Bounding the Commons
At World Social Forums in Porto Alegre (but not this year in Mumbai) Michael Albert of ZNet organised a series of events entitled 'Life after capitalism'. There was a similar event this year in New York just before the Republican National Convention.
At the London ESF, a day-and-a-half conference was organised called 'Life Despite Capitalism' (LDC), about the challenges of creating anti-capitalism now (or so I thought). Not having been to the WSF events, I was very intrigued, and caught a bit of the event, which turned out to be a pretty theoretical affair revolving around the notions of 'commons' and 'enclosure'.
In pre-capitalist Britain, as in many parts of the world now, there were areas of 'common' land, which could be used by local people according to informal customs and rules governing the grazing of animals, the collection of wood, the cutting of trees and so on. In the 18th and 19th centuries, landowners privatised and seized these lands in a process known as 'enclosure'.
It turned out that the LDC conference was focused on an attempt to theorise the anti-capitalist struggle through the lens of 'commons' and 'enclosure' – capitalism 'enclosing' different resources and social/political spaces, and the movement trying to reverse this.
I listened as several speakers within the debate expressed doubt about the definition of 'commons'. One leading figure said that at one moment he felt great excitement, and the next, listening to a new speaker, he felt he didn't know what the term meant. The chair of the final plenary commented that several different definitions were in play.
My own conclusion was that if this idea is to be useful, then the first step will be to restrict the notion of 'commons' to (roughly) 'resources and social spaces which are democratically controlled by users'. This would cut out much of the confusion created by the wider meaning of 'commons', allowing statements such as 'money is a commons'; 'power is a commons'; and so on (statements made during the final plenary).
I also concluded that the focus out to be on concrete social situations (rather than the abstractions which were the centre of attention, so far as I could see), and extending the frontier of popular control, or, if you like, the 'boundary of the commons' within that situation.
This was the focus of the syndicalist and guild socialist strand of left politics at the beginning of the last century: trying to extend what they called the 'frontier of control'. Placing this frontier or boundary at the centre of attention, in the context of particular social situations, seems likely to be more productive than theorising 'the commons' in the abstract.
(I got up and tried to make this suggestion during the final plenary, but my introductory remarks were so long, and so offended some members of the audience, that someone walked out, and I got heckled before I got to the point itself, and I was asked by the chair to stop talking. As the only other person I saw heckled during ESF was from the Sparticist League, this is not a good sign. Maybe I should stick to requested talks and the written word, and try to steer clear of spontaneous spoken interventions.)
Milan Rai
Hastings
At the London ESF, a day-and-a-half conference was organised called 'Life Despite Capitalism' (LDC), about the challenges of creating anti-capitalism now (or so I thought). Not having been to the WSF events, I was very intrigued, and caught a bit of the event, which turned out to be a pretty theoretical affair revolving around the notions of 'commons' and 'enclosure'.
In pre-capitalist Britain, as in many parts of the world now, there were areas of 'common' land, which could be used by local people according to informal customs and rules governing the grazing of animals, the collection of wood, the cutting of trees and so on. In the 18th and 19th centuries, landowners privatised and seized these lands in a process known as 'enclosure'.
It turned out that the LDC conference was focused on an attempt to theorise the anti-capitalist struggle through the lens of 'commons' and 'enclosure' – capitalism 'enclosing' different resources and social/political spaces, and the movement trying to reverse this.
I listened as several speakers within the debate expressed doubt about the definition of 'commons'. One leading figure said that at one moment he felt great excitement, and the next, listening to a new speaker, he felt he didn't know what the term meant. The chair of the final plenary commented that several different definitions were in play.
My own conclusion was that if this idea is to be useful, then the first step will be to restrict the notion of 'commons' to (roughly) 'resources and social spaces which are democratically controlled by users'. This would cut out much of the confusion created by the wider meaning of 'commons', allowing statements such as 'money is a commons'; 'power is a commons'; and so on (statements made during the final plenary).
I also concluded that the focus out to be on concrete social situations (rather than the abstractions which were the centre of attention, so far as I could see), and extending the frontier of popular control, or, if you like, the 'boundary of the commons' within that situation.
This was the focus of the syndicalist and guild socialist strand of left politics at the beginning of the last century: trying to extend what they called the 'frontier of control'. Placing this frontier or boundary at the centre of attention, in the context of particular social situations, seems likely to be more productive than theorising 'the commons' in the abstract.
(I got up and tried to make this suggestion during the final plenary, but my introductory remarks were so long, and so offended some members of the audience, that someone walked out, and I got heckled before I got to the point itself, and I was asked by the chair to stop talking. As the only other person I saw heckled during ESF was from the Sparticist League, this is not a good sign. Maybe I should stick to requested talks and the written word, and try to steer clear of spontaneous spoken interventions.)
Milan Rai
Hastings
posted by Milan Rai at 10:11 PM
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