Continuing the exploration of relationship to the land and life, we will critically examine two profoundly influential papers that form in their way foundational text for neoliberal thinking, and consider alternative ways of relating to the world.

The first two texts, by Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, and by Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business, will guide us to examine the role of ideology – in its neo-liberal guise – and its entrenchment in social institutions and legal systems, such as property rights, and the permission to pollute, but also why our ways of thinking about the world these attitudes to the world became so ingrained that they often exclude imagining any other alternatives. Please read these texts, both of which have been extremely influential since being published in 1968 and 1970, respectively, and still serve as frame of reference for ‘transformation’ and ‘development’ projects around the world, with a critical eye, examining their discourse, the assumptions and references they contain – historical, philosophical, scientific -and compare them with the approaches of other authors we have been reading recently.

We will also consider texts that provide appraisal of these two articles several decades later, which offer alternative perspectives on the world we share. One of them reflects on Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons, another revisits the question of the social responsibility of business, and another one examines the historical constitution of capitalism and its imperatives.

These texts invite us to reflect on our own relationship to the land, to other inhabitants we share it with, while examine the practices and justifications in terms of inevitability, progress, and the imperative of economic growth.

readings

Garrett Hardin. The tragedy of the Commons

Milton Friedman. The social responsibility of business

Taylor Tepper, Benjamin Curry. Milton Friedman On The Social Responsibility of Business, 50 Years Later

Carol M. Rose. Thinking about the Commons

Jason Hickel. Less is More. How Degrowth will Save the World. 

Capitalism: A Creation Story (42-50)

questions for discussion

What is your relationship to the place where you live, where you come from?

What is the land in the area where you live used for? What is the history of the place?

What other forms of life share this land with you? How are these intertwined with human habitats?

In what sense can a mortal human being, an organism among many others, ‘own’ the land, and life?

How did ‘economy’ exempted itself from ‘ecology’? Why do they often stand in opposition to each other in political debates?

What do we gain and what do we loose when we see the planet in terms of economic value? What are the benefits and limitations to seeing the land, and life, as a resource, as an asset, as a form of ‘capital’? What are the alternative ways of relating to nature?

How is the line between ‘private’ property and ‘public’ or ‘community’ or shared ownership drawn in the area where you live and work?

Why has Garrett Hardin’s paper been so very influential? (It is one of the most cited papers of all time, and remains so – e.g if you look at Encyclopedia Britannica entry on ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ you find it gives the weight of the British empire to Hardin’s ideas, with no criticisms!)

What kind of assumptions about human nature do these papers make?

Who benefits from Hardin’s arguments? Can we think here of competing narratives/ideologies?

Can we think of short term gains and long term consequences within different economic frameworks? (i.e. within capitalism one tries to maximise short term gain, while in a commons one is thinking of long term consequences). What kind of understanding of time these frameworks actually work with?

What other influential – but ethically wrong – social movements have been derived from a biological idea, arguing that “it is a biological law that ….” ? (e.g. eugenics, sociobiology, etc).  

What is the role of a particular conception of what a human being is for these thinkers (e.g. only interested in self-interest, and always using western rationality to maximise gain)?  Are there alternative models of what a human being is? (e.g concerned with welfare of the community, with spirituality, with beauty or with justice, or as fundamentally flawed and conflicted, etc.)

Can you see any similarities between how Garrett Harden argues and how Milton Friedman argues?  

How important are ethical considerations to these thinkers? Are there ethical considerations that they ignore or minimise?

Are their ideas appropriate for the environmental problems that we need to address, such as pollution, extinction, warming oceans and climate?

Portraying the human behaviour as selfish and driven solely by individual gain, is an oversimplification of human nature, motivation, cooperation, and complexity. While it is true that individuals sometimes prioritize short-term self-interest over collective good, many societies have developed mechanisms, such as social norms, regulations, and collective decision-making processes, to manage common resources effectively. Can you provide examples and counter-examples of these alternative accounts of human nature?

The concept of ownership in Roman law has influenced even modern legal systems around the world. The institution of ownership of land and property was granted to citizens (‘pater familie’), and included in the ownership mode were also their ‘families’ (i.e. women and children) and slaves. The ownership granted three distinct kinds of power over the property: usus, the right to use; fructus, the right to enjoy its products (such as fruit of the trees of the land, but also work of the slaves, and the children born by women); and abusus (right to damage and destroy). It minimised the responsibility and care, while granting the power to use and dispose of. Can you think of any alternative ways of understanding ownership, which might provide a corrective to the potentially destructive tendencies of this institutional arrangement?

In last decades, the patenting of genes, molecules, cells, and technologies that manipulate these, became very widespread, both in medicine and in agrarian practices (culture cells, GMOs, pharmaceuticals, etc.). What are the utilities and limitations of this approach to life? How does this relate to the notion of ‘commons’?

In recent debates there has been a shift towards understanding atmosphere, hydrosphere, and stratosphere, as ‘commons’. What are the assumptions behind this approach? What are its possibilities, and its limitations?

additional resources

Elinor Ostrom. Beyond markets and states. Polycentric governance of complex economic systems (Nobel prize lecture)

Robin Wall Kimmerer. The Rights of the Land. Orion Magazine (essay)

David Graeber, David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything. A New History of Humanity (book)

Jason Hickel on Less is More. Dissens Podcast (audio/text)

Who’s counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics (documentary film)

Gregg Mitman. The land beneath our feet (documentary film)

Ian Angus. The War against the Commons. Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism (book)

Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway. Merchants of Doubt. How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change (book)

Naomi Oreskes on Merchants of Doubt. Cultures of Energy Podcast (audio)

Scott Mann. Biothics in Perspective. Corporate power, public health and political economy (book)

Partha Dasgupta. On Natural Capital. The Value of the World Around Us (book)

Tim Jackson. The Care Economy (book)