, at the bioregional level, and at the level of planetary cooperation. This is what ensures protection from potentially hostile public authorities or global financial players.

I have suggested that at the planetary level, the creation of productive commons, agricultural, industrial and cognitive, will be a key ingredient in sustaining the manifold of (trans)local initiatives through common infrastructures that pool knowledge, collaborative practices, and access to capital. This does not obviate regional and national structures, but at the very least, adds a new layer to it. When local conditions make it difficult to obtain the support of local and national authorities, local commoners can rely on translocal support structures.

The suggested strategy for such local players is to connect with that part of the public authority structure that is friendly to the commons, without overt partisan identifications. Choosing the latter means becoming dependent on the electoral successes of distinct parties, and thus losing support when they lose.

To develop policy proposals that can be addressed to political institutions, at every level, I have suggested the creation of a dual structure locally. That of ‘Assemblies of the Commons’, that unite contributive citizens, and that of ‘Chambers of the Commons’ that interconnect the concerns of the generative business sectors. These types of institutions should increase the scale of ‘Communality’ in the legislative and regulatory infrastructures.

Nevertheless, as argued above, I am quite convinced that one of the ‘waves’ that is crashing as we transition, is the model of mass political parties that act as representatives of broad public interests. The model that was born in 1789, and replaced earlier religious divisions, is now itself on life support. Therefore, the key vehicle today is that of cosmo-local constructive networks.

The overall political and policy priority of commoners must in my opinion be:

The systematic mutualization of provisioning systems at the bioregional level

This means moving from economies of scale to economies of scope, ‘doing more with less’, but essentially, I believe this is the only way to maintain the benefits of modernity: general literacy, longer life spans, democratic deliberation, health outcomes, welfare, at a much lower thermo-dynamic cost.

[ Check out Lindisfarne Island in the movie 28 Years Later for how this may work in the direst of circumstances (compared to the demonic alternative represented by ‘Jimmy’). ]

This is the broad canvas of a proposed commons-centric approach, that starts at the local, bioregional levels and moves upward. Bear in mind that Web3 capital formation, and their own self-infrastructuring of their own commons infrastructures works from the trans-local planetary scale downwards. Creating entangled forms of common property that combine local, regional, national, and transnational forms of harmonized interest, is the integration of both modalities I have been calling for.

I have also made the case for moving towards a new licensing regime that I have called Copyfair, to distinguish it from both copyright and copyleft. While copyright prohibits knowledge sharing without permission and license fees to private owners, copyleft allows non-reciprocal use of common resources by large extractive institutions such as multinational corporations. In contrast, copyfair protects the knowledge sharing but conditions commercialization on reciprocity, thereby strengthening coalitions of trust that co-develop common infrastructures. Ask yourself the question: who is profiting most from having totally open digital commons: if the answer is: the private platforms, then this should motivate cooperative players to create more self-protective alliances.

Ultimately, we will be constructing a new global interconnected network of life-protecting commons-based infrastructures, that can act in a regulatory capacity towards the excesses of the extractive institutions, i.e markets and states. I have called this ‘Magisteria of the Commons’.

Once more: where are we today in such a scenario ?

In 1993, with the web and the browser, we created a new digital commons of shared knowledge, software and designs, which allows for the global coordination of human labor, outside of the full control of market and state (though the use it, abuse it , influence it, and attempt to control it to some extent.

In 2009, we established the possibility of the creation of a globally scalable social sovereign currency that was not controlled by large corporations or states, and which has created many new financing capabilities for commons-centric projects.

At the same time as Bitcoin was established, we developed the first universal accounting system, the blockchain and its derivatives, which now allows for contributory, flow, and thermo-dynamic shared accounting in open ecosystems. Web 3 is rebuilding a more robust peer to peer internet with in-built capacity to self-finance common infrastructures.

At the same time, at the local level, many regenerative projects have been initiated at local and urban levels, a tenfold increase in the decade after 2008, and these movements are now converging into bioregional alliances. Starting in the sphere of mutualized consumption, an emergent sector is experimenting with mutualized production facilities, see our Cosmo-Local Reader for examples of productive cooperation.

But we are, of course, still missing many pieces of that puzzle. Local regenerative initiatives and global post-national capital and knowledge flows, as well as productive alliances, are still making baby steps.

In the coming decade, I recommend focusing on acquiring both common capital at the local level, and to scale up cooperation at the level of planetarity.