George Monbiot — How Reviving Common Ownership is One Possible Route to Social Transformation

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
How Reviving Common Ownership is One Possible Route to Social Transformation

George Monbiot

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson On Private Property

 Contributed by y in the comments:

"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, 25 Dec. 1783

"Private Property therefore is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Publick, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or the Payment of a just Debt."

Benjamin Franklin, Queries and Remarks respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1789


"While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from Nature at all … it is considered by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land … Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813

Matt Bruenig — Libertarian Julian Sanchez Agrees Non-Aggression Is Circular

You can’t resolve a philosophical debate between a classical liberal and a socialist by appealing to the NAP, because each can claim their view is consistent with that principle given their theories of property: The state is not “aggressing” on an individual “property owner” if in fact The People ultimately own (or have some kind of share right in) all property, given the normatively loaded way “aggression” is used here. The appeal of the NAP lies in its apparent simplicity and intuitive plausibility (tautologies tend to be intuitively plausible), but it’s typically deployed in a way that amounts to a kind of shell game: I argue that socialism must be rejected on the grounds that it violates this one simple moral principle, and hope my interlocutor doesn’t notice that I’ve essentially begged the question by baking a theory of strong property rights incompatible with socialism into my conception of “aggression,” when of course libertarian property rights are ultimately backed by the threat of (individual or state) violence as well.

All along I have emphasized that my point about the NAP being question-begging is stupidly obvious and has been made by others before. It is its stupid obviousness that makes me so shocked that libertarians pretend not to understand it (or maybe they actually don’t understand it, which is even more shocking).

Libertarian Julian Sanchez Agrees Non-Aggression Is Circular
Matt Bruenig

Of course, Libertarians will claim that there is no vicious circle involved because the non-aggression principle is a priori. 

Socialists also claim that their principle of no absolute right to private property is either also a priori or empirical in that originally all property was common and private property is based on primitive accumulation, that is, appropriation of the commons that abrogates the prior right of all to share the commons. They will also point out that much if not most primitive accumulation was through aggression.

Robert Neuwirth — Against Economics

 “The idea of individual, exclusive ownership, not just of what can be carried and occupied, but of the immovable, near-eternal earth, has proved to be the most destructive and creative cultural force in written history. It has eliminated ancient civilizations wherever it has encountered them, and displaced entire peoples from their homelands, but it has also spread an undreamed-of degrees of personal freedom and protected it with democratic institutions wherever it has taken hold.”— Andro Linklater

Stealth of Nations
Against Economics
Robert Neuwirth reviews Andro Linklater's Owning the Earth

[08] As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part. 

[09] The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit.

[10] In every society the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.

— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 6

Sec. 32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.

Sec. 33. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.

Sec. 34. God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.

— John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter V

Corey Robin — The Hayek-Pinochet Connection: A Second Reply to My Critics

In my last post, I responded to three objections to my article “Nietzsche’s Marginal Children.” In this post I respond to a fourth regarding the connection between Friedrich von Hayek and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The Hayek-Pinochet Connection: A Second Reply to My Critics
Corey Robin

The road to socialism troubled Hayek as political philosopher. The road to fascism, not so much as long as economic liberalism was maintained institutional. BTW, essential to economic liberalism for Hayek was zero collective bargaining power for labor, that is, no trade unions. If it took a dictator to do away with them, that was a feature of progress, in which all innovation is the result of intervention by great men.

If you don't already know the details, here they are.

BTW, Hayek's ideas were not very different from those of Mises:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism

Quoted in Mises and the “Merit” of Fascism by Jeet Heer at sans everything (December 15, 2007), which is also worth a read.

 Mises styled himself a classical liberal, a position which after the First World War lost its political salience in Central Europe. Amid the strife of the era, Mises hated above all else any form of working class militancy, not just in the manifestation of Bolshevism but also moderate social democracy. This led him to look with favour on some authoritarian regimes. In his 1927 book Liberalism, Mises expressed great ambivalence about Mussolini’s new political doctrine of fascism. He recognized that, of course, that fascism was illiberal and was even farsighted in seeing that it would lead to another European war. Still, Mises thought that as a reaction to communism, fascism was understandable and even admirable. 

The approval that Mises gave to Dollfuss was a precursor to the squirmy support Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman gave to the Pinochet regime in Chile. All three men were in some ways acting in consistency with the doctrines of classical liberalism, which prizes private property while being fearful of democracy. What they failed to realize is that under modern dictatorships, neither property nor any other right is secure. I like classical liberals and libertarians well enough but I don’t think they can be depended upon to defend liberty.

David Graeber — Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery

Some background on the development of the concept of liberty in the West. We need to examine the concept of liberty-freedom closely in light of the current conflict in economics over the market state based on the right to unlimited acquisition of property and the welfare state based on the distribution of property between private use as "utility" advocated by neoliberalism and public use for public purpose advocated by social democracy. These are based on two different notions of freedom, the first being the master of oneself and the second that of the citizen of a polis.

Resilience

Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery
David Graeber

Timothy Taylor — Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?

If "intellectual property" is not a misnomer, then it needs to be explained on what basis a property right is time-delimited, as are copyrights and patents but not other forms of property. Is this a property right or a subsidy granted by law, e.g., to foster innovation and creativity?

Conservable Economist
Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?
Timothy Taylor

Thomas Hedges — An Economic Alternative to Exploitative Free Market Capitalism

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
An Economic Alternative to Exploitative Free Market Capitalism
Thomas Hedges | Center for Study of Responsive Law

Thomas Jefferson & James Madison on Equality

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
28 Oct. 1785 Papers 8:68-82
in The Founders' Constitution

19 June 1786  Papers 9:76--77
Volume 1, Chapter 15, Document 32

University of Chicago Press
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950
(h/t OccupyMarines)

Madison replied:

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
The Founders' Constitution

Volume 1, Chapter 15, Document 33


University of Chicago Press
The Papers of James Madison. Edited by William T. Hutchinson et al. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962--77 (vols. 1--10); Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977--(vols. 11--)

John Rawls on capitalism and democracy

John Rawls's critique of capitalism was deeper than has been commonly recognized -- this is a central thrust of quite a bit of important recent work on Rawls's theory of justice. Much of this recent discussion focuses on Rawls's idea of a "property-owning democracy" as an alternative to both laissez-faire and welfare-state capitalism. This more disruptive reading of Rawls is especially important today, forty years later, given the great degree to which wealth stratification has increased and the political influence of wealth has mushroomed. (I've addressed this set of issues in prior posts; link, link.) Martin O'Neill and Thad Williamson's recent volume, Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, provides an excellent and detailed discussion of the many dimensions of this idea and its relevance to the capitalism we experience in 2012. It includes contributions by a number of important younger political philosophers. 

O'Neill and Williamson make the point in their introduction that this issue is not merely of interest within academic philosophy. It also provides a powerful conceptual and normative system that might serve as a basis for a more successful version of progressive politics in North America and the UK. Politicians on the left have found themselves locked into a defensive battle trying to preserve some of the features of welfare state capitalism -- usually unsuccessfully. The arguments underlying the idea of a property owning democracy have the potential for resetting practical policy and political debates on more defensible terrain.

Read the rest at Understanding Society (short)
Rawls on a property-owning democracy

by Daniel Little

Billier on the commons v. enclosure

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.

Read it at David Bollier — new and perspectives on the commons

Surveying Commons Activism on the International Stage

by David Bollier

h/t Energy Bulletin)

I bring this to attention because it is relevant to a developing trend destined to shape the future, which might be termed "global awakening."

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.

John Carney — Kids are capitalists

Read it at CNBC NetNet (short)
Kids Are Capitalists

by John Carney | Senior Editor

John argues that methodological individualism has an ontological basis. I responded in a comment there that this is only partially true based on what we know from cognitive science:

Right, and every parent knows what a job it is getting kids to learn to share. It's called "socialization" and kids that don't get socialized sufficiently grow up to be a delinquents and go on to a life of crime. "Capitalism" may be by nature, but "socialism" is by nature. Although now we know that animals including humans have mirror neurons that induce empathy and sympathy, which are basic to fairness, sharing, and altruism. So socialization isn't all nurture.

See: "The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism – Experimental Evidence and New Theories" by Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt (2005