The Basics of Library Socialism V0.3

Shawn Vulliez

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11 min read

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Mar 21, 2023

[I am (slowly) building out a Library Socialism 101 article which reflects the theory as it is currently developed. Each section will likely be expanded on in the future, and more sections added. Feedback welcome, it’s under construction-Shawn]

I. Library Society

Planet earth is not an economy that just happens to have humans on it.

We currently live in a society where private property and the marketplace are our defining institutions. The consequences of this arrangement has been ecological devastation, poverty, and corruption. We have an unhinged ecology and violent inequality.

We propose an alternative model: a society in where lending libraries are the defining institutions of our society.

We face two major threats to human civilization: the climate emergency, and the crisis of global inequality. The lending principle of the library- which we call usufruct- is in the unique position of being able to address both of these crises at once. The principle of circulating communal materials decreases the amount of resource throughput which is required to provide for everyone, and the process of circulating shared goods by default, rather than private hoarding, could eliminate poverty and inequality. It’s a solution that threads together multiple major problems we face into a single, elegant solution.

So, Library Socialism is a cornucopian ideology of luxurian circulating communal abundance. Our core idea is that by creating institutions which can share the bounty of earth fairly, we can have a higher degree of ecological responsibility while also at the same time ending poverty. We can do more with less, and give all of humanity a standard of living that’s never been achieved before in human history.

There’s reason to think this would be a popular proposal. In a society which largely views all institutions with contempt, public libraries continually rank among the most respected public institutions, up with first responders and police. We have a credible, materialist argument for an unprecedented growth in abundance mediated by new institutions of communal property.

Library socialism is a more comprehensive programme than the key idea of usufructian property relations. But if you’re going to take only a single thing away from this proposal, remember this: the solutions to the ecological crisis and the social crisis of inequality are both present within the logic of the lending library.

II. Where to End Capitalism

There are three guiding values that we use to measure the transition away from capitalism towards another system. While much is said in opposition to capitalist violence, it’s often a quite slippery concept that seems to shape-shift around whatever attempts we make to oppose it. The open ended definition of capitalism in vogue is like an ooze that can always creep back through the cracks.

Even if you want to end capitalism, it’s hard to know where exactly to find it.

We define the qualitative features of capitalism as having three primary aspects that must be overturned in the transition to Library Socialism. Each of these capitalist values and institutions have their opposites in Library Socialism.

We stand for the abolition of private property, because it destroys the planet and corrupts politics.

Usufruct is a property relationship where durable goods are shared like a library and held in common, where they are loaned and transferred based on who is using them. What distinguishes this most clearly from private property is the principle of abusus. Under private property as inherited from Roman slave society, there are three property rights which make up property as a whole: usus (the right to use,) fructus (the right to collect the fruit or profit,) and abusus (the right to destroy.) Under a usufructian system, the twisted and socially useless right to destroy something that you ‘own’ no longer exists. But we propose going further than that: systems of anti-abusus communal property that emphasize the wholeness of community, the wholeness of nature, and which uses the lending library as our guide for an alternative to marketplaces and private property.

We stand for the abolition of deprivation and forced work, because all human beings deserve a dignified life free from coercion.

The Irreducible Minimum is a universal guarantee of the needs of a good life. A way of expressing our social responsibility to meet the basic needs of all people. There should be a level that no one can fall below. A dignified home, access to food, water, and internet, a right to privacy. These are the sorts of basics which we should propose as part of a healthy society. This is the condition which prevents systemic exploitative forced labour, as it’s our responsibilty to ensure that everyone genuinely has options. Library socialists go further than so-called “basic” needs- we don’t find a cell with daily gruel enough to live a very liberating vision. The correct view on the Irreducible Minimum is that our responsibility extends to not just food, but good food, self-actualization, opportunity, joy, and everything beautiful made enough for everyone and shared with all. For this same reason, we strongly support p2p filesharing, libraries, and public parks.

We stand for the abolition of bosshood, because command-and-control hierarchical relationships are socially damaging, bury and obscure competence, and encourage corrupt behavior.

The ethic of complementarity holds that non-hierarchal difference is generative. For example, our neighbour who is elderly and our neighbour who is a child- both have unique things to contribute that are rooted in their differences. An elder may have more experiences and from that a direct insight into the flows of history that a young person would not, sometimes at the expense of a tendency towards rigidity. A young person is more adapatable to new ideas and processes, open-minded, and dynamic, sometimes at the expense of less knowledge and experience. Neither is better or worse than the other, neither is above or below. When both of their skillsets are understood as potentially, and indeed consciously made, complementary, we unlock a greater freedom for everyone. The same applies to all differences amongst human beings, including between the roles of boss and worker in a workplace. We can judge the transition away from capitalism in how the logic of hierarchal bosshood is eroded and replaced with a sense of holistic complementarity, and how the social roles themselves are transformed or abolished. The necessary conclusion of a complementary society is one which embraces queerness, disability, age, and cultural difference as parts of complete and mutually reinforcing wholeness.

Our inherited system produces too much of the wrong things and then distributes it in the wrong places. So we have huge waste and people suffering from unmet need at the same time. Under capitalism, everything is in it’s wrong place. The goal of Library Socialism is to put things where they belong.

III. Library Democracy

The only political program which can abolish bosshood is a sufficiently advanced direct democracy. A layered knot of participatory mutuality would constitute a new form of freedom.

A complete democratic system is rarely even imagined, let alone tried. But when we library socialists say ‘all power to the people,’ we mean all power to all people.

To do this at a system level is no simple task. When we look at the staggering complexity of our own society we see a dancing interplay between markets, courts, ballot boxes and parliaments, private firms, unions, and media organizations, just to name a few. Different types of power are radically decentralized through unspoken convention, creating a tapestry of power which isn’t easily summarized. We assume that a fair and complete democratic system will be more or less equally complex as the current system we’ve inherited.

Our inherited system was not designed by rote blueprint, but by an iterative, experimental process, that was shaped through political struggles, tensions, and even revolutions. The next system will surely be shaped through similar yet-unforeseen processes. For that reason, it’s foolish to too rigidly suggest a totalizing vision. However, we should nevertheless define some of the broad strokes of a Library Democracy as our guidepost.

There is no singular democratic solution to all problems. Our inherited system functions in a complex way. For example, your local library. It’s likely a municipal body which recieves state funding, and works according to federal regulation. Its IT systems are from a marketplace of 3rd party vendors, it’s books printed, published and distributed by different firms. A righteous and complete democracy would function similarly in multiple complex layers, according to new conventions of distributed power.

The old saying goes- “Measure twice, cut once.” for good reason. A complete democracy would be a complex system of overlapping specializations which give democratic subjects multiple options and avenues for participating in public life, and which locks no-one out. The system would be expressive to every individual voter, and built on a bedrock of checks and balances through collaboration, consensus, and ratification.

Workplace democracy is one key layer, and the layer which obliterates the bosshood of the workplace. But we are not just workers, we are consumers as well. And workplaces are located within, and affect, neighbourhoods. So on some issues, all three layers need to be consulted. Other issues just affect two layers. Some decisions just one. Everyone should have the option to weigh in on the things which affect them. No one is the boss of anyone. No layer is more important than one another. Consumer democracy abolishes the bosshood of firms over individuals. Neighbourhood democracy abolishes the bosshood of representative democracy.

A politician, to us, is someone who takes more than their fair share of politics for themselves. Competitive representative democracy does not have a big place, or perhaps a place at all, in Library Democracy. Representative democracy is an elitist pursuit, which was originally envisioned as a compromise between democracy and aristocracy. We reject it for an egalitarian approach. In confederation, democratic bodies send recallable delegates who act as intermediaries for the groups they represent. They are not rulers or decision-makers, but proxies.

Different voting systems and processes have value for different contexts- consensus, liquid democracy, ranked ballots, long-form expressive balloting, face-to-face democracy, range voting, sortition, quadratic voting. Each has their benefits and drawbacks to any given context. Our complete system will have a mosiac of all of these methods and more. Our guiding principles are simple: no one should be turned away without an option for meaningful participation, necessary knowledge for participation should always be universally available, expertise is valued but all have access to the conditions of building their own expertise.

Under a fair system, snakes in suits, hippie freaks, cranks, and TV watching boomers all have a seat at the table as much as the most principled and radical library socialist activist. That’s by design. In fact, we’re strengthened by these differences of perspective, when our energy is focused right, and our political conventions push us towards productivity. This doesn’t necessarily mean every moment is ruled by peaceful collaboration. The right conflict for the right reasons can be part of the generative potential of democratic emergence.

With neither mob rule, nor the tyranny of very serious experts, we can have balanced systems which incorporate the workplace democracy of skilled trades or studied experts with the unpredictable and sometimes necessary brilliance of autodidact outsiders. The structure of the democratic process can be oriented towards mutual accountability and openness, while still having a layered process which refines collaboration and weighs the value of expertise and experience.

The democratic space is like a library- more than the sum of it’s parts. The interplay of ideas and perspectives is generative. Dialogue, persuasion, consensus, deliberation, consultation with expertise, and conflict towards solutions end up sharpening the spear of democracy. The democratic process is that political difference, unfolding against itself, towards utopia, in myriad forms, with a myriad of voices.

Tallying votes in new ways is also not enough. In order to have a real democracy, we must also empower people to act without permission. In the most stilted parody of democracy imaginable, you must ask permission from your neighbours or the people’s dog-walking board to walk your dog. We reject a democracy which rejects the democracy of the individual. In order to have a free society, we must strike a balance which empowers people to do a greater variety of things without permission, proportionate to how it affects other people. “Do-ocracy” is a meaningful component of a layered library democracy, and any system which functions smoothly. Under the current system, that free agency is filtered into certain market forms, and in our system we will create new contexts to enable and encourage self-directed actions.

Where are we going to get time for all this wonderful democracy? How about massively reduced normal work hours and a wealth of leisure?

VI. The Gilded Pathway To Perfect Utopia Forever

There’s no singular set of political tactics that will work in all contexts, there’s no golden ticket, no key to the city, no get out of jail free. The work of political transition involves pulling up one’s sleeves, pinching one’s nose, and working in a variety of ways when the circumstances and contingencies demand it. We can view the entire library of tactical, organizational, and political actions as a wide array of tools which might be appropriate in one given circumstance or another. In some society, on some planet, at some given time, any of these possible tools might have a use.

We must continually build a unique strategy for our own given moment.

There are three spectra of political action in library socialist analysis. Our goal is to envision a cascade of actions which bring all three together into harmony. It may be the case that each individual tactic matters less than the collaboration they are brought into.

We also must work with the political ecosystem that we have, thinking about how to mutually corral the existing energy of our movements towards something coherent and complete. A flat note can be made to work in a melody.

The first category is Narrative Practice. This utopian practice is to refine the facts into a compelling narrative, and grow the appeal of our political goals through public engagement. This is a category of tactics that includes study groups, media, journalism, movement knowledge, rhetoric, and public persuasion. This is the most accessible tactical front, which the majority of readers are likely engaged in to some degree, even if it’s just talking to their friends about politics. The ultimate goal of library socialist narrative practice is to bring as many people as possible into our politics, or as close to it as possible.

The second category is Prefigurative Practice. In this DIY method of utopian practice, we seek to build grassroots institutions of community care as a vector for political engagement. This category of tactics could include mutual aid groups, food not bombs, tool libraries, filesharing protocols, and support for climate events like shovelling walks in unseasonal blizzards, providing information on cooling for heat waves, masks for pandemics and wildfire smoke, and so on. Library socialist prefigurative practice is the glue that holds the whole strategy together, with three concurrent goals: first, to do some little good in an otherwise hostile world, secondly, to spread the narrative and information relevant to political survival, and thirdly, to build bases of collective power which can engage large amounts of people for societal change.

The third category is Institutional Practice. In this spectrum of politics, we’re attempting to remake society through whatever tools and levers we can get our grubby little hands on. This is a category of tactics that includes influencing centres of power, securing non-reformist reforms, changing policies and directions of outside institutions, and even in some cases, entering the institutions to appropriate their resources for good or change their direction. The ultimate goal of institutional practice is nothing short of system change. It’s ultimate forms are particularly hard to predict, but we can only climb to this rung if we’ve given sufficient attention to the first two.

It’s through the conscious interplay of these categories, building up from the introspective world of narrative, through the practical realm of collaborative community aid, and into the echelons of global political transition that we have a shot to remake society into something ecological, democratic, and socialist.

Organizationally, I identify Usufructian Commons, Digital Commons, Food Commons, Climate Self-Defense Commons, and Democratic Commons as key pillars of a holistic prefigurative ecology of tactics. A strong base of strategies which can mutually support one another. But there are many others which could work as well. Don’t let me limit your imagination. For more on one possible way to apply these ideas to present conditions, read this.

[To be continued/revised/updated. subject to revision, splitting, tweaks and so on… — last update 2023–11–04 SV]