Nature for Sale: The Commons versus Commodities - Softcover

Ricoveri, Giovanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745333702 ISBN 13: 9780745333700

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Nature for Sale uncovers the rich heritage of common ownership which existed before the dominance of capitalist property relations. Giovanna Ricoveri argues that the subsistence commons of the past can be reinvented today to provide an alternative to the current destructive economic order. Ricoveri outlines the distinct features of common ownership as it has existed in history: cooperation, sustainable use of natural resources and decision-making through direct democracy. In doing so, she shows how it is possible to provide goods and services which are not commodities exchanged on the capitalistic market, something still demonstrated today in village communities across the global South. Tracing the erosion of the commons from the European enclosures at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to the new enclosures of modern capitalism, the book concludes by arguing that a new commons is needed today. It will be essential reading for activists as well as students and academics in history, politics, economics and development studies.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Giovanna Ricoveri is a writer, activist and professional translator. She has written two books on the commons in Italian and is the founding editor of Capitalismo Natura Socialismo, which is part of the international network Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. She is the author of Nature for Sale (Pluto, 2013).

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Nature for Sale

The Commons Versus Commodities

By Giovanna Ricoveri

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2013 Giovanna Ricoveri
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3370-0

Contents

Foreword by Vandana Shiva, vii, 
Introduction to the Italian edition: Will the commons save the world?, 1, 
Introduction to the English edition: The enclosure of nature and the social movements, 5, 
1. What are the commons?, 29, 
2. The decline of the commons, 55, 
3. The destruction of wealth through commodities, 68, 
4. All power to the commons!, 91, 
Afterword: The right to the future, 103, 
Notes, 117, 
Bibliography, 127, 
Index, 136, 

CHAPTER 1

What are the commons?

I start off with the 'impossible' definition of the commons and describe the basic elements that constitute the nature-related commons (water, land, forests, pastures, fisheries). I look at a few cases of 'historical' commons, some of which still survive, both in the North and the South. I explain how natural commons are linked to the vital elements of Empedocles – water, air, earth, fire – and it is also for this reason that they are important and redefine subsistence in broader terms, as they relate to energy, climate, water scarcity, agriculture and ecosystems' services. There follow some thoughts on private property which, at least as far as nature-related commons are concerned, is certainly theft. Finally I consider the community as the natural and multiform subject of the commons: the owner and the manager – the usufructuary, in fact.

A KALEIDOSCOPE OF THE COMMONS

It is not possible and besides it would be a mistake to define the commons precisely and definitively, either those of the past in Medieval Europe or those that still exist in the rural and nearby forests in the South. For they vary in time and space to adapt to different situations. It is, however, possible to describe their distinctive characteristics and thus try to understand why they can be useful, if properly refashioned in the current context, as an antidote to the crisis of the dominant model of development. In the countries of the North it is a question of reconsidering new forms that are appropriate to contemporary reality and this is a different problem from reclaiming the commons, which is the historical objective of the communities in the South, whose lives depend directly on access to water, land and forests. Still today, in the countries of the South, a third of the world population owe their lives to local subsistence economies, which is possible because they have access to natural resources. These populations or local communities use land, forests and water without owning them, but exercise effective and participatory sovereignty over them. In fact they represent a kind of social and productive organisation that is an alternative to that of the market economy.

The word commons has had several meanings – such as the land, water, pasture, forest, fishing zone and so on that is outside the confines of the land owned by 'the prince' and that a local community had the right to use, not for productive purposes but for the subsistence of its families or the right to what the soil brings forth over a particular period, as in Anglo-Saxon common law, or as in the case of the civil uses (usi civici) in the Italian legal tradition, or the predial servitudes like the right of passage through a field. These are the rights to natural goods through which the local community integrates its means of subsistence.

The word 'community' should also be clarified: in the past, it defined the group of people who, together, managed a piece of land or other natural resource; or the authority in the village that owned the fertile land and distributed it among the families of the village so that they could use it for their own subsistence. This still exists in many countries, such as Ethiopia which is one of the most quoted examples in the studies on the subject. It is also to be found in most of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in all countries of South East Asia, including India and China, and in the Andean countries of Latin America, where there is a strong presence of village communities, often indigenous ones. Today the word community indicates a group of people that has a certain degree of cohesion based on common roots and language, interests or ideas and who sometimes share the same goals.

In the 1992 special issue of The Ecologist (at that time a very important journal on ecology) the commons were defined as 'a system of social relations based on cooperation and reciprocal dependency [...] that provide sustenance, security and independence, yet typically do not produce commodities as such, in what many Westerners feel to be a paradox.'

The commons are goods or means of subsistence which are not commodities, and therefore they constitute a social arrangement that is the complete opposite of the one created by the market economy. In the capitalist system, goods are no longer 'use values' which satisfy human needs, but exchange values or commodities, which realise themselves through the market exchange. Indeed, the market has always existed since the late Stone Age, but its role had remained of secondary relevance in the economic and social life of a community or a population, until modern times when profits deriving from the market exchanges have become so important to the point of governing the entire economy and even the society. This is what Karl Polanyi means in The Great Transformation, when he affirms that the market economy absorbs the society, thus making it possible for multinationals to govern a country and undermine political democracy.

The commons have survived through time in spite of repeated attempts of enclosure and privatisation on the part of hegemonic forces. This is because they are flexible and capable of changing to meet environmental and technological challenges, or because they express undeniable human rights of self-government and the need for cooperation and social relationships. These aspects of human behaviour are different and alternative to those of homo oeconomicus theorised by the current orthodoxy, and they represent behaviours that modern laws and policies have tried to obliterate but have never completely succeeded.

The commons have the specific characteristic of being and producing goods that are not transformed into commodities, as has just been said. The community cannot alienate a field, although it can exchange its produce with other communities. Then to whom do these goods belong? The true answer is that natural goods and ecological services that nature provides gratis should not belong to anyone in particular, because they belong to everyone. Those who use a piece of land cannot alienate it as they have only usufruct rights on it, that is, the right of enjoyment and benefit from that piece of land, either held in common or titled to someone else. The community (what is now the state or some other public body) is therefore its custodian. As Karl Marx put it:

From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745333702
• ISBN 13: 9780745333700
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland