International Coordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales, author
The Wealth of Commons
Edited by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich
Levellers Press
http://bit.ly/UTst79
The popularity of collective, ecologically-responsible ownership is growing . From Venezuela's creation of 21st century socialism based on communal councils to the late great Professor Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize in economics, commons are becoming better known.
This is a superb collection of 73 short essays on the commons, covering very diverse and exciting perspectives. The essay on the connection between the indigenous idea of buen vivar (good living) is especially good. Massimo de Angelis warns how the commons can be co-opted by capitalism and Peter Linebaugh links commons to the work of Marxist historians like the great English ecosocialist E.P. Thompson.
David Bollier had the book printed at his local left and community printers in Amherst, Massachutes and you can order a copy via http://www.wealthofthecommons.org/.
However, being about the value of free, as in free beer, he and Silke will be putting the whole book on the web for free in the future. This is my favourite green left themed book of 2012. Commons is about property and, for me, whether it is indigenous land or fighting the enclosure of the web from corporations, property is about class struggle.
From Green Left Weekly here
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