Ivan Illich on the Recovery of the Commons

Discussion

Ivan Illich:

"“How shall I call the opposite project: the reconquest of the right to live in self-limiting communities, that each treasure their own mode of subsistence. Pressed, I would call this project the recovery of the commons. Commons, in custom and law, refer to a kind of space which is fundamentally different from the space of which most ecologists speak. ... The public environment is opposed to the private home. Both are not what“ commons” mean. Commons are a cultural space that lies beyond my threshold and this side of wilderness. Custom defines the different usefulness of commons for each one. The commons are porous. The same spot for different purposes can be used by different people. And above all, custom protects the commons. The commons are not community resources; the commons become a resource only when the lord or community encloses them. Enclosure transmogrifies the commons into a resource for extraction, production or circulation of commodities. Commons are as vernacular as vernacular speech. I am not suggesting that it is possible to recreate the old commons. But lacking any better analogy, I speak of the recovery of the commons to indicate how, at least conceptually, [it can be understood] ... Truly subsistence-oriented action transcends economic space, it reconstitutes the commons. This is as true for speech that recovers common language as for action which recovers commons from the environment.”

(https://journals.psu.edu/illichstudies/article/view/62221/61627)