Property Law

Discussion

David Bollier:

"Traditional property law is based on a woefully obsolete worldview and antiquated economic premises about human beings and social and ecological realities. It sees all of these expansions of property law as a form of wealth creation – when in fact it often amounts to wealth destruction (monetizing nature), redistribution from the have-nots to the haves, or a transformation of the intrinsic use-value of something into exchange-value (price). It presumes that value is only created by individuals trucking and bartering in the marketplace, and the Invisible Hand does its magic.

Property law does not generally acknowledge the actual value generated by social collaborations, by complex natural systems and by inherited knowledge and culture. It is blind to non-economic relationships such as gift economies, informal relationships, social communities and care work. You could say that property law generally simply does not recognize the commons and its significant role in generating value." (http://bollier.org/blog/property-rights-inequality-and-commons)

Towards more Law of the Commons

David Bollier:

"historically, most commons have not needed nor sought formal protections of law. Their self-organized customs and relative isolation from outside capital and markets, were enough to sustain them. This has changed dramatically over the past thirty or forty years, however, as global commerce technology and conventional property law have expanded relentlessly, superimposing the logic and values of markets on nearly every corner of nature and social life.

Our common wealth is vulnerable because typically the state has no formal, clear property rights protecting them. Indeed, the state has little interest in granting or clarifying collective property interests because it would prefer to collude with investors and corporations to privatize this collective wealth. As usual, invoking the tragedy parable, the state presumes that only the private appropriation and monetization of common wealth can produce prosperity and human progress. Expansive private property rights are crucial instruments in advancing this process. And inequality, Pikketty and others have documented, is an inevitable result.

I wish to suggest, therefore, that – apart from some of the redistributionist strategies mentioned yesterday – the commons is a vital tool for assuring a more equitable predistibution of wealth for all. By that, the commons provides the most durable, structurally effective way to ensure that people’s basic needs are met – and this in turn will foster greater political equality. Citizens must have legally guaranteed access to and use of the resources that they require for their survival, dignity and cultural identity.

If we truly wish to address inequality, then we must find ways to reclaim the commons and reinvent the Law of the Commons. (Re)inventing the Law of the Commons may sound way ambitious, but consider this: People in the thirteenth century arguably had stronger legal rights to subsistence and survival than people do today. Thanks to Magna Carta and its companion document, the Charter of the Forest, people had guaranteed legal access to the forest to gather firewood, water for drinking and planting, acorns for their pigs, the right to hunt wild game and collect fruit, and much else.

Commoners had legal access to the means of production and subsistence – which is more than contemporary markets and many states are willing to guarantee today. If you ain’t got the do re mi, as Woody Guthrie put it, you’re out of luck." (http://bollier.org/blog/property-rights-inequality-and-commons)