Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy opens by characterizing what the authors call the “The Planetary Polycrisis”. Global capitalism is creating a socio-ecological rift, severing society from nature and putting civilization itself at risk. Planetary care labor is rendered invisible by capitalism, even as the system of capitalism relies on it for its own existence. This crisis is a polycrisis that manifests in multiple ways: inequality, poverty, disease, climate change, and ecosystem collapse. What we are witnessing, Satgar and Williams argue, is “the last great dispossession of the commons” by global capitalism.
This idea of the commons is actually central to the book’s premise. Society relies on forests, lakes, oceans, rivers, ecosystems, seed sharing, public infrastructure, knowledge systems, cyber platforms, cultural practices, and solidarity in order to exist. These are all part of our shared commons. The authors summarize this well, writing that “We are socio-ecological beings who are part of a rich, complex, and fragile web of life; we live in and are part of systems. This is one of the fundamental insights of the life-centric ontology of the commons.”
Read the rest at Brief Ecology
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