To provide context, we can look at the history of capitalism as the history of the enclosure of the commons. Increasingly, through the acclerated processes of economic globalization, there is a concerted effort to enclose all resources, institutions and regimes hitherto referred to as the commons. The processes of enclosure, including the commodification and privatization of the commons, can be seen as a broader enclosure movement whereby the prevailing private property relations of the capitalist social formation enclose all aspects of social reproduction that exist outside of the free market – all resources, insitutions and regimes that are seen as unproductive, or not producing profit. Increasingly, then, these resources are transformed into a form of transnational corporate private property.
Contemporary critical analysis of economic globalization do not often address the prevailing property relations that frame the nature of production, distribution and exchange of goods and services within the global economy. Because the global economy is grounded within a private property framework, an analysis of economic globalization and/or those goods and services affected by economic globalization must take into account these prevailing relations. It is for this reason that much of the content on this site pays specific attention to the transformation of the property relations that define and govern our relationship not only to goods and services but also other people.
