Table of Contents

Introduction Part One: Commons as systems 1. Common goods 2. Systems 3. Elements Part Two: From Elinor Ostrom to Karl Marx 4. Commons governance 5. The money nexus and the commons formula Part Three: Commoning: the source of grassroots power 6. Mobilising social labour for commoning 7. The production of autonomy, boundaries and sense Part Four: Social change 8. Boundary commoning 9. Commons and capital/state 10. Towards postcapitalism

Promotional Information

This book reveals the potential for radical transformation contained in a conceptualisation of the commons as a set of social systems, rather than just common goods.

About the Author

Massimo De Angelis is professor of political economy at the University of East London, and founder and editor of the web journal The Commoner (www.thecommoner.org). His previous books include The Beginning of History (2007).

Reviews

De Angelis has applied his considerable academic understanding to his practical experience of communing to advance a critical conversation on social change.
*Green Left Weekly*

An extraordinary new book.
*CounterPunch*

As the crises of neoliberal capitalism deepen, Massimo De Angelis offers us a sweeping framework for understanding how commons can provide practical pathways for political and social emancipation. Timely, insightful and hopeful.
*David Bollier, author of Think Like a Commoner*

De Angelis does for the commons in this book what Marx did for capitalism in Capital. Omnia Sunt Communia will be indispensable to scholars and activists grappling with the most important question of our time: what system, if any, should follow the end of capitalism?
*George Caffentzis, author of In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism*

Carefully argued and with a wealth of profound examples, this book is at once expansively curious and politically urgent. De Angelis does justice to the complex heat and light of the commons: our hidden past, our living present and our potential future.
*Max Haiven, author of Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power*

An ambitious and path-breaking work. While he introduces us to the main theorists of the commons, De Angelis also explores new ground. It makes for a powerful and challenging book that all educators and activists in movements for social justice should read.
*Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle*