1 FSE100 Introduction to Engineering Before-lecture.docx

1
FSE100 Introduction to Engineering
Before-lecture Preparation
Use the following questions to guide your reading and
preparation for the iRAT/tRAT quiz in lecture.
1. Pre-lecture reading: read the article “Design a Better Cup
Heater” starting on the next page:
1) What is the problem needs to be solved?
2) What are the design requirements? Function? Time? Other
requirements?
3) Why did they decide “Preliminary design must be completed
today, and tested and refined
tomorrow.”?
4) Why did they draw a sketch in their design journal?
5) How did the design proceed? What were the steps in the
design process?
6) Is the design process a sequential process or an iterative
process?
7) What do you think will happen next for the design after the
end of the story?
8) What are the different types of engineers needed to create the
better cup heater?
9) After one week, how do you communicate the improved cup
heater design to the supervisor?
10) What skills are needed by the engineers in the story to
complete the design successfully?

2. Pre-lecture homework: answer all questions above. First copy
each question then write down the
answer. Submit the homework to Blackboard and also bring in
the completed homework to the
lecture.
2
Design a Better Cup Heater
Suppose that your small design team at Sunbeam Inc. was given
the following task: Design a better cup
heater to heat 250 ml of tap water to boiling in 2 minutes.
First, notice how simple—yet general—the problem statement
is. There are no guidelines for the size or
type of heater, except that it must fit inside a cup. Also, the
shape of the heater is unclear. Your team
also asks the questions: “To what is the heater compared? Better
than what?” Your supervisor says that
the heater should perform better than a microwave oven and
plug into an electric wall socket. Then,
your supervisor mentions that you have only one week to
complete the design.
“One week!” Your team quickly realizes that the preliminary
design must be completed today, and
tested and refined tomorrow.
These first observations and questions are written in your

design journal, but they remain unanswered.
What is the next step in assessing the problem? A quick look in
a physics textbook helps to further
define the problem. Your team finds that it is possible to
generate heat by passing a current through a
wire.
Now the ideas start to flow. One team member remembers that
her mother uses a small electric heater
to heat cups of water. You remark that electric space heaters
basically are made of long sections of thick
wire, too. A suggestion is made to purchase a tea cup heater.
Many team members speak at once.
Someone suggests, obviously in jest, building a pocket-sized
nuclear weapon. Another idea is to use the
chemical packet that warms up feet in ski boots. All of these
ideas are documented in your journal.
Your supervisor then requests that the heater be constructed
from specialty wire located in the
warehouse. You wonder what is so special about this particular
wire. You wonder if the supervisor will
continue to add more parameters.
Since heating wire is now required, your team decides to
evaluate that concept further. A sketch is
drawn in your design journal. The potential set-up looks
something like the drawing in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Design journal sketch
3

A parts list prepared from the sketch includes wire, beaker,
water and thermometer. Two team
members state that they are ready to build the heater—but are
they? Some members of the team want
to build the heater immediately, but you say that the team needs
more information before beginning.
Another member returns from the warehouse with a spool of the
specialty wire. The label states that
the material is NiCr, that the wire diameter is 22 gauge and that
the resistance is 1.6 Ω per foot. One
team member notes the thinness of the wire. Another team
member says that the symbol “Ω” stands
for the word “ohm.” How does the value of 1.6 Ω per foot relate
to the heating of water? Your team
realizes that it must perform an engineering analysis of the
problem to understand the relationship
between the heating wire and the temperature of the water.
Together you discuss how a heater performs. Current flowing
through the wire causes the wire to heat.
The heat is transferred to the water. Your team estimates that
the temperature of the water must be
raised a maximum of 100°C, if the temperature comes out of the
tap at close to 0°C (as a worst case
scenario). How much heat is required to perform this feat? What
equations apply to heating water?
Someone digs out a first-year chemistry book, and the team
finds that the heat absorbed by a volume of
water is related to its heat capacity according to the following
energy equation:
Q = Cp ΔT,
where Q is the energy or heat absorbed by the water in watts,
and ΔT = (T2 – T1), the difference

between the beginning and ending water temperatures.
The reference tables in the back of the chemistry book give a
value for Cp of water as approximately 1
cal/cc/°C.
� = �1
��
�� °�
� (100°� − 0°�)
= 100
��
��
��
�� 100
��
��
��1
��
��
��4.1868
��
��
��
�� · ��
��
�

= 418.69
�� · ��
��
This is the amount of energy needed to heat one ml of water
100°C. Heating a cup of water (250 ml) in 2
minutes will take
�418.69 �� · �� (250��)
(2��) �60 ��
= 873��
This value, 873 watts, is the energy per unit time, or power,
required. At this point, you perform a reality
check. “If this were a light bulb, it would be pretty bright. Some
hair dryers are only 800 watts. Some
microwaves are around 1000 watts, but it does take a lot of
energy to heat water.”
Your next move is to determine how much wire is needed. The
physics text states that for any material
conducting electricity, Ohm’s Law is given by the following
formula:
4
� = ��,
where V is volts, I is current in amps, and R is resistance in
ohms. You also read that the power P

dissipated by the wire is given by this formula:
� = �2� = ��.
Now, by using the above power equation, your team finds the
current that is carried by the wire. The
heater is to be plugged into a socket supplying common
household electricity that has a voltage of 110
volts. From the power equation, the following expression is
obtained for I:
� = �
�
= 873��
110�
= 8��.
The required wire resistance is calculated from Ohm’s Law:
� =
�
�
=
110�
8��
= 14�.
Now, the length of the wire can be estimated. The length is
found from the resistance characteristic
stated on the label, or 1.6 Ω per foot, and the required
resistance value for the heater, or 14 Ω:

L = 14 Ω / 1.6 Ω per foot = 8.75 feet.
This seems like a reasonable amount to coil up in a coffee cup,
since the wire is so thin.
Your team decides that the analysis supports the original design
concept shown in Figure 1 and chooses
to build it. The team gathers in the lab and locates a glass
beaker, an alcohol thermometer, a pair of wire
snips and an unwired electrical plug. One team member suggests
using a 10-amp fuse “just in case.” The
wire is wound neatly around a 1-inch rod, and the ends of the
wire are attached to the plug and the
fuse. After filling the beaker with water, the coil of wire is
submerged. You are ready to record the
amount of time to heat the water while another team member
prepares to record the temperature rise,
and a third snaps a photograph of the experimental set-up. The
plug is placed into the outlet.
Everyone watches as the plug smokes and they hear the snap of
the fuse. What happened to heater?
Why has it shorted out?
The team evaluates the test procedure. The bare wire was placed
in the beaker of water. The fuse is
attached to one end of the wire. The other wire end and the fuse
end were connected to the plug. A
team member comments, “Doesn’t water conduct electricity?”
All of you simultaneously recognize that the water created a
short circuit around the wire because the
wire was not insulated from the water.
Your team decides to modify the configuration so that the wire
is electrically insulated from the water.

Scouting around the supplies in the warehouse, the team notices
thin, small diameter tubing called
5
shrink tubing. The tubing slides over uninsulated wire. A heat
gun is used to shrink the tubing until a
snug fit is obtained.
You apply the shrink tubing and then start the test again. After
four minutes the temperature of the
water reaches 50°C. After eight minutes the temperature is only
90°C. It takes 11 minutes to heat the
water to boiling.
The team evaluates the data by plotting the temperature rise as a
function of time (see Figure 2). Why
does it take so long to heat the water to boiling?
One team member muses on the possibility of the insulation
affecting the rate of heat dissipating from
the wire. You suggest that the plastic tubing acts as electrical
and thermal insulation. The team decides
that only electrical insulation is necessary. How can the design
be changed to obtain the correct amount
of heat transfer?
Figure 2. Plot of temperature vs. time
One person proposes that thinner shrink tubing be found.
Another team member suggests using a
longer wire. How much longer should the wire be? Two team

members suggest using at least four times
as long, while another says it should be six times as long.
After much discussion, your team decides to try using more
analysis to determine an appropriate length
for the wire. You review the equations and realize that you need
a heat transfer model to take the
thermal insulating effect of the shrink tubing into account.
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Student's name
Professor's name
Course
Date
Economic Democracy and Global Crisis
Today, capitalism is faced with numerous challenges with
the most important of them being issues of inequality. More
importantly, the world exhibits unprecedented prosperity and
also there is a dilemma on how to share public goods such as
the environment. In-order to solve these inherent problems,
institutions must take the populations beyond the capitalist
economy (Schweickart, 1). Nevertheless, issues surrounding
environmental pollution, poverty and inequality still continue to
persist in the world today. As a consequence, there is need for
an alternative means to take the world beyond capitalism and
preserve the strengths of competitive capitalism while

mitigating or eliminating its negative features. In-order to
achieve this alternative, there is a great need to extend
democracy to the economy. In other words, economies ought to
democratize labor, capital and democracy.
Therefore, economic democracy or free market capitalism
need to find its place in the global market. Economic democracy
possesses certain features including competition among
enterprises in-order to provide the consumers whatever they
need. In addition, for a successful operation, companies will
need to get access to the means of production including labor.
The capacity of an individual to work is a commodity on its own
and hence it can be bought and sold. Finally, economic
democracy is characterized by private allocation of funds for
investment. Private financial institutions source finances from
those who have and lend to business for high profitability.
Noteworthy, this is in contrast to capitalism where financial
markets are like gods that need to be appeased.
The idea of commons came as a result of the need to
counter capitalism. However, the commons have been attacked
time after time but they still exist. As such, there are commons
outside capitalism and they have played an important role in the
class struggle. The 19th century mutual aid societies serve as an
example of these commoners who have been able to feed the
ideas of radicals and the bodies of other commoners (Caffentzis
& Federici, 95). Noteworthy, more commoners are emerging all
over the world today. Some common examples include
solidarity economy movements and free software programs
which have created a new social relations in the world based on
the principle of communal sharing. Moreover, the ideas of the
commons are sustained by the realization that capitalism does
not have anything to offer apart from further divisions and more
misery.
Furthermore, the initiatives by the commoners are more

than creating protection against neo-liberals' assaults. Instead,
they are more like the planted seeds or embryonic form of an
alternative mode of production being made. The growing
squatters' movements and the disconnection of the growing
population of city dwellers from the formal world economy
should also viewed in the same manner. Such group can, under
the ideas of the commons, gain the capability of reproducing for
themselves without the control of the market and the state.
Nevertheless, the commoners have found a boost in their
struggles with a new problem as indigenous Americans resist
privatization of their land. In addition, the grassroots initiatives
by women have played a special role in the quest to move away
from capitalism (Caffentzis &Federici, 96). More importantly,
commons is not only the means to share resources but also a
commitment to foster common interest in every aspect of life.
The working portion of the world's population is faced with
the greatest challenge coming from economic struggles. For
instance, the economic crisis that faced the financial institutions
in the United States in 2008 rapidly spread throughout the world
causing massive industrial and financial disaster. In most
countries in the world, banks failed and corporations went
bankrupt leading to loss of jobs by millions of people. As a
consequence, governments responded by pumping trillions into
the financial sector to help the banks, stimulate their economies
and to stabilize vulnerable corporations (Botz, 1). Noteworthy,
those who are under employment are usually not prepared to
face such uncertainties. Additionally, they lack independent
organizations to fight for themselves and the whole society.
Without a strong labor movement and powerful socialist
organization, the working class would continue to suffer more.

Works Cited
Botz, Dan. The Global Crisis and the World Labor Movement.
New Politics. 2009. newpol.org/content/global-crisis-and-world-
labor-movement.Accessed on 21 August 2018
Caffentzis George &Federici, Silvia. Commons against and
beyond Capitalism. Community Development Journal Vol 49 No
S1 January 2014 pp. i92-i105. University of California. 2014.
academic.oup.com/cdj/article abstract/49/suppl_1/i92/307214.
Accessed on 21 August 2018
Schweickart, David. Economic Democracy. The Democracy
Collaborative.

Surname 2
Commons against and beyond
capitalism
George Caffentzis* and Silvia Federici*
Abstract This essay contrasts the logic underlining the
production of ‘commons’
with the logic of capitalist relations, and describes the
conditions under
which ‘commons’ become the seeds of a society beyond state
and
market. It also warns against the danger that ‘commons’ may be
co-
opted to provide low-cost forms of reproduction, and discusses
how
this outcome can be prevented.
Introduction
‘Commons’ is becoming a ubiquitous presence in the political,
economic and

even real estate language of our time. Left and Right, neo-
liberals and neo-
Keynesians, conservatives and anarchists use the concept in
their political
interventions. The World Bank has embraced it requiring, in
April 2012,
Zapatista women working in a common garden (photo by
George Caffentzis)
*Address for correspondence: email: [email protected] (S.F.);
[email protected] (G.C.)
& Upping the Anti
doi:10.1093/cdj/bsu006
i92 Community Development Journal Vol 49 No S1 January
2014 pp. i92 – i105
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/cdj/article-
abstract/49/suppl_1/i92/307214
by University of California, Santa Barbara user
on 14 August 2018
that all research conducted in-house or supported by its grants
be ‘open
access under copyright licensing from Creative Commons—a
non-profit
organization whose copyright licenses are designed to
accommodate the

expanded access to information afforded by the Internet’ (World
Bank,
2012). Even the Economist, a champion of neo-liberalism, has
nodded favour-
ably to it, in its praise of Elinor Ostrom, the doyen of commons
studies, as
indicated by the eulogy in its obituary:
It seemed to Elinor Ostrom that the world contained a large
body of common
sense. People, left to themselves, would sort out rational ways
of surviving
and getting along. Although the world’s arable land, forests,
fresh water and
fisheries were all finite, it was possible to share them without
depleting
them and to care for them without fighting. While others wrote
gloomily of
the tragedy of the commons, seeing only over-fishing and over-
farming in a
free-for-all of greed, Mrs Ostrom, with her loud laugh and
louder tops, cut a
cheery and contrarian figure. (Economist, 2012)
Finally, it is hard to ignore the prodigal use of ‘common’ or

‘commons’ in the
real estate discourse of university campuses, shopping malls and
gated com-
munities. Elite universities requiring their students to pay
yearly tuition fees
of $50,000 call their libraries ‘information commons’. It is
almost a law of con-
temporary social life that the more commons are attacked, the
more they are celebrated.
In this article we examine the reasons for these developments
and raise
some of the main questions facing anti-capitalist commoners
today:
† What do we mean by ‘anti-capitalist commons’?
† How can we create, out of the commons that our struggles
bring into
existence, a new mode of production not built on the
exploitation of
labour?
† How do we prevent commons from being co-opted and
becoming
platforms on which a sinking capitalist class can reconstruct its
for-

tunes?
History, capitalism and the commons
We start with a historical perspective, keeping in mind that
history itself is a
common even when it reveals the ways in which we have been
divided, if it
is narrated through a multiplicity of voices. History is our
collective
memory, our extended body connecting us to a vast world of
struggles that
give meaning and power to our political practice.
History then shows us that ‘commoning’ is the principle by
which human
beings have organized their existence for thousands of years. As
Peter
Linebaugh reminds us, there is hardly a society that does not
have the
Commons against and beyond capitalism i93
on 14 August 2018

commons at its heart (Linebaugh, 2012). Even today, communal
property
systems exist in many parts of the world especially in Africa
and among indi-
genous people of Latin America. Thus, when we speak of the
principle of ‘the
common’, or of commons, as imagined or existing forms of
wealth that we
share, we do not only speak of small-scale experiments. We
speak of
large-scale social formations that in the past were continent-
wide, like the net-
works of communal societies that existed in pre-colonial
America, which
stretched from present-day Chile to Nicaragua and Texas,
connected by a
vast array of economic and cultural exchanges. In England,
common land
remained an important economic factor until the beginning of
the twentieth
century. Linebaugh estimates that in 1688, one quarter of the
total area of
England and Wales was common land (Linebaugh, 2008). After
more than

two centuries of enclosures involving the privatization of
millions of acres,
according to the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, the amount
of common land remaining in 1911 was 1,500,000 to 2,000,000
acres,
roughly 5 percent of English territory. By the end of the
twentieth century
common land was still 3 percent of the total of the territory
(Naturenet, 2012).
These considerations are important to dispel the assumption that
a society
based on commons is a utopia or that commons must be small-
scale projects,
unfit to provide the foundation of a new mode of production.
Not only have
commons existed for thousands of years, but elements of a
communally based
society are still around us, although they are under constant
attack, as capit-
alist development requires the destruction of communal
properties and rela-
tions. With reference to the sixteenth and seventeenth century
‘enclosures’

that expelled the peasantry in Europe from the land – the act of
birth of
modern capitalist society, Marx spoke of ‘primitive’ or
‘originary’ accumula-
tion. But we have learned that this was not a one-time affair,
spatially and tem-
porally circumscribed, but is a process that continues into the
present
(Midnight Notes Collective, 1990). ‘Primitive accumulation’ is
the strategy
to which the capitalist class always resorts in times of crisis
when it needs
to reassert its command over labour, and with the advent of neo-
liberalism
this strategy has been extremized, so that privatization extends
to every
aspect of our existence.
We live now in a world in which everything, from the water we
drink to our
body’s cells and genomes, has a price tag on it and no effort is
spared to ensure
that companies have the right to enclose the last open spaces on
earth and
force us to pay to gain access to them. Not only are lands,

forests, and fisheries
appropriated for commercial uses in what appears as a new
‘land grab’ of un-
precedented proportions. From New Delhi and New York to
Lagos and Los
Angeles, urban space is being privatized, street vending, sitting
on the side-
walks or stretching on a beach without paying are being
forbidden. Rivers
are dammed, forests logged, waters and aquifers bottled away
and put on
i94 Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis
on 14 August 2018
the market, traditional knowledge systems are sacked through
Intellectual
Property Regulations and public schools are turned into for-
profit enter-
prises. This explains why the idea of the commons exercises
such an attraction on
our collective imagination: their loss is expanding our

awareness of the significance
of their existence and increasing our desire to learn more about
them.
Commons and the class struggle
For all the attacks on them, commons have not ceased to exist.
As Massimo De
Angelis has argued, there have always been commons ‘outside’
of capitalism
that have played a key role in the class struggle, feeding the
radical imagin-
ation as well as the bodies of many commoners (De Angelis,
2007).
Nineteenth-century mutual aid societies are examples of it
(Bieto, 2000).
More important, new commons are constantly created. From the
‘free soft-
ware’ to the ‘solidarity economy’ movement, a whole world of
new social rela-
tions is coming into existence based on the principle of
communal sharing
(Bollier and Helfrich, 2012), sustained by the realization that
capitalism has
nothing to give us except more misery and divisions. Indeed, at
a time of per-

manent crisis and constant assaults on jobs, wages, and social
spaces, the con-
struction of commons – ‘time banks’, urban gardens,
Community Supported
Agriculture, food coops, local currencies, ‘creative commons’
licenses, barter-
ing practices – represents a crucial means of survival. In
Greece, in the last two
years, as wages and pensions have been cut on average by 30
percent and un-
employment among youth has reached 50 percent, various forms
of mutual
aid have appeared, like free medical services, free distributions
of produce
by farmers in urban centres, and the ‘reparation’ of the
electrical wires discon-
nected because the bills were not paid.
However, commoning initiatives are more than dikes against the
neo-
liberal assault on our livelihood. They are the seeds, the
embryonic form of
an alternative mode of production in the make. This is how we
should view

also the squatters’ movements that have emerged in many urban
peripheries,
signs of a growing population of city dwellers ‘disconnected’
from the formal
world economy, now reproducing themselves outside of state
and market
control (Zibechi, 2012).
The resistance of the indigenous people of the Americas to the
continuing
privatization of their lands and waters has given the struggle for
the commons
a new impulse. While the Zapatistas’ call for a new constitution
recognizing
collective ownership has gone unheeded by the Mexican state,
the right of in-
digenous people to use the natural resources in their territories
has been sanc-
tioned by the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999. In Bolivia as
well, in 2009, a
new Constitution has recognized communal property. We cite
these examples
not to propose that we rely on the state’s legal apparatus to
promote the

on 14 August 2018
society of commons we call for, but to stress how powerful is
the demand
coming from the grassroots for the creation of new forms of
sociality orga-
nized according to the principle of social cooperation and the
defence of the
already existing forms of communalism. As Raquel Gutiérrez
(2009) and
Raúl Zibechi (2012) have shown, the ‘water wars’ of 2000, in
Bolivia, would
not have been possible without the intricate web of social
relations which
the ayllu and other communal systems regulating life among the
Aymara
and Quechua provided.
Grassroots women’s initiatives have played a special role in this
context. As
a growing feminist literature has demonstrated,1 because of
their precarious

relation to wage employment, women have always been more
interested than
men in the defence of nature’s commons and in many regions
have been the
first to come forward against the destruction of environment:
against logging,
against the selling of trees for commercial purposes and the
privatization of
water. Women have also given life to various forms of pooling
of resources
like the ‘tontines’, which have been one of the oldest and most
widespread
forms of popular banking in existence. These initiatives have
multiplied
since the 1970s when in response to the combined effects of
austerity plans
and political repressions in several countries (e.g. Chile,
Argentina) women
have come together to create communal forms of reproduction,
enabling
them to both stretch their budget and at the same time break the
sense of par-
alysis that isolation and defeat produced. In Chile, after the
Pinochet coup,

women set up popular kitchens – comedores populares –
cooking collectively
in their neighbourhoods, providing meals for their families as
well as for
people in the community who could not afford to feed
themselves. So power-
ful was the experience of the popular kitchens in breaking the
curtain of fear
that had descended over the country after the coup, that the
government
forbid them, sent the police to smash the cooking pots and
accused the
women setting up the comedores of communism (Fisher 1993).
In different
ways, this is an experience that throughout the 1980s and 1990s
has been
repeated in many parts of Latin America. As Zibechi (2012)
reports, thou-
sands of popular organizations, cooperatives and community
spaces,
dealing with food, land, water, health, culture, mostly organized
by women
have sprung up also in Peru and Venezuela, laying the
foundation of a co-

operative system of reproduction, based on use values and
operating autono-
mously from both state and market. In Argentina as well, faced
with the near
economic collapse of the country in 2001, women stepped
forward ‘common-
ing’ the highways as well as the barrios, bringing their cooking
pots to the
1 For an overview of the role of women in the construction of
cooperative forms of reproduction see
Federici (2010). Also see Shiva (1989, 2005) and Bennholdt-
Thomsen and Mies (1999).
on 14 August 2018
piquetes, ensuring the continuity of the roadblocks, also
organizing popular
assemblies and city councils (Rauber 2002).
In many cities of the United States as well, e.g. Chicago, a new
economy is

growing under the radar of the formal one, as partly due to
necessity and
partly to the need to recreate the social fabric that economic
restructuring
and ‘gentrification’ have torn, women in particular are
organizing various
forms of trading, bartering, and mutual aid that escape the reach
of commer-
cial networks.
Co-opting the commons
In the face of these developments, the task for us is to
understand how we can
connect these different realities and how we can ensure that the
commons that
we create are truly transformative of our social relations and
cannot be
co-opted. The danger of co-optation is real. For years, part of
the capitalist
international establishment has been promoting a softer model
of privatiza-
tion, appealing to the principle of the commons as a remedy to
the neo-liberal
attempt to submit all economic relations to the dictate of the
market. It is rea-

lized that, carried to an extreme, the logic of the market
becomes counterpro-
ductive even from the viewpoint of capital accumulation,
precluding the
cooperation necessary for an efficient system of production.
Witness the
situation that has developed in US universities where the
subordination of
scientific research to commercial interests has reduced
communication
among the scientists, forcing them to be secretive about their
research projects
and their results.
Eager to appear as a world benefactor, the World Bank even
uses the lan-
guage of the commons to put a positive spin on privatization
and blunt the
expected resistance. Posing as the protector of the ‘global
commons’, it
expels from woods and forests people who lived in them for
generations,
while giving access to them, once turned into game parks or
other commercial

ventures, to those who can pay, the argument being that the
market is the most
rational instrument of conservation (Isla, 2009). The United
Nations too has
asserted its right to manage the world’s main eco-systems – the
atmosphere,
the oceans, and the Amazonian forest – and open them up for
commercial ex-
ploitation, again in the name of preserving the common heritage
of humanity.
‘Communalism’ is also the jargon used to recruit unpaid labour.
A typical
example is British Prime Minister Cameron’s ‘Big Society’
programme
that mobilizes people’s energies for volunteer programs aimed
to compen-
sating the cuts in social services his administration has
introduced in
the name of the economic crisis. An ideological break with the
tradition
that Margaret Thatcher initiated in the 1980s when she
proclaimed that
‘There is no such thing as Society’, ‘The Big Society’
programme instructs

on 14 August 2018
government-sponsored organizations (from day-care centres, to
libraries and
clinics) to recruit local artists and young people who, with no
pay, will engage
in activities increasing the ‘social value’, defined as social
cohesion and above
all reduction of the cost of social reproduction. This means that
non-profit
organizations providing programmes for the elderly can qualify
for some
government funding if they can create ‘social value’, measured
according
to a special arithmetic factoring in the advantages of a socially
and environ-
mentally sustainable society embedded in a capitalist economy
(Dowling,
2012). In this way, communal efforts to build solidarity and
cooperative

forms of existence, outside the control of the market, can be
used to
cheapen the cost of reproduction and even accelerate the lay-
offs of public
employees.
Commodity-producing commons
A different type of problem for the definition of anti-capitalist
commons is
posed by the existence of commons producing for the market
and driven
by the ‘profit motive’. A classic example is the unenclosed
Alpine meadows
of Switzerland that every summer becomes grazing fields for
dairy cows, pro-
viding milk for the huge Swiss dairy industry. Assemblies of
dairy farmers,
who are very cooperative in their efforts, manage these
meadows. Indeed,
Garret Hardin could not have written his ‘Tragedy of the
Commons’ had he
studied how Swiss cheese came to his refrigerator (Netting,
1981).
Another often cited example of commons producing for the
market are

those organized by the more than 1000 lobster fishers of Maine,
operating
along hundreds of miles of coastal waters where millions of
lobsters live,
breed and die every year. In more than a century, lobster fishers
have built a
communal system of sharing the lobster catch on the basis of
agreed upon
divisions of the coast into separate zones managed by local
‘gangs’ and self-
imposed limits on the number of lobsters to be caught. This has
not always
been a peaceful process. Mainers pride themselves on their
rugged individu-
alism and agreements between different ‘gangs’ have
occasionally broken
down. Violence then has erupted in competitive struggles to
expand the allot-
ted fishing zones or bust the limits on catch. But the fishers
have quickly
learned that such struggles destroy the lobster stock and in time
have restored
the commons regime (Woodward, 2004).

Even the Maine state’s fishery management department now
accepts
this commons-based fishing, outlawed for decades as a violation
of anti-trust
laws (Caffentzis, 2012). One reason for this change in official
attitude is
the contrast between the state of the lobster fisheries compared
to that of
the ‘ground-fishing’ (i.e. fishing for cod, haddock, flounder and
similar
species) that is carried out in the Gulf of Maine and in Georges
Bank where
on 14 August 2018
the Gulf connects with the ocean. Whereas the former in the last
quarter
century has reached sustainability and maintained it (even
during some
severe economic downturns), since the 1990s, one species after
another of

ground-fish has been periodically overfished, leading to the
official closure
of Georges Bank for years at a time. (Woodward, 2004) At the
heart of the
matter are differences in the technology used by ground fishing
and lobster
fishing and, above all, the difference in the sites where the
catches are
taken. Lobster fishing has the advantage of having its common
pool resource
close to the coast and within the territorial waters of the state.
This makes it
possible to demarcate zones for the local lobster gangs, whereas
the deep
waters of Georges Bank are not easily amenable to a partition.
The fact that
Georges Bank is outside the 20-mile territorial limit has meant
that outsiders,
using big trawlers, were able to fish until 1977 when the
territorial limits were
extended to 200 miles. They could not have been kept out
before 1977, contrib-
uting in a major way to the depletion of the fishery. Finally, the
rather archaic

technology lobster fishermen uniformly employ discourages
competition.
In contrast, starting in the early 1990s, ‘improvements’ in the
technology
of ground-fishing – ‘better ’ nets and electronic equipment
capable of detect-
ing fish more ‘effectively’ – have created havoc in an industry
that is
organized on an open access principle (‘get a boat and you will
fish’). The
availability of a more advanced and cheaper detection and
capture technol-
ogy has clashed with the competitive organization of the
industry that had
been ruled by the motto: ‘each against each and Nature against
all’, ending
in the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ that Hardin envisioned in
1968. This contra-
diction is not unique to Maine ground-fishing. It has plagued
fishing commu-
nities across the world, who now find themselves increasingly
displaced by
the industrialization of fishing, and the might of the great
trawlers, whose

dragnets deplete the oceans (Dalla Costa, 2005). Fishermen in
Newfoundland
have thus faced a similar situation to that of those of Georges
Bank, with
disastrous results for the livelihood of their communities.
So far Maine lobster fishers have been considered a harmless
exception con-
firming the neoliberal rule that a commons can survive only in
special and
limited circumstances. Viewed through the lens of class
struggle, however,
the Maine lobster common has elements of an anti-capitalist
common in
that it involves workers’ control of some of the important
decisions concern-
ing the work process and its outcomes. This experience then
constitutes an in-
valuable training, providing examples of how large-scale
commons can
operate. At the same time, the fate of the lobster commons is
still determined
by the international seafood market in which they are
embedded. If the US
market collapses or the state allows off-shore oil drilling in the

Gulf of
Maine, they will be dissolved. The Maine lobster commons,
then, cannot be
a model for us.
on 14 August 2018
The commons as the ‘third sector’: a peaceful coexistence?
While commons for the market can be viewed as vestigial
remnants of older
forms of work cooperation, a growing interest in the commons
also comes
from a broad range of social democratic forces that are either
concerned
with the extremes of neo-liberalism and/or recognize the
advantages of com-
munal relations for the reproduction of everyday life. In this
context, the
common/s appears as a possible ‘third’ space besides and equal
to the state

and the market. As formulated by David Bollier and Burns
Weston in their
discussion of ‘green governance’:
the overall goal must be to reconceptualize the neoliberal
State/Market as a
‘triarchy’ with the Commons—the State/Market/Commons—to
realign
authority and provisioning in new, more beneficial ways. The
State would
maintain its commitments to representative governance and
management
of public property just as private enterprise would continue to
own capital
to produce saleable goods and services in the Market sector
(Bollier and
Weston, 2012, p. 350).
Along the same lines, a broad variety of groups, organizations
and theorists
look today at the commons as a source of security, sociality and
economic
power. These include consumer groups, who believe that
‘commoning’ can
gain them better terms of purchase, as well as home-buyers
who, along

with the purchase of their home, seek a community as guarantee
of security
and of a broader range of possibilities as far as spaces and
activities provided.
Many urban gardens also fall in this category, as the desire for
fresh food and
food whose origin is known continues to grow. Assisted living
homes can also
be conceived as forms of commons. All these institutions
undoubtedly speak
to legitimate desires. But the limit and danger of such
initiatives is that they
can easily generate new form of enclosure, the commons being
constructed
on the basis of the homogeneity of its members, often producing
gated
communities, providing protection from the ‘other ’, the
opposite of what
the principle of the commons implies for us.
Redefining commons
What then qualifies as ‘anti-capitalist commons’? In contrast to
the examples
that we have discussed, the commons we wish to construct aim

to transform
our social relations and create an alternative to capitalism. They
are not
intended to only provide social services or to act as buffers
against the de-
structive impact of neo-liberalism, and they are far more than a
communal
management of resources. In summary, they are not pathways to
capitalism
with a human face. Either commons are a means to the creation
of an egalitar-
ian and cooperative society or they risk deepening social
divisions, making
on 14 August 2018
havens for those who can afford them and who can therefore
more easily
ignore the misery by which they are surrounded.
Anti-capitalist commons, then, should be conceived as both
autonomous

spaces from which to reclaim control over the conditions of our
reproduction,
and as bases from which to counter the processes of enclosure
and increasing-
ly disentangle our lives from the market and the state. Thus they
differ from
those advocated by the Ostrom School, where commons are
imagined in a re-
lation of coexistence with the public and with the private.
Ideally, they
embody the vision that Marxists and anarchists have aspired to
but failed
to realize: that of a society made of ‘free associations of
producers’, self-
governed and organized to ensure not an abstract equality but
the satisfaction
of people’s needs and desires. Today we see only fragments of
this world (in
the same way as in late Medieval Europe we may have seen only
fragments of
capitalism) but already the commons we build should enable us
to gain more
power with regard to capital and the state and embryonically
prefigure a new

mode of production, no longer built on a competitive principle,
but on the
principle of collective solidarity.
How to achieve this goal? A few general criteria can begin to
answer this
question, keeping in mind that in a world dominated by
capitalist relations
the common/s we create are necessarily transitional forms.
(i) Commons are not given, they are produced. Although we say
that
commons are all around us – the air we breathe and the
languages
we use being key examples of shared wealth – it is only through
co-
operation in the production of our life that we can create them.
This
is because commons are not essentially material things but are
social relations, constitutive social practices. This is why some
prefer to speak of ‘commoning’ or ‘the common’, precisely to
underscore the relational character of this political project
(Line-
baugh, 2008). However, Commons must guarantee the reproduc-

tion of our lives. Exclusive reliance on ‘immaterial’ commons,
like the internet, will not do. Water systems, lands, forests,
beaches, as well as various forms of urban space, are
indispensable
to our survival. Here too what counts is the collective nature of
the
reproductive work and the means of reproduction involved.
(ii) To guarantee our reproduction ‘commons’ must involve a
‘common
wealth’, in the form of shared natural or social resources: lands,
forests, waters, urban spaces, systems of knowledge and
commu-
nication, all to be used for non-commercial purposes. We often
use the concept of ‘the common’ to refer to a variety of ‘public
goods’ that over time we have come to consider ‘our own’, like
pen-
sions, health-care systems, education. However, there is a
crucial

on 14 August 2018
difference between the common and the public as the latter is
managed by the state and is not controlled by us. This does not
mean we should not be concerned with the defence of public
goods. The public is the site where much of our past labour is
stored and it is in our interest that private companies do not
take
it over. But for the sake of the struggle for anti-capitalist
commons it is crucial that we do not lose sight of the
distinction.
(iii) One of the challenges we face today is connecting the
struggle over the
public with those for the construction of the common, so that
they can
reinforce each other. This is more than an ideological
imperative.
Let us reiterate it: what we call ‘the public’ is actually wealth
that
we have produced and we must re-appropriate it. It is also
evident that the struggles of public workers cannot succeed

without the support of the ‘community’. At the same time, their
ex-
perience can help us reconstruct our reproduction, to decide (for
instance) what constitutes ‘good health-care’, what kind of
knowl-
edge we need, and so forth. Still, it is very important to
maintain the
distinction between public and common, because the public is a
state institution that assumes the existence of a sphere of
private
economic and social relations we cannot control.
(iv) Commons require a community. This community should not
be
selected on the basis of any privileged identity but on the basis
of
the care-work done to reproduce the commons and regenerate
what is taken from them. Commons in fact entail obligations as
much as entitlements. Thus the principle must be that those who
belong to the common contribute to its maintenance: which is
why (as we have seen) we cannot speak of ‘global commons’, as
these presume the existence of a global collectivity which today

does not exists and perhaps will never exist as we do not think
it
is it is possible or desirable. Thus, when we say ‘No Commons
without Community’ we think of how a specific community is
created in the production of the relations by which a specific
common is brought into existence and sustained.
(v) Commons require regulations stipulating how the wealth we
share is to be
used and cared for, the governing principles being equal access,
reci-
procity between what is given and what is taken, collective
deci-
sion making, and power from the ground up, derived from
tested abilities and continually shifting through different
subjects
depending on the tasks to be performed.
(vi) Equal access to the means of (re)production and egalitarian
decision
making must be the foundation of the commons. This must be
stressed
because historically commons have not been prime examples of

on 14 August 2018
egalitarian relations. On the contrary they have often been orga-
nized in a patriarchal way that has made women suspicious of
communalism. Today as well, many existing commons
discrimin-
ate, mostly on the basis of gender. In Africa as the land
available is
shrinking, new rules are introduced to prohibit access to people
not
originally belonging to the clan. But in these cases non-
egalitarian
relations are the end of the commons, as they generate
inequalities,
jealousies, and divisions, providing a temptation for some com-
moners to cooperate with enclosures.
Conclusions
In conclusion, commons are not only the means by which we
share in an

egalitarian manner the resources we produce, but a commitment
to the cre-
ation of collective subjects, a commitment to fostering common
interests in
every aspect of our life. Anti-capitalist commons are not the end
point of a
struggle to construct a non-capitalist world, but its means. For
no struggle
will succeed in changing the world if we do not organize our
reproduction
in a communal way and not only share the space and time of
meetings and
demonstrations but put our lives in common, organizing on the
basis of
our different needs and possibilities, and the rejection of all
principles of
exclusion or hierarchization.
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank Upping the Anti: a Journal of Theory
and Action for
permission to reprint this article which first appeared in that
journal N.15
(Sept. 2013), pp. 83 – 97.

George Caffentzis is a founding member of the Midnight Notes
Collective. He is also an Emeritus
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine.
He is the author and editor of many
books and articles on social and political thought. His latest
book is In Letters of Blood and Fire:
Work, Machines and the Crisis of Capitalism.
Silvia Federici is a long-time feminist activist, teacher and
writer. In 1991 she was one of the foun-
ders of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa. She has
been active in the anti-globalization
movement and the anti-death penalty movement. She is the
author of many essays on political phil-
osophy, feminist theory, cultural studies, and education. Her
published works include: Revolution
at Point Zero (September 2012); Caliban and the Witch:
Women, the Body and Primitive Accu-
mulation (2004); A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against
Structural Adjustment in
African Universities (2000, co-editor), and Enduring Western
Civilization: The Construction
of Western Civilization and its ‘Others’ (1994 editor). She is
Emerita Professor at Hofstra Univer-
sity (Hempstead, New York).

on 14 August 2018
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