Posted
December 21, 2006

The Void in Our Language

To protect the commons, we need to forge a new kind of language that movingly expresses its importance to all of us.

One of the most stubborn problems in confronting the pathologies of the neoliberal market and political order is the limitations of our language. We do not have the vocabulary, the analyses and the cultural awareness for challenging a normative way of life. The reality of the market order is not simply “out there” in the realities of political and economic life, it is also deeply rooted in our culture and consciousness, and in the ways that we relate to each other and the resources we share.

I believe that a commons discourse offers some powerful remedies. It can speak at once to many different levels of life – policy, politics, law, economics, global ecosystems – while also speaking to social and personal issues such as identity, social norms and our relations to time, space and nature. The commons is not so much an ideology as a template for talking about socially created value and the systems for managing shared resources. Unlike an ideology, which tends to be rigid and highly prescriptive, the commons is more a set of general principles. That’s because the precise character of a commons will naturally vary from one instance to another.

The most immediate, strategic value of talking about the commons is its ability to help us alter the fundamental terms of market discourse. It can play a profound re-ordering role much as the meta-language of “the environment” did in the 1960s. “The environment,” recall, was a cultural invention. The air, water, soil and wildlife had always been there, of course. But they were not conceptualized in a coherent, unified way until the writer Rachel Carson and others began to popularize the idea of “the environment.”

Once the idea of the environment took root, people could begin to make mental connections among diverse phenomena that had previously seemed unconnected. It turned out that dying birds were linked to household chemicals! Genetic mutations in humans were linked to industrial pollution. And so on. The language of the environment not only gave us an overarching narrative, it helped galvanize a political movement by providing a new, understandable story.

Today, we face much the same problem in talking about countless shared resources that are threatened by the march of new technologies and expanding markets. Fresh water, the atmosphere, public lands, genetic information, scientific knowledge, cultural works, free and open source software and countless other gifts of nature and socially created resources are being privatized and commodified by corporations, with the active help of nation-states. Yet we do not really have an international public discourse for challenging the systemic limitations of the neoliberal economics and political culture.

To take one example: We do not have well-developed language and narratives for asserting the value of free, un-metered exchanges of information, which is increasingly the norm on the Internet. Conventional economics regards sharing and creative transformation as either worthless or a form of piracy. The commons is a useful antidote to this intellectual limitation because it gives us a new story to explain how social communities generate their own distinctive value – value that is economic, social and creative all at the same time.

The commons “tears the curtain away” from normative assumptions, revealing that market exchange is not the only source of value-added activity in societies. The commons can be at least as productive. But first, we need to name that social process if we are going to value it and preserve it.

To talk about the commons, then, is to insist that there are other powerful sources of value-creation that are humanistic and social, and yet can be described in serious and analytic terms. Politics and policymaking can build on these fundamental terms. It can begin to challenge market-based narratives that refuse to acknowledge some elemental realities of human instinct and social life. For example, copyright law sees value only in property-encased creativity; the public domain is regarded as a wasteland. Real estate developers regard open spaces and wilderness as unproductive land, lacking in value until the magic hand of property enlivens it. Companies ascribe value to people (“human resources”) only to the extent that they contribute to “the economy” as workers or consumers.

There is, right now, a movement growing around the world that has embraced the idea of the commons. It includes farmers who dislike genetically modified crops; Internet users who use free software; environmentalists who are fighting the commodification and global transport of fresh water; artists and musicians who have embraced the Creative Commons licenses; ordinary people who celebrate localism and “slow food” as healthier alternatives to industrialized agriculture; and indigenous peoples trying to preserve their cultural sovereignty; among many others.

The spontaneous and widespread embrace of the idea of the commons suggests a deep human yearning to explore new modes of social connection and collaboration, and to assert a common human identity at a time when markets and nation-states wish to separate us. As a political movement, the commons brings many attractive features to the table:

  • It underscores the fact that the people own certain resources and must have the right and legal mechanisms to control them.
  • It helps us challenge the presumption of market-speak that all resources should be available for sale.
  • It allows us to recognize the many types of socially created value that market economics fails to acknowledge.
  • It brings into focus a wide variety of related phenomena that are otherwise seen as vague and diffuse.
  • It is a positive vision, not just a reactive critique.
  • It helps people seize the moral high ground in fighting market excesses.

Just as the market vocabulary invests mundane acts of buying and selling with a cosmic significance, so the commons can confer new cultural respectability on social collaboration and shared ownership. Just as peer production on the Internet is a source of robust creativity, so the commons in “real life” can be a force to rejuvenate civil society. The commons resurrects this vision not as a utopian or revolutionary goal, but as an agenda grounded in practical, empirical realities. Again, the many commons of cyberspace are a source of inspiration.

Trying to build a new political and policy tradition of the commons – while still enmeshed in a deeply entrenched market culture – is likely to ensnarl us in many intellectual paradoxes and confusions. Any quest for ideological purity is doomed to failure. If there is one truth in the networked environment, it is that truth is not unitary. It is fractal, varied and local.

Which is why I believe that any commons movement must exhibit a tolerant, ecumenical humanism. We are all irregular, self-contradictory creatures living in a society rife with contradictions. The best way to transcend the cultural contradictions of our time may be to open ourselves up to the worlds of art and spiritual inquiry, which are a more universal, accessible language.

These realms have important things to say about the commons because the commons is not just a polemic – a cognitive, intellectual message – but equally a vehicle for social reconstruction and reconciliation. The commons lays claim to our deeper selves and enduring cultural traditions, not just that which can be monetized and sold or secured through the power of the state.

Because the language of the commons does not yet have wide cultural currency, its immediate value to politicians and policy debates is often limited. Yet those seeking serious, long-term change – and a way out of the neoliberal dead-end – should not find this discouraging. The point is precisely to introduce a transformative vocabulary into political culture, much as environmentalism did in its early days. There is practical, strategic value in talking about the commons, and in building a diverse, ecumenical movement on a fresh set of intellectual footings.