Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism

458 Pages·2017·2.5 MB·English

by  Massimo de Angelis

In Common
The architects of our lives are divided. There are those who insist
that there is still no alternative to neoliberalism. Despite the
many crises it has provoked, they continue to push for compe-
tition in every sphere of life, to widen the wealth gap, to ignore
climate change and to pursue the steady dispossession of our
rights and commonwealth.
Then there are those advocating change, those who seek to
persuade us that capitalism can be saved from itself. They conceal
capitalism behind a human face. They tell us that environmental
disaster can be averted through technological solutions. They
say that deeply rooted social injustices can be cured with a little
more economic growth. That we’ll be safer with more police on
our streets.
And yet, we know that capitalism is dying, that its lies have
been unmasked, that its grip on our world and our lives is
maintained only through expropriations, dependency and
commodified desires. In Common is a collection of works that
see an end to capitalism without apocalypse. It provides us with
techniques for building another world, and it narrates practices
of alternatives and theories of hope. It is a glimpse into our
shared present, for a future in common.
In Common is published by Zed Books under the creative
commons license. You are free to share this material, transform
and build upon it for non-commercial purposes.
Series editor: Massimo De Angelis
Already published: Stavros Stavrides, Common Space:
The City as Commons

Omnia Sunt
Communia
On the Commons and the
Transformation to Postcapitalism
Massimo De Angelis
Zed Books
LONDON
Omnia Sunt Communia: Principles for the Transition to Postcapitalism
was first published in 2017 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way,
London SE11 5RR, UK.
www.zedbooks.net
Copyright © Massimo De Angelis 2017
The right of Massimo De Angelis to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This book is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0.
International Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Typeset in Minion by seagulls.net
Index by John Barker
Cover design by Dougal Burgess
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78360-063-2 hb
ISBN 978-1-78360-062-5 pb
ISBN 978-1-78360-065-6 pdf
ISBN 978-1-78360-064-9 epub
ISBN 978-1-78360-066-3 mobi
Contents

Tables, figures and boxes vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Omnia Sunt Communia 1
PART ONE Commons as systems
1 Common goods 29
2 Systems 75
3 Elements 119
PART TWO From Elinor Ostrom to Karl Marx
4 Commons governance 143
5 The money nexus and the commons formula 173
PART THREE Commoning: the source of
grassroots power
6 Mobilising social labour for commoning 201
7 The production of autonomy, boundaries and sense 223
PART FOUR Social change
8 Boundary commoning 265
9 Commons and capital/state 303
10 Towards postcapitalism 357
Notes 389
References 399
Index 419

Tables, figures and boxes

Tables
1.1 Commons as a type of good 38
1.2 Types of commons, following Yochai Benkler’s rule 54
7.1 Property rights as a bundle of rights 254
9.1 Using the other system’s complex products 333
9.2 Principles of a commons resilience 342
Figures
2.1 Temporal subject (body) path through the 81
commons
2.2 An illustration of the system–environment relation 83
2.3 Commons as a social system 98
2.4 Force field 113
5.1 Capital’s boundless expansion conatus 179
5.2 Expanded capital circuit 186
5.3 Coupling between the production and 189
reproduction circuits
5.4 The circuit of the commons 193
7.1 The system’s reproduction of its own boundaries 244
8.1 Boundary commoning 293
8.2 The market assembly, the core institution of the 296
Campi Aperti, Bologna
8.3 Producers–consumers–markets–goods network, 299
Campi Aperti, Bologna
9.1 The iceberg model of the economy 314
9.2 Capital–commons structural coupling 330
viii TAblES, FIgURES ANd bOxES
10.1 A very high bird’s-eye view of society and regulation 376
10.2 Controlled society 378
10.3 Commons movements and social revolution 385
boxes
1 Occupy 42
2 Greek self-organised clinics 46
3 Greek solidarity statistics 50
4 Water commons 91
5 The meaning of minga 130
6 Flores Rancho, 19 April 2010 159
7 Their parking, our park 164
8 No free water if you free-ride 248
9 School trespassing and temporary boundary 266
commoning
10 Food sovereignty 284
11 The co-op village, 26 March 2010 318
12 The point of struggles 350
Acknowledgements
This book is the creation of many discontinuous encounters,
with people, books, situations and life processes. Each of these
encounters brought home to me a confirmation or a dissonance,
a question or an exclamation mark. To search for the commons
meant to leave the normalised part of me sitting silently in its
cynical sulk about the world’s condition, and to open out for the
warmth of human commoning. This was the only way for me to
do research on the commons. As this work is not a literary piece,
this warmth will not be greatly expressed through the book. But
I would never have been able to carry out this research without
having experienced the love, the friendship and the experience
of community with many of the people who taught me about the
commons. In the first place, unlike with many other subjects in
science, the student of the commons cannot avoid examining
also the position in which he or she, the author and researcher, is
located in much of daily life and their immediate circle of affects
and love. The micro-commons of my family, and the common-
ers therein, became the most immediately approachable mirror
for my ongoing internal dialogue on the system, on aspects
such as the properties of the commons and the aporias of the
process of commoning. I must therefore thank Dagmar and our
two sons Leonardo and Nicola for their support in critical times
and for their patience in having to deal with my never-ending