Arno Noack

Hon 206
profs. Clinton & Hanover
Spring 2014

The Catastrophe of the Market:

A Critique of Core assumptions in Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons
In his article The Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin presents his interpretation of
the idea of the commons in order to promote a social Darwinist approach to the control of the
reproduction of the poor. Hardin calls for a shift in morality driving further the trend to
rationalize the capitalist mechanization and subjugation of the body through the full enclosure of
the womb to the control of the bourgeois state. Hardin, is very concerned with what he sees as
an overpopulation problem, and comparing it to the nuclear arms race he states that, The
population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of
winning the game of tick-tack-toe (Hardin). It is true, there are no technical solutions to these
problems, but what Hardin fails to see is that there are no solutions to these problems period
under the capitalist methods of production and reproduction (MOP). Hardin's views and
potential for imagining solutions is limited by a very narrow and abstract view of history and
human nature. Tendencies to naturalize capitalism and its specific social relations and MOP
restrict Hardin from deciphering the core source of the modern 'overpopulation problem'. I argue
that the 'overpopulation problem,' is intrinsically linked to the capitalist MOP, and although
capitalism has given us the means to solve many growing crises, it cannot because these
problems and crises are conditions essential to capitalism's being and have their origin in the
rise of capitalist relations themselves. It will take more than a slight modification of morality to
remove these symptoms of a greater disease, it will take a full shift in social and political
relations.

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Hardin makes some very vague assumptions in his argument that require a much stronger
historical evidence than he provides. Laid out in the following pages is a breakdown of what I see
as three core assumptions that distort Hardin's conclusion; first, he naturalizes the conditions
of capitalist market dependency, and the compulsions that are related to this dependence;
secondly, he misrepresents the economics of the commons and realities of workers alienation in
capitalist society ; third, he proposes a static human nature in the matters of reproduction
ignoring historical realities and material conditions and how they influence the social
construction of human reproductive life while overlooking the role of enclosure of the womb in
maintaining the oppressive conditions of capitalist relations of reproduction. To dismantle the
core assumptions which make up the holes in Hardin's argument, one merely has to contrast his
assumptions to the actual record of historical material conditions. Marx states in his Preface to A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that,
The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political
and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but
their social existence that determines their consciousness... it is always necessary to
distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal,
political, religious, artistic or philosophic in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out (Gasper).
By comparing Hardins assertions with the historical realities and context that actually existed
we can begin to take apart his argument, and expose the realities of the issues he is addressing.
His assumptions are not new claims but they are dangerous ones, as Ellen Meiksins Wood
explains in her Origins of Capitalism: a Longer View, The naturalization of capitalism, which
denies its specificity and the long and painful historical processes that brought it into being,
limits our understanding of the past... Thinking about future alternatives to capitalism requires
us to explore alternative conceptions of its past (Wood, Origins of capitalism). Hardin's assumptions

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prevent him not only from finding the solution to the overpopulation problem, but also from

identifying it's source in the social reproduction of capitalist relations.

I: Hardin's first assumption is his projection of the competitive market dependent
mentality of the capitalist producers and appropriators on pre-capitalist systems. He begins his
caricature of the commons by asking the reader to, Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be
expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons (hardin).
Though Hardin never asks himself why would this herdsman want to keep so many cattle for
himself? John Molyneux explains that in history before capitalism humans have always lived in
groups, never as isolated individuals. Similarly their labor has, from the earliest times, always
been social and cooperative in nature (Molyneux). In a common society under cooperative labor the
cattle on the commons would likely be common to everyone as would the labor maintaining
them. Hardin naturalizes capitalist compulsions that are rooted in rather recent historical
conditions by linking them to abstract undefined natural laws, which prevent him from analyzing
the greater issue in its actual historical context. Hardin continues his assumptions when he
suggests that the drive for the peasant would be to sell the cattle. This suggestion presupposes a
market for such basic commodities, a market that is not a natural occurrence that we see
throughout human history. John Molyneux explains that, Neither the trading of commodities in
general nor the buying or selling of labor power... appear anywhere in the natural world in the
early stages of human history (Molyneux). Ellen Meiksins Wood elaborates on this explaining in her
article The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism that even in feudal times,
There was no single and unified market, a market in which people made profit not by
buying cheap and selling dear, not by carrying goods from one market to another, but by
producing more cost-effectively in direct competition with others in the same market.
Trade still tended to be in luxury goods, or at least goods destined for more prosperous
households or answering to the needs and consumption patterns of dominant classes (Wood,
Agrarian Origins,).

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The peasant producers were living at subsistence levels and did not have the means to

leave their homes and were too tied to the land and regulated by the local aristocracy to travel
regularly to distant markets to sell their small surpluses and if they could there was no market
yet for them to sell them in. Wood argues that Ideas such as improvement of profitability or
increased production of surplus would not have even occurred under the conditions of the
commons in most of Europe. Such compulsions were the result of the rise of a single national
market, and the dependence that came with it which was a direct result of the direct producers
divorce from the commons in England due to the absence of the more common forms of
European feudal coercion. So when Hardin claims that, Adding together the component partial
utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to
add another animal to his herd(Hardin). Wood would argue that the description of the herdsman's
logical conclusion is only logical under the capitalist social relations, where the producer must
buy and sell his means of subsistence due to being divorced from the means of production. This
separation for the producer from the means of their subsistence,...gives the market an
unprecedented role in capitalist societies, as not only a simple mechanism of exchange or
distribution but as the principal determinant and regulator of social reproduction(Wood, agrarian
origins).

It was the separation from these means that initiated the compulsions which Hardin has

naturalized, as well as the alienation of the producer from his labor, community, and
environment.
II: In his next assumption, Hardin presents to us what he sees as his interpretation of two
modern examples of the failure of the commons though what he describes is a better
representation of common exploitation of natural resources under imperatives and drives of
capitalist market dependence. First, he uses the example of the Modern bourgeois nations'

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exploitation of the oceans,... the oceans of the world continue to suffer from the survival of the
philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the
'freedom of the seas.' Professing to believe in the 'inexhaustible resources of the oceans,' they
bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction (Hardin). But this is not an
example of social relations of a subsistence society based on the common need of the many, it is a
representation of societies acting under the imperatives of capitalist accumulation driven by the
competitive impulses of market dependence rooted in capitalist social relations which we have
already pointed out are not part of human nature but the result of the dispossession of the actual
commons from the direct producers, and the genesis of the production for profit of the basic
necessities of life.
Hardin expands on his thesis using the example of pollution as a failure of the commons
explaining that for producers and appropriators alike, ...[discharge] into the commons is less
than the cost of purifying... wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, [they]
are locked into a system of 'fouling [their] own nest'... (Hardin). Hardin fails to see that the apathy,
or even contempt of modern people toward nature comes from their market mediated
relationship with the environment and the means of their subsistence. Marx explains this in his
theory of alienation. Marx explains that Man lives from nature i.e., nature is his body and he
must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die (Gasper). But in capitalism, everything
including mans relationship with nature is regulated and mediated by the market, alienating
man from nature, as he has been alienated from the means of production. Just as The relation of
the worker to the product of labor [seems a relation of] an alien object exercising power over
him. This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of
nature, as an alien world inimically opposed to him (Gasoer). Removed from his connection from
the commons, the worker is disconnected from means of production/subsistence, so logically

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doesn't understand his relation to them and approaches them with apathy and even contempt.
Once again not the result of a static human nature but rooted in historical conditions of the
divorce of the direct producer from the commons and the rise of capitalist relations.
III: Finally we come to the Question of human reproduction which Hardin Makes his third
assumption about, quoting statistical research Hardin explains that human population, naturally
tends to grow 'geometrically,' or, as we would now say, exponentially (hardin). Though it would be
convenient to lock one rate of population growth to all of history as human nature; population is
not just a simple matter of mathematics but is indeed reflective of culture and social conditions.
Molyneux from his research came to the conclusion that ...the capacity for social change and
development is an essential part of human nature. It is one of the key things that distinguish
human beings from other animals (molyneux). Human nature has often responded to the material
realities of the greater society especially in means of reproduction. When Hardin comes out and
says, The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by
relinquishing the freedom to breed... (Hardin). There is a great irony in this statement as there have
been massive movements of women to control their reproduction in the past, and it was not the
forces of the rabble that violently opened the womb as a factory, for exponential reproduction
but the capitalist class themselves as womans knowledge of reproductive control was enclosed
with the commons. In the Arguments of Sylvia Federici, ...the body has been for women in
capitalist society what the factory has been for male waged workers: the primary ground of their
exploitation and resistance, as the female body has been appropriated by the state and men and
forced to function as a means for the reproduction and accumulation of labor (Federici). She
explains in her book Caliban and the Witch that there were many groups who actively practiced
celibacy and birth control throughout history and especially in feudal Europe in heretical and
millenarian movements such as the Bogomils. Federici explains how many traditional forms of

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abortion and birth control were practiced by women well into the late feudal era. It took the

witch hunts and mechanistic philosophy as a form of violent appropriation of the female body
and reaction to the limited workers population to help build the massive growth of population
which would be necessary to reinforce the compulsions and breeding discipline needed to
solidify capitalist relations in Europe. Federici says that, The witch-hunt deepened the divisions
between women and men and destroyed a universe of practices, beliefs, and social subjects
whose existence was incompatible with the capitalist work discipline, thus redefining the main
elements of social reproduction (Federici). For ages the discipline of reproduction for the
reconstruction of the work force and the command of men over women and their bodies had to
be violently enforced by the ruling classes before becoming 'the norm', and these battles stretch
on today in some form or another, I think its safe to say that it would be difficult to argue that
reproductive relations are not socially constructed by the conditions and culture of the time, or
that the ruling class does not have an interest in the conditions of reproduction in a particular
era.
Conclusions:
Since the mass dispossession of the direct producers, capitalism has always had the
means to solve the hunger and overpopulation crises due to the agricultural and productive
results of its drives of improvement. Scarcity in capitalism is strictly a manufactured scarcity.
This fact was apparent even in the days of Thomas More in the early phases of agrarian
capitalism, who wrote: Consider any year that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have
died of hunger; and yet if at the end of that year a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich
men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have
prevented all that consumption of men that perished in misery... (More). The capitalist class in its
endless drive for profit originating from imperatives of competition rooted in market

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dependence, cannot solve these problems without themselves descending from their position as
the ruling class. Mass inequality and overpopulation are core pillars to the existence of the ruling
bourgeoisie, without the starving masses of the unemployed the appropriators would not be able
to as effectively use competition to coerce the producers into the types of repressive exploitative
relationships we see under capitalist market dependence, a dependence intrinsically linked with
the violent divorce of producers from the means of production. Marx explains the cycle between
crises and accumulation in the manifesto stating that,
The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by
them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced
destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets,
and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way
for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby
crises are prevented (Gasper).
Crisis is essential to capitalism, it is necessary to create a scarcity of commodities and available
labor, this contributes to constant revolutionizing of production to create the most profit
possible. The same case made for the crisis of inequality as a pillar of capitalism can be made for
crisis of overpopulation. Lisa Vogel, in her book Marxism and the Oppression of Women explains
that, in capitalism, ...social reproduction requires that a supply of labour-power always be
available to set the labor process in motion (Vogel). Under the imperatives of competitive
development this supply of labor power must always be growing to bring down overall labor
costs for the appropriators, and to limit the restrictions on the maximum accumulation of capital.
Of course Hardin is right that the poor workers produce more children, but this is due to the fact
that the reproduction of the workers is essential to capitalism's proper function. Marx explains
this process of expansion of population and its benefits to the ruling class in chapter twenty five
section three of Capital: Volume One stating that,
The production of a relative surplus population... goes on... more rapidly than the technical
revolution of the process of production that accompanies, and is accelerated by, the

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advance of accumulation;.... If the means of production, as they increase in extent and
effective power, become to a less extent means of employment of labourers, this state of
things is again modified by the fact that in proportion as the productiveness of labour
increases, capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its demand for
labourers. The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the
reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on
the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of
capital (marx).
Therefore, a large expanding displaced class is essential in the continued drive to appropriate
more and leave less for the producers. Without a growing population of reserve laborers in
dilapidated conditions, it will be increasingly harder for the capitalist class to extract the
maximum surplus value from the direct producers, as was the case of the heretics and other
groups in the labor crises of the late feudal era.
Hardin's tendency to naturalize capitalist methods of production and reproduction cloud
his view of history and his research, which seems abstract and divorced of the economic realities
of the pre-capitalist world. Driven by assumptions that naturalize capitalism he can defend
actions derived from capitalist relations as natural but can only do so in the realm of an idealized
past with little connection to reality. Due to the limits of his approach, Hardin has failed to see
the real origins of the issues he has brought to light. Hardin is oblivious to the recent origin of
'the Market' and of 'The Market's' role in workers total subjugation to capitalist methods of
production and reproduction and the effects on the workers themselves alienation, and the
compulsions for improvement , competition, and accumulation. The real solution to the
overpopulation problem is a shift in morality, but a shift in a different direction than proposed by
Hardin, a complete change in social relations towards human need vs endless growth; a turn
towards socialism and away from market dependence.

Bibliography:
Federici, Sylvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body, and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004.
Gasper, Phil. The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Document. Chicago: Haymarket books,
2005.
Hardin, Garrett. The Tragedy of the Commons, Science (web). accessed march 5th, 2014,
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full .
Marx, Karl. Capital volume 1: Chapter twenty-five: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. (section 3)
Marxists.org (web), 1999. accessed march 5th, 2014,
Http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#s3 .
Molyneux, John. Is Human Nature a Barrier to Socialism. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2003.
More, Thomas. Utopia. New York: Dover Publications, 1997.
Vogel, Lisa. Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. Chicago: Haymarket Books,
2013.
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism. Monthly Review (web), 1998. accessed march 7 th, 2014,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1998/07/01/the-agrarian-origins-of capitalism