Think Like a Commoner, Second Edition: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons

By David Bollier

Welcome to the Commonsverse, a parallel social economy helping millions of commoners take charge and escape the predatory Market/State order.

This completely revised and updated edition of Think Like a Commoner offers a succinct yet thorough account of the history and future of the commons.

Working outside of both market capitalism and state power, commoners are deeply committed to developing local, practical solutions, social trust, and community. From relocalized agriculture to open-source learning, diverse types of commons — ecological, social, digital, urban — are building a decentralized Commonsverse. This parallel economy is powered by the peer governance of shared wealth; respectful engagement with the Earth; participation; and fairness.

Widely respected activist and scholar David Bollier explores the full scope of the commons in contemporary life, including:

• A survey of successful commons initiatives, from shared land and water, to digital commons, mutual aid networks, alternative currencies, cohousing, and more
• The centuries-old cultural traditions, Indigenous practices, and historical folkways that gave rise to the modern commons Commons under siege – how enclosures of shared wealth through trade treaties, copyright and trademark law, commodification, privatization, and outright theft are dispossessing commoners and worsening inequality
• Understanding the commons as a profoundly relational, living social organism that itself generates value.

The Commonsverse is a dynamic, evolving socio-political space that is constantly being reimagined and rebuilt. Driven forward by worldwide networks of traditionalists and innovators working collaboratively outside of mainstream institutions, commoning constitutes a quiet revolution of real, functional alternatives. Pull up a chair, relax, and let's talk about the commons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Release date: Mar 11, 2025
• ISBN: 9781771424004

David Bollier

David Bollier ist ein amerikanischer Commons-Experte und -Aktivist, Blogger und Berater. Er hat zahlreiche Beiträge und Bücher zum Thema verfasst. Der Leiter des Programms Reinventing the Commons am Schumacher Center for a New Economics und Mitbegründer der Commons Strategies Group lebt und arbeitet in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Book preview

Cover: Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. Second Edition. By David Bollier.

Praise for Think Like a Commoner, Second Edition

Every 21st century economic thinker needs to understand the commons, from their fascinating histories to their many future possibilities—and this book provides the perfect introduction. It is the starting point that I recommend to everyone.

—

Kate Raworth

, author, Doughnut Economics

We don’t live alone in the world, but it’s organized in ways that push us apart. Think Like a Commoner restores those relationships—with place, as well as with each other. In place of passive anxiety, these pages are filled with meaningful acts of care—as already practiced by grassroots communities across the world.

—

John Thackara

, author, convenor, educator

In Think Like a Commoner, David Bollier, the trailblazing commons thinker and activist, has formulated the economic principles of an animate universe. He manages the rare task of both sketching a bold new economic cosmology and detailing the filigree of its practical applications. The intrigued reader comes to understand: not only is reality as such a commons, centered around the reciprocity of the gift of life, so are the bulk of our cultural practices and many systems of material and social exchange. The commons, it turns out, is what underlies everything and what ultimately fulfills our deepest longings.

—

Dr. Andreas Weber

, biologist, philosopher, and author, The Biology of Wonder and Matter and Desire

Curious about the commons and eager to build a new world? You could not find a more accessible, inspiring guidebook than Think Like a Commoner. It’s a penetrating history of commoners fighting market enclosures and a survey of innovative new forms of commoning now spreading across the world. Drawing on three decades of work as an activist-scholar, Bollier identifies key challenges facing commoners and provides useful strategies and resources for expanding the Commonsverse. Highly recommended!

—

Susan Witt

, co-founder and executive director, Schumacher Center for a New Economics

David Bollier, the doyen of today’s champions of the commons, has written the definitive primer. The commons is inexorably moving to the forefront of progressive thinking and action. Quite simply, without a commons revival, there is no future.

—

Guy Standing

, author, The Blue Commons

Since the first publication of David Bollier’s earlier version of Think Like a Commoner in 2014, I have consistently used it in classes I teach at my university. I know of no work that so gracefully presents commons history, the many types of commons that exist in our world, and key issues they face. This book should be required reading—not just for all students—but for every person on the planet, to allow them to rediscover ideas they may have forgotten, introduce new ones, and become inspired toward collectively generating a better world, one commoning instance at a time.

—

Charlie Schweik

, professor, University of Massachusetts, and president, International Association for the Study of the Commons (2022–2024)

Hidden beneath the norms of markets and states lies another way for people to live and work together—one that’s radically different from conventional practice and yet fundamentally attuned to core human values. As Bollier illuminates in this wide-ranging and penetrating book, this is the way of the commoner. Bollier shows how the commons are all around us—in cities, technology, agriculture, art, and education—even when they’re not ordinarily recognized as such. By making the invisible become visible, this landmark book lays out a comprehensive framework for a parallel polis: how we might reorient our society around a way of communing that sets the conditions for collective human flourishing.

—

Jeremy Lent

, author, The Patterning Instinct and The Web of Meaning

In this highly readable overview, David Bollier re-introduces us to the web of social trust and cooperation that existed before capitalism—and that we must reweave if we are to survive. Fortunately, there are innumerable examples of commoning around the world, where groups of social innovators are finding ways to create an open-access, sustainable, vibrant future.

—

Richard Heinberg

, author, Power, senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute

This book opened worlds to me that I have spent all the years since exploring. The new edition once again crystallizes, better than anything I know, where we are in this collective journey of discovering and rediscovering ourselves as commoners.

—

Nathan Schneider

, author, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life

With nature financialized, the commons securitized, people individualized, sharing criminalized, and life’s work commodified, David Bollier, like a gallant knight of old, wields a muckraker’s lance and carries a social scientist’s shield on behalf of the republic of the commons. His introduction is supple, generous, comprehensive, colloquial, kind, and clear. Privatizers beware for here truth will out, and error be uprooted.

—

Peter Linebaugh

, author, Red Round Globe Hot Burning

If, like me, you are deeply bothered by the incessant erosion of community life, collective forms of care for each other and our natural environment, and the colonization of our life worlds by private gain, read this brilliant book. David Bollier not only sharply dissects many of the ills haunting contemporary capitalist societies, as one of the most pre-eminent thinkers and advocates of the commons, he demonstrates that the ideas, tools, and practices to build a different, better world for everyone are all around us. Pick up this hopeful book, start commoning, and intensify and diversify the many commons you are already part of to the next level!

—

Bram Buscher

, professor, chair of the sociology of development and change group, Wageningen University, and co-author, The Conservation Revolution

This is an excellent book that deserves to be read from cover to cover. If we cannot rely on corporations, the market, or government to solve the social, economic, and environmental problems of the twenty-first century, then where else should we look? In Think Like a Commoner, David Bollier makes a passionate and compelling case for massively expanding the commons, an effective and just organizing structure with a long history and widespread, if unrecognized, presence in the world today. Bollier draws on history, philosophy, law, anthropology, ecology, economics, and more to show a way to a fairer and genuinely democratic future that is built on reciprocal relationships with all of nature.

—

Peter A. Victor

, professor emeritus, York University, and author, Escape from Overshoot

As we grapple with collapsing ecosystems, savage inequalities, and much else, it’s time to realize that practical options are already at hand. A rich world of possibilities can be found in the commons—a re-emerging social form that is quietly reinventing political economies and cultures worldwide. In this wise, compelling book, David Bollier explains how the deep relationality of commoning is helping people meet important needs themselves, directly, while developing new ways of being in the world.

—

Jonathan F.P. Rose

, author, The Well Tempered City, founder, Jonathan Rose Companies, co-founder, the Garrison Institute

think

like a

commoner

A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons

David Bollier

Second Edition

New Society Publishers logo: a line drawing depicting a tree stump, with a seedling growing out of the top. Rays of light form a halo around the seedling.

Copyright © 2025 by David Bollier. All rights reserved.

This book is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

See creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.

For more information about the book, go to www.thinklikeacommoner.com

Full citations are available at

https://www.thinklikeacommoner.com/citations-second-editon

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Cover Image: © iStock 174169375

Printed in Canada. First Printing, January 2025.

This book is intended to be educational and informative. It is not intended to serve as a guide. The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk that may be associated with the application of any of the contents of this book.

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Think Like a Commoner should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call 250-247-9737 or order online at www.newsociety.com.

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

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library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

Title: Think like a commoner : a short introduction to the life of the commons / David Bollier.

Names: Bollier, David, author

Description: Second edition. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20240510496 | Canadiana (ebook) 2024051050X | isbn 9781774060117 (softcover) | isbn 9781550928044 (pdf) | isbn 9781771424004 (epub)

Subjects: lcsh: Public goods. | lcsh: Commons. | lcsh: Capitalism.

Classification: lcc hb846.5 .b644 2025 | ddc 306.3—dc23

Funded by the Government of Canada written in both English and French, followed by the word Canada with a stylized maple leaf logo.

New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.

New Society Publishers, Certified B Corporation. This book is certified as being made from a mix of paper from responsible sources. Forest Stewardship Council C016245.

For Jonathan Rowe (1946–2011),

whose beautifully insightful writings about

the mysteries of the commons

remain an inspiration.

and

For Silke Helfrich (1967–2021),

friend and colleague

whose fierce, questing intelligence

helped unearth the patterns of commoning.

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

1. The Rediscovery of the Commons

Part I. Enclosure, Dispossession, and the Eclipse of Commoning

2. The Tyranny of the Tragedy Myth

3. Enclosures of Nature

The Massive International Land Grab

The Privatization of Water

The Corporatization of Food

4. All That Is Shared Becomes a Market Commodity

The Marketization of Universities and Their Research

Enclosures of Infrastructure

Enclosures of Civic Infrastructure

The Many Costs of Enclosure

Part II. Commons as Living, Generative Systems

5. Many Galaxies of Commons

Subsistence Commons

Indigenous Peoples’ Commons

Mutual Aid and Gift Economies

Alternative Local Currencies

Cooperatives

6. The Eclipsed History of the Commons

What Evolutionary Sciences Tell Us About Cooperation

The Forgotten Legal History of the Commons

The Liberal State and the Eclipse of Vernacular Law

7. The Commons as a Relational Organism

The Metaphysics of the Commons Is Relational

8. Local, Vernacular, and Alive

Commoning Our Way to a Land Ethic

Vernacular Culture and the Commons

A New Vision of Local Development

Urban Commons

9. Digital Rebels in the Big Tech Imperium

It All Began with Free Software

Creative Commons: A License to Share

The Open-Access Publishing Revolution

Cosmolocal Production, DAOs, and Commons Infrastructures

Part III. Expanding the Commonsverse

10. Relationalized Property and Finance

The Inalienable Rights of Commoners

John Locke’s Theories About Property Rights

The Measure of Wealth

Relationalized Property

Relationalized Finance

11. Reimagining State Power

State Power and Commons Are Different Orders of Life

Commoning and International Law

State Trustee Commons

Legal Hacks on Western Jurisprudence

Commons/Public Partnerships

Conclusion: The Future of the Commons

The Commons as Gift and Duty

Tools for Exploring the Commonsverse

The Commons, Short and Sweet

The Triad of Commoning: Social Life, Peer Governance, and Provisioning

The Logic of the Commons and the Market

Further Reading

Websites Engaged with Commons and Commoning

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

About New Society Publishers

Preface

to the Second Edition

Not so long ago, the commons was widely seen as a quaint historical curiosity—interesting perhaps, but essentially irrelevant to modern life. Then, about twenty years ago, a rediscovery of the commons started to gain some momentum. The surge was partly fueled by the rise of the World Wide Web and its networking progeny (open source software, wikis, blogs, etc.) but also by people’s fierce desire to reclaim some modicum of control over their lives. Then, after the 2008 financial meltdown, people began to realize that neoliberal capitalism and its promises of progress through growth and technology are not going to deliver a better life. Yes, there are significant human benefits from advanced capitalism, but they often entail radical destruction and dispossession: the privatization and plunder of our shared wealth and the displacement of massive costs and risks onto households, communities, ecosystems, and future generations. In the service of private profitmaking, the market machine appropriates our land, forests, and water, genes, seeds, and lifeforms. It claims private ownership of knowledge, creativity, and even data about our personal lives. It’s all part of a global project of extraction, now supercharged by financialization, authoritarian politics, and artificial intelligence.

To help reclaim the commons and name the forces of enclosure, I wrote Think Like a Commoner in 2012 and 2013 to tell the historical backstory of the commons and showcase noteworthy contemporary projects. I also wanted to explain how commoning could help reinvent modern life in institutional and everyday ways. At the time, this challenge felt ambitious but necessary. After all, the first association triggered by the word commons was invariably tragedy, as in tragedy of the commons. People who self-identified as commoners were seen as oddballs lurking outside the perimeter of respectable politics. Commons projects were generally brave, small experiments that rarely attracted attention. As a self-appointed chronicler of the fledgling Commonsverse, I found it fairly easy to keep track of notable commons developments, at least in the Global North.

No longer. The Commonsverse has exploded in size and variety—or perhaps more precisely, the discourse of the commons has spread, allowing countless commons to become more conspicuous. The scope of scholarship, experimentation, and activism has also soared. The commons has acquired enough cachet, in fact, that some trend-conscious corporations perceive a competitive advantage in commons-washing—wrapping themselves in the word commons to try to signal authenticity and street cred.

In short, the character of the Commonsverse and its political and cultural context have changed dramatically over the past fifteen years. Hence the need for this new, revised edition of Think Like a Commoner. Many developments deserve mention, and many new sorts of commons—in cities, agriculture and food systems, local communities, and on the internet—have arisen. Practitioners are building new types of infrastructures to make commoning easier. Many older commons—now larger and more robust—are confronting novel challenges from state power, law, and finance, while scholars tracking these changes are offering new insights and ideas.

Beyond the Commonsverse proper, movements for degrowth, climate action, peer production, platform cooperatives, and racial and ethnic justice are increasingly seeing how commons can help address the intertwined crises of our time. These include the planet’s climate emergency, corporate enclosures, social precarity, wealth inequality, social alienation, and a waning commitment to democracy. While the original text of this book remains a solid introduction to the commons, this new edition takes account of current circumstances for commoning, drawing on ground-level commoning projects, strategic initiatives, and commentary.

This edition also brings some important shifts of perspective. For example, instead of seeing the commons primarily as a resource, as conventional economists do, this edition pays far more attention to commons as a social system. The point is to move beyond the narrow scope of economic thinking that sees the commons as a thing, and reveal it as a deeply relational, living social organism that itself generates value.

Another perspectival shift in the pages that follow: instead of focusing on the scourge of market enclosures—which remain an urgent, destructive problem—this edition emphasizes the commons as a social space for creative experimentation and social reconstruction. Commoners have come to realize that they must do much more than fight enclosures, important as that is. After all, stopping enclosures is exceedingly difficult when state power is so deeply allied with capitalism and its fixation on capital accumulation, growth, and progress. In the face of this totalizing power, many commoners see the appeal of building a parallel polis—functional islands of coherence outside of the market/state system.

A warning: Think Like a Commoner is an introduction, not a comprehensive treatise. While this book describes many successful projects and movements, it can’t explore all noteworthy fields of commoning or fully probe their complicated challenges. Nor can it delve into the experimentation that is needed or myriad undertheorized frontiers. But ambiguities and fuzzy edges are precisely why the Commonsverse is such a promising sociopolitical space: It is still being imagined and built. Promising spaces, tools, and strategies are still being identified. At this stage, the most relevant question may be whether we have the imagination and tenacity to live the questions posed by the commons. That’s the only way we’ll be able to bring into being the world we need.

— David Bollier

Amherst, Massachusetts

June 1, 2024

Introduction

When my seatmate on the airplane turned to me and abruptly asked, So what do you do? I replied that I study the commons and work as an activist to try to protect it.

Polite bewilderment. Say what? It was not the first time. So I cited the familiar references—the Boston Common and medieval pastures—and moved on to the so-called tragedy of the commons, the meme that brainwashed a generation of undergraduates.

Sensing a quiver of interest, I ventured further, mentioning open-source software, Wikipedia, countless collaborative websites, and billions of books, articles, images, and music made shareable via Creative Commons licenses. At the risk of overwhelming my captive seatmate, I ticked off a list of commons that are rarely seen as commons: community supported agriculture and community land trusts. The gift economies of blood donation systems, mutual aid networks, and Indigenous commitment-pooling traditions.

There are fisheries managed by coastal fishers, water protectors defending precious rivers and groundwater, and alternative local currencies. There are makerspaces, mesh network WiFi systems, and platform cooperatives. Language itself is a commons, free to anyone to use, but whose letters and words are fast becoming proprietary trademarks.

I half expected my new friend to turn back to her book or gaze out the window at the fleecy clouds over the Great Plains. Instead she brightened. Oh, I get it! The commons are things that no one owns and are shared by everyone.

Well put.

She mused that the park where she walks her dog and mingles with strangers is a commons—and so is the online listserv about parenting that she belongs to. She cited a community festival and parade with homemade floats and local luminaries.

In the modern industrialized countries of the world, the commons tends to be a baffling, alien idea. The word may be invoked to make faux-genteel allusions to Merrie Olde England (Coxswain Commons Apartments), but otherwise it has scant currency. We don’t really have a language for naming commons—real commons—and so they tend to be invisible and taken for granted. The commons is not a familiar cultural category. (Confusingly, commons is both the singular and plural of the term, and some people make things even more confusing by using the word common instead of commons.)

Anything of value is usually associated with the free market or government. The idea that people could actually self-organize durable arrangements for managing their own resources and that this paradigm of social governance could generate immense value, well, it seems either utopian or communistic, or at the very least, impractical. The idea that the commons could be a vehicle for social and political emancipation and societal transformation, as some commons advocates argue, seems just plain ridiculous.

The point of this book is to gently dispel such prejudices and provide a short introduction to the commons. After encountering so much confusion about the commons over the years—and seeing how rich bodies of commons-oriented scholarship are inaccessible to the lay person, and commons-based activism projects are scattered, ignored, or misunderstood—I decided it was time to write a short, accessible synthesis of the topic.

I want you, my reader, to imagine that you are my quizzical seatmate as we begin a short flight. You have intuitions about the commons and the need for social cooperation. You surely know about the dismal performance of corporate capitalism and government. You may be outraged by the alarming privatization of public lands, schools, and research; Big Tech’s relentless surveillance of our personal lives via social media and websites; and investors’ destructive addiction to carbon fuels and economic growth. The pervasive commodification and privatization of our shared wealth is what spurred me to write my first book on the commons, Silent Theft, in 2002. It helped me realize how our ignorance of the commons is actually part of the problem. It allows grand narratives about economic growth and progress to deflect attention from what’s really going on: the private plunder of our common wealth, our dispossession, our social disintegration.

That’s why I want to explain the history of

[spoko_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s a bit utopian, and a bit polemical. So as you might expect, there’s a significant amount of cherry-picking and confirmation bias going on. But the overall point of the book is solid, and needs to be heard. Our society doesn’t have to be atomized, and our resources don’t have to be splintered and mined for profit to the exclusion of all else. The commons presents a valuable alternative model (a diverse array of them, actually).

[willszal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Awesome overview of the commons. I just wish it were longer.