In the Boston Review, Michael Hardt contributes to an online forum on the threat posed to democracy by the privatization of public goods. Unlike many contributors to the forum, Hardt identifies a third category alongside the private and the public: the commons. Describing this as social goods that are governed neither by the laws of private property nor state by control, Hardt underscores the vital importance of the commons for democratic culture, because “private and public frequently function together to maintain exclusions and hierarchies.” Read an excerpt from Hardt’s piece below:
Fortunately the private and the public are not our only options. The common—defined by open access to, and shared democratic management of, social wealth—provides an alternative…
The common, in contrast to both the private and the public, is defined by open access and democratic decision-making. It thus designates not a third kind of property, but a non-property structure for sharing social wealth…
The Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock illuminate another face of the common. Led by an extraordinary gathering of North American tribes, the movement did not contest the pipeline route based on property rights. Nor did it appeal for greater state regulation or control. It posed a much more fundamental challenge, the implications of which extend well beyond the issue of pipelines: a new relation to the earth—to view the earth as common and to develop practices of care and participation on that basis. To share the earth in this way would require a radical transformation of the current social order.
Social movements such as the Spanish Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca and the pipeline protests render visible the common, which is so often obscured in discussions of public goods. They demonstrate that the public is not the only means of combatting neoliberal privatization and open up a wider range of social and political alternatives.
Image of Michael Hardt via egs.edu.