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version of Section I.
I.6 What about the "Tragedy of the Commons"? Surely communal
ownership will lead to overuse and environmental destruction?
It should first be noted that the paradox of the "Tragedy of the Commons"
is actually an application of the "tragedy of the free-for-all"
to the issue of the "commons" (communally owned land). Resources
that are "free for all" have all the problems associated with
what is called the "Tragedy of the Commons," namely the overuse
and destruction of such resources; but unfortunately for the capitalists
who refer to such examples, they do not involve true "commons."
The "free-for-all" land in such examples becomes depleted
(the "tragedy") because hypothetical shepherds each pursue
their maximum individual gain without regard for their peers or the
land. What is individually rational (e.g., grazing the most sheep
for profit), when multiplied by each shepherd acting in isolation,
ends up grossly irrational (e.g., ending the livelihood of every
shepherd). What works for one cannot work as well for everyone in
a given area. But, as discussed below, because such land is not communally
managed (as true commons are), the so-called Tragedy of the
Commons is actually an indictment of what is, essentially, laissez-faire
capitalist economic practices!
As Allan Engler points out, "[s]upporters of capitalism cite
what they call the tragedy of the commons to explain the wanton plundering
of forests, fish and waterways, but common property is not the problem.
When property was held in common by tribes, clans and villages, people
took no more than their share and respected the rights of others.
They cared for common property and when necessary acted together to
protect it against those who would damage it. Under capitalism, there
is no common property. (Public property is a form of private property,
property owned by the government as a corporate person.) Capitalism
recognises only private property and free-for-all property. Nobody
is responsible for free-for-all property until someone claims it as
his own. He then has a right to do as he pleases with it, a right
that is uniquely capitalist. Unlike common or personal property, capitalist
property is not valued for itself or for its utility. It is valued
for the revenue it produces for its owner. If the capitalist owner
can maximise his revenue by liquidating it, he has the right to do
that." [Apostles of Greed, pp. 58-59]
Therefore, as Colin Ward argues, "[l]ocal, popular, control is
the surest way of avoiding the tragedy of the commons." [Reflected
in Water, p. 20] Given that a social anarchist society is a communal,
decentralised one, it will have little to fear from irrational overuse
or abuse of communally owned and used resources.
So, the real problem is that a lot of economists and sociologists
conflate this scenario, in which unmanaged resources are free
for all, with the situation that prevailed in the use of "commons,"
which were communally managed resources in village and tribal
communities. E.P. Thompson, for example, notes that Garret Hardin
(who coined the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons") was "historically
uninformed" when he assumed that commons were "pastures open
to all. It is expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many
cattle as possible on the commons." ["Custom, Law and Common
Right", Customs in Common, p. 108f] The commons, in fact,
were managed by common agreements between those who used them.
Similarly, those who argue that the experience of the Soviet Union
and Eastern Block shows that "common" property leads to pollution
and destruction of the resources also show a lack of awareness of
what common property actually is (it is no co-incidence that libertarian
capitalists use such an argument). This is because the resources in
question were not owned or managed in common -- the fact that
these countries were dictatorships excludes popular control of resources.
Thus the Soviet Union does not, in fact, show the dangers of having
"commons." Rather it shows the danger of not subjecting those
who control a resource to public control (and it is no co-incidence
that the USA is far more polluted than Western Europe -- in the USA,
like in the USSR, the controllers of resources are not subject to
popular control and so pass pollution on to the public). The Eastern
block shows the danger of state owned resource use rather than commonly
owned resource use, particularly when the state in question is not
under even the limited control of its subjects implied in representative
democracy.
This confusion has, of course, been used to justify the stealing
of communal property by the rich and the state. The continued acceptance
of this "confusion" in political debate is due to the utility of the
theory for the rich and powerful, who have a vested interest in undermining
pre-capitalist social forms and stealing communal resources. Therefore,
most examples used to justify the "tragedy of the commons"
are false examples, based on situations in which the underlying
social context is radically different from that involved in using
true commons.
In reality, the "tragedy of the commons" comes about only
after wealth and private property, backed by the state, starts to
eat into and destroy communal life. This is well indicated by the
fact that commons existed for thousands of years and only disappeared
after the rise of capitalism -- and the powerful central state it
requires -- had eroded communal values and traditions. Without the
influence of wealth concentrations and the state, people get together
and come to agreements over how to use communal resources, and have
been doing so for millennia. That was how the commons were managed,
so "the tragedy of the commons" would be better called the
"tragedy of private property." Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger
(and proto-anarchist), was only expressing a widespread popular sentiment
when he complained that "in Parishes where Commons lie the rich
Norman Freeholders, or the new (more covetous) Gentry overstock the
Commons with sheep and cattle, so that the inferior Tenants and poor
labourers can hardly keep a cow but half starve her." [quoted
by Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism,
p. 173] Colin Ward points to a more recent example, that of Spain
after the victory of Franco:
"The water history of Spain demonstrates that the tragedy of the commons
is not the one identified by Garrett Hardin. Communal control developed
an elaborate and sophisticated system of fair shares for all. The
private property recommended by Hardin resulted in the selfish
individualism that he thought was inevitable with common access,
or in the lofty indifference of the big landowners." [Colin Ward,
Op. Cit., p. 27]
As E.P. Thompson notes in an extensive investigation on this subject,
the tragedy "argument [is] that since resources held in common
are not owned and protected by anyone, there is an inexorable economic
logic that dooms them to over-exploitation. . . . Despite its common
sense air, what it overlooks is that commoners themselves were not
without common sense. Over time and over space the users of commons
have developed a rich variety of institutions and community sanctions
which have effected restraints and stints upon use. . . . As the old
. . . institutions lapsed, so they fed into a vacuum in which political
influence, market forces, and popular assertion contested with each
other without common rules." [Op. Cit., p. 107]
In practice, of course, both political influence and market forces
are dominated by wealth -- "There were two occasions that dictated
absolute precision: a trial at law and a process of enclosure. And
both occasions favoured those with power and purses against the little
users." Popular assertion means little when the state enforces
property rights in the interests of the wealthy. Ultimately, "Parliament
and law imposed capitalist definitions to exclusive property in land."
[E.P. Thompson, Op. Cit., p. 134 and p. 163]
The working class is only "left alone" to starve. In practice,
the privatisation of communal land has led to massive ecological destruction,
while the possibilities of free discussion and agreement are destroyed
in the name of "absolute" property rights and the power and
authority which goes with them.
For more on this subject, try The Question of the Commons,
Bonnie M. McCoy and James M. Acheson (ed.), Tucson, 1987 and The
Evolution of Co-operation by Robert Axelrod, Basic Books, 1984.
First, we need to point out the fallacy normally lying behind this objection.
It is assumed that because everyone owns something, that everyone
has to be consulted in what it is used for. This, however, applies
the logic of private property to non-capitalist social forms. While
it is true that everyone owns collective "property" in an anarchist
society, it does not mean that everyone uses it. Carlo Cafiero,
one of the founders of communist-anarchism, states the obvious:
"The common wealth being scattered right across the planet, while
belonging by right to the whole of humanity, those who happen to
be within reach of that wealth and in a position to make use of it
will utilise it in common. The folk from a given country will use
the land, the machines, the workshops, the houses, etc., of that
country and they will all make common use of them. As part of
humanity, they will exercise here, in fact and directly, their
rights over a portion of mankind's wealth. But should an inhabitant
of Peking visit this country, he [or she] would enjoy the same
rights as the rest: in common with the others, he would enjoy
all the wealth of the country, just as he [or she] would have
in Peking." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 250]
Anarchists, therefore, think that those who use a part of
society's wealth have the most say in what happens to it (e.g. workers
control the means of production they use and the work they do when
using it). This does not mean that those using it can do what they
like to it. Users would be subject to recall by local communities
if they are abusing their position (for example, if a workplace was
polluting the environment, then the local community could act to stop,
or if need be, close down the workplace). Thus use rights (or usufruct)
replace property rights in a free society, combined with a strong
dose of "think globally, act locally."
It is no coincidence that societies that are stateless are also
without private property. As Murray Bookchin points out "an individual
appropriation of goods, a personal claim to tools, land, and other
resources . . . is fairly common in organic [i.e. aboriginal] societies.
. . By the same token, co-operative work and the sharing of resources
on a scale that could be called communistic is also fairly common.
. . But primary to both of these seemingly contrasting relationships
is the practice of usufruct." [The Ecology of Freedom,
p. 50]
Such stateless societies are based upon "the principle of usufruct,
the freedom of individuals in a community to appropriate resources
merely by the virtue of the fact they are using them. . . Such resources
belong to the user as long as they are being used. Function, in effect,
replaces our hallowed concept of possession." [Bookchin, Op.
Cit., p. 50] The future stateless society anarchists hope for
would also be based upon such a principle. In effect, critics of social
anarchism confuse property with possession and think that abolishing
property automatically abolishes possession and use rights. However,
as argued in section B.3, property and possession
are distinctly different. In the words of Charlotte Wilson:
"Property is the domination of an individual, or a coalition of
individuals, over things; it is not the claim of any person or persons
to the use of things -- this is usufruct [or possession], a very
different matter. Property means the monopoly of wealth, the right
to prevent others using it, whether the owner needs it or not. Usufruct
implies the claim to the use of such wealth as supplies the user's
needs. If any individual shuts off a portion of it (which he is not
using, and does not need for his own use) from his fellows, he is
defrauding the whole community." [Three Essays on Anarchism, p. 17]
Thus an anarchist society has a simple and effective means of deciding
how communally owned resources are used, one based on possession and
usufruct.
As for deciding what a given area of commons is used for, that falls
to the local communities who live next to them. If, for example, a
local self-managed factory wants to expand and eat into the commons,
then the local community who uses (and so controls) the local commons
would discuss it and come to an agreement concerning it. If a minority
really objects, they can use direct action to put their point
across. But anarchists argue that rational debate among equals will
not result in too much of that. Or suppose an individual wanted to
set up an allotment in a given area, which had not been allocated
as a park. Then he or she would notify the community assembly by appropriate
means (e.g. on a notice board or newspaper), and if no one objected
at the next assembly or in a set time-span, the allotment would go
ahead, as no one else desired to use the resource in question.
Other communities would be confederated with this one, and joint
activity would also be discussed by debate, with a community (like
an individual) being free not to associate if they so desire.
Other communities could and would object to ecologically and individually
destructive practices. The interrelationships of both ecosystems and
freedom is well known, and its doubtful that free individuals would
sit back and let some amongst them destroy their planet.
Therefore, those who use something control it. This means that "users
groups" would be created to manage resources used by more than
one person. For workplaces this would (essentially) be those who worked
there (with, possibly, the input of consumer groups and co-operatives).
Housing associations made up of tenants would manage housing and repairs.
Resources that are used by associations within society, such as communally
owned schools, workshops, computer networks, and so forth, would be
managed on a day-to-day basis by those who use them. User groups would
decide access rules (for example, time-tables and booking rules) and
how they are used, making repairs and improvements. Such groups would
be accountable to their local community. Hence, if that community
thought that any activities by a group within it was destroying communal
resources or restricting access to them, the matter would be discussed
at the relevant assembly. In this way, interested parties manage their
own activities and the resources they use (and so would be very likely
to have an interest in ensuring their proper and effective use), but
without private property and its resulting hierarchies and restrictions
on freedom.
Lastly, let us examine clashes of use rights, i.e. cases where two
or more people or communities/collectives desire to use the same resource.
In general, such problems can be resolved by discussion and decision
making by those involved. This process would be roughly as follows:
if the contesting parties are reasonable, they would probably mutually
agree to allow their dispute to be settled by some mutual friend whose
judgement they could trust, or they would place it in the hands of
a jury, randomly selected from the community or communities in question.
This would take place if they could not come to an agreement between
themselves to share the resource in question.
On thing is certain, however, such disputes are much better settled
without the interference of authority or the re-creation of private
property. If those involved do not take the sane course described
above and instead decide to set up a fixed authority, disaster will
be the inevitable result. In the first place, this authority will
have to be given power to enforce its judgement in such matters. If
this happens, the new authority will undoubtedly keep for itself the
best of what is disputed, and allot the rest to its friends! By re-introducing
private property, such authoritarian bodies would develop sooner,
rather than later, with two new classes of oppressors being created
-- the property owners and the enforcers of "justice."
It is a strange fallacy to suppose that two people who meet on terms
of equality and disagree could not be reasonable or just, or that
a third party with power backed up by violence will be the incarnation
of justice itself. Common sense should certainly warn us against such
an illusion. Historical "counterexamples" to the claim that
people meeting on terms of equality cannot be reasonable or just are
suspect, since the history of disagreements with unjust or unreasonable
outcomes (e.g. resulting in war) generally involve conflicts between
groups with unequal power and within the context of private property
and hierarchical institutions.
And, we should note, it is equally as fallacious, as Leninists claim,
that only centralisation can ensure common access and common use.
Centralisation, by removing control from the users into a body claiming
to represent "society", replaces the dangers of abuse by a
group of workers with the dangers of abuse by a bureaucracy invested
with power and authority over all workers. If rank and file
workers can abuse their position and restrict access for their own
benefit, so can the individuals gathered round a centralised body
(whether that body is, in theory, accountable by election or not).
Indeed, it is far more likely to occur. Thus decentralisation
is the key to common ownership and access, not centralisation.
Communal "property" needs communal structures in order to
function. Use rights, and discussion among equals, replace property
rights in a free society. Freedom cannot survive if it is caged behind
laws enforced by public or private states.
This point is expressed in many different forms. John Henry MacKay (an individualist
anarchist) puts the point as follows:
"'Would you [the social anarchist], in the system of society which you
call 'free Communism' prevent individuals from exchanging their labour
among themselves by means of their own medium of exchange? And further:
Would you prevent them from occupying land for the purpose of personal
use?' . . . [The] question was not to be escaped. If he answered 'Yes!'
he admitted that society had the right of control over the individual and
threw overboard the autonomy of the individual which he had always zealously
defended; if on the other hand he answered 'No!' he admitted the right
of private property which he had just denied so emphatically." [Patterns
of Anarchy, p. 31]
However, as is clearly explained above and in sections B.3
and I.5.7, anarchist theory has a
simple and clear answer to this question. To see what this answer
is it simply a case of remembering that use rights replace property
rights in an anarchist society. In other words, individuals can exchange
their labour as they see fit and occupy land for their own use. This
in no way contradicts the abolition of private property, because occupancy
and use is directly opposed to private property. Therefore, in a free
communist society individuals can use land and such tools and equipment
as they personally "use and occupancy" as they wish -- they
do not have to join the free communist society. If they do not, however,
they cannot place claims on the benefits others receive from co-operation
and their communal life.
This can be seen from Charlotte Wilson's discussions on anarchism
written a few years before MacKay published his "inescapable"
question. Wilson argues that anarchism "proposes . . . [t]hat usufruct
of instruments of production -- land included -- should be free to
all workers, or groups of workers" and that "the necessary
connections between the various industries . . . should be managed
on the . . . voluntary principle." She asks the question: "Does
Anarchism . . . then . . . acknowledge . . . no personal property?"
She answers by noting that "every man [or woman] is free to take
what he [or she] requires" and so "it is hardly conceivable
that personal necessaries and conveniences will not be appropriated."
For "[w]hen property is protected by no legal enactments, backed
by armed force, and is unable to buy personal service, its resuscitation
on such a scale as to be dangerous to society is little to be dreaded.
The amount appropriated by each individual . . . must be left to his
[or her] own conscience, and the pressure exercised upon him [or her]
by the moral sense and distinct interests of his [or her] neighbours."
This is because:
"Property is the domination of an individual, or a
coalition of individuals, over things; it is not the claim
of any person or persons to the use of things -- this is,
usufruct, a very different matter. Property means
the monopoly of wealth, the right to prevent others
using it, whether the owner needs it or not. Usufruct
implies the claim to the use of such wealth as supplies
the users needs. If any individual shuts of a portion of
it (which he is not using, and does not need for his
own use) from his fellows, he is defrauding the whole
community." [Anarchist Essays, pp. 22-23 and p. 40]
In other words, possession replaces private property in a
free society. This applies to those who decide to join a free communist
society and those who desire to remain outside. This is clear from
Kropotkin's argument that an communist-anarchist revolution would
leave self-employed artisans and peasants alone if they did not desire
to join the free commune (see Act for Yourselves, pp. 104-5
and The Conquest of Bread, p. 61 and pp. 95-6). Thus the leading
theorist of free communism did not think the occupying of land for
personal use (or a house or the means of production) entailed the
"right of private property." Obviously John Henry MacKay had
not read his Proudhon!
This can be seen even clearer when Kropotkin argued that "[a]ll
things belong to all, and provided that men and women contribute their
share of labour for the production of necessary objects, they are
entitled to their share of all that is produced by the community at
large." [The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution,
p. 6] He goes on to state that "free Communism . . . places the
products reaped or manufactured in common at the disposal of all,
leaving to each the liberty to consume them as he [or she] pleases
in his [or her] own home." [Op. Cit., p. 7] This obviously
implies a situation of "occupancy and use" (with those who
are actually using a resource controlling it).
This clearly means, as the biographers of Kropotkin noted, that
an Individualist Anarchist like Tucker (or MacKay) "partly misinterprets"
Kropotkin when he "suggests that [Kropotkin's] idea of communal
organisation would prevent the individual from working on his
[or her] own if he wished (a fact which Kropotkin always explicitly
denied, since the basis of his theory was the voluntary principle)."
[G. Woodcock and I. Avakumovic, The Anarchist Prince, p. 280]
Thus the case of the non-member of free communism is clear -- they
would also consume what they have produced or exchanged with others
in their own home (i.e. land used for their own "personal use").
The land and resources do not, however, become private property
simply because they revert back into common ownership once they are
no longer "occupied and used." In other words, possession
replaces property. Thus communist-anarchists agree with Individualist
Anarchist John Beverley Robinson when he wrote:
"There are two kinds of land ownership, proprietorship or property, by
which the owner is absolute lord of the land to use it or hold it out
of use, as it may please him; and possession, by which he is secure in
the tenure of land which he uses and occupies, but has no claim on it
at all if he ceases to use it. For the secure possession of his crops
or buildings or other products, he needs nothing but the possession
of the land he uses." [Patterns of Anarchy, p. 273]
This system, we must note, was used in the rural collectives during
the Spanish Revolution, with people free to remain outside the collective
working only as much land and equipment as they could "occupy and
use" by their own labour. Similarly, the individuals within the
collective worked in common and took what they needed from the communal
stores. See Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution
for details (and section I.8).
Mackay's comments raise another interesting point. Given that Individualist
Anarchists oppose the current system of private property in land,
their system entails that "society ha[s] the right of control
over the individual." If we look at the "occupancy and use"
land system favoured by the likes of Tucker, we discover that it is
based on restricting property in land (and so the owners of land).
Tucker argued that if "the Anarchistic view" of "occupancy
and use" would prevail then any defence associations would not
protect anyone in the possession of more than they could personally
use, nor would they force tenants to pay rent to landlords of housing.
[The Individualist Anarchists, pp. 159-62] Thus the "prevailing
view", i.e. society, would limit the amount of land which individuals
could acquire, controlling their actions and violating their autonomy.
Which, we must say, is not surprising as individualism requires the
supremacy of the rest of society over the individual in terms of rules
relating to the ownership and use of possessions (or "property")
-- as the Individualist Anarchists themselves implicitly acknowledge,
as can be seen.
John Henry MacKay goes on to state that "every serious man must
declare himself: for Socialism, and thereby for force and against
liberty, or for Anarchism, and thereby for liberty and against force."
[Op. Cit., p. 32] Which, we must note, is a strange statement,
as individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker considered themselves
socialists and opposed capitalist private property (while, confusingly,
many of them calling their system of possession "property"
-- see section G.2.2).
However, MacKay's statement begs the question, does private property
support liberty? He does not address or even acknowledge the fact
that private property will inevitably lead to the owners of such property
gaining control over the individuals who use, but do not own, that
property and so denying them liberty (see section
B.4). As Proudhon argued:
"The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, 'This
is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.' Here, then, is
a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has right to step,
save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save
the proprietor and his servants. Let these multiply, and soon the
people . . . will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no
ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door,
on the edge of that property which was their birth-right; and the
proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, 'So perish idlers
and vagrants.'" [What is Property?, p. 118]
Of course, the non-owner can gain access to the property by selling
their liberty to the property-owner, by agreeing to submit to the
owners authority. Little wonder that Proudhon argued that the "second
effect of property is despotism." [Op. Cit., p. 259] Moreover,
given that Tucker argued that the state was "the assumption of
sole authority over a given area and all within it" we can see
that MacKay's argument ignores the negative aspects of property and
its similarity with the state [The Individualist Anarchists,
p. 24]. After all, MacKay would be the first to argue that the property
owner must be sovereign of their property (and not subject to any
form of control). In other words, the property owner must assume sole
authority over the given area they own and all within it. Little wonder
Emile Pouget, echoing Proudhon, argued that:
"Property and authority are merely differing manifestations and
expressions of one and the same 'principle' which boils down to
the enforcement and enshrinement of the servitude of man.
Consequently, the only difference between them is one of vantage
point: viewed from one angle, slavery appears as a property
crime, whereas, viewed from a different angle, it constitutes
an authority crime." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 66]
Neither does MacKay address the fact that private property requires
extensive force (i.e. a state) to protect it against those who use
it or could use it but do not own it.
In other words, MacKay ignores two important aspects of private
property. Firstly, that private property is based upon force, which
must be used to ensure the owner's right to exclude others (the main
reason for the existence of the state). And secondly, he ignores the
anti-libertarian nature of "property" when it creates wage
labour -- the other side of "private property" -- in which
the liberty of employees is obviously restricted by the owners whose
property they are hired to use. Unlike in a free communist society,
in which members of a commune have equal rights, power and say within
a self-managed association, under "private property" the owner
of the property governs those who use it. When the owner and the user
is identical, this is not a problem (i.e. when possession replaces
property) but once possession becomes property then despotism, as
Proudhon noted, is created.
Therefore, it seems that in the name of "liberty" John MacKay
and a host of other "individualists" end up supporting authority
and (effectively) some kind of state. This is hardly surprising as
private property is the opposite of personal possession, not its base.
Therefore, far from communal property restricting individual liberty
(or even personal use of resources) it is in fact its only defence.
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