Why the Alliance of the Commons?

Because the production and management of goods as commons can be efficiently effected through cooperation, distribution and through the processes of participation of many towards the common interest.

The dominant system, based on perpetual profitability, is in rivalry with the economy of the commons. It encloses the basic social goods so as to exclude society from its free access to them, to manage them on its own behalf or to market them. With its inherent tendency towards perpetual economic growth, which has reached its limits worldwide, it continues to guard and exclude from free access goods that exist abundantly in nature (e.g. immaterial goods of intellect). At the same time, it appropriates and overexploits the finite resources (forests, minerals, etc.) and promotes the overexploitation of produced material goods, depleting rapidly the natural resources of our planet.

In this absurdity and the subsequent impasses of the system, society reacts and comes together again around the commons, developing and expanding it. Through our collective efforts, we aim to set up tangible examples of the economy of the commons in action in every region of the country and in every sector of economic activity. But that does not mean that there is wider awareness of the value of such initiatives or of the scale they could obtain. At present, many of these initiatives are pools of cooperativism and solidarity in a society that is concerned whether the commons are a serious proposition, being itself confronted with urgent living problems, the collapse of traditional forms of welfare, as well as suffocating dilemmas from above.

We believe that discussions and practices developing around the commons are already forming innovative and promising models for an organic development of economy and society in a sustainable direction.