Commons Flashcards
Locke & the Commons
Commons pre-date Lockean labour-based theory of property recognition, which is designed as a way to deal with inefficiency in the commons, where property isn’t used to its full benefit. Locke’s theory of property is a denial of the efficacy of the commons.
What are the three main dichotomies with the Commons?
use/ownership. subject/object, public/private
How can we open our idea of property up to the commons?
- Critically opening up property to the idea of the commons would make use and access the key concern.
- Use/access make collecting information more rational.
- Commons can be publicly or privately owned if there’s a mechanism for everyone to use it (ie Villa Borghese, Right to Roam legislation ie CroW & LRSA). Ownership isn’t significant. What counts is the regime of access to the resources.
Commons & future generations
- Commons gives you a fairer use/access of water but also gives a framework to better preserve water as a common resource
Why is the feminist perspective on the commons is important ?
- A feminist perspective on the commons is important because it begins with the realization that, as the primary subjects of reproductive work, women have depended on access to communal natural resources more than men and have been most penalized by their privatization and most committed to their defense. (Federici)
Why is marketising everything bad for the markets?
- Capitalist accumulation is structurally dependent on the free appropriation of immense quantities of labor and resources that must appear as externalities to the market, like the unpaid domestic work that women have provided, upon which employers have relied for the reproduction of the workforce.
- the marketization of all spheres of life is detrimental to the market’s well-functioning for markets too depend on the existence of non-monetary relations like confidence, trust, and gift giving
Resource allocation and strategy in commons/ capitalism?
- In Capitalism, scarcity is created through barriers, the strategy is “efficient” resource allocation.
- In the Commons, for rivalrous resources, there is enough for all through sharing and for non-rivalrous resources, there is abundance.
- The strategy of the commons is strengthening social relations and ensuring fair and sustainable use of resources
How does commons/capitalism see people?
- the Commons sees humans as co-operative, “what do I/ we need”
- Capitalism sees humans as competitive, “what can be bought and sold”,
Decision making in commons/ capitalism?
- Capitalism is in principle governed by the majority through representatives who govern in hierarchical, top-down way
- The Commons is governed by consensus and is self-organised and decentralized
What are the implications of the commons/capitalism for resources?
- Capitalism leads to the depletion and enclosure of resources
- Commons leads conservation/protection of resources and their expansion and reproduction
CALABAN AND THE WITCH
- Witch hunting was when women were at the forefront of resistance aimed at stopping the enclosure of the commons.
- Stigmatising women as witches was a way of eliminating the obstacle to achieve what Marx calls primitive accumulation.
- Constructing the resistant woman as a witch allows an advantage being obtained (1) you get the land and resources (2) it allows you to establish a regime that distributes roles and functions so that the regime of private property is instituted along with a certain type of production.
- Not only do you appropriate land, but you appropriate women’s labour, as unlike wage labour, women’s labour is not recognised
Does Federici believe in tragedy of the commons?
- Federici doesn’t believe humans are self-interested
- Federici also mentions how commons aren’t open access, and have always involved community regulation
Marella
It is not always the case that a feminist approach to property takes us the discussion of the commons- you can have a feminist approach that supports private property. The feminist discourse isn’t inherently against private property, liberal feminism holds that strategic forms of property are a form of empowerment.
principle of commons
principle of care rather than principle of competition
Is private property gender-neutral?
- capitalists treated women as men’s common, a natural source of wealth and services to be as freely appropriated by them
- women main force preventing commercialisation of everything
- collective forms of living
-accumulation v reproduction
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