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34 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
34 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
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[Excerted without permission from New Alchemy (Spring
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1988).`Subscriptions $8/yr (4 issues) from New Alchemy, 237 Hatchville
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Rd., East Falmouth, MA 02536.]
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WHO REALLY OWNS THE LAND?
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by Judith M.Barnet
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How does it come to be that a non-renewable resource like land and a
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basic human need like shelter are subject to the slings and arrows of
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the marketplace and the buisness cycle? The root answer to that
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subversive question takes us to the institution of private property,
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defined as that which can be sold and whose possesion confers exclusive
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rights upon the owner. THis aspect of our relationship to land is so
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thoroughly taken for granted in our culture that to even raise the
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topic seems absurd, until we remember that the ownership system brought
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to North American shores by the colonists constituted an almost
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unimaginable revolution to the indians. We tend to forget that in
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Native American culture it was inconceivable that land could be sold -
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because it wasn't something one owned. A further root of all this can
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be traced back to what is probably the largest privatizing operation in
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history; the enclosure movement in 15th century England, when common
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rights to land were extinguished, individual title was established and
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15,000 peasants were cleared off 794,000 Scottish acres to create 29
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farms, each inhabited by a single family (with imported servants) and
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131,000 sheep. This institutional arrangement was required to launch
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the woolen industr y, and land became from that moment and for all time
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a commodity; to be valued at its 'highest and best use,' presumably
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determined by what the market could bring. Is it too great a leap from
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there to the speculation in real estate market today that has brought
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us the current housing crisis?
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