As I've mentioned already this morning, I am spending much of today in Norwich. One reason why is that today marks the anniversary of the death of Robert Kett who led a rebelleion against encloisure in 1549.
Kett died for his concern. And yet what troubled him then should trouble us now. I wrote most of the rest of this blog last year, but it remains just as relevant today:
Those with blind faith in private enterprise say it solves all our problems. And generates all wealth.
I don't agree. If it did I do not believe its supporters would need to take control of parliament to ensure they can capture the public sector to deliver wealth to their friends.
Two hundred (and more) years or so ago this process involved seizing land because the private sector could not work out how to generate wealth for itself before the coming of railways. As Wikipedia notes:
Enclosure is the process which was used to end some traditional rights, such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on land which is owned by another person, or a group of people. In England and Wales the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient system of arable farming in open fields. Under enclosure, such land is fenced (enclosed) anddeeded or entitled to one or more owners. By the 20th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and in relatively small parts of the lowlands.
The process of enclosure has sometimes been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas ofagricultural and economic history in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. For example: “In agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost”.[1]
I'm surprised the author thought you had to be a Marxist to think that: it seems pretty much universally accepted that this is what happened at the time.
This process is, I suggest, happening again. Private enterprise has no clue how to generate wealth right now. I mentioned the consequence a while ago. Private business has no idea what to invest in now, no new product to make, no big idea to offer. That's why it is sitting on a massive pile of cash.
So this government is offering it the NHS, education and more so that public benefit can be enclosed for private gain.
This is what happened two hundred years ago.
And it's happening again.
And the goal is simple: that the single largest income stream in the country - tax revenue -be washed through privatised structures to deliver private gain rather than the common good.
Kett fought for the common good.
So should we.
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I hadn’t thought of privatisation of the public sector as a direct continuation of the theft of that which was once commonly owned through enclosures. but now you describe it as that it seems obvious.
The analysis of the effects of the infamous 18th century enclosures is surely correct, though there may be some doubt whether the landlord and rentier class fully understood this, immediate gain being their major concern. There can be no doubt, however, that in the later Scottish equivalent – the bloody Highland Clearances – the landlord class fully understood, and intended destitution and demise for the crofters, from which they were only saved by emigration
Which of the two models – blind greed, or malicious greed – is at work now, it seems clear, from your post above, and also your post on the Merkel-Sarkozy folly (well, folly if you belong to the 99%, not for the 1%), that an ever more impassioned resistance is being called for, and that this generation may have to step up to the plate and to the mark as did the members of my great-grandparents’ generation in the 1880’s with the famous London dock strike, and fight these bastards for the preservation of all the gains made in civilizing society since the late 19th century. I regret to say, this may need to be a physical, even armed struggle, since it is clear that the 1% once again wish to reduce those outside their class to destitution.
Last night’s Channel 4 programme on the empty homes scandal was a text-book example; it looked as though Housing Minister Grant Shaps had agreed to entrepreneur George Clarke’s idea of a (substantial) loan fund to help people willing to do so to do up empty homes (350,000 of them!!) at only £3 to £4k a house, so easing the housing shortage, and also re-building community – REAL localism, and REAL “Big Society”. What happens? A mere £50m, AND a reduction in the premium for the infamous “Right to Buy”, with the clear aim of stripping away the very last vestiges of social housing in the interests of their rich friends, so inevitably adding to our acute housing problem. The Tory Party really IS the Nasty Party, who apparently won’t be content until the whole of the 99% has been reduced to feudal destitution.
Best of luck with today’s meetings in Norwich, Richard. Alas, I cannot join you at your book signing, as I’d hoped, owing to family obligations, but will hope to make the “Occupy” meeting.
This idea of “capturing the state for private gain” is just as absurd as opposing tax on the grounds that it “captures private gain for the state”. It has never had any merit as an idea yet you have run with it and run with it.
Perhaps you would like to consider the effect of enclosure on living standards. The period you note (1760-1820) coincided with the Industrial Revolution and the greatest explosion in living standards ever known. There had been virtually no economic progress of any note whatsoever in the thousands of years before 1760. The modernisation of agriculture has always been the spur to industrialisation in every single economy. Perhaps you think Soviet collectivisation of agriculture is the way forwards? And I use the example of the Soviets quite deliberately – this would take us back to the stone ages, no doubt about it. There is not serious economic historian who would not link enclosure of arable land and the rise in living standards which followed it – not one.
And no doubt you also note the misery that followed for the 99%
Now we know that happened we can stop it happening again
Especially as in the current case the result will be massive reductions in productivity – since it is impossible for the private sector to run health as efficiently as the NHS as I argue in the Courageous State
Here, as ever, we run into the problem of terminology…and ignorance. Just because something can be modernised a) doesn’t mean it should happen without consulting those affected and b) it should mean that those who do the work of modernisation should be fairly compensated. Your ignorance stems from the fact that the initial modernisation of agriculture ran into the ground very quickly die to the exhaustion of the soil. Modernisation took place before all the results were in, as it were. The great nineteenth century agricultural chemist Liebig was very critical of the modernised agriculture. Thankfully, in one way, we had the coal deposits that allowed us to take advantage of the new technology that undercut eveyone else, creating the surplus that allowed us to feed ourselves through importing others agri-products. Your characterisation of the IndRev is so blunt as to be meaningless. Perhaps you should go and read the Govt. literature that Marx based capital on to see the devastation visited on those newly ‘liberated’ from the land. Anyone up for a 18-hour day, working dangerous machinery, eating adulterated bread, feeding opium to the children you’ve left at home, and so on.
Societal gains should go to society, not to an old boys network. If you want to restrict gains to the few, then you’ll create the conditions for revolution (or fascism), which only the foolhardy would wish for.
As per Richard Price – I regret to say that I find your argument entirely specious. If we grant you are correct on the issue of enclosure of arable land being the engine that powered rising living standards in the 19th century (a proposition open to grave question), two further questions arise.
First, the enclosures were NOT of arable land only, but of COMMON land, land upon which the rural poor were able to graze their animals, pick up wood for fuel and other uses, harvest wild fruit from the vegetation, and fish from the ponds and wild animals from the land, to support themselves and each other. By enclosing all this, the landed gentry cut off the rural poor from sources of self-help and mutual support, as they watched out for each other, and each other’s animals, forcing them into alienating competition with each other, merely to survive.
The truth of the matter is that your example of Soviet collectivisation much more accurately sits on top of the process of enclosure – in both cases the rural poor were driven off their land by a more powerful urban elite, and forced to work on land they had once owned – than on any argument against the enclosures with which you seek to compare Soviet collectivisation
Which leads onto the second question: if wealth DID flow from the enclosures, why was this not fairly shared with those from whom the land was being taken? After all, the only outlay the landed gentry incurred was the cost of the fencing they used to enclose the land, and the hiring of bully boys and militia to protect what they had stolen from the poor.
In actuality, as Richard murphy notes, all that followed was the immiseration of the poor, and any sharing out of the wealth generated in the Industrial Revolution only occurred for the vast majority when they had come together in common purpose and fought for that share,
To follow on from this, the same argument about shares can be brought in the case of the Thatcherite privatisations, which took from me, and all other citizens, what already belonged to us, to sell to others a preferential share in what already belonged to them – a pretty close approximation to the sale of Tower Bridge or the Eiffel Tower to gullible investors. The sharing out to every citizen of the wealth generated by the selling-off of public assets has still not taken place – and PLEASE don’t tell me that we get that in improved service – private train companies receive a subsidy many times, perhaps double or treble, what British Railways received, only to offer a less complete service that is in some cases slower than that provided by the nationalised railways!
We, the people, are STILL waiting for these promised rewards, and are more and more coming to the conclusion that if the 1% won’t give fair shares, then we must build a society in which they are compelled to do so – the enclosures were theft, and a great deal of what passes for business activity, and probably ALL of that which passes through secrecy jurisdictions, is also theft from the common purse of a coutnry’s wealth.
You say all that followed was the immiseration of the poor. What also happened was that lots of money was invested in machines like Tull’s seed drill which minimized seed loss, selective breeding which doubled and trebled the weight of sheep and cattle, crop rotation which reduced having to keep land fallow plus better drainage and fertilisation. The increased productivity enabled one worker on the land to feed many more people than his grandfather. Thus more people were available to work in industry and eventually their children and grandchildren had a higher standard of living.
Of course the Corn Laws was an attempt to protect landowner income. It was defeated by other (mainly rich, not exclusively so) people who organised for a more rational economy. No argument as to the suffering and unfairness of the enclosures. If it had not had happened then by 1900 the people would have been little better off-as Russian peasants remained.
The swing riots of the 1830s were an attempt by the poor to destroy machines which took their winter work-a sort of Luddite reaction.
Today we should emulate the Anti-Corn Law league and bring together varying groups to promote a new economics relevant to a world with diminishing resources and facing climate change.Richard’s book gives some hints. My own priority would be nationalising the creation of money. A huge mountain to climb but if the choice is that or do nothing, then the answer is obvious. Where do we start?
May have got my terminology wrong as regards the Right to Buy – basically, the Tories are making it EASIER to buy, by reducing the amount buyers need to come up with. This is probably more accurately called “increasing the premium” = reduction in up-front cost. Whichever the correct terminology, the Tories are defnitely making it easier and cheaper for Council tenants to buy their homes, despite all the evidence that this has only contributed to homelessness and social division. RTB should have been geared a) to allow Councils to re-invest in new build, and b) to enable Council tenants to buy outside Council Estates, using their tenanted property as a trade. The social housing stock would thereby have not just been maintained (in both senses) but increased, to the benefit of all.
Agreed
RTB simply does not make sense – and the claim a new house will be built for each one sold rings hollow – simply because no finance was offered to make good the shortfall
This is all, again, about reducing the state sector
Irish Politicians Joe Higgins, attacking cuts aimed at the poor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOZLELg8Rxw
On the subject of the health service… I was talking with one of the senior consultants at the Royal Free in Grays Inn Road a few days ago, discussing the sleep study unit they have there. It’s a diagnostic unit, people with disturbed sleep patterns get wired up and readings are taken during an overnight stay. The unit, all thirty grand’s worth of it, is stood down. The hospital can’t afford to hire the staff to run it. While this genuinely useful unit stands idle for lack of funds hundreds of millions of pounds a year are given to Atos the French company performing the so-called functional testing on disabled people to see if they’re ‘fit to work’. The number of successful appeals against decisions based on these tests are both staggering and ruinously expensive yet the enormously expensive testing continues regardless. In short, it appears money that should have gone to make people well instead goes to a private company for pretending they’re well when they obviously aren’t. I suspect there you have an example of public money being enclosed, if you will, for private gain. I find myself wondering if the two government ministers most closely associated with this process, Grayling and Duncan Smith, are being rewarded in any way by Atos or some associated company. I doubt if we’d ever know, as I imagine rsther than bags of used fivers being clandestinely delivered chez Grayling and Duncan Smith, in today’s non-transparent world I’d expect them to be receiving their ill-gotten gains through tax havens. I wonder, could this or similar behaviour in other branches of government have any bearing on why this government is so keen on demonising the disabled and the unemployed yet so reluctant to pursue tax dodgers and close down tax havens?
They will most likely end up with seats on the board as happened in the privatisations of the 1980’s.
Yes.
And ATOS make great play on their use of “health professionals” for the assessments.
However, the majority are not doctors or nurses they are occupational health professionals.
Further, from reports sent to those appealing, it seems that many of the cases are decided prior to the claimant attending for assessment.
The claimant is assessed from the moment they enter the building….even the waiting room is an assessment area with their ability to cope with stairs and chairs part of the routine.
I have neither the time nor patience to investigate the ownership/management of the company…but since it is large and international I have little doubt that they will be complex.
With yet more PFI, (this government appears to be extending it) Social Impact Bonds and more and more privatisation of services within the public sector, the aim is to transfer as much as possible funds from the taxpayer purse into the hands of private finance. This will provide backing for more debt in order to create more profit and laden people down with more debt than they can posibly repay.
More debt produced means more money for the financial sector. Private debt, that is. That is why they enocourage private debt in every way possible. And that is why governments, mostly infuenced by the lobbyists from the financial sector, have no intention of bringing in legislation to curb the excesses of the banking and finance sectors.
Land is our commonwealth – it existed before homo sapiens existed. We could reclaim it all by nationalising rent via land value taxation.
Robert Kett came up with 30 demands, all of which seem reasonable & desirable, & many of which aren’t fulfilled now (obviously it is hard to say, as times change)
” 21.We pray that it be not lawful to the lords of any manor to purchase land freely and to let them out again by copy of court roll to their great advaunchement and to the undoing of your poor subjects.”
I believe the Tory Govt has just passed regulations encouraging the great lords (or at least the v wealthy) to do exactly that.
I can only hope those of us opposing the apparently irresistible rise of “the free market” don’t meet the grisly fate of Robert Kett & his brother.
What I love about the story is that Kett, who himself had come from a v poor background, was made aware of enclosing when a rival landowner encouraged the peasants to pull down Kett’s fencing instead of his. Far from resisting, once he understood the situation Kett began pulling down his own enclosures before leading a band to pull down all the other enclosures.
That’s like Philip Green saying “you’re right, I’ll never use a tax haven again, & now I want to tell you all the beneficiaries & settlors behind all those other tax haven trusts my former friends used to their great advantage”.