Commons as Counterhegemonic Projects

James McCarthy, CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM VOLUME 16 NUMBER 1 (MARCH 2005)

Neoliberalism, the Privatization of Nature, and the Commons
At first glance, neoliberalism has meant enclosure and destruction of commons and
public goods. From the privatization of state assets and collective property to attempts to
create new markets for environmental goods, and from the international expansion of the
concept of ‘regulatory takings’ to the increased use of user fees to ration access to public
goods and spaces, more and more of nature is being subsumed by markets.1 In the pro-
cess, many of the institutional arrangements for the protection of nature won in earlier
struggles have been challenged or diluted.2 The negative consequences are familiar
and grim: increases in socially produced scarcity, growing inequality, and often acceler-
ated depletion or degradation of the very resources market mechanisms were supposed to
protect. Biophysical nature turns out to function as a ‘commons’ whether we like it or
not, in the sense that it is impossible to keep private natures truly cordoned off from
the rest of the world – a principle well illustrated by the widely-discussed case of Cana-
dian farmer, Percy Schmeiser, who was taken to court by Monsanto for patent infringe-
ment after its genetically modified seeds blew into his field and took root.