_

This century could hardly have started more tragically in Bolivia. The civilian population staged a series of protests in what is now known as the Water War. This capitalist process of extraction was led by Hugo Banzer, president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001 and former orchestrator—as a member of the military—of a coup d’Etat in 1971. In 2000, Banzer signed a contract with an international business consortium, including the US firm Edison and Spain’s Abengoa, to privatise the supply of drinking water to the municipality of Cochabamba, and he also declared martial law.

Two claims were decisive in the Cochabamba Water War, put forward by two local players, namely the Coordinadora Departamental del Agua y la Vida [Departmental Coordinator for Water and Life] and the Federación Departamental Cochabambina de Regantes [Departmental Federation of Cochabamban Irrigation Committees]. Standing out among the communiqués published by the Coordinadora is the one issued by the end of 1999. It included a concept based on Elinor Ostrom’s crucial theoretical work around the commons—i.e. resources destined for common use—, which inspires the writings of thinkers such as Nancy Fraser, Christian Laval, Pierre Dardot, María José Guerra Palmero, Fernando Broncano [1][1] Broncano, Fernando (2020). Conocimiento expropiado. Epistemología política en una democracia radical [Expropriated knowledge. Political epistemology in a radical democracy]. Ediciones Akal., Alicia Puleo or César Rendueles, among others [2][2] Rendueles, César (2024). Comuntopía. Comunes, postcapitalismo y transición ecosocial [Comuntopia. Commons, post-capitalism and ecosocial transition]. Ediciones Akal.. The motto: “We were plundered, and yet we owned nothing” inspired forms of political communication and discursive arenas—to paraphrase Fraser—that ended in the defeat—albeit short-lived—of the neoliberal threat to the public management of this resource.

In their delving into the complex world of etymology—one we must undoubtedly return to if we hope to interpret the political meaning of the common good—French philosophers Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot remind us that from the root word munus comes the term we use for the experience of reciprocity, mutuum, understood in its collective and political dimension. From it come words like re-munerado, which, in Spanish, refers to the due compensation in exchange for an action or service. It is the same root we will find in the term designating the political structure of a city, made up of citizens of said municipality—municipes.

It is not the aim of this paper to elaborate a conceptual history of the commons or the common good. It is precisely in the writings of Laval and Dardot that we can find one of the most outstanding studies in this regard—although the methodological criteria employed aren’t per se those of conceptual history. To our aim, it will be enough to coincide with their observation that, in the Ciceronian tradition, the notion of the public good is opposed to the private one, as the common good is to the individual good. This is because it is opposite to all things private, yet it is not linked to the State. It was Rousseau who looked to the common good as an object of his general will, having identified it with the common interest or with the shared elements within individual interests, forming social bonds. From this, we can conclude that, in the contractualist tradition, the notion of “common good” derives from the very institution of the State. Thus, the notion of practical activity as a means to render things common is lost—that is, as the shaper of a new collective subject that Laval and Dardot retrieved with the concept of “moral economy of the crowd” [4][4] Ídem..

Voice Articulation and the Search for Common Ground

Contemporary republicanism cannot remedy the inherent limitations of the ideal of self-rule and the limits of public deliberation. This is because articulation is achieved through practices guided by the political principle of co-obligation, or in other words, reciprocal commitment toward a common activity. Mini-publics and counter-publics are all but the political institutions designed in our time to guarantee access to deliberation spaces. There, we can forge an educated public opinion without considering its connection to the political meaning of the common good.

Contemporary republicanism should stay abreast of the debate on the common good, for otherwise, conceptions of civic virtue will become disengaged from the participatory practices that build up political co-obligation. It is noteworthy that contemporary republicanism has not acted as a theoretical platform from which to analyse the different conceptions of the commons or common good. Both socialism and the feminist critical theory caused a radical break away from 19th-century thought, exposing how workers, women, and a large section of social activities had been excluded from the common good.

In Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought, Hannah Arendt illustrated with great clarity the extent to which the shift to labour-centrality caused an unexpected disruption in the political thought preceding Marx [5][5] Guerra Palmero, María José (2011). Arendt y los feminismos contemporáneos: ontología y política [Arendt and contemporary feminisms: ontology and politics]. Daimon, Revista Internacional de Filosofía 4: 203-212.. In his presentation of this classic text, Agustín Serrano de Haro, a specialist in Arendt’s work, clarifies this point:

“But in fact—I shall clarify this further—it was first the Industrial Revolution, followed up by the North American and French political Revolutions, that caused such changes to the landscape of social and political coexistence in the West. Marx emerged as the great thinker who noted these mutations and the attempts to cover their extraordinary scope. The emancipation, already underway, of the working classes within an egalitarian society in which all human beings are (merely) labourers-consumers was the basis of Marxian glorification of labour. This was also the foundation for the exaltation of necessity as both a source and driver of freedom.In this tradition, physical labour was tantamount to sheer compulsion—that is, natural, non-political—and thus, it could not posit notions which, like slavery, have nonetheless taken place. Marx strove to address this unprecedented novelty in the liberation of labour (…).” [6][6] Arendt, Hannah (2007). Karl Marx y la tradición del pensamiento político occidental [Karl Marx and the tradition of Western political thought]. Ediciones Encuentro.

According to Arendt’s interpretation, Marx challenged the tradition of Western political thought by liberating labour from the categories of this overburdened tradition. But Arendt made a twofold discovery: in her historical tackling of the ancient world, in which she conceives slavery as a social institution, she also sheds light on the fact that women and slaves were both determinant factors in the fabric, build-up and maintenance of communitarian relations.

According to orthodox Marxist Nancy Fraser—whose tracks are followed by authors like José Luis Moreno Pestaña and José Manuel Romero Cuevas in their interpretation of Axel Honneth’s thought and the reproduction of social matters [7][7] Romero Cuevas, José Manuel & Moreno Pestaña, José Luis (2022), Recuperar el socialismo. Un debate con Axel Honnet [Reclaiming socialism. A debate with Axel Honnet]. Ediciones Akal.—it is now commonplace to claim that capital gain derives from women’s work. Less clear is how we should consider the role of women—as well as that of slaves, if we accept Arendt’s framework—both in the sociopolitical construct and the moral economy of the commons. Elucidating this matter is no easy task from a theoretical standpoint: women’s public voice and political agency concerning what Dardot and Laval called “the commons” appears to be as difficult to extract as the position held by the commons themselves in the political heritage of participatory contemporary republicanism.

The Duality of the Republican Tradition: Elitism vs Egalitarianism

As we know, the two visions of contemporary republicanism, elitist and participatory—or egalitarian, thus feminist—, are opposed to the conceptions of democracy in its pluralist liberal form and its competitive form, respectively. They also incorporate normative solutions from our contemporaries gathered through valuable theoretical practices and papers. In the pluralist form, political agents defend self-interested preferences, aiming not to evaluate the fairness of participants’ pretences but rather to reach agreements by employing diverse negotiation strategies. In the case of the competitive form of democracy, citizens express their individual preferences by voting, and the decision-making process is completed by applying aggregation methods, calculations and majority rule.

It was altogether unlikely that concrete activities—generators of collective identity and the co-obligation underpinning access to the commons—would become a fundamental cause of democracy in its individualistic liberal form. As sociologist Hartmut Rosa expresses:

“According to this notion, politics is the (often antagonistic) field on which to unload conflicts of interest. It is up to democracy to channel the decision-making process fairly and impartially, employing the sum of individual interests and the formation of commitments. […] modern democracy is, first and foremost, based on the idea that the form of politics grants each individual a voice and renders it audible” [8][8] Rosa, Hartmut (2019). Resonancia. Una sociología de la relación con el mundo [Resonance. A sociology of the relationship with the world]. Katz Editores.

To a sociologist of German origin like Rosa, seeking the kind of sociology best suited to describe the relationship between the world and contemporary society, it seemed apparent that voice had a key role in the suffragist tradition. After all, Stimme means both “voice” and “vote/suffrage”. Undoubtedly, this factor made him especially receptive to the findings of political scientist Nancy Love. Drawing from her understanding that the experience and conceptualisation of democracy depend on interpreting the concept of voice, Rosa distinguishes as many as three possible interpretations.

Firstly, he referred to the liberal understanding of politics in which voice is interpreted as a conferred vote: every vote is added as a silent voice of sorts. This political model, therefore, could hardly enjoy what Rosa defined as “qualities of resonnance”, because the people’s voice is converted into the arithmetical and political problem of tallying.

Secondly, both Rosa and Love refer to the Habermasian interpretation in which voting is associated with the deliberative, rational voice, which verbalises (and hence conducts) reasoning—at least as a social phenomenon. This enables the critical analysis of interests and positioning. Voice is thus disembodied, lacking the visceral, sensorial and flesh-bound qualities indispensable to understanding politics as an identity-forging event. It is likewise essential to the purposes of this article, as it ties into the rituals revolving around the commons.

Moreover, it is of utmost interest to join these authors in redeeming a third political experience in the construction of voice. According to Love, an alternative interpretation of voice exists, one we can also find in Julia Simon’s Singing Democracy. This Rousseaunian expert examines workers’ protest songs, interpreting the voice of democracy neither as issued suffrage nor as words but rather as singing or music. This finding was key to Rosa’s quest for democracy’s qualities of resonance.

The ensemble interpretations of voice and its articulation can be broadened because, even when translated in the light of suffragist tradition, the term voice enables and forges an understanding of the liberal form of democracy. This reasoning suggests room to explore re-thinking voice from the standpoint of republican politics. Interestingly, it is in the social and political epistemology of philosophers such as Fernando Broncano, Miranda Fricker [9][9] Fricker, Miranda (2017). Injusticia epistémica [Epistemic injustice]. Herder., José Medina [10][10] Medina, José (2013). The epistemology of resistance. Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford University Press., Nora Berenstain, Kristie Dotson, Julieta Paredes, Elena Ruíz & Silva Noenoe [11][11] Berenstain, Nora; Dotson, Kristie; Paredes, Julieta; Ruíz, Elena; Silva Noenoe K. (2022). Epistemic oppression, resistance, and resurgence. Contemporary Political Theory 21 (2): 283-314., and Carla Carmona that we find references to forms of epistemic negligence, injustice, and resistance, offering a diverse array of approaches to recover voice as a political metaphor [12][12] Carmona, Carla (2021). Extending the limits of epistemic neglect. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (6): 51-57..

“This was the vision held by Marxism. Given that those appropriating capital gains do so with increasing intensity, all while those who produce them become an expanding majority, the class divide turns insurmountable and increasingly radical. The political struggle will thus sooner or later be determined by these social divisions. As production progressed, the likelihood of a triumph of the working classes would also increase. The process was in no rush.
However, populism dismissed this social ontology of class. In this framework, classes do not exist. Social affairs are infinite and endowed with an indomitable surplus. It consisted of an endless game of differences—productive, creative—that cannot be confined to the ontology of classes or in watertight groupings. Society is like a bed of quicksilver, ever spreading and changing. Politics does not spring from this social theory per se. On the contrary, politics is an endeavour that transcends society and aims to control this distinctively modern continuous production of differences. It is on the untamed body of a society resigned to its own dispersion that politics tends to generate something resembling common good.” [13][13] Villacañas, José Luis (2015). Populismo [Populism]. La Huerta Grande Editorial.

From this, we infer that populist theory, thus describing a sense of the social status quo (its reproduction), is not essentialist in nature precisely because the populist community as a project operates through the language and metaphors of politics. The actions and political communication criteria employed by citizens, organising in several forms of mobilisation and protest, seem to highlight that the emergence of (the experience of) the common good depends on the assumption of political co-obligation. Jane Mansbridge maintains that populism—understood as a moral struggle against the elites—tends to favour democracy by forcing a return to the normative roots of politics and promoting distrust of elitist dominion over the economy, justice, and culture in general. However, she also warns that when populist formulas come into power and take up the responsibility of government, their us/them dichotomy, their “moral fervour”—as she puts it—are liable to erode or compromise aspects such as mutual respect, institutions’ ethical-legal function, and practices such as deliberation and negotiation.

The deliberative practices used in citizens’ assemblies, mini-publics, and counter-publics, like those tested in Bolivia, provide clues on where to find the most updated versions of feminist-inspired participatory republican spirit. Lessons like those of the municipalist experience in the Madrid city council have improved our diagnostic understanding of the structural resistances and the woes facing the government action of independent candidates. Piketty’s proposal for participatory socialism is partially inspired by management initiatives that, in my view, effectively transform the social standing of individuals and groups by impacting their epistemic position. Let us examine some examples of what I am trying, perhaps cryptically, to convey.

Activists in Cibeles

In Madrid, municipalism refers to an array of elements delivering a new notion of politics, following the calls for true democracy that the 15M movement put forward. Regardless of how civil society may have assessed public management and city governance by independent actors and politicians between 2015 and 2019, we can establish that this experience emanated from an assembly-based building of independent candidacies. Thanks to the reflection and testimony of political philosopher Monserrat Galcerán, former councillor for the districts of Moncloa-Aravaca and Tetuán, we now understand the requirements for such a government formula to remain operational: it must deploy a common strategy addressing endemic local problems such as privatised public services, evictions, social housing shortage, pollution, our precarious concept of mobility, etc [14][14] Galcerán, Monserrat (2022). Activistas en Cibeles. Apuntes para futuros municipalistas [Activists in Cibeles. Notes for future municipalists]. Traficantes de sueños.. Future municipalist projects will once again be confronted with structural issues—e.g. the bargaining power of civil servants, difficulties fitting transformative projects on the agenda, the limits of municipal political action, etc.—, but also with circumstantial problems like candidacy structure and the means of acquiring political power—e.g social composition of candidacies, electoral list leads and distribution, underdeveloped networks and repercussions of dialogue with social movements, etc.—. The common good, in this case, is the set of actions that ought to be addressed in a future scenario, to tackle the obstacles to government action that any form of municipalism will face. We might add that the formula for counter-publics defended by Fraser might enable absolute participation scenarios if the aim were to strike up the necessary alliances for municipalism and cut the Gordian knot it faces.

Fighting Neo-Proprietary Ideology: For an Egalitarian and Participatory Socialism

Capital and ideology is, without a doubt, one of the most relevant works of our time. The final chapter in this monumental book proposes a set of actions to halt the hyper-unbalanced account that the conservative counter-revolution presented as an inevitability. It aimed to promote what Piketty called “the new neo-proprietarian ideology” and fully unchecked income and wealth concentration levels [15][15] Piketty, Thomas (2019). Capital e ideología [Capital and ideology], p. 1144. Ediciones Deusto.. Among the measures the French thinker and economist referred to, this is the first.

I would particularly like to highlight here that Piketty’s coordinated reasoning rests on a concept of deliberation that sees it as both the end and the means. It is worth noting that this is a conclusion he reached as a historian of economics. Piketty is convinced that, to progress in his research on non-egalitarian regimes, it is necessary to consider the historical and individual experiences on record first and the participation of all members of civil society. Only from this foundation can a collective reflection focused on his proposed transformations be built. In this sense, deliberation is an end and a means, but also an ally.

Conclusions

Contemporary developments in research on deliberative democracy should be linked, at origin, to the political and academic context of the republican tradition. This tradition is more complex than usually acknowledged, as it should incorporate the contributions of feminist critical theory to the deliberative and participatory form of democracy. Indeed, a feature of the political tradition of republicanism is its twofold approach: on the one hand, the elitist focus, and on the other, the participatory or egalitarian—i.e. feminist—one. Likewise, contemporary conceptions around the commons are part of the contemporary republican tradition. These are presented in this paper as authentic critical reviews of the notion of ‘public interest’, which is key to republican thought. The literature on the commons acquaints us with the positive dimension of public deliberation and participation, that is, comprising constituent practices as well as several mini-publics and counter-publics that fully connect with feminism as a social movement, with workers’ demands and, in general, with civil society.

·

SHARE THIS: