“Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor.”[1]
“Commons are not just a “third way” beyond state and market failures; they are a vehicle for claiming ownership in the conditions needed for life and its reproduction.”[2]

For generations, rural and urban communities in Southeast and South Asia have been creating and using commons, although they do not use this term. Commons scholarship is of course very important, but at the same time, we need to be mindful that as we seek to understand real, lived experiences of people in diverse contexts, we do not appropriate their realities to fit our analytical frameworks.

The conditions needed for life and its reproduction that De Angelis talks of, have become extremely precarious for the majority of the world’s peoples with the advance of global capitalism. The enclosures that Polanyi referred to, are the theft of these conditions, easing the concentration of all forms of wealth in the hands of a small minority. Enclosures have accelerated and intensified through myriad ways; today, even the concept of the commons is being enclosed to serve market purposes.

The increasing dominance of market forces in all aspects of our lives systematically denies people the necessary conditions, capacities, opportunities and agency by which we can live well today, and in the future.

The commons offer us strategies to claim and sustain collective ownership of these conditions. Commons have immense potential to resist global capitalism and market domination, and co-create just, equitable, sustainable, non-extractivist social and economic systems.

What are commons?

In the broadest sense, I see the commons as different kinds of wealth, spaces, resources, values, social relations, systems, processes and activities that “belong to” groups or collectives , which must be actively claimed, created, restored and protected for collective good and purpose for present and future generations.

“Belonging” implies ownership, but ownership in this context is not proprietary. Rather, these are relationships that entail shared responsibility and shared beneficiary relationships; some call them stewardship, some call them care-taking, and even management.

Commons are not only the resources/wealth/spaces/terrains themselves. Equally important are the relationships between those involved in the commons. These relationships are expressed as rules, social conventions, norms, customs and customary or vernacular laws, and behavioral patterns.

Commons evolve in practice: Peter Linebaugh, the eminent historian and commons scholar talks about “commoning,” i.e., dynamic processes and actions that allow commons to be created, adapted and strengthened to last over generations and serve varying needs. These could be indigenous peoples’ ancestral lands, women’s health collectives, urban community gardens, workers’ cooperatives, online knowledge platforms, watershed protection areas, etc.

The commons demand conscious, deliberate participation and involve rights as well as responsibilities/obligations. People agree to be part of a commons, to enter into the system of rules (however informal or customary) of a commons. Commons governance entail a delicate balance of rules of access and use, boundaries, limits, inclusions and exclusions, that are developed by commons users, and recognized/respected by broader society.

It makes sense to see the commons as a paradigm that includes: tangible and intangible resources/wealth; people, communities acting collectively; and norms, rules and practices that manifest crucial values of equality, equity, dignity, respect and sustainability.

Agency in commons thinking is collective and autonomous from state and market institutions. At the same time, commons do not exist in isolation. Rather, they are nested within existing social, economic, environmental and political systems, or in the intersection of these systems. Commoners have to negotiate with these systems to create and protect commons. This is important to note when we talk about social protection as commons.

The best-known examples of commons are in nature: air, water, land, forests, biodiversity, eco-systems, climate, territories/domains. But commons are also social (health, education, safety), intellectual and cultural (knowledge, technology, the internet, literature, music) and institutional (self-help groups, mutual support associations). With the resurgence of extreme authoritarianism, intolerance, and criminalization of dissent, we need to bring commons thinking into the political realm as well: human rights, justice, democracy and security.

Despite categories, each commons contains natural, social, economic and political dimensions, whether a traditional irrigation system, urban vegetable garden, food collective, community forest, seed saving-sharing system, online knowledge portal, workers’ cooperative or a local savings group.

Public spaces that are accessible to all, the assurance of physical security, and relevant information/knowledge, are all essential for people to be able to gather, build voice, engage in social and political dialogues, participate in policy processes, articulate and defend rights, and build popular democracy. Struggles of rural communities in India, Cambodia or Laos, to protect forests, lands, seeds and water, are connected with the struggles of migrant workers in factories, domestic services or the construction industry.

The notion of the commons does not negate individual agency and responsibility; protecting and managing collective resources requires a collectivity of individual actors working together towards shared goals.

Communities in many rural areas in Asia share labour, produce and income to maintain food reserves. Many villages have community forests, common water sources, and common lands for fishing, grazing, foraging/gathering and farming. In urban gardens, people farm individual plots but manage the garden collectively.

Threats to the Commons

Not surprisingly, the commons are spaces where the fiercest and most enduring resistances to capitalism, neoliberalism, corporate control and economic growth are being waged.
Threats to the commons are threats to all of us, our communities, societies, rights and lives. These include:

• Privatisation and private capture of natural, social, economic and knowledge wealth and resources through private property regimes (enclosures).
• Commodification of land, water, seeds, labour, knowledge, etc.; with carbon markets, offset schemes and the Green Economy, the environment, climate and life itself have been commodified.
• Extractivism: exploitation of natural and social wealth, and expropriation into global value chains to create wealth elsewhere.
• Financialisation: financial markets are penetrating deeper and deeper into the “real economy” of actual production of goods, services, infrastructure;
  New financial assets and markets are being created to trade these constructed commodities.
  Again, if we look at climate change: new commodities and markets are being created from scratch to satisfy the demands by financial markets for new, high-return investments, for e.g. carbon credits, carbon trading rights, and other derivative contracts.
• Free trade and investment agreements.
• Globalisation of production and global value chains: they destroy the abilities of workers to form unions, political communities, undermine their abilities to organize, negotiate, build economies, etc.; no social wages and social protections are possible in such a production system.
• Bio-piracy and theft of knowledge: appropriation of the wealth and knowledge of peoples and societies into proprietary goods to generate monetary profits through intellectual property rights (IPR) rules; these capture seeds, biodiversity, traditional knowledge, medicines, etc.
• Militarisation and “securitization” of territories.
• Repression, criminalization of dissent, authoritarianism, dictatorship

Many governments are complicit and often proactive in enabling these threats through laws, policies and international agreements. In fact, the state can enable or disable commoning through the exercise of its authority. This is especially pertinent to the articulation of public interest.

Public goods and services, i.e., those under the authority of the state, are generally not considered commons. But these goods and services–water systems, food programmes, public procurement, health systems, infrastructure, educational establishments, etc.–are extremely important to ensure equitable access to the conditions necessary for “life and its reproduction” that De Angelis referred to.

Taking the example of water, appropriate laws are needed to protect water in its free state, and prevent its commodification and privatization. At the same time, to ensure that all people in a society have equitable access to water, water needs to be channeled as a public good/service with equity oriented regulation that states must enforce.

The governance of water—in its free state and as a public good—does not have to fall into a bipolar trap of private or state ownership/management. Water can and should be governed as a commons through community councils, rural and urban water boards, water user committees, etc., with the necessary rules and regulations for inclusion, equity, justice, exclusion and accountability that are recognized and respected by state.

Social protection and social commons are inter-dependent on public goods, services, infrastructure, knowledge and institutions, that have been built with public resources (money, labour, capacities, knowledge, natural resources), many of which have been nurtured through commoning. These are the “assets” that corporations most want.

Enclosures of knowledge and knowledge production through privatization of educational and research centres, patents, copy rights and corporate supported IPR laws, have serious implications for social protection and the public interest. Corporations and private institutions that hold patents and copyrights can dictate what knowledge would be produced and released, and when, as well as suppress research and knowledge critical to public and environmental health and safety.

Conclusion

The commons are not free of contradictions. Commons are non-commodified systems of production, but what is produced in some commons are sold as commodities, for example, grains, livestock and other foods. Commons are about collectivity and non-proprietary “ownership,” but to be sustained, they cannot be open to everyone without rules and exclusions. Commons foster equality and equity, but they are not free from class, caste, race and gender discrimination. Women are critical actors in all commons, but commons themselves have not necessarily been emancipatory spaces for gender identity and equality.

The climate crisis is, in a sense, the ultimate crisis of capitalism: there is no easy exit from this endgame; we have to change how we live, produce, consume; we can no longer try to convert ecological limits to barriers that can be overcome through techno fixes; we cannot use modern science to recreate nature—all that has been tried (at great cost) and has failed.

Commoning practices have been getting increasing visibility over the past decade because they offer creative survival options in difficult times, and allow people to effectively resist extractive development, economic growth and capitalist expansion, while rebuilding their own agency and capabilities. By expanding commons, we expand spaces that capital is unable to occupy.

Because of their creative power and resistance potential, they are also open to ideological capture and co-optation—which has become another terrain of struggle.

The relationships between the commons, state and market are complex, and must be carefully negotiated as we build social commons. Particularly important here are issues of ownership, governance, scale and agency. We cannot allow commons to be used as ways to subsidize the state and market. We must not forget how the care work of women has been exploited through austerity and privatization programmes. Social commons should not become de facto ‘safety nets’ for goods, services and infrastructure that must remain in the public realm and be governed democratically.

Building social commons must be supported by policies and laws at multiple levels to enable commoning, for example: collective, non-proprietary “property” rights; de-privatisation; equality and equity across gender, class, caste, race, culture; synergy with public goods regimes; dismantling the threats to the commons; networking different kinds of commons; etc. Experience in how to do this exists among women, workers, social movements, food producers, indigenous peoples, hackers, scholars and rights activists across the world. We need to learn from them, and build communities of learning across gender, class, race, culture and geography.

Shalmali Guttal is Executive Director of Focus on the Global South (Focus), based in Bangkok, Thailand. She has been researching and writing about economic development, trade-investment, food, land, ecological and social justice issues in Asia – especially the Mekong region and India – for over 25 years.

Focus is a regional policy research organization headquartered in the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok, Thailand.

[1] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation. 1944. (p. 35)

[1] Massimo De Angelis. Crises, Capital and Co-optation: does capital need a commons fix? http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/crises-capital-and-co-optation-does-capital-need-commons-fix