GT Commons on the Thematic Social Forum 2012
(The following text has been produced by one of the 17 working groups of the Thematic Social Forum which took place between January 24 and January 29 in Porto Alegre/ Brazil. Commoners from Brazil, Germany, France, India, Argentina and Bolivia took place in redacting this as an “open document”, thus: it will be further developed. The version we publish here serves as in input for a more general and comprehensive document to be prepared for Rio+20 by the Thematic Social Forum. More on this process here. Translations into Spanish, French and Portuguese have been done already. The German version is waiting for volunteers
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Challenges of the current context: the dangerous conspiracy between state and market
State and market, at least in its hegemonic shape, are closely linked and it is hard to differentiate their actions. Even those of us who believe that it is possible for a democratic state to guarantee the general well-being, we see ourselves confronted with states that have no shame in catering to the banking sector –the chief culprit for the recent economic crises– while cutting social expenditures. Both state and market share the same ideological commitment to progress and competition. Both are committed to a model of development and economic growth that destroys the planet and the richness of the commons. Both dismantle our culture and livelihoods in order to convert us into consumers of goods. This inevitably leads to such outrages as the Brazilian mining company VALE’s construction of the Belo Monte dam in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, which will have a devastating impact on the biodiversity and the indigenous people of the region.
This threat to what is common to us are achieved through diverse mechanisms:
- Legal: through agreements on free trade and investment protections and intellectual property, and international bodies like the WTO and the WIPO;
- Economic: through private appropriation of territories (landgrabbing);
- Technological: through genetically modified organisms (GMOs), restrictive systems of access to culture (DRM),geoengineering, etc.
All these phenomena are part of a grand, still untold story of our time: the process of enclosure of the commons, which goes beyond the privatization because it involves expulsion, disenfranchisement and social fragmentation. Enclosures are expanding and intensifying, and, “when the last tree is cut, when the last river has been poisoned” they will go on with the enclosure of the fundamentals of life at a scale of nanotechnology.
Meanwhile, the same states and markets have prepared the trap of the “green capitalism,” which they will try to enforce through the Rio+20 conference. This will signal the next round of enclosure, Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »