Common Wealth: For a Free, Equal, Mutual and Sustainable Society

by Martin Large; Hawthorn Press, 2010, 256 pgs.

Review by Sarah Hearn

Listlessly naming the flaws of the system can be an alluring distraction from trying to fix it. And too often the intoxication of scrutinizing social problems dulls one’s faculties for perceiving a larger context and mapping a way forward. But not so with Martin Large, an English academic, business entrepreneur, community facilitator, and all around trailblazer. Large is as interested in the “know-how” as in the “know-why” of tackling social problems and working toward Common Wealth, the title of his new book. He models a delicate balance of critiquing the problems, presenting practical means to effecting positive social change, and offering a big-picture framework for understanding the three sectors of society: economy, polity, and culture.

Drawing in part from Rudolf Steiner’s work with the threefold social organism, this framework recognizes mutuality, 1 equality, and freedom as the leading principles of economy, polity, and culture respectively, with business, government, and civil society as their leading institutions. While there’s some contention around identifying civil society as the chief vehicle of the cultural sector—particularly in anthroposophical circles—Large’s inclusive exploration could potentially calm this dispute. Large recognizes multiple definitions of civil society: as a vast, informal association of community and culturally-based organizations; as those organizing specifically for comprehensive sustainable development, peace, and social justice; and as a larger vision for the future, wherein cultural values and initiatives flourish, employing the creativity of the human spirit, free from political and economic control. This last definition finds strong resonance with Steiner’s picture of a truly free cultural life as the bedrock of a healthy threefold social organism.

Large draws directly on salient points from Steiner’s social ideas and also from those of a handful of contemporaries connected to the anthroposophical movement: Robert Karp, Nicanor Perlas, and Otto Scharmer, to name a few. While referencing wisdom and examples from an array of wellknown historical leaders, Large also has his ear to the wind of what’s fresh, relevant, and progressive in the worlds of economics, governance, and cultural movements. This makes Common Wealth a great resource as well as an introduction to this constellation and to a more macrocosmic understanding of “tripolar society,” which Large outlines in part 1 of his book. But it doesn’t stop there. He works to build a “map that can help guide action for a more sustainable society and planet,” positing that we all have “an intuitive, gut-level grasp” for healthy social boundaries as a basis for this map. He explains that clarifying boundaries not only prevents confusion and disharmony, but also enables each sector to focus on what it does best.

In the second section of the book, Large proceeds to use the tripolar picture of society to analyze how and why negative boundary-crossing takes place and what we can do about it. He presents a summary and analysis of how corporations and banks have captured the state, estranging it from its guiding principle of equality, and provides a succinct and helpful overview of the rise of corporate privilege and power, of privatization, and of the fashioning of corporate execs into government officials and back again. But fear not: Large is as well versed as he is hopeful, so he also charts some of the route toward establishing boundaries so that government can maintain autonomy from the clutches of business and protect freedoms and social justice.

Common Wealth includes equally vivid pictures of our captive cultural life, systematically identifying the commercial and political interests that stifle and constrain cultural freedom. The author ambitiously tackles these issues in all their complexity. A free cultural life, as he explains it, isn’t just about some loose promotion of freedom and autonomy for cultural organizations, the media, science, and the arts. He brings fresh data and commentary to bear upon multiple issues, including both intellectual and genetic commons; the privatization of healthcare; and the commercialization of childhood. In his words, cultural life means “all the activities that enable people to develop their potential, to maintain their health, wellbeing, and sense of meaning. The argument is that the freer and more independent from political and/or corporate control they are, the more vibrant our schools, arts, sports, science and health will be.”

In the final chapter of part 2, Large addresses capitalism gone wild, unpacking our current economic crises and touching on most of the hot-button themes on the neoliberal agenda, such as deregulation, privatization, and the rule of free markets. Here it may occasionally overwhelm the American mind to navigate a text geared toward readers in the United Kingdom with its emphasis on British history and passages of unfamiliar facts, figures, and headlines. That said, Large’s diagnoses and conclusions resound beyond geographic or national borders, imploring us to inform ourselves and take action.

To that end, the book offers a great chart that deserves mention. It descriptively compares a neoliberal, capitalist society and a tripolar one in twenty different areas of contemporary social concern. The idea of something so schematic might pique concern among those who are familiar with the oft-repeated caveat of social threefolding— that it’s neither a blueprint nor a quick-fix for our social ills—but as evidenced by the examples below, Large does a commendable job of communicating qualities and leading thoughts, not prescriptions.

What emerges as one of the book’s central concerns is that free-market capitalism, in rewarding self-interested, competitive behavior, makes everything in its grasp a commodity to be bought, sold, and privately owned, including some essential aspects of our common wealth: land, individual human labor power, and capital, (according to Large, we ignore the fact that capital is socially created, unable to exist without society’s support). Part 3 addresses how to redraw boundaries and transform capitalism to overcome this seizure of common wealth. However, this shouldn’t be confused with a return to some long-lost utopia. Large aims to map a way forward that helps the natural systems of economy, polity, and culture emerge, untangled, into our contemporary context. Echoing Steiner and others’ call for the decommodification of land, labor, and capital, Large offers practical models for how to transform these bedrocks of our economic system into commons for the benefit of all.

The subsequent chapters present convincing evidence for the viability of these models just at the point where many writers often falter, unable to maintain equal footing in both the conceptual, academic work and the nitty-gritty details of carrying out their ideas. Here Large offers a trustworthy synthesis of scholarly insight along with his own practical experience and personal impressions.

With respect to land, we’ve all had front row seats to the market failure that’s unfolded as a result of land speculation. But not everyone is familiar with the powerful measures some communities are taking to protect land and hold it in tenure for the benefit of all. Large presents an expansive account of the Community Land Trust (CLT) model, which holds land in trust on behalf of the community and separates the value of land from the housing or other structures built on it, basing the value of the latter on their replacement costs (labor and materials) rather than on the fictitious values of the speculative market. He also explains the function of a Land Value Tax as a means of securing and protecting land for housing and productive purposes. Though these models vary among countries and even states or municipalities because of legal and community contexts, Large offers important universal foundations on the land issue, including suggestions for how CLTs can best acquire land and explorations of other innovative types of housing, from cooperatives to cohousing initiatives.

With respect to the commodification of human labor, Large advocates a Citizen’s Income (often called Basic Income) as a measure for social inclusion and more equitable wealth distribution. The Citizen’s Income would grant every national citizen an unconditional basic income, and support for such a measure has grown significantly in the past few years, especially in Europe. The book’s short overview of a Citizen’s Income is particularly worth reading because it doesn’t shy away from tough questions regarding its ethical rationale, implementation, or the common criticism that it might provide a disincentive to work and shrink the labor supply.

The least common model Large presents is for a Commons Capital Trust (CCT) to steward capital and means of production for business enterprises with a conscience. For anyone who’s read Steiner’s World Economy lectures, this is a particularly exciting model because it gives substance to Steiner’s call for the creation of methods to direct capital toward entrepreneurs with good ideas and to cultural initiatives in need of gift money in order to support its healthy circulation and protect it from getting sunk into land or luxury items. What CLTs do for the land issue a CCT could do for capital—lease the common wealth to an individual or group

for productive use with an eye toward social, economic, and cultural benefits for the community. If we view capital as something that is socially created and existentially dependent on the mutuality of various aspects of society, we can see how some business owners have already recognized this issue and have turned toward various forms of social entrepreneurship, green business, and the B Corps initiative (corporations that are genetically encoded to support social and environmental causes with the capital they create) as well as peer-to-peer lending and Slow Money. The CCT model is an exciting new development and deserves further exploration in all regards.

Common Wealth also examines the way forward to liberating education as a primary foundation for a free cultural life. While Large points to the United States as a front-runner in the small-school educational movement, his discussion centers mostly on the British system and features lengthy descriptions of the qualitative needs of free education in the United Kingdom such as partnership, respect for the individual, and avoiding carrot/stick tactics. He seems to shy away from full engagement with some tangible measures for freeing education, with hardly a mention of modern school voucher models or details of the emerging school choice movement in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. However, he does call for the establishment of an autonomous education council to lead and take responsibility for the education system, and offers some inspiring success stories from Europe. Overall, Common Wealth offers a thorough treatment of various social problems and potential solutions to securing our common wealth. The book draws on an impressive collection of contemporary thinkers and doers and puts careful emphasis on deep listening and dialogue as catalysts for meaningful social change. All the while, Martin Large builds the picture of a radiant tripolar society with business, government, and civil society working in conscious partnership for sustainable development.