The traditions we inherit

The traditions Commonweal comes from. Commonwealism is new, but its parts are old.

The commonweal

Commonweal is an old English word for the common good: the welfare of the whole community, the weal we hold in common. It is the root of commonwealth. Medieval and early modern writers used it for the idea that rulers and property exist to serve the wellbeing of all. Commonwealism keeps both words: the commonweal is the common good, and a commonwealth is a self-governing community that holds it in common.

Subsidiarity and the guilds

Catholic social teaching, especially Pius XI's letter Quadragesimo Anno (1931), set out the principle of subsidiarity: a larger body should not take over what a smaller one can do well. Medieval Europe's guilds, associations of craftsmen and traders, kept standards of skill, trained apprentices and cared for their members. Commonwealism's nested commonwealths and its national guilds draw on both.

Solidarism

In the 1890s the French statesman Léon Bourgeois argued, in his book Solidarité (1896), that everyone is born in debt to society and owes something back, and that the state should guarantee mutual protection against illness, accident and old age. The German Jesuit economist Heinrich Pesch developed a solidarist economics in which classes cooperate under the common good instead of fighting. Commonwealism takes from solidarism its central idea: mutual obligation, with the strong owing the weak.

Catholic social teaching and Christian democracy

In 1891 Pope Leo XIII's letter Rerum Novarum defended workers' right to a just wage and to organise, while also defending property and the family. That teaching inspired the Christian democratic parties of the twentieth century, which joined faith and tradition to a strong welfare state. Commonwealism keeps that union of faith and social care, but makes no faith compulsory.

Stewardship and participation

The idea that owners are stewards, holding property in trust for the common good, runs through both religious and civic traditions. In postwar France, Charles de Gaulle championed participation, giving workers a share in the running and profits of their companies, alongside a strong state that steered the economy in the national interest. Commonwealism's stewarded economy draws on both ideas.

Cybernetics and Project Cybersyn

Commonweal's method comes from cybernetics, the science of how systems steer themselves through feedback. In Brain of the Firm (1972) the British cybernetician Stafford Beer set out the Viable System Model: the five parts any self-governing system needs.

From 1971 to 1973 Beer applied it in Chile, in Project Cybersyn, with Fernando Flores and a team of Chilean engineers and designers. It had four parts:

• Cybernet, a network of telex machines that carried daily production figures from factories to Santiago.
• Cyberstride, software that flagged unusual changes early.
• CHECO, a simulator of the economy.
• The Opsroom, an operations room where decisions could be taken quickly with the facts in view.

In October 1972, during a strike by truck owners, the network helped keep food and fuel moving with a fraction of the usual trucks. The project ended with the military coup of 11 September 1973.

Commonweal is not a revival of that government's politics. It takes Cybersyn's lasting technical lessons: shared, current information lets a nation coordinate itself; problems are best caught early, by the people closest to them; and a small team can do a great deal with little.

Open source

In 1983 Richard Stallman launched the GNU project to build an operating system that anyone could use, study, change and share. That free software movement, and the open standards that let the internet's machines all talk to each other, show how technology can belong to everyone. Commonweal is free software for the same reason.

Lessons Commonweal carries forward

1. The common good is the measure. Every institution, the state included, is judged by how well it serves the whole people.
2. Mutual obligation. The strong owe the weak, and everyone owes something to the nation that raised them.
3. Feedback beats guesswork. A nation that can see itself clearly can govern itself well.
4. Power must stay accountable. Records and systems can be captured and turned against the people. Openness, consent and the people's power to overrule are the defence.
5. Open technology is national strength. What everyone can read, fix and build on cannot be held hostage.

Further reading

• Stafford Beer, Brain of the Firm (1972; second edition 1981).
• Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile (2011).
• Léon Bourgeois, Solidarité (1896).
• Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891).