Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space

Abstract

Major twentieth-century social theories like socialism and liberalism depended on property as an explanatory principle, prefiguring a geopolitical rivalry grounded in differing property regimes. This article examines the Cold War as an under-analyzed context for the idea of “the tragedy of the commons.” In Soviet practice, collectivization was meant to provide the material basis for cultivating particular forms of sociability and an antidote to the ills of private property. Outsiders came to conceptualize it as tragic in both economic and political dimensions. Understanding the commons as a site of tragedy informed Western “answers” to the “problem” of Soviet collective ownership when the Cold War ended. Privatization became a mechanism for defusing old tragedies, central to a post-Cold War project of advancing “market democracy.” Meanwhile, the notion of an “illiberal commons” stands ready for redeployment in future situations conceived as tragically problematic.

Collective farm construction in kuban in the 1930s

“…Em janeiro de 1932, o secretariado do conselho sindical regional do Cáucaso do Norte adotou uma resolução "Sobre medidas práticas para implementar a decisão do comitê regional do PCUS (b) (Partido Comunista de Toda União dos Bolcheviques) e do comitê executivo regional sobre o fortalecimento organizativo e econômico das fazendas coletivas", no qual todas as organizações da região eram obrigadas a participar ativamente nesta matéria, anexando cada unidade partidária, coletivo laboral a cada brigada de fazendas coletivas e providenciando nesta matéria tanto a logística direta como assistência cultural (CHUPRYNNIKOV, 2009;EPPINGER, 2018).…”