Ostrom’s 8 Rules of the Commons for Anarchists

The commons are resources self-managed by communities who need and use them. Commons are managed through dialogue, deliberation, and collective-decision-making as well as through mutual aid to meet needs. Commoning refers to the process of developing commons. Commons can include land, water-ways, fields, factories, workshops, instruments/tools, dwellings, recreational facilities, general infrastructure, miscellaneous infrastructure, fruits of re/production, mixes of all of the above, and beyond. Flourishing commons provide communities and participants with shared means of existence, production, and politics as well as access to the fruits thereof in ways that meet the needs of all. 

The commons have been under attack by the last several thousand years of hierarchy and class society as well as the last several hundred years of capitalism. Capitalism developed through multiple factors including continuous privatization of the commons enforced through state violence (Federici, 2018). Despite such systemic violence, pockets of the commons continue to exist through people developing both new and enduring commons to meet their needs and the needs of others as well as through people resisting domination and exploitation (Federici, 2018). Commoning is not only under attack by multiple entangled forms of hierarchy (institutionalized domination) such as capitalism, statecraft, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism; commoning is also under ideological attack through widespread propaganda and belief systems that deem various hierarchies beneficial or inevitable. 

Arguments claiming that commons inevitably lead to tragedies of overuse and collective ruin deny the history of the commons while also assuming that commons are rooted in crude competitive acquisition without the very collective rules, agreements, and practices that enable them to be functional. Such straw men of the commons reflect the norms of competitive and hierarchical societies rather than the kinds of organized cooperation to meet needs so crucial to any well-functioning-commons. Responding to sweeping critiques of the commons, Elinor Ostrom empirically and theoretically demonstrated that commons have been, are, and can be well-managed by participants when they utilize several good-enough rules and practices (Ostrom, 2021). Many communities and persons have in their own ways and words convergently evolved and articulated variations of such core-design-principles. 

Commons and related self-managed institutions have existed within foraging societies, agricultural societies, villages, towns, blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and mixed method non-state societies (Boehm, 2001, Kropotkin 1902, Bookchin, 2005a, Federici, 2018, Ostrom, 2021, Graeber and Wengrow, 2023). Such a rich history demonstrates that well-managed-commons are possible and that such well-managed-commons predictably contribute to social and ecological flourishing. 

While there are plenty of examples Ostrom looks at that are in harmony with her 8 rules for managing the commons as well as a non-hierarchical approach to social-organization (Ostrom, 2021), other instances of the commons she looks at utilize some methods that those from an anti-hierarchical perspective would disapprove of. Truly emancipatory commons are distinct from quasi-commons that produce commodities and/or are gated against commoners having mutual-access (Federici, 2018). Given the goals of the self-management of each and all, mutual non-domination, wellbeing for all, and ecological flourishing, Ostrom’s core-design-principles can become more coherent through being remixed with insights from anarchism. 

The following adaptation of Ostrom’s rules for managing the commons is informed by libertarian socialism/communism/communalism, organizations and revolutions influenced by libertarian socialism that utilize community assemblies related to common decisions and resources, various commons Ostrom looks at, as well as an expanded history of commoning in multiple modes of subsistence:

1. Participants know they are part of a group and what the group is about (Wilson, 2016).

2. Agreements for sharing and at times rotating labor/work and implementation of decisions as well as for sharing the fruits thereof (Kropotkin, 1906, Sixth Commission of the EZLN, 2016, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2022). People can co-create a cornucopia where there is more than enough for all or otherwise agree to specific ways of distributing less abundant fruits of re/production according to needs.   

3. Direct collective decision making by participants through deliberation. For there to be self-management of each and all, there must also be mutual non-domination. By extension, community assemblies related to the commons should utilize direct, participatory, and non-hierarchical forms of democracy (Bookchin, 2005b).  

4. Organizational transparency that allows participants to mutually-monitor the commons (Atkins, Wilson, Hayes, 2019). This can happen through the process of co-managing and interacting with the commons, collective action, living in community with others, relevant accounting/calculation as needed, and availability of relevant information to participants. 

5. Graduated defense against domination and exploitation such as: informal social disapproval, self-defense and defense of others as needed, and recourse to expelling someone from a particular collective (through deliberation, assembly, and due process) in response to the most extreme violations of the commons and freedoms of persons (Boehm, 2001, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2023).  

6. Good-enough conflict resolution such as: people talking directly to each other, mediation to find out how to move forward, dispute resolution to resolve disputes, restorative justice and transformative justice processes for people to repair harm and transform causes thereof, and organization-wide assembly when the conflict is in regards to organizational form or content. (Kaba, 2019, Usufruct Collective, 2023). 

7. Communities and participants need sufficient autonomy to organize. 

8. The use of co-federation and embedded councils. Community assemblies can co-manage inter-communal commons in a way where policy-making power is held by participants and assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, Ocalan, 2014). This enables self-management and mutual aid within and between communities as well as inter-communal management of the commons. Community assemblies can utilize mandated and recallable councils and rotating delegates to implement decisions within the bounds of policies made by community assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, 2007, 2018). 

The above should be further fleshed out, qualified, and wisely adapted to conditions, needs, and desires of communities and participants. When there are good-enough institutions and agreements for collective action, individuals benefit through the flourishing of the commons and mutually-contributing to the commons– blending self-interest with collective-interest. Although specifically related to common-economics, Ostrom’s core-design-principles and coherent adaptations thereof can be used to reflect upon and develop various self-managed collectives that have shared practices and goals (Wilson, 2016). 

The self-management of each and all on every scale requires the flourishing of the commons and related general assemblies. Developing the commons in the context of a hierarchical society requires both the reconstruction of the commons as well as opposition to domination and exploitation. Such functions can be done through self-managed community assemblies that utilize mutual aid and direct action to meet needs and solve social problems. That kind of community organizing can happen as a crucial part of a broader social movement ecosystem that includes workplace organizing, student organizing, and beyond. In addition to the commons and related general assemblies being needed for political economic freedom of each and all: developing the commons and sharing social re/production can meet needs of social movement organizations, participants thereof, and the non-ruling class while building the new world in the shell of the old and increasing capacity for people to solve social problems and oppose hierarchies.

***

PS:

Additional critique of Ostrom: 

Ostrom does want the commons to expand and increase. However, Ostrom sees the commons as a sector that should exist alongside capitalism and states. This is distinct from the anti-domination and anti-exploitation approach of libertarian socialism. While Ostrom does talk about the need to have sufficient autonomy to self-organize, Ostrom does not properly touch upon developing the commons through opposition against capitalism, statecraft, and hierarchy more broadly.   

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photo by Rory Robertson-Shaw

Version of essay featured in Dope Magazine