The foundational economy and the civil sphere

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the relationship between FE, citizenship, democracy and social justice. We outline the scope of the Foundational Economy and proceed to focus on the importance of Foundational thinking for critiques of capitalist formations that involve financialization and extraction. We then discuss the relationship between the Foundational Economy and human needs and capabilities before developing an argument for a moral basis to the Foundational Economy and how this links to civil society, citizenship and the commons focusing in particular on the potential for developing democratic governance and public action. We conclude by arguing that Foundational thinking provides a means of linking citizenship to attempts to manage the commons and, if social relations and institutional arrangements vary contextually across space and time, this requires innovative solutions based on experimentation at different scales.