Fellow Workers,

Some in our class are being treated like criminals if they engage in actions of solidarity.  In response, we should show solidarity with them.   You'll find a pdf file attached here which you can print out and circulate.

Classwide unity trumps narrow, individualist alienation.

Want to get a grip on analysing the current economic slump?

Take this course!  

About the Course

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 133 .... August 25, 2008
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The Myth of the
Tragedy of the Commons

Ian Angus

Will shared resources always be misused and overused? Is community
ownership of land, forests and fisheries a guaranteed road to ecological
disaster? Is privatization the only way to protect the environment and end
Third World poverty? Most economists and development planners will answer
"yes" -- and for proof they will point to the most influential article ever
written on those important questions.

Since its publication in Science in December 1968, "The Tragedy of the
Commons" has been anthologized in at least 111 books, making it one of the
most-reprinted articles ever to appear in any scientific journal. It is
also one of the most-quoted: a recent Google search found "about 302,000"
results for the phrase "tragedy of the commons."

What does political-economy mean? 

It means that the wealth we create as workers is owned and controlled by our masters.  The control is political.  We create the economy.  We create capital.  The owners decide what to do with what we've created, once they've paid us wages for what we have agreed to sell our skills for and what they've agreed to buy them for.  

What is useful for the capitalists is to make money.  Money is the measure of all things for them.  Count it.  It is a quantitative measure of what they have had us produce.  Remember, they control what is produced by us.  

From a recent editorial in the very influential bourgeois newspaper, "The Washington Post":

"Yet Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is 'the central front' for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable."

Translation: "The 'global war on terror is just a front.  It's all about oil."