With one breath, the friends of power told us that global capitalism was a dynamic, disruptive force, the source of constant innovation and change. With the next, they told us it had brought about the end of history: permanent stability and peace. There was no attempt to resolve this contradiction. Or any other.
We were promised unending growth on a finite planet. We were told that a vastly unequal system would remove all differences. Social peace would be delivered by a system based on competition and envy. Democracy would be secured by the power of money. The contradictions were crashingly obvious. The whole package relied on magic.
Because none of it works, there is no normal to which to return. The Keynesian measures espoused by Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders – in a world crashing into environmental limits and the mass destruction of jobs – are as irrelevant in the 21st Century as the neoliberal prescriptions that caused the financial crisis....
So this column is the first in an occasional series whose purpose is to champion new approaches to politics, economics and social change. There is no going back, no comfort in old certainties. We must rethink the world from first principles.
There are many points at which I could begin, but it seems to me that an obvious one is this. The market alone cannot meet our needs, nor can the state. Both, by rooting out attachment, help fuel the alienation, rage and anomie that breeds extremism. Over the past 200 years, one element has been conspicuously absent from the dominant ideologies, something that is neither market nor state: the commons.Evonomics
Capitalism is a coercive economic system that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation.
Governments have typically dealt with capitalism’s more misery-inducing tendencies by creating institutions of labor protection — such as the right to organize unions — and by building out modern welfare states. Although these policy programs have been fairly successful, especially in the countries that have pushed them the furthest, they have not fully eliminated coercion and deprivation. To secure freedom and prosperity for all, it may ultimately be necessary to supplement the welfare state with a universal basic income — a program that would provide all citizens with a basic level of financial support, regardless of whether they’re employed.
By now, it is well established that capitalism is fundamentally built upon threats of force. As libertarian philosophers Robert Nozick and Matt Zwolinski have explained, the only way to turn unowned natural resources (such as land, minerals and other goods) into privately owned property is by violently preventing all others from using them. This one-sided exclusion destroys freedom of movement and cuts many people off from the things that they need to survive.
When the physical resources necessary for production are privately held in the hands of very few, as in the United States, the majority of the population is forced to submit itself to well-financed employers in order to live. The precarious position of most workers in this position — desperate for employment but aware that they could lose their jobs at any time — is coercive on its face and susceptible to exploitation and abuse.…Pretty good analysis of enclosure of the commons and its maintain through "force of law"with emphasis on "force." But more weak suggestions for limiting excesses instead of addressing the issue of capitalism.
The commons was once just that. Huge unfenced areas open to the use of any and all. Then, by legal slight of hand, they became privatized, fenced and own by wealthy private individuals who used law and government to acquire them. They then charged others for their rental use. The internet is the 21st century analogue of the commons. That is what the fuss regarding net neutrality is largely all about.
Monied interests want exclusive and superior access to most of the better aggregate bandwidth. They are trying to use law and government to get it, just as with the commons. The issue becomes will the rest of us become relegated to the lesser piece of the internet and otherwise be cut off.…
People of libertarian persuasion are often very keen on the idea that Government should "defend property rights". Their view is that the assets they own are theirs by natural right, and it is the Government's job to defend that right....
But Government doesn't "defend" property rights, anyway. It creates them. The natural law is "I'm bigger and stronger than you are, so I'm having that". Government, pressured by people who believe that things they have are theirs by right even if they can't defend them, creates laws that say that what you have, you own, and no-one else can have it however big and strong they are. And it creates the legal infrastructure to enable those laws to be enforced. Well, more or less. Too often those laws are not enforceable in practice, not just because people don't have enough money to enforce them, but because it isn't easy to define what we mean by "ownership" or "property".
The legal infrastructure created by Government to protect individual "rights" incorporates within itself the right for Government to take some of the property of its citizens in order to fund itself. But our libertarian friends are horrified by the idea of taxes, especially capital taxes. Government taking your property from you by force is a betrayal of what they regard as the primary function of Government, namely to "defend property rights". This is illogical. Without taxes, Government could not function and the laws created by Government could not be enforced - including the "property rights" beloved of libertarians. Confiscation of property by Government is necessary if it is to "defend" the right to own property.
I find this view bizarre. As I've noted before, there are no "natural" property rights. The law of the jungle, which is the law that holds when all other laws are unenforceable, says that the only property you "own" is what you can defend....
What our libertarian friends really want is for Government to "defend" the property rights that they would LIKE to have - namely that what they have, they own, and no-one - not even Government - can take it from them. I don't have any problem at all with the idea of Government defining and enforcing an alternative set of property rights that are more "just" than the law of the jungle, if that can be done. But to claim that these are "natural" property rights and Government is merely "defending" them is simply wrong. If property laws are more "just" than the law of the jungle, it is ONLY because Government makes them so. And if Government can impose "just" laws regarding property ownership, why should it not impose "just" laws in other areas too? The problem is, of course, that the "just" property rights beloved of the libertarian right conflict with other "just" laws, such as the right of workers to a living wage, and the right of those who cannot work to the means to live. But why should laws that primarily benefit the rich override laws that primarily benefit the poor?Coppola Comment
This book presents a modern version of the old Labor (or Natural Rights) Theory of Property and of an Inalienable Rights Theory that descends from the Reformation and Enlightenment. Together these theories re-solve the basic problem of distribution in the sense of giving a basis for the just appropriation of property and a basis for answering the question of who is to be the firm, e.g., the suppliers of share capital as in conventional capital, the government as in socialism, or the people who work in the firm as in the system of economic democracy (or labor-managed market economies). While these theories address old questions in economics, they do so in an entirely different manner than conventional economics which renders the questions as being about value or price theory (instead of about property rights and contracts). This book is now out of print and the rights have reverted to the author.See also Daniel Ellerman's paper, Rethinking Common vs. Private Property
The purpose of this paper is to suggest a rethinking of the common-versus-private framing of the property rights issue in the Commons Movement. The underlying normative principle we will use is simply the basic juridical principle that people should be legally responsible for the (positive and negative) results of their actions, i.e., that legal or de jure responsibility should be imputed in accordance with de facto responsibility. In the context of property rights, the responsibility principle is the old idea that property should be founded on people getting the (positive or negative) fruits of their labor, which is variously called the labor or natural rights theory of property[Schlatter 1951].[1]
For instance, the responsibility principle is behind the Green Movement’s criticism of the massive pollution and spoliation by corporations that don’t bear the costs or legal responsibility for their activities. Ordinary economics shows that markets do not function efficiently in the presence of these “negative externalities” but the responsibility principle shows that there is injustice (i.e., the misimputation of responsibility) involved as well, not just inefficiency, and that aspect is overlooked by conventional economics.
The current economic system institutionalizes forms of social irresponsibility that go far beyond the topic of negative externalities. Indeed, the forms of socialized irresponsibility embodied in Wall Street capitalism are behind the current economic crisis, although the roots are much older. In recent decades, the American model of Wall Street capitalism has been promoted as an “advanced” model of a market economy to be emulated not only in the industrialized countries but also in the post-socialist and developing worlds. Hence the current crisis provides the opportunity to finally discredit the idea that this “advanced” form of socialized irresponsibility should be emulated by anyone. That is the topic of the next section.
But our main point goes much deeper than just a tamed or reformed version of capitalism; it goes to the form of private property behind the system. The ideology of the current system seems to have convinced those on both the Left and Right that the current system is based on the principles of private property so that anyone who opposes the current system is an “enemy of private property” itself, as the Commons and Green Movements are often portrayed (and as some members of those movements may portray themselves). We will see that practically the opposite is true.
Like the old system of chattel slavery, the current property system is “a” private property system but it is grounded on violating the very responsibility principle upon which property appropriation and other juridical imputations are supposed to rest. And when private property is refounded on the responsibility principle (or the labor theory of property) then a very different system emerges where firms are worker cooperatives (or similar workplace democracies) where people will appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Moreover this refounding of property on the responsibility principle provides no basis to treat the products of nature as if they were ordinary private property.
The rethinking of private property will take place in two steps: (1) the undoing the “brain-washing” ideology that the usual form of enterprise is based on “private ownership of the means of production” and (2) the application of the responsibility principle to the human activities of the people working in any enterprise where they are inalienablyde facto responsible for both the positive and negative results of their activities. After two sections on those two steps and a section on the notion of inalienability, we show how the corporation can be re-constituted from these first principles. Then we conclude with the negative application of the labor theory of property to the products of nature (natural resources) where some common ownership arrangement is required (rather than ordinary private ownership) so that the equal claims of future generations can be respected.
Firstly, the term ‘social commons’ is meant to be analogous with the protection of the so-called ecological ‘commons’. Defending ‘the commons’ means focusing on that which is shared by all human beings. It is the very foundation of collective life of humanity. It also means resisting the current commodification of everything and a breakaway from the dominant logic. The ‘social commons’ are human-made commons, meant to protect individuals and societies.
Secondly, the notion of ‘social protection’ is, paradoxically, being hollowed out by the new global initiatives of the ILO, the World Bank and other international organisations. Some of their proposals have an important potential for improving the situation of poor people, but others barely go beyond the already existing poverty reduction policies. We think that in the long term, more is needed.
Thirdly, we noticed that the concept of ‘social protection’ has a very low appeal to young people who were raised in a neoliberal world in which individual freedom and competitiveness are presented as being natural. But these same young people do understand the value of solidarity and sharing with others. Changing the concept of social protection to social commons may change the perception and the understanding of an idea that may positively shape their future. It may also open up new analytical insights and lead to a new praxis fit for the 21st century.
Fourthly, and most importantly, we think that not only individuals need to be protected, but also societies. With its focus on competitiveness, neoliberalism is destroying social relationships, societies and communities. This collective dimension is particularly important when one knows that poverty is never a problem of poor people alone, but is the problem of societies with a skewed income distribution. It thus cannot be eradicated if the whole of society is not involved in solving it. This requires solidarity and active participation of all. Universalism will therefore be a major characteristic of ‘social commons’. This is based on the fact that social relationships are not purely contractual but are constitutive of each one’s individuality. Indeed, society is necessary for the survival of individuals.Global Social Justice
During one of the three visits made by IPS to El Jatatal since October, local resident Tito Romero said that on one occasion, a group of around 40 cattle ranchers surrounded him when he was returning from a field alone, and warned him that he had better leave the village, for his own good.
They also told him they had the backing of the mayor of San Borja, Jorge Añez, and that there was nothing the people of El Jatatal could do to keep the cattle ranchers, led by DarÃo RamÃrez, from occupying and fencing the land in the area.But the threats were not only verbal. Shortly afterwards, FermÃn Carmelo Coata Mayto found a fence across the path leading from his house to his crops. Now, defying threats, he has to walk a long way around to reach the fields he has farmed since childhood.
Tayo, the “corregidor” or traditional community leader, explained that the land is gradually being fenced in, while the villagers continue to be harassed. “They keep Mayto away from his house, and the supposed ranchers verbally threaten him when he tries to reach his home.”
Enclosure, in which property rights are literally taken or given away by government, is half the reason our commons is in such a steep decline today; the other half is a form of trespass called externalizing—that is, corporations shifting their costs onto the commons. Externalizing is as damaging as enclosure, yet much less noticed, since it occurs quietly and continuously, as in the case of pollution seeping into a river.
The one-two punch of enclosure and externalizing is especially destructive. With one hand, corporations take valuable stuff from the commons and privatize it. With the other hand, they dump bad stuff into the commons and pay nothing. The result is profits for corporations but a steady loss for everyone else, to whom the commons belong.On The Commons
In 1649, a group of English communists started fighting the notion of private property in what became known as the commons movement. They were using the unstable period in England’s history to introduce a new economy, one that would see land, wells and other means of wealth as shared resources. This group would prevent a small class of people from collecting and consolidating the rights to basic human life, such as water and food. In an annual celebration that doubled as a protest, they would circle the village commons and level or dig up any hedges and fences that designated spots of private ownership. They became known as the “levelers” or “diggers.”Truthdig
Lametti states his thesis simply: “I argue that the Cloud, unless monitored and possibly directed, has the potential to go beyond undermining copyright and the public domain – Enclosure 2.0 – and to go beyond weakening privacy. This round, which I call “Enclosure 3.0”, has the potential to disempower Internet users and conversely empower a very small group of gatekeepers. Put bluntly, it has the potential to relegate Internet users to the status of digital sheep.”David Bollier
I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation.Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
A certain degree of misery seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness. If the lands in Europe which are now dedicated to the amusement of the idle rich, were parcelled out among the idle poor, I readily conceive the happy revolution which would be experienced by a certain proportion of the latter. But still would there not remain a great proportion unrelieved? No problem in political Oeconomy has appeared to me more puzzling than that which relates to the most proper distribution of the inhabitants of a Country fully peopled. Let the lands be shared among them ever so wisely, & let them be supplied with labourers ever so plentifully; as there must be a great surplus of subsistence, there will also remain a great surplus of inhabitants, a greater by far than will be employed in cloathing both themselves & those who feed them, and in administering to both, every other necessary & even comfort of life. What is to be done with this surplus? Hitherto we have seen them distributed into Manufacturers of superfluities, idle proprietors of productive funds, domestics, soldiers, merchants, mariners, and a few other less numerous classes. All these classes notwithstanding have been found insufficient to absorb the redundant members of a populous society; and yet a reduction of most of those classes enters into the very reform which appears so necessary & desireable. From a more equal partition of property, must result a greater simplicity of manners, consequently a less consumption of manufactured superfluities, and a less proportion of idle proprietors & domestics. From a juster Government must result less need of soldiers either for defence agst. dangers from without or disturbances from within.James Madison to Thomas Jefferson
It’s unlikely that we are ever going to get a book as rigorous and comprehensive in its treatment of infrastructure as a commons than Professor Brett Frischmann’s recently published Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press). This book is a landmark in the study of the social value of infrastructure, a theme that is generally overlooked or marginalized.

Who among us gives much thought to the economics and policy structures that govern the Internet, telecommunications, water systems, roads and highways or the electric power grid? These resources hover in the background, nearly invisible, until they break down. Then people start to contemplate the wide-ranging social, economic and civic benefits of safe bridges and reliable, efficient water systems. And if we're lucky, prudent policies are enacted.
Infrastructure tends to be neglected because it is generally very complex, technologically and financially. Its value extends well into the future and so it’s easy to ignores its benefits. And since the benefits also tend to be diffused among the general public, there is often no single individual constituency to rally behind infrastructure except those who directly profit from it.
Not surprisingly, lots of private interests have made great fortunes by privatizing public infrastructure. Since deregulation in the 1990s, the broadcasting industry has enjoyed exclusive control over our airwaves with no meaningful public interest obligations – an enclosure worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The atmosphere is used as a free waste dump by polluters. Multinational bottlers continually prowl the globe in search of free or cheap groundwater supplies while other attempt to privatize municipal water systems.Read it at David Bollier | news and perspectives on the commons
A four-module online course on the commons has just been launched by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) based in Geneva, in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. The four modules focus on the history of the commons, the special value proposition of the commons, the dynamics of enclosure, and a survey of commons-based strategies. Officially called “Introductory e-Course to the Global Commons,” the self-paced course, taught in English, consists of videos, online readings and resource links, as well as self-test quizzes.
I helped develop this course over the past year, working closely with Professor Leo Burke of the University of Notre Dame and e-learning specialist Robin Temple. There are, of course, many ways to introduce and teach the commons. This is just one path into the subject. We were especially mindful that we were devising an online course that could be interesting and accessible to a highly diverse general audience -- a special challenge since there is no moderator.We think the course pulls together some notable talks and readings to introduce the commons to UN delegates and government officials, who are the target audience/participant group. However, students, academics, businesspeople and the general public are also invited to take the course. To register, justgo here. The deadline for registration is April 20.
Completion of the e-course is estimated to require an average study-time of ten hours per week over the course of two to three weeks. However, participants are given four weeks to finish the course, starting at the time they receive a valid log-in. Participants who successfully complete the course will receive a certificate of participation from UNITAR and the Mendoza College of Business. Because of limited technical staffing, the course will end on May 12, 2012, but there are hopes that it may be possible to extend the course or offer it via the Mendoza College of Business.
The UNITAR course joins other educational efforts on the commons such as the School of Commoningin London. I have heard of perhaps a dozen courses devoted solely to the commons in American colleges and universities, and I have heard of efforts in Barcelona and Buenos Aires to develop commons curricula there as well. It's an exploding field of inquiry. If you end up taking the course, please let me know how it went for you.UN Agency Offers Online Course on the Commons
It’s an encouraging sign that the language of the commons and enclosure is gaining momentum internationally. This should not be a surprise. Enclosure is one of the great, unacknowledged scandals of our time.
One of the worst sets of enclosures is the international land grab that is now underway in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Investors, national governments and speculators are buying up millions of acres of farmlands. Saudi Arabia is spending $1 billion for huge tracts in Africa for rice cultivation. India and China are assembling investment pools to buy up farmlands. Much of this land is customary land managed as commons. Hundreds of millions of rural poor use have used these lands for generations for subsistence. But because they don't have formal property rights -- the government or corporations do – they are powerless.
And to justify the appropriations, the commons are called “wastelands” or “unowned” lands. This harks back to John Locke’s definitions of property and value. Because commoners use their lands in ecologically sustainable ways, without the exploitation and extraction that markets typically use, the lands are considered without value. Investors who bring the land into a system of market control – say, for monoculture farming or biofuels production – are supposedly “developing” the land. This is how language misleads us about the real meaning of value.
One of the most infamous enclosures occurred in Bolivia. We just heard earlier about the infamous attempt to privatize water in Cochabamba. Even though the people prevailed, enclosures of water are still a worldwide phenomenal.
The commons is a great sleeping giant – an unacknowledged superpower – if we consider the many transnational tribes of commoners. Because they are not conventional institutions or nonprofits, their impact can be easy to overlook. But consider these diverse movements and networks of people who may not be explicitly using commons language, but certainly share the core values and goals of commoners:
• The Solidarity Economy movement, which is particularly strong in Brazil, Venezuela, Canada and Europe.
• The Transition Town movement
• Water activism
• The Landless Workers Movement / Via Campesino
• Free software/open source software, a well-established international network
• Creative Commons / free culture, which is active in more than 70 countries
• Wikipedians, who number in the tens of thousands in dozens of countries
• Open access publishing, which has more than 7,000 open access journals
• Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which features open courseware in more than 150 colleges and universities worldwide
• The Pirate Parties in more than two dozen countries
• The Occupy movementA great convergence of movements is going on, or at least robust cross-fertilization.
Each movement has serious questions about conventional governance and politics, or is building its own alternatives to convention markets and government. Each has different focal points and different tactics. But there is a rough agreement on basic human values, political goals and a respect for the open, participatory ethic of the Internet.
