Free, Fair and Alive [1] is the third book in a major undertaking by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich which spans the last fifteen years and has brought to fruition the work of the Commons Strategy Group [/], which they founded. The first two books, The Wealth of the Commons [2] and Patterns of Commoning, [3] followed the work of Elinor Ostrom, Nobel prizewinner in 2009, who established the viability of self-governing communities in local resource management (see our interview with David Bollier ‘The Revival of the Commons’). While Ostrom’s analysis concentrated on the rules that need to be followed in a commons, in this book Bollier and Helfrich are more concerned with the attitude of mind of commoners, which they believe possesses a quality that has been lost in the contemporary market-dominated mindset. Thus Free, Fair and Alive, while providing a new and more penetrating analysis of the nature of commons based on academic work and a wealth of practical examples, is also concerned with the contribution that the thinking of commoners can make in the future of a world apparently threatened by a neoliberal ideology.

“This book is dedicated to overcoming an epidemic of fear with a surge of reality-based hope,” is the opening sentence of the Introduction (p. 1). The first three chapters tackle the ‘epidemic of fear’, with a critique of the perception of identity of the competitive individual in our market-oriented society, compared with the self-perception of a person in a community which shares responsibility for the well-being of its members. The two views of reality are in conflict and the authors argue that what they term the ‘ontoshift to the commons’ is necessary for the survival of social life. The kernel of the argument is that the relationship between entities yields a richer and more value-oriented world-view than the isolating concentration on the entities themselves advocated by philosophers like Locke.

The authors use the term ‘Ubuntu Rationality’ to refer to a way of thinking that seeks to align individual and collective well-being. This is term derived from the Bantu languages of South Africa, where the word ubuntu expresses the relationship between ‘me’ and ‘the other’; it has become associated with an African philosophy [/] founded on “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”.[4] Bollier and Heflrich define Ubuntu Rationality as:

A logic of human interaction that recognizes the deep connections between a person’s interests and well-being of others. It points to a dynamic where a person’s unfolding requires the unfolding of others, and vice versa. (p.89)

Aware that readers may find their insistence on the importance of ontology distracting, they point to the importance of relational ontology – the idea that what distinguishes objects is mutual relation rather than substance – to complexity science, which is revolutionising chemistry, physics and economics (see our article ‘The Century of Complexity’). They also refer to their colleague Andreas Weber, biologist, poet and philosopher, who has written extensively on the primacy of relationship in biological systems (see our article ‘A Biology of Wonder’).

The habit of ‘thinking like a commoner’ (the title of another of Bollier’s books [5]) is not acquired overnight, but rather comes about through the experience of commoning. The need for a new language to express the nature of commoning is met with a comprehensive vocabulary of terms at the end of this section. The entry under ‘Enclosure’ gives a taste:

Enclosure is the act of “fencing of” land, forest, or pasture to convert shared wealth that commoners have depended upon for their needs, into private property. Historically, enclosures were political initiatives by feudal lords and later, by early capitalists and parliaments. Today enclosures are generally driven by investors and corporations, often in collusion with the nation-state, to privatize and commodify all sorts of shared wealth – land, water, digital information, creative works, genetic knowledge – dispossessing COMMONERS in the process. […]

Enclosure is the opposite of COMMONING in that it separates what commoning otherwise connects: people and land, you and me, present and future generations, technical infrastructures and their governance, rulers and the ruled, wilderness lands and the people who have stewarded them for generations. (pp. 78–9)

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The Patterns of Commoning

The second section of the book is accordingly devoted to a new conceptualisation of commoning, an undertaking which the authors feel has not so far been met by general discussions, which are often hampered by the use of economistic terminology. They find that the ‘pattern language’ developed by the architect Christopher Alexander [/] provides a more helpful approach in identifying a ‘common core’ of commoning while recognising the unique character of every commons. 

Patterns, described as “a kernel of an idea for solving problems that show up again and again in different contexts” (p. 96), were proposed by Alexander as a tool for giving ordinary people control over their own environment. As conceived by Bollier and Helfrich, they are not principles governing the formation of commons, but tendencies observed within the endlessly variable manifestations of commoning in time, like phyla in evolution. They “amount to design tools that help us address our practical challenges while speaking to our inner ethical, aesthetic and spiritual needs.” (p. 97)  

A ‘Triad of Commoning’ is proposed: Social Life, Peer Governance and Provisioning. The authors immediately warn that these headings inter-relate and that the commons is “a stealth laboratory for new forms of life” – a phrase of Pascal Gielen’s [/] (p. 102). Nevertheless, it is proposed that social life is subject to the following injunctions:

• Cultivate Shared Purpose and Values
• Ritualize Togetherness
• Contribute Freely
• Practice Gentle Reciprocity
• Trust Situated Knowing
• Deepen Communion with Nature
• Preserve Relationships in Addressing Conflicts
• Reflect on your Peer Governance. (p. 103)

A consideration of these headings should help the reader to see how fundamental the concept of Ubuntu Rationality is to this book. Peer governance is headlined in the same way, but described as “an artful political dialectic between culture and structure” (p. 121). The word ‘peer’ is the clue; commoners share a responsibility in their self-governance. They do not have to be ordered to vote, as in Australia. Alternatives to the party political system of decision-making are explored. The authors point out that in a commons it is more important to find solutions to whatever problem arises than to make laws which may simply not apply to whatever is in hand. Similarly, enforcement of decisions is far more effective when applied by those affected by them than it is by agencies outside the action. Most importantly, it is necessary to protect a commons from the commercial market with its emphasis on property. Many measures and an extensive literature on this topic are reviewed.

The section ‘Provisioning through the Commons’ is both a critique of the market economy and the identification of patterns of production and consumption which more closely resemble the ancient Greek oikonomia. Cooperation and sharing, and the ‘use of convivial tools’ are key patterns. The absence of externalising ‘women’s work’, education, health, social care and nature is fundamental to the commons. 

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The Commons and the State

Part Three of the book, entitled ‘Governing the Commonsverse’, tackles the obvious problem: can the patterns observed in the commons be scaled up?  If the commons have so far been classically identified first in early tribal existence, then in the feudal version and later in community initiatives, what is the future of Ubuntu Rationality in a neoliberal world that is destroying itself?  These questions prompt a re-consideration of the concepts of property and property law and of the many historical examples of what can or cannot be owned. Vernacular and customary law may often be at odds with state law. Roman concepts of inalienability, often associated with the air, oceans and sacred matters, could well be applied today in environmental stewardship. Throughout this exploration we are often reminded that the present day assumption that practically everything has a market value and that nature (land), labour and money are commodities has led to a disastrous devaluation of the spiritual needs of humanity.

Discussion of this problem can lead to endless generalities, but the authors have avoided this danger by immersing themselves in examples of commoning from all over the world and describing how they interact with society at large. These case studies range from the voluntary self-organising fire-fighting services in Germany, Austria and Poland which are provided with gear by the state, to inter-village agreements in Japan to control the harvesting of matsutake mushrooms over an area permeated by the mycelia.  What could be a dull handbook is actually an earthy treasure trove of original answers to the endless variety of questions met in daily life. How can the ‘state’ accommodate this creative element? Many unhappy examples are given of the way in which a capitalist economy encloses the commons, but there are also many ways in which the state can help. 

The first of these is to recognise self -governance as a social ‘good’ rather than an obstacle to the economic control of the country. Next, there are many ways in which a commons can be criminalised or deliberately deprived of legalising agency; these should be reviewed. In some countries, functionaries for the commons are appointed to help their relationship with the law and the economy. The New Zealand Government, for example, has granted legal personality to the Whanganui River. It is also possible to establish digital platforms for open source material in the fields of education, health services and scientific research. The book shows that Commons, Private/Public Partnerships, again subject to much abuse, can nevertheless be made to work. 

Bollier and Helfrich make no secret of their intention to combat the ideology of neoliberalism. I see them as natural followers of Karl Polanyi’s work The Great Transformation [6] (they acknowledge their debt to him) which hinges on the ‘ontoshift’ from a conception of the economy as embedded in the social norms of society to the industrialised capitalism in which land, labour and money are seen as commodities. Free, Fair and Alive provides abundant grounds for hope that the appalling results forecast by Polanyi may be countered by the authors’ ontoshift in the opposite direction.

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Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons was published by New Society Publishers in September 2019.