By the Peer to Peer Network
The municipal context is today one of the main crucibles where the commons project is expressed.
- The commons movement is made up of a multitude of people in action who, strong in their diversity, embrace the same political horizon.
- This project consists in allowing, through sharing and cooperation, and collective autonomy, the transformation of living conditions towards more well-being.
- The commons are not reducible to a mechanism for managing a resource, nor to a juxtaposition of collective experiences.
- In the municipal context, the commons project is based on practices: sharing practices, decision-making practices, practices of mastery of use which testify to a search for social justice.
- The movement of the commons carries logics of collective reappropriation and demarchandisation which are based on the recognition of the values of use and production to counterbalance the only exchange value.
- Recognition of the commons in the municipal context calls both for the transformation of the political culture of the administration, elected officials and residents, and for the renewal of the instruments and mechanisms of co-construction of public action and public space – on legal, economic, ecological, social, political, etc.
- Public action is not the prerogative of public power alone. Civil society and social movements, including that of the commons, participate actively. Thus, to be truly open and participatory, public policies need to be articulated with the dynamics of the commons. A public policy for the commons recognizes the plurality of actors who make public action and the autonomy of the commons.
- The commons are one of the means, both practical and theoretical, for communities to build solidarity . The commons project thus challenges the neoliberal order in its claim to be the only credible and legitimate project to draw the contours of a just world. This challenge is exerted not only on the sharing of wealth, but also on that of the sharing of power .
- The neoliberal logic exerts a strong pressure at the heart of the municipal apparatus by the financialization and the privatization of the public space and more generally of public resources. These ongoing processes widen the disparities and inequalities between the different categories of the population, but also between the territories, and impoverish democracy. On the contrary, the commons movement aims at a reappropriation of politics, through the testing of collective action in all areas of daily life.
- The commons are a source of inspiration for the practices and creativity of tools for those who support the ecological transformation of society. In the municipal context, this perspective enriches the commons project with an ecosystem dimension that can be experienced on a daily basis and in proximity to the local scale through housing, food, energy, transport, etc. etc.
These ideas, barely sketched here in the municipal context, and many others, participate in the foundations of the commons project. We call for sharing them in a form accessible to the greatest number and implementing them.
