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Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons
A new world based on fairness, participation, accountability is closer than you thinkif you learn to think like a commoner The biggest "tragedy of the commons" is the misconception that commons are failures-relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the Market and State. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons-an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world. With graceful prose and dozens of fascinating stories, Bollier describes the quiet revolution that is pioneering practical forms of self-governance and production controlled by people themselves. Think Like a Commoner explains how the We have a Ignore the commons and suffer the ongoing private plunder of our common wealth. Or Think Like a Commoner and learn how to rebuild our society and reclaim our shared inheritance. This accessible, comprehensive introduction to the commons will surprise and enlighten you, and provoke you to action.
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2014
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June 8, 2014
Are the commons big, or just vanishing?
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites.]
The latter, is the book's answer. And I cannot help disagreeing.
The book opens with a conversation on the definition of commons between the author and another flight passenger. The examples provided are the usual ones: a commons is the park, a lake, air. Whereas the very possibility of that flight taking place relies on the systematic organization of society for the shared use of common resources. The gas turbines that were developed by the military with public money, the heavily subsidized and non-renewable fuel, the publicly funded airports, the highly regulated air route control system - all are commons in disguise. And they are structural commons, core, central - big.
As with its internal contradictions, capitalism cannot do away with the commons, but only move them around, trying to hide them from public sight. There's no society without commons. Once the rural commons were dismantled, urban commons had to replace them, in the form of rights, to education and welfare. The commons are those resources that make society a society, i.e. a place where people receive gifts and develop duties. Education, public health, communication and transportation, housing, energy and water open to all, so that no one is left prey to slavery, are the contemporary commons. These commons exist already. You do not have to set up a garden in your neighborhood to create new commons.
Associating the powerful concept of the commons with marginal self-organization initiatives such as parking lots management in Boston when it snows or access to waves on a Hawaiian beach is a great limitation of this book, with dramatic political implications.
Corporations are more than happy to leave to commoners tiny bits of urban space and hawaiian waves, especially if this distracts the commoners from reclaiming their schools, their roads, their airports, their hospitals, their water, their prisons, their agriculture, their banking system, their energy, etc. These commons belong to the people, who have delegated the government as a trustee to manage them in the name of the people. If the government has betrayed its trusteeship, selling off the commons to private interests as if they were res nullius ,it is time to scale back to more direct and participatory forms of democracy. The water privatization project in Italy was blocked by popular vote through a referendum (the commoners knew their constitutional law and what it takes to get sixty million people to cast their ballot).
Of course, direct democracy is time consuming and if we are all too busy eking out a living because we have been separated from the commons, there is no way out. Which leads to the conclusion that time dedicated to taking care of the res publica is the commons enabling all other forms of 'commoning'.
[Through my ratings, reviews and edits I'm providing intellectual property and labor to Amazon.com Inc., listed on Nasdaq, which fully owns Goodreads.com and in 2013 posted revenues for $74 billion and $274 million profits. Intellectual property and labor require compensation. Amazon.com Inc. is also requested to provide assurance that its employees and contractors' work conditions meet the highest health and safety standards at all the company's sites.]
The latter, is the book's answer. And I cannot help disagreeing.
The book opens with a conversation on the definition of commons between the author and another flight passenger. The examples provided are the usual ones: a commons is the park, a lake, air. Whereas the very possibility of that flight taking place relies on the systematic organization of society for the shared use of common resources. The gas turbines that were developed by the military with public money, the heavily subsidized and non-renewable fuel, the publicly funded airports, the highly regulated air route control system - all are commons in disguise. And they are structural commons, core, central - big.
As with its internal contradictions, capitalism cannot do away with the commons, but only move them around, trying to hide them from public sight. There's no society without commons. Once the rural commons were dismantled, urban commons had to replace them, in the form of rights, to education and welfare. The commons are those resources that make society a society, i.e. a place where people receive gifts and develop duties. Education, public health, communication and transportation, housing, energy and water open to all, so that no one is left prey to slavery, are the contemporary commons. These commons exist already. You do not have to set up a garden in your neighborhood to create new commons.
Associating the powerful concept of the commons with marginal self-organization initiatives such as parking lots management in Boston when it snows or access to waves on a Hawaiian beach is a great limitation of this book, with dramatic political implications.
Corporations are more than happy to leave to commoners tiny bits of urban space and hawaiian waves, especially if this distracts the commoners from reclaiming their schools, their roads, their airports, their hospitals, their water, their prisons, their agriculture, their banking system, their energy, etc. These commons belong to the people, who have delegated the government as a trustee to manage them in the name of the people. If the government has betrayed its trusteeship, selling off the commons to private interests as if they were res nullius ,it is time to scale back to more direct and participatory forms of democracy. The water privatization project in Italy was blocked by popular vote through a referendum (the commoners knew their constitutional law and what it takes to get sixty million people to cast their ballot).
Of course, direct democracy is time consuming and if we are all too busy eking out a living because we have been separated from the commons, there is no way out. Which leads to the conclusion that time dedicated to taking care of the res publica is the commons enabling all other forms of 'commoning'.
August 9, 2018
Δεν ξέρω αν μπορώ να βάλω "αστεράκια" σε ένα τέτοιο βιβλίο. Είναι ενδιαφέρον, εξηγεί τι ακριβώς είναι "τα κοινά", με παραδείγματα από την ιστορία και το σήμερα, και πώς αυτά θα μπορούσαν ίσως να λειτουργήσουν για να περάσουμε σε μια άλλη μορφή κοινωνίας. Μερικά απ' αυτά που λέει τα βρήκα εντελώς ανεδαφικά, σε κάποια "κρύβει" τις αδυναμίες του "συστήματος" που προτείνει.
Πάντως χρήσιμο :-)
Πάντως χρήσιμο :-)
March 1, 2017
Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρουσα εισαγωγή στην έννοια των "κοινών", της συν-διαχείρησης των κοινών αγαθών του κόσμου. Κατανοητό, ενδιαφέρον, με παραδείγματα και εύστοχες ιστορίες. Πολύ καλή η ελληνική έκδοση.
November 21, 2018
David Bollier's brief argument on behalf of the importance of defending those places and processes in our lives which could be labeled "commons"--parks and pathways, obviously, but also all sorts of things from open-source software to natural aquifers to regular assemblies on public squares--is wonderful and important. Much of what he argues for are matters familiar to me from other works of socialist or anarchist or radically democratic theory, but he puts them all together in a wonderfully practical and persuasive way. I think he may be a little too enamored of the technology-enabled aspects of "commoning"; his enthusiasm for the "sharing economy" would have been better balanced with a little more time addressing the "subsistence" aspect to the commons, and the fact that--which, to his credit, he doesn't deny, even if he doesn't address it at length--turning away from the profit-maximizing habits of enclosure and privatization would probably often result in less overall productivity and wealth. Still, I learned a great deal from this book, both about the history of the commons (I'd never heard of the Charter of the Forest, a companion document to the Magna Carta before) and the ways in which commons-thinking necessarily pushes in philosophical directions that prioritizes the tactile and the local, rather than the abstract and rational. A great, thoughtful primer on an important social, economic, and environmental topic.
August 30, 2015
The idea I liked the most in this book was a new triumvirate requiring checks and balances -- the corporate, the government and the commons. A combination of the commons with the government is the proper check against corporate greed, corruption and even simply the corporate mandate for profit. Simply thinking in terms of a commons, changes the outlook on political issues and grass roots efforts. Our law has a long history of following the commons (common law) and maybe the common law needs to be strengthened for all our benefit.
November 30, 2014
Bollier reveals how the corporate world has been encroaching and usurping the resources that were once held in Common by the citizens of Earth. If you want to know how international corporations operate, this is a good book for you. Also, he gives us hope by showing how ordinary people are resisting these efforts by creating new commons. A very good read.
December 29, 2017
I heard Bollier speak at an Open Ed conference this past year (2017) in Anaheim CA. A great talk and the book did not disappoint. It is a daring seemingly new, yet as Bollier argues, a very old vision of how society can be managed through lateral relationships rather than hierarchical governmental and business models solely focused on power and profit.
A key concept I intuitively understood but had never named: enclosures. In his chapter Enclosures of Nature, he outlines the grand illusion, "one you learn to identify the commons and understand its dynamics, it becomes quite clear that the privatization and commodification of our shared wealth is one of the great unacknowledged scandals of our time" (37). He explains that enclosures are special kind of theft, a theft which treats communities as individuals and consumers, pitting livelihoods against one another. That is companies, often aided by government laws and funds, take what we all owned in common, enclose it, block out the people, and then sell access or the product back to us.
I've thought of this very issue for years as I hike along the Bonneville trail in Davis County. The trail skirts and skates along the beginnings of the national forest which we all own, which we are all (or should be) stewards of. Yet time and again access points to this trail and to trails we venture up into the national forest have been blocked by development. On one trail run, I became so infuriated at the new homes intersecting a trail I'd run for years as I crested a hill, I lost my balance and came crashing down into the sagebrush I stewarded but was simultaneously losing even the ability to fall into. How can a NATIONAL forest, a forest owned by the people be a national forest when one cannot access it? Private.
I'll give you your private, just as Thoreau did on one of his trips to see some waterfalls near the Canadian border, I push down the fences that block out the people. On one mt bike trail I've ridden on for 20+ yrs someone has tried to put up a gate and private sign for years. Again and again we hikers and bikers have pushed apart posts, taken down signs, pushed down the hill the cemented posts. Not to do so would be to give up our forest heritage.
Of Bollier's book is about much more than access to forests. It is a whole vision of life where we no longer rely on the fanciful tale, ultimately a vicious lie, that if only we spend more the market will make us all rich and happy. Market-based economies will never lead to equality. And the modern idea of trickle-down economics, yet again being bandied about by different names, never quite trickles below the tree-line; it stays up in the tops of the mts with all those who already have the best view and the most resources.
I believe in this new/old vision of how it could be but, in these beleaguered political times when corporate power infiltrates every law and conversation about society, I have little hope we will soon return to our common roots.
A key concept I intuitively understood but had never named: enclosures. In his chapter Enclosures of Nature, he outlines the grand illusion, "one you learn to identify the commons and understand its dynamics, it becomes quite clear that the privatization and commodification of our shared wealth is one of the great unacknowledged scandals of our time" (37). He explains that enclosures are special kind of theft, a theft which treats communities as individuals and consumers, pitting livelihoods against one another. That is companies, often aided by government laws and funds, take what we all owned in common, enclose it, block out the people, and then sell access or the product back to us.
I've thought of this very issue for years as I hike along the Bonneville trail in Davis County. The trail skirts and skates along the beginnings of the national forest which we all own, which we are all (or should be) stewards of. Yet time and again access points to this trail and to trails we venture up into the national forest have been blocked by development. On one trail run, I became so infuriated at the new homes intersecting a trail I'd run for years as I crested a hill, I lost my balance and came crashing down into the sagebrush I stewarded but was simultaneously losing even the ability to fall into. How can a NATIONAL forest, a forest owned by the people be a national forest when one cannot access it? Private.
I'll give you your private, just as Thoreau did on one of his trips to see some waterfalls near the Canadian border, I push down the fences that block out the people. On one mt bike trail I've ridden on for 20+ yrs someone has tried to put up a gate and private sign for years. Again and again we hikers and bikers have pushed apart posts, taken down signs, pushed down the hill the cemented posts. Not to do so would be to give up our forest heritage.
Of Bollier's book is about much more than access to forests. It is a whole vision of life where we no longer rely on the fanciful tale, ultimately a vicious lie, that if only we spend more the market will make us all rich and happy. Market-based economies will never lead to equality. And the modern idea of trickle-down economics, yet again being bandied about by different names, never quite trickles below the tree-line; it stays up in the tops of the mts with all those who already have the best view and the most resources.
I believe in this new/old vision of how it could be but, in these beleaguered political times when corporate power infiltrates every law and conversation about society, I have little hope we will soon return to our common roots.
July 17, 2016
Anecdotal in nature, Bollier's "Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons" is a useful text to get a grounding in the theoretical and real-life application of the "commons". Bollier provides a thoughtful and compelling antidote to the well-worn narrative of contemporary neo-liberal market ideology; homo economicus is anything but rational in this text. While the writing feels a bit like an extra-long essay at times, the engaging nature of the various ways to implement a "commons" framework makes up for it.
June 1, 2016
Best overview of the commons and commoners that I've read. Bollier offers a welcoming introduction and exploration of many historical and contemporary commons, making a compelling case that the commons might hold answers for the future of political, economic, and social life in the 21st century. Recommended for all.
July 31, 2017
A refreshing way of looking at economics from a non-capitalist perspective. The author overstates the potential for commons as an alternative to capitalism and also overstates its benefits in certain instances, but there is a place for a larger role that commons can play in our lives.
January 12, 2018
Lightweight
Too repetitive. It feels like a unnecessarily long blog post.
Really, the most useful part are the charts at the end.
Too repetitive. It feels like a unnecessarily long blog post.
Really, the most useful part are the charts at the end.
February 19, 2023
'Everyone's freedom cannot be limitless.'
#DeZinVanHetBoek #TheSentenceOfTheBook
A highly informative book with a message, and a positive one at that. Bollier convincingly explains not only how capitalism and neoliberalism have caused damage, but also that there is in fact a feasible alternative. It lies in the commons, which should be understood not only as a noun (namely, shared resources), but also as a verb (namely, the practices and values we devise to manage these resources). This verb-noun thing seems rather obligatory, since he also applies the verb commoning.
Anyhow, compact as it is, this introduction offers both a broad and dense overview, of theoretical and philosophical groundwork as well as successful examples of commons and commoning.
It also leaves open a few questions, such as how to go about commoning when the interests of one commons conflict with those of another, or when a locally managed commons has impact on communities and natural environments elsewhere. But I guess that's the idea: Bollier aimed to write an introduction, hoping to entice the reader to look further into and start participating into this promising social effort. In my view, he did a good job.
#DeZinVanHetBoek #TheSentenceOfTheBook
A highly informative book with a message, and a positive one at that. Bollier convincingly explains not only how capitalism and neoliberalism have caused damage, but also that there is in fact a feasible alternative. It lies in the commons, which should be understood not only as a noun (namely, shared resources), but also as a verb (namely, the practices and values we devise to manage these resources). This verb-noun thing seems rather obligatory, since he also applies the verb commoning.
Anyhow, compact as it is, this introduction offers both a broad and dense overview, of theoretical and philosophical groundwork as well as successful examples of commons and commoning.
It also leaves open a few questions, such as how to go about commoning when the interests of one commons conflict with those of another, or when a locally managed commons has impact on communities and natural environments elsewhere. But I guess that's the idea: Bollier aimed to write an introduction, hoping to entice the reader to look further into and start participating into this promising social effort. In my view, he did a good job.
October 21, 2020
It’s a bit utopian, and a bit polemical. So as you might expect, there’s a significant amount of cherry-picking and confirmation bias going on. But the overall point of the book is solid, and needs to be heard. Our society doesn’t have to be atomized, and our resources don’t have to be splintered and mined for profit to the exclusion of all else. The commons presents a valuable alternative model (a diverse array of them, actually).
August 26, 2022
An absolute wonderful introduction to the commons. As someone who has never heard the concept of the commons David Bollier does a fantastic job of the introduction of the commons along with examples, advantages and disadvantages of the commons. This should be a required read for anyone interested in finance, history and government. Especially for people tired of living in this hyper-capitalist post-modernist society.
May 3, 2020
Agreed to add to the Study Circle for June 2020
September 3, 2020
Read for grad school course, concise and clear in what commons are. Good examples of commons in historical and contemporary practice.
April 10, 2021
Good introduction to the topic, nicely organized and to the point. Repetitive sometimes, I feel it could've been shorter than it actually is
October 19, 2022
C'est vraiment très ennuyeux à lire mais ça met un coup de fouet et rappelle que la base de notre monde est de considérer les gens cupides et égoïstes
December 4, 2014
I'm going to have to read it again.
I raced through it and its been tickling my brain ever since.
But a book I want to share so that I can talk to someone about it...
I raced through it and its been tickling my brain ever since.
But a book I want to share so that I can talk to someone about it...
December 28, 2015
Good reminder of the potential of commoning as a stewardship mechanism.
April 29, 2017
Bollier gives a top notch introduction to a way of organizing society that has been repressed, neglected, and ridiculed by most contemporary Western economics, sociology, and political science, and yet continues to pervade our lives in ways we often fail to recognize. Bollier's basic definition of a commons is a resource collectively managed by a community with the intention of maximizing the benefit from that resource while preserving and/or improving it for future use. In other words, the commons differs from our current neoliberal/corporate globalized economy in several key ways: 1) it is democratic because the commons is governed by the people who use and relate to the resource; 2) it is relational instead of impersonal because commoning--the action of building and participating in a commons--builds interconnections between commoners, the resource, and other commoners; 3) it is sustainable because the commons ethic inherently involves preserving the resource rather than exploiting it for as much short term financial gain as possible; 4) it undermines the basic logics of neoliberal capitalism that identify monetary price as the only legitimate measure of value and the individual as the only relevant unit of social organization (which of course falsely imagines that the individual is not impacted by or subject to larger social forces). Bollier talks extensively about a number of different types of commons, including some large scale ones--principally the internet, which is probably the most visible contemporary global commons--some historical ones--like the medieval forests of England which became subject to enclosure from the 16th-19th centuries--and some small, idiosyncratic ones--like water sharing co-ops in Latin America or a system of norms by which some Boston neighborhoods manage limited parking after snowstorms. He continually returns to the point that commons exist in myriad ways, but are locally run, flexible, and intended to preserve a resource through an ethic of sustainable use.
One problem with the book is Bollier's tendency to speak about indigenous peoples as though they were a homogeneous group, rather than thousands of different groups with different ethics and relationships to resources. There are points, especially later in the book, where he states clearly that he is broadly generalizing and that indigenous peoples are widely varied, but for much of the book he tends to treat them as a singular group, and he tends to romanticize them. I think Bollier's tendency to talk about the indigenous ethic of stewardship is pretty typically North American, in that one of the main cognitive frameworks people in the US and Canada have developed for thinking about American Indians (and other indigenous peoples to a lesser extent) is a sort of New Age-y image of being deeply and spiritually in touch with the earth, passive, non-violent, communal, matriarchal, etc. And while this reflects some aspects of the cultures of various American Indian tribes, it Orientalizes and severely reduces the complex civilizations of the pre-Columbian American continents.
One problem with the book is Bollier's tendency to speak about indigenous peoples as though they were a homogeneous group, rather than thousands of different groups with different ethics and relationships to resources. There are points, especially later in the book, where he states clearly that he is broadly generalizing and that indigenous peoples are widely varied, but for much of the book he tends to treat them as a singular group, and he tends to romanticize them. I think Bollier's tendency to talk about the indigenous ethic of stewardship is pretty typically North American, in that one of the main cognitive frameworks people in the US and Canada have developed for thinking about American Indians (and other indigenous peoples to a lesser extent) is a sort of New Age-y image of being deeply and spiritually in touch with the earth, passive, non-violent, communal, matriarchal, etc. And while this reflects some aspects of the cultures of various American Indian tribes, it Orientalizes and severely reduces the complex civilizations of the pre-Columbian American continents.
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September 24, 2017I had to read this for class
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