[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Commons Various / Towards a European Charter of the Commons
Mark Barrett
marknbarrett at googlemail.com
Fri May 18 06:15:14 UTC 2012
I've reposted the first of these messsages about the commons' movement at
http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2012/05/european-charter-of-the-commons-initiative/
On 17 May 2012 07:46, Mark Barrett <marknbarrett at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Four texts on Commons :)
>
> (1) http://s.coop/me9n
>
> *Responding to the current wave of privatisations, European Alternatives
> together with the International University College and its Institute for
> the Study of Political Economy and Law together with the Municipality of
> Naples, and the Institut international D’etudes et recherches sur les
> biens communsare launching a process of forums and metings throughout
> Europe to draft a European Charter of the Commons.*
>
> ***In May/June meetings will take place in Zagreb, Cluj-Napoca, Sofia,
> Berlin, London, Paris, and Rome. More information coming soon!*
> Why?
>
> The dichotomy of private property and the state has proven incapable of
> resisting the distortions produced by more than 20 years of neoliberal
> order. The outcome has been a global and severe imbalance, favouring the
> private sector and specifically corporate interests at the expense of the
> people.
>
> Massive transfers of common resources from the public to the private
> sphere are occurring throughout the world, with total disregard of any
> constitutional guarantees of the public interest, due process, and just
> compensation. Our democracies are increasingly being jeopardized by
> collusive state and market actors; government representatives that put the
> short term profits of individuals and corporations ahead of the interests
> of the common people.
>
> From Greece to Spain, from Tunisia to Egypt, from Italy to Bolivia,
> Ecuador, rural India and China, the people are increasingly aware of the
> need for a different model of globalisation. These activists are currently
> engaged in acts of reclaiming commons all around the world. From those
> resisting the privatisation of resources (for example in Italy with the
> water referendum or in Romania with the attempts at health care
> privatisation) to the recent occupations of public spaces against
> neoliberalism (for example the Indignados in Spain and the people of
> Greece). In solidarity with these movements, we initiate a campaign for the
> European Charter of the Commons.
> What are Commons?
>
> Our approach to the commons is both about reclaiming access to fundamental
> resources as well as guaranteeing the democratic process that governs their
> distribution. Resources that are fundamental to human life include both
> natural commons such as water, food, energy and the atmosphere, as well as
> man made commons, like technology, health, the internet and culture.
> Reclaiming the commons also requires a reshaping of the democratic process
> as it stands today, offering an alternative to the model that has prevailed
> under state and market models. Governing the commons demands a shift of
> power from the centraliaed state and free market to local communities,
> placing the power to satisfy the long term needs of these communities as
> well as those of future generations back into the hands of community
> membera through bottom up, local and direct democracy.
> The Draft European Charter of the Commons
>
> http://www.commonssense.it/emend/european-charter-of-the-commons-eng/
> Here<http://www.commonssense.it/emend/european-charter-of-the-commons-eng/> you
> will find a draft of the European Charter of the Commons you can freely
> comment on, thanks to a special participatory software. We aim to produce
> an updated version of the Charter by early Summer taking into account all
> inputs received.
> [image: Share]<http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.p2pfoundation.net%2Ftowards-a-european-charter-of-the-commons%2F2012%2F05%2F14&title=Towards%20a%20European%20Charter%20of%20the%20Commons&description=>
>
>
> (2) http://s.coop/meeo
>
>
> A new german book called “Commons – Für eine neue Politik jenseits
> von Markt und Staat” was published recently. It includes articles from
> members of the P2P Foundation.
>
> The index of the book is available and also the PDF version
> of it.
>
> An english version of this same book will appear later this year, in
> September. This version is edited by David Bollier:
>
>
> An English version of the book, which I have co-edited with
> Helfrich, will be coming soon. Levellers Press, a small publisher
> in Massachusetts with a deep commitment to the commons and
> innovative publishing, will release The Wealth of the Commons: A
> World Beyond Market and State, in September. The English version of
> the book will be about 90% the same as the German version, with a
> handful of additional essays and a few of the German ones omitted.
> Both books are being published under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-ShareAlike license.
>
> This is a brief presentation:
>
>
> The commons live a renaissance given the current climate,
> financial and food crisis. This is the conclusion of the 500-page
> anthology “Commons – Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und
> Staat” which is published by the commons expert Silke Helfrich and
> the Heinrich Boell Foundation. More than 90 authors from 30
> countries make their contributions in front of a modern concept of
> the commons, the traditional assumptions of economic theory and
> goods into question and may be a guide for a new policy.
>
> Commons are more important than ever. They are not based on the
> idea of scarcity, but draw from the wealth. They are productive
> without producing primarily for the market. They exist for and by
> the people to solve concrete problems.
>
> The book is published under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA)
> and may be reproduced, and modify without restriction. The download
> of the book is free.
>
> (3) *12th May 2012 / **Political Economy and the Inclusive Commons
> House of Commons Portcullis House
> London, 8 May 2012
> * James B. Quilligan
>
> It is an honor to be a guest in this august body, the House of
> Commons.
>
> I’m sure that you don’t need a outsider to come in here and tell you
> about English history, but I would like to remind you about the
> meaning of this word, commons.
>
> In the beginning was the common. People hunted and gathered on the
> common to meet their needs.
>
> Like all species, human beings inhabited familiar territories in
> their vicinity, but these were communal to their family or tribe, not
> owned by particular persons.
>
> People took the commons for granted because their was no reason not
> to.
>
> Yes, many, many times people fought over their spaces, but for the
> most part, each person shared their own little corner of the world
> with friends and family.
>
> We would not be here today if our ancestors had been driven only by a
> ‘selfish gene’ — if they had not shared their commons and destroyed
> themselves.
>
> For them, the commons were simply the economics of human need and
> replenishment.
>
> Eventually, in areas like Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Carthage and
> Greece, a small private or business sphere began to evolve alongside a
> larger public or governmental sphere.
>
> By the time of Ancient Rome, society was becoming differentiated
> between private, public, and common interests.
>
> In the face of these private and governmental sectors, the commons
> needed legal justification to remain relevant.
>
> The Roman Justinian Code of 533 AD declared, “The law of nature is
> that which she has taught all animals; a law not peculiar to the human
> race, but shared by all living creatures, whether denizens of the air,
> the dry land, or the sea”.
>
> In Britain, King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, and in 1217 the
> Charter of the Forest was signed by his son, King Henry III.
>
> It declared the royal forests as common land that could be enjoyed
> and used by all citizens, including serfs and vassals.
>
> But during the 16th and 17th centuries, the English commons began to
> be privatized or enclosed.
>
> These enclosures began with the common meadows used for hay, the
> common land used to graze livestock, and the arable farmland used to
> grow food.
>
> By the late 19th century, after 4000 acts of Parliament, over 98% of
> the agricultural land in England and Wales was owned by less than 1%
> of the population.
>
> During the past several centuries, the privatization of common land
> has become a familiar story across the world.
>
> What happens when private owners are granted legal titles to common
> properties and enclosure becomes a primary driver of wealth creation
> in the world economy?
>
> Let’s make a brief review of the enclosure of the commons.
>
> • Commoners are forcibly displaced from the forests, streams and
> fields they had once considered inalienable through customary law.
>
> • Commodities become detached from their real value as gifts beyond
> price.
>
> • The personal use value of things is transformed into commercial
> exchange value.
>
> • Cooperation, altruism and mutuality are displaced by reciprocity,
> calculation and utility.
>
> • The State emerges to protect private property and defend the
> homeland through legally sanctioned violence against those who
> challenge private ownership.
>
> • Civil law replaces customary or moral law.
>
> • The world becomes increasingly mechanical and decontextualized.
>
> • Access to nature is restricted. • Society is divided into creditors
> and debtors. • Exchange takes place through a currency based on bank
> debt.
>
> • Interest charges promote competition and encourage perpetual growth.
>
> • Commercial exchange expands.
>
> • Alienability becomes marketability.
>
> • Common faith and community bonds deteriorate.
>
> • The significance of tradition and culture is diminished.
>
> • Morality and natural law become a matter of self- interest and
> personal choice.
>
> • Material wealth and poverty exist side by side.
>
> • The commons is no longer the economics of sufficiency and
> replenishment.
>
> • The commons is now the economics of scarcity and consumption.
>
> Today, we vaguely recall this social history of the enclosures of the
> commons.
>
> But how were these developments rationalized by science, political
> science and economic theory?
>
> In classical physics and chemistry, systems were regarded as the sum
> of their component parts.
>
> Applying this principle to human beings, philosopher John Locke
> viewed the person as a mental substance and the body as its material
> property.
>
> This created created a kind of atomism or reductionism in liberal
> social thinking, where individuals are thought to be comprised of
> preferences and assets.
>
> Enlightenment thinkers began to teach that these preferences and
> assets are in constant interchange among people through their social
> relationships.
>
> They applied this liberal version of metaphysics to the liberal
> vision of society.
>
> In the political sphere, the mind of government (through policies and
> institutions) coordinates the body politic (through votes and taxes).
>
> Similarly, economics is conceived as a mechanistic system — the minds
> of producers coordinate the supply (of property and material
> resources) to meet the demand of consumers’ bodies (through their
> utility and happiness).
>
> This should sound familiar. It’s the basis of today’s consumer
> society. We consume what we need. But the economics of human need has
> failed us.
>
> By focusing on consumption, economics has neglected the rest of the
> cycle: we consume what we need, but this also means that we consume to
> be replenished.
>
> Yes, as individuals, we are replenishing ourselves through
> consumption.
>
> But individual consumption is not replenishing society.
>
> And individual consumption is certainly not replenishing nature. This
> is the legacy of the enclosure of the commons.
>
> For generations our resources have been under assault from global
> market forces, regional and national policy development, and
> inadequate legal recognition of common property rights.
>
> We’re drilling for oil in the oceans, releasing vast amounts of
> carbon into the atmosphere, patenting the genes necessary to cure
> diseases, privatizing water, and claiming seeds as its intellectual
> property.
>
> The private sector now penetrates segments of society that we had
> previously considered off-limits to commercial interests.
>
> Public education, scientific research, philanthropy, art, health
> care, prisoner rehabilitation, roads, bridges have ceased to be public
> or commons spaces but are now under private control.
>
> Why? Because this is an expression of individual freedom and creates
> economic growth.
>
> We’re told that we’re being old-fashioned by clinging to the archaic
> forms of the past — like the commons — since modern society advances
> only through growth.
>
> Yet we are recognizing that the benefits of perpetual economic growth
> are not compensating for the vast damages and risks they create — from
> social insecurity, global warming, ecological degradation and species
> loss to hunger, poverty, debt and financial meltdown.
>
> We’re also realizing that neither the private sphere nor government
> provision and distribution — which created these problems to begin
> with — are capable of solving them.
>
> Business has adopted the idea that it is meeting human needs by
> selling private goods to individual consumers.
>
> Government has adopted the idea that it is meeting human needs by
> regulating and provisioning public goods to individual citizens.
>
> But who is responsible for preserving our common goods?
>
> Who is responsible for replenishing what is consumed?
>
> Who is creating the collective will for sustainability?
>
> The economics of human need must be broadened to encompass the
> sustainability of the commons.
>
> But who is creating this new economics of replenishment? Look at our
> divisive political world.
>
> We divided ourselves by ideologies that focus upon the social good,
> or ideologies which focus more on individual rights.
>
> But all of those who have chosen to champion a particular view of
> either the social good or of individual rights have generated an
> enormous political polarity.
>
> This duality between the ideals of social equality and political
> freedom discourages personal and social reconciliation, the
> transformation of our communities and the creation of a commons-based
> economy.
>
> When the individual is set in competition with the whole of society,
> the moral will and creativity of the people are suppressed.
>
> Mind and body are seen as separate units. Our being is split from our
> actions. Our common purpose is lost. This is why Western Liberalism is
> in crisis.
>
> We have not fully understood that the society which sees itself as an
> inevitable polarity between the social good and individual rights
> destroys the forms of life that are rooted in the commons.
>
> Capitalism is failing because it does not recognize the need for
> creating and maintaining the commons.
>
> This has left us starved for the equality and freedom which express
> the interrelatedness of human life and which can arise only through
> our commons.
>
> Recall that the system of privitization did not begin with Mrs.
> Thatcher. It began in Ancient Rome.
>
> If we take the long view of things, one could say that the Roman
> Empire was never really defeated until the end of World War II and the
> demise of the Nazi regime.
>
> But Rome is reviving itself now through the Market State.
>
> This phenomenon called the Market State has been defined by both
> Philip Bobbitt and Phillip Blonde.
>
> It is the confluence of business and government that we have been
> witnessing since the 1970s.
> Market State describes what seems like a role reversal over the
> past forty years between the private and public sectors.
>
> Indeed, the business community has now taken up many of the social
> and cultural responsibilities that were formerly the concern of
> government, such as policing power, prisons, social problems,
> environment, personal health, public and adult education, and the
> fostering of culture through finance.
>
> And the state has embraced market dynamics and corporate principles
> of efficiency and management to a greater degree than before,
> marginalizing the role of representative government.
>
> Where is the voice of non-dualism today? Who is speaking for a
> genuine Third Way?
>
> Unlike the Market State, the commons cannot be coordinated by some
> ultimate authority exercising control through a unified command
> structure, the social hierarchy of private property, the division of
> labor and the enclosure of what belongs to everyone.
>
> Rather, the commons express the massive, heterogeneous forces of
> society and the common responsibility of people to protect and sustain
> their valuable common goods.
>
> Without a sense of the indivisibility of human existence, the modern
> ideologies of collective rights and individual rights are both devoid
> of the realization that we take part in a variety of commons which are
> the source of our livelihood and well-being.
>
> The commons recognize the dichotomy between individuals as the sum of
> their desires and ends (through the common good) and the individual
> being who is free to make choices independent of those desires and
> ends (as in individual rights).
>
> The commons movement brings them together as a consciously organized
> third sector that can create a more beneficial balance in economics
> and society.
>
> The commons are resources which people self-organize through their
> own production and governance.
>
> These commons — involving social, cultural, intellectual, digital,
> solar, natural, genetic and material resources — are now being
> rediscovered and rapidly becoming a potent counterforce to the Market
> State.
>
> The commons offer a unique form of non-dualism — a way of integrating
> the individual with the collective, the self with the whole.
>
> We are now recognizing that our Beloved Commons are both the state of
> individual being and the collective state of the world.
>
> But what happens to the liberal ideals of freedom represented by the
> invisible hand of the market, and equality and justice represented by
> our social contract with government?
>
> The self-organization and rule-based production of a commons is a
> grassroots application of the principles of freedom and equality which
> are idealized but imperfectly expressed through modern free markets
> and state-enforced justice.
>
> We are expressing freedom and equality far more directly through the
> commons.
>
> This freedom and equality arise through the production and governance
> of the commons, which express the principles of pluralism,
> polycentrism, subsidiarity, checks and balances, and horizontalist
> decision-making.
>
> This new social dynamic — arising from the shared values and meanings
> of people’s life-experiences in the organization and production of
> their commons —includes but transcends the market and state, thus
> bringing people a new form of political power.
>
> People across the world are creating commons trust and social
> charters.
>
> We’re developing new forms of co-production and co-governance.
>
> Open source models of self-organisation and value creation are
> inspiring communities in innovative ways.
>
> We’re learning that the commons are not just resources but the set of
> relationships they create, including the communities that use them,
> and the cultural and social practices and property regimes that manage
> them.
>
> Unlike Moses coming down from the mountain with his tablet
> proclaiming the laws of God, there is no prophet of the commons
> holding a set of immutable principles that we can say are universal
> laws.
>
> Yet there are some guidelines that many of us are following which
> seems to reflect the evolution of human civilisation in the 21st
> century.
>
> • We are Co-creators of Nature
>
> • By Creating this Shared Environment, we Participate in our own
> Culture
>
> • Through this Creative Cooperation, Resource Users become the
> Producers of their own Resources
>
> • Cooperation between Users and Producers is the Practice of
> Stewardship
>
> • The Social and Political Expression of Stewardship is Trusteeship
>
> • Trusteeship of the Commons Transforms the Ownership Structures of
> Modern Society
>
> • Co-produced and Co-governed Commons Generate Sources of Value which
> Transcend the Marketplace and Government
>
> • Commons Value is the basis of a Debt-Free Monetary System
>
> • A Commons-Based Society results from our Collective Intentions for
> Sustainability
>
> • The Economics of the Commons is Replenishment
>
> What does this mean — that the commons is the economics of
> replenishment?
>
> In our present view, we consume what we need. But this economics of
> human need has failed us.
>
> By focusing on consumption, economics has neglected the rest of the
> cycle: we consume to be replenished.
>
> As individuals, we are replenishing ourselves through consumption.
>
> But our consumption is not replenishing society — and it is not
> replenishing nature.
>
> As I said earlier, business has adopted the idea that it is meeting
> human needs by selling private goods to individual consumers.
>
> Government has adopted the idea that it is meeting human needs by
> regulating and provisioning public goods to individual citizens.
>
> But who is responsible for preserving our common goods?
>
> Who is responsible for replenishing what is consumed?
>
> Who is creating collective intentions for sustainability?
>
> Friends, the House of Commons took its name to remind the public that
> civil law emerged from common law.
>
> I understand this to be a promise by the Government to honour the
> people and their right to the resources of this nation.
>
> It’s time that our leaders broaden the economics of human need to
> encompass the commons, not just in the United Kingdom and the Western
> World, but in all nations.
>
> What would this future look like?
>
> The only institutions capable of managing replenishment are commons
> trusts.
>
> The primary purpose of commons trusts is the regeneration of
> resources for future generations.
>
> This will lead to a new global monetary system, using commons
> resources for its reserve assets.
>
> The commons will lead to sustainability rates that replace our
> present interest rates.
>
> They will lead to the development of new ways of financing
> replenishment, including the development of Commons Wealth Funds which
> invest in the commons trusts which preserve our resources.
>
> The commons will lead to peer-to-peer job creation, in which the
> users of resources become the producers of those resources, creating
> innovative forms of employment.
>
> It is our collective responsibility to replenish what is consumed.
>
> The commons must be created and sustained for the benefit of everyone.
>
> Now is the time to manifest abundance in our world, to manifest the
> processes needed to ensure that our commons are used wisely and
> sustainably, so that everyone will get their needs met today, tomorrow
> and hundreds of years into the future.
>
> The non-dualism of individual rights and the social good is teaching
> us how to rebuild our commons, create collective intentions for the
> planet based on sustainability and restore the peace and tranquility
> of the world.
>
> The liberal economics of consumption has failed us.
>
> The commons is the economics of replenishment.
>
> (4) -------------------------
>
> Ethical Markets Review is delighted to publish this brilliant
> original paper by Deirdre Kent, author of Healthy Money, Healthy
> Planet (2005). Deirdre has been an activist for a better common future
> and in New Zealand politics since the Values Party was founded in
> 1975. Many members of this early futurist party visited our editor,
> Hazel Henderson, in the late 1970s and gave her the rights to their
> visionary manifesto, Beyond Tomorrow. Deirdre continued her activism
> in her local community, Otaki, and co-founded the Otaki Transition
> Town and the Otaki Timebank, the brainchild of Edgar Cahn, a member of
> Ethical Markets Advisory Board. In 2011, Deirdre Kent founded New
> Zealand’s New Economics Party and wrote this immensely practical and
> viable proposal for a scaled-up, robust local currency which can be
> issued in many countries by local authorities and ratified by central
> banks and authorities as is now happening in Brazil, see articles
> by Ladislau Dowbor and Rose Marie Muraro in Ethical Markets
> Review. We welcome these innovative thinkers and activists. –
> Hazel Henderson, Editor.
>
> http://s.coop/meer
>
>
>
> __._,_.___
>
> <mail at vegburner.co.uk?subject=Re%3A%20Towards%20a%20European%20Charter%20of%20the%20Commons>
> --
> Apathy is Dead !
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarider/5254770064/#/photos/solarider/5254770064/lightbox/
>
>
--
Apathy is Dead !
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarider/5254770064/#/photos/solarider/5254770064/lightbox/
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