Theory of the Commons: The Return of the Commons

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the concept of the commons has become a key concept in the political and theoretical debates of the social left. Many social scientists and activists consider the commons to be a theoretical and practical toolbox that can be used to criticize contemporary capitalism and describe radical changes. However, this popularization came at the price of a certain vagueness: From the Commons derived terms are used to describe congruent but very different things.

In the narrower sense, the commons are traditional social institutions that regulate the use of vital resources that are collectively produced, used and managed. Over centuries, this type of collective ownership – distinct from both private and state ownership – has proven to be a solid, egalitarian and ecologically sustainable tool for organizing access to subsistence resources. Centuries before the emergence of markets and modern states, human communities around the world managed forests, pastures, irrigation systems, fish stocks, hunting grounds, roads and canals. Many theorists and activists consider this historical legacy to be a practice from which contemporary industrial societies could also learn.

On the other hand, the term commons is often used without this direct historical reference: as a kind of association that refers to solidarity, equality and sustainability. In this sense, the US historian Peter Linebaugh said that commons in English has transformed into an “omnibus term” that is used beyond its technical use to refer to “alternatives to patriarchy, private property, capitalism and competition”. The concept of the commons may have lost some of its sharpness as a result, but at the same time this expansion has made it possible to pool the utopian energies of fragmented movements and to open up a common horizon of discourse for heterogeneous social movements.

Counter-state designs

Over the past 25 years, the concept of the commons has been reformulated by at least three political currents. First, the Open Knowledge and Free Software movements popularized a set of Almende principles that had previously been widespread only in small academic and policy circles. The cyber activists understood the digital networks as a contested political space in which two different concepts of technology, culture and knowledge struggle for dominance. Against the big tech companies that were commodifying and bureaucratizing the Internet, these activists defended horizontal and collaborative practices inspired by pre-capitalist commons production. The idea behind it was that the Internet, through spontaneous collaboration, creates a space of abundance that breaks with scarcity and capitalist competition. There are many objections to this technopolitical position, but its communicative success is beyond question. Many people came into contact with the concept of the commons for the first time through the so-called Creative Commons.

The second moment in which the commons discourse became widespread was the recession of 2008. Protests broke out in various places around the world in which the commons, in the more open sense outlined by Linebaugh, played a central role. First, the concept of the commons allowed social movements to defend welfare policies while developing a critique of bureaucratic authoritarianism. Universal public infrastructures such as health and education were seen as indispensable heritage, but at the same time it was recognized that governments had played a central role in the destruction of welfare policies and in the privatization processes. The theory of the commons opened up a perspective to defend public health, housing or education from a non-state-centered perspective, thus building on an anti-authoritarian tradition that advocated direct participation in the management of public goods.

On the other hand, the popularization of the common goods concept meant that the defense of collective property, which had become less important than distribution policies in the radical left agenda in recent decades, was heard more frequently again. The question of property was understood as a central component of popular sovereignty, but at the same time two points were added. First, the idea of ​​collective ownership was expanded: it was shown that, in addition to conventional public-state ownership, there are other – effective and egalitarian – options for the collective management of socially necessary goods and services. Secondly, it was conveyed that the politics of the commons went beyond the classic collectivization of the means of production. Against the background of the eco-social crisis, careful use of vital resources is required.

Today we are experiencing a third moment in which the commons is propagated primarily by political ecology. Many theorists and activists believe that the commons paradigm is indispensable for an eco-social transition from an emancipatory perspective. Why this? At first glance, the ecological crisis seems to prove the commons critics right, who have always claimed that resources that belong to no one are not cared for by anyone. According to this approach, all private actors who have access to a resource will exploit it for their own benefit until it is exhausted – even if this is ultimately disadvantageous for everyone involved and desired by no one. This phenomenon, known as the “tragedy of the commons,” may not be true for all social interactions, but it does explain some of our greatest societal environmental problems.

Historical solutions

But political ecology defends commons institutions for precisely this reason. Since we are now confronted on a global scale with a dilemma that historically occurred in much more limited spaces, we should, the argument goes, update solutions that past societies developed to this problem of collective irrationality. The traditional commons institutions emerged in societies that had to survive in fragile ecosystems and were threatened by over-exploitation of resources. Additionally, these societies developed value systems based on self-restraint and created a subjective sense of abundance in stationary economies.

This “ecocommunalism” is an important contribution and should not be ridiculed. The approach has enabled legal innovations such as the category of “natural commons”: these are natural resources that the state should preserve but over which it has no ownership rights. Nevertheless, the approach also has two serious problems. First, it leads us to assume an automatic connection between commons and sustainability. The traditional commons systems were never harmonious social spaces: they emerged as solutions to potentially extremely dangerous social situations and were intended to reduce the risk of a major conflict. It is also by no means clear that commons systems would always be the best means of containing such conflicts in our mass societies. Our societies consist of a confusing number of communities and we all simultaneously belong to several, imprecisely defined and changing groups, each with incompatible rules and goals.

The second problem with ecocommunalism has to do with the urgency and scale of the ecological crisis. One reason why the commons principle is so popular in the environmental movement has to do with the fact that state policy has actively promoted the environmental crisis. Nevertheless, when it comes to the energy transition, we will not be able to do without the state’s ability to quickly advance large, coordinated transformations. An emblematic example of this is China, where decarbonization is progressing much faster than would be conceivable in a country without authoritarian government powers. China builds about twice as much solar and wind power capacity annually as the rest of the world combined.

Ecocommunalism is fraught with problems that would confront any public welfare-oriented policy that seeks to combine a universalist perspective – such as was missing from traditional commons systems – with self-government and political participation. Efficiency and speed are necessary for the energy transition: it requires a large-scale state policy that can also use coercion. But there also needs to be a change in our everyday understanding, a new concept of the good life with which we can leave the “Imperial way of life” behind us. Thinking realistically about the contemporary commons means designing an interaction between state policy and local self-government that can thrive in complex and pluralistic social spaces.

César Rendueles is a Spanish sociologist and most recently published the essays “Canal Capitalism” and “Against Equal Opportunities” (Edition Suhrkamp). In this text for the »nd« Renduele summarizes the core theses of his new book »Comuntopia. “Comunes, postcapitalismo y transición ecosocial” (Akal, Madrid 2024).

The concept of the commons allows social movements to defend welfare policies.

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