Author(s): Mary Louisa Cappelli

Abstract: The enclosure of the Atlantic Commons has included the most basic human needs of survival from land and water to seeds and genomes—all in the name of capital profit. In this essay, I explore how our contemporary leaders have lost the sagacity of our US Constitutional Founders who knew that civic duty and public virtue were necessary requisites to liberty and democracy. I argue that Founding Father Benjamin Franklin proposed a moral and ethical obligation to the protection of the commons, its resources, its knowledge, its culture, and its ideas. In all of Franklin’s ventures, we see models of self-sustainable reciprocity of capital and virtue, which enables all people to share in the wealth of its resources.

Keywords: Benjamin Franklin, Atlantic Commons, Liberty, Private Property, Max Weber, Capitalism, Democracy.

DOI: 10.24001/ijels.2.4.18