Colombo, Sri Lanka, March 23, 2006

Garett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" resulted in a massive, Orwellian sweep of the language previously used to attack collectivization and forms of communalism.  Rather than attacking communism directly, thinkers such as Hardin and the Chicago school of economists, led by Milton Friedman, led an attack against the unsustainabilities and instabilities of collective governance.

In a news item posted on the World Bank site earlier this year, Peter Harrold, Country Director for the World Bank Colombo Office, proclaims the need for economic growth to solve Sri Lanka's poverty. Harrold blames Sri Lanka's problems on the mismanagement of resources, in particular those resources managed collectively.  Paraphrasing Hardin, Harrold states that, "The freedom to consume the commons without cost leads to the ruin of all."

This report is the beginning of my education on the relationship between the WB and private propertization schemes. The most damning report I've read so far is George Caffentzis' "Tale of Two Conferences," which is also posted on this website. Caffentzis accuses the WB of responding to the worldwide revolts against Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) by pushing common property arrangements as a way of controlling indigenous resistance. However, this report on the destructive agrarian reforms of the WB focuses mostly on the sale of land, rather than on the promotion of common property as a subversive method of propertization. These methods are described here in this excerpt from the report: