The Goose and the Commons
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
~ a bit of doggerel from the beginning of the enclosure movement in England
A number of years ago, in the nascent years of the 21st century, one heard a great deal in certain circles about the global commons. Then, suddenly, it seemed that particular cause went out of fashion. Why?
The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
In 1968 a scientist named Garrett Hardin wrote a paper titled "The Tragedy of the Commons" in which he claimed that common lands will always be misused because it is in the self interest of each user to take to much of the common resources, and because it is a open access, nobody can stop this from happening. This is wrong on several counts. The first mistake is calling it open access. The commons of old were open only to the members of the village where the particular commons was located, and was controlled by a complex system of kinship rights. The second big mistake was assuming that all people at all times and places act only in their own self interest. There are much stronger motivators. There were rules to using the commons and millennia old traditions. Nobody wanted to get kicked off, and all had been brought up with the system of common use that sustained the entire village. But Hardin did not recognize that.The paper was obscure in the larger world, but not in certain policy making circles where it was used to justify further privatization. The opposite of what was needed.
Why Should We Care Now?
If we look back to the beginning, a great global commons is the state of nature. And the most recent human economic invention, capitalism, is destroying that commons. At our peril. Though it is true that we have over-populated, that is not the cause of the current crisis, or at least not the biggest cause. Capitalism is a human invention that actually benefits very few humans, and it is these few that are responsible for the carnage, the 6th mass extinction, and the climate disruption.
We live in a great global commons whether the rulers of humankind want to admit it or not. The water that is fouled with plastic is the water that we all must use. The soil that is stripped of nutrients is the same soil that feeds us all. The fires and floods do not discriminate. The elites may be able to protect themselves, but not forever and not completely. And, even if they could, under what theory should they be allowed to break the earth for the rest of us, and for all the other species that make this their home?
We must defend the waters, the soils, the air, the forests and wetlands. And, in the human world, the food and water security, the public airwaves, and the transportation and communication systems, all of which are commons.
What Are the Commons Anyhow?
In the beginning, the whole world was one great commons. This was before the new species, homo sapiens sapiens developed the concept of property or ownership. The species before us may have had territories but they did not have private property, and neither did we, at first. With time humans developed hierarchical systems. For millennia, in the parts of the world that had greater hierarchical stratification, only those on top by class had property. The rest of the population had living spaces under the aegis of the king, but they also had a shared commons. This was land that was stewarded by all the inhabitants of a particular village or place, and was also used by all of the members of that place alike, to raise food, graze livestock, and more.
This system existed for time beyond knowing, until the 18th century, when the very wealthy, not content with all that they had, decided that there should be no common property, and set about fencing it in and taking it as private property.
The creeping push for privatization may have accelerated in the last 50 years, but it has been creeping up for centuries. This movement was called the enclosure movement. The movement that “stole the commons from the goose” and goes on stealing our common wealth right up to the present moment. Perhaps now is the time to “steal it back”.
Let's start talking about this again. And let's make a plan to preserve what belongs to us all.