The commons is…. - A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity. - A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State. - The wealth that we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished or enhanced, to our children. Our collective wealth includes the gifts of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural works and traditions, and knowledge. - A sector of the economy (and life!) that generates value in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State. Bollier, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/commons-short-sweet/2017/09/25
Starting from the position that we should not confuse the commons with resources held in common, I approach commons as social systems in which resources are pooled by a community of subjects who also govern these resources to guarantee the sustainability of the resources (if they are natural resources) and the reproduction of the community, and who engage in commoning, that is, doing in commons that has a direct relation to the needs, desires and aspirations of the commoners. De Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia, p.90
Communism and Commons
The only difference between communists and any other struggling subjects whatever their identity, is that communists confront capital while holding a mirror in their hands. The alternative to capital, at whatever scale of social action, is a social force that creates a world within the space defined by that reverse image: the image of commons and democratic communities instead of enclosures and market disciplinary integration. Communists are those who seek to create alternative ways to meet needs and follow desires at whatever scale of social action, wherever they are, knowing that the means can be shared, while the goals and the modes of doing that those means make possible can emerge from direct engagement with the other. Just as the social force we call capital seeks to preserve itself by extending and defending enclosures and the realm of the markets, so the social force we call communism can preserve itself only by extending and defending the realm of commons and grass-roots democratic processes and practices. The bottom-line ground within which to problematise alternatives, or the beginning of history is, in my opinion, all here. De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Chapter: Anarchism, Communism and Socialism
Communists therefore are not those who ‘fight for communism’, as if communism were a fixed thing, a fixed set of rules, of norms we could fight for. There is nothing static in communism understood as social force; all of it is dynamic, flowing and relational, because the commoners create it. Communists are those who take part in the value struggles we are all involved in with awareness that alternatives linking our particular struggles to those of others can only be constructed beyond enclosures and beyond disciplinary integration. […] Communists in this sense are not enchanted by the parables of reform or revolution, since neither of these is the point of the beginning of history. The point is to live a different type of life, linked to others and to nature through different value practices. De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Chapter: Anarchism, Communism and Socialism