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May 2002
The Circle Experiment in the context of the Auroville Economy
- by Jean-Yves
The 'Circle Experiment' began in
February, 2000, when 101 Aurovilians gathered together in 4
'circles' of approximately 25 members each, to find ways to move
towards an economy with no exchange of money. Jean-Yves reviews
the experiment after two years.
The idea behind the experiment was to create
"extended-family" groupings where people who have more
resources can share with those who have less. In that way, the
material living standard of those who live solely on maintenance
provided by the community would improve. The experiment aimed at
developing trust and caring amongst individuals belonging to a
circle, while at the same time creating an economy where the basic
needs of the individual who works for Auroville are taken care of.
Ultimately, the circle-experiment was to further the ideal economy
of Auroville in which individuals would lose the sense of personal
possession, and where the community would move towards
self-sufficiency and no exchange of money within Auroville. The
experiment would re-establish sharing as a principle of the
Auroville economy and provide a decentralised field for
experimentation towards no-exchange of money. The experiment,
however, was not preceded by any quantitative or structural study
of Auroville's economy, and no instrument of evaluation was felt
necessary. Thus a vague program of sharing and caring, of losing
the sense of personal possession and of the disappearance of money
as a means of internal exchange was announced. Wishful thinking
rather than knowledge and objectives or a clearly defined
methodology presided over the Circle experiment from the very
beginning.
Those interested in the experiment grouped
themselves into circles. Each circle appointed a circle
coordinator who controls the circle collective account and keeps
check on the difference between what a circle-member contributes
to the collective circle account and what he or she takes out. In
case a circle's expenses are more than its income, the difference
can be compensated from a "buffer account" from the
community. Though some people had to be warned against
overspending, one of the initial objectives of the circle
experiment was soon reached: many Aurovilians could improve their
access to basic or less basic needs.
There are, of course, also flipsides. One is
that not all circle-members feel motivated to donate any
incidental excess income they may have to the circle account.
Another difficulty is how the Circle coordinators control the
accounts, and halt the ever-increasing discrepancy between
expenses and income. Their attitudes have alternated from an
attitude of laissez-faire to aggressive control, which could take
the form of moral judgment rather than the economic analysis of
the reasons why a person spends more.
The economic context of Auroville is largely
determined by two structural features. The first is that
individual Aurovilians freely determine the allocation of their
resources. This feature is strengthened by the fact that about one
third of the Aurovilians have external resources available to
them. The second feature is that public services are supposed to
be financially self-sufficient, which means that they have to find
the margin they need to cover their expenses and development.
If the services have to be self-sufficient,
they will automatically aim at the more solvent sector of the
population, those who are not maintained by Auroville because they
have resources exceeding their personal basic needs. Pour Tous,
for example, which was created to provide food to all ('Pour Tous'
means 'For All' in French), has become a commercial supermarket,
where one finds certain food and household products that
Aurovilians who depend on the community for their maintenance
cannot afford. But there was no other strategy possible if Pour
Tous had to be self-sufficient.
Thus, a non-affordable offer of products
coincided with the start of the Circle experiment, leading
naturally to an upward level of consumption. The supermarket
system adopted in Pour Tous exposes its customers to a stimulating
offer to fill up one's basket. This system, which comes from
consumerist types of societies, has not been invented to help
people become independent of their impulses but, on the contrary,
to promote 'buying on impulse'. The community subsidizes the
demand-increase by supporting the circle experiment, and so
indirectly supports the self-sufficiency of the services. One can
guess that the money that has been saved by not supporting the
services is now allocated to the "customers" in an
equivalent amount, if not more. A liberal and consumerist type of
economy has entered Auroville, though nobody has chosen it and
nobody would have deliberately designed it for Auroville.
The circle experiment then, at best, can
only be regarded as a step on the way. But our failure to give a
material expression to The Mother's ideals is a source of weakness
damaging our credibility and preventing the mobilization of funds
and support required for the Auroville project. We still suffer
from too much wishful thinking and lack of concept.
A clear conceptual thing of our aims and goals then is required.
Here we should be guided by Mother's vision which She expressed
for Auroville and by Sri Aurobindo's statement on the economics of
a spiritualized society:
"The aim of its economics would be not to create a huge
engine of production, whether of the competitive or the
cooperative kind, but to give to men - not only to some but to all
men each in his highest possible measure - the joy of work
according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly,
as well as a simply rich and beautiful life for all". *
Basically, this points towards an economy where you give and are
given to, with no money transaction needed for it to happen. It
requires a redefinition of the roles of capital, labour, money and
of their inter-relations. Practically, it would lead to the
creation of a service oriented towards the production and
distribution of basic needs and of a material harmony, thus
allowing all those who do not want to be caught in commercial
transactions to live in an organization that is a living
expression their ideal. Such a 'gift economy' would not be imposed
but only offered to those who have an inward 'Yes' for it without
reserve, and it would co-exist with the commercial economy.
To manifest such an economy two things are
required. One is the need for empirical data. We need knowledge of
the community budget, and knowledge of the basic needs of the
Aurovilians. The second one is to recognize that if we want a
simple and beautiful life for all, we need to invent a new model
where harmony is our organising principle. If harmony is not
seized upon by the intelligence and the heart as our first need
and as the foundation of all our practical research, it will be
vain to believe that we can discover the new type of economy that
Mother envisaged for Auroville.
*Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, CWSA 25
-p. 257
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