By Vasilis Kostakis, Andreas Roos, P2P Foundation
The intuitive belief that technology can manifest from money alone, anthropologists tell us, is a culturally rooted notion which hides the fact that the scarcity experienced by some is linked to the abundance enjoyed only by a few.
By Michel Bauwens, Commons Transition
Andrea Fumagalli’s new book sharply distinguishes the common, a general counter-approach to neoliberalism and capitalism based on the self-organisation of life and work, as opposed to seeing the commons are merely shared resources.
By P2P Staff, P2P Foundation
Step by step, I can see little advances in people’s mentalities, or in local politics. For example, recently the Madrid council has received a UN Public Service prize for a collaborative free software platform called Decide Madrid. It is an excellent sign and means that our work and efforts working in the commons are important and can provoke social change.
By Patrick Noble, Feasta
Because most political, social and working life is enclosed, people falsely conclude that our struggle must be to improve those enclosures – not to step gently into the wood. That choice, to weave improvements into the wires, is the course taken by most of the liberal left. It endorses enclosure.
By Chris Tittle, P2P Foundation
What if community development was actually shaped by all members of the community, not just the most privileged and most likely to profit?
By Saki Bailey, Shareable
The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is an impressive burgeoning commons legal institution that's aimed at the decommodification of housing.
By David Bollier, Local Futures
I am always trying to figure out how to explain the idea of the commons to newcomers who find it hard to grasp. Here is a fairly short overview, which I think gets to the nub of things.
By Patrick Noble, Feasta
An enclosure is no less than right to amorality, freed from the ancient obligations of the common. It follows that our task is to evacuate enclosures and reclaim the common.
By Kevin Carson, P2P Foundation
Hence the commons, by growth, can reduce its need for interaction with the circuit of capital via the cash nexus, and incorporate more and more basic functions of life into itself. The commons are constrained by the fact that they coexist with capital and the state.
By Saki Bailey, Shareable
These three commons legal institutions exemplifies, in different ways, a central feature of the commons as described in the previous piece: namely, decommodifying access to a common good by taking homes permanently off of the speculative market