Well, Stephen, I too am appreciative of your observations about Terrell and
his ilk. Being a couple of refugees from his homeland I tend to look at
him like an Iraqi expatriate looking at Sadaam. His statements about the
kind of culture that he wants and the assumptions that he makes about the
bible and law mixed with a kind of primitive non-artistic libertarianism
that cuts it off from the genius of its early founders I also am repelled
by. He is as rude as the liberals who marched into the South and put
textbooks in the hands of the children of primitive fundamentalists were
rude as they sold the idea that religion was a simple opiate and God was an
invention of people who had no power. That single aggressive act along
with the lies about the Civil Rights movement and the hypocrisy of so many,
who marched with the truly abused Blacks, fed fuel to this current counter
blow from the orthodox.
As a senior citizen who has spent more time in my Art than Terrell is alive,
I would also say that I resent tremendously having to spend these productive
years of my life defending what little resources I have from such fools as
he. The family he speaks of only existed on the backs of immense pain,
suffering and personal abuse of slaves, servants and the many bachelor and
spinster younger siblings who could not have families because they gave up
marriage to raise the children of the elder children who owned the family
name and fortune. One only has to know a few of the "walking wounded"
folks of wealth to realize why they align themselves with such myths.
I was going to continue to post his writings simply because I think it is
good to know what the academics on the other side are thinking. But at my
age I am choosing to leave such research to anyone younger and with more
time than myself on the list. Most of this material makes me feel like
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The more I deal with it the more stuck I
get. Perhaps the answer is just to leave "Tar" alone and to trust the
great works of art and the folks stories of the people and relegate the
bible manual and its literal adherents to the dust bins of history.
Unfortunately their current rise has created a cultural tsunami that is
engulfing the end of my life with their half baked theories that are
defunding all of the things that I consider the reason for life in the first
place.
I chose to leave their affluence because I found it bankrupt culturally. I
believed that it was benign and took an attitude that it would change over
time as I had changed meeting new exciting cultures and realities. Those
cultures drove me to explore and discover the roots of my own life that had
remained buried in my unconscious and personal habits. As an Artist it
also taught me that most people have no idea what they are talking about
when they quote sources. That unless you can understand the way people eat
and where they put their waste to begin with, understanding their health and
their economics is an impossibility. And that their personal aesthetics
and such things as the weather and their environment form their stories
about morality and law. That has put me squarely into this century and
makes me enjoy forays into the past through the art but also has made me
believe that all of those folks that we quote from the past were so grounded
in their world that to read them without an understanding of that world is
to divorce their thought from its moorings and to bring it into the present
is to create a human without knowledge of the present. That is the kind of
destruction that current economic theories grounded on dead economists gives
us in the present. It is akin to a person from Toronto coming to New York,
taking up residence and then beating up New Yorkers for not being from
Toronto. A book is a universe as the living writer Ursula LeGuinn and
daughter of Alfred Kroeber the anthropologist, has pointed out. If I am
mis-quoting her, she is alive and you can check it out with her. But she
said that reading a book is to become crazy for a while. It takes you out
of the present and puts you in an alternative universe. Music is also like
that. The purpose of the art is to ground you by letting you live in those
alternative universes for a while.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Straker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 7:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Biblical Freedom and the American War for
Independence.
> REH asks:
> "How far does "property" go and how is it determined? Did
> the Colonists truly not ask and discuss this question?
> Also what about the Calvinist doctrine of the elect? In
> his language "Landowner" is very close to "Godliness" or the
> Elect. At one point some of the founding fathers wanted
> only the landowners to vote."
>
>
> SS replies:
>
> It is hard to imagine a historical TEXT more salient to the
> future of work than John Locke's "2nd Treatise of
> Government" (1690)(3 years after Newton's *Principia*,
> 1687).
>
> I'm probably recycling material first shared on FW in 1996
> or something, but what the hell - this is very relevant to
> every sort of trying to think things through *especially*
> because unless we *remember* what happened, we're in danger
> of not understanding what surrounds us.
>
> So - herwewith some EXCERPTS [with commentary] from locke on
> WORK, PROPERTY, and RIGHTS ---->
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> FROM:
> John Locke (1632-1704), from "The Second Treatise of
> Government" [*An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent,
> and End of Civil Government*] (1690).
>
>
> Cap. V Of Property
>
> �25. ... 'tis very clear, that God, as King David says,
> Psal. CXV. xvi. has given the Earth to the Children of Men,
> given it to Mankind in common. But this being supposed, it
> seems to some a very great difficulty, how anyone should
> ever come to have a Property in any thing... But I shall
> endeavour to shew how Men might come to have a property in
> several parts of that which God gave to Mankind in common,
> and that without any express Compact of all the Commoners.
>
> [here, then, an argument, not from utility but from 1st
> principles (reason) and revelation, as to the nature and
> legitimation of private property, or "appropriation" - SS]
>
> �27. Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common
> to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person.
> This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his
> Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly
> his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature
> hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour
> with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and
> thereby makes it his Property. It being removed by him from
> the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour
> something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of
> other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property
> of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that
> is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as
> good left in common for others.
>
> [so, human labour + nature = a new thing: private property.
> *Nota bene* the qualifier: as long as there is enough for
> others!]
>
> �28. He that is nourished by the Acorns he pickt up under
> an Oak, or the Apples he gathered from the trees in the
> Wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No Body
> can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did
> they begin to be his? When he digested? Or when he eat? Or
> when he boiled? Or when he brought them home? Or when he
> pickt them up? And 'tis plain, if the first gathering made
> them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a
> distinction between them and common. That added something to
> them more than Nature, the common Mother of all, had done;
> and so they became his private right. And will anyone say he
> had no right to those Acorns or Apples he thus appropriated,
> because he had not the consent of all Mankind to make them
> his? Was it a Robbery thus to assume to himself what
> belonged to all in Common? If such a consent as that was
> necessary, Man had starved, notwithstanding the Plenty God
> had given him. We see in Commons, which remain so by
> Compact, that 'tis the taking any part of what is common,
> and removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in, which
> begins the Property; without which the Common is of no use.
> And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the
> express consent of all the Commoners. Thus the Grass my
> Horse has bit; the Turfs my servant has cut; and the Ore I
> have digg'd in any place where I have a right to them in
> common with others, become my Property, without the
> assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was
> mine, removing them out of that common state they were in,
> hath fixed my Property in them.
>
> [NB: the famous "turfs" argument here at the end. CB
> MacPherson - in his *Political Theory of Possessive
> Individualism* - made a proper fuss about this, noting that
> Locke here *assumes without argument* that the labour of his
> servant is *his labour*!! Therefore Locke is assuming,
> without argument, that labour is alienable, like any other
> commodity I might own, it can be transferred to another by
> exchange.]
>
> �31. ... It will perhaps be objected to this, That if
> gathering the Acorns, or other Fruits of the Earth, &c.
> makes a right to them, then any one may ingross as much as
> he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same Law of Nature,
> that does by this means give us Property, does also bound
> that Property too. God has given us all things richly, 1
> Tim. vi. 17. is the Voice of Reason confirmed by
> Inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As
> much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life
> before it spoils; so much he may by his labour fix a
> Property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his
> share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for
> Man to spoil or destroy...
>
> [NB: that for Locke God & Reason have decreed: to each only
> according to his needs. This is why, for Locke, this whole
> equitable business is *destroyed* by the invention of MONEY,
> which, more's the pity, does not rot.]
>
> �40. ... Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before
> consideration it may appear, that the Property of Labour
> should be able to overballance the Community of Land. For
> 'tis Labour indeed that puts the difference of value on
> every thing; and let anyone consider, what the difference is
> between an Acre of Land planted with Tobacco, or Sugar, sown
> with Wheat or Barley; and an Acre of the same Land lying in
> common, without any Husbandry upon it, and he will find,
> that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of
> the value. I think it will be but a very modest Computation
> to say, that of the Products of the Earth useful to the Life
> of Man 9/10 are the effects of labour: nay, if we will
> rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up
> the several Expenses about them, what in them is purely
> owing to Nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in
> most of them 99/100 are wholly to be put on the account of
> labour.
>
> [Note here that Locke is enunciating a ("the") famous labour
> theory of value which will be taken up both by Adam Smith
> and Karl Marx.]
>
> [AND NOW - in what is, for me, the most *remarkable* passage
> in the whole text, Locke explains WHY we must recognize that
> each of has a god-given, inalienable RIGHT to life, liberty,
> and property. It is NOT self-evident that we do.]
>
> Cap. I
>
> �6. ... The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern
> it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law,
> teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all
> equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his
> Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. For Men being all the
> Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker;
> All the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the
> World by his order and about his business, they are his
> Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during
> his, not one anothers Pleasure.
>
> ["THEY ARE *HIS* *PROPERTY*"!! This is why we have
> inalienable rights. We are God's property, that special
> mixture of *God's Labour* with "nature" (dust), and that is
> why each of us is inviolate in our projects. It follows that
> without this theological justification, the grounds of our
> "rights" disappear. And indeed, in an unpublished ms. Locke
> speculated on our situation if god is dead ... he says, I
> paraphrase "If men were not beings dependent on their
> creator, then each man would be "a god to himself" and his
> own wants the sole measure of his actions.]
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> You can see how resonant this is with more recent texts and
> arguments, how full it is with notions of productive labour
> and the bounds on such. It speaks to Ray's questions: who
> has property in what?; who is godly (and thus elect)?; who
> is a landowner & why is he entitled?.
>
> Most recently, in a BC Supreme Court decision (appealed &
> overturned at the Federal level), the Delgamuukw case,
> Locke's argument was used to *deny* that the native
> inhabitants of BC had a legitimate claim of *property* in
> land (except where *cultivated*): wandering about, foraging
> and hunting, do *not* establish a property right.
>
> See:
> http://www.delgamuukw.org/
> the Internet's most extensive collection of resources
> relating to the Delgamuukw decision.
>
> Anyway, Locke gave us a text much to conjure with ... as
> they do down at the Center for Biblical Law and Economics.
>
> Enuf for now ...
>
> Stephen Straker
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Vancouver, B.C.
> [Outgoing mail scanned by Norton AntiVirus]
>
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