Ostrom’s 8 Rules of the Commons for Anarchists

Oct

23

2024

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From Usufruct Collective

The commons are resources self-managed by communities who need and use them. Commons are managed through dialogue, deliberation, and collective-decision-making as well as through mutual aid to meet needs. Commoning refers to the process of developing commons. Commons can include land, water-ways, fields, factories, workshops, instruments/tools, dwellings, recreational facilities, general infrastructure, miscellaneous infrastructure, fruits of re/production, mixes of all of the above, and beyond. Flourishing commons provide communities and participants with shared means of existence, production, and politics as well as access to the fruits thereof in ways that meet the needs of all. 

The commons have been under attack by the last several thousand years of hierarchy and class society as well as the last several hundred years of capitalism. Capitalism developed through multiple factors including continuous privatization of the commons enforced through state violence (Federici, 2018). Despite such systemic violence, pockets of the commons continue to exist through people developing both new and enduring commons to meet their needs and the needs of others as well as through people resisting domination and exploitation (Federici, 2018). Commoning is not only under attack by multiple entangled forms of hierarchy (institutionalized domination) such as capitalism, statecraft, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism; commoning is also under ideological attack through widespread propaganda and belief systems that deem various hierarchies beneficial or inevitable. 

Arguments claiming that commons inevitably lead to tragedies of overuse and collective ruin deny the history of the commons while also assuming that commons are rooted in crude competitive acquisition without the very collective rules, agreements, and practices that enable them to be functional. Such straw men of the commons reflect the norms of competitive and hierarchical societies rather than the kinds of organized cooperation to meet needs so crucial to any well-functioning-commons. Responding to sweeping critiques of the commons, Elinor Ostrom empirically and theoretically demonstrated that commons have been, are, and can be well-managed by participants when they utilize several good-enough rules and practices (Ostrom, 2021). Many communities and persons have in their own ways and words convergently evolved and articulated variations of such core-design-principles. 

Commons and related self-managed institutions have existed within foraging societies, agricultural societies, villages, towns, blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and mixed method non-state societies (Boehm, 2001, Kropotkin 1902, Bookchin, 2005a, Federici, 2018, Ostrom, 2021, Graeber and Wengrow, 2023). Such a rich history demonstrates that well-managed-commons are possible and that such well-managed-commons predictably contribute to social and ecological flourishing. 

While there are plenty of examples Ostrom looks at that are in harmony with her 8 rules for managing the commons as well as a non-hierarchical approach to social-organization (Ostrom, 2021), other instances of the commons she looks at utilize some methods that those from an anti-hierarchical perspective would disapprove of. Truly emancipatory commons are distinct from quasi-commons that produce commodities and/or are gated against commoners having mutual-access (Federici, 2018). Given the goals of the self-management of each and all, mutual non-domination, wellbeing for all, and ecological flourishing, Ostrom’s core-design-principles can become more coherent through being remixed with insights from anarchism. 

The following adaptation of Ostrom’s rules for managing the commons is informed by libertarian socialism/communism/communalism, organizations and revolutions influenced by libertarian socialism that utilize community assemblies related to common decisions and resources, various commons Ostrom looks at, as well as an expanded history of commoning in multiple modes of subsistence:

1. Participants know they are part of a group and what the group is about (Wilson, 2016).
2. Agreements for sharing and at times rotating labor/work and implementation of decisions as well as for sharing the fruits thereof (Kropotkin, 1906, Sixth Commission of the EZLN, 2016, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2022). People can co-create a cornucopia where there is more than enough for all or otherwise agree to specific ways of distributing less abundant fruits of re/production according to needs.   
3. Direct collective decision making by participants through deliberation. For there to be self-management of each and all, there must also be mutual non-domination. By extension, community assemblies related to the commons should utilize direct, participatory, and non-hierarchical forms of democracy (Bookchin, 2005b).  
4. Organizational transparency that allows participants to mutually-monitor the commons (Atkins, Wilson, Hayes, 2019). This can happen through the process of co-managing and interacting with the commons, collective action, living in community with others, relevant accounting/calculation as needed, and availability of relevant information to participants. 
5. Graduated defense against domination and exploitation such as: informal social disapproval, self-defense and defense of others as needed, and recourse to expelling someone from a particular collective (through deliberation, assembly, and due process) in response to the most extreme violations of the commons and freedoms of persons (Boehm, 2001, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2023).  
6. Good-enough conflict resolution such as: people talking directly to each other, mediation to find out how to move forward, dispute resolution to resolve disputes, restorative justice and transformative justice processes for people to repair harm and transform causes thereof, and organization-wide assembly when the conflict is in regards to organizational form and content. (Kaba, 2019, Usufruct Collective, 2023). 
7. Communities and participants need sufficient autonomy to organize. 
8. The use of co-federation and embedded councils. Community assemblies can co-manage inter-communal commons in a way where policy-making power is held by participants and assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, Ocalan, 2014). This enables self-management and mutual aid within and between communities as well as inter-communal management of the commons. Community assemblies can utilize mandated and recallable councils and rotating delegates to implement decisions within the bounds of policies made by community assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, 2007, 2018). 

The above should be further fleshed out, qualified, and wisely adapted to conditions, needs, and desires of communities and participants. When there are good-enough institutions and agreements for collective action, individuals benefit through the flourishing of the commons and mutually-contributing to the commons– blending self-interest with collective-interest. Although specifically related to common-economics, Ostrom’s core-design-principles and coherent adaptations thereof can be used to reflect upon and develop various self-managed collectives that have shared practices and goals (Wilson, 2016). 

The self-management of each and all on every scale requires the flourishing of the commons and related general assemblies. Developing the commons in the context of a hierarchical society requires both the reconstruction of the commons as well as opposition to domination and exploitation. Such functions can be done through self-managed community assemblies that utilize mutual aid and direct action to meet needs and solve social problems. That kind of community organizing can happen as a crucial part of a broader social movement ecosystem that includes workplace organizing, student organizing, and beyond. In addition to the commons and related general assemblies being needed for political economic freedom of each and all: developing the commons and sharing social re/production can meet needs of social movement organizations, participants thereof, and the non-ruling class while building the new world in the shell of the old and increasing capacity for people to solve social problems and oppose hierarchies.

***

PS:

Additional critique of Ostrom: 

Ostrom does want the commons to expand and increase. However, Ostrom sees the commons as a sector that should exist alongside capitalism and states. This is distinct from the anti-domination and anti-exploitation approach of libertarian socialism. While Ostrom does talk about the need to have sufficient autonomy to self-organize, Ostrom does not properly touch upon developing the commons through opposition against capitalism, statecraft, and hierarchy more broadly.   

Atkins, Paul W.B., David  Sloan Wilson, and Steven C. Hayes. Prosocial: Using evolutionary science to build productive, equitable, and collaborative groups. Context Press, 2019.

Boehm, Cristopher. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Harvard University, 2001.

Bookchin, Murray. Urbanization without cities: The rise and decline of citizenship. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992.

Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005a.

Bookchin, Murray. “Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy.” libcom.org. 2005b. https://libcom.org/article/municipalization-community-ownership-economy.

Bookchin, Murray. Social Ecology and Communalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007.

Bookchin, Murray. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. AK Press, 2018.

Federici, Silvia. Re-enchanting the World Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. PM Press, 2018.

Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Kaba, Mariame, and Shira Hassan. Fumbling towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators. Chicago: Project NIA, 2019.

Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure Phillips and Co., 1902.

Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. 1906.

Ocalan, Abdullah. Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing, 2014.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 

Sixth Commission of the EZLN. Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra I. Durham, NC: PaperBoat Press, 2016.

Wilson, David Sloan. “The Tragedy of the Commons: How Elinor Ostrom Solved One of Life’s Greatest Dilemmas.” Evonomics, April 5, 2016. https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/.

Usufruct Collective. “The Conquest of Sandwiches.” Usufruct Collective, February 1, 2022. https://usufructcollective.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/the-conquest-of-sandwiches/.

Usufruct Collective. “Kick the Cops off Your Block.” Usufruct Collective, June 14, 2023. https://usufructcollective.wordpress.com/2023/06/04/kick-the-cops-off-your-block-2/.

 

Explaining the Commons Economy

By Dave Darby

January 9, 2024

Source: Low Impact

Image by Richard Bartz, CC BY-SA 2.5

The word ‘commons’ can mean different things to different people. We’ve been working with specialists to help build the commons economy, so we’d like to concisely describe what we mean, and how you can join us.

What is the commons economy?

It’s an economy in which the essentials of life – housing, energy, land, food, water, transport, social care, the means of exchange etc. are owned in common, in communities, rather than by absentee landlords, corporations or the state. Commons have 3 parts: a) resources / assets, b) ‘commoners’ – local people who control and use them, and c) a set of rules, written by the commoners, so that they’re not lost, by being sold or used up.

We’re not talking about ‘open access’ public goods like the oceans, atmosphere, sunlight or rainfall or ‘anything to do with building community’, but commons based on the principles laid out by Elinor Ostrom in Governing the Commons. She shows that communities can develop systems of self-governance to manage resources without the need for top-down government intervention or privatization.

Ostrom’s commons principles

1. Clearly defined boundaries: commoners understand what resources they have responsibility for, and who with.
2. Regulations correspond to the needs and conditions of the community: commoners understand the relationship between contribution and benefits.
3. Collective decision-making: individuals affected by the regulations can participate in changing the regulations.
4. Monitoring: commoners monitor and re-assess the rules / commitments themselves, or appoint others, drawn from, or accountable to the commoners who ensure they’re adhered to.
5. Graduated sanctions: commoners design sanctions for violations of rules / commitments, depending on the severity of the violation.
6. Conflict resolution: commoners devise conflict-resolution mechanisms that are low cost and easily accessible for all members.
7. Local autonomy: commoners can create regulations and institutions without the infringement of an outside authority.
8. Nested groups: if part of larger systems, commons groups are organised in multiple layers of nested groups.

New ideas

There are new tools and ideas that allow us to:

1. bring assets into the commons without debt: by issuing vouchers sold at a discount. Imagine an energy group wanting to put up a wind turbine. At the moment, they’d need to go into debt or give away equity, which means the infrastructure will be in the hands of capitalists before long (like many co-ops and building societies). Instead, they issue energy vouchers, denominated in kWh, not £ (which makes them inflation-proof). People will want them because they’re sold at a discount, and they provide a store of value – interest-free security for old age or sickness. This basic idea can work in every sector of the economy.
2. provide strong asset locks: to prevent appropriation of commons assets. Commons groups have members that are users / customers, investors and stewards (employees), but also a ‘custodian’ member class, who aren’t proactive – they just have a veto vote. They’re disinterested arbiters to make sure that the purpose of the commons isn’t compromised – such as selling commons assets to capitalists.
3. reduce the need for money, banks and interest: by ‘credit clearing’. It’s something the banks do, to reduce the need for cash to pay debts. But we can do it too. Imagine A owes B £10; B owes C £10; C owes A £10. If everyone has all the information, it can just clear, without needing money to pay debts. For networks of trading small businesses, this can be done with algorithms, covering large areas.
4. remove the need for money, banks and interest entirely: within those large areas, smaller clusters of businesses can be found that trade with each other regularly. They can share a ‘mutual credit’ ledger in which all members get an account, set at zero. When they sell, their numbers go up, when they buy, they go down. There are limits to how far anyone can go into credit or debit. It’s just an accounting system, for who’s done what for whom – no money required, so nothing to extract from communities.
5. federate to form the basis of a new, commons economy: all these commons projects can be connected together via the ‘Credit Commons Protocol’ – a ‘language’ that they can all speak that allows them to trade between each other – but in a federation, with no centre. Each local group retains full autonomy. Everything is interoperable – so people can pay their rent, energy bills etc. (and get paid) in mutual credit, for example.

What’s happening already?

Under feudalism, ‘commoners’ had rights on land owned by the Crown, nobility or the church, to graze animals, collect firewood etc. Ending such rights – by legal acts of enclosure – was part of the transition to capitalism. An estimated 2 billion people today still depend for at least part of their livelihood on common resources.

According to the International Reciprocal Trade Association, around $12-14 billion worth of trade happens annually via mutual credit between participating businesses in the (mis-named) commercial barter industry.

4000 businesses on the island of Sardinia are members of a mutual credit network called Sardex, trading over 50 million euros’ worth of value per year. Grassroots Economics are building similar networks of pooled vouchers around Kenya. They currently have over 80,000 participating small businesses, with thousands joining each week.

Island Power are using the use-credit obligations concept to build renewable energy infrastructure for Pacific islands – but it’s also the basic idea behind air miles and community-supported agriculture.

Stroud Commons is a group of Stroud residents who’ve come together to build the commons economy in Stroud, and to document everything so that it can be implemented in other towns too.

What are the benefits of the commons economy?

Community resilience

We believe that we’re in an era of collapse, with its roots in environmental destruction, exacerbated by resource depletion, fragile supply chains, mass migration and war. We’re going to need to look after each other in communities, by building the commons economy to provide affordable housing, energy and other essentials, and a way to invest our savings in our communities. The social aspects of the commons is very important, and the commons is not divisive. It’s neither right nor left – nothing to do with the state or corporations.

People in communities (e.g. in Switzerland, Japan, Spain and the Philippines) where there are commons for irrigation, pasture, woodlands etc. have for centuries organised themselves to set and monitor rules, and sanction those breaking them. This has developed excellent organisational skills for community cohesion in times of shortage or hardship.

Decentralising power

Once assets are in the commons, there are no profits for shareholders, and they’re never sold again, so that wealth stays in communities, rather than being extracted and concentrated. Mutual credit is the exchange system for the commons economy – it’s accounting for who’s done what for whom, rather than money, which is what’s actually extracted from communities.

System change

By building the commons, we can start to lay the foundations of a new system. It may be the only way we can do that – we can’t vote for it, as the state and corporate sector are so entwined; protest or petitions won’t work for the same reason; there’s not going to be an ‘uprising’, and even if there were, it would be crushed, and even if it succeeded, it would mean a different group in control of centralised power. We need to build something new ourselves, in our communities. In the 19^th century, the co-operative and mutual movements came close to building a new system, but co-ops needed to go into debt to obtain infrastructure, and didn’t have strong enough asset locks to prevent corporate buyout. Now the Co-op Bank, Co-op Energy and most of the building societies are owned by the corporate sector.

Other

• Wealth is spread more widely, which makes political corruption by the extremely wealthy more difficult.
• No businesses are ‘too big to fail’ and won’t require taxpayers’ money to bail them out.
• Supply chains are short and sweatshop-free.
• We employ ourselves, either individually or co-operatively.
• No-one gets rewarded for someone else’s work.
• Work is more meaningful and interesting.
• You can talk with real people and get personal attention.
• Communities are strengthened and become safer, friendlier and more fun.
• Homes exist to house people, not as investments, and are owned by the people who live in them, individually or in common.
• Towns retain their character and uniqueness.
• Attempts to change the system without considering social relations have been disastrous (e.g. communism, fascism), and attempts to change social relations without considering the system have been ineffective (e.g. hippies, self-help).

What can I do?

We’re working with Mutual Credit Services to provide ‘recipes’ for building commons infrastructure, using the tools above to raise investment without debt, provide strong asset locks, and to federate everything together to form the basis of a new system. We’re using these recipes in Stroud and other towns.

We’ll be producing materials as guides to building commons institutions in every sector of the economy, and an online manual (the ‘Commoners Manifesto’).

If you live in or around Stroud, you can contact Stroud Commons if you’d like to get involved – as an activist / commons builder, investor, customer or steward (employee to manage / maintain the commons). We’re also helping groups start in several other towns around the UK, and in other countries, including the US, Sweden, Galicia, Costa Rica, India and Nigeria. Join what we believe will become a burgeoning movement for real change.

Here’s more about ‘commoning’, housing commons, energy commons, climbing commons, friendly societies (social care commons) and here’s a longer article about the why, what, how and who of the commons economy.

Contact us if you’d be interested in starting a group in your town. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates; become a member; and of course, please share this page with anyone you think might be interested. We’d like to invite everyone to be a commoner!

 

Reclaiming Our Common Home: Expand the Commons to Include Everything We Need

Ecological civilization is based on the consciousness that we are part of the Earth, not her masters, conquerors, or owners.

by

Vandana Shiva

The planet is 70% water. Our bodies are 70% water. Water is the ecological basis of all life, and in the commons, conservation creates abundance. (Photo: Davide Restivo/Wikimedia/cc)

The path to an ecological civilization is paved by reclaiming the commons—our common home, the Earth, and the commons of the Earth family, of which we are a part. Through reclaiming the commons, we can imagine possibility for our common future, and we can sow the seeds of abundance through "commoning."

In the commons, we care and share—for the Earth and each other. We are conscious of nature’s ecological limits, which ensure her share of the gifts she creates goes back to her to sustain biodiversity and ecosystems. We are aware that all humans have a right to air, water, and food, and we feel responsible for the rights of future generations.

Enclosures of the commons, in contrast, are the root cause of the ecological crisis and the crises of poverty and hunger, dispossession and displacement. Extractivism commodifies for profit what is held in common for the sustenance of all life.

The Commons, Defined

Air is a commons.

We share the air we breathe with all species, including plants and trees. Through photosynthesis, plants convert the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and give us oxygen. “I can’t breathe” is the cry of the enclosure of the commons of air through the mining and burning of 600 million years’ worth of fossilized carbon.

Water is a commons.

The planet is 70% water. Our bodies are 70% water. Water is the ecological basis of all life, and in the commons, conservation creates abundance. The plastic water bottle is a symbol of the enclosures of the commons—first by privatizing water for extractivism, and then by destroying the land and oceans through the resulting plastic pollution.

Food is a commons.

Food is the currency of life, from the soil food web, to the biodiversity of plants and animals, insects and microbes, to the trillions of organisms in our gut microbiomes. Hunger is a result of the enclosure of the food commons through fossil fuel-based, chemically intensive industrial agriculture.

A History of Enclosure

The enclosure transformation began in earnest in the 16th century. The rich and powerful privateer-landlords, supported by industrialists, merchants, and bankers, had a limitless hunger for profits. Their hunger fueled industrialism as a process of extraction of value from the land and peasants.

Colonialism was the enclosure of the commons on a global scale.

When the British East India Company began its de facto rule of India in the mid-1700s, it enclosed our land and forests, our food and water, even our salt from the sea. Over the course of 200 years, the British extracted an estimated $45 trillion from India through the colonial enclosures of our agrarian economies, pushing tens of millions of peasants into famine and starvation.

Vandana Shiva. Illustration by Enkhbayar Munkh-Erdene/YES! Magazine.

“We receive our seeds from nature and our ancestors. We have a duty to save and share them, and hand them over to future generations in their richness, integrity, and diversity.”

Our freedom movement, from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, was in fact a movement for reclaiming the commons. When the British established a salt monopoly through the salt laws in 1930, making it illegal for Indians to make salt, Gandhi started the Salt Satyagraha—the civil disobedience movement against the salt laws. He walked to the sea with thousands of people and harvested the salt from the sea, saying: Nature gives it for free; we need it for our survival; we will continue to make salt; we will not obey your laws.

Expanding Enclosures

While the enclosures began with the land, in our times, enclosures have expanded to cover lifeforms and biodiversity, our shared knowledge, and even relationships. The commons that are being enclosed today are our seeds and biodiversity, our information, our health and education, our energy, society and community, and the Earth herself.

The chemical industry is enclosing the commons of our seeds and biodiversity through “intellectual property rights.” Led by Monsanto (now Bayer) in the 1980s, our biodiversity was declared “raw material” for the biotechnology industry to create “intellectual property”—to own our seeds through patents, and to collect rents and royalties from the peasants who maintained the seed commons.

Reclaiming the commons of our seeds has been my life’s work since 1987. Inspired by Gandhi, we started the Navdanya movement with a Seed Satyagraha. We declared, “Our seeds, our biodiversity, our indigenous knowledge is our common heritage. We receive our seeds from nature and our ancestors. We have a duty to save and share them, and hand them over to future generations in their richness, integrity, and diversity. Therefore we have a duty to disobey any law that makes it illegal for us to save and share our seeds.” 

I worked with our parliament to introduce Article 3(j) into India’s Patent Law in 2005, which recognizes that plants, animals, and seeds are not human inventions, and therefore cannot be patented. Navdanya has since created 150 community seed banks in our movement to reclaim the commons of seed. And our legal challenges to the biopiracy of neem, wheat, and basmati have been important contributions to reclaiming the commons of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.

Partnership, Not Property

So, too, with water. When French water and waste management company Suez tried to privatize the Ganga River in 2002, we built a water democracy movement to reclaim the Ganga as our commons. Through a Satyagraha against Coca- Cola in 2001, my sisters in Plachimada, Kerala, shut down the Coca-Cola plant and reclaimed water as a commons. 

Ecological civilization is based on the consciousness that we are part of the Earth, not her masters, conquerors, or owners. That we are connected to all life, and that our life is dependent on others—from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food we eat.

All beings have a right to live; that is why I have participated in preparing the draft “Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.” The right to life of all beings is based on interconnectedness. The interconnectedness of life and the rights of Mother Earth, of all beings, including all human beings, is the ecological basis of the commons, and economies based on caring and sharing. 

Reclaiming the commons and creating an ecological civilization go hand in hand.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

This article was written for YE

UK

Can the Commons be the Left’s Ethical Ground?

DECEMBER 29, 2024

Guy Standing explains the background to the first of a series of meetings next year that aim to reintegrate an important idea into the left’s thinking.

Those who see themselves on the political left of the spectrum favour a reduction in inequalities, a strengthening of democracy and rising living standards for lower-income groups in society. Nothing controversial about that. It should be widely popular.

However, today, across the world, the left is in deep trouble, and must relearn an essential lesson of history. The left has flourished only when it offers an uplifting vision of a Good Society. In honesty, one has to admit that in the past the vision offered has turned out to be a false one or one that allowed dictatorial trends to overcome personal freedom.

However, without a vision, politics risks becoming at best a stepping stone occupation for self-advancing individuals to do for a few years before they take lucrative positions in other sectors. Today, we are in that situation, in which there is ‘think tank politics’ on the left, driven by a utilitarian mentality, focus groups and personal ambition. It will fail.

Currently, the Labour Party and Government is not offering a transformative vision, merely a short-term future of slightly higher GDP growth, which it hopes will yield modest rises in living standards for everybody. It is not being sectarian to say that this has a high probability of being a mirage, one doomed to offend the ecologically minded while preparing the ground for the far right to gain power. At the very least, that risk suggests there should be a parallel narrative and agenda, one to lift the spirits, escape from the current dourness and inspire those working for the cause.  

I want to suggest that the core of a sensible Vision for all shades of the left today should be a revival of the commons and commoning. The commons may be described as all that belongs to all of us as commoners, as citizens in the proper sense of that word, as people who have a broadening range of human rights. The commons reflects and nurtures a culture of mutual support and generalised reciprocity, of social solidarity and informal social protection, or what some have called ‘the poor’s overcoat’.

They are intrinsically ecological, emphasising ‘the gift economy’ and values of reproduction, rather than accumulation and acquisitiveness. These are surely the values that unite all shades of the progressive left, and are what are sorely lacking in today’s financialised capitalism.

The commons have always been the bedrock of society, and commoning (that is, shared activities in the commons) have always been desired forms of activity by the world’s commoners. The commons, commoning and commoners have been at the heart of all progressive transformations throughout history. They are deeply ingrained in the human condition, giving people Robustness and Resilience, twin feelings in short supply at the moment.

All the great rebellions in British history have been about defending the commons and have been in response to the taking of them, beginning with the social strife that led to the Charter of the Forest and the Magna Carta in November 1217, and going on to the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, Kett’s Rebellion in 1549, the Civil War in the seventeenth century, the Diggers and Levellers of 1649 whose activities culminated in the great Putney debates, the ‘blacking’ actions of the early 1720s (when commoners blackened their faces to conceal themselves when taking deer from enclosed land), which prompted the most savage legislation in British history, the Luddites of the early nineteenth century (ideologically misrepresented ever since), and the Chartists in the 1830s. All were about the defence of the commons and the radical emancipatory lifestyle that they have embodied.   

Perhaps most durably, the commons as the fulcrum of progressive politics was lost in the defeat of William Morris’ Socialist League in the 1890s, this time not a defeat by capital plundering the commons, but by the twin juggernauts of communism and labourist social democracy, both of which pinned all their hopes and intellectual energy on eulogising the ‘state’ as the saviour of society, rescuing ‘the working class’ from industrial capitalism. In doing so, they both dismissed the commons, as quaint historical relics.

Throughout the twentieth century, the core of political struggle was between those who favoured state control, through such mechanisms as nationalisation and state ownership of ‘the means of production’, and those who believed in ‘free markets’. The commons ceased to figure in political discourse, reduced to little more than amenities for recreation. They disappeared as the locus for socio-political struggle.

It is time to escape from that simplistic dualism. We should develop an agenda around the commons and set up a series of discussions around the country to develop a strategy to revive all types of commons, one that should not be party-political or even factional in any sense.

The context could not be more urgent or dire. We are in a transformational crisis, and as Karl Polanyi put it that brings a “threat of annihilation of civilisation”. That is growing in 2025. We are entering the era of Trumpism, and what might be called a plutarchy, which is more threatening than the earlier version of populism associated with Peronism in Latin America.

Plutarchy is a society controlled by the extremely rich, the plutocracy. The plutocracy is a definable group, the plutarchy a definable political system. The libertarian right plutocracy, led by Elon Musk, Peter Theil, Charles Koch et al, have created the conditions for Trumpism and the plutarchy, and predictably the rest of the American plutocracy are lining up to show they now want to be an integral part of what that offers them.

They want to demolish what is left of the progressive side of democratic politics, and unless progressives offer a transformative alternative vision, we will be among the victims. Every person of whatever shade of left they might have should pin on their proverbial wall – the plutocracy does not do compromise. You are Little Red Ridinghood if you enter their den. 

What is happening in America today could spill over this side of the Atlantic tomorrow. It is already doing so. The plutarchy is the outcome of rentier capitalism, which the left must understand and confront. There is nothing like a free market economy today. More and more of the income, wealth, status and power flows to the owners of private property (physical, financial and intellectual). Plundering what remains of the commons is an integral part of that process. Conventional policies to promote GDP growth only increase inequalities and economic insecurity, while increasing the devastation of our natural world.

Over the centuries, all forms of Commons (natural, civil, social, cultural and intellectual) have been plundered, and in much the same sequence – through encroachment, neglect, enclosure, privatisation, commodification and financialisation. But globally and in Britain, the plunder has been accelerated since the neoliberal economics revolution of the 1980s, under Thatcherism and above all in the austerity era.

This must be reversed. In an attempt to start a conversation between similarly minded activists and the politically minded, the conversational society Kairos is planning on organising a series of conversational meetings during the course of 2025 or different areas of the commons, starting with one on January 16th in Kairos’ conference rooms in Tottenham Court Road. The event is open to everyone who is interested, via registration.

The first meeting will outline the meaning and significance of the commons, drawing in part on the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, and on three recent books on different aspects of the commons. It will conclude with a focus on a sphere of commons that receives insufficient attention, the knowledge commons.

The principles and practices of the education commons were established in ancient Athens. Over the ages they have been shredded, first by religious and class-based bigotries and latterly by the neo-liberal emphasis on ‘human capital’ and the construction of a globalised education industry dominated by financial capital and by the plutocracy. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it has turned into an instrument for weakening progressive thinking. The tragedy of education de-commoning must be overcome if the plutarchy is to be overcome.  

Depending on the development of commons conversations in Kairos and elsewhere over the coming months, one outcome might be the drafting of a modern Charter of the Commons that could form the basis for a public campaign. Meanwhile, let a thousand commons bloom.

Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London, and co-president of BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network.

EVENT DETAILS
Thursday January 16th 2025
Doors open 6.30pm, Talk starts 7pm

Reviving the Commons: A Unifying Vision for Our Common Wealth with Guy Standing 

Talk followed by supper at 8pm and discussion until 9.15pm
Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TG

Find out more and reserve a place.

Image: https://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/v/vision.html License: Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0 Attribution: Alpha Stock Images – http://alphastockimages.com/ Original Author: Nick Youngson – link to – http://www.nyphotographic.com/ Original Image: https://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/v/vision.html

 

Solving the Housing Crisis via the Commons

By Dil Green

August 23, 2024

Source: Low Impact

Image via Lowimpact.org

This is Part 1 of a two-parter, about how the housing crisis causes debt-bondage and wage-slavery, and how the housing Commons can release people from debt and give them freedom to do what they know needs to be done.

Part 2: how the housing commons can solve the housing crisis.

In Stroud Commons, we’re looking to find ways to speed up the building of the commons – especially the housing commons, which we were talking about in terms of ‘the rock on which the commons can be built’ before we’d even formed the core group in Stroud. Dil Green of Mutual Credit Services (MCS – who design models for the commons in all sectors), posted a message in our chat group, giving his take on the housing crisis, and how we might speed up the housing commons by allowing / helping / encouraging people to put their house into the commons, and carry on living in it for the rest of their life – and pass it on to their family, too. They’d be able to free up cash (like equity release, but without having to go into more debt), they could retire early, maintenance of the property would be taken out of their hands, and as they get older, commoners will visit regularly to chat, check they’re OK and see if they need anything. Freed from debt-bondage and wage-slavery, and with greater security, people will have more time. And they would spend it on things they know need to be done.

We’ve turned the thread into a 2-part article. Part 1 is about the housing crisis, and Part 2 is about how the housing commons can help solve it.

First, let’s look at the problem:

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How the housing crisis causes debt-bondage and wage-slavery

There is a housing crisis in the UK, but it’s not the way the papers frame it – which is all about numbers of houses, nimbys, building on the green belt or building council houses – it’s not a supply problem, really – it’s a distribution problem, caused by over-inflated prices.

The reason we’re told it’s a supply problem is because there is so much money (and employment) in housing development, and because the UK finance system is hooked on mortgage income. All politicians (even the Greens) seem gung-ho on building more houses. But house building is an enormous cause of CO2 emissions and other environmental degradation. Surely, we should be looking to solve the distribution problem – dealing with house prices – before digging up the green belt?

The graph shows UK house price inflation in blue and population growth in green; clearly, this is not a simple supply/demand relationship. It is best described as a government sponsored ‘Ponzi scheme’ – where the ‘too good to be true’ rewards are paid for by ‘greater fools’ joining in – until the whole thing crashes. Similar schemes are under way in every country across ‘the West’.

Over the last fifty years, the cost of having a secure place to live has eaten up a larger and larger fraction of people’s income. Over the period of the graph, the price of UK housing has approximately doubled in relation to earnings. 

This has gone hand-in-glove with the  campaign to turn more and more people into ‘home-owners’ – aka slaves to mortgage debt for most of their working lives.

Employers are told – ‘if you want a reliable worker, look for someone with a mortgage and 2 kids’. Why? Because they will undergo almost any pain in order to provide a safe place for those kids to live, and they are already in debt-bondage. Wage-slavery comes as part of the package.

The ‘reward’ for participation in this programme has been the enrichment of a small fraction of the population – those lucky enough to get onto the ‘ladder’ early on (ie at least 20 years ago). The problem with this is that the upwards escalator of house prices cannot carry on forever – there is only so much of your income that can be allocated to a place to live, and it’s already too high for most. Those rewards are simply not possible for most people under the age of 40.

The 2008 crisis was triggered by the housing market in the US, and that instability is not going away – there will be other crises, and soon. In the UK, the ‘value’ of the housing stock is now considered to be somewhere between £7-8 trillion – around £200,000 per working person (about half of us). Since we all buy our houses on debt, and mortgages double the initial price of the houses we (and landlords) buy, that suggests that every working person will spend £400k on having somewhere to live in their lifetime – but the average lifetime income is only £570k! Something has to break.

The Housing Commons offers a way out of this mess, a way which diminishes debt-bondage and wage slavery, de-risks the housing finance system, and does not attack individuals who ‘got lucky’ (after all, their lives have already been spent in wage-slavery and debt-bondage).

But there’s more. If we can, even by a fraction, free people from debt-bondage and wage-slavery, it will liberate them to do what, deep down, they know they want to do – work to secure their and their children’s longer-term future.

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Part 2: how a housing commons can address and help solve the housing crisis – very quickly, by allowing people to put their homes into the commons, but be better off, and with lots of practical and social benefits.