The Commoner

Issue 06: Winter 2003

What alternatives? Commons and communities, dignity and freedom!

‘The global justice and solidarity movement (and all its articulations) is increasingly posing the question of alternatives. In this issue of The Commoner we provide contributions on this issue. Several of these pieces (those of Massimo De Angelis, Olivier De Marcellus, Franco Barchiesi and Peter Waterman) were presented at a workshop on “Commons and Communities” during last European Social Forum in Florence, November 2002. Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s two papers are older, but still very much relevant to this debate. She also presented the themes of her papers at the workshop in Florence. Finally, John Holloway’s contribution is the only one in this list that was missing in Florence, but the question of dignity he poses is obviously central to any discourse on alternatives’.


  • Introduction by the editors: What alternatives? [PDF]
  • Massimo De Angelis: Reflections on Alternatives, Commons and Communities [PDF]
  • Olivier De Marcellus: Commons, Communities and Movements: Inside, Outside and Against Capital [PDF]
  • Peter Waterman: All in Common. A New/Old Slogan for International Labour and Labour Internationalism [PDF]
  • Franco Barchiesi: Communities between Commons and Commodities. Subjectivity and Needs in the Definition of New Social Movements [PDF]
  • Mariarosa Dalla Costa: Seven Good Reasons to Say “Locality” [PDF]
  • Mariarosa Dalla Costa: The Native In Us, The Earth We Belong To [PDF]
  • John Holloway: Is the Zapatista Struggle and Anti-Capitalist Struggle? [PDF]

‘They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose’
(English folk poem, circa 1764)