A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

South and in the North. The struggle consists of opposition to the wave
of privatizations that are affecting many public utilities and networks,
from railways, electricity, water, transport, telephones, woods, rivers
and land to health and education. What in England used to be called, before
capitalism, the ‘commons’ 2 , has been gradually reduced in order to
give rise to an economic system which transforms all aspects of life into
merchandise – a necessary step for the accumulation of capital, now accentuated
by the dominance of finance capital. Common land was considered
wasted land and all non-capitalist use of it was considered
‘non-utilization’ (Michael Brie, 2011).
Let it be clear that the primary purpose of revaluing ‘common goods’,
in whatever form (nationalizations or other kinds of collective control),
has been to break away from that lengthy period when economic logic
emphasized the private and the individual, in order to promote the development
of the productive forces and freedom of private initiative –
so eliminating most of the public sector from its objectives. We have
reached the stage when human life itself is being commodified. This
new economic logic has taken hold of the political sphere, as became
obvious during and after the financial crisis of 2008, through the operations
put into effect to save the financial system without nationalizations,
leaving them in the hands of those who were responsible for the
crisis in the first place (and only indicting a few delinquents). Such policies
have led to national-wide austerity measures, making ordinary citizens
pay the price for the crisis, while neoliberal policies have been
maintained.
The defence of public services and of ‘common goods’ forms part of
the resistance to these policies, but it risks becoming a rearguard struggle
if these are not seen in a broader context, that of the Common Good
of Humanity of which they form part – that is to say the life of the planet
2 The Commons were the communal lands of the peasantry in England which,
starting in the XIII century, were gradually transformed into the private property of
landowners through the Enclosures, who used these measures to fence off land,
particularly for sheep raising. This provoked numerous peasant revolts.
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