Only the ethic and practice of sharing can provide the necessary values-based policy framework for planetary rehabilitation – one that compels us to think in global terms, prioritise the needs of the poorest, and recognise that we only have one planet’s worth of resources that must be fairly shared by all people. An edited version… Continue reading
“Momentum needs to reach beyond the familiar campaign politics of the Left — not abandoning the conventional modes entirely but combining them with economic initiatives and self-organization endeavors that can develop the capacities and create the resources through which to build power to transform society (as well as win electoral office to manage the state).”… Continue reading
In this first part of an article by Fran Quigley, we excerpt the history of medicines as a public good: “Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the rich and the powerful fenced off commonly held land and transformed it into private property. Land switched from a source of subsistence to a source of profit, and… Continue reading
If we want to improve ourselves and improve the world, consumption isn’t what empowers us. Only the conquest of work can do it. Let’s start with a fact: consumption is an individual activity, something that we generally do alone. So, thinking about society in terms of consumption leads us to think that the only way… Continue reading
As healthcare insurance in the US has skyrocketed, despite passage of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2010, many Americans are turning to a new/old solution: mutualized self-help. As reported in the New York Times, many Christian groups in the US are forming their own unregulated insurance pools to pay the medical bills of their… Continue reading
One of my hobbies is hiking. I live in Phoenix, where several mountain preserves boast a network of city-wide trails. Along the trail, we have favorite restaurants we stop at for brunch or a beer after our hike. I hadn’t equated this routine with place-making. A community in Scotland has. The Cateran Common Wealth maps… Continue reading
“In the UK and other countries ravaged by unfettered capitalism, there are many signs of a new kind of resistance. Typically this involves mobilizing all possible sources of counter-power — economic, social, cultural — and different levels of political power, local as well as national and, very occasionally, continental. In particular, these efforts don’t just… Continue reading
The FairCoop team is pleased to announce that the FairMarket has now officially entered its beta phase, which means that it is fully functional as a market, and we invite interested individuals and organisations to come and test it out, either as sellers or buyers or both. To give some background on the project for… Continue reading
Do you want to “make community” in your surroundings? The first three steps are simple… but have surprising results. Listening is always the most important thing in a conversation. This is true to such an extent that the result of an online discussion can be predicted by the rhythm and the shape of the message… Continue reading
Let us state the obvious. Capitalism has failed. It has failed because it failed to deal with climate change. This was a forseeable, and foreseen disaster. We knew it, without any reasonable doubt, by the late 70s. If we had acted then, we could have stopped the worst of it. We did not. The death… Continue reading
Jose Ramos and Karl Fitzgerald discuss the fast moving commons culture that is evolving through systems thinking, peer-to-peer and the sharing economy. They focus on the City as a Commons as an emerging social project, and Karl gives a precis of the top peer-to-peer trends of the moment according to Michel Bauwens. This was originally… Continue reading
Members of the Commons Institut (Germany) contribute to the debate around the Convivialist Manifesto and on Mother’s Day offer a new approach to reproduction. We see ourselves as commoners. Therefore we welcome the initiative by the Convivialist Manifesto authors to bring together diverse persons and organisations, positions and discourses in a shared process. This will… Continue reading
A new free e-book by the famous urbanist Nikos A. Salingaros. From the introduction: Our biology should dictate the design of the physical settings we inhabit. As human beings, we need to connect with living structures in our environment. Designers thus face the task of better incorporating healing strategies into their work, using factors that… Continue reading
A critique of the ideas of U.S. cooperative leaders such as Richard Wolff and Gar Alperovitz: Excerpted from Sam Gindin: “If state ownership is rejected as a proxy for the commons and if ownership in worker-controlled enterprises is in the hands of the workers, then these groups of workers essentially become their own capitalists. They… Continue reading
Copylove started in 2011 as a local informal network for investigations into commons and feminist practices. Later, it turned into a public and open investigation via www.copylove.cc (only in Spanish) led by Sofía Coca (ZEMOS98, Sevilla), Txelu Balboa (COLABORABORA, Euskadi) and Rubén Martínez (Fundación de los Comunes, Barcelona) in which we tried to extract, from… Continue reading
Some enterprising commoners in Spain and Latinamerica have launched an imaginative crowdfunding campaign to translate and publish my book Think Like a Commoner in Spanish. What makes this publishing initiative so distinctive is its ambition to build a new transnational publishing network that is commons-oriented in content as well as practice. They call it “Think… Continue reading