common dreams

The notion of the commons refers to shared land, publicly available for all people to access for leisure and when times get tough, for survival. Publicly shared lands have existed since humans first walked the earth but have progressively been enclosed for individual sustenance or for profit. The most profound period of enclosures came with the introduction of European capitalism, and mass displacement of agricultural people to toil in industrial factories.

Throughout European and U.S. colonialism, the genocide, enslavement, and displacement of indigenous people from their lands was “justified” via the pseudo-science concept of Social Darwinism—the notion that humans inherently compete for resources and the most violent and coercive are rightfully in charge. Similarly, the pseudo-science tragedy of the commons was created to justify the privatization of public lands. This “tragedy” was based on the premise that shared resources will inherently be exploited and destroyed by the unruly public. That if left to their own volition people are inherently greedy, they don’t think in the long-term, they don’t communicate, and just like Social Darwinism, they must compete. Economist Elinor Ostrom debunked the tragedy of the commons and in doing so became the first woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize for Economics...

The late radical social ecologist Murray Bookchin theorized how diverse communities, utilizing diverse tactics, could work together based on shared principles of sustainability, direct democracy, and equality. He coined this “communalism”—and many theorists and activists have further developed these theories and put them into practice. At its core, communalism is about bringing people together into assemblies to discuss the short-term and long-term challenges they face, and democratically decide on how to best address these challenges. This is how successful commons are regulated and maintained via community participation and shared interests, and how our future atmosphere must be maintained. That is, once we as a society recognize our atmosphere as a vital component of our commonly inhabited planet.

“Partial measures are far from sufficient, and approaches to renewable energy development that merely replicate capitalist forms may likely turn out to be a dead end. However, the cumulative impact of [communal] municipal efforts to challenge entrenched interests and actualize living alternatives – combined with coherent revolutionary visions, organizations, and strategies towards a radically transformed society- could perhaps be enough to fend off a dystopian future of deprivation and authoritarianism.” —Brian Tokar

Common dreams