I have done a lot of thinking on the subject of the "commons" recently in the context of looking at the meaning of rights, legal terms, from outside the legal system. I guess what started me on this was various economic musings such as this one that I discussed in a post to Buddhist_Dialogue Group:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buddhist_dialogue_group/message/37204
The article:
http://www.econlib.org/library/ENC/TragedyoftheCommons.html, It is a good idea to read this article and this one from Wikipedia before reading what I have to say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons:
"In England and Wales, a common (or common land) is a piece of land over which other people—often neighbouring landowners—could exercise one of a number of traditional rights, such as allowing their cattle to graze upon it. The older texts use the word "common" to denote any such right, but more modern usage is to refer to particular rights of common, and to reserve the word "common" for the land over which the rights are exercised. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to."
And later:
"The fact that land is common land does not mean it has no owner—all land in England and Wales is owned by someone. Those who have a right to exercise a right of common are known as commoners. Historically most rights of common were "appurtenant" to particular plots of land. So the commoner would be the person who, for the time being, was the owner of the land. Some rights of common were said to be "in gross" in that they were unconnected with ownership or tenure of land. This was more usual in regions where commons were more extensive, such as in Northern England or in the Fens but also included many village greens across England and Wales."
The reason this is important is that understanding the general concept of the commons is that the concept itself has been abused by partisan ideologues in their efforts to befuddle us commoners about our rights as citizens in the US. Untangling the linguistic and conceptual befuddlements is important or we are in danger of loosing our common rights to inequitably distributed private property and the tyranny of the wealthy and connected.
In the Wikipedia article they detail examples:
common pasture (right to pasture cattle, horses, sheep or other animals on the common land)
common piscary (the right to fish)
common turbary (the right to take sods of turf)
estovers (the right to take sufficient wood for the commoner's house or agriculture)
The issue of the commons is "how do communities divide up the properties (spaces, material and things) of those communities in a fair fashion." In a society where everything is owned by wealthy or "noble" individuals this is an issue of the potential tyranny of those people against the "commoners" who have no other way to exercise necessary freedoms such as the need to provide fuel, clothing, food, or keep their animals alive. The commons represents a contractual arrangement between "commoners" and owners that allows the liberties of both groups to be "adjudicated" or settled in a manner that is (aimed at being) agreeable to all parties.
This notion of "commons" has been used to analyze environmental-economic situations that are very different from those of Europe, but the underlying principle is important to understand: Ownership of certain kinds of property can only be assigned if the rights of people to use those properties can also be divided agreeably. Common pasture, piscary and turbary estovers deal with the rights of commoners to enter public space that may be privately held and to assert their liberties in situations where otherwise those rights would be denied with disagreeable consequences.
Why? The common folk had to assert their right to "common land" because just as it is important that each of us have our own liberty -- which requires either control or outright ownership of our own "space", so some spaces need access by people as commons (temporary, controlled or permanent) or those people are having their liberties infringed on. The story of Robin Hood is an example of how the survival imperative and the rights of nobility clash. When people don't have the right to own or acquire property, they need to either assert their rights against those who do, or they simply suffer the oppression. Ownership of property can be oppressive to those who are disenfranchised or excluded from the system. In most legal systems those who don't own anything are outside the law.
Modern examples of this principle would be the spaces inside stores, access to telephone or internet services, access to streets and roads, and access to rivers, canals or oceans. But your modern day wanna-be aristocrats try to confuse the issue by confusing the "commons" with "collectivism. Compare these terms for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
Chris
Posted by cholte at March 30, 2007 03:04 PM