Source: Real Currencies
The Enclosure of the Commons is an ongoing process, in which the peoples of the World are disowned from their natural heritage – paying for their own land, their own water, and soon their own sunlight and air. It's an integral part of our complete enslavement.
Usury has, throughout the ages, driven this disownment of the commoner.
Complete liberation of the Commons is a key goal in the struggle for real economic freedom. Commoners have a right of access to their fair share of the Commons at cost price.
The Commons are 'the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth'.
The difference between the Commons and Capital is that Capital goods were created by men, whereas the Commons were created by God.
Capital should be owned by its creator or by those who have purchased it. The Commons are part of our common heritage; every human being has, by natural law, rights to his fair share in them.
Capital goods that were created in the common interest, with public means, must also be considered part of the Commons – for instance, a public railway system.
The commoner is anybody with rights to the Commons.
The historical context
Throughout history, there has been an ongoing battle between the rich and the many for control of the Commons. It's a key part of our economic history.
Currently, we are in the endgame of this process: the people have been basically completely disowned already, and after the coming collapse, the ultra-wealthy and the State will consolidate what up till now remained in the hands of the middle class.
The same process brought the 1000-year-old Roman Empire down: when it collapsed, all land and most other assets had been centralized in the hands of a very few through Usury; this unsustainable situation was ultimately the reason why it was brought down.
In Medieval Europe, the Landed Aristocracy and the Vatican owned the Land; the commoner lost about 10 to 20% of his production in rents and taxes to his 'Lords'. Unskilled Labor worked about 15 weeks a year to feed a family. A Craftsman could afford to work even less.
There is no reason to idealize the situation. Life was brutal in many ways, and the distinction between the Aristocracy and the common man was enormous. Serfdom is hardly what we are looking for. The spiritual tyranny of the Vatican came with many outrages.
Still, there can be no doubt at all that the standard of living in Britain in the late Medieval era was much higher than, for instance, during the 19th century. While Britain ruled the waves, the British common man faced an abject fate in the sweatshops, should he manage to escape the press gangs.
Only after the war did things really improve for the commoner. But over the last 40 years, real wages have been declining constantly, meaning all economic 'growth' is being gobbled up by the 0,001%.
So what's going on? How is it possible that in the 'rich West', the commoner must now work 40 hours per week, up to 50 weeks a year, for sustenance? That 150 years ago, normal people were far worse off than their ancestors in the Middle Ages?
What happened?
Well, Usury happened, and Usury started buying up the Commons, gaining rents while raising them too. People are more and more forced to pay more and more for what was always theirs.
Usurpation of the Commons
Usurpation of the Commons is sold as 'privatization', and is also known as 'enclosure'.
It's an ongoing process, continuing very much today, globally. Water is the main front at the moment. An excellent example is Ireland: the IMF (Usury) forced the Irish Government to install water meters at private homes – part of the 'structural adjustments' 'necessary' for making available the next tranche of loans (which are needed to service the old loans). This prepares for the next step: privatizing the water utility.
This step has already been taken in Detroit, another place 'needing' bailouts after it was suckered by the bankers' derivatives hoax. The obvious result: rising prices, people being cut off from what is of course basically their own property.
Meanwhile, they're creating artificial scarcity by destroying competition and alternative sources. Fracking is undoubtedly a huge part of that.
And it's not just water. Even sunlight is now under attack. In Spain, draconian fines are threatened to those who dare use solar panels. The Solar Police is allowed to enter Spanish private quarters without a warrant if they suspect somebody may leeching off of the sun, which is just another finite resource that 'doesn't just fall out of the sky, you know'.
'Next they'll tax us for breathing' is an old running gag. But it's not a joke, and there is every reason to believe that, at some point, either the State or a Corporation will claim 'air is not a human right' and is a 'finite resource'.
How the Money Power busted the Landed 'Aristocracy'
In Medieval Europe, say starting around the 13th century, urbanization started, and the first Kings managed to forge the basics of Nation States. Usury was already on board: lending to the Kings, not even at interest, but in return for concessions; taking over sources of income from the State.
Providing the Landed Aristocracy with mortgages (the Aristocrats would then default) slowly but surely started centralizing Land in the hands of richer and richer Plutocrats. The Protocols extensively describe this process. They boast how they managed to make the Kings believe that borrowing was in their interest; after 20 years at 5%, the amount of the principal was already paid in interest, without even denting the debt itself – while the Kings could have taken the same sum in taxation from their people directly.
The Protocols also report on slowly but surely pushing out the Landed Aristocracy, both through Usury and marriage. They point at the French Revolution as the coup de grâce for the Aristocracy as a political force. But Aristocrats remained an obstacle to Usurers' schemes, because Aristocrats' land holdings allowed them and their people to at least live freely from their own lands, affording them real sovereignty. This issue was finally settled in the 19th and 20th centuries by taxing land holdings.
While 1789 settled matters in the West, the Protocols predated 1917, which destroyed the old arrangements in the East. Even in America the basic conflict is visible, with the Landed Plutocrats framing the Constitution, while the Bankers established control in the early 19th century through Alexander Hamilton.
Another infamous example is post-1066 Britain, when William the Conqueror allowed the Jews into England. With them came Usury and the shetar, their contracts, subverting classical English common law. Within decades, Jews were the richest people in the country.
Jews were, like most Gentiles, forbidden to own land; but ways were found to make it possible for debtors to collateralize land holdings, and the issue quickly became a major plague. The Magna Carta was the first reaction against the Jews' financial practices, and in 1290 they were kicked out of the country, until that despicable (ask the Irish) Calvinist stooge of Jewish Amsterdam Finance, Oliver Cromwell, let them back in.
Usury leads to escalating rents
Usury not only allows for enclosure of the Commons; it also allows for higher rents. For instance: to buy some land, most people will need a mortgage. A mortgage costs 150% of the principal in Usury over 30 years. Landlords pass these costs on to tenants. Even when the mortgage has been paid off, and there is no cost of capital to pass on anymore, there is the wholly artificial idea of 'opportunity cost': the money invested in Land could have been profitably invested elsewhere, and the 'loss' of this 'opportunity' must be 'compensated'.
Nowadays, about 75% of rents for housing are Usury or 'opportunity cost' passed on by the landlord.
Conclusion
The idea that people need to pay for the land they live on from the moment they were born is strictly for humans only. No other species has a brain powerful enough to spin reality into such absurdity.
Nobody can call himself free if he's a slave to landlordism, just as he cannot be free as long as he's chained by Usury and scarce money.
Classical Economists, like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the people before them, considered Land, Labor, and Capital to be the factors of production.
'Modern Economics', beginning with Karl Marx, managed to obscure this.
We need to establish again the difference between man-made goods and our natural heritage, so that we can have a clear view of our rights and duties.
Land reform and the wider liberation of the Commons is a key target in the struggle against the Plutocracy.
As we have seen, it is Usury that has managed to usurp the Commons, overtaking the Landed Aristocracy that preceded it as the main power: so monetary reform is obviously the main goal.
But Land reform is definitely its younger brother and part of the same fight.
Related:
The Public vs. Private Dialectic, or: Money as Part of the Commons
Unfortunately, current land reform proposals, most notably Georgism, are lacking, mainly because of their mistaken trust in the State and taxation. In a forthcoming article, we'll discuss how we can equitably reform land, without empowering the State and/or its opulent owners.
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/how-usury-encloses-the-commons/
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