What You Should Read To Understand the Commons

Personal recommendations by Michel Bauwens.

The Context

* The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. by Kojin Karatani. Duke University Press, 2014

The commons, i.e. 'communal shareholding', is one of the four important ways humanity has used to exchange and allocate resources, together with the gift economy, distribution according to rank, and the market. Alan Page Fiske's The Structure of Social Life documents many examples of each, but Karatini's great contribution is to historize this evolution. It's a rather fantastic synthesis of the anthropological and historical literature on the subject, and I very warmly recommend it.

For details, see: Evolution of the Structure of World History Through Modes of Exchange

* Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation. (1944)

This is a great history of industrial capitalism, from its emergence in the UK in the late 18th century, after the enclosures of the commons and the destruction of the basic income provided by the Tudor Kings, up to WWII. It describes a 'double movement' between periods of liberalization of the market, in which market forces want to be freed from societal regulations, and the periodic efforts of people's movement, to re-embed the markets in society. Polany is the great author and historian about how pre-capitalist markets functioned.