4 – 2012

Commons

The power of ownership holds everything together: society, the state, the community of states. But the creaking sounds of strain from the structure can no longer be ignored. Week after week at a large conference table somewhere rescue packages are agreed; the sums involved are too great and too abstract for us to imagine. Is this still the market economy of which it was once said that it is the form of organization with the most efficient allocation of resources? Perhaps it is precisely the efficiency, or the profit, that is the problem – not fundamentally but structurally. Looking around, one notices with increasing alarm that there are hardly any areas that are not affected by the striving for profit. In Switzerland the concept of the Allmende is well-known and, even in the 21st century, has not vanished. Although today the English term commons is more widely used in research, the fundamental idea remains connected to joint ownership, and, above and beyond that, with the joint use of land, a source of water or of a building. And yet commons are far more than just a certain form of possession and ownership.