'One of the most important books I've read in years' Brian EnoWe are losing the commons.
Austerity and neoliberal policies have depleted our shared wealth our national utilities have
been sold off to foreign conglomerates social housing is almost non-existent our parks are
cordoned off for private events and our national art galleries are sponsored by banks and oil
companies. This plunder deprives us all of our common rights recognized as far back as the
Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest of 1217 to share fairly and equitably in our public
wealth.Guy Standing leads us through a new appraisal of the commons stemming from the medieval
concept of common land reserved in ancient law from marauding barons to his modern reappraisal
of the resources we all hold in common - a brilliant new synthesis that crystallises quite how
much public wealth has been redirected to the 1% in recent decades through the state-approved
exploitation of everything from our land to our state housing health and benefit systems to
our justice system schools newspapers and even the air we breathe. Plunder of the Commons
proposes a charter for a new form of commoning of remembering guarding and sharing that which
belongs to us all to slash inequality and soothe our current political instability.
