The Social Life Of The Commons
Written 10th January 2020
For many of us, we’re at the start of a new (Gregorian) year, and, indeed, decade. As we step gingerly into the ‘Transition Twenties’, it’s quite possible to feel overwhelmed at the prospect of what’s to come in a decade, we are regularly reminded, that will be one of reckoning, and one where life as we know it will be transformed, whether we like it or not.
As I try to remember ‘the future has not yet been written’, I have been sourcing energy from the myriad examples of people and communities doing things differently. Last night I re-read the chapter in Silke Helfrich and David Bollier’s book Free, Fair and Alive called ‘The Social Life of Commoning’, and was moved by a seemingly simple paragraph at the opening: “Commoning is what common people decide for themselves in their specific circumstances if they want to get along with each other and produce as much wealth for everyone as possible.” I read it over and over again, struck by how ‘ordinary’ it seemed, but how entirely radical it is in these times as a concept; to want to get along with each other and to be invested in the good of the collective. But that’s the point. In some ways, commoning really was, and certainly could be, a very ordinary way for us to live. For many people, in cultures and communities across the globe, commoning is the very ordinary, but simultaneously very special way that they live out their lives together; cultivating shared purpose and values, ritualising togetherness, contributing freely, practicing gentle reciprocity, trusting situated knowing, communing with nature, preserving relationships despite conflicts and reflecting on their peer governance — all patterns of cooperation, sharing and relating to one another that the chapter goes on to describe in beautiful detail and admiration.
We release the chapter this week online to be read for free on the Free, Fair and Alive website. Read it here: Chapter 4: The Social Life of Commoning.
It is my hope that within these extraordinary times that those beacons of light that are communities of commoners will light the way for the rest of us so that commoning might one day, once again, be considered very ordinary indeed.
Commoning around the world
Abahlali baseMjondolo
(AbM, Zulu pronunciation: [aɓaˈɬali ɓasɛm̩dʒɔˈndɔːlo], in English: shack dwellers, lit. those who reside in shacks) is a shack-dwellers’ movement in South Africa which campaigns both against evictions and for public housing. The movement grew out of a road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and expanded to the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town. It is the largest shack dweller’s organisation in South Africa, campaigning to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratise society from below. Read the full entry on Wikipedia here.
“Patterns of Commoning: The Ethical Struggle to Be Human: A Shack Dwellers Movement in South Africa” is an essay derived from a chapter by Nigel Gibson, “Unfinished Struggles for Freedom: The Birth of a New Shack Dwellers’ Movement,” in Fanonian Practices: From Steve Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo. Read it here.
This week, we are mostly reading…
Here are some of our favourite books, articles and long read articles on the commons. Let us know what you think or send us your own recommendations.
Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
by Silvia Federici
Reproduction precedes social production. Touch the women, touch the rock.
– Peter Linebaugh
In Federici’s own words: “I look at the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective where “feminist” refers to a standpoint shaped by the struggle against sexual discrimination and over reproductive work, which, to paraphrase Linebaugh’s comment above, is the rock upon which society is built and by which every model of social organization must be tested. This intervention is necessary, in my view, to better define this politics and clarify the conditions under which the principle of the common/s can become the foundation of an anti-capitalist program. Two concerns make these tasks especially important.” Read the article here.
Stop, thief!: The commons, enclosures, and resistance
by Peter Linebaugh
“From Thomas Paine to the Luddites and from Karl Marx — who concluded his great study of capitalism with the enclosure of commons — to the practical dreamer William Morris who made communism into a verb and advocated communizing industry and agriculture, to the 20th-century communist historian E. P. Thompson, Linebaugh brings to life the vital commonist tradition. He traces the red thread from the great revolt of commoners in 1381 to the enclosures of Ireland, and the American commons, where European immigrants who had been expelled from their commons met the immense commons of the native peoples and the underground African American urban commons, and all the while urges the ancient spark of resistance.” Find out more here.
