Standing (2019): Plunder of the Commons

Overview

Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth (Pelican/Penguin, 2019) is a book by economist Guy Standing that traces the erosion of Britain's shared wealth — land, health, education, transport, and public knowledge — from the Charter of the Forest (1217) through modern enclosure, privatization, and austerity.[1] Standing proposes a Charter of the Commons funded by a levy on rentier income across three classes of commons — exhaustible resources, replenishable commons such as forests, and non-exhaustible commons such as air and ideas — with proceeds paid out as common dividends.[2] The book is cited by Akhil Patel in The Secret Wealth Advantage (2023), Ch. 4, in the context of the legal construction of rent-seeking and the modern-day plunder of common assets.[3]

Standing is not a Georgist, but his program — identify commonly created wealth captured by private rentiers, levy it, and pool the proceeds for public dividends — parallels the Georgist logic of rent capture extended beyond land value taxation to a general theory of commons plunder. A fuller treatment of Standing's biography and the book's argument is on the Guy Standing page; this page exists as a direct research citation for pages that reference the book itself (such as Patel's).

See Also

• Guy Standing — the author's biography page, with a fuller summary of the book's argument
• Land as Commons — the concept this book's land chapters feed
• Enclosure · A Short History of Enclosure in Britain (Fairlie) — the historical enclosure record Standing's modern argument extends
• Common Wealth Fund — the Georgist-tradition counterpart to Standing's proposed Commons Fund
• Economic Rent

Sources

1. Penguin (UK), publisher page for Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth (2019). penguin.co.uk — used for the book's publication details and its Charter of the Forest / modern-enclosure framing.
2. Guy Standing, "Current Projects" (personal site). guystanding.com/current-projects — used for the Charter of the Commons / Commons Fund proposal summary; corroborates the fuller sourcing already verified on the Guy Standing page.
3. Akhil Patel, The Secret Wealth Advantage (Harriman House, 2023), Ch. 4 — discovery source citing Standing (2019) in its discussion of the legal construction of rent-seeking assets.