Marx position on Russia and the dualism of the agrarian community

Author: Lion Wedel

Relation of the “capital” to development of the Russian peasant community’s

It is a premise that the analysis of the genesis of capital in Capital is dedicated to the Western European countries. That means that the history stages described for the western hemisphere by Marx are not destined to Russia or any other cultural region across the globe except Western European (see Marx, 1881: p.2).
We can conclude that there is no evidence of Marx’s position on the destruction of the commons related to Russia in Capital. Without a specific analysis of the Russian Mir we’re not able to speak about a historical inevitability of the destruction of the Russian Commons. Out of these reasons Marx wrote down his analysis of the Russian Commons in a correspondence with Vera Zasulich.

Citește mai departe →

The Tragedy of the Common Sense

Author: Dinu Koica

A reaction paper to the article “Tragedy of the Commons” by Garret Hardin

Reading the article ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ by Garret Hardin, one must notice the multidisciplinary aspect of it. In his way of building up his argument, the author is borrowing from fields such as neoclassical and behavioral economics, game theory, evolutionary biology, abstract mathematics and psychoanalysis. Hardin even quotes Hegel, the Bible, Nietzsche and Adam Smith. This cocktail of quite heterogeneous knowledge, the mix of hard sciences and humanities with little romantic detours, begs the question – Is Hardin using a unique set of tools to shed new light on the problem of the commons or is he just cherry picking to get to the desired conclusions?

Citește mai departe →

From primitive accumulation to accumulation by disposession

Author: Marina Mironica

In order to keep itself alive capitalism always needs to enclose new goods and properties. Because of a moment of crisis or due to the urge to expand – two of the inevitable capitalism features – new territories have to be constantly conquered. By territories, I mean not only land, but also human labour products, cultural heritage or whatever else could be potentially put under enclosure and transformed from public to private property. The enclosures, which occurred in England, are referred to as a decisive step toward the concentration of land in the landlord’s hands.

Citește mai departe →

Whose commons? An exploration of ownership, against humanunkind

Author: Maria Martelli

The commons is one thing, or another, but what can be grasped of it is that it is something collective, something „common” to someone. Different theorists say different things,  from Hardin (1968) who puts it forward as a problem (a tragedy, even!) of managing collective goods, to Ostrom (2010) who solves this false theorizing of „commons” by urging us to look at specific examples (of common pool resources collectively managed, such as Swiss pastures). The first looks at grazing lands and fisheries and says something along the lines of: if we no one owns them, man (man, not some other instance of human) will make the maximum use of them for himself, and thus destroy them, slowly, and everyone will be worse off.

Citește mai departe →