OMNI
COMMONS, PUBLIC PROPERTY FOR
THE PEOPLE, #1
1-23-2022
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology
Omnicenter.org/donate/
Contents
Commons Newsletter #1, 1-23-22
Ian Angus
Robbing the Soil, 1, “Commons and
Classes before Capitalism.”
Robbing the Soil, 2, “Systematic Theft of
Communal Property.”
“Agricultural Enclosure: Commoners Fight Back.”
John Bellamy
Foster. “Capitalism and Ecological Theft.”
Peter
Linebaugh. Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance.
Coulthard, Indigenous
Resistance, Blockades.
Lolly, “Commons
Actions.”
Tittle, “Community
Development and the Commons.”
Linebaugh. “The Commons as the Fulcrum for Social
Regeneration.”
|
Robbing the Soil, 2: ‘Systematic theft of communal property’
Ian Angus.
Mronline.org (9-4-21).
“The expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil
forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production.” (Karl Marx)
Against enclosure: The commoners fight back
Ian Angus.
Mronline.org (1-20-22).
Articles in this series: Commons and classes before
capitalism ‘Systematic theft of communal property’ Against Enclosure: The
Commonwealth Men Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class Against Enclosure:
The Commoners Fight Back by Ian Angus In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend
and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a
[…]
“Capitalism and ecological theft.” Mronline.org (2-23-20).
Sociologist
John Bellamy Foster on the modern divide between humanity and nature and his book The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the
Ecological Rift from Monthly Review. Source 
Stop, Thief! The
Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance. PM, 2014 by Peter Linebaugh.
Publisher’s Description
In this
majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the
thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the
despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has
existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart.
"Neither the state nor the market," say the planetary commoners.
These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons.
From Thomas
Paine to the Luddites, from Karl Marx—who concluded his great study of
capitalism with the enclosure of commons—to the practical dreamer William
Morris—who made communism into a verb and advocated communizing industry and
agriculture—to the 20th-century communist historian E.P. Thompson, Linebaugh
brings to life the vital commonist tradition. He traces the red thread from the
great revolt of commoners in 1381 to the enclosures of Ireland, and the
American commons, where European immigrants who had been expelled from their
commons met the immense commons of the native peoples and the underground
African-American urban commons. Illuminating these struggles in this
indispensable collection, Linebaugh reignites the ancient cry, "STOP, THIEF!"
Praise:
"There is not a more
important historian living today. Period."
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical
Imagination
"E.P. Thompson, you
may rest now. Linebaugh restores the dignity of the despised luddites with a
poetic grace worthy of the master… [A] commonist manifesto for the 21st
century."
—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
"Peter Linebaugh's
great act of historical imagination… takes the cliché of 'globalization' and
makes it live. The local and the global are once again shown to be
inseparable—as they are, at present, for the machine-breakers of the new world
crisis."
—T.J. Clark, author of Farewell to an Idea
About Peter Linebaugh:
Peter Linebaugh is a child
of empire, schooled in London, Cattaraugus (NY), Washington, D.C., Bonn, and
Karachi. He went to Swarthmore College during the civil rights days. He has
taught at Harvard University and Attica Penitentiary, at New York University
and the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. He used to edit Zerowork and
was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He coauthored Albion's
Fatal Tree, and is the author of The London Hanged, The
Many-Headed Hydra (with Marcus Rediker), The Magna Carta
Manifesto, and introductions to Verso's selection of Thomas Paine's
writings and PM's new edition of E.P. Thompson's William Morris:
Romantic to Revolutionary. He lives in the region of the Great Lakes and
works at the University of Toledo in Ohio.
See and hear author
interviews, book reviews, and other news on Peter Linebaugh’s page HERE
INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE: DECOLONIZE
For our Nations to live, capitalism must die
Editor. Mronline.org (10-1-21).
What the recent actions of the Mi’kmaq land and water
defenders at Elsipogtog demonstrate is that direct actions in the form of
Indigenous blockades are both a negation and an affirmation. 
Originally “Unsettling America” by
Glen Coulthard (November
5, 2013 ) - Posted Sep 30, 2021.
COMMONS concept for
action from LOLLY,
3-14-15
SIDEWALKS
The
possibilities of Commons as a coherent,
unifying concept for action is expanding in my imagination. Do you
take the Democrat-Gazette? Yesterday's 3-13 guest editorial,
"Jaywalking's early days," is about commercialization of public
space," especially the diminishing of public places by intruding cars.
I wrote an essay once about what still seems to me the enormous loss of
sidewalks as public fora (gained in 1943 by SCOTUS vote) by the encroachment of
private malls where you can walk but not with a sign.
OMNI
I include COMMONS as one area of potential action for OMNI in
my comprehensive glass-half full account of OMNI's work, sent out yesterday.
You had received a draft of it earlier.
I hope you will stay with COMMONS and list-- help us here get
our minds in and around-- all the places that I. are and II. should be the
people's. And then let's ask our Book Forum to sponsor a public rally
with the mayor and county judge. Our goal will be to open their eyes and
gain their active commitment to the COMMONS.
Yeah, I want to see it as it grows; Resilience is put out by Post Carbon Institute, R. Heinberg who did the Big Energy
Book that I reviewed two years ago. Resilience has a lot of articles on the commons in its many
variations.
Community Development and the
Commons
By Chris Tittle on Mar 09, 2016 05:06 am
The commons offers a framework and a process for effectively and equitably
stewarding the resources communities need to live in dignity. If we have a collective
right to a resource, we should be able to democratically participate in
decisions about that resource’s use.
The commons as the fulcrum for social regeneration. Karl Marx’s
1875 critique of the German Social Democratic Party provides a withering
examination of capitalism’s ‘wicked ways’ and a guide to what the commons is
and how to bring it about. | more…
Originally published: New Frame by
Peter Linebaugh (November
12, 2020 ) | - Posted Nov
20, 2020.
Historian
Peter Linebaugh has written an afterword to the new edition and translation of
Karl Marx’s Critique of the
Gotha Program, PM
Press.
https://mronline.org/2020/11/20/the-commons-as-the-fulcrum-for-social-regeneration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-commons-as-the-fulcrum-for-social-regeneration&utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=c9ce418992-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_MRONLINE_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-c9ce418992-295821469&mc_cid=c9ce418992&mc_eid=[ab2f7bf95e]
STRUGGLE
AHEAD: ROBBERS COMMODIFYING AND PRIVATIZING THE COMMONS IN OUTER SPACE
LYNDA
WILLIAMS. “FATEFUL GOLD RUSH IN SPACE
GIVEN ‘GO-AHEAD.’” SPACE ALERT! (Winter/Spring 2016).
This magazine edited by Bruce Gagnon, the
founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
(Global Network) is one of the best sources of this most important
under-reported information. This article
is an outstanding example. The US has
been arming, that is taking, the commons once
called the heavens, for decades, and now the US government has made it legal
for corporations and wealthy individuals to join the gold rush in flagrant
violation of international law/i.e. treaty.
Williams discloses that Pres. Obama last
November 25 signed into law the U.S. Space Act of 2015, “granting property
rights to materials that U.S. companies mine from asteroids, the moon, and
other celestial bodies. . . .the act unilaterally promotes and empowers the
private U.S. space industry. . .for exploration and extraction of space
resources with tax payer economic incentives and little regulatory oversight.”
The legality of the act is being debated,
but Williams argues: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) “does
not allow any nation to claim territorial sovereignty in space and establishes
space as a global commons to be shared by all
humankind.” “…the industry celebrated
the passing of the Space Act as a green light to start staking claims in space
with the backing and protection of the U.S. government and military which is
expanding its pace war fighting capabilities through the U.S. Space
Command.” The head of an asteroid mining
startup declared: “’This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in
history.’”
I have been reading and discussing the US
“arming the heavens,” the expansion of our empire and its global bases into
space. So I am glad to see the COMMONS
concept by which to understand and resist this enormously dangerous potential
for future nuclear conflict on earth and in space. Think global, act local, act global for the
human future through international law, between terrestrial and celestial war
or peace. SHUN ELON MUSK. --Dick
END COMMONS NEWSLETTER #1
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