The commons are in crisis.
The commons were and still are effectively and often elusively
encroached, plundered and exploited by the prevailing global system. The
commons, property of public, are usurped systematically with ‘bards’ of
the system praising its ‘great conquest’ all the while. In this present
world stage, the usurpation is an accelerated and wider reality.
With the wake of crises threatening both ecology and
economy, protecting and claiming the commons can be just one of the ways
of peoples’ survival through these crises. But how can the commons be
protected and claimed before the brutal onslaught of the prevailing
system?
The answer to the question is of social nature, find
psychological researcher Craig Parks and Jeff Joireman of Washington
State University, Pullman and Paul A.M. Van Lange of Vrije Universiteit,
Amsterdam in their research report in Psychological Science in the
Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The researchers “emphasize the urgent need to broaden thoughtful use of
public goods” as they discuss their scientific findings on conditions
that foster cooperative use and protection of the common resources in
the report.
The act of protecting the commons is a popular act.
People are one of its basic driving forces. Craig and his co-researchers
argue that people help out in urgent situations if their leaders act in
a transparent and trustworthy way. Along with it strong sense of
belonging and smaller community size where one’s contribution can be
easily identified are also factors that affect people’s role in
protecting and claiming the commons. Cognitive disconnection or people’s
inability to grasp the idea of the vast threats to the common resources
also plays a part in affecting people’s initiative to protect the
commons. The researchers also argue that policymakers, in promoting
optimal use of public goods, must concentrate on building public's trust
to garner cooperation.
Yet questions remain unanswered. Why looting of the
commons still continue despite calls and efforts by governments and
organizations to protect these? Is it because people cannot trust their
leaders? Or is it the leaders’ incapability? If that is the case, then
who can lead the people to protect their commons?
Leading people to protect the commons is historically
impossible by a leadership that is rooted in the prevalent production
relations. The ‘leading’ or dominating classes are inherently incapable
of leading the masses. Though history finds, in countries, sections of
the ruling classes played the role of leaders in the primary stages of
the present system. The moment these classes plunged into accumulation,
expansion and appropriation they lost justification and capacity to lead
the masses regarding claiming the commons. Historically these
dominating classes have ‘alienated’ themselves from the masses they rule
and in the process have only maintained a farce of leadership.
Essentially as long as a system immersed into maximization of profit continues to function the protection of the commons by peoples’ active participation under the leadership of the present ruling classes is a far away dream. Words like ‘democracy’ and ‘sovereignty’ does not exist in the handbook of the system that practices neoliberalism.
Essentially as long as a system immersed into maximization of profit continues to function the protection of the commons by peoples’ active participation under the leadership of the present ruling classes is a far away dream. Words like ‘democracy’ and ‘sovereignty’ does not exist in the handbook of the system that practices neoliberalism.
“The free mobility of capital between sectors, regions, and countries is regarded as crucial. All barriers to that free movement (such as tariffs, punitive taxation arrangements, planning and environmental controls, or other locational impediments) have to be removed, except in those areas crucial to ‘the national interest’, however that is defined. State sovereignty over commodity and capital movements is willingly surrendered to the global market.”
Neoliberalization rather than generating wealth and
income has achieved redistribution. It has continued processes of
accumulation by dispossession only in a more rapid and expansive way.
“These include the commodification and privatization of land and the
forceful expulsion of peasant populations compare the cases of
Mexico and of China, where 70 million peasants are thought to have been
displaced in recent times); conversion of various forms of property
rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property
rights (most spectacularly represented by China); suppression of rights
to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of
alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial,
neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets
(including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation,
particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in
the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of
all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by
dispossession. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions
of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these
processes.”
“In societies, usurpers of the commons are helped by
section of law enforcers and section of jurists, by section of media and
section of political leadership. In societies, legislation,
administration and jurisdiction turn servile to the commons robbers, and
long hand of law ‘fails’ to catch neck of the commons thieves.”
“To demolish commoners’ power to claim enclosed
commons, commoners are demobilized, deactivated, depoliticized; their
organizations and determining section of leadership of these
organizations are purchased and co-opted and the committed section of
the leadership is made isolated; the vacuum in the areas of commoners’
politics and resistance thus created are stuffed with slogan mongering
pseudo- , ultra- and philistine-fighters, and all out efforts are made
to perpetuate ignorance, confusion and indiscipline.”
The ‘leadership’ with a saintly face full of promises
continues encroachment of the commons all the while keeping the people
in dark. The case of “cognitive disconnection” comes into play as people
are intentionally kept ignorant, alienated and indifferent. As
“simulated, re-created, or edited versions of events and experiences”
clutter our consciousness “direct contact with other people, other
communities, other sources of knowledge, and the natural world” turn
faint and fainter. Even this very act of dominating and subtly dictating
people’s consciousness is commons-robbery as the process of free
thinking and reacting to events is tampered with.
As the present ‘leadership’ hangs a curtain of false
hopes and aspirations in front of people and sometimes to keep them
rejuvenated takes projects that work as ‘incentives’ or a form of
psychological bribery, the people fail to effectively organize to
protect their commons. Force or false hopes are used or planted by the
system. Constant continuation of these acts ultimately results in a loss
of credibility of ‘leadership’ and consequently their justification to
lead.
Leadership is not an independent function, nor can it
be exclusively personified. Its roots are in broader society, in social
classes and processes. Justification and credibility of the leadership
are also innate functions of these. The dominant leadership’s only
function is to be collaborator and turn active participants in the
system’s gluttonous process of usurping and appropriating the commons
and establishing property relations antagonistic to people’s existence,
organization and democratic rights that in turn are also part of the
commons!
Protecting the commons is a part of the historic
struggle raging under the social surface between contentious classes.
The effective leadership to organize the people to claim the commons
must develop from the ranks of the people. A leadership founded on the
bases of the classes that will play historically progressive role in
upholding people’s cause only can be justified to have the people’s
trust. And only then can the commons be claimed successfully by the
people.
(Omar Rashid Chowdhury studies Civil Engineering in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology)
from here
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