hiya platt, john, dave et al
like john and presumably others i cringe at the situation we have vis-a-vis
land and land rights. it seems aesthetically wrong/ugly to me.
platt suggests that if it weren't for private property, supported by law, then
we would lose our properties to rampaging gangs.
but surely we could still have law that supports a different sort of tenure
aswell?
the enclosure of the commons is not a single historical event but a gradual
process that has culminated with the definition of land and land ownerhip we
all know today. this process was well and truly active in europe by the time of
the industrial revolution (at its height in britain in the 16th century) but in
countries such as india it is a much more recent phenomenon.
vanadan shiva (indian physicist, author, eco-feminist):
"The Western bias in defining property rights
Today we have to look beyond the state and the market place to protect the
rights of the two-thirds majority of India - the rural communities . Empowering
the community with rights would enable the recovery of commons again. Commons
are resources shaped, managed and utilised through community control. In the
commons, no one can be excluded. The commons cannot be monopolised by the
economically powerful citizen or corporation, or by the politically powerful
state.
Commons and communities are beyond both the market and the state. They are
governed by self-determined norms, and are self managed. In the 'colonial' and
'development' era, the commons were enclosed and community power undermined by
takeover by the state. Thus, water and forests were made state property,
leading to the alienation of local communities, and the destruction of the
resource base. Poverty, ecological destruction and social disintegration and
political disempowerment have been the result of such state-driven 'enclosures'.
In the globalisation era, the commons are being enclosed and the power of
communities is being undermined by a corporate enclosure in which life itself
is being transformed into the private property of corporations. The corporate
enclosure is happening in two ways. Firstly, IPR systems are allowing the
'enclosure' of biodiversity and knowledge, thus eroding the commons and the
community. Secondly, the corporation is being treated as the only form of
association with legal personality.
IPRs are the equivalent of the letters patent that the colonisers have used
since 1492, when Colombus set precedence in treating the licence to conquer
non-European peoples as a natural right of European men. The land titles issued
by the Pope through European kings and queens were the first patents. Charters
and patents issued to merchant adventurers were authorisations to 'discover,
find, search out and view such remote heathen and barbarous lands, countries
and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people'. The
colonisers' freedom was built on the slavery and subjugation of the people with
original rights to the land. This violent takeover was rendered 'natural' by
defining the colonised people into nature, thus denying them their humanity and
freedom.
Locke's treatise on property effectively legitimised this same process of theft
and robbery during the enclosure movement in Europe. Locke clearly articulates
capitalism's freedom to build on the freedom to steal; he states that property
is created by removing resources from nature through mixing with labour in its
'spiritual' form as manifested in the control of capital. According to Locke,
only capital can add value to appropriated nature, and hence only those who own
the capital have the natural right to own natural resources; a right that
supersedes the common rights of others with prior claims. Capital is thus,
defined as a source of freedom, but this freedom is based on the denial of
freedom to the land, forests, rivers and biodiversity that capital claims as
its own. Because property obtained through privatisation of commons is equated
with freedom, those commoners laying claim to it are perceived to be depriving
the owners of capital of freedom.
Thus, peasants and tribals who demand the return of their rights and access to
resources are regarded as thieves and saboteurs.
The takeover of territories and land in the past, and the takeover of
biodiversity and indigenous knowledge now has been based on 'emptying' land and
biodiversity of all relationships to indigenous people.
All sustainable cultures, in their diversity, have viewed the earth as terra
mater (mother earth). The colonial construct of the passivity of the earth and
the consequent creation of the colonial category of land as terra nullius
(nobody's land), served two purposes: it denied the existence and prior rights
of original inhabitants and negated the regenerative capacity and life
processes of the earth.
In Australia, the concept of terra nullius (literally meaning 'empty land') was
used to justify the appropriation of land and its natural resources, by
declaring the entire continent of Australia uninhabited. This declaration
enabled the colonisers to privatise the commons relatively easily, because as
far as they were concerned, there were no commons existing in the first place!
The decimation of indigenous peoples everywhere was justified morally on the
grounds that they were not really human; and that they were part of the fauna.
As Pilger has observed, the Encyclopedia Britannica appeared to be in no doubt
about this in the context of Australia: 'Man in Australia is an animal of prey.
More ferocious than the lynx, the leopard, or the hyena, he devours his own
people.' In another Australian textbook, Triumph in the Tropics, Australian
aborigines were equated with their half-wild dogs. Being animals, the original
Australians and Americans, the Africans and Asians possessed no rights as human
beings. Their lands could be usurped as terra nullius - lands empty of people,
'vacant', 'waste', and 'unused'. The morality of the missions justified the
military takeover of resources all over the world to serve imperial markets.
European men were thus able to describe their invasions as 'discoveries',
piracy and theft as 'trade', and
extermination and enslavement as their 'civilising mission'.
Whether it is the gradual privatisation and divisibility of community held
rights or the declaration of terra nullius, the transformation of common
property rights into private property rights, implies the exclusion of the
right to survival for large sections of society. The realisation that under
conditions of limited availability, uncontrolled exploitation of natural
resources involves taking away resources from those who need them for survival,
has been an underlying element of Indian philosophy. Prudent and restrained use
of resources has been viewed as an essential element of social justice.
According to an ancient Indian text, the Ishopanishad:
'A selfish man over utilising the resources of nature to satisfy his own ever
increasing needs is nothing but a thief because using resources beyond one's
needs would result in the utilisation of resources over which others have a
right.'
This relationship between restraint in resource use and social justice was also
the core element of Mahatma Gandhi's political philosophy. In his view:
'The earth provides enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.'
The eurocentric concept of property views only capital investment as
investment, and hence treats returns on capital investment as the only right
that needs protection. Non-Western indigenous communities and cultures
recognise that investment can also be of labour or of care and nurturance.
Rights in such cultural systems protect investments beyond capital. They
protect the culture of conservation and the culture of caring and sharing.
There are major differences between ownership of resources shaped in Europe
during the enclosures movement and during colonial takeover, and 'ownership' as
it has been practised by tribals and farmers throughout history across diverse
societies. The former is based on ownership as private property, based on
concepts of returns on investment for profits. The latter is based on
entitlements through usufruct rights, based on concepts of return on labour to
provide for ourselves, our children, our families, our communities. Usufruct
rights can be privately held or held in common. When held in common, they
define common property.
Equity is built into usufruct rights since ownership is based on returns on
labour. The poor have survived in India in spite of having no access to capital
because they have had guaranteed access to the resource base needed for
sustenance - common pastures, water, and biodiversity. Sustainability and
justice is built into usufructuary rights since there are physical limits on
how much one can labour and hence there are limits on returns on investment of
labour and return on investment. Inequity is built into private property based
on ownership of capital since there is no limit on how much capital one can own
and control and invest. "
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