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Jukka Peltokoski

Towards a Legal Framework for the Commons by Tommaso Fattori | via Michel Bauwens | Soc... - 0 views

  • It is commonly acknowledged that there is a legislative gap concerning the protection and recognition of the sphere of Commons (1). The consequence of these inadequate legal guarantees is the extreme vulnerability of Commons, which remain without protection from processes of “enclosure”, due both to the market and to public policies in favour of privatization, in their various forms. (2)
  • A first preliminary step is the drafting of a catalogue of Commons (3), both at the national and European level, albeit in the knowledge that it must remain a potentially open and updatable catalogue
  • A catalogue which forms the basis for a Charter
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  • the state and institutions must take an active role in supporting commoning and to support the creation of new Commons.
  • But the sphere of Commons is broader still, sometimes even tied to specific projects, as normally occurs in the case of digital or non-material Commons.
  • Commons must be defended by the legal system and safeguarded through particularly stringent protective norms which can ensure the collective enjoyment and use of them, also for the future. Commons also need a specific form of self-governing by the commoners themselves, which must also be strenuously defended
  • This active role must translate into forms of public-common partnership, where the institutions enable and empower the collective/social peer-creation of common value.
  • Governments could also provide seed funding
  • , incentives and grants for Commons and commoning, just as it currently provides research and development support and assistance to businesses and corporations (6).
  • The legal recognition of the sphere of Commons must lead to a delegation of authority and power by the state to commons-based institutions.
  • Current debates (and experiments) focus on Trusts, Foundations, for-benefit institutions etc.
  • Such trusts can be located either inside the boundaries of one state or be trans-border, according to the size and range of the resource and/or of its relative community of interest.
  • Just as it is true that commoning normally produces use value which cannot be accounted for in monetary terms (values which are part of the range of positive social or environmental externalities) one should construct a special legal form which could recognise and protect a similar type of enterprise or “project” (a common social enterprise) and protect a similar form of production of use value of collective use, which will help build another type of economy.
Jukka Peltokoski

Chomsky on the Commons | David Bollier - 0 views

  • Noam Chomsky recent gave a meaty talk, “Destroying the Commons:  On Shredding the Magna Carta” that shows how fragile the rights of commoners truly are. Achieved after enormous civil strife, the Magna Carta supposedly guaranteed commoners certain civic and procedural rights.
  • Charter of the Forest later incorporated into the Magna Carta, expressly guarantees commoners stipulated rights to access and use forests, land, water, game and other natural resources
  • Both documents are now being shredded today with barely a peep of acknowledgment that centuries-old principles of human rights are being swept aside.
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  • Citing Linebaugh’s book, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Chomsky writes:
  • With the commons no longer protected for cooperative nurturing and use, the rights of the common people were restricted to what could not be privatized, a category that continues to shrink to virtual invisibility. 
  • Its goal was to protect the source of sustenance for the population, the commons, from external power -- in the early days, royalty; over the years, enclosures and other forms of privatization by predatory corporations and the state authorities
  • While the mainstream likes to dismiss Chomsky as an out-of-touch lefty with a cult following, who else is pointing out that the Magna Carta’s basic guarantees are indeed being shredded?
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