Plaine Commune Contributory Research Project
The contributory research program “Plaine Commune Contributory Learning Territory”, led by Bernard Stiegler from 2016 to 2020 with the Research and Innovation Institute and the Ars Industrialis association, aimed to experiment with the contributory economy in the Plaine Commune territory.
A call for applications was launched in 2017 (written by Anne Alombert).
Two contributory research projects have been set up in the territory:
| Contributory Clinic |  |
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Plaine Commune Contributory Territory
PROGRAM
We are experiencing a profound transformation of society linked to the massive diffusion of digital technologies. It will have a very strong impact on employment. Our project consists of developing a new macroeconomic model centered on knowledge and of experimenting it in the territory of Plaine Commune, and then generalizing it.
| 1) The context: Entropocene, disruption, automation |
| . Disruption |
| The current era of the Anthropocene is characterized by disruption. Disruption results from the fact that the speed of technological evolution is much greater than that of the evolution of social systems: all social organizations, from the family to the government, including businesses, languages, law, economic rules, taxation, etc., are transformed.
This extremely rapid pace of transformation escapes politics and public authorities in general: while social systems are short-circuited by new start-ups practicing radical and permanent innovation, no new model of viable long-term economic and social development can be reconstituted. The phase shift between the evolution of the technical system and the evolution of social systems is not new. It is characteristic of all industrial revolutions. What is quite new, however, is the fact that regulation, legislation and knowledge always arrive too late in their attempts to appropriate the new: the constant extension of theoretical and legal voids that results from this is without historical precedent. |
| . Entropocene |
| If we define entropy in its broader sense beyond thermodynamics, as the tendency towards disorganization or dissociation of structures, as the tendency of a system to exhaust its dynamic potential and its capacity for conservation or renewal, then disruption seems to be able to be described as an entropic process, during which technological innovation becomes self-destructive by short-circuiting the exercise of public power and by disorganizing existing social structures. It is thus part of the process of massive increase in entropy that characterizes the Anthropocene era through the upheaval of ecosystem balances: the climatic, geographic, demographic and biological systems that constitute different dimensions of the biosphere do not survive the technological, industrial and economic projects currently being implemented on a planetary scale.
The biospheric, economic and psycho-social imbalances currently caused by the “computerization of society” are partly due to the fact that current disruptive innovation models are designed and implemented according to the interests of the digital industry in Northern California, and most of the time at the expense of the European and French economy. Faced with such a process, it seems necessary to consider a new macroeconomic model integrating ecological issues and promoting the production of negentropy, in order to gradually transform the economy to structurally overcome this situation. |
| . Automation and the decline in employment |
| On both an international and national scale, a consensus is emerging that over the next two decades, digital automation based on algorithms, which is taking the form of both a data economy and a new robotics, will have considerable consequences on employment. Automation tends to replace not only factory workers, but also many other jobs in all sectors (including education, medicine, law), and forces us to raise a fundamental question: with what money will individuals who no longer work be able to consume what robots and the data economy will produce?
This fact of the progressive disappearance of employment could also become an opportunity: the jobs susceptible to automation are in fact repetitive jobs and therefore proletarianizing for those who perform them. The reduction in employment could therefore signal the renaissance of work, in its singular and creative dimension. But for this to happen, it is essential that the territorial public authorities, the national public authorities and the economic powers established in the territories cooperate with higher education establishments to design and implement a response adapted to the current challenges of employment and work disrupted by automation, in order to open up new perspectives for the future. |
| 2) The territorial experimentation of a contributory economy |
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. The social value of knowledge
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The hypothesis of the contributory economy consists in arguing that robots and algorithms, which are today at the origin of the decrease of employment in all sectors of activity and of a process of generalized precariousness and proletarianization, are also what makes it possible to put an end to proletarianization and precariousness, provided however that we gradually move away from the current entropic economic model. In the context of general automation, we have to rehabilitate and value the practice of knowledge and the development of capacities, which increases the power of action of individuals as well as the collective intelligence and economic activity of territories.
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| The different kinds of knowledge – know-how, know how to live, know how to think – are constantly transforming through the singular practices of the individuals who participate in them, and thus contribute to the dynamic evolution of societies and territories, which are distinguished and transformed through the invention of new techniques and new ways of life. The practice of knowledge thus participates in the fight against the massive increase in entropy that characterizes the Anthropocene. The use of automatons in production saves time by increasing productivity: the time made available could then be redistributed to citizens, and dedicated to the practice of technical, social and academic knowledge – that is, to the development of the singular capacities of individuals, which supposes their co-individuation within collective projects, and the return of the fruit of their work to society and the territory |
| . Contributory Income and Contributory Jobs |
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A contributory income could thus be delivered to people, in order to remunerate the time spent in the service of their capacity building, provided that they can justify a period of intermittent employment, during which the acquired capacities are shared with society and used for the development or care of the territory and of its inhabitants, within the framework of intermittent jobs labeled as contributory.
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The implementation of a contributory income therefore presupposes:
. the development of structures and processes of empowerment in the territory, capable of giving citizens the means to develop knowledge individually and collectively
. the creation of intermittent contributory jobs within structures labeled as negentropic
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A process of empowerment corresponds to the development of capacities during work activities, and is distinguished from the acquisition of skills required by a job. The skills acquired with a view to employability tend to lock the individual into the performance of tasks in the definition of which he takes no part and which he can neither modify nor transform. When it forces the individual to conform to pre-established procedures, employment can become structurally entropic: it maintains sclerotic processes that tend towards the repetition of the same and not the production of novelty. Conversely, knowledge practices or empowerment processes produce negentropy at the psycho-social level (“neganthropy”): they establish processes that tend to produce organization within communities sharing rules and objectives, but also diversification, novelty, and singularity from controversies between peers.
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| . New economic indicators |
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A structure (public, private, or associative) may be labeled as negentropic if it contributes to the a sustainable enrichment (social, environmental, economic) for the territory. It will therefore seem necessary to develop new economic indicators, making it possible to take into account the production of negentropy and the social and territorial impacts of companies, which requires considering criteria other than immediate profit and types of values other than exchange value in the evaluation processes.
For example, this will involve measuring the influence of the activities of residents, associations and businesses on the ecosystem and biodiversity, their participation in education, their work for the common good of life, the sustainability of the profits created, the relevance and necessity of the projects developed for the territory, etc.
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| The fact of constituting contributory capital likely to be invested in the development of such activities therefore requires qualifying at new costs and according to specific criteria the contributory investment, in particular by formalizing in a quantifiable way indicators of negentropic impact (likely to measure the positive externalities of these activities, their value in terms of ecological sustainability and social innovation, and on the basis of a new conception of utility). This will involve considering new modes of experimental income, investment and contributory credit, and in the longer term, creating alternative macroeconomic models in different localities. |