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Anarchists should rethink common vs private property
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Anarchism
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The article you posted is interesting.
To a certain extent I understand the want of people to have a space that they can call their own. A stable home is that very place. But this pathological need to own land is ridiculous. Native Americans lived for centuries under the premise that nature owns the property and humans are allowed to live in harmony with her and are expected to be good stewards of her. Property ownership is a capitalist notion. It's a notion that resources must be horded so as to create artificial supply shortages depriving others of their right to a stable home and creating almost a caste system. That's my 0.02. In fact, I would go as far as to consider authoritarian capitalism, which is essentially what the US more or less is, is in of itself a pathology.
This worked because they had low populations and an abundance of high resource land. We have high populations and scarcity of high resource land. Their situation was unique to their era and populace.
North America, South America, central America, the Pacific islands... The list goes on.
This isn't some kind of metaphysical crap, they respected the land so it would provide for them. Respect in this context means you're mindful of what you take, and you plant the seeds to help more grow down the line. You hunt the herd, but you also chase off predators and make sure it stays healthy.
Some of them didn't have to take food with them when they traveled, because over generations they stocked the forest with edible plants. They knew how to, but they often didn't have to plow the soil because their ancestors artificially selected for the environment into being great for humans
They surrounded themselves with food forests. The uneaten food draws in animals too, making for easy hunting. No worries of depleting the soil, you don't have to work the land, you just walk around and gather what you need
It's very efficient and probably what humans did in most places that had good conditions. You get to spend most of the day on your hobbies and hanging out. They had trade networks from Argentina to the Pacific Northwest. They had advanced math and their technology was moving at a reasonable speed. They had hundreds of thousands of people, and plenty of room to grow
Farming has one advantage - a small group working their asses off can feed a much larger group. That let's you field big armies with bupply lines, and then you can turn the "savage" land into farmland, and extract profit from it while denying their food source
Their situation wasn't unique, every indigenous people either had forest gardens or managed herds of wild animals. They even had empires like the incas and the Maya, who were able to build roads, pyramids, and floating cities with huge populations
That's why they started wars when people started killing buffalo for profit and leaving the meat to rot - they were willing to share because they had more than enough due to generations of work, and profiteers slaughtered their food source for no good reason. It wasn't moral outrage, it was an extensional threat
They rejected the idea of ownership of the land because it wasn't theirs to exploit, it belonged to future generations. And that's why our generation is fucked, because capitalism isn't about efficiency, it's about maximization
I get what you're saying, but it's a bit romanticized. By the time cultures get to the size of the Aztec, they're farming. The Aztec had huge floating farms that fed the people, and many other forms of trade and industry similar to ours. I'm pretty sure that Aztecs believed in land ownership. They certainly believed in owning people.
By "unique to their situation", I didn't mean unique only to native Americans, I meant unique to cultures before the 1800's that remained relatively small, and lived in resource abundant areas. There's were many cultures like that across the world, but they all had commonalities of having abundant resources and small enough populations to not require more robust solutions like agriculture and farming. And while native Americans didn't follow a system of land ownership, they did believe in personal space and property. You couldn't just go set up your dwelling right next to someone else's unless that person liked you and agreed to it. But there was room to spare, so the solution was easy.
The lifestyle we're talking about doesn't really support laying around and enjoying hobbies like you said. Yes, it was probably a great deal less stressful than modern life, as long as nothing went wrong. But it definitely required work. Have you ever gone backpacking? There's always that needs to be done. You're not really rushing to do things, and it's pretty satisfying and enjoyable, but there's a lot to be done. You have to walk down to the stream and collect water several times per day. You need to filter water. Food needs preparation, things need to be cleaned. The fire needs to be maintained. But it is all fairly gratifying. For primitive cultures they would have even more things that required their attention, like tool maintenance and crafting, weapon crafting, practicing skills, teaching young ones, hunting, skinning, making clothes, etc. Even still, I think those were probably edifying activities.
Anyways, I'm not really disagreeing with you other than the few clarifications I made. I'm just saying that I don't see how such a life is compatible with modern society. It can work in small communities in places like Wyoming, or Nebraska, or even parts of California, Washington, and Nebraska, but what about NYC, London, and Paris? Those people are never going to abandon their lifestyle. They're not going to leave their cities and start wandering the forest throwing seeds on the ground. There aren't enough wild animals left on the planet to support 8 billion people's needs for food and clothing. You don't get cotton clothing without cotton plantations. You don't get polyester without oil. You don't get oil without massive industries and farms to support them. So I think we need to focus on figuring out a way to make our current systems work sustainably, not try to return to primative methods.