3.10 Building institutions and collective action that can support the transition

The Manifesto of the Awakening raises the issue of a healthy management of authorities. If, according to John Rogers Commons, institutions are collective actions that steer individual action, it is clear that we must envision institutions that will also be able to steer collective action. We must account for this reality of revolutionary spaces in which we are investing as well as the power struggles between domination and emancipation.

The expression ‘collective action’ as employed here goes beyond the usual concept of a common concerted action¹Commons, J.R. (1950). The economics of Collective action. New York : The Macmillan Company.. Here we mean everything that causes collectives to act together, in the pragmatist sense of the term (Peirce, James and Dewey). Collective action is the whole of gestures, behaviour, usage, rules and habits that govern the action of a collective of human beings, whether or not its members know each other. Understood in this way, the employees of a multinational corporation with establishments around the world possess the same collective action : the same employer, the same products, the same uniform, the same objective, the same values etc. All social movements have a collective action as well : before it becomes a concerted action, it begins as a rollout of a common framework, of congruent gestures, values, language etc. It is collective action that sets gestures in motion, that transform what already exists. Collective action includes institutions, or, as Elinor Ostrom highlights : “we mustn’t believe that there can be institutions other than those created by the State²Cited by Pierre Dardot and Chrisitan Laval (2014). Commun. Essai sur la révolution au XXI^e siècle, Pris, La Découverte, p. 149, note 22.”.

Therein lies precisely the issue : establishing rules, human collectives, a vision, a narrative that will allow a movement of the socio-ecological transition to converge and to recognize itself for what it is, on its own foundations, to act in order to carve out a path for the future. In short, building “our” institutions and “our” collective action, even if it means intersecting existing institutions that were not built to promote a transition.

It is important to understand here how collective action comes about and how it “controls” and permits future actions.

Notes

• 1
  Commons, J.R. (1950). The economics of Collective action. New York : The Macmillan Company.
• 2
  Cited by Pierre Dardot and Chrisitan Laval (2014). Commun. Essai sur la révolution au XXI^e siècle, Pris, La Découverte, p. 149, note 22.”