It's a hard call for me to make. Until that moment when I am
confronted by such a disaster, and I hope that day never comes, I can
only second guess how I would handle it. Part of the problem is that
we are constantly being conditioned to strike back when we, or our
loved ones are the victims. My normal first response is to attack.
When Doctors Without Borders had their hospital bombed, part of me
shouted, "Close up shop and let them destroy one another". Way back
in 1945, as a ten year old boy, I cheered at the news of the
successful use of the Atomic Bomb. I believed, "That will teach them
Japs to mess with us." It would be years before I understood that
"Those Japs" were men, women and little children going about the
challenge of attempting to live in a world that was coming in around
their ears, and that they had no control over it. When Doctor Martin
Luther King, Junior was murdered, I wanted revenge. When Ronald
Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union, I prayed, since I
still sort of considered myself to be a Believer, that God would smack
him down.
But as usual, God was busy keeping His eye on the Sparrows.
Anyway it has taken me a long time to understand that problems are
never solved through instant reaction. Sure, we can relieve ourselves
of an annoyance, but until we deal with the basic, fundamental issue,
we are only swatting at flies in a feed pen. Each fly is a victory,
but as long as the cows continue to shit, we will never contain all of
the flies. So rather than giving in to instant gratification, we need
to look for the shit and figure out what to do with it.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/6/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Speaking of how to understand the nature of evil and making an attempt to
rid the world of it, I'm reading a book, the title of which is, What To Buy
The Children of the Terrorist Who Tried To Kill Your Wife. That must be the
longest book title that I've ever come across. This book is a memoir
written
by a Jewish American man. He and his young wife were very involved in
Jewish
education and culture, and they spent time in Israel, attending University
there. In 2002, a Palestinian terrorist ignited a bomb in the student
cafeteria. Two of this couple's friends were killed. This man's wife was
severely injured. The book is about his emotional response to the attack
and
the emotional journey which he eventually undertook to move from paranoia,
then rage, to recognition of who the Palestinian people are and what
they've
undergone, to reconciliation. How many of us would be capable of that kind
of searching, I wonder.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2016 8:29 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Progress and Poverty, Chapter 29
As for myself, Understanding is the way to purge ourselves of what we call,
"our dark side". Evil is nothing but Greed. Talking about what Greed
looks
like and how it affects us, individually and collectively give way to
understanding. Once we begin to understand that Greed is that destructive
force in our world, we can teach ourselves ways of defeating it. Not an
easy solution, but better than mass suicide.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/4/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As I said before, we look back at a time, "The Garden of Eden", whenforce.
sin didn't exist. But then some evil force, human beings, introduced
war and the idea of special elites, and we now have the modern world,
steeped in sin.
Some people think we can rid ourselves of sin by praying. Some people
think we can do it by organizing, and some think we need to overthrow
our current system by violent revolution.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2016 9:59 PM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Progress and Poverty, Chapter 29
I found this interesting chapter on google. As I have the time, I'll
read additional chapters.
Carl Jarvis
Chapter 29.
ANY CUSTOM that has existed for a long time seems natural and
necessary to us. This is merely habit. Nonetheless, this, more than
anything else, keeps us from realizing the basic injustice of private
property in land - and prevents us from considering any proposal to
abolish it. We are so used to treating land as individual property
that the vast majority of people never think of questioning it. It is
thoroughly recognized in our laws, manners, and customs.
Most people even think it is required for the use of land. They are
unable to conceive of society as possible without reducing land to
private possession.
The first step in improving land is to find an owner. A person's land
is looked on as property to sell, lease, give, or bequeath - the same
as houses, cattle, goods, or furniture. The "sacredness of property"
has been preached so constantly - especially by the "conservators of
ancient barbarism," as Voltaire called lawyers - that most people view
private ownership of land as the very foundation of civilization. They
fancy returning land to common ownership as some wild fantasy - or an
attempt to return society to barbarism.
Even if it were true - which it is not - that land had always been
treated as private property, this would not prove the justice or
necessity of continuing to treat it as such. The universal existence
of slavery was once affirmed. Yet that did not prove it just or
necessary. Not long ago, monarchy seemed all but universal. Not only
kings, but the majority of their subjects, really believed that no
country could survive without a king. Yet France, to say nothing of
America, gets along quite well without a king.
And
the Queen of England has as much power to govern the realm as the
wooden figurehead of a ship has to determine its course.
But the assumption that land had always been treated as private
property is not true. On the contrary, the common right to land has
always been recognized as the primary right. Private ownership has
appeared only as the result of usurpation - that is, being seized by
lower classes.
The primary and persistent perception of mankind is that everyone has
an equal right to land. The opinion that private property in land is
necessary to society is a comparatively modern idea, as artificial and
as baseless as the divine right of kings. It is only the result of an
ignorance that cannot look beyond its immediate surroundings. History,
research, and the observations of travelers prove that wherever human
society has formed, the common right of people to use the earth has
been recognized. Unrestricted individual ownership has never been
freely adopted. It has always been born in war and conquest - and in
the selfish use the cunning have made of law and superstition.
Wherever we can trace the early history of society - in Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, and Polynesia - land was once considered common
property.
All members of the community had equal rights to the use and enjoyment
of the land of the community.
This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full
recognition of the exclusive right to the products of labor. Nor was
it abandoned when the development of agriculture imposed the necessity
of recognizing exclusive possession of land - to secure the results of
labor expended in cultivating it.
How, then, has private ownership of land become so widespread? Why was
the original idea of equal rights supplanted by the idea of exclusive
and unequal rights? The causes are the same ones that led to the
establishment of privileged classes. We can summarize them briefly:
(1) The concentration of power in the hands of chieftains and the
military. (2) Conquest that reduces the conquered to slavery and
divides their lands, with a disproportionate share going to the
chiefs. (3) The differentiation and influence of a priestly class. (4)
The differentiation and influence of a class of professional lawyers.
The interests of priests and lawyers were served by the substitution
of exclusive property in place of common land. In Europe lawyers have
been especially effective in destroying all vestiges of the ancient
tenure by substituting Roman law - exclusive ownership.
Unfortunately, inequality, once produced, always tends toward greater
inequality. This struggle - between equal rights to the soil and the
tendency to monopolize it in individual possession - caused the
internal conflicts of ancient Greece and Rome. But the final triumph
of the tendency toward ownership eventually destroyed both.
By the power with which the great attracts the less, small family
estates became part of the great estates - the latifundia - of
enormously rich patricians.
The former owners were forced into slave gangs, or became virtual serfs.
Others fled to the cities, swelling the ranks of the proletariat, who
had nothing to sell but their votes. As a result, population declined,
art sank, the intellect weakened, and once splendid civilizations
became empty shells.
The hardy virtues born of personal independence died out, while
exhaustive agriculture impoverished the soil. At length the barbarians
broke through; a civilization once proud was left in ruins. During
Rome's grandeur, such a fate would have seemed as impossible as it
seems to us now that the Comanches could conquer the United States or
Laplanders desolate Europe.
The fundamental cause was tenure of land. On the one hand, denial of
the common right to land resulted in decay; on the other, equality
gave strength.
Every family in the German villages was entitled to an equal share of
common land. This impressed a remarkable character on the individual,
which explains how small bands of barbarians overran a great empire.
Rome perished from "the failure of the crop of men."
After the Roman Empire fell, the idea of common rights was blended
with the idea of exclusive property. The feudal system was the result.
But side by side and underneath the feudal system, a more primitive
organization revived. Based on the common rights of cultivators, it
has left traces all over Europe, and still survives in many places.
Feudalism clearly recognized - in theory at least - that land belongs
to society at large, not to the individual. A fief (a feudal estate)
was essentially a trust to which certain obligations attached. The
sovereign was, theoretically, the representative of the collective
power and rights of the whole people.
Though land was granted to individual possession, specific duties were
required. Through these, some equivalent to the benefits received from
the common right was rendered back to the commonwealth.
Under the feudal scheme, crown lands supported public expenditures.
Church lands defrayed the cost of public worship and instruction, as
well as care for the sick and destitute. The military tenant was under
obligation to raise a certain force when needed.
These duties were a rude and inefficient recognition - but
unquestionably still a recognition - of a fact obvious to the natural
perceptions of all
men:
Land is not individual property, but common property.
Amid the feudal system there were communities who tilled the soil as
common property, though subject to feudal dues. Of course the lords,
if they had the power, claimed pretty much all they thought worth
claiming. Yet the idea of common right was strong enough to attach
itself, by custom, to a considerable part of the land.
The commons must have been a very large proportion of most European
countries in those times. After centuries of appropriation by the
aristocracy, France still retains almost ten million acres of communal
land.
In England, while over eight million acres have been enclosed since
1710, some two million acres still remain as commons, though mostly
worthless soil.
But these are not the only things that prove the universality and
persistence of a common right to the soil. There are also the very
institutions under which modern civilization has developed. Certain
things persist in our legal systems that point to this common right,
though they have lost their original meaning. For instance, the
doctrine of eminent domain arises from nothing but the recognition of
the sovereign or government as representing the collective rights of
the people. Legal terminology also distinguishes between real and
personal property. This very difference is the survival of a primitive
distinction between what was originally looked on as common property
and what, from its nature, was always considered the exclusive
property of the individual.
The general course of development of modern civilization since the
feudal period has subverted the natural and primary ideas of
collective ownership of the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, the
emergence of liberty from feudal bonds has been accompanied by a
tendency toward a form of land ownership that enslaves the working
class. This is being felt all over the civilized world. Political
economists mistake it for the pressure of natural laws, while workers
mistake it for the oppression of capital.
It is clear that in Great Britain today, the right of the people as a
whole to the soil of their native country is much less fully
acknowledged than it was in feudal times. The commons, once so
extensive, largely contributed to the independence and support of the
Today, all but a small remnantobvious.
of worthless land has been appropriated for individual ownership and
enclosed. Most crown lands have passed into private possession. Now
the British workingman must pay to support the royal family and all
the petty princelings who marry into it.
A smaller proportion of the people now own the land. And their
ownership is much more absolute. Thirty thousand people have legal
power to expel the whole population from five-sixths of the British
Islands. The vast majority of the British people have no right
whatsoever to their native land, except to walk the streets.
The reason, I take it, that the idea of private property in land has
grown alongside the idea of personal freedom is this:
In the progress of civilization, the grosser forms of supremacy
connected with land ownership were dropped, or abolished, or became less
Parliamentary government gradually stripped the great lords ofother things.
individual importance and repressed their most striking abuses. As
this happened, attention was diverted from the more insidious - but
really more potent - forms of domination.
Meanwhile, there was a steady progression of legal ideas drawn from
Roman law, the great storehouse of modern jurisprudence. This tended
to level the natural distinction between property in land and property in
Landowners were then able to put property in land on the same basis aslandholders have appropriated it to themselves.
other property.
Moreover, the political power of land barons was not broken by the
revolt of those classes who could clearly feel the injustice of land
ownership. What broke their power was the growth of the artisan and
trading classes.
But the relation between their wages and rent is not as obvious.
These classes developed under a system of guilds and corporations. As
I explained previously, trade unions and monopolies enabled them to
somewhat fence themselves off from the general law of wages. But those
were more easily maintained then than now, when population is steadily
becoming more mobile due to improved transportation, education, and
access to current news.
These classes did not see - and still do not see - that land tenure is
the fundamental fact that ultimately determines the conditions of
industrial, social, and political life. And so the tendency has been
to assimilate the idea of property in land with that of property in
things of human production.
The original landholders of England got their land on terms that
required them to provide military defense and meet other conditions,
which amounted to a considerable part of their rent. Had the form of
feudal dues simply been changed into ones better adapted to the
changed times, English wars need never have incurred a single pound of
debt. English labor and capital need not have been taxed a single
farthing. All this would have come from rent. But since that time,
What if landholders had been kept to this contract? What if any land
enclosed required similar terms? There would be no need for customs
duties, excise, license, or income taxes. The income accruing to the
nation from these landowners would meet all present expenditures and,
in addition, leave a large surplus.
This could be used for any purpose aiding the comfort or well-being of
the people as a whole.
Looking back, wherever there is light to guide us, we see that people
recognized the common ownership in land in their earliest perceptions.
Private property
in land is a usurpation, a creation of force and fraud.
block quote end
