Capitalist commons

HOW HAS THE ELEVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL’S RIGHT TO PROFIT AND A BELIEF IN THE INALIENABLE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY DEFINED THE POLITICS OF SPACE WITHIN THE NEOLIBERAL CITY?

PANIC.CRISIS. RECESSION TIMELINE

A timeline of key political and economic events, from the moment of financial panic to current state of recession and stagnation

US bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Lehman Brothers file for bankruptcy.

Dow Jones falls 504 points

Bank of America rescue Merrill Lynch $50bn

And staves off Bear Stearn’s bankruptcy by assuming $30bn in liabilities and engineering sale

7. 09. 08

03. 08

07. 08

3. 07. 08

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The Capitalist Commons

SEPTEMBER: Global financial panic

US: biggest ECB ever fall in increases house prices interest rates by 25 basis points

worst loss since 2001 terrorist attacks

101

PA The US Federal Reserve injects $236bn into the American banking system

DOW

14. 09. 08

15. 09. 08

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18. 09. 08

1PM

NIC Federal Reserve bails out A.I.G for $85 billion

Treasury and Federal Reserve began discussions for biggest bailout in US history

FBI investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and Lehman Brothers over their role in the sub-prime mortgage crisis

Goldman Sachs reports 70% drop in profits

Central banks globally pump $180bn into the system

Federal Reserve announces Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shift from independent investment banks to bank holding companies (greater regulation)

G7 vows to protect financial system

16. 09. 08

18. 09. 08

21. 09. 08

22. 09. 08 24. 09. 08

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Washington Mutual Speech at the UN, bank failure Gordon Brown calls for an end to the US bailout plan "age of stalls

irresponsibility"

Ireland becomes the first state in the Eurozone to fall into recession

25. 09. 08

26. 09. 08

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worst day since Black Monday 87 .

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CC US Bailout Fails

House rejects proposal 228-205

ity"

Dow Jones falls 778 points

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US Senate approves $700 bn bailout package

Europe seeks unified policy on the US House German approves government Bailout Bill guarantees all private savings accounts in the country

...“worst financial crisis since WW2 due to speculative capitalism�

Dow Jones falls 800.

Recovers to 369.88 Markets struggle

1. 10. 08

3. 10. 08

5. 10. 08

6. 10. 08

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The Capitalist Commons

29. 09. 08

OCTOBER: The State steps in

s

R Central banks co-ordinate lowering interest rates globally

“potential for instability was always there,” but caught by surprise at the magnitude of the problems in the economy and financial system.

Steepest drop in UK house prices since 1983

- Robert M. Solow, economist

Singapore officially in recession due to falling demand for manufacturing from US and Europe.

TERRIBLE WEEK: Dow plummeted 20.8 % Oil prices fell and Asian markets down

UK gov nationan £37bn £ Royal B ScotlanS and Lloa

15 EU m coordinc providep capital cf

US Trea i inject $2 banks ib for equif

8. 10. 08

9. 10. 08

10. 08

10. 10. 08

13. 10.

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UK govt partially Dow Jones falls 7.8% nationalises banks £37bn into the Royal Bank of Bernanke (Federal Scotland, HBOS Reserve) cautioned and Lloyds TSB “broader economic

recovery will not happen right away,”

Dow Jones up 4.7%

Signs of easing credit

Pakistan seeks emergency bail-out funds from the IMF

Dow Jones falls 5.7%

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,”

-Alan Greenspan

Global cur slump. Sto sink world

UK econo officially sh with the bi drop in GD 1990.

The Capitalist Commons

15 EU members coordinate plans to provide banks with capital funding

Workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive deals worth more than $70bn, large proportion in discretionary bonuses

US Treasury plan to inject $250 ‘bn into banks in exchange for equity

Iceland cut interest rates by 3.5% and discusses multibillion euro loan with Russia

13. 10. 08

15. 10. 08

17. 10. 08

20. 10. 08

22. 10. 08

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DOW

15. 10. 08

23. 10. 08

24. 10. 08

IS

currencies Dow Jones up 11% Stocks orldwide following earlier rallies in Europe and Asia

The US Federal Reserve cut key interest rate to 1%

onomy ly shrinking, e biggest n GDP since

IMF, EU and World Bank announce rescue package for Hungary

Convent Garden shops close central London

Sta wo the

Th Jap rat 7y

0. 08

28. 10. 08

29. 10. 08

30. 10. 08

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Financial crisis | Business | n.co.uk ardian.co.uk/b 2008/oct/08/cr ch.marketturm

11%

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Most volatile Month in Wall St history.

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31. 10. 08

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Barack Obama elected US President

ECB cuts interest rates by 50 basis points

China announces $586 bn economic stimulus plan 7% of GDP

G20 meet to discuss growth and further prevention of crisis

IMF approves Mumbai$2.1bn loan bombings for Iceland

4. 11. 08

6. 11. 08

9. 11. 08

15. 11. 08

20. 11. 08

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ECB cuts interest rates by 75 basis points

Economists confirm US had been in recession fo year - on track t be the long downturn i generation The Capitalist Commons

The Bank of Japan cut interest rates - 1st time in 7 yrs

NOVEMBER: Further Damage Limitation

SR Standard & Poor’s worst month since the ‘87 crash

26. 11.08 4. 12. 08

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E Efforts to stimulate economies

ack to longest rn in a tion

ECB cuts interest rates by 50 basis points

2009

mists m US en in on for a

The US govt. pays Bank of America $20 bn from financial rescue fund to help it with losses incurred from Merrill Lynch buy out

ECB cuts interest rates by 50 basis points

15. 01. 09

16. 01. 09

5. 03. 09

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G20 Summit London G20 setup Financial Stability Board Protests in London

2. 04. 09

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Bank of Chrysler and General Motors England pumps bankrupt ÂŁ50bn into economy

Obama’s call for regulatory overhaul meets resistance from financial industry and Congress

Riots in Tehran, Iran over Presidential election

Wall Street financier / fraudster Bernard Madoff prosecuted and jailed

Executives at Britain's top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year, despite recession

UK unemMerkel wins ployment German hits highest Election since 1995

WIKILEAKS published

The Capitalist Commons

05. 09

8. 05. 09 06. 09

13. 06. 09 29. 06. 09 14. 09. 09

16. 09. 09

28. 09. 09

25. 11. 09

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E S New PM of Greece, George A. Papandreou, announces that his predecessor had disguised the size of the country ’s deficit

Obama signs EU offers “The Affordable support to Care Act” - US Greece healthcare reform

2010

AKS ed

The Greek ripple effect : Portugal and Ireland

24. 09. 10

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The Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Goldman of defrauding investors of more than $1bn through mis- marketing sub-prime mortgage- related securities

25. 03. 10 16. 04. 10

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Deepwater Horizon oil spill

EUr mal $1 ava Eur nee

Inc 110 bai Gre

20.04.10

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ECB announces stricter rules on bank collateral

Ireland seeks financial support

25. 06.10

28. 07.10

21. 11.10

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2011

The European Financial Stability Facility established

Including a 110bn euro bail out for Greece

05. 10

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Spain, Portugal Political and Greece are protests in constrained by EU Tunisia membershipunable to devalue their currencies to regain competitiveness, and facing austerity measures when their economies need extra spending.

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George Soros warns, that the British govt will push the economy back into recession unless it modifies its hardline austerity package.

Ea Ch Zea peo wid dam

14. 01. 11

26. 01. 11

22

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The Capitalist Commons

bc. wo a--

EU and IMF make nearly $1 trillion available to Euro states in need.

Austerity: economic contraction

S S

r l

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, Earthquake in

Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 185 people and causes widespread damage

Earthquake and tsunami in Japan effect financial markets Moody downgrades Greece’s rating to B1 and Spain’s to Aa2

Global stock markets fall sharply again at prospect of a Greek debt default

EU council approves €78bn aid to Portugal and sets conditions

Papandreou tries to persuade MPs to approve 28bn euro of cuts, tax rises, fiscal reforms and privatisation plans to secure the 12bn loan

G pa ro au m ne ses loa b

22. 02.11

03. 11

16. 06. 11

17. 05.11

22. 06. 11

06

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top f top op dits

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06. 11

European leaders meet in Brussels to discuss sovereign debt crisis

21. 07.11

O

Shooting of Mark Duggan by police spark Tottenham Riots

04.08.11

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DAY 1: 1,000 protesters

Occupy Wall St The Capitalist Commons

in 92

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s bn

Greece barely passes 2nd round of austerity measures needed in securing EU loan

Occupy Wall St swells to 15,000

17. 09.11 5. 10.11

ll St 5,000

Occupy demonstrations go global 900 locations

Occupy Movement: 2000 cities worldwide

15. 10.11

29. 10.11

N The Bank of England pumps £75bn into the banking system

European leaders increase the European financial stability facility (EFSF) – to around €1tn.

ECB allots 489bn EURO to 523 banks - refinancing operation

6.10. 11

10. 11

22. 12.11

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2011 ends with a w happy New Year o message from the IMF: “the h

world, is at serious risk of s sliding into a o 1930’s- style y slump.”

12. 11

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Further protests and strikes in Athens due to austerity measures

rdian.c 2011/ju is-arkets

. .

Eurogroup agrees on 2nd financial aid package for Greece

ECB allots 530bn euro to 800 banks refinancing operation

21. 02.12

1. 03.12

The Capitalist Commons

2012

he t sk of oa yle

Uncertainty and Regulation debate

with a Year om

12.02.12

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In a 5-4 decision U.S. Supreme Court found the Healthcare Reform Bill to be constitutional

Spanish officials reject EU intrusion into their budgetary powers in exchange for helping the country ’s banks

30 States currently have voter ID laws for the coming US election

Police clash with protestors outside Spanish parliament in Madrid

05.12

06. 12

06.12

09.12

23. 09.12

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Euro currency struggles, ECB President warns European Parliament that the structure of the currency union has become “unsustain-

able unless further steps are undertaken.” half-measures

and delays have made the euro zone crisis worse

117

THE CAPITALIST COMMONS

economic and political monopolies and the centralization of capital it challenges the aspatial character of cosmopolitanism and drawing on the political theory of David Harvey and Chantal Mouffe it focusses on how the elevation of the individual’s right to profit and a belief in the inalienable right to private property has defined space economically and resulted in an enclosure of the commons politically and architecturally.

The Capitalist Commons

This essay interrogates the current politics of space within the contemporary neoliberal city. Highlighting

Immanuel Kant’s theory of cosmopolitanism shifted the locale of identity construction from the polis to the cosmopolis, from the city-state to the universal through the notion of the “citizen of the world” within a “universal community”.1 Devoid of social origins, aspatial cosmopolitanism was embraced by neoliberalism.2 But Western liberalism’s persistent tendency to view the human subject outside of her or his social, spatial and environmental context creates an over simplistic flattening of difference. Under

neoliberalism the disembodied subject is used to ignore culture and homogenize people as universal consumers, allowing the society to be reconfigured by magic of the free market, a “... borderless world, ruled by the commodity in which geographical differences are conveniently erased…”3 But in reality “neoliberalization has created a flat world for the multinational corporations and for the billionaire entrepreneur and investor class, but a rough, jagged and uneven world for everyone else.”4 Garret Hardin’s article The Tragedy of the Commons is commonly cited as an irrefutable argument for the superior efficiency of private property and thus a justification for privatization. 5 Both David Harvey and George Monbiot believe this to be a mistaken reading; one that satisfied the prevailing trend towards unregulated, individualized capital accumulation under neoliberalism.6 Hardin’s perspective on the commons exemplifies the narrow set of presumptions largely driven by land enclosures that occurred in Britain from the sixteenth century. Politically this “…thinking has often been polarized between privateproperty solutions or authoritarian state intervention”7 and influenced an over simplistic ‘for or against’ treatment of enclosure.

“The justification for private property rights in liberal theory…is that they should serve to maximise the common good when socially integrated through the institutions of fair and free market exchange.”8 Following Thomas Hobbes’s logic a commonwealth is produced “…through privatizing competitive interests within a framework of strong state power.”9 But forty years of neoliberalism has departed from this theory, downplaying the necessity for strong State power and encouraging deregulation, privatization and entrepreneurial liberties. Economically, privatization involves enclosing commonly

held wealth, assets and land and value is produced by collective labour in any enterprise.

Capitalism individualizes the profits from this collective labour.10 This leads Harvey to argue the ‘tragedy’ of the commons is not as Hardin depicts. The failure lies with individualized private property rights’ inability to fulfil common interests.

Neoliberalism has developed a highly persuasive rhetoric emphasizing individual liberty and freedom but it is the individual’s right of profit and inalienable right to property that is paramount. Neoliberalism’s

119

blind endorsement of “…individualized capital accumulation perpetually threatens to destroy two basic common property resources that undergrid all forms of production; the labourer and the land. And with capital accumulation occurring at a compound rate of growth … these dual threats to land and labour escalate in scale and intensity over time.”

Speculation and the liberalization of financial markets have allowed a few to exercise their inalienable right to profit at the cost of many; the logic of the market has successfully divided the rich from

the poor through the egalitarianism of exchange.11 The “equal treatment of unequal’s”12 under neoliberalism invariably produces monopoly power and these same monopolies protect market freedoms. As Marx observed competition always tends towards monopoly (or oligopoly) “…simply because the survival of the fittest in a war of all against all eliminates the weaker firms.”13 The economic logic of neoliberalism asserts that the protection of the individual’s right to profit encourages competition. But the centralization of capital over the last forty years negates this.

Neoliberalism has been the major political project of the capitalist class in the USA. From the 1970s US government deficits have been used to provide a rationale to externalize social reproduction and environmental costs, whereas corporate capital has been protected through the lowering of taxes in the higher bracket of earners.14 The neoliberal manta of the State’s responsibility to protect the individual’s monopolies.

Now post 2008 deficit reduction is discussed again by Government, their solution being the politics of austerity which signals further losses in asset values, rights and entitlements for the public. “Thirty years of neoliberalism teaches us that the freer the market the greater the inequalities and the greater the monopoly power.”15 This contradiction within the neoliberal framework resides with capitalism itself. “… capitalists actively cultivate monopoly powers.”16 The visible hand of the corporation, as Alfred Chandler terms it, has been far more influential in global capital than Adam Smith’ s invisible hand of the market.17 The market depends on the individual monopoly of capitalists and their ownership of the means of production, including finance and land. “The monopoly power of private property is therefore both the beginning point and the end point of all capitalist activity.”18 The neoliberal condition is relegated to keeping economic relations competitive enough while sustaining the individual and class monopoly privileges of private property.

Markets require scarcity to function and if scarcity does not exist then it must be socially created. Private property and the profit rate facilitate this demand resulting in deprivation in the form of unemployment or

The Capitalist Commons

right to profit has led to centralization of wealth and an explicit increase in economic and political

housing shortages in the midst of plenty.19 The engineering of scarcity, the manipulation of value and land speculation and the market’s tendency towards monopoly creation puts neoliberalism’s promotion of the freeness and fairness of the market in dispute.

David Harvey offers a sceptical perspective of a social situation we have come to think of as natural.

As a“… social process [neoliberalism] depends upon a juridical construction of individual rights.” But “All ideals about rights hide suppositions about social processes. [And] conversely, social processes incorporate certain conceptions of rights.”20 Neoliberalism’s emphasis on individual liberty and freedom has been the justification for the individualization of profit from collective labour and the enclosure of the commons through privatization.21 To live under capitalism is to accept the bundle of rights necessary for endless capital accumulation. But Harvey argues the emphasis is wrong; the individual’s right to profit and the inalienable right to private property should be derivative, not fundamental.

Echoing Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, political theorist Chantal Mouffe articulates democracy as an on-going project not an end point or solution. For Popper the basis for openness is in political, economic or social ideologies being accountable for their biases and weaknesses. Ideologies are not truth; they are a perspective that if questioned and criticized may remain ‘open’. In The Open

Society and its Enemies: Authority, Community and Bureaucracy, Mark Notturno articulates the frequent misuse and distortion of Karl Popper’s theory of an open society to push the neoliberal agenda or in justifying democracy’s superiority.22 Over the last forty years neoliberalism has been left unchecked and unchallenged. Market capitalism is not purely a process of accumulation, it has become a powerful ideology; embodying imagery of the unlimited expansion of rational mastery and the continuous innovation of the cycle of production, consumption and finance.23 Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s conception of the polis, Chantal Mouffe’s ‘agonistic pluralism’ describes the vigorous contest among equal adversaries.24 For Mouffe there is democracy as long as there is a

conflict; but the lack of competing commons, the absence of a political entity challenging the hegemony of neoliberalism and the proposition of “Third Way” theorists that society must think beyond left and right signals a retreat from the adversarial model of politics.25 Thus Chantal Mouffe describes the contemporary neoliberal city as “post-political.”26

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Aspatial cosmopolitanism and neoliberalism has privileged the procedural means of capital at the expense of confrontational discourse among equals and subsequently destroyed civic space as a place of contestation.27 Unlike the Greek polis, the Western city is propelled primarily by economics

and market capitalism’s centralization of capital and privileging of monopoly power negates the possibility of equate debate. Instead of a city of fractious competing commons, citizens with differing value sets are classified as consumers with moderately varied preferences while simultaneously relegating difference to the fringe of identity politics.28 The disembodied subject and neoliberalism’s code of the individual has undermined the urban commons and has situated itself as the antidote of agnostic pluralism.

With the rise of the modern western city since the 15th century there has been a blurring of public and private space. “In taking over the political power of cities, economic power in the form of oligarchic accumulation fragments the collective body and makes the city a composition of individual forms which manifest the force of private interest over collective values.”29 Changes in modes of production have involved huge shifts in the spatial dynamics of capitalism, daily life, the structure of labour and the social fabric. The structure of money and its mode of circulation have been substantially modified in recent years, an era of postmodernity. Fredrick Jameson argues that finance capital and globalization represent the most distinct features of late capitalism and that for architecture its counterpart is land speculation.30

The quality of urban life has become a commodity for those who can afford it. So has the city in a world in which consumerism, tourism, cultural, knowledge-based industries and the spectacle have become key aspects of the urban political economy.31 David Harvey argues the city is being Disneyfied, believing cities in Europe are redesigning themselves to Disney standards. It is generally accepted that qualities of uniqueness and particularity are key to tradability. The branding of cities is a big business, a city’s ability to capture monopoly rents effects its bankability; its marks of distinction (cultural artefacts, practices and environmental characteristics) add up to a collective symbolic capital.32 Yet the more marketable such items become the degree of uniqueness decreases. “The bland homogeneity that goes with pure commodification erases monopoly advantages; cultural products become no different from commodities in general.”33 Rem Koolhaas suggests the city is taking the

form of the resort. That the model for life in the city is conceptually shifting from work to leisure and therefore the aesthetic of the city is shifting from serious enterprise to resort conditions.34 Within this, the language of the resort informs the public realm rather than an exchange of ideas.

The Capitalist Commons

The most recent radical expansion of the urban process has transformed lifestyles.

Koolhaas argues the surface of the city is being inscribed with leisure and public space is less about participation or politics and more about consumption and commerce. In a place where lifestyle is the dominant activity or industry, dwelling, maintaining or contributing matter less.

The further encroachment on public space and urban management by the private sector reflects a blurring of what constitutes public. Market globalization has led to an increase in global capital’s role within city politics, a greater cooperation with the private sector and a gradual deregulation of urban planning. Within the global economic circuit cities must remain competitive, the increasing cost

of urban infrastructure results in partnerships between public bodies and the private sector.35 This mutually beneficial relationship has led to the city becoming biased towards global capital; the private sector plays an increasing role in the urban policies, governance and planning.36 Deregulation and privatization happened simultaneously across a wide range of disciplines.

Governments, planning bodies and institutions were considered inflexible, slow to act and not commercially savvy. The neoliberal equivalent of the citizen was the consumer, and this consumer wanted a competitive urban realm and a visible return on their investment in the city (taxes). The neoliberal preoccupation with individual user satisfaction, customisation and quality has led to a commodification of public services.37 George Monbiot’s article Putting a Price on the Rivers and Rain Diminishes Us All discusses the British government’s efforts to value and thus commodify the United Kingdom’s ecosystem. Monbiot believes this valuation of natural resources and rivers is a “…prelude to the greatest privatisation since enclosure.”38 In the accusation of “natural capital” the UK government has commissioned research, formed the Natural Capital Committee and an Ecosystem Markets Task Force. Their argument being that assigning a capital value to nature creates an economic incentive for its protection. Natural processes are now “ecosystem services”, hills forests and river catchments are “green infrastructure” and biodiversity and habitats are “asset classes” all within the new “ecosystem market”.39 Logical, perhaps, but considering the history of privatisation, open to manipulation and monopoly power. Commodifying nature makes it a subsidiary of the corporate economy and like other aspects of neoliberalism, “…the motivating forces of democracy, will be resolved in a column of figures. Governments won’t need to regulate; the market will make the decisions that politicians have ducked.”40 The fact that this valuation is being proposed by the State suggests the extent of neoliberalism’s influence.

The city is the most explicit index of power relationships. Here evidence of the post-political condition’s erosion of the commons must be made apparent and the influence of the private sector within urban

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management should be seen as a point of contention. The streets and squares of our cities are “… open in principle but regulated, policed, and even privately managed in the form of business-improvement districts.”41 The further enclosure of the urban commons politically and architecturally must be addressed.

As Chantal Mouffe warns, “…the post-political consensus which characterizes most advanced liberaldemocratic societies is at the origin of the growing success of right-wing populist parties.” The denial of conflicting commons and the acceptance of the current hegemonic form of the neoliberal city will lead to the raising of antagonistic voices.

Although not a radical group securing their space and then projecting their politics outwards, the gated community is a form of exclusionary commons. The consolidating of their economic and social interests through private property rights does affect the fabric of the city and their sphere of influence is larger than the security door, gates or white picket fences of the boundary. Although blanketed in the term community or neighbourhood to suggest inclusion, the gated community or the condominium segregates along demographic, economic or even racial lines, exacerbating existing inequalities.

A cities built form is a powerful political entity, shaping attitudes and defining contemporary political culture. Harvey uses the term ‘place-making to describe how a culture’s values are developed through the spatial character of an urban environment, believing the U.S. post-war suburbanization breed a “suburban view of the world.”42 It is easy to write-off the Tea Party as ignorant or extremists, but Harvey argues the Tea Party is no accident; it represents a growing culture of individualist suburbanites who feel their right

property rights and validates exclusionary commons then “place-making” in late capitalism is further enclosure.

The current defeatist position argues that in the wake of commodification culture has become so subjugated to the control of capital that it cannot imagine modes of resistance to the hegemony of neoliberalism. But if space is about multiplicity then there is something ungovernable about that.

44

The commons is not something to be nostalgic for. Although it is being continuously

enclosed, it is also being continuously produced. 45 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri see “the metropolis as a factory for the production of the common,” and the city as a reflection of its inhabitants. The urban commons or the character of the city is defined and formed through the inhabitants’ negotiation of spaces subject to enclosure through social control, appropriation or countermoves.

The Capitalist Commons

to an exclusionary commons is threatened.43 If the neoliberal mantra of the individual protects the

“…if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself.”46 Drawing on the writing of Henri Lefebvre, political theorist David Harvey argues the ‘right to the city’ has been marginalized in neoliberalism’s elevation of the right to profit and right to private property. For Harvey the right to the city should not merely be a right of access to what property speculators and state planners define, but an active right to change it.47 Harvey argues that new rights should be defined. If the geographer’s agenda is to spatialize historical and contemporary political, economic and social forces, architecture has a role to play in finding ways to organize production, distribution, exchange and consumption to meet human needs.

For Pier Vittorio Aureli “… the city emerges as a locus of permanent political conflict of which architectural form is one of the most extreme and radical manifestations.”48 The boundaries or stoppages set up physically by the architecture form an extensive governmental apparatus. Teddy Cruz argues architects “can be designers not just of form but of political processes”49 For Cruz the city’s management at a physical level:- zoning, dormant infrastructures, creeping privatisation, parcel size, slum dwellings and changing semi-public spaces are architecture’s concerns. But to understand the appropriation and negotiation of public and private architecture must alter its conventions, finding ways to make the informal flows and forces of the city visible in order that they can be known and recognized.50 How architecture unveils invisible political and economic structures and imagines counter-spatial procedures “remains the essential question in the negotiation between the formal and informal city”.51

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The CAPITALIST COMMONS is a contradiction in terms. Capitalisms’ managerial approach to the ordering of knowledge is in conflict with notions of the public and the necessary contention of the polis. The reduction of the commons as a place for contention in the ‘post-political’ city, the homogenization of the populous under aspatial cosmopolitanism and enclosure, through the individualization of profits from collective labour, have led to an erosion of the commons both ideologically and physically. The strength of liberal theory surrounding the individual’s right to profit and the inalienable right to private property is undeniable, and despite current economic insecurity, this position has not been challenged. Markets, unregulated financial capital and land speculation have further contributed to the commodification of the contemporary city. Space is being defined economically, assigned a capital value, branded and consumed.

The Capitalist Commons

NOTES

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Barney Warf, “A Review of “Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom”,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100, no. 5 (2010), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2010.523597. “… a violation of laws in one part of the world is felt everywhere.” Ibid.

Ibid.

David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom, Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 52.

George Monbiot, “The Tragedy of Enclosure,” Scientific American 270, no. 1 (1994), http://www.nature.com.ezproxy. auckland.ac.nz/scientificamerican/journal/v270/n1/pdf/scientificamerican0194-159.pdf.

Using the analogy of cattle grazing Hardin argues that common property will always be destroyed as the gain individuals make by exploiting it will outweigh the loss they may suffer. Whereas the private ownership of a land or resource encourages self-interest which ensures its use is sustainable. David Harvey, “The Future of the Commons,” Radical History Review 109(2011): 101.

Ibid.

Ibid., 104.

Ibid.

Ibid., 105.

David Harvey, “Debates and Developments: The Right to the City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27, no. 4 (2003), http://abahlali.org/files/Harvery_right_to_the_city_0.pdf.

Ibid.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (New York: Verso, 2012). 93.

University of Westminster The Centre for the Study of Democracy, “Spatial Justice Workshop: David Harvey,” in Spatial Justice: Radical Spacial Foundations (You Tube, 2011).

Harvey, “Debates and Developments: The Right to the City”. 2.

Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution: 93.

Ibid., 94.

Ibid.

Harvey, “Debates and Developments: The Right to the City”. 940.

Ibid.

Harvey, “The Future of the Commons,” 105.

Mark A. Notturno, “The Open Society and its Enemies: Authority, Community and Bureaucracy,” ed. I. C. Jarvie and S Pralong, Popper’s Open society after fifty years the continuing relevance of Karl Popper (London: Routledge, 1999), http:// site.ebrary.com/lib/auckland/Doc?id=10017068.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), http://site.ebrary.com/lib/auckland/Doc?id=10477992. 5.

Justin Fowler, “Agonism, Consensus and the Exception: On the Newest Monumentalists,” in International Forum on Urbanism: Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism (Amsterdam: Delft Univeristy of Technology, 2009), 627.

Nina Power, “The Books Interview: Chantal Mouffe,” New Statesman(2009).

Harvard University Graduate School of Debate, “Chantal Mouffe, “Democratic Politics and Agonistic Public Spaces”,” (You Tube, 2012).

Fowler, “Agonism, Consensus and the Exception: On the Newest Monumentalists,” 627.

Ibid.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Secular Monumentality in the Architecture of Palladio and Mies,” in Iconoclastia: News from a Posticonic World, ed. Florian Sauter (Zurich: ETH, 2009), 32.

Fredric Jameson, “The Brick and the Balloon,” in Anyhow, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (New York Anyone Corporation; MIT Press, 1998), 106.

Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution: 14.

Ibid., 103.

Ibid., 92.

Rem Koolhaas, “Dilemmas in the Evolution of the City,” CABE(2006), http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov. uk/20110118095356/http:/www.cabe.org.uk/articles/dilemmas-in-the-evolution-of-the-city.

Nikolaos Triantafyllopoulos, “Global Capitals Role in the (De)structuration of Urban Space,” in International Forum on Urbanism: Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism (Amsterdam: Delft Univeristy of Technology, 2009), 173.

Ibid.

Julia Huber and Paul Skidmore, The New Old: Why Baby Boomers Won’t be Pensioned Off, (London: Demos, 2003), http:// www.demos.co.uk/files/thenewold.pdf. 37.

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38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

George Monbiot, “Putting a Price on the Rivers and Rain Diminishes Us All,” The Guardian(2012), http://www.guardian. co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/06/price-rivers-rain-greatest-privatisation.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Harvey, “The Future of the Commons,” 103.

The Centre for the Study of Democracy, “Spatial Justice Workshop: David Harvey.”

Ibid.

Ibid.

Harvey, “The Future of the Commons,” 105.

Quoting sociologist Robert Park in David Harvey, “The Right to the City,” New Left Review 53(2008), http://newleftreview. org/II/53/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city.

Harvey, “Debates and Developments: The Right to the City”. 939.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, “City as Political Form: Four Archetypes of Urban Transformation,” in Architectural Design: Typological Urbanism, ed. Christopher C. M. Lee and Sam Jacoby (Chichester: Wiley, 2011), 32.

Teddy Cruz, “Border Translations: Urbanism Beyond the Property Line,” Praxis: Journal of Writing + Building, no. 10 (2008): 92.

Ibid.

Ibid., 97.

The Capitalist Commons