Commons and/against Property

This blogpost provides brief insights into the commons research in the Collaborative Research Centre “Structural Change of Property”. The concept of the commons has played a major role in our discussions about non-private forms of property and alternatives to all forms of property. It is hardly possible to talk about alternatives without talking about the commons. What makes commons even more intriguing is that their proprietary character is anything but clear.

Two research projects have focused on the commons in particular, though from very different perspectives. One project looks at the global commons of the oceans and the atmosphere (JRT01 The Transformation of Global Commons and the Future of Planetary Ecosystems), and the other deals with urban commons and local commons projects and Public-Commons-Partnerships in municipal areas such as care, housing, health and nutrition (C04 Public Politics and the Future of the Commons). In light of these two projects, we want to present some overarching reflections on the property-related implications of the commons. Two main aspects will be the focus: the relationship between commons and commoning and the question as to whether commons are proprietary or not. 

Today, commons articulate many expectations and hopes, especially with regard to transformative potentials to overcome negative aspects of capitalist economic relations. However, the concept of the commons remains vague, both in theory and in practice. Empirical research explores very diverse best-practice examples in local niches. There are also different strands of the theory of the commons. The neo-institutionalist paradigm inspired by Elinor Ostrom focuses on the commons as a form of governance beyond market-based and state-based solutions. Then, there is a theoretical strand that refashioned the terms commons and commoning as distinctly political concepts describing new forms of political subjectivity and non-capitalist social cooperation and co-production of knowledge, culture, or goods (Dardot & Laval 2019; see also Hardt & Negri 2009). Although very different in their focus, many analyses of commons and commoning that are rooted in these theoretical traditions tend to idealize historic and contemporary commons. This idealization not only distorts reality, it also prevents us from learning from practical experiences and failures that have come to light in our empirical research. Before we summarize them, we will delve into the two aforementioned conceptual questions that are of major importance for our research: the relationship between commons and commoning and the (non-)proprietary character of commons.

Commons and Commoning

Many scholars agree that commons consist of three elements: the common-pool resource, the commoners, and the rules and institutions of the commons. According to this view, the commons do not exist as such, but are based on the practice of commoning – a particular way of commoners relating to each other and collaborating with each other that is based on an orientation towards needs and democratic decision-making. Despite this understanding, accounts differ as to whether the common-pool resource and its intrinsic characteristics stand in the center of attention or the social practice of commoning. This difference can be expressed in the following question: Are commons rather something that we find (‘intrinsic characteristics’) or are commons made (‘collective practice’)?

Approaches that place the intrinsic character of the resource at the center are often rooted in the economic theory of goods and emphasize the characteristics of a common pool resource. This is the case in the discussion about global commons, for example, such as the oceans or the atmosphere (Stern 2011; Paavola 2012). Global commons are natural resource domains and territories beyond sovereign territorial jurisdictions to which all countries have access guaranteed by international law. These areas have been established as global commons because access to and human habitation in them is difficult and their geographic features have disabled any efforts to enclose them within state territories. Due to the openness of the global commons, the resources within them (fish, minerals, pollution sinks) are ‘non-excludable’ yet highly ‘subtractive’ or depletable. Unsurprisingly, this is where the questions of overuse, depletion, and environmental sustainability come into play. With the progressing climate crisis and biodiversity decline, there is an urgent need to devise effective regimes for the sustainable use of global commons resources.

Approaches that place the social practice at the center take a different starting point: the social constitution of commons through commoning, combined with the assumption that every resource can be a commons. This perspective is dominant in the research on urban commons (Acksel et al. 2015; Dellenbaugh et al. 2022). The joint discussion in our two commons projects – projects that seemed to embody the two poles of the commons concepts (as intrinsic characteristics versus social practice) – has made us question this dichotomy. Borrowing from new materialism and practice theory it seems fruitful to us to bridge the camps and not to stop at the dichotomy of ‘natural’ versus politically constructed and designed. Both alternatives bear problems: the naturalization of commons suggests that how resources are managed and used is not a political issue. The definition of natural common pool resources also legitimizes the private appropriation of numerous other resources. Practical theoretical approaches remind us that people decide whether and, if so, which resources should be used and managed collectively. However, this comes at the cost of detaching the focus on practice from the material conditions. Even if we assume that there are no natural commons, it is worth asking, how far socio-material features of resources co-constitute the mode of its use and governance.

Building bridges in this way is also the key to the analysis of the transformative potential of commons. Even if we assume that commons are made, collective management is more or less challenging, more or less costly, and more or less desired by the people – but always depending on the nature of the resource. Commoning as a transformative practice should not start with the most challenging resources in question. In purely technical terms, commoning is easier for non-rival, immaterial goods; culturally, for example, we can see that the idea of water as a common good enjoys great support and has spawned the strongest movements. What is missing so far is a cartography of the affinity of resources to commoning that takes material, socio-technical, and cultural aspects into account, which of course are highly dependent on context and scale.

Commons and property (regimes)

The question of whether commons are collective property is the subject of controversial debates. We identify three answers from the literature. First, there is an understanding of the commons as collective property that is not controlled and managed by the state but by actors in civil society. The formal ownership of a defined community or group is explicitly envisaged here as a possibility. Consumer and worker cooperatives are probably the most prominent form of common property. A second perspective is offered by Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot in their book Common. On revolution in the 21st century: They claim that the true opposition facing us is not between common property and private property, but between unappropriability and every form of property as such. In this case, the principle of the common is an alternative to any form of property. A third strand is agnostic towards the property question and is represented by Elinor Ostrom: Here, the focus is on regulated forms of collective, non-competitive (re-)production, use, and (self-)management of a resource. Ostrom and her colleagues have described the heterogeneity of community-based institutional arrangements on the basis of numerous empirical examples and identified design principles that underpin functioning commons – but have not specified a concrete form of ownership.

In contrast, we suggest an understanding of the commons as collective ownership that connects all three strands: The focus of our perspective is not primarily on the concrete property title, for example as it has been cast in a legal form of cooperative property. Instead, the collective power of decision-making and disposal is at the heart of our attention. To use the words of Massimo de Angelis, “a plurality that claims ownership is one that, not only accesses the use value of a resource, but that also governs its production and reproduction, its sustainability and development” (de Angelis 2017: 30). In a similar vein, we argue that claiming ownership can be compatible with cooperative property, with public property, and also with nobody's property. Classical or ‘pure’ private property, however, is hardly suitable for creating the basis for collective ownership in the sense of democratic decision-making. This is our dissent with the neo-institutionalist Ostromian school – it pays insufficient attention to the genuinely anti-collective and profit-orientated character of private property.

To what extent public property has the potential to strengthen the commons principle is open for discussion. Whereas Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval have identified public property primarily as the private property of the ruling classes, we are more optimistic with regard to its democratizing potential, particularly at the municipal level. There are lessons to be learned from municipal attempts to open up public resources and services to civic participation and co-management. These attempts could be conceived of as commoning, bearing the potential to blur the contrast between public and common. This allows us to think beyond individual commons projects that flourish in niches, and ask questions about the commoning of infrastructures in fundamental areas such as care, digitalization, housing, or energy supply.

A second issue that troubles us is of a conceptual nature: Whether we conceive of the commons in proprietary terms depends on the understanding of property. Those who draw on a broad concept of regulated disposition over resources are less likely to look and long for forms beyond property than those who start from the paradigmatic form of individual, exclusive power of disposal. Sometimes a second look shows that the controversy over whether commons are proprietary or not tells us less about the commons than about the underlying understanding of property. Referring to authors such as Nicholas Blomley (2003) we suggest understanding property as the power of disposition in the broadest sense and therefore as a highly contingent capacity that can be individual or collective, exclusive or open – always, of course, depending on power relations. This perspective reflects the fact that property is not a supra-historical concept, but a social institution that is itself subject to change.

Insights from our empirical research: Gradual commons and learning from failures

Another learning point for us was to drop the dichotomy between ‘commons’ and ‘non-commons’: Realistically, we should expect actually existing commons to be situated on a spectrum realizing different degrees of participation, self-governance, and equality. If we take such a spectrum into account, we find more or less successful implementations as well as concrete impediments and partial failures. In this sense, we need to be skeptical when ideal-typical conceptions of commons as democratic, participatory, inclusive, egalitarian, needs-based, and sustainable are confused with reality, which unfortunately happens all too often. Vice versa, not all practical endeavors that do not correspond to this ideal type are automatically and in toto not commons. Finally, we want to outline empirical findings from our research that sensitize for concrete failings in practice. Linked to this is the open question of what we can learn from these failures for a step-by-step strengthening of commons principles.

Uncommoning of the commons on a global scale: The project on the global commons found out that it is not common property but public and private property that are predominantly used to govern and regulate the use of natural resources in the global commons – fish and other living resources, minerals, fossil fuels, pollution sinks. Sovereignty, territoriality, and public property are the main principles of governance; and private property rights are most often used to make an economically efficient use of natural resources. The research has shown that with respect to natural resources in the global commons, states actually behave like private property owners – they seek the maximum possible share, make exclusive claims to their domains, seek to extract maximum economic benefits from resources under their control, and exercise a full bundle of rights typical of private property. In the context of the ocean global commons, for example, states have expanded their sovereign rights by claiming exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf where they now have unlimited rights to control, manage, and extract minerals, fossil fuels, fish, and seafloor species and transfer property rights to these marine natural resources to other agents, including private companies. Private property rights are routinely used to regulate fisheries or enable the extraction of seabed minerals. Their exercise often leads to overuse, depletion, and the lack of concern with the need to collectively manage oceans as ecosystems. Thus, we witness a tendency that could be called the uncommoning of common-pool resources.

The amputation dilemma of urban commons: One case study of the project “Public Politics and the Future of the Commons” conducted research on the new municipalism in Barcelona. From 2015 to 2023, Barcelona was governed by a local alliance of movements called Barcelona en Comú, turning Barcelona into the flagship of a new urban politics. Programmatically, the movement party emphasized the principle of the commons, which it already bears in its name, and announced a strategic shift from welfare to “commonfare” (Subirats and Gomà 2020: 521). While we found a lot of excitement in academic and activist literature around Barcelona en Comú, the empirical reality is much less researched and indeed is a far cry from the original fanfare. As a starting point, we conceptualized the commons as a political principle in terms of two functions: First, commons fulfill a broad spectrum of socioeconomic functions to address essential needs of the population, from nutrition and care to housing, culture, and communication. Second, they are democratically governed, not only at the individual level but also their networks. The transformative potential of the commons lies precisely in the integration of these two functions.

By contrast, the amputation dilemma that we describe in our research points to the problem that the implementation of commons programs requires foregoing one of these functions: either the socio-economic function or the participatory, democratic function. The first kind of amputation could be found in one strand of commons promotion in Barcelona focused on using public properties and resources for community-led, participatory governance. Such commons initiatives, however, were not allowed to offer economic or social services, which under EU law would have required competitive bidding. The second type of amputation occurred in public policies fostering the Social and Solidarity Economy. While these policies addressed socio-economic needs, they sought to make providers in the social and solidarity economy competitive within the market, thereby dropping the democratic function and their integration into a municipalist democratic governance.

As mentioned beforehand, we do not conceive of these two examples as a fundamental problematization of the principle of the commons. Rather, our aim is to go beyond the widespread, idealizing equation of principle and practice and ask about the concrete conditions of success and failure in reality – while always keeping an eye on gradual achievements and successes.

Header picture photographed by and courtesy of Analia Cid