Land Commons
See also:
Description
"Land commons are characterized by shared, inclusive, and collectively governed ownership of urban and rural spaces. They distinguish themselves from the exclusive and absolute conception of ownership by renewing the functional scope of property rights. Thus, the market or utilitarian value of land gives way to its environmental, social, and democratic values."
(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)
Characteristics
If land ownership remains essential in the fundamental rights of our Western societies, it is necessary to mitigate its most problematic social and environmental effects. Public ownership may appear in some cases as an alternative to private ownership, but it shares a strong similarity with the latter in the way it establishes the preeminence of the rights and interests of administrations as owners of public goods. To break out of this "proprietary order," we advocate a third way that institutes land as a common good: socializing ownership, defending its democratic management, and putting it at the service of preserving natural, urban, and rural spaces.
- Ensuring ecological management of spaces
As shown by the work of Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom, commons allow for sustainable management of spaces. Land is no longer managed by a single owner but by a group of stakeholders who ensure its preservation over time, for their common interests as well as for those of future generations.
- Guaranteeing access to essential spaces for human development
An alternative to speculative land grabbing, land commons allow for a fairer and more solidarity-based distribution of urban and rural spaces necessary for individual and collective emancipation. They facilitate access to housing, the establishment of third places, the installation of young farmers, and the development of local agricultural production means. The solidarity initiatives that emerge in these spaces thus provide essential services to populations by prioritizing their social use function over their market exchange value.
- Revitalizing democracy
Land commons not only guarantee access to social living spaces but also contribute to their collective management. This active participation in maintaining our common spaces strengthens civic engagement and social bonds."
(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)
Policy Proposals
"The right to property as defined in the Civil Code was conceived more than two centuries ago for a society very different from our own. Following in the footsteps of the work on commons by Elinor Ostrom, the Rodotà Commission in Italy, and the Mission Droit et Justice in France, we advocate for the evolution of land property rights that fits into a long historical context (see the box on the heritage of traditional commons, page 4).
The general proposal we outline in this booklet can be summarized as follows: it is urgent to commonize land, meaning to normalize and support forms of social and collective ownership.
Concretely, this involves reorganizing rights among communities of use, governance, and control:
- Community of Use: Urban and rural spaces necessary for human development must be established or maintained as collective, inalienable properties whose access is guaranteed within a logic of social justice.
- Community of Governance: These shared spaces must be democratically managed by all stakeholders, particularly the users, who have collective interests associated with these spaces.
- Community of Control: These spaces must be preserved for future generations. Collective organizations must ensure they are managed with an environmental sustainability logic.
The more inclusive these three communities of use, governance, and control of land spaces are, the more the ownership of these spaces will be considered as tending towards the commons. Thinking of land as a common allows addressing the challenges posed by modern property rights to balance the interests of owners, whether public or private, with the interests of citizens, nature, and future generations."
(https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf)
For more detailed proposals see:
- Report: FONCIER EN COMMUNS. VERS UNE PROPRIÉTÉ PARTAGÉE. DES LIEUX ESSENTIELS. Ed. by Rémy Seillier et Sébastien Shulz. Société des communs, Livret 04. 2024.. See: Policy Proposals for Land Commons in France
URL = https://societedescommuns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/LIVRET-4-FONCIER.pdf
Typology
In the Medieval Low Countries
"Overall, one can distinguish two types of common. The first type comprises land that was only temporarily open to a group of people, typically members of the local community, usually after the harvest for the remaining grain to be reaped or for cattle to be pastured on the stubble left behind. This type was generally indicated by the term ‘‘common arable’’, was often not formally organized, and is therefore not included in this survey. The other type of common was land open throughout the year, although perhaps with agreed periods to allow the land to recover, to a group of entitled users who could be defined differently from the rural community. This type of common can be divided into common woodland, common pasture, and common waste, the last usually being rather poor land open for pasture and other activities during most of the year. Rights were assigned to groups, in some cases comprising the whole local village and sometimes even more than one village; in other cases rights of use were limited to those who met certain qualifications, such as ownership of certain farms, or payment of a certain fee."[1]
Discussion
Land as Community Property
Gene Callahan:
"Reading James C. Scott's excellent Seeing Like a State. He gives, as an example of how land was traditionally held, the following: "Rural living in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Denmark, for example, was organized by ejerlav, whose members had certain rights for using local arable, waste, and forest land. It would had have been impossible in such a community to associate a household or individual with a particular holding on a cadastral map."
This is just an example of the way land was typically held before the current system of clearly defined freehold of lots was imposed by the state on a reluctant society, and not by any process of "mixing one's labor" with virgin land. Land was owned by communities first.
I fully anticipate the objection, "But communities can't own anything!" Like "Only individuals choose," this is an obvious falsehood which is embraced precisely because it defends radically individualistic property arrangements against the force of historical truths such as those noted by Scott."[2]
More Information
- Documents collated via http://files.uniteddiversity.com/Money_and_Economics/Land_Value_Tax/
- http://commonsabundance.net/wiki/land/