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Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic reference for the resource, which will typically also contain an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. Particularly recommended items have a red Connexions logo beside the title.

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  1. All That We Share 
    A Field Guide to the Commons
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2010
    All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons is a wake-up call that will inspire you to see the world in a new way. As soon as you realize that some things belong to everyone -- water, for instance, or the Internet or human knowledge -- you become a commoner, part of a movement that's reshaping how we will solve the problems facing us in the twenty-first century.
  2. The Charter of the Forest
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1217   Published: 1225
    A complementary document to the Magna Carta of 1215, defining the rights of vassals, freemen, and serfs, reducing penalties, and restoring common land taken by the Crown.
  3. Common land
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights.
  4. The Commons and the Centennial of the Easter Rising
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    A hundred years ago today in Dublin the Easter Rebellion commenced. This was an urban insurrection, in the revolutionary tradition. Not more than a thousand participated. It lasted five days, before the British military killed hundreds, and executed sixteen including those who had signed the Proclamation of the Republic.
  5. Destroying the Commons 
    How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Our rights and liberties are under ever-increasing attack.
  6. For the Reconstitution of the Movements from Below: Autonomy and Independence
    A Reflection almost Ten Years After the Water War
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    Within the grassroots there are mixed feelings of dissatisfaction, sadness and anger. The demand of re-appropriating the commons and natural resources like gas, petrol, minerals and water has fundamentally not been met. Transnational corporations continue to exploit and extract these resources, and the government manages them in a private, sectarian, inefficient and in many cases corrupt manner.
  7. India's Indigenous Peoples organise to protect forests, waters and commons
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    India's neoliberal government is attempting the mass seizure of indigenous lands, commons and forests in order to hand them over for corporate exploitation with mines, dams and plantations. But tribal communities are rising up to resist the takeover, which is not only morally reprehensible but violates India's own laws and international human rights obligations.
  8. Land, Food, Freedom
    Struggles for the Gendered Commons in Kenya
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2009
  9. The Land Grabbers 
    The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2012
    How Wall Street, Chinese billionaires, oil sheikhs, and agribusiness are buying up huge tracts of land in a hungry, crowded world.
  10. Liberties and Commons for All
    Preface to the Korean Edition of Magna Carta Manifesto
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Liberties and Commons for All expresses two aspects of the ancient English Charters of Liberty; first is the restraint on political power of the King, second is the protection of subsistence in the commons.
  11. The Magna Carta Manifesto 
    Liberties and Commons for All
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2008
    Linebaugh shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny -- and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture -- are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state.
  12. Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2013
    In contrast to the traditional view that Marx's work is restricted to a critique of capitalism – and that he consciously avoided any detailed conception of its alternative – this work shows that Marx was committed to a specific concept of a post-capitalist society which informed the whole of his approach to political economy.
  13. A Movement Without Demands?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    We claim that far from being a strength, the lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement. We also claim that demands should not be approached tactically but strategically, that is, they should be grounded in a long-term view of the political goals of the movement, a view that is currently lacking. Accordingly, in the second part of this text, we argue that this strategic view should be grounded in a politics of the commons.
  14. Open Borders and the Tragedy of Open Access Commons
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013
    “Open borders” refers to a policy of unlimited or free immigration. I argue here that it is a bad policy. If you are poor and your country provides no social safety net, you move to one that does. If you are rich and your country makes you pay your taxes, you move (or at least move your money) to one that doesn’t. Thus safety nets, and public goods in general, disappear as they become both overloaded and underfunded. That is the “world without borders,” and without community. That is the tragedy of open access commons.
  15. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 18, 2014
    The Commons
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2014
    From its beginnings, one of capitalism's prime imperatives has been an all-out and never-ceasing assault on the Commons in all its manifestations. Common land, common water, public ownership -- anything rooted in the ancient human traditions of sharing and cooperation is anathema to an economic system that seeks to turn everything that exists into private property that can be exploited for profit. This issue of the Connexions Newsletter focuses on the Commons.
  16. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 26, 2015
    Sustainability, ecology, and agriculture
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    This issue features a number of items related to sustainability, ecology, and agriculture, including Vandana Shiva's article "Small is the New Big," the Council of Canadians' new report on water issues, "Blue Betrayal," the film "The Future of Food," the Independent Science News website, which focuses on the science of food and agriculture, and the memoir "Journey of an Unrepentant Socialist" by Brewster Kneen, a former farmer and long-time critic of corporate agriculture.
  17. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - June 18, 2015
    Corruption
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    Corruption - or at least some types of corruption - are much in the news, with the ongoing scandals in the Canadian Senate and the recent U.S. targeting of the Swiss-based football federation FIFA for alleged bribery. In this issue, we look at these and other forms of corruption. Diana Johnstone writes about the double standards displayed by U.S. institutions, which happily target enemies and rivals, while ignoring the much greater corruption that underlies the power structures in Washington. We feature an article detailing how much money U.S. Senators received from corporations prior to their vote on the TPP negotiations, as well as materials on criminal conduct by some of the world's biggest banks, and an article on the work of investigative journalists in exposing corruption.
  18. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 21, 2015
    Climate Change and Social Change
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2015
    This issue of Other Voices spotlights climate change, the escalating crisis that the upcoming Paris climate conference is supposed to address. But climate change is not a single problem: it is a product of an economic system whose driving force is the need to grow and accumulate. Nor does it affect everyone equally: those with wealth and power can buy themselves what they need to continue living comfortably for years to come - everything from air conditioning to food to police and soldiers to protect their secure bubbles - while those who are poor and powerless find their lives increasingly impossible. A serious effort to address climate change therefore means social change and economic change.
  19. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - March 26, 2016
    Forests and trees
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2016
    For countless centuries, forests, and the trees in them, have been seen as sources of life, livelihood, and spiritual meaning. For capitalism, however, forests are sites of extraction and profit-making, or obstacles in the way of 'development.' In this issue, we look at some of the threats to forests worldwide, and the ways in which people are resisting and defending the forests.
  20. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 21, 2018
    What are we eating?
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2018
    What are we eating? A simple question which opens up a labyrinth of devilishly complex issues about production and distribution, access to land, control of water, prices, health and safety, migrant labour, and much else.
    For millions of people, the answer is brutally simple: not enough to survive. UNICEF estimates that 300 million children go to bed hungry each night, and that more than 8,000 children under the age of five die of malnutrition every day. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 12% of the world's population is chronically malnourished.
    How is this possible in a world where there is an enormous surplus of food, where farmers are paid not to grow food?
    A short answer is that food production and distribution are driven by the need to make profits, rather than by human needs.
  21. Public Disinterest: Information Commons Dismantled
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    Seventy-five years after the Federal Radio Commission declared there was no room on the public airwaves for “propaganda stations” and denied a license renewal to a station that attacked Jews and law enforcement agencies, the airwaves are filled with both propaganda and venom. Today the airwaves, stripped of commons rules, feed hatred.
  22. Reclaiming the Commons in Appalachia
    Property is Theft
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    The extractive resource industry has a firm hold on the wild, wonderful, but wounded Appalachians. The use of eminent domain and compulsory pooling has robbed communities of their cultural and natural heritage. Capital is the authority of the Appalachian coalfields, and has created systemic poverty and mono economies. Instead of prosperity in the commons, the mechanism of authority has spawned tragedy.
  23. Sharing as our common cause
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    A call for sharing underpins many existing initiatives for social justice, environmental stewardship, true democracy and global peace. On this basis, STWR argues that sharing should be more widely promoted as a common cause that can help connect civil society organisations and social movements under a united call for change.
  24. Socialism.ca 
    Resource Type: Website
    First Published: 2016
    A gateway to resources about socialism, socialist history, and socialist ideas, compiled by Connexions.
  25. Solidarity Economies: A Guerrilla War against Capitalism
    An Interview with Nicolás Cruz Tineo
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    Capitalism is based on the philosophy that man is inherently evil and selfish. But solidarity economies suggest something different: that we are human, we cooperate with one another, we love, we struggle for the love of humanity, and that the future of our planet, our life, is based on our having a culture of brotherhood, sisterhood, collaboration, cooperation. It is an economy of love.
  26. Stop, Thief!
    The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2014
    A collection of fifteen chapters on many different aspects of the commons, mostly from a historical perspective.
  27. Tragedy of the anticommons
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A coordination breakdown where the existence of numerous rights holders frustrates achieving a socially desirable outcome.
  28. Tragedy of the commons
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest will ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen.
  29. 12 Reasons You'll Be Hearing More About The Commons In 2012
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    "We Power" stands at the convergence of economic and cultural trends.
  30. Unequal Freedoms
    The Global Market as an Ethical System
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1998
    McMurtry's central argument in this work is the global market can be an ethical thing if a civil commons is put into place. The civil commons is a economic system in which individuals, not a handful of corporations, take part in a equal opporutinity framework of supply and demand.
  31. Why The Language of the Commons Matters
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Our very language for identifying problems and imagining solutions has been compromised. We may have many unattractive human traits fueled by individual fears and ego, but we are also creatures entirely capable of self-organization, cooperation, a concern for fairness and social justice, and sacrifice for the larger good and future generations.
  32. Winstanley & The Diggers
    The Spirtual and Political Story of a Seventeenth Century Communist Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    Spritzler sets out to show that the resistance to the Hobbesian ideas that rule our lives today is as old as those ideas themselves. Hobbes' basic assumption is that men are necessarily locked into a struggle for power over one another This assumption is also the basis of the most powerful political forces at work in the world today. Winstanley, and many of his contempoaries, defy this dominant paradigm.
  33. Winstanley’s Ecology
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2014
    Largely forgotten for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the communist thought of Winstanley was rediscovered by German and Russian Marxists in the late nineteenth century.
  34. The World Turned Upside Down
    Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1984
    Hill looks at radical groups such as the Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, and others, whose ideas threatened to overturn the established order in the mid-seventeenth century.
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