Usufruct

 from Commune Life

Here’s an unusual and yet useful word.  Usufruct means (according to vocabulary.com ) “using someone else’s property as long as you don’t harm it.”  Merriam-Webster adds, “Usufruct has been used as a noun for the legal right to use something since the mid-1600s.”  It’s apparently a legal term for sharing–as long as whoever is using what’s being shared in a non-destructive way.

I’ve talked about library socialism.  The Library Socialism website says “Usufruct is the key to library socialism – and how it can radically change the nature of a capitalist society into one that works for the people of that society instead of just a few.”  They say, “In the simplest terms, the right of usufruct means you can use things, but you cannot deny them to others when you’re not using them, and you do not have the right to destroy them to prevent others from using them.”  They go on to compare this to taking out a book from the library.  You have a right to borrow it and use it, temporarily, as long as you don’t harm it.

Imagine if we extend this to all manner of things.  In fact, many public libraries these days offer a “Library of Things”, offering stuff like tools, toys, seeds, kitchenware, etc.  I know of at least one library that offered to loan out e-bikes.  This is true resource sharing.  How can we extend this?

Twin Oaks (and other of the communes) often practice radical sharing, including clothes and bikes–sometimes using what I call public/private options  A group that I’m getting involved with now, the Design Studio for Social Intervention, .created what they called a “Public Kitchen”–a place where people could cook and eat.

Imagine a world full of radical sharing, practicing usufruct, so that everyone had access to what they needed.  It would be the opposite of this capitalist society where people hoard what they have, sometimes out of greed and sometimes out of fear that they won’t have what they need if they share what they have.  It would be a world of abundance rather than scarcity.  I think the communes are pointing the way, but there are dozens and dozens of ways to share.

We just need to start doing it.