And Tom Paine's views are based on an even longer memory, going back to our origins as a human community: he recalls (as Rousseau did in his Discourse on Inequality) the time when all the earth's resources were owned in common, the fertility of the land, the bounty of the sea, the mineral wealth created by nature. He asserted the ancient principle that that which is a gift of nature belongs to all humanity, and those who claim it as their own, as private property, can only do so through theft of the Commons. This view, which was shared by Jefferson, is firmly established in Agrarian Justice, where he makes the case that private property is in reality (since that which is natural originally belongs to all) common property, rented or borrowed from the community and to whom those who exploit it for profit, are therefore obliged to pay rent, to support roads, schools, hospitals, etc.
Private property, then, is not a right but a rental agreement. And those who rent must pay. This makes wealthy elites who write the property laws deadbeat renters who claim that by taking possession of the Common, they own it as a natural right. And those who remember the original theft and call them onit are accused of seeking to "steal" their property. In destroying the original memory of the theft, the thieves thereby claim those seeking to take it back are thieves. Private rights, based on an original theft, trump the commities right of orignal ownership.
Paine offers us an understanding of why we are entitled to take back that which has been stolen (the current term is privatization, the transfer of public funds and assets into private hands) through revolution, armed if necessary. In so doing, he raises from the Memory Hole the ancient principles of community, equality, and sharing and the basic sanctity of the Commons which can be rented but not owned for private gain.
The free English yeomen once owned the forests in common, with a simple rule: take what you need of fuel, food, and building materials but no more. Hoarding, which is the foundation of capitalism, was prohibited. Then, as Rousseau exactly describes in the Discourse on Inequality, the British aristocrats (this is what happens when the rich make the laws) began the original acts of privatization, by fencing off the commons and stating,"Under the Enclosure Acts we just passed, this land is MY land." This act of theft justified by law has been repeated a million times since and is the foundation of neoliberalism.
When Columbus, or Cortez, arrived on land owned in common by natives in the New World,they said that since "no one" owns the land, they were proclaiming it the property of Spain and finalizing the act of the theft by stabbing Mother Earth, our common heritage, with a flag claiming ownership. When Columbus encountered his first natives, the gentle Arawak, he observed they would share everything with him (because it belonged to all) and had no concept of private property, like hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. He claimed the land and commenced to exterminate the natives.
This is the broad history of civilization, a series of thefts of the Commons in an act which transforms it, magically (ie by virtue of state power and religion), into private property. Privatization, in the view of the disowned yeomen, became a form of slavery, as they now could only survive by working for the aristocrats, and later they would be forced to work in "demonic" factories along with their children in the world described by Dickens. Privatization, then and now, means seizing land and resources and enslaving the masses created by the theft of their commonly owned land.
Wherever this transformation of the Commons has taken place, dating back to the Agricultural Revolution but no further, the world has been divided into masters and slaves, the rich and the poor. And the rationalization for this class warfare and theft has been to proclaim the act of theft a natural right: property rights mask a theft which the long memory we are seeking to re-member and summon up.
"Great fortunes are based on great crimes."
It is time to lock up the criminals and take our commonwealth back for the benefit of all. That is the root principle of all genuine revolutions, and only by recovering out long memory, going back to our very beginnings (see my 3 part series Why We Fight for details) and rediscovering our true elders can we understand why WE fight.
The Long Memory is a trip back to our origins as a community based on cooperation, of sharing, and of equality. It takes us back beyond the false myths of society being a "war of all against all, each against each" on which both our modern political philosophy and capitalism are based. It is a memory, if we go back to the beginnings of an evolutionary co-operation among equals.
I will conclude by quoting from a song by one of our elders, the late Woody Guthrie, who, in response to the claim that "This land is MY private property," sang:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
That is the original memory which today when we bring it alive, is demonized.
But only by taking the long journey to our evolutionary heritage can we understand both how and why we have been robbed. And only if we re-cover that original theft are we empowered to demand it back.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
