The paper has been presented at the Heteropolitics International Workshop, held in Aristotle University of Thessalonike on 13-15.9.2017.
https://www.academia.edu/35957415/Commons_and_private_property_as_a_patriarchal_trap
Full Conference proceedings at
http://heteropolitics.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Conference_Proceedings_Website.pdf
Abstract:
The paper investigates the concept of commons as a western European patriarchal term constructed in antithesis to private property following the historical material conditions formed during the advance of capitalism. I use feminist theory to understand how commons have taken over the demand for collective arrangements in late capitalism concerning both natural ecosystems and human societies.
The paper examines commons in comparison to private property and its understandings within a framework where patriarchy is investigated as an economic system and capitalism is a form of patriarchy. I also examine how commons became prominent in the political discourse, exactly at the time of multi-layered changes in private property regimes under neoliberal policies.
The focus on the commons has reduced the interest in the critique of private property and in its abolition as an anti-capitalist anti-patriarchal claim of communities and social movements. Quite the opposite: Commons are a form of property and the logic of property seems to expand to the discourse about the alternatives to private property. In other words, commons and private property are constructed in late capitalism as one more patriarchal binary of propertied “things”.
Moreover, the commons are thought of as the “left-overs” of private property. This perception leads to prioritising private property demands and having the commoners following the agenda of the privatisers instead of setting a non-property agenda. It seems that the commons, as constructed till the moment, bear this acceptance of private property as the main political economic institution to define arrangements of access and control over means of production. They also represent the social understanding that property is the only way to institutionally understand our relationship to the world.
The paper contributes to the commons debate by showing that the patriarchal construction of the commons keeps them tied to private property sustaining the latter and degrading the potential of the former for social change.
