HOW DID WE GET HERE?(a thread of threads, quotes, and links)
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Here is an insightful, extensive and detailed look at the history of Enclosure in Britain and the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons":
A Short History of Enclosure in Britain | The Land Magazine
Over the course of a few hundred years, much of Britain's land has been privatized — that is to say taken out of some form of collective ownership and management and handed over to individuals.
(www.thelandmagazine.org.uk)
11/30
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@HeavenlyPossum on the enclosure of our roads and car dependency as capitalist rent:
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
In 2010, Raquel Nelson attempted to cross a street in Marietta, Georgia, with her three children. Rather than walking a third of a mile away to the nearest crosswalk and then another third of a mile to her home, she attempted to directly cross. While she was doing so, Jerry Guy, who was driving a car while intoxicated, struck and killed Nelson’s four-years-old son A.J. Guy was convicted of hit-and-run and sentenced to six months in prison. Nelson—who was not driving a car—was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 36 months in prison. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/07/14/mother-convicted-of-vehicular-homicide-for-crossing-street-with-children/ 1/9
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
(for more horrifying details of car culture see this article which fleshes out the statistics very well though it falls short by only dealing with superficial causes and solutions:
https://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-cities-for-people-not-cars )12/30
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@HeavenlyPossum on art as an enclosed commons:
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
If you spend time with kids, one thing you’ll quickly notice is how incredibly creative they are. They churn out art at prolific rates, and seek out opportunities to create it as a form of play. I have two kids and have often struggled with figuring out storage solutions for their art, all of which is precious to me. I was a kid once too, and I have memories of making lots of art as a kid. But, at some point, I just sort of stopped. This isn’t true for everyone, of course; some people go on to become professional artists, while others keep it up as a hobby. I suspect, though, that most people reading this will share my experience: like most imaginative play, we leave the daily production of art behind in our childhoods. Isn’t that strange? 1/8
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
13/30
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@HeavenlyPossum - An investigation into money, credit, and the social role of landlords:
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
It is a common capitalist trope that landlords “provide” housing to people. They are, the story goes, doing everyone a service! And we all know the appropriate response: it’s actually the tenant who provides the landlord with housing, by paying capital costs (like the landlord’s mortgage, which was borrowed to pay the people who actually built the home) in their rent payments. Landlords don’t provide, they *hoard,* collecting tolls by restricting access to housing. Some of the cleverer ideologues might argue: the landlords play an important role by paying the capital costs up front. Without landlords to rent out housing incrementally, everyone would have to save up enough capital to buy outright, and most of us would be too poor to buy a house outright. So it’s worth asking: why do landlords have access to all that capital up front, and can spend it all at once, while others don’t and have to pay for it a bit at a time? 1/11
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
14/30
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The result of all this has been to force us into a "market society".
@HeavenlyPossum on the imposition of markets and the demolition of society:
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
We live in what Karl Polanyi called a "market society," in which commercial market exchanges have almost completely supplanted non-market exchange. Gone are the great pillars of pre-capitalist economies: domestic household production, reciprocity, and redistribution. In their place are buying and selling. To access virtually any resource, including basic sustenance, we must first sell (usually ourselves). 1/15
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
15/30
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Another quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property":
"No argument about the freedom to appropriate can support the market economy, because capitalism makes people no freer to appropriate property than the common property regime, public property regime, or any other system. A person born into the contemporary market economy is as unfree to appropriate land as a person born to a common property regime or a public property regime that allows no private landownership. The right to appropriate scarce resources, as economist define the term (i.e. anything with a monetary value), is inconsistent with a system of equal freedom from coercion. The propertyless today are not and cannot be equally free to appropriate.
"Lomasky’s “liberty to acquire” holdings actually means the “liberty” to purchase goods. That’s not a liberty at all. That’s a positive opportunity. The goods you are expected to buy are made out of resources you have forcibly been excluded from using yourself. The chance to take orders from one resource owner so that you can “earn” the right to buy goods from other resource owners might be useful, but it is not freedom from some form of coercion that exists in societies with a common property regime."16/30
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Here is @AdrianRiskin on the role of state violence in market society:
State Violence, The Diamond/Water Paradox, and an Invisible Axiom of Classical Economics
17/30
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Ok, so capitalism can be a tad harsh , but we are told it's worth it because capitalism has "lifted billions out of poverty!" and that even the poor of today are wealthier than kings of old. Let's unpack these claims and take a close look at the concepts of "wealth" and "poverty".
@HeavenlyPossum on Wealth
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
This is an incredibly common and incredibly stupid take on wealth: that people today have so much more “stuff” than people in the past, so we—even the poorest among us—are richer than ancient kings and titans of industry. 1/9 https://twitter.com/cafreiman/status/1635430623958401024
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
18/30
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@HeavenlyPossum on Poverty
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
Property is a social relationship—an agreement about the use and disposition of stuff. Beyond what you can grasp in your own hands, everything you own is by agreement with other people who could, but don’t, take for themselves the things you’ve claimed. Wealth is a subset of property, a social relationship of *command.* Wealth is the social ability to command and compel other people to bring you things you want or labor for you at your direction. If wealth is a relationship of command, then poverty, its inverse, is the state of being subject to command. 1/thread #property #poverty #wealth #capitalism #anticapitalism #propertyrights #privateproperty
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
19/30
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@HeavenlyPossum on Hunger
HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])
A few years ago, NPR published an article about an “archeological mystery.” In Ghana, a place now associated with poverty and hunger, archeologists found that food security peaked about 500 years ago, in the midst of an epic two-century long drought, and declined in the mid-19th century. Now, in Ghana, people struggle to find enough to eat during the annual dry season, switching to less-nutritious foods—if they can even afford them in markets. And I’ve always been surprised at the author’s surprise. Where, exactly, is the mystery? 1/11 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/20/486670144/an-archaeological-mystery-in-ghana-why-didn-t-past-droughts-spell-famine
kolektiva.social (kolektiva.social)
20/30
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"Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century"
Highlights:
- The common notion that extreme poverty is the “natural” condition of humanity and only declined with the rise of capitalism rests on income data that do not adequately capture access to essential goods.
- Data on real wages suggests that, historically, extreme poverty was uncommon and arose primarily during periods of severe social and economic dislocation, particularly under colonialism.
- The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality.
- In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, wages and/or height have still not recovered.
- Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began only around the 20th century. These gains coincide with the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements.
Abstract:
This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. These claims rely on national accounts and PPP exchange rates that do not adequately capture changes in people’s access to essential goods. We assess this narrative against extant data on three empirical indicators of human welfare: real wages (with respect to a subsistence basket), human height, and mortality. We ask whether these indicators improved or deteriorated with the rise of capitalism in five world regions - Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and China – using the chronology put forward by world-systems theorists. The evidence we review here points to three conclusions. (1) It is unlikely that 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty prior to the 19th century. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year, except during periods of severe social dislocation, such as famines, wars, and institutionalized dispossession – particularly under colonialism. (2) The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered. (3) Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems.
21/30
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Let's continue to look at the real results of capitalism, colonialism, state, and the religious rituals of "economics" - environmental destruction, violent coercion and exploitation of humans:
How Colonialism Spawned and Continues to Exacerbate the Climate Crisis
How Colonialism Spawned and Continues to Exacerbate the Climate Crisis
Colonialism was motivated by the promise of plundering the environment and subjugating populations. Its legacy makes it far more challenging to address the climate crisis and implement equitable solutions.
State of the Planet (news.climate.columbia.edu)
22/30
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Here is @KevinCarson1 on the Victims of Capitalism (note this was published in May 2020, if written now it would also include millions more deaths due to capitalism's failure to prioritize human safety and well-being, throwing us under the bus of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic in favor of an imaginary entity "the economy"):
Victims of Capitalism Day
At Reason Ilya Somin, in keeping with his annual practice since 2007, has chosen May 1 — May Day — as his date for observing “Victims of Communism Day.” Somin cites the “authoritative” Black Book of Communism as his source for a death toll of 80-100 million in the 20th century. To put that “authoritative”...
Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org)
23/30
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To go off on a tangent for just a moment: we should be clear that we are not going to be rescued by converting our cars to electricity or by switching our current insane energy "needs" to "renewable" sources. Technology will not save us. We are not going to be able to have our cake and eat it too:
The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics
The green techno-dream is so vastly destructive, they say, ‘we have to come up with a different plan.’Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs - or live with it, privately?
Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs— or live with it, privately?
Years ago, I told an engineer that I want to cause minimal ecological harm.
(katiesinger.substack.com)
24/30
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Enclosure continues, in the name of "green capitalism":
"‘They Will Die’: Tesla-Linked Mining Project Is Devastating One of the World’s Uncontacted Peoples"
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxj8wm/uncontacted-tribe-threatened-indonesia
25/30
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How is it that we are not all rising up against all these horrors? How are so many fooled for so long, scammed into supporting a system that treats us as a resource to be consumed? This is a huge subject worthy of it's own project. Investigate the term "capitalist realism" and Gramsci's concept of "cultural hegemony":
26/30
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Think about the stories and characters we are presented with in popular fiction, examine the many assumptions built-into every aspect of our lives, planted there by institutions both of control and recreation (interesting word that: our engaging in "recreation" can *re-create* the capitalist program).
For now we'll just touch on this with some thought-provoking examples.
From @AdrianRiskin - Why Are Children Forced To Study Mathematics At Gunpoint?
27/30
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Capital is served by various institutions (property rights and legal codes, corporations, the system of wage labor, law enforcement, military, other religions, education systems, media, white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, etc), by the billionaires and oligarchs who are its priests and the rulers and politicians who are their henchmen. As Albert Einstein wrote in Monthly Review, May 1949:
"...private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
As a result we have unwittingly internalized Capital's demands, to our great detriment. Capital's narrative is deeply embedded into every aspect of our lives.
Note how this quote from the speech "The Three Evils of Society" by Martin Luther King Jr. assumes the Protestant work ethic is a good thing and not itself part of the implanted narrative that serves Capital. Instead of calling it out, MLK tried to distance it from capitalism. So while the second sentence of this quote is very true, the first sentence is an example of the deep conditioning of the narrative of capitalism and its precursors:
"We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad."
Even "Democratic Socialist" Bernie Sanders sadly equates dignity and security with wage slavery:
"This is the United States. We are the richest country on the planet. One job should be enough to live with security and dignity."
David Graeber, from “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”:
"For me, this is exactly what's so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money - and then tell us that it's only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money. It introduces moral perversions on almost every level. ("Cancel all student loan debt? But that would be unfair to all those people who struggled for years to pay back their student loans!" Let me assure the reader that, as someone who struggled for years to pay back his student loans and finally did so, this argument makes about as much sense as saying it would be "unfair" to a mugging victim not to mug their neighbors too.)
"The argument might perhaps make sense if one agreed with the underlying assumption - that work is by definition virtuous, since the ultimate measure of humanity's success as a species is its ability to increase the overall global output of goods and services by at least 5 percent per year. The problem is that it is becoming increasingly obvious that if we continue along these lines much longer, we're likely to destroy everything."As @HeavenlyPossum has commented: "capitalism depends on ignorance of history for its ideological survival". It is the intent of this project to do what we can to remove some of this ignorance, to share the debunking of some of the lies we've been told; to encourage *unlearning the lesson* that has been forced upon us.
28/30
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So, if capitalism, state, and other heirarchical power structures are existential threats to humanity and to the biosphere and therefore must be removed, what does that leave us with?
Anarchy??!
Yes.
From @AdrianRiskin - "Anarchism isn’t a fantasy and it’s not a political theory — it’s a collective name for whatever forms of society can exist without murder as a political tool"
29/30
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If you're not already a student of anarchism, then you probably have some very negative ideas about "anarchy" or anarchism. It is beyond the scope of this project to mount a comprehensive defense or explanation of anarchism, but we also don't want to leave you hanging without some guideposts towards further understanding.
Here are a couple popular introductions:
"Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!" by David Graeber
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you"To Change Everything"
https://crimethinc.com/tceHere are some pieces dealing with specific common concerns about anarchism:
Anarchists Are Not Naive About Human Nature
https://anarchopac.com/2022/02/28/anarchists-are-not-naive-about-human-nature/(edited 26 Aug 2023 to add this classic piece from Howard Zinn on the rule of law):
The Conspiracy of Law
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/howard-zinn-the-conspiracy-of-lawAnarchism and Democracy
https://anarchopac.com/2022/04/15/anarchism-and-democracy/(edited 29 May 2023 to add this definitive essay on democracy by David Graeber):
There Never Was a West
Or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-there-never-was-a-westHere is a rich survey of anarchistic principles and practices in action in the real world, past and present: "Anarchy Works"
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-worksFor further research here is a very good reading list ranging from basic introductions to specialized aspects and history of anarchism:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KDEM4AzinLVFQZGDljFriiMwWFn73IIIlp26LwEasK0/edit30/end