George Monbiot

and we can create this economics around that great neglected sphere, the commons.

The commons is neither market nor state, capitalism nor communism, but it consists of three main elements, a particular resource, a particular community that manages that resource, and the rules and negotiations the community develops to manage it.

Think of community broadband or community energy cooperatives

or the shared land for growing fruit and vegetables that in Britain we call allotments.

A commons can't be sold, it can't be given away, and its benefits are shared equally among the members of the community.

where we have been ignored and exploited.

We can revive our politics.

We can recover democracy from the people who have captured it.

We can use new rules and methods of elections to ensure that financial power never trumps democratic power again.

representative democracy should be tempered by participatory democracy so that we can refine our political choices.

And that choice should be exercised as much as possible at the local level.

If something can be decided locally, it shouldn't be determined nationally.

And I call all this the politics of belonging.

Now, I think this has got the potential to appeal across quite a wide range of people.

And the reason for this is that among the very few values that both left and right share,

are belonging and community.

And we might mean slightly different things by them, but at least we start with some language in common.

In fact, you can see a lot of politics as being a search for belonging.

Even fascists seek community, albeit a frighteningly homogenous community where everyone looks the same and wears the same uniform and chants the same slogans.

What we need to create is a community based on bridging networks, not bonding networks.