Guy Standing shares with The Mint his uncommon understanding of a fundamental political issue that pervades history to the present day.
When Guy Standing speaks about the commons, he doesn’t sound like a dry academic. He speaks with the urgency of someone who has watched a grand theft unfold in slow motion. “Throughout history,” he says, “the commons have been enclosed — taken away from ordinary people and turned into private property. Every great rebellion in British history has been about the defence of the commons.”
Standing, a British economist and honorary president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), has built his career on two intertwined ideas: the precariat – a new global class defined by insecurity and the erosion of rights – and the reclamation of the commons. For him, these aren’t abstract concepts. They are the pulse of politics today.
A global voice
“I joke that I’ve sold more copies of my books on the commons in Korean than in English,” he says with a chuckle. When he visited South Korea a few years ago, his ideas found a surprisingly receptive audience. In fact, one of his early interlocutors from BIEN is now the President of the Republic of Korea. “He came to our meetings, asked me about basic income, first as a governor, then as a presidential candidate,” Standing recalls. “Two weeks ago, he was elected president. Fantastic story.”
If you accept private inheritance, then you must accept the inheritance of public wealth.
For Standing, such stories prove that the politics of the commons is not just niche academic chatter. It is entering mainstream debates around the world — from South Korea to Malaysia, where he once sat down with the prime minister to discuss basic income as a form of “common dividends.”
Basic income
Standing came to commoning through his decades of advocacy for a universal basic income. “A basic income is common dividends,” he insists. “If you accept private inheritance, then you must accept the inheritance of public wealth. Generations of commoners created public wealth. It’s been plundered, privatised, and enclosed. A dividend is simply compensation, a matter of common justice.”
The rich pollute more, consume more, take more of the commons. People experiencing poverty suffer the consequences.
He points to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays citizens dividends from oil revenues, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund as models. He imagines similar schemes financed by eco-taxes on carbon emissions and land values. “The rich pollute more, consume more, take more of the commons. People experiencing poverty suffer the consequences. So why shouldn’t we have a system of redistribution from those who take to those deprived of the commons?”
Blue commons
But land and air are only part of the story. Standing’s recent work has focused on what he calls the Blue Commons — the sea. “Historically, the sea belonged to everyone,” he explains. “Now, through international treaties and privatisation, a minority of corporations are taking the profits, and it’s going to get worse with deep-sea mining. That actually belongs to the commoners of the world.”
His anger rises when he talks about water privatisation in Britain. “Thatcher’s 1989 privatisation of water was a giveaway, plus subsidies. The water belongs to the commons, going back to Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. To hand it over to private equity to make huge profits is trampling on common justice.”
You can read his article in the current issue, which critiques Trump’s move to seize the marine commons.
History as resistance
For Standing, the story of the commons is the story of struggle itself. He rattles off examples like a living archive: Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest in 1217, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Levellers and Diggers of 1649, the Chartists of the 1830s, and William Morris in the 1890s. “Every great rebellion,” he says, “was about recovering the commons.”
The Charter of the Forest, in his eyes, is “the most subversive document in British history.” It enshrined rights to common land and due process, and remained on the statute books until 1971. “We’re still fighting for the commons,” Standing says, “still fighting for commoning.”
“Commoning is a verb,” he reminds us. “It’s not just about resources. It’s about shared activities, shared risks, shared benefits. It’s about social solidarity.” He points to allotments, cooperatives, Latin America’s Via Campesina movement, and African Ubuntu traditions as living examples. Even the National Health Service, he argues, was founded as a commons in 1948. “It belonged to everybody. Now it’s being privatised by stealth. But it still belongs to us, and we shouldn’t have it taken away.”
When I explain how the loss of the commons defines their predicament, people nod. They get it. Because they are living it.
In Britain today, he sees people grasping this instinctively. He recalls a recent visit to Saltburn, where a café cleared two floors for him to give a speech. “Cross-party audience, packed room. I talked about the commons and basic income. They all got it. They understood. Now they’ve formed a network.”
The precariat and the plunder
The loss of the commons isn’t just historical — it defines the present. Standing coined the term precariat to describe a mass class of people with insecure work, unstable incomes, and, crucially, shrinking rights. “The precariat is losing the commons,” he explains. “They’re losing public parks, libraries, allotments — those parts of social income that gave informal protection. That’s what makes their insecurity unique.”
He has delivered more than 800 talks on the precariat in 49 countries, and everywhere, he says, people recognise themselves in his description. “When I explain how the loss of the commons defines their predicament, people nod. They get it. Because they are living it.”
Politics of the Commons
For Standing, the commons offers more than analysis — it’s a political horizon. “Our politics is stuck,” he says, frustrated by what he calls the dead ends of laborism and warmed-up “third way” centrism. “They have no vision, no narrative of the future. The commons can provide that.”
He points to South Korea’s national motto, Hongik Ingan — “community through sharing.” It is, he believes, precisely what’s missing in today’s rentier capitalism, where income flows upward to property owners while work is devalued. “We’re a highly individualistic form of capitalism,” he says. “The challenge is to restore the commons.”
It’s about giving people back a sense of belonging, protection, and dignity.
That’s why he is meeting with Labour MPs, Green Party leaders, and activists across the world. For him, commoning is more than theory — it’s a strategy for progressive politics, a way to rebuild solidarity in an age of division.
“Commoning is about resilience,” Standing says, leaning forward. “It’s about giving people back a sense of belonging, protection, and dignity. If we don’t reclaim the commons, we risk losing not just resources but our very capacity to live together.”
This article, except for the quotes, was created with AI assistance.
