Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of the “Diggers” in 17th Century England, summed up the notion of the Commons when he stated that the earth is “a common treasury for all to share.” In this section are links to, among other things, the commons in Western history, how the denial of access to land (and the theft of it) still impoverishes people worldwide, how our understanding of the commons has evolved to view it as a human institution which saves communities from both the State and the Market, the role of community land trust in advancing the work of the commons in land, the commons as a bridge between ecology and economics, and the threats today posed by the seizure and privatization of the commons. 1The commons – a vehicle for meeting everyone’s basic needs in a roughly equitable way – is being annexed and disassembled to serve a global market machine which treats nature as a brute commodity. Commoners become isolated individuals. Communities of commoners are splintered and reconstituted as armies of consumers and employees. The “unowned” resources of the commons are converted into the raw fodder for market production and sale – and after every last drop of it has been monetized, the inevitable wastes of the market are dumped back into the commons. Government is dispatched to “mop up” the “externalities,” a task that is only irregularly fulfilled because it is so ancillary to neoliberal priorities. – David Bollier and Silke Helfrich in the Introduction to The Wealth of the Commons.
Information on land ownership worldwide, some current threats to communal land by state-market forces, and some background on the “Enclosures” in England, an early model for land-grabbing globally today are provided in Dispossession and Enclosure.
Mutual Aid is a strategy that humans and other animals have used successfully to survive and will continue to do so.
Terror is usually thought of as “theirs.” Our Terror contains links to discussions of recent uses of overwhelming U. S. force throughout the world.
Inequality provides commentary on the New Gilded Age which most of us are trying to survive, as well as topics like residential racial segregation as government policy, and how a more equal society is better for all.
The deep and comprehensive nature of the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the clear trajectory of his life, have been blurred by the narrower, more one-dimensional representations of him which now predominate. Who Was Dr. King?
Footnotes
- 1The commons – a vehicle for meeting everyone’s basic needs in a roughly equitable way – is being annexed and disassembled to serve a global market machine which treats nature as a brute commodity. Commoners become isolated individuals. Communities of commoners are splintered and reconstituted as armies of consumers and employees. The “unowned” resources of the commons are converted into the raw fodder for market production and sale – and after every last drop of it has been monetized, the inevitable wastes of the market are dumped back into the commons. Government is dispatched to “mop up” the “externalities,” a task that is only irregularly fulfilled because it is so ancillary to neoliberal priorities. – David Bollier and Silke Helfrich in the Introduction to The Wealth of the Commons.