In truth, Garrett Hardin's 'landmark' essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons"
was merely a propaganda piece buttressing lassiez-faire market ideology..and
retro and pro-actively justifying the seizure by capitalist interests of all
public and communal assets.
As E.P. Thompson long ago pointed out, Hardin was 'historically
uninformed'...
Garret's thesis (that rational individual usage, left unchecked, results in
the irrational plundering and exploitation of communal resources) conflated
*free-for-all* property usage with *communally managed* usage.
In fact, for millennia, the commons were communally managed under a rich
variety of institutions and community sanctions which clearly reflected both
the value of these public resources for the common weal, and the need for
their protection from over-use. Indeed, it was only *when* private property
(backed by the state) started to encroach upon and destroy communal life
that a true 'tragedy of the commons' was visited upon them. ...In this
sense, it is more correct to employ the phrase, 'The Tragedy of Private
Property'...
The real measure, then, of whether a resource is likely to be over-exploited
is the measure of how *truly* democratic (as opposed, simply, to its
corporately infiltrated governance) is its oversight. (This, it should be
noted, rebuts those who would cite the former Eastern Bloc countries - and
their record of environmental depredation - as representatives of
'communally managed resources'...since these resources were most certainly
not democratically or communally managed).
That the world is facing ecological and environmental catastrophe, there can
be no doubt. But that this catastrophe can be, with any stretch of the
imagination, righted by the autocracy of private/corporate ownership/greed
is both logically and historically indefensible.
It's long past due to consign 'The Tragedy of the Commons' to the rubbish
bin of false-metaphors-in-the-service-of-wealth-and-power....where it
belongs.
Tony
Dear Tony,
You may be glad to know that Hardin recanted, in a volume edited by
the late Bob Andelson. I forget the title, but it's something about The
Commons.
Anyway, hardly anyone knows about this essay, because it was published
by the Robert Schalkenbach foundation (Georgists).
But it was indeed a retraction. I wonder why it is never cited.
Michael Hudson
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