Monday, August 24, 2020

Land is a commodity and Every Ruling Class Covets It.

A nice presentation but the history of capitalism is one of driving "ordinary" people off the land whether it's the Native people of these United States, the peasants of Britain and Europe and so on. The presenter says that to open the land and liberate it from private ownership does not mean  that "we're not looking for a revolution, we're not looking for an upheaval of the state". But that's the only thing that will change this situation. He wants open access to nature as a human right. But the capitalist mode of production and the political superstructure that supports it sees private property as a right, an essential right of capitalists. British peasants were thrown off the land to make way for wool production. Without a means of subsistence and with capitalism not developed sufficiently to absorb all this new labor power they roamed the country desperate for food and shelter. Poaching for food was a crime, vagrancy eventually becoming a capital offense.

The narrator's intentions are well meaning and he's absolutely correct but the road to hell is paved with good intentions unfortunately. People die by the hundreds of thousands every year because they can't afford to buy food, can't afford medical care. Capitalism is not a friendly system, it is a violent system hostile to nature and humanity. Only a revolution and the upheaval of the capitalist state can end that.

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