Commons, Markets and Democracy

* dissertation / Book: Lukas Peter. Democracy, Markets and the Commons: : Towards a Reconciliation of Freedom and Ecology. Political Science | Volume 107, December 2021.

URL = https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355677260_Democracy_Markets_and_the_Commons_Towards_a_Reconciliation_of_Freedom_and_Ecology

"This study was accepted as a dissertation by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Zurich in the fall semester 2017 ." (full-text version by transcript Verlag)

Contents

Excerpted from the ToC:

Chapter 3: Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the unregulated commons

3.1 The tragedy: maximization strategies and the double C–double P game

3.2 Social institutions against tragedy: privatism or socialism ........................... 48

Chapter 4. Overcoming the tragedy with the Ostroms

1. 4.1 Collective action and “grim” social dilemmas ........................................ 52
2. 4.2 The tragedy of monocentric orders ................................................. 54
3. 4.3 The tragedy of privatization and the market......................................... 57
4. 4.4 Overcoming tragedy through collective action ...................................... 70
5. 4.5 Self-governing commons with the aid of eight design principles ..................... 75
6. 4.6 Institutional diversity and polycentricity.............................................. 81
7. 4.7 Interim conclusion.................................................................. 85

Chapter 5. An ecological understanding of the commons

1. 5.1 Nature, language and social relations ............................................... 90
2. 5.2 Concepts of nature and social reality................................................ 93
3. 5.3 Autopoiesis and the interdependent co-creation of reality .......................... 100
4. 5.4 Ecosystems, abundance and natural commons .................................... 106
5. 5.5 Empathy, cooperation and a common(s) reality ..................................... 115
6. 5.6 Ecological freedom, democracy and care............................................ 119
7. 5.7 The civic tradition of ecological democracy and commoning ........................ 130

Chapter 6. Towards a commons theory of property

1. 6.1 The normative language of goods ................................................. 144
2. 6.2 Common needs, common resources and common property ......................... 148
3. 6.3 Reinterpreting John Locke’s theory of property from a commons perspective ....... 155
4. 6.4 Predistribution: commons in a property-owning democracy ........................ 180
5. 6.5. Consumption goods: individual or common property? .............................. 194
6. 6.6 Interim conclusion................................................................. 205

Chapter 7. The role of the state in a commons-creating society

1. 7.1 Preliminary reflections on the state-commons relationship ........................ 207
2. 7.1. Varieties of the state and the role of the commons .................................210
3. 7.2 Public goods versus state-supported commons:...............................216
4. 7.4 Creating commons in a non-ideal world – in and against the state .................. 239

Chapter 8. Commons and the market

1. 8.1 The market in commons literature ................................................. 252
2. 8.2 Enclosing commons and opening markets ......................................... 256
3. 8.3 The market as a commons......................................................... 260
4. 8.4 Responses to possible critiques of the market commons ........................... 274

Excerpts

Lukas Peters:

"The contrast of commons to individual private property:

"As the renowned commons scholar Yochai Benkler states in his book The Wealth of Networks, ‘Commons’ refers to a particular institutional form of structuring the rights to access, use, and control resources. It is the opposite of ‘property’ in the following sense: With property, law determines one particular person who has the authority to decide how the resource will be used. (Benkler 2006: 60)

Although, as I will later show, commons can be understood as property arrangements, Benkler’s juxtaposition remains significant: While individual private property is based on exclusion and dominion, commons are often structured according to the principles of (regulated) access and democratic (network) governance. The emphasis of commons theorists on inclusion and democratic regulation has, more generally, made commons a name for an alternative, emancipatory and emerging form of social organization. Here, economic activities are based on needs-oriented and non-hierarchical ‘peer-production’, which short-circuits the competitive market, the price mechanism and perpetual economic growth (Rifkin 2015; Mason 2015). In this sense, it can be said that commons are providing people with concrete examples of how to create a more inclusive, democratic and ecologically sustainable society within or beyond democratic capitalism.

To assess this possible solution to the diverse challenges contemporary societies face, I will examine whether – and if so, how – the concept of commons can strengthen democratic practices and institutions by limiting or even overcoming negative socio-economic, political and ecological effects of capitalist markets."