Nicos Poulantzas Institute in cooperation with transform! europe organized an open lecture of David Bollier, researcher, activist and writer of a series of books concerning Commons. Find here the short report of the event on 14 February.

Our colleague David Bollier speaks about Law for the Commons at an event co-organised by the Nicos Poulantzas Institute & Transform! Europe. The text below was written by Theodora Kotsaka and was originally published in the Transform! Europe blog.

Theodora Kotsaka: Nicos Poulantzas Institute is working on Commons during the last four years, focusing on areas as water and its management as a common good, digital commons and applied policies on Commons related to productions model transformation. D. Bollier’s speech was organized in order to complete the picture by referring to the argent need of reinventing a law for the Commons.

In countries around the world, Bollier noted, a burgeoning ‘Commons Sector’ is developing effective, ecological alternatives to the increasingly dysfunctional market/state system. Commons are developing new types of food-growing and -distribution systems, alternative currencies to retain community value, platform co-operatives for online sharing, multistakeholder co-ops, open design and manufacturing systems, land trusts, co-learning projects, and much else. The goal in most instances is to meet essential human needs through inclusive participation, the decommodification of relationships, collaborative social organization, and long-term stewardship that links responsibilities and benefits.

The growth of the Commons Sector faces significant barriers from conventional law, however, because the state privileges individual property rights and market exchange, and even criminalizes commoning. Fixated on extractive economic growth, state policies do not recognize the actual value created through Commons. This reality that has forced commoners to devise ingenious ‘hacks’ on the law, as possible, to protect their ability to collectively manage seeds, water, farming, housing and much else.

To legalize and support commoning, Bollier calls for a new field of legal inquiry to validate and develop new forms of commons-based law. We need new types of effective legal mechanisms to help incubate, maintain and defend commons. Bollier argues that this is an essential challenge to meet if we are to imagine and invent fair economic and governance systems that can work for everyone.

David Bollier is cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group, an international advocacy project, and Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (US).”

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Greek edition of “Think Like a Commoner”

After the governing coalition Syriza capitulated to creditors’ draconian demands in 2016, its credibility as a force for political change declined. Despite its best intentions, it could not deliver. The Greek people might understandably ask:  Have we reached the limits of what the conventional Left can achieve within “representative democracies” whose sovereignty is so compromised by global capital?  Beyond such political questions, citizens might also wonder whether centralized bureaucratic programs in this age of digital networks can ever act swiftly and responsively.  Self-organized, bottom-up federations of commoning often produce much better results.

Pummeled by some harsh realities and sobered by the limits of Left politics, many Greeks are now giving the commons a serious look as a political option. This was my impression after a recent visit to Athens where I tried to give some visibility to the recently published Greek translation of my book Think Like a Commoner.  In Greek, the book is entitled Κοινά: Μία σύντομη εισαγωγή).  Besides a public talk at a bookstore (video here), I spoke at the respected left Nicos Poulantzas Institute (video with Greek translation & English version), which was eager to host a discussion about commons and commoning.

Re-inventing law for the Commons, David Bollier from Institouto Nicos Poulantzas on Vimeo.

In my talk, I suggested that the Greek state might wish to re-imagine “the economy,” politics and law by considering what commons could accomplish (and are accomplishing), and how state policies might support commoning. Since the left cannot necessarily advance its larger agenda of social justice, fairness and human rights through the state – subservient as it is to neoliberal circuits of global power – it should entertain how the commons might open up some new solution-sets.

To that end, I discussed the promise of relocalized food and agriculture systems; the potential of re-imagining city policies and programs as a commons; the advantages of academic commons to more efficiently generate and share scholarship and scientific knowledge; the power of open source software and open design and manufacturing; the ecological wisdom of traditional agricultural, forestry and fishery commons; and the ways in which law could decriminalize and support commoning, moving beyond many pathologies of bureaucracy.

At the macro-scale, a commons-based economy could also help a country escape the massive inefficiencies, ecological costs, predatory behaviors and corruption associated with the conventional economy — while generating new forms nonmarket provisioning and socially legitimate political power.

I was told about medical care commons that have sprung up in Athens in recent years.  Staffed by volunteers and donated/low-cost supplies, the system is a desperate social improvisation to help people meet basic medical needs at a time when public hospitals turn people away.  The system has become a respected alternative system for medical care, engaging people as real human beings and not as mere “clients” or numbers. When patients don’t use all the pills they are given, for example, they return them, so someone else can use them. A kind of social solidarity has emerged. Supplies and personnel are obviously limited, but some aspects of healthcare have been reinvented as flexible modes of human caring, escaping the economic and social logic of conventional healthcare.

Of necessity, Greeks have established other commons as well – for food, housing and fuel.  There are active efforts to make Greek academic research and data more available as a commons, going beyond the logic of open platforms.  A Greek hacker community, the Libre Space Foundation, has even built the first open source satellite and ground station network – UPSat and SatNOGS — from readily available and affordable tools.

These are the sorts of initiatives that the traditional left may regard as interesting, but not politically significant. I think that is a huge mistake. In that gap of understanding lies the potential for inventing a new type of climate-friendly, socially just economy and political culture.

At this moment of transition, therefore, when the commons seems to be acquiring new traction and visibility in Greece, I am thrilled that my book Think Like a Commoner is now available there.

I wish to thank George Papanikolaou and Andreas Karitzis for their role in organizing the translation of my book, and Efstathiou Anastasio of Angelus Novus Editions for publishing and promoting the Greek edition.  My thanks also to two commons scholars, Antonis Broumas and Stavros Stravrides, for graciously sharing their thoughts on the commons at the bookstore event.  A salute, too, to the Nicos Poulantzas Institute for hosting my talk.

For any readers of Greek, here are a few press interviews with me and reviews of my book – in Epohi; in Avgi, a collective blog (and here); in efsyn; and in Left.

Even though it was cold and blustery — Athens in February! — I had a great time, including a visit to the Acropolis and Agora. Next time: longer discussions, a day at the National Museum, and a visit to Greek islands.

Cross-posted from Bollier.org

Photo by stevegarfield

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