The modern progressive movement, like its predecessor, is a diverse coalition of individuals and organizations. They have a wide variety of pet causes, such as the environment, health care, education, and a variety of pseudo-rights (women’s rights, gay rights, workers’ rights, etc.). One of these causes is “the commons.”
Commoners (those who advocate for “the commons”) hold that those things that we have and use in common, should be controlled and governed in common. And what do we have and use in common? The following are a few of the values considered to be a part of “the commons”: nature, infrastructure, culture, knowledge, television, education, and software.
Not surprisingly, commoners are advocates of democracy. They want the majority to decide how a vast array of resources and values are used and distributed.
They argue for the regulation of businesses on the premise that roads, education, and infrastructure are provided by “the people,” and thus, as Elizabeth Warren put it, nobody built a successful business by himself. They oppose intellectual property rights, arguing that the discoveries of today are built on knowledge “inherited” from previous generations, and thus belong to everyone. They want to control your body and your mind.
While it is often difficult to provide a concrete example of how a particular movement might manifest itself if widely accepted, the commons movement has provided us with such an example: Occupy Wall Street (OWS).
OWS claims to represent the “common man”—the 99 percent rather than the productive elite and the exceptional. OWS claims the “right” of the majority to control those who excel in making our lives better. OWS uses their I-Phones and lap tops to attack those who made such devices possible.
The violence, lewdness, and nihilism of OWS is what commoners want to spread to every neighborhood in America. There is nothing common about that.