Introduction to the Commons

Summary

The commons is:

“a social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity. [It’s] A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State.

There is no master inventory of commons because a commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability. 

 The commons is not a resource.  It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources.“ 

Source & further summary: David Bollier (2011): The Commons, Short and Sweet [emphasis and text in brackets added]

 The original meaning of the term ‘commons’ comes from the way communities managed land that was held ‘in common’ in medieval Europe. Today, the term includes not only natural resources (land, water, air), but also created assets (knowledge, computer code, manufactured goods, etc.).

 

Short introductory videos:

Thenextsystem.org (2016 ): How Does the Commons Work? [2,5 min.]

 Utrecht University, the Netherlands (2017): What Are Commons? [3 min.]

Agence française de développement (2016): The Commons : Interview with David Bollier  [3 min.]

 

A paradigm in itself?

Much of the undersigned’s website deals with ways of radically changing mainstream policy and economics. Going beyond this approach, the Commons may be seen as a paradigm in itself,- somewhat outside both the state and the market. ‘Somewhat’ because, while it often needs to interact with both, it seek to retain a substantial degree of control and independence.

Notwithstanding, several concepts and tools can be -and is- shared by both approaches. Suffice to mention here the stress put on collective action and tools for system change (see Addressing problems of Democracy, Inequality & Climate: A Systems Approach).

While the Commons is discussed at length in my draft for a course on Cooperative Social Entrepreneurship -with a number of case studies across economic and social sectors- (see links to  course outline here), one strongly voiced opinion needs to be mentioned. According to by David Bollier:

“ The first priority is not to bang at the door of governments and political parties to seek change. That may be necessary in some measure. But that path is doomed to disappoint so long as the norms of the current market/state system are intact. As recent history shows, even in places like Greece and Bolivia where left-wing parties took over the state, the results have been problematic – chiefly because international capital can continue to bully, co-opt, and constrain the state and social movements. 

By contrast, even a small but functional parallel polis of working commons – if properly insulated from these forces – can exert great leverage. We saw this in the early days of Linux and open source software…”

David Bollier (11. January 2024) Commons and Commoning: A Progressive Vision of a Good Society

Neither state nor capital

The Commons can nevertheless influence political debate, as shown by the below excerpts from Broca, in an article first published in Le Monde diplomatique in 2016:

Excerpts from the Sébastien Broca, University of Paris (desember 2016): Verken stat eller kapital  (‘Neither state nor capital’ ). Sourced and re-translated to English from Le Monde diplomatique Norge AS [own translation, emphasize and text in brackets added]. Original article: Les communs, un projet ambigu

“ 

Common goods and commons have become popular terms in Europe. Studies of joint management debunk the myth that privatization provides the most efficient use of resources. At the same time, the concepts also cast doubt on the state’s role, for better or for worse.

(..)

EFFECTIVE COMMONS

April 1985, Annapolis, USA. Academics from all over the world are gathered at a conference funded by the National Research Foundation to present their research on the commons. At this time, the term usually refers only to an old story of how communally managed pastures were transformed into fenced private properties at the beginning of the industrial era [‘the first enclosure’ -in the UK, through acts of Parliament over several centuries].

(..) The researchers in Annapolis pick up the thread from this story and show that there are still places in the world where land, fishing and forests are managed as commons, that is, common resources that communities manage together. The researchers believe that these public sector systems often are effective, and that they prevent overtaxation of resources. It completely turns upside down the theory Garrett Hardin put forward in his famous article “The tragedy of the commons” (1968). And behind these, the entire liberal economic orthodoxy is being challenged, which claims that exclusive private ownership is always the best way to distribute scarce resources.

In 1990, the economist Elinor Ostrom summarized the main findings of the research that was presented in Annapolis. She particularly emphasizes the institutional conditions that make it possible to establish permanent Commons systems. She shows that a commons cannot exist over time without rules for its use, and emphasizes that these rules can be made and enforced by the communities without state power [and without private property- ‘neither state nor capital’].

Among many examples, she mentions a fishing village in Turkey “where the fishermen were able to establish their own rules for coastal fishing”. For this work, Ostrom was awarded the Swedish Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel in 2009 (the “Nobel prize in economics”).