textfiles-politics/politicalTextFiles/landown.txt

[Excerted without permission from New Alchemy (Spring
1988).`Subscriptions $8/yr (4 issues) from New Alchemy, 237 Hatchville
Rd., East Falmouth, MA 02536.]


                WHO REALLY OWNS THE LAND?
                -------------------------
                    by Judith M.Barnet

   How does it come to be that a non-renewable resource like land and a
 basic human need like shelter are subject to the slings and arrows of
 the marketplace and the buisness cycle? The root answer to that
 subversive question takes us to the institution of private property,
 defined as that which can be sold and whose possesion confers exclusive
 rights upon the owner.  THis aspect of our relationship to land is so
 thoroughly taken for granted in our culture that to even raise the
 topic seems absurd, until we remember that the ownership system brought
 to North American shores by the colonists constituted an almost
 unimaginable revolution to the indians.  We tend to forget that in
 Native American culture it was inconceivable that land could be sold -
 because it wasn't something one owned. A further root of all this can
 be traced back to what is probably the largest privatizing operation in
 history; the enclosure movement in 15th century England, when common
 rights to land were extinguished, individual title was established and
 15,000 peasants were cleared off 794,000 Scottish acres to create 29
 farms, each inhabited by a single family (with imported servants) and
 131,000 sheep. This institutional arrangement was required to launch
 the woolen industr y, and land became from that moment and for all time
 a commodity; to be valued at its 'highest and best use,' presumably
 determined by what the market could bring.  Is it too great a leap from
 there to the speculation in real estate market today that has brought
 us the current housing crisis?