Uprising: the crisis of civilisation and the struggle for the global commons…

Uprising: the crisis of civilisation and the struggle for the global commons by Dr Nafeez Ahmed 

The last half decade has seen the persistence of social protests in various forms, including civil disobedience and mass demonstrations. From the Occupy movement across the Western world, to the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa; from riots in European capitals, to the current protests in Cyprus: uprisings have become a regular feature of life.

With the world reeling under the impact of banking collapses, austerity, environmental crisis, energy woes and rocketing food prices, it’s no wonder that people everywhere are rising up and demanding change.
But at the heart of these disparate uprisings is a single global struggle: between the people and profit, for access to the planet’s precious land, water, energy, raw materials and resources – a struggle for the global commons.

Over three hundred years ago, the struggle kicked-off in a major way when the seeds of English capitalism were planted amidst mass evictions of peasants from public lands. Formerly landed peasants, who were compelled by threat of force to pay tribute (a percentage of their produce), to local lords, now ended up as a new, landless proletariat. They had no choice but to sell their labour power for wages to the lords who now owned and controlled what was once their land. This process of enclosure gradually enforced a new social condition – the dispossession of people from access to the sources, means and technologies of production – that was, and remains, the fundamental basis of modern capitalism.

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