by Sylvain Sainte-Marie on behalf of Sciences Po Environnement Le Havre
The term “free market” is very common nowadays and refers to an almost natural functioning of exchange: everything has a price and must be traded for something of the same value. But this seemingly trivial notion is almost an oxymoron. “Free” can be understood as ‘without constraints’, but also as ‘does not cost anything’. Associated with “market”, a place of economic trade, there is a double contradiction: on a market, nothing is for free; on a market, there is a strong constraint on what things can be: they are only a certain amount of money.
In fact, the idea of reclaiming the commons has long been a topic in a world where the oxymoron “free trade” is more and more accepted. “Commons is a generic term or a variety of social forms existing in Europe, particularly in England, before capitalist or socialist industrialization transmogrified them into resources.” Commons can be land, objects, know-how—exactly like resources. However, they are not subject to exploitation or seen from a perspective of growth. The word is often found in the economy in the term “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin, 1968), the idea that shared resources are being overexploited since commons are free but rival and thus each actor’s interest is to exploit as much as they can. Elinor Ostrom received a Nobel Prize for working on a solution between state planning and private ownership to regulate the exploitation of such resources. In both cases, though, we are still talking about resources, i.e. potential wealth sources if they are traded. The problem of the market lies in this tendency to transform everything into resources. This potential exploitation is precisely what the “reclaiming of commons” fights against. Since the enclosure movement of the 17th century, we progressively tend to consider things as property, which is something you can use, make revenue from, or sell. The social shock caused by the enclosure movement was obviously in opposition to reactions. Diggers were a dissident group with a program of reforming the existing social order through the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities.
The Eating in Public movement takes on that legacy of opposing existing order and disrupting the capitalist systems around them. In 2003, Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, O’ahu (the island of the Hawaïi archipelago), started planting papaya trees in an abandoned, unpleasant patch of weeds near their house. This transformation of shared spaces went on with many actions, such as recycling centers, seed-sharing stations, community gardens or free stores. For them, they are not inventing anything or initiating something they should be credited for. Comparable actions are taken in their community and internationally, with or without the direct influence of Eating in Public.
SPE opened a free store on campus in November. This long-term project is, to some extent, a continuation of the Yard Sale logic. Many objects remain in everyone’s apartments without being used. Why not just give them away? One can give and take freely without any considerations other than ‘Do I really need this?’. That is, as long as everyone respects each other and follows basic rules: 1) No broken items, 2) Make sure objects are clean, 3) The store is neither a landfill nor a dumping station. This free store is the perfect way to make sure that an object will find the person who needs it, and the objects you need may well end up on the shelves of the store for you to take! Moreover, this action aims at questioning the market logic we live in. We are not in a TINA (there is no alternative) society; we can reconsider evidence and reclaim the commons. A free store on a campus is tiny indeed, but it is a makeshift experiment in mentality, a seed for new ideas to bloom.
Le Dragon Déchaîné 