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Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an
organization, enterprise or community are held indivisibly rather than in the
names of the individual members. It involves an arrangement whereby the
produce belongs indivisibly to all members.
The principle of holding the means of production in common with free access to
the output produced is a central goal of many socialist movements and is taken
to be a defining feature of a genuine communist society. Advocates make a
distinction between forms of collective ownership (such as corporate/private
ownership and state ownership) and common property based on access
abundance.
In political philosophy, common ownership refers to joint ownership by all
individuals in society. Common ownership of the means of production is
advocated, or asserted, by communism and some forms of socialism. Common
ownership differs from collective ownership. The former means property open
for access to anyone, and the latter means property owned jointly by agreement.
Examples of collective ownership include modern forms of corporate ownership
as well as producer cooperatives, which are in contrast to forms of common
ownership, such as a public park available to everyone.
Common ownership of land is an example of customary land ownership in tribal
societies which predates and runs simultaneously to the arrangement of
colonised alienated land. Tribes and families living on the land have common
ownership through tradition.
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History
In Marxist theory, Primitive communism was based on common ownership on a
subsistence level. Pre-Neolithic tribes held property in common. Another term
for this arrangement is a "gift economy" or communalism.
Movement in the UK
The principle was adopted by the “new wave” workers’ co-operative movement
during the 1970s, and continues into the present day, although it is less
common. In 1976, the British Parliament passed the Industrial Common
Ownership Act (“ICO Act”), which gave £100,000 of "seed" funding to the
Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) and £50,000 to the Scottish
Co-operative Development Committee (SCDC), respectively. ICOM was fueled
by three strands of thought–Christian socialism, workers’ control and “rice and
sandals” alternativism–and successfully promoted the creation of over 2,000
worker’s co-operatives, before merging in 2001 with the Co-operative Union to
form Co-operatives UK, thus reuniting the worker co-operative and consumer
co-operative sectors.
In parallel, the growth of some 60 local co-operative development agencies
(CDAs), supported by local authorities, gave on-the-spot start-up assistance to
groups wanting to create a co-operative. Some local retail co-operative societies
were also active. By combining personal, community, and business
development, this movement brought many disadvantaged people the
opportunity to go into business for themselves on the basis of economic
democracy, equal opportunities, and social inclusion.