ABSTRACT
Immanuel Wallerstein has described capitalism as a historical social system that uses capital in a very special way: its primary objective is self-expansion, to accumulate more capital. In the era of the global economic and ecological crisis, it has become evident that capitalism cannot guarantee the foundations for sustaining life on the planet. In this context, the idea of the commons and common management of resources has entered the arena of political economy as an alternative to both capitalism and private property on the one hand and socialism and public property on the other. The chapter analyses the concept of commons as a historical and contemporary phenomenon. Further it analyses the importance of the commons in Marx's thinking on ecology, and the dynamic role that the commons has in the understanding of class struggle in capitalism. The foundation of modern politics is the struggle between those who have no part in management of the commons and those who control it.
