Beyond Money II: Commoning
That money as a system leads to the harm, hardships and atrocities that a TV documentary parades before our eyes almost nightly now has been recognized by those who want to counter money with a change of the most fundamental kind. The Commons movement takes as its model the «Allmende», shared land, not cultivated by an individual as his private property separate from others but belonging to everyone, cultivated by everyone, and sustaining everyone with its fruits. That means that something is set in place to counter money here that involves shared participation in even the most fundamental conditions, activities and forms of provisioning.
Over what is wanted collectively the community alone would decide
That all those who strive for such Commons are still trying hard cannot be surprising and cannot be otherwise. They not only face the difficulty of determining in positive terms what in which way and with whom can be shared, and that in the middle of a world where the dominant money logic obediently excludes any such communality fundamentally from the outset and accordingly scrutinizes it suspiciously. They also have to battle with the other difficulty that they don't want to instantly proclaim a new ism. For one, that would necessarily draw such scrutiny to them. Secondly and above all however it would impose its program on a community that as such, after all, as community, is the program. Over what is wanted and desired collectively the community alone would decide – and as community, not following a program that would otherwise be written and adopted only by one camp within the community. Thus this movement needs to be kept open as far as possible, outlining the thoughts, the possibilities and here and there the achievements already reached, thus to encourage others to try something similar.