Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The doors open. You can feel the pent-up energy even before the faces appear. The lockdown is over. A dam is burst. Out pours a torrent of angers, anxieties, frustrations, dreams, hopes, fears. It is as if we cannot breathe.
Water is in the hands of large producers who have dried out our territory and compromised the lives of our communities. Ours is an extreme case: Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised. Chile has clearly prioritised extractive industries over the rights of communities to water.
Trained to see the dismemberment of complex production processes as efficient and natural, and its segregation from consumption as a core premise of “the economy,” economists tend to overlook a more elegant, practical approach to provisioning — commoning.
I have come to think that the themes we on the Left should be coalescing around are dismantling rentier capitalism, offering a new income distribution system in which basic income divorced from the performance of labor is the anchor, and reviving all forms of commons and commoning.
In our work to build the Agrarian Commons, Agrarian Trust participates in this work: to confront systems and structures that have resulted in inequitable access to land, and thus impeded the most vulnerable and historically disadvantaged among us from having true control over their food supply.
The etymology of “apocalypse” points to an “unveiling”, dropping illusion and finding revelation. As our global production systems and social institutions (eg. healthcare, education) are suddenly overwhelmed, their basic unsuitability is exposed.
There is no guarantee that this resurgence of collective action will survive the pandemic. We could revert to the isolation and passivity that both capitalism and statism have encouraged. But I don’t think we will.
DisCOs are a commons-oriented, feminist, cooperative way for people to work together. A set of ideals and criteria for ensuring that patterns of oppression and violence that permeate our society are not replicated within intentional, cooperative spaces. DisCOs systematize fairness and the recognition of care work.
Today, some 400 members strong, we are still creating elements of the site. Now that we know the place so much better it is easier to plan the details. Most importantly, however, we have created a model for community land ownership that helps fulfil our multi-yield mission, particularly when it comes to learning from natural systems and demonstrating appropriate possibilities for the 21st century.
We want to break down the barriers that prevent us from working together for causes that are bigger than all of us. We want to build a new narrative of solidarity, kindness and care. And we want to reset political boundaries – to say with courage that the increasing tendency towards inequality, racism and sexism that we are witnessing in this and other countries cannot continue.
The British sociologist Raymond Williams once wrote, “Culture is ordinary.” We could say much the same about commoning. It is terribly ordinary. Commoning is what common people decide for themselves in their specific circumstances if they want to get along with each other and produce as much wealth for everyone as possible.
There is much to be said about the relationship of commons to climate change, but let me offer this short glimpse into the clash of worldviews that must be negotiated. Whatever the outcome in ongoing arguments with capitalist climate-deniers, our best recourse will be to build and fortify our many commons as a failsafe against the earthly reckoning that is coming.
