1. The Commons, social cohesion and the autonomy of social reproduction
Observatorio Metropolitano
Abstract
In this text, the Observatorio Metropolitano, develops the main thesis of its work on com-
mon assets1 from the standpoint of the absolute impossibility of the construction of a vi-
able society without the acknowledgement of the functions of the large and diffuse pool
of common goods, wealth and knowledge that make social life possible. Common assets
are essential for the maintenance of both life as such and for an enhanced social justice.
These include both elements of the natural world such as the land, water, woods and air
and other socially produced resources (usually managed by public and private institutions
not very concerned about their preserving and improving) such as public space, health sys-
tem, educational system, care system, culture and knowledge. The attack, in the form of
privatization and dispossession, to these common resources is immediately a source of
distress on the process of social reproduction, encompassing both the reproduction of life
itself and the reproduction of a wide array of social productions.
The case for the commons
In Spain, historically, the significance of the commons was recognized by legal arrange-
ments such as Cartas Pueblas or Fueros (medieval acts of settlements) and other acts. In
them, woodlands, pastures, irrigated system and fisheries and others were set up as com-
mons, and the settlers had the right of using them and were fully and collectively entitled
to the wealth they produced. Also, these commons were a strong countertendency for so-
cial inequality, allowing poorest people in society to access to resources (pastures, fire -
wood, fruits and animals...) that, in a time of shortages, avoid the famine and allow a de-
cent existence for all the inhabitants in a territory with the only condition of living effect -
ively on the territory.
But apart from being a social device that limited inequality drastically, the commons were
a permanent source of environmental sustainability. Contrary to contemporary forecasts
about the “tragedy of commons”2 –i.e., that commons will be destroyed by selfish and in-
dividualistic uses until their exhaustion-, on traditional commons regulation and rules
were set up in order to guarantee their preserving and improving, as their survival over
centuries (even millenniums) can easily prove.
1
Observatorio Metropolitano, Carta de los comunales de Madrid, in press, Traficantes de Sueños,
2011
2
G. Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859, pp. 1243-124, December
13, 1968.
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