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Surveying Commons Activism on the International Stage

The following is an adaptation of my notes for my talk at the Occupy Wall Street “Making Worlds” conference on February 16-18, 2012.

I am so pleased that the Occupy and Commons movements are finding each other and starting a new conversation. Occupy is an incredible force for change. It has a bracing vision, a deeply principled philosophy, and an independent, risk-taking spirit that is unusual in American political life. There are many challenges for Occupy, however, as it tries to imagine new ways to move forward and grow. I’d like to suggest how the commons framing and language may be strategically important by surveying the international scene of commons activism, which is remarkably robust. There is a lot is going on — but I won’t presume to be comprehensive; my apologies for any significant omissions.

Let me start by giving a brief speculation about why people from so many backgrounds are embracing the commons. First of all, it is a way for people to assert the integrity of their existing communities, or to try to reclaim that integrity. The commons also provides a way to assert a moral relationship to certain resources and people that are endangered by market forces. It’s a way of saying, “That _________ (water, air, software code, cultural tradition) belongs to me. It is part of my life and identity.”

Many people are embracing the commons, too, because it provides a powerful critique of neoliberal capitalism. But it is much more than that. It is a pro-active set of alternatives that work. And therefore it provides a positive, constructive scaffolding for practical alternatives to the prevailing market economy and corrupt political process. But the commons is still more than this. It is not just a policy critique or political philosophy, but equally a distinctive worldview, language and social ethic.

All of this means that the commons can give us a vision of a new world. And in this respect, the commons is really about building a new vocabulary. For example, what neoliberal capitalism generally calls “progress,” we would call “enclosure.” People are starting to understand that market forces do not necessarily represent progress, but rather dispossession and destruction. So-called economic development is more about environmental destruction than “progress.”

Enclosure dispossesses people through the privatization and commodification of things that were once shared and accessible often outside of the marketplace. Enclosure is about substituting power hierarchies and money-based relationships – the producer/consumer dyad – for egalitarian co-production and co-governance. But it’s hard to name such things as a systemic phenomena without concepts like “enclosure.”

It’s an encouraging sign that the language of the commons and enclosure is gaining momentum internationally. This should not be a surprise. Enclosure is one of the great, unacknowledged scandals of our time.

One of the worst sets of enclosures is the international land grab that is now underway in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Investors, national governments and speculators are buying up millions of acres of farmlands. Saudi Arabia is spending $1 billion for huge tracts in Africa for rice cultivation. India and China are assembling investment pools to buy up farmlands. Much of this land is customary land managed as commons. Hundreds of millions of rural poor use have used these lands for generations for subsistence. But because they don’t have formal property rights — the government or corporations do – they are powerless.

And to justify the appropriations, the commons are called “wastelands” or “unowned” lands. This harks back to John Locke’s definitions of property and value. Because commoners use their lands in ecologically sustainable ways, without the exploitation and extraction that markets typically use, the lands are considered without value. Investors who bring the land into a system of market control – say, for monoculture farming or biofuels production – are supposedly “developing” the land. This is how language misleads us about the real meaning of value.

One of the most infamous enclosures occurred in Bolivia. We just heard earlier about the infamous attempt to privatize water in Cochabamba. Even though the people prevailed, enclosures of water are still a worldwide phenomenal.

India is the site of major enclosures of pastoral lands, farm lands, waterways, ponds. Fortunately, because so much of the economy in India depends upon such commons, there is serious pushback, and the commons is starting to be recognized and defended as a matter of law and public policy. Last year there was a powerful Supreme Court ruling prohibiting enclosures – a landmark case. The State of Rajasthan is currently developing a major public policy system to protect commons of farmland, pastures, water and other natural resources. The Foundation for Ecological Security, a nonprofit advocacy group in India, is a leader there in trying to get “wastelands” recognized as commons.

The Balkans – Macedonia, Serbia, Herzegovina, Romania and other countries of the region – are experiencing their own sets of enclosures. Some of the worst involve corrupt governments working with investors and developers to privatize coastal land and urban spaces. Many commoners are working to establish more open, honest forms of democratic governance and to fight the rampant marketization. The Green Party is quite active in this fight.

In Germany, the commons is actually a topic of mainstream political discussion. Here, too, the Green Party and particularly its associated foundation, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, have been very active. I have been working with the Boell Foundation and with the Commons Strategies Group on the commons, especially with Silke Helfrich of Jena, Germany, who has long associations with the Boell Foundation, and with Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation. Together we created the Commons Strategies Group to act as international advisers and strategic catalysts for advancing the commons paradigm. We are less of an organization than a collaborative network.

We are completing a major anthology of more than seventy essays about the commons from authors from more than two dozen countries. The book, The Life of the Commons, will be published in a few months. We are also planning a major conference on the economics of the commons for May 2012, in which we will try to explore how and why the commons works as a socio-economic-political entity, at both the macro- and micro-levels.

This conference will build on the work of the International Commons Conference held in Berlin in November 2010, which convened 200 self-identified commoners from 35 countries — Amsterdam hackers, Filipino farmers, South African squatters advocates, the Brazilian minister of digital culture, German urban gardeners, American academics and activists, and many others. The website for the conference has a host of valuable documents, videos and other materials. One sign that the commons is being taken seriously in Germany is the recent founding of a new Research Institute on Climate Change and the Global Commons.

I think it’s noteworthy that the Pirate Party is big in Germany. It won 10% of the vote in the recent Berlin regional elections. And the Pirate Party in Sweden won two seats in the European Parliament a few years ago. It is the most popular party in Sweden for voters between the ages of 18 and 30. Like Occupy, the Pirate Party also sees the existing political system as a rigged, captured system. The Pirate Party has focused mostly on Internet and copyright issues, but it is attempting to diversify its agenda and move into electoral politics. There are more than two dozen national Pirate Parties coordinated by the Pirate Party International.

There is a lot of interest in the commons in France, but sometimes the history of political action focused on government makes it hard for some French to “see” the commons as a viable alternative sector. However, advocacy about digital commons is quite strong, as seen in the group La Quadrature du Net, the work of the Charles Meyer Foundation, and advocacy by people like Philippe Aigrain, who has a new book on the sharing economy called Sharing.

I shall always remember reading a short piece by Frenchman Alain Lipietz, who gave an etymology of the word “commons.” He traces it to the Normans – not the English – and says that the word derives from the conjoining of two words that mean “gift” and “duty.” I like this short, succinct description of what a commons is. It’s poetic and profound.

In Italy, there was a major voter initiative two years ago about whether to privatize municipal water systems and other water resources in Italy. Some 94% of the electorate gave a stunning rejection of the privatization proposals. Control of water was spoken about explicitly as a commons, which has become a term of mainstream political discussion. A key advocate and scholar in Italy is Ugo Mattei, an international law professor based in Turin. Another prominent figure is Enrico Grazzini, who recently published a book on the sharing economy.

Some of the most visible leadership is coming from Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris, who has appointed an Assessor of the Commons to monitor and improve local commons. He recently hosted a major conference on the commons for Italian municipal officials, and has instigated a move to have a voter initiative on a European Charter on the Commons. This effort aspires to collect one million signatures in order to get a voter initiative on the commons on ballots throughout Europe, with the goal of giving explicit legal protection to various commons. The precise legal terms of the Charter are currently being worked out. Just this past weekend there was a major conference in Rome devoted to the initiative.

The Rio+20 conference in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, could be a major beachhead for commons advocacy. The previous panel spoke about this, so I won’t repeat that. But suffice it to say that the official conference will not accomplish much because the leading economic powers have little interest in serious change. But the alternative People’s Summit that will occur at Rio+20 is showing signs of interest in the commons as a way of pushing back on the neoliberal policy agenda that will prevail at the official conference. At several days of planning sessions by NGOs in Porto Alegre a few weeks ago, some real headway was made. A two-page statement – which I put on my blog – talks about the “dangerous conspiracy between the Market and State” to enclose our many commons. It also notes the many commons-based alternatives that can be pursued and the convergence of many social movements that have interests in commons — digital, agricultural, indigenous, urban, social.

Many people in the Global South recognize the value of commons framing: indigenous peoples, farmers’ groups in Latin America, the World Social Forum, development advocates in smaller countries. All becoming more active. Many, many Brazilians understand and love free software, CC licenses and free culture, and peer production, thanks to years of pioneering advocacy by the former minister of digital culture, the musician Gilberto Gil. (Some of this is now jeopardized by the policies of the new president Dilma Rousseff.)

Why is the commons so attractive as an alternative vision and framework for “development”? Because the commons can help us talk about the compulsive externalizing of costs that markets inflict on nature. It raises questions about the ethics of monetizing all value. It challenges the growth imperatives of the contemporary economy. It challenges the legal prejudices against collective stewardship and long-term commitments. And it helps heal our cultural alienation from nature and each other. If “another world is possible,” the commons helps us elaborate on that slogan with some specifics, philosophical coherence and sophistication.

For my part, I have been involved in the past two years with The Commons Law Project. Working with the noted international human rights law scholar Burns Weston of the University of Iowa, I have been working to imagine a legal framework for the State recognizing and supporting commons governance of natural resources. We have been trying to blend a new vision of human rights, different modes of environmental protection, a new economic approach and commons-based governance into a new paradigm. This is not just a theoretical exercise; we are also trying to develop a variety of practical legal strategies for recognizing and supporting commons. We plan to publish a book Greenkeeping Governance: Toward a Law of the Ecological Commons within the next year, and a website for the Commons Law Project will soon feature an earlier draft of our book.

It’s important to note that education about the commons is expanding internationally. In London, there is the School of Commoning that George Por and others have started. In Germany, there is a Summer School on the Commons. I know of efforts in Barcelona, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the U.S., to develop courses on the commons. Last year I worked with the UN Institute for Training and Research to develop an online course on the commons. It consists of four modules and a self-paced syllabus with various readings and videos. The course is expected to go live on or about March 1.

The commons is a great sleeping giant – an unacknowledged superpower – if we consider the many transnational tribes of commoners. Because they are not conventional institutions or nonprofits, their impact can be easy to overlook. But consider these diverse movements and networks of people who may not be explicitly using commons language, but certainly share the core values and goals of commoners:

  • The Solidarity Economy movement, which is particularly strong in Brazil, Venezuela, Canada and Europe.
  • The Transition Town movement
  • Water activism
  • The Landless Workers Movement / Via Campesino
  • Free software/open source software, a well-established international network
  • Creative Commons / free culture, which is active in more than 70 countries
  • Wikipedians, who number in the tens of thousands in dozens of countries
  • Open access publishing, which has more than 7,000 open access journals
  • Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which features open courseware in more than 150 colleges and universities worldwide
  • The Pirate Parties in more than two dozen countries
  • The Occupy movement

A great convergence of movements is going on, or at least robust cross-fertilization. Each movement has serious questions about conventional governance and politics, or is building its own alternatives to convention markets and government. Each has different focal points and different tactics. But there is a rough agreement on basic human values, political goals and a respect for the open, participatory ethic of the Internet.

Any review of international developments about the commons must consider a rich array of smaller but significant projects and initiatives. I don’t have time to name them all, but some of the more prominent ones include the Degrowth movement; the open information commons that the city of Linz, Austria, is creating; the Global Innovation Trust, a database of valuable technology patents in the public domain that can help build cheap, eco-friendly solutions; alternative complementary currencies; new business models that work on P2P platforms; the P2P Urbanism movement that advocates for participatory urban design; the Yasuni-ITT initiative in Ecuador to keep oil in the ground and protect biodiverse region and indigenous communities; and many, many important academic research initiatives.

The commons is a work in progress. It is not a monolithic, unified movement, but there is a certain unity of worldview, sensibility and goals without a uniformity of political approaches. It is only natural that there be many divergent perspectives. Any given commons has always been marked by the particular history, culture, economics and resource base involved.

There are also many unanswered questions, as the recent Porto Alegre statement made clear. Many digital commoners do not recognize their dependency on the “analogue” world on the one hand (computers cannot produce food), and many ecologists and traditional communities tend to underestimate the potential for social transformation that free technologies and culture can provide, on the other hand. Some commoners believe that the right to share and self-management can achieve the universal desire for social justice without exhausting the natural resources. Others in good faith are skeptical.

Some commoners argue that the idea of the commons continues to (re)trace the pathologies of property and the domination of nature and thus tend to be anthropocentric. Others see in the commons the possibility of greater communion between nature and culture. Some commoners want to find ways to deal constructive with markets; other want to shun markets altogether.

There are also many unresolved concerns. There is a tension between the local, the regional and the global. It is impossible to think of commoning without thinking about a social subject, a “community.” It is therefore easiest to think about the commons paradigm at a local level. But thinking about the commons at a global level is a great challenge, and even impossible to escape because there is only one earth.

This raises a related question: What should be the role of a state that conceives itself as a defender of the commons? Rather than talk of socialism, which implies government dominance and decisionmaking, I think we should talk about “state trustee commons” to underscore the fact that government must act on behalf of the people, whose rights of participation and sovereignty must not be violated.

A major problem is moving forward is our received political language. It is so permeated by the terminology of the state/market system and that of ideologies having a different mindset, that little progress can be made unless we can develop a new vocabulary that truly describes the world we want to create. That’s why we need an open process and a ongoing conversation to help us collectively build a vocabulary that we can adapt to the diversity of contexts in which we each act.

As the Porto Alegre statement concludes: “The commons are right before our eyes. Together we will find methods for naming them and, even more important, for converting them into a diversity of governance systems based on the principles of commoning. This is the challenge that unites the many international efforts to defend and expand the commons.

What makes the commons so powerful — if still under-developed — is its multiple dimensions. It is a rich history. It is a body of law. It is a set of social practices and ethics. And it is a vision for the future. And yet it is open and incomplete enough that each of us can make it our own. The future is not yet written.

~~~~~

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License and originally appeared at www.Bollier.org.

19 Comments

  1. “In Germany, the commons is actually a topic of mainstream political discussion. Here, too, the Green Party and particularly its associated foundation, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, have been very active.”

    Cem Ozdemir, Germany (Green Party) attended Bilderberg in 2009

    Seems pretty obvious the Bilderbergers are not out for the general good of humanity, or the environment, even with a modicum of research.

    “The Balkans – Macedonia, Serbia, Herzegovina, Romania and other countries of the region – are experiencing their own sets of enclosures. Some of the worst involve corrupt governments….”

    Lets not forget how the instability that led to these Balkan countries independence came about, OPTOR! was a ahem “grass roots” resistance movement, sponsored by western governments via more “NGOs, it developed strategies that led to civil war and ultimately military intervention by the “UN”. It is the exact same method of operation that started the “Arab Spring” leading to more “UN” military intervention and more atrocities then I care to mention. Balkans, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, same MO. same results.

    What links all this together with OCCUPY? OPTOR! designed the methods, and some of the original players from the Balkans are prevalent in the OCCUPY movement worldwide, many are “facilitators”.

    The “green” political movement has been co-opted by the very powers who have historically wreaked havoc on the world via warring and environment destruction.

    More political rubbish on the Permaculture blog. Do some proper research on these articles or as someone said, stick to your knitting

    For the “activists” out there, be sure you know where your energy is being directed, DYOR, thoroughly.

    some examples, for more search on OCCUPY +OPTOR!

    https://freemanireland.ning.com/video/optor-trained-facilitators-occupy-toronto-wmv
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxslgRjVzZs&
    https://www.landofthefree.co.uk/site/

    While I’m at it, did did anyone fall for the “STOP KONO 2012” thing? Motivating the children, the “global conciousness” to lobby US gov for military intervention in Africa?

    It’s propaganda aimed at kids to legitimise intervention in these resource rich areas of Africa. I expect to see more of that kind of manipulation of the “global conciousness” to enact policy TPTB wanted in the first place, DYOR, thoroughly.

  2. @Pete, Occupy is a very loose thing, and it’s surely a lot of “strange” people joining it, I’ve read about some I should not like to have as friends. But two of the three top ranking authors of the p2p-blog for 2011, joined forces with OWS: https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-p2p-foundation-book-of-the-year-2011-our-annual-top-ten-list-of-p2p-books/2012/01/09

    These were David Graeber and Charles Eisenstein, and I’ve great respect for both. The third, Nikos A. Salingaros, has joined forses with Michel Bauwens and the p2p-foundation, part of the new world of the commons. I’ve great respect for both.

    Surely, people with narrow and destructive intentions try to occupy both OWS and the commons. We should be aware of this. Still, I’m convinced that the creation of a living world can only happen within the commons: https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/library/battle-for.pdf

    I cannot see any other way forward than the third way, the commons!

  3. Øyvind I am saying this from the heart.

    When I became worried about the state of our world in the late 90’s I looked at many “movements”. I was looking for something with potential, something that could effect great change that did not involve violence of any sort. I was enamoured by the “freeman on the land” movement, I spent a few years studying the philosophy and researching common law, often spending 12 hours per day researching for over 4 yrs. I learnt a great deal about how the world got into the state it has, how TPTB created, and still create, wars to further their hegemony of the global banking/corporate system, how they herd the sheeple.

    I became despondent as I realised how difficult it would be to educate the masses to such a degree that they too would see what I saw and demand change without resorting to violence. The “masses” just don’t have the time or inclination for the required research, they are tied by mechanisms enacted by TPTB, working to pay off the usury on their home loans while the very means of exchange, their sweat equity, is eroded by the very same powers.

    Brainwashed may be too strong a word to describe the reason the masses refuse to even look at the problems, but it is accurate. Consumerism and the mindless focus on celebrity, the complicity of the mainstream media acting as enablers for TPTB long game plans does not begin to describe the enormity of the problems.

    The amount of research required is tremendous, people have spent lifetimes researching the history of the PTB, thousands of books have been written, both by those with good intentions, and by those working for TPTB who would divert researchers from finding the truth of history. I pretty much gave up on a solution.

    I foresaw the inevitable collapse of the current system around 2000/01. I decided to try to become self sufficient, to remove myself and my family from the “system” as much as possible, if I couldn’t beat it, I was going to make damn sure I was not going to contribute to it, without shooting myself in the foot in the process. I made a 5yr plan to liquidate our assets and buy some land with potential, we did it within 4 yrs. I worried my preparations, my meagre attempts at self sufficiency, would be taken by desperate people when the collapse came, I soon realised that without a resilient community my plans would be for nought.

    Then I cam upon Permaculture. I saw what most PC folks have seen, a movement with potential to circumvent the PTB to achieve resilient independence from the system, a movement with a sound ethical foundation to build on.

    I spent an 1/2 an hour reading about David Graeber, his wikipedia page says all you need to see. He is one of the facilitators I warned of in my first post on this thread.

    If people like him are infiltrating Permaculture I will lose any hope I had.

    Why do you have the greatest respect for him?

    I searched for an easy link to pass on to describe my concerns, this is by no means the whole story, it only highlights some things, and concludes with a religious theme I do not agree with, it would be better if it ended with a link to the Permaculture Designers Manual. please read it.

    https://www.crossroad.to/articles2/011/beaudine/last-stand.htm

    “I cannot see any other way forward than the third way, the commons!”

    I can almost hear the sound of jack boots.

    The direction of this Permacuture blog into politics is seriously depressing.

  4. Pete, I’ve respect for David Graeber because Charles Eisenstein and Michel Bauwens have: https://www.shareable.net/blog/there-is-an-alternative-0

    Except for this I don’t know much about him. But Nikos Salingaros I know quite much about, and as long he joins forces with the commons I’ll not let him down. You know, a battle can be worthwhile fighting even you are doomed to loose.

    Yes, I agree, much of these revolts are supported by Western governments who want to implement corporatism and modernist liberalism, to control the world and get access to resources. It’s a pity if parts of the occupy movement play this role. Still, I’m convinced that both Michel Bauwens and Nikos Salingaros are aware of this danger.

  5. “It’s a pity if parts of the occupy movement play this role.”

    The parts of the movement that play this role are the “facilitators” steering it, people like David Graeber, who you seem to respect for no other reason than because someone else does. I humbly encourage you to think for yourself, than to give your respect so easily.

    “You know, a battle can be worthwhile fighting even you are doomed to loose.”

    What ultimate form will this “battle” take? Would you be willing to use violence to fulfil your desire for “the third way, the commons”?

  6. @Pete, there can be many reasons to respect someone. David Graeber is undoubthly a brilliant intellectuell, and I respect him for his research. His political intentions I don’t know much about, and I might heavily differ from his thinking on this topic. Anyway, his last book seems to be an interesting read: https://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt

    Why should I not respect him for this brilliant research on the history of debth?

    What form this battle will take I don’t know, as I’m just a foot soldier of Christopher Alexander. I guess he’s just one of these facilitators you fear. Anyway, I guess it will become a quite silent revolution: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/07/12/permaculture-a-quiet-revolution-an-interview-with-bill-mollison/

  7. I’m glad you linked that from Bill Øyvind, that’s the only “revolution” we need.

    The “powers that be” play the long long game, IMO they are currently worried regarding the global conciousness awakening…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k78xX9uwj-0

    Imagine a Permaculture film with the power of the “global conciousness” in the context of the above video, that’s the kind of revolution we need.

    TPTB have a big stake to lose in any form of “revolution” that may shift power once the people are aware/awake to the current power paradigm. They use political intellectuals to foster controlled revolutions from within movements. We don’t need political intellectuals, we need more Permaculturists.

    By politicising Permaculture we are open to a controlled response from within, this is what I am trying to highlight.

    We don’t need political positioning in Permaculture, only a quiet revolution will work. It may take longer then a “political revolution” but a quiet revolution is much less risky and has a much greater chance of success without the risk of violence that any form of political revolution can be steered into by political intellectuals IMO.

  8. Øyvind I read your “battle” link, I am familiar with Alexanders pattern language. Can you say more about what you mean by…

    ““I cannot see any other way forward than the third way, the commons!”

    Maybe we have a misunderstanding, I would just like to make sure what you mean, by “the third way”. I took it to mean the political jargon developed by the Fabians, as in…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_social_democracy

    Anyone who thinks the Fabians are out for the good of humanity is seriously under-researched. Tony Blair is a case in point, he used Fabian dominated spin to dupe the political landscape and look where that got us.

  9. I only learned about the commons about 6 months ago, so there’s not so much I know about it yet. Personally I’ve only joined forces with peer-to-peer urbanism, initiated by Nikos Salingaros. This has given me several new friends, like Leavegirl, who contacted me yesterday: https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/

    Personally I find all these people to be very nice! Why we need to reclaim the right to the city, to take it back from the current architectural elite, the bureaucrats and the corporations, I think the following 5-parts interview with Salingaros explains very well: https://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000726.html

  10. Øyvind I spent 2 hours reading the interview, “the third way” or “the commons” was not mentioned at all.

    I’ll try to be more specific so as not to waste any more time. Please give an example where you get the terminology you used, the specific word use of “the third way, the commons.”

    Please provide a reference for the word use in the context you used it “I cannot see any other way forward than the third way, the commons!”

    I even consulted Alexanders “a pattern language”, what is it with great minds who write great books and think a good index is not important ;)

  11. Pete, we need to develop a new language for the commons, to train ourself to see through the spectacles of commoning.

    If you follow the blog of Michel Bauwens he’ll provide examples of the commons every day, you’ll find lots and lots of examples there: https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/

    Why should Nikos use the word “commons”? There are so many words for it. Nikos’ interview investigates what’s wrong with today’s architecture, and the root cause is that it’s taken away from the commons:

    “But, by contrast, in the early phases of industrial society which we have experienced recently, the pattern languages die.

    Instead of being widely shared, the pattern languages which determine how a town gets made become specialized and private. Roads are built by highway engineers; buildings by architects; parks by planners; hospitals by hospital consultants; schools by educational specialists; gardens by gardeners; tract housing by developers.

    The people of the town themselves know hardly any of the languages which these specialists use. And if they want to find out what these languages contain, they can’t, because it is considered professional expertise. The professionals guard their language jealously to make themselves indispensable.

    Even within any profession, professional jealousy keeps people from sharing their pattern languages. Architects, like chefs, jealously guard their recipes, so that they can maintain unique style to sell.

    The languages start out to being specialized and hidden from the people; and then within the specialties, the languages become more private still, and hidden from another, and fragmented.” – Christopher Alexander

    Thank you for taking time to read the interview! Anyway, I’ll stop this discussion now, as I don’t understand your world, and you don’t understand mine. I think I rather join the peer-to-peer urbanism forum, to where I’ve been invited to take part, and where I can communicate with more likeminded people: [email protected]

  12. Well, if you can’t explain the concept who is it needs a new language?

    I managed to dig out the reference from here…

    https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/v2/edward-miller-arguments-for-the-land-value-tax/2011/08/04

    (Knud Tholstrup, Dansk MP, A Third Way, 1986)

    I still don’t know where this idea originated, there is scant info regarding the book to look up. It seems to be about…

    “A Land Value Tax system recognizes that land titles are a practical way of allocating land use rights, but that the proceeds from such monopolization over locations on the Earth must be returned to their rightful owners, the community as a whole.”

    It sounds great on face value, just like a lot of political movements, but with enough research you soon see political movements are a control mechanism of the elites.

    What use is a LVT system if there is still usery on the means of exchange? What use is a LVT to Permacultureists or any “back to the land” types if the proceeds of this tax are used to pay the interest on the means of exchange? Maybe this is a good wheeze to divert people from realising the root cause of strife in the world, i.e. usery on the means of exchange.

    Who has been in favour of this system in (similar economic) times past?

    “The Land Value Tax is an idea that has united in support people who would generally be considered political rivals: William F Buckley and Ralph Nader, Joseph Stiglitz and Milton Friedman, Aldous Huxley and Henry Ford, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, the list goes on.”

    Seems it was supported by well known members of the PTB, which immediately raises red flags as non are synonymous with being in it for the good of humanity IMO.

    I humbly encourage you to think for yourself, and to research further into this political movement before throwing your support behind it.

    Stop the conversation if it’s too challenging by all means, it’s not my world you don’t understand, it OUR world ;)

    Peace out.

  13. This post is not meant for libertarians, it’s a beautiful post, but sadly, for libertarians everything beautiful is ugly. So for everyone not being a libertarian I can recommend this post:

    – The Story of the Commons: Interview with Annie Leonard: https://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-16/story-commons-interview-annie-leonard

    “Talking about the commons is a critical first step. We’re so indoctrinated in an individualist focused approach to stuff and private property that we need to be reminded—like my college class mentioned above—that there’s much more that we share and, that for a wide range of things, sharing is better. So, let’s introduce the term into public discourse, slip it into conversations, include it in letters to the editor and blog posts. Talking more about the commons will make it more visible.

    It’s hard to love what we don’t see, so let’s bring the commons right out into the spotlight!

    I also fear that I am not alone in having associated the “commons” with a sheep-filled pasture for too long. We need to think of more ways to explain what the commons is, to create a new frame for the word, so that the full richness of the commons comes to mind when we hear the term. I love the phrase “all that we share.” That’s clear, accessible and makes us feel good thinking about all that we share. That’s what we want people to feel when they think of the commons.”

    I’m sorry for all the libertarians on this blog, personally I do now understand it’s waste-time to discuss with them, just like with the modernists. Hope to see more commoners on this blog!!!!

  14. Øyvind it’s not useful to use the political labels of the current system, I’d go further and suggest we don’t need anything currently associated with the current system, please see my latest post at

    Comment by Pete S — March 17, 2012 @ 9:59 pm

    https://www.permaculturenews.org/2012/03/06/a-manifesto-for-psychopaths/

    for further insight into where I’m coming from watch this film in it’s entirety, it’s quite long but worth viewing, don’t switch off it you disagree with one POV expressed, watch it all, here’s part one it’s called THE SYSTEM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVov8ajcKuo

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