The centre point of socialism is common ownership. Instead of society being run for the benefit of a minority and production being based on profit, property is owned collectively and short-term greed is rejected.  

The commons, collective property based on co-operative principles, have existed throughout history.  

Friedrich Engels argued that his friend Karl Marx was radicalised by the enclosure of commons, when peasants in Germany who had been collecting fallen wood from forest commons were treated as thieves for under taking customary rights they had enjoyed for hundreds of years.  

Chapter 27 of Das Kapital examines the enclosure of the English commons by the rich and the powerful.

It is often argued that commons are unrealistic and collective ownership an idealistic but impractical dream. 

This is false. We have commons now in cyberspace. The world wide web, Wikipedia and open-source software are all forms of commons. 

We know that throughout history, land, fisheries and forests have been owned by communities, not just by private individuals. 

The biologist Garrett Hardin developed the idea of the “tragedy of the commons,” arguing that environmental degradation and catastrophe resulted from common ownership.  

Over-fishing would lead to extinction and over-grazing to erosion of soil. Hardin believed that if some commoners grazed fewer animals, others would put more animals on, and because of this “free-rider” effect, tragedy was inevitable.

So what stops commons property from being abused?  

I was lucky enough to meet Elinor Ostrom, the first and so far only woman to win a Nobel prize for economics.  

Sadly, Ostrom died in 2012, but when I met her she told me about her work on common ownership, the study of the commons that won her the prize.  

It’s an exciting thought that a Nobel prize was awarded for a study of the economics of sharing and collective property. 

Ostrom listened to Hardin when he spoke at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, where she worked as a political economist.  

It dawned on her that while he condemned the commons as tragic, she had come across plenty of commons that worked well, and rather than destroying the environment, in fact protected it.  

She was inspired to find out why commons worked and why they sometimes failed, so she gathered case studies of thousands of commons across the world.  

Ostrom believed that people could co-operate to overcome the free-rider effect, that we don’t always compete, but sometimes we can learn to share.

She wrote up her findings in her book Governing the Commons, arguing that a number of characteristics made it easier to manage collective property. 

If rules were adapted to local conditions they were more likely to work. 

Cheap conflict resolution was also important and democratic control was needed because people were more likely to stick to rules that they had helped to agree.  

She continued to study what made long-term commons work well and wrote about examples such as Torbel in Switzerland where commons for grazing lasted for over 1,000 years. She was also keen on co-operatives.

While commons are under threat from enclosure and we can dismiss the idea that collective ownership is impractical, commons don’t automatically equal human liberation.  

I think we can crudely divide commons into exploitative commons, mixed commons and liberation commons. 

The rich and the powerful would generally rather abolish the commons, but they can distort commons to enable exploitation. 

In contrast, Ostrom believed in diverse and mixed commons as a system, but such commons can degrade into capitalist economic relations.  

Marx and Engels believed in commons as democratic common ownership, where associated producers would co-operate. 

Mixed and liberation commons are not without their problems, but exploitative commons are a source of misery. 

Exploitative commons were part of feudalism. Serfs worked all week for their lords in medieval England but had common rights to common land so they could survive and reproduce themselves.  

Peasants could gather fallen wood, dig peat, gather herbs and graze animals, but most of the land was far from being commonly owned and common rights were used to provide just enough for survival.  

Yes, it was right to oppose the enclosure of the commons, but rather than broad common ownership, a ribbon of common land allowed peasants to reproduce themselves.  

David Cameron’s idea of the “big society” reflects this. Instead of paying us for certain types of work, more and more is outsourced to the voluntary sector.  

The non-monetary, the voluntary, the local are used to cut the bills so corporations can pay less tax.  

The commons as a way of cutting bills for the rich is increasingly common on the web.  

Wikipedia is a superb commons-based institution, but from Facebook to Twitter and Google, commons is a business model.  

We go on social media for free, but this generates advertising revenue for corporations and such needs for corporate advertising distort the system. 

Hardly a day goes by without a story about social media being abused to take away our privacy to make profit.  Likewise, while mutuals and co-ops are often fine institutions, they are being used by Cameron to erode services like the NHS to bring in US multinationals. 

Exploitative commons use common ownership to cut costs for either feudal or corporate exploiter. 

Ostrom would not have classed herself as a socialist but she certainly opposed human exploitation. 

She believed in a diversity of institutions and ownership. This provides for pluralism, experimentation and a rich — she would say “polycentric” — system.  

The Marxist geographer David Harvey has advocated her espousal of diversity.  

Yet while diversity is good, there is a danger that such commons and co-operatives will be crushed by a wider capitalist system.

We need commons that liberate. I don’t think these occur automatically but we need to strive for them.  

As Marx recognised, the rich and the powerful will always seek to manipulate for themselves and a system of capitalist market relations erodes and distorts commons.  

Ostrom looked in detail at what makes a commons work or fail. We need to read and apply perspectives from both Marx and Ostrom.  

Just making people aware of alternatives based on common ownership is needed, but we must also be aware that commons are not a panacea or a perfect system. 

We can produce in common but common ownership needs to be part of a system which is thoughtfully prepared for and practically nurtured.

Derek Wall is international co-ordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales.