Community Ownership as Mamlaka

Community Ownership as Mamlaka

By Rick Smith

Wealth that is made through the labour of working community members is currently being gluttonously drained by the ruling class. It is the members of the ruling class who own the means of production that are depriving communities of the ability to organize themselves into viable political units and increase the standard of living for their diligent members. To overcome this handicap in the system, the means of production must be reclaimed by the communities in which they operate so that the communities themselves benefit as well as the workers within the community. This requires defining what constitutes the means of production, justifying community take-over by exposing the evils of private ownership of the means of production, and outlining how a community can achieve this ambitious objective.

The means of production are, as the name suggests, the central tools from which wealth is produced. This includes things such as railways with which to transport goods, factories with which to produce goods, warehouses with which to store goods, and machinery and equipment with which to perform the labour. For this reason, it must be immediately clarified that the markets in which the goods are dealt are not considered to fall within the means of production, nor outlets from which services are offered. Thus, if as an example a factory were to come into the hands of the community in which it resides, it would be a fundamental case of the condition to strive for. However, a marketplace where goods are purchased by customers after they are bought by the vendors is not to be considered part of the means of production and should thus remain in the hands of private merchants. Furthermore, the means of production must be placed into ownership according to the region of impact. Continuing with the factory example, any community associations that the factory’s presence affects whether by its physical existence or the employment of a significant amount of the community’s population would own the factory. Profits from the factory would then be used to improve infrastructure, housing, schools, hospitals and other institutions that fulfill the needs of the community. A railway, though, could not conceivably be put in the hands of just a few communities nor be effectively managed by the multitude of communities it maintains a presence in. For this reason, the ownership of the railways as a means of production must be put into the hands of the federal government. It is therefore by a measure of whom it affects and practicality that determines which level of government should own a particular segment of the means of production. The placement of ownership of the means of production into the hands of a community should hereafter be known as “mamlaka” after the Swahili word for “right to ownership”.

Of course, this cannot be done without considerable opposition from the capitalist interests. Their trumpeting of such flimsy and increasingly unbecoming soundbites of “free markets” alongside spurious red-baiting will be heard once this idea emerges even among a handful of people. Of course, if one believes that libertarian free markets are necessarily a good thing because of the dubitable ablation of the word “free”, then the concept of community mamlaka would fall under the menacing category of “communism” and would hastily be discarded. Nevertheless, there is a plentitude of reasons to consider mamlaka as an alternative to unrestricted capitalism. Among them is the retrospective observation that prior to the influx of citizens into cities during the Industrial Revolution, communities were the primary means of organizing and managing resources, which at the time consisted mainly of agriculture products. For this reason, it is evident that microeconomic management of resources is entirely plausible. In addition to plausibility, there are both moral and logical arguments for this. As a moral argument, the allowance of private investors who have already accumulated ample fortunes to continue to deplete communities of their resources creates poverty and robs workers of a fair price for their labour. From a retail perspective, the Wal-Mart corporation has a practice of transferring any money earned at the end of the week from their stores across the United States to their corporate headquarters, and there is no reason to not expect a similar practice with their stores in other countries. This is the danger of corporate monopolies and is especially evident when the means of production are involved. Allowing corporations to monopolize the means of production empowers the ruling elite and further debases the resources of the working class. This continues the cycle of poverty by depriving families and communities of the assets necessary to advance themselves to financial freedom. To do so in the name of freedom is to do so in the name of a shadowy malevolence conveniently cloaked with a misrepresentative brand of freedom that in fact perpetuates the serfdom of the working class and their families. Allowing for mamlaka means that in addition to the payment that the workers receive for their work, they are additionally working for their communities and not to fill the bank accounts of an insatiable collective of plutocrats. Mamlaka also means that the community will not have to suffer the environmental damage from reckless profit-pursuit.

To reinvest the funds earned from mamlaka, the community must of course achieve ownership. This is indeed a daunting task, but must be done within the principles of the Canadian Renaissance movement. That is to say, we reject the Marxist call for violent revolution in favour of peaceful transition from capitalist democracy to community democracy. The right to property that is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution is defied by non-compensated nationalization of industry. However, the fact remains that a community that surrounds a factory is unlikely to possess the funds to buy the factory in the first place. Therefore, any community seeking mamlaka must seek the money elsewhere. Where luck is a factor, successful members of the community or former members looking to invest in the community could pool their resources to pull off the purchase, but this should not be relied on. Ideally, once community democracy is put in place – and it must be before mamlaka can take place – the provincial and federal governments would be completely answerable to community associations. With this in mind the need to purchase the means of production must be put on the front of the agenda of both the provincial and federal governments. Naturally, when a factory is close to bankruptcy – as they often are as a result of free trade with developing nations – they will sell for much less and it would thus be an optimal time to buy. It is fundamental in the process of achieving mamlaka that respect for the rights of property under the Canadian Constitution be respected and the need to acquire the means of production for the community as soon as possible under the best possible circumstances.

Mamlaka is absolutely essential to constructing a Canadian economy in agreement with the principles of community democracy. In this way, communities will be able to reinvest the profit at the place where the money was made, have the ability to regulate environmental impact, and have a harmonious partnership with the trade unions instead of the antagonistic relations that result from corporate-union co-existence.