Author: Tiger Kneller

Hardin, Bollier, and Caffentzis & Federici introduce three unique approaches to the value of “the commons”. Hardin is clearly anti-commons and very much concerned with the implications of a growing world population. He drastically claims, “freedom in a commons brings ruin to all,” essentially arguing that freedom and equality cannot coexist due to the finite amount of resources a commons can offer. Bollier, on the other hand, critiques Hardin first by claiming Hardin does not correctly envision a commons. Unlike Hardin’s imaginary pasture, for Bollier, “a commons has boundaries, rules, social norms and sanctions against free riders. A commons requires that there be a community willing to act as a conscientious steward of a resource” (Bollier 24). Furthermore, whereas Hardin assumes that people cannot cooperate in stable and sustainable ways, Bollier lauds the work of Elinor Ostrom who was one of the first scholars to advance more sociological motivations of a commons. Bollier and Ostrom lean toward a ruling ethic of sufficiency, rather than Hardin’s ethic of efficiency instilled within “rational” actors. Lastly, Caffentzis & Federici argue for a more stringent idea of a commons, free from any capitalist characteristics or profit-based motivations. C&F believe, “Anti-capitalist commons are not the end point of a struggle to construct a non-capitalist world, but its means” (C&F i103, emphasis added by me). Altogether, we can think of the scholars’ work in a sort of venn diagram:

I want to meditate on the ability of a commons to foster long-term relationships. First of all, the relationships between people in a commons, whether they be on the internet or in a community garden, seem to be willingly chosen and seem more active than operations within a social contract arrangement. Long-term relationships can form in a commons, unlike in the marketplace, because people form bonds by mutually maintaining a resource and working over time toward a regenerative common goal. I see this as a process that generates empathy, which I would argue is largely aided by face-to-face interaction. As such, I’m skeptical of the sustainability of a commons that grows too large. The ability for commoners to form empathy for others seems crucial, and I’m uncertain how effectively empathy can be engendered without constant face-to-face interaction. The sort of “rationality” that Hardin claims as bolstering a scenario in which, “each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit– in a world that is limited,” is less likely when each man is inclined to look out for other herdsmen (Hardin 1244). In other words, empathy can bar “rationality”, and for the better, but empathy is most strongly instilled when humans are interacting in person. (Read about mirror neurons here: https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror)

This brings me to my skepticism of the feasibility of Ostrom’s “polycentric” governance over too much space. Despite how well the concentric levels of governance are arranged and organized, I still wonder how democratic ways of life are stymied by distance. What is lost when those making decisions don’t know the people the decisions effect? Additionally on the subject of governance, Bollier suggests that ideally “the state must act as a trustee for commoners,” a sort of revitalization of bureaucracy (141). The question, for Bollier, “is not so much whether markets or governments have some role in commons but rather to what degree and under what terms” (145). C&F would disagree on the premise of the question, but I will just pose hesitation. Hannah Arendt likens bureaucracy to the rule of nobody. I’m weary that the state in any kind of trustee capacity would function bureaucratically, because “the state” as a group of removed individuals, stray from the very necessary face-to-face interaction and governing I argue a commons needs to thrive. My parting questions are these: How scalable is a commons? Does that question depend on the kind of commons? Should we even be aiming toward scalability when it comes to a commons?   

“Whiteness as Property” by critical race theorist, Cheryl Harris, is asking us to widen our understanding of property beyond the scope of Locke and George’s contributions. Specifically, Harris urges us to consider how “whiteness”, as a “right to white identity as embraced by the law” is indeed a modern form of property (1726). Harris highlights that whiteness functions as each an identity, status, and form of property– defending the latter by noting that, “the fact that whiteness is not a ‘physical’ entity does not remove it from the realm of property” (1725). Whiteness, she argues, shares with physical property the ability to exclude, codified and enforced by the law. However, whiteness as property fuses the concept of property with questions of power, selection, and allocation (1729), ultimately creating value because it and its explicit and implicit benefits could be, and is, denied to some (1744).

To bolster her claims, Harris traces the evolution and legacy of two monumental Supreme Court cases, Plessy and Brown, to showcase their attention to de jure, rather than de facto, forms of racism. While her main focus rests on the inadequacies of the legacy of Brown I and II, I found one of her footnotes quite curious. Harris mentions, “The removal of de jure segregation resulted from the domestic pressure generated by the oppressed Black masses under the banner of equal justice under law as well as from the external dynamic of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence in the Third World. The United States was vulnerable to the charge that its domestic policies toward Black people residing in the United States were a better indication of its view of the emerging nations of Africa and Asia than its rhetoric of democracy” (1754). Contextualizing Brown v. Board in the Cold War moment makes its inability to address substantive and de facto inequities unsurprising, and perhaps predictable. The United States, as an empire, is unique in its rejection of its own status. Racism is written in the DNA of the U.S., making phrases like “We the people…” forever exclusive despite its appeal to both liberty and equality (an unlikely pair) on the global stage. What is rhetorically beneficial is prioritized, which is why Brown needed only to produce the bare minimum of equality under the law to keep the foundation of our international brand somewhat stable. Moreover, the Cold War, most basically representing the clash between Communism and Capitalism ideologies, is a clash between theories of private property. Compared to the Soviet Union, which generally attempted to advance economically-oriented rights, the United States emphasized more politically-oriented rights by which whiteness was undoubtedly protected and removed from class discontents. Whiteness could more easily function as property in the United States because whiteness superseded class distinction, a phenomenon aided by a disregard for social and economic rights in favor of political rights more easily formulated into rhetoric.

On another note, I want to pay attention to Harris’s section regarding the case Mashpee Tribe v. Town of Mashpee. Commenting on the ruling, Harris writes, “Fundamentally… the external imposition of definition maintained the social equilibrium that was severely challenged by the Mashpee land claims” (1765). This makes me wonder how certain groups are meant to remain the same over time despite external pressures to comply with changing cultural, social, and economic environments threatening the groups very survival. In other words, how is land connected to the perception of identity? How do claims to land depend on the stability, or even static-ness, of some identities? It is clear that the Mashpee Indians could not provide the vision whites wanted to have of them as “authentic”, even if this authenticity was not composed by the group it was meant to portray. In some ways, this pressure for cultures to remain unchanged in order for dominating groups to digest their presence reminds me of similar pressures imposed upon gentrifying neighborhoods today. In order to combat major, sterilizing, development, ethnic neighborhoods are sometimes saved by portraying the authenticity and richness of their culture. Cultural enclaves too must adapt to the market, and the construction of identity as portrayed to visitors can be crucial to its preservation. In a sense, claims to land are tied to how one presents their tie to it. If the presentation is convincing to outsiders, the better chance the tie has of surviving. Although the topic of gentrification deserves more attention, I found that Harris’s mention of the Mashpee case really struck a chord.

To sum it up, Harris’s “Whiteness as Property” makes a compelling argument as to why whiteness should indeed be understood as property, which makes her strong belief in affirmative action as a distributional, as opposed to corrective, form of justice convincing. However, as we have the luxury of hindsight, I do question how Harris, writing in 1993, underestimated the impasse that the U.S. finds itself in today. My parting questions revolve around her thoughts viewing whiteness as a “consolation prize” in that, “it does not mean that all whites will win, but simply that they will not lose, if losing is defined as being on the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy – the position to which Blacks have been consigned” (1758-59). How are we to get whites to view whiteness as property if some feel they are a part of the “forgotten America”, in which jobs, livelihoods, and the comforts whiteness used to automatically afford, feel as if they have been taken away? This “impasse” (which I see Trump wholly capitalizing from) has created a scenario in which whites don’t see whiteness as putting bread on the table, but as something explained to them solely through critique. How do you tell somebody they own a historically valued entity when they perceive themselves as having nothing without engendering defensiveness? Something to consider.

Both John Locke and Henry George agree that labor is the essential ingredient in ownership. Locke describes the process of coming to own property as taking, “something from the state that nature has provided and left it in” and mixing his labor with it, “thus joining it to something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property” (Locke 11). George’s opinion is similar in that “as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only title to exclusive possession” (The Injustice of Private Property in Land). However, Locke and George disagree about the validity of owning land. Whereas George believes that the idea of private property in the land is “wrong” because humans cannot produce land, Locke contends, “A man owns whatever land he tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the products of. By his labor he as it were fences off that land from all that is held in common” (Locke 12). Central to this disagreement is George’s opinion that “the essential characteristic of the land is that it does not embody labor” (The Injustice of Private Property in Land). This is where I’d like to intervene.

I would like to question if, in fact, land does not embody labor and if it exists “irrespective of human exertion,” as George argues. Both authors are products of their time, therefore unable to foresee the kind of globalized world we live in, which displays such vast inequality between industrialized and undeveloped areas. From a 21st century lens, it is almost harder to extract labor from land to imagine it without than to conceptualize how we could, as George may try, to envision humans producing land, implying a kind of unnatural labor. Today, land is nearly unrecognizable without thinking about our relation to it. Patrick Wolfe, author of “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” posits that “land is life.” In other words, we cannot exist without it, and as Locke notes, “when God gave the world in common to all mankind, he commanded man to work and man needed to work in order to survive” (Locke 13). Thus, obeying God, man’s relationship to land became the very basis of his own life, which he owns according to both Locke and George. The key here is making the jump from being entitled to hold land in common to privately owning it.

Locke argues that, “No man’s labour could tame or appropriate all the land; no man’s enjoyment could consume more than a small part; so that is was impossible for any man in this way to infringe on the right of another; or acquire a property to the disadvantage of his neighbor” (Locke 14). What Locke is saying is that so long as everyone can acquire only so much property as they have the capacity to use for themselves, privately owned land is not in itself a bad thing. In this scenario, “fencing off” land for oneself is not a detriment to the community because everybody has the opportunity to do so and thrive from it. Here, Locke’s argument connects to George’s assertion that, “All people exist in nature on equal footing and have equal rights,” in that so long as this natural right of equality lends itself to equal opportunity, there is no room for co-opting the commonality of land in a harmful way. I see two snags here. First is that making an argument about “natural rights” becomes moot in a society which has written and unwritten social contracts that have worked and continue to privilege certain identities in socioeconomic life. Second, and interrelated, is Locke’s argument that money, fiat currency, has created lots of problems.

The invention of money, gold as a fiat currency namely, created a system that would take man, “beyond the bounds of his rightful property” because with money, the basis of accumulation was no longer necessarily for use and thus goods could spoil, creating a waste (Locke 17). Money was “a durable thing that men could keep without it spoiling;” men could take more than what was needed to support life and manipulate trade for more than sustenance (Locke 18). It was no longer a mixing of rights and convenience which curbed man’s temptation to labour for than what he could use, but rather a creation of artificial value (Locke 18).

These ideas bring up some final, half-baked, thoughts and questions for me: Was private property a valid concept before the invention and widespread use of money? Will it ever be valid, according to Locke, for as long as money is a dominant tool in trade? What about the role of overpopulation and overdevelopment? Are we far past any redemption of private property in the land given that theoretically there may no longer be enough space for everyone to use only what they would need? Have we “improved” land too much for it to be of use?

Andro Linklater’s opinions on private property are not subtle. With descriptions like “contagion” and “monster”, he is clearly not a fan of the principle that helped form a new psychological outlook and sensibility that prioritized the individual. Linklater lists the results of the private property revolution: “The traditional rights of villeins and laborers were overturned. The claims of the feudal superior, whether lord or king, were frozen out. The needs of wives and children were subsumed. All those who might have challenged the solitary male owner’s right to exclusive possession of the land were sidelined” (Linklater 36). Unsurprisingly, each of these results was presented as deeply tangled with religious values and histories. A few points in Linklater’s work regarding the conversation between private property and religion are worth noting.

First, the process of putting church land on the market circa 1540  is crucial. Since the Protestant Reformation spread rumors of the “luxury and decadence of monastic life,” monasteries attracted a degree of scrutiny that would result in King Henry VIII’s seizure of religious property (Linklater 20). The seized land would be sold to pay for the King’s navy and foreign wars, leading to several turnovers of the land that was priorly incredibly lucrative for wool production. The seizures of lands formerly held by monasteries accelerated the psychological development of individualized sensibilities. The seizures also set in motion the horrible conditions of what Marx would call “primitive accumulation” in which “so many peasants were driven off the manors that once supported them, they were deemed a menace to England’s emerging property-owning society” (Linklater 21). It seemed that in effort to rebuke the corruption of the Catholic church, an even greater corruption would take its place. Yet whereas the corruption of the Catholic church was blamed on a community, eventual criticism of private-property owning societies would be placed on a system. Curiously, in both scenarios the individual is protected.

Next worth mentioning is this unmistakable linkage between private property and Protestantism, tied tighter by a democratic knot. Referring to the development of private property for commercial usage other than subsistence farming, Max Weber argued that, “profit driven enterprise sprang out of the individualized tenets of the protestant reformation” (Linklater 18). However, Linklater disagrees with Weber in that, “it would be more accurate to say that individual property owners were naturally drawn to a faith that gave priority to the individual conscience” (Linklater 18). Linklater’s critique based on Weber’s incorrect dating would support his later description of the “new American” inclination toward Reverend John Cotton’s sermon. Linklater describes Cotton’s sermon as giving private property a “biblical backing”, noting, “there was biblical evidence to reassure the new Americans that their right to individually owned, landed property depended on their own efforts in improving the ground, and not on English law” (Linklater 28). In the “new American” frame of reference, another ingredient is added to Linklater’s contagious recipe for disaster: democracy. He reminds us, “The first major democratic decision taken on American soil,” was, “in favor of individual ownership,” and, “carried a symbolism that echoes down the centuries,” referencing the Mayflower settlers’ decision to turn away from a more “communist”-like model of living toward conjoining allotments of private property to form a community (Linklater 25). However, this tripartite “monster”, Protestantism, private property, and democracy, formed during a time when private property was still widely regarded as validated by monarchies.

As such, lastly, I’d like to mention how the Divine Right of Kings plays a role according to Linklater. The author’s discussion on colonies highlighted the nature of the relationship between monarchy and property. As he outlines the legality of royal charters that granted territory to a company or powerful proprietor, Linklater claims, “The King’s royal power, backed by ‘divine grace’, as the charter also specified, was the ultimate authority that enabled colonists to claim that particular bit of the earth’s surface as their property… Real estate was literally and legally, royal estate” (Linklater 29). This unprovable notion chafes against the Judaic concept, stemming from Leviticus, that humans are “mortals”, “mere strangers and sojourners” by definition unable to own land (Linklater 26). Similarly, the Divine Right of Kings grates against the idea held dear to third century B.C. Chinese emperors that rulers are but, “intermediaries between the spiritual and material worlds” (Linklater 26). Both the Judaic and Chinese perceptions (and others that Linklater mentions) of a person’s orientation in the universe speak to the individual, but do not prioritize it making private property an unstable concept. I wonder how these rather humble and beautiful existential ideas could be incorporated or reimagined in a society indisputably defined by an “individualized ethos of the property-owner influenced government, the law, and everyday life” (Linklater 38). It very well may be impossible, as private property seems less an ethos, but more a religion; a religion with its own mystical all-powerful beings who really own the earth: corporations.

Each of this week’s readings addresses the validity of private property by presenting theological or spiritual approaches to the relationship between people and land. In the Hebrew Bible, man is characterized as a caretaker of the land. Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it,” but is also sent forth from the Garden, “to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Genesis, 2). It is clear that the Hebrew Bible paints man as originating from the earth he is meant to take care of, which begs the legitimacy of privately owned property if all people, as descendants of Adam and Eve, were made from earth they may be barred from inhabiting. The underlying question here is, as St. Augustine asks, “By what right does every man possess what he possesses?” (Gibb 1). As Christians and Jews today certainly own private property, origin is by no means a right to possession. For St. Augustine, the Lockean alternative seems also ill-fitted. Nowhere does St. Augustine mention labor as a necessary component for man to possess what he possesses. And if we were to go down the Lockean route, since God created the heaven and the earth, and since that creation can be construed as labor, he technically owns everything. However, the Lockean interpretation is anachronistic, and therefore perhaps not applicable.

Chief Seattle’s discussion of land is similar to the Hebrew Bible’s in that there seems an obvious tether between the physical and spiritual. In the Hebrew Bible, “everything that creepeth upon the earth,” within exists, “a living soul” (Genesis, 1). Comparably, Chief Seattle claims, “the soil is rich with the life of our kindred,” when describing the deep sorrow his people felt as white settlers violently took over the natives’ land. However, Chief Seattle’s explanation of man’s connection to the earth seems deeper and more mystical because the connection does not stem from an all-powerful, central being but animates the inherent spirit inside the living and nonliving alike. And because of the spirits so deeply ingrained in the landscape, Chief Seattle describes why man can never truly be alone despite desires to privatize the uses of land. He says, “In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.” The values of community so crucial to Native American culture insisted that even without other people around, man was in the spirited company of the natural world around him. Whereas Native Americans saw the natural world as a force to cohabitate and act in symbiosis with, the white settlers saw it as something to tame and control. For the settlers, the earth was not a living thing, but something to subdue for the progress of civilization. As such, nature and civilization would never be able to exist at the same time; civilization depends on such a subduing. Even to be considered a “man” in the eyes of the settlers required a recognition of private property. “Rights” to such “property” were given to Native Americans often as code for the true intent to break up their communal ties to land, leaving the natives defenseless against this damning liberty.

Radically different from both conceptions of property and ownership in the Hebrew Bible and by Chief Seattle is Confucius’ offering of the Dao. Confucius proclaims that popular interest in government is a sign of political failure and moreover that, “when the Dao prevails in the world, governance does not lie in the hands of grandees. When the Dao prevails in the world, the common people do not discuss governance” (16.2). I cannot speak to the governing structure of Chief Seattle’s tribe, but white, and by 1854, “American”, settlers were bound by the principles of “democracy” which necessitating the allocation of private property. Suffrage was linked to property ownership and race. Civic participation was (and is) inextricably linked to private ownership and wealth. Yet Confucius insists the goal is for “common people” to be unconcerned with governance. Clearly we are straddling two very different conceptions of the best way to organize society, but what is intriguing is that the organization of society is primarily talked about in terms of property. The thread of all of these readings seems to be that in order to discuss how to live, we also must discuss our relationship as to where we do that. Whether it be a relationship of caretaking, symbiosis, or duty, it becomes clear that the basis of society rests upon our relationship with land– how we treat it, who it’s been stolen from, and what say we even have over it.