RD

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
(a thread of threads, quotes, and links)

This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done *to* us, and what has been *taken from us*.

By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities.

By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality, exploitation and oppression, hunger and starvation, genocide and war; a world of fences, walls, gatekeepers, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable disease; a world of vanishing biodiversity and thriving fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital.

Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall:

"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b

Also recommended: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy"

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#4b

#capitalism #colonialism #enclosure #PrivateProperty #state #police #inequality #anthropology #environment #ClimateCrisis #economics

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May 12, 2023 at 7:01pmWeb
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

A big part of this false lesson is the fantasized history that serves as its foundation; the stories we've been told and the assumptions we've been conditioned with.

To introduce us to "A new understanding of human history and the roots of inequality" here is the TED talk by archaeologist David Wengrow (link includes transcript):

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_wengrow_a_new_understanding_of_human_history_and_the_roots_of_inequality/transcript?language=en

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David Wengrow: A new understanding of human history and the roots of inequality

TED
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

To explore this new understanding further here is a more detailed look at the stories we've been told and who has been telling them (this one is a longish read, dive in if you find it interesting, otherwise don't get bogged down here, move on to the next post!):

"How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened)"
by anthropologist David Graeber and David Wengrow:

https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/

3/30

Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Understanding the state of things requires us to understand The State. Here's a crash course:

What Is The State? A helpful thread from @HeavenlyPossum
https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113034394722266469

The State, Our Ancient Enemy
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/the-state-our-ancient-enemy/

The State as Sole Capitalist
https://archive.ph/7uRGy

Here is another aspect of state, and another example of accepted narratives that need to be questioned in light of actual evidence. It turns out we can probably thank state for #patriarchy:

How did patriarchy actually begin?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230525-how-did-patriarchy-actually-begin

More info about roles of men and women in past societies:

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-shattering-myth-men-hunters-women.html

Worldwide survey kills the myth of ‘Man the Hunter’
https://www.science.org/content/article/worldwide-survey-kills-myth-man-hunter

Iron Age DNA Reveals Women Dominated Pre-Roman Britain
https://www.sciencealert.com/iron-age-dna-reveals-women-dominated-pre-roman-britain

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

Thread: What Is The State? I thought it would be a good idea to explain what I mean by “the state,” because quite a few people seem confused by this. Thought it is lengthy, I don’t mean for this to be a definitive statement, and I’m sure plenty of anarchists will disagree with some or many of my points. I also don’t mean for this to be a comprehensive discourse on state-ness, but rather a general statement about my personal perspective. 1/13

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Next we're going to meet a monster and do our best to kill it. This monster is the ghost of the man John Locke, a philosopher known as "the father of liberalism". We're going to spend some time dragging Locke through the mud because his ideas became a linchpin in our whole system of property, justifying atrocities that continue even as we read this together now. It's not that Locke was single-handedly responsible for our plight, but he does serve as an example of the kind of men who used high-sounding words and "moral" arguments to draw us all into a nightmare that enables *them* to "live the dream".

We'll start with this excerpt from an article by political economist @blair_fix "Can the World Get Along Without Natural Resources?" (by all means read the entire excellent article, but for now this excerpt serves our purposes):

"The original sin

From its outset, the field of political economy was not designed, in any meaningful sense, to understand resource flows. Instead, it was designed to explain *class relations*. The goal of early political economists was to justify the income of different classes (workers, landowners and capitalists). They chose to do so by rooting this income in the ‘production of wealth’. What followed from this original sin was centuries of conflating income with ‘production’. This conflation is what allowed Robert Solow to proclaim that the world could “get along without natural resources”.

Let’s retrace this flawed thinking. It starts with a failure to understand property rights. Political economists largely understand property as a productive asset — a way of thinking that dates to the 17th-century work of John Locke (or perhaps earlier). Locke proclaimed that property rights stemmed from ‘natural law’. A man, Locke argued, has a natural right to own what he ‘produces’:
_____

...every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
_____

Locke’s thinking became known as the ‘labor theory of property’. This theory (and its derivatives) is why political economists misunderstand the role of natural resources. Here’s what happens. If we accept Locke’s argument that you have a right to own what you produce, it follows that your wealth should stem from your output.

Most political economists after Locke accepted this reasoning (at least in part). That meant that the debate was not about whether wealth was ‘produced’, but rather, about *which* ‘factors of production’ were ‘productive’. The physiocrats thought land alone was productive. Marx insisted that only labor was productive. Neoclassical economists proclaimed that, alongside labor, capital too was productive. The debate between these schools played out over centuries. The problem, though, is that it’s based on a flawed premise. The debate assumes that value is ‘produced’. (It’s not.)

To see the flaw, let’s go back to Locke’s theory of property rights. Notice that it’s not really a ‘theory’ in the scientific sense. It doesn’t explain *why* property rights exist. It explains why they *ought* to exist. Locke proclaimed that a man ought to own what he produces. That is his ‘natural right’.

This change from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ is important. It means that we’re not dealing with a scientific theory. We’re dealing with a system of *morality*. The philosopher David Hume was perhaps the first to understand this moral sleight of hand. He noticed that moral philosophers made their arguments more convincing by framing what ‘ought’ to be in terms of what ‘is’. Here’s Hume reflecting on this trick:
_____

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence.
_____

With David Hume’s observation in mind, let’s return to Locke’s ‘theory’ of property. It’s not a ‘theory’ at all — it’s a moral treatise. According to Locke, we *ought* to own what we produce. But that doesn’t mean that we *do*.

To see the consequences of this mistake, we need an actual scientific theory of property rights — a theory that explains why property exists, not why it ‘ought’ to exist. The most convincing theory of private property, in my opinion, comes from the work of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. To understand property, Nitzan and Bichler argue that we should turn Locke’s idea on its head. Property isn’t a ‘natural right’. It’s an act of *power*.

Property, Nitzan and Bichler observe, is an act of exclusion. If I own something, that means that I have the right to exclude others from using it. It’s this exclusionary power that defines private property. Here are Nitzan and Bichler describing this act:
_____

The most important feature of private ownership is not that it enables those who own, but that it disables those who do not. Technically, anyone can get into someone else’s car and drive away, or give an order to sell all of Warren Buffet’s shares in Berkshire Hathaway. The sole purpose of private ownership is to prevent us from doing so. In this sense, private ownership is wholly and only an institution of exclusion, and institutional exclusion is a matter of organized power.
_____

When we think like Nitzan and Bichler, we get a very different view of income. Recall that most political economists see property in terms of the ‘things’ that are owned. They then argue that income stems from these ‘things’. Nitzan and Bichler upend this logic. Property, they argue, is about the *act* of ownership — the institutional act of exclusion. Income stems from this exclusionary act. We earn income from the *fence* of property rights, not from what’s inside the fence. In other words, if you can’t restrict access to your property, you can’t earn income from it."

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/06/18/can-the-world-get-along-without-natural-resources/

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Can the World Get Along Without Natural Resources? – Economics from the Top Down

I dissect how neoclassical economics treats (neglects) natural resources, and discuss ways to fix it.

Economics from the Top Down
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Here are two short threads from @HeavenlyPossum on the Labor Theory of Property and John Locke:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110164109548612913

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109465708774475922

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

Labor Theory of Property is an outgrowth of settler colonialism and the ideological justifications for the latter.

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

More on Locke and others like him from "The Prehistory of Private Property":

"Locke could hardly have been unaware that his theory provided a justification for an ongoing process disappropriating European commoners and indigenous peoples alike or that that process amounted to redistribution without compensation from poor to rich. This observation raises serious doubts that the principles contemporary propertarians have inherited from him reflect some deeper commitment to nonaggression or noninterference.

Lockeanism eventually revolutionized the world’s conception of what property was by portraying full liberal ownership as if it were something natural that had always existed, even though it was only then being established by enclosure and colonialization. Lockean and propertarian *stories* might have been more important than their *theories* in that effort. The “original appropriator” in Locke’s story resembles European colonialists rather than prehistoric indigenous North Americans who first farmed the continent. Locke’s appropriator establishes the fee-simple rights that colonial governments (building a global cash economy) tend to establish rather than the complex, overlapping rights indigenous farmers in stateless societies tend to establish."

"The intent of Blackstone, Locke, Grotius, and other early modern property theorists was not to describe what property actually was or even what kind of institutions most people wanted at the time. Instead, it was “a common strategy of claiming the ground of property so as to preempt serious consideration of alternatives like common property” [Olsen,E. J. 2019, “The Early Modern ‘Creation’ of Property and its Enduring influence,” European Journal of Political Theory, Online Early, 1–23]. In that way, private property theory furnished propaganda for the enclosure and colonial movements that forcibly established that institution around the world."

https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b

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Books – Karl Widerquist

Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Let's spend some time looking at Enclosure both historically and as a continuing reality. We'll start with a quick look at one small example of how people organized life on their own just before having it turned upside down by Enclosure:

@HeavenlyPossum on the Irish rundale system of common property:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110219111305684330

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

The dominant pattern of Irish community organization used to be something called the “rundale.” The rundale was a system for managing and dividing up village agricultural land according to need. The word derives from two Gaelic words—“roinn,” or division, and “daíl,” a meeting or assembly. The rundale, then, was “the meeting to divide up the land.” Each peasant village, or clachan, owned land in common. Some of it was used as common grazing land for cows and other livestock; some was used for gardens by individual households, and some was used as crop land to grow oats, rye, barley, and potatoes. Periodically—I presume each year—the clachan would meet in a daíl to redistribute crop land among households. 1/5

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Looking further back we see that humans all over the globe have been actively managing our environment successfully and sustainably for many millennia, which reveals falsehoods embedded in the Lockean (white, European, patriarchal) view of humanity, history and land use. From the research article "People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years":

"The current biodiversity crisis is often depicted as a struggle to preserve untouched habitats. Here, we combine global maps of human populations and land use over the past 12,000 y with current biodiversity data to show that nearly three quarters of terrestrial nature has long been shaped by diverse histories of human habitation and use by Indigenous and traditional peoples. With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies. Global land use history confirms that empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities will be critical to conserving biodiversity across the planet.

"Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis."
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118

Those in power have been telling us that *we* (people in general or "human nature") are the problem. Popular narratives insist that humans and agriculture of any kind are intrinsically and inevitably destructive to the biosphere.

The actual evidence tells us otherwise:

@HeavenlyPossum on "Tells" (archeology):
"And here these farmers sat, year after year, millennia after millennia, in one place. These were people working with the same Neolithic agricultural package, growing the same sorts of wheat and raising the same sorts of sheep, in the fields around their tells.
They did not die out. They did not exhaust their soils to extinction. Many of them — especially the tells in the Danube Basin that constitute “Old Europe” — developed no states, as some people believe is inevitable from wheat cultivation. If they did leave, they left for reasons unrelated to the success of their way of life. But, as I noted, some of these tells are still inhabited, like the central citadel of Aleppo in Syria."
https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113367947919067023

The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear?
-Across the globe, vast swathes of land are being left to be reclaimed by nature. To see what could be coming, look to Bulgaria-
Many of the landscapes people now tend to think of as untouched, from the savanna lands of equatorial Africa to the deep Amazon rainforest, have already been deeply transformed by human presence. “The essential role that people play in ecology is the critical thing, and it’s been ignored,” Ellis says. “The most biodiverse places left on Earth – this is almost universally true – have Indigenous people in them. Why? Well, they conserve a lot of that biodiversity and actually produce it. They maintain that heterogeneous landscape.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/nov/28/great-abandonment-what-happens-natural-world-people-disappear-bulgaria

On Navajo Lands, Ancient Ways Are Restoring the Parched Earth
https://e360.yale.edu/features/navajo-natural-infrastructure-dryland-streams

Milpas
Based on the agronomy of the Maya and of other Mesoamerican peoples, the milpa system is used to produce crops of maize, beans, and squash without employing artificial pesticides and artificial fertilizers...
A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucuna ... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary...
The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, "is one of the most successful human inventions ever created."
The concept of milpa is a sociocultural construct rather than simply a system of agriculture. It involves complex interactions and relationships between farmers, as well as distinct personal relationships with both the crops and land. For example, it has been noted that "the making of milpa is the central, most sacred act, one which binds together the family, the community, the universe ... [it] forms the core institution of Indian society in Mesoamerica and its religious and social importance often appear to exceed its nutritional and economic importance."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milpa

Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths
First described over 120 years ago in Brazil, Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are expanses of dark soil that are exceptionally fertile and contain large quantities of archaeological artifacts... Archaeological research provides clear evidence that their widespread formation in lowland South America was concentrated in the Late Holocene, an outcome of sharp human population growth that peaked towards 1000 BP
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31064-2

The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans
"Perhaps [...] the very biodiversity we want to preserve is not only due to thousands of years of natural evolution but also the result of the human footprint on them," Iriarte says. "The more we learn, the more the evidence point to the latter."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/

Lost Cities of the Amazon Discovered From the Air
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lost-cities-of-the-amazon-discovered-from-the-air-180980142/

Genetic Evidence Overrules Ecocide Theory of Easter Island Once And For All
https://www.sciencealert.com/genetic-evidence-overrules-ecocide-theory-of-easter-island-once-and-for-all

Easter Island study casts doubt on theory of ‘ecocide’ by early population
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/21/easter-island-study-casts-doubt-on-theory-of-ecocide-by-early-population

The truth about Easter Island: a sustainable society has been falsely blamed for its own demise
https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own-demise-85563

Debunking the “Ecocide” Myth: The Real Story of Easter Island
https://scitechdaily.com/debunking-the-ecocide-myth-the-real-story-of-easter-island/

Climate change, not human population growth, correlates with Late Quaternary megafauna declines in North America
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8

New research upends theory that Indigenous Australians hunted large animals to extinction
https://archive.ph/XuewE
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250078

Study finds Indigenous people cultivated hazelnuts 7,000 years ago, challenging modern assumptions
Researcher says evidence challenges narratives of wild, untouched landscapes in what is now British Columbia
"What this is saying is ... intentional agricultural-type food production is part of our heritage for longer than ancient Egypt."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-hazelnut-research-1.7392860

All these examples just scratch the surface. Here is an absolutely mammoth thread from @pvonhellermannn with many more examples from around the world showing "that the history of our relationship to nature has not been one of unilinear destruction; and that destruction is not 'human nature'":
Posts 1-21: https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109410840331192595
Thread continues here (posts 22-42): https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109508169070569262
Thread continues here (posts 43-52): https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109535265169676919

Note: some of the links in Pauline's thread are no longer working, but I was able to find alternatives. If you are seriously diving into her thread, you can check this post for alternate links:
https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/114032517680702524

Rather than human nature, agriculture, or over-population, the cause of our current nightmare of environmental destruction originated with a specific group of people who had the power to enforce their exploitation and pillaging over the entire globe eventually. We'll look more later at the disastrous results of colonialism and capitalism.

9/30

Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

With all the above context in mind let us examine the process of Enclosure.

Here is an introduction to "The Tragedy of the Commons" from @HeavenlyPossum:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109449321659418326

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

There is no such thing as the tragedy of the commons: a thread. The oldest published reference to the idea is in a lecture by an early political economist at Oxford, William Foster Lloyd, in 1832 titled "On the Checks to Population." Lloyd first articulated the argument that many of us have been taught as an inevitable and immutable fact of economic life: that any resource owned in common will be exploited to the point of ruin. "Why are the cattle on a common so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so hare-worn, and cropped so differently from the adjoining inclosures? No inequality, in respect of natural or acquired fertility, will account for the phenomenon." https://www.jstor.org/stable/1972412 1/ #capitalism #commons #tragedyofthecommons #anticapitalism #ostrom #anticapitalism #anarchism

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Here is an insightful, extensive and detailed look at the history of Enclosure in Britain and the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons":

A Short History of Enclosure in Britain
https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

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Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum on the enclosure of our roads and car dependency as capitalist rent:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110123111646315678

(See also: What We Lost When Cars Won
Americans once feared cars. Now we can’t imagine life without them.
https://grist.org/culture/cars-crashes-books-culture/

for more horrifying details of car culture see this article which fleshes out the statistics very well though it falls short by only dealing with superficial causes and solutions:
We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars
https://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-cities-for-people-not-cars
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Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum on art as an enclosed commons:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110162427730407993

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

If you spend time with kids, one thing you’ll quickly notice is how incredibly creative they are. They churn out art at prolific rates, and seek out opportunities to create it as a form of play. I have two kids and have often struggled with figuring out storage solutions for their art, all of which is precious to me. I was a kid once too, and I have memories of making lots of art as a kid. But, at some point, I just sort of stopped. This isn’t true for everyone, of course; some people go on to become professional artists, while others keep it up as a hobby. I suspect, though, that most people reading this will share my experience: like most imaginative play, we leave the daily production of art behind in our childhoods. Isn’t that strange? 1/8

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum - An investigation into money, credit, and the social role of landlords:

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110108848618951452

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HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

It is a common capitalist trope that landlords “provide” housing to people. They are, the story goes, doing everyone a service! And we all know the appropriate response: it’s actually the tenant who provides the landlord with housing, by paying capital costs (like the landlord’s mortgage, which was borrowed to pay the people who actually built the home) in their rent payments. Landlords don’t provide, they *hoard,* collecting tolls by restricting access to housing. Some of the cleverer ideologues might argue: the landlords play an important role by paying the capital costs up front. Without landlords to rent out housing incrementally, everyone would have to save up enough capital to buy outright, and most of us would be too poor to buy a house outright. So it’s worth asking: why do landlords have access to all that capital up front, and can spend it all at once, while others don’t and have to pay for it a bit at a time? 1/11

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

The result of all this has been to force us into a "market society".

@HeavenlyPossum on the imposition of markets and the demolition of society:
https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110182089285428195

@HeavenlyPossum on why money is so insidiously pervasive in virtually every aspect of life:
https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113854777439943148

One of the foundational falsehoods underlying capitalist ideology is the claim that money emerged at the grass-roots level as a natural and inevitable progression from supposedly pre-existing "barter economies"; a clever hack that benefited everyone. Anthropologists and archaeologists know this is not true, but orthodox economics and other conventional institutions still promote this myth routinely. Here is a recent study further debunking this pervasive indoctrination:

Ancient tally sticks across three civilizations challenge myths about money
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ancient-tally-civilizations-myths-money.html

See also chapter 2 "The Myth of Barter" from David Graeber's essential book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years"
https://we.riseup.net/assets/393727/David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf

It is true that various forms of Indigenous currency arose independently in many places around the world, but those systems were fundamentally different from money as we know it today. Here is an informative article about that:

Indigenous Currency Systems: From Wampum Belts to Trade Valuations
https://archive.ph/wMhyt

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Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Another quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property":

"No argument about the freedom to appropriate can support the market economy, because capitalism makes people no freer to appropriate property than the common property regime, public property regime, or any other system. A person born into the contemporary market economy is as unfree to appropriate land as a person born to a common property regime or a public property regime that allows no private landownership. The right to appropriate scarce resources, as economist define the term (i.e. anything with a monetary value), is inconsistent with a system of equal freedom from coercion. The propertyless today are not and cannot be equally free to appropriate.

"Lomasky’s “liberty to acquire” holdings actually means the “liberty” to purchase goods. That’s not a liberty at all. That’s a positive opportunity. The goods you are expected to buy are made out of resources you have forcibly been excluded from using yourself. The chance to take orders from one resource owner so that you can “earn” the right to buy goods from other resource owners might be useful, but it is not freedom from some form of coercion that exists in societies with a common property regime."

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Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Here is @AdrianRiskin on the role of state violence in market society:

State Violence, The Diamond/Water Paradox, and an Invisible Axiom of Classical Economics

https://chez-risk.in/2023/01/29/state-violence-the-diamond-water-paradox-and-an-invisible-axiom-of-classical-economics/

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State Violence, The Diamond/Water Paradox, and an Invisible Axiom of Classical Economics

Robert Wedderburn Rest In Power

Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

Ok, so capitalism can be a tad harsh 🙄 , but we are told it's worth it because capitalism has "lifted billions out of poverty!" and that even the poor of today are wealthier than kings of old. Let's unpack these claims and take a close look at the concepts of "wealth" and "poverty".

@HeavenlyPossum on Wealth

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110043938013023300

18/30

HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

This is an incredibly common and incredibly stupid take on wealth: that people today have so much more “stuff” than people in the past, so we—even the poorest among us—are richer than ancient kings and titans of industry. 1/9 https://twitter.com/cafreiman/status/1635430623958401024

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum on Poverty

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109463692215268151

19/30

HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

Property is a social relationship—an agreement about the use and disposition of stuff. Beyond what you can grasp in your own hands, everything you own is by agreement with other people who could, but don’t, take for themselves the things you’ve claimed. Wealth is a subset of property, a social relationship of *command.* Wealth is the social ability to command and compel other people to bring you things you want or labor for you at your direction. If wealth is a relationship of command, then poverty, its inverse, is the state of being subject to command. 1/thread #property #poverty #wealth #capitalism #anticapitalism #propertyrights #privateproperty

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum on Hunger

https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110224911687712240

20/30

HeavenlyPossum (@[email protected])

A few years ago, NPR published an article about an “archeological mystery.” In Ghana, a place now associated with poverty and hunger, archeologists found that food security peaked about 500 years ago, in the midst of an epic two-century long drought, and declined in the mid-19th century. Now, in Ghana, people struggle to find enough to eat during the annual dry season, switching to less-nutritious foods—if they can even afford them in markets. And I’ve always been surprised at the author’s surprise. Where, exactly, is the mystery? 1/11 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/20/486670144/an-archaeological-mystery-in-ghana-why-didn-t-past-droughts-spell-famine

kolektiva.social
Show threadRDMay 12, 2023

"Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

Highlights:

- The common notion that extreme poverty is the “natural” condition of humanity and only declined with the rise of capitalism rests on income data that do not adequately capture access to essential goods.

- Data on real wages suggests that, historically, extreme poverty was uncommon and arose primarily during periods of severe social and economic dislocation, particularly under colonialism.

- The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality.

- In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, wages and/or height have still not recovered.

- Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began only around the 20th century. These gains coincide with the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements.

Abstract:

"This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. These claims rely on national accounts and PPP exchange rates that do not adequately capture changes in people’s access to essential goods. We assess this narrative against extant data on three empirical indicators of human welfare: real wages (with respect to a subsistence basket), human height, and mortality. We ask whether these indicators improved or deteriorated with the rise of capitalism in five world regions - Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and China – using the chronology put forward by world-systems theorists. The evidence we review here points to three conclusions. (1) It is unlikely that 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty prior to the 19th century. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year, except during periods of severe social dislocation, such as famines, wars, and institutionalized dispossession – particularly under colonialism. (2) The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered. (3) Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems."

edited 8 Oct 2024 to add this side note:

You may encounter pro-capitalism arguments that offer supposed evidence from data presented at a site called "Our World In Data" (often quoted by mainstream journalists). Do not take anything from that site at face value! The data presented is often incomplete, cherry-picked, manipulated, and not standardized properly. Biases are ignored and uncertainties treated as fact. Here is a revealing article about the people and agenda behind that site:

The Unbearable Anthropocentrism of Our World in Data
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-unbearable-anthropocentrism-of-our-world-in-data/

21/30

Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century

This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to a…

Show threadla tierra de nuestros nietosDec 17, 2024

@RD4Anarchy

The term #tupambae from the #Guarani language kinda means #commons.
It's told that the #Jesuits in the Paraguayan region when they created their "christian reign" had difficulties to get the indigenous people to work on their specific #abambae, the personal family yard the Jesuits invented and tried to impose onto the local tribes.
At the same time the indigenous people joyfully engaged when ever it was time to go to the Tupambae, the region further away from the village to hunt and gather together.

The Jesuits managed to translate the term Tupambae into "tierra de dios", "land of good" to the point that now a days if you ask people in this region for the meaning, you get this translation as an answer. "The everything", the space of everything, of every one, became "the all", "the all embracing", "the one and only".

Actually, to unveil this "wrong translation" it's ultimately quite simple as the only thing you have to do is ask if the Guarani where a monotheistic culture. As the answer is obviously no, Tupambae can't be "the land of the good of all" but "the space of all".

> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupamba%C3%A9
Toponimia guaraníTupambaé, proviene del vocablo guaraní formado por Tupá = "trueno, Ser Supremo" y mbaé = "perteneciente a", se traduce como “cosa que pertenece a Dios”, "propiedad de Dios" o en un sentido más amplio ”lugar donde habita Dios”.6

> https://www.territoriodigital.com/herencia/indice.asp?herencia3/paginas/cap08
El azote aplicado como castigo a los indígenas, fueran hombres, mujeres o niños, era un método común para sujetar a indio a un régimen de trabajo que muy poco se relacionaba con su cultura. El trabajo en los lotes del abambaé se iniciaba muy temprano, luego de escuchar misa.
..
Luego, con sus herramientas, entonando canciones alegres en guaraní, acompañadas con los sones de cajas, flautas y chirimías, partían rumbo a las labores. El aire festivo continuaba durante el día de trabajo, ya que la música y las canciones eran constantes en los ámbitos de trabajo. Se trabajaba con la convicción de que se lo hacía para Dios y para la comunidad.

@HeavenlyPossum

Tupambaé - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Show threadHeavenlyPossumDec 17, 2024

@RD4Anarchy @tierranietos

That’s really cool, thank you for sharing that

Show threadmʕ•ﻌ•ʔm bitPickupDec 21, 2024

> Tupá = "trueno, Ser Supremo" y mbaé = "perteneciente a"

Actually, "what belongs to to the thunder, the bang, the supreme (inicial) being" sounds a lot like everything that emerged from the big bang in time and space.

:)

@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy @tierranietos

Show threadjeSuisatire neindochohh ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷDec 21, 2024

@bitpickup

> what belongs to to the thunder

Are you talking about my good old buddy Thor?

@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy @tierranietos

Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy @blair_fix Locke's theory of property does not intend the statement that "a man ought to own what he produces." Such a statement would immediately imply #anticapitalism and anti-slavery. What Locke said and intended was that whatever is produced by labor belongs to the labor's owner, which can very well be a separate party from the party that in fact carried out the labor. That alienation inherent in the theory is what allows it to be compatible with #capitalism
Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy Objectivity flows from convergence in reflective rational minds' views. A reason that science is objective is that, if you were to take N rational reflective minds, let them study the universe for t time and take the limit as t and N both approach infinity, there would be some convergence in the models of the universe those minds developed. There is no reason to assume that such convergence could not occur in ethics, or that the space of value systems is undifferentiated
Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023

@RD4Anarchy
"If we accept Locke’s argument that you have a right to own what you produce, it follows that your wealth should stem from your output."

This quote is wrong. The premise is not true. Locke didn't support the right to own what you produce, as mentioned in my previous toot, due to his support of the employer-employee relationship. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. In terms of the productivity debate, all factors are causally efficacious, but only labor is responsible

Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy
"The judge…is only concerned with the legal imputation,… discovery of the legally responsible factor,…. [He] will rightly [bear] the whole…consequences, although he could never…alone–without instruments…–have committed the crime. The imputation takes for granted…causality." With respect to the moral imputation, "certainly [only] the labourer could be named. Land and capital … are dead tools…; and the man is responsible for [his] use…of them." -- von Wieser, a neoclassical #economist
Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy While Locke's theory is problematic from both a descriptive and normative point of view, I don't see the problem with having normative theories about property rights as long as they build on a proper descriptive account of property rights
Show threadRDJul 31, 2023

@jlou

You seem to be enmeshed in a very specific legalistic framework. You should understand that as a student of anarchism these comments are wasted on me.

I do not support states or legal systems. I am not interested in tweaking liberalism or classical economics.

I believe the very idea of Capital is destroying us from inside and outside and must be annihilated if we are to survive at all, let alone experience a truly free human society.

You seem to have followed a particular thinker down their proprietary rabbit hole. I don't think that will lead anywhere useful to the cause of human liberation and saving the biosphere.

Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023

@RD4Anarchy Capitalism is a system of property and contract, which are both aspects of the legal system. To critique capitalism's property relationships, you have to analyze what is precisely wrong with the structure of rights in those property relationships.

When making arguments against the current system, it is more productive to make arguments based on the commitments people already hold.

Common ownership of products of nature is exactly what is needed to save the biosphere

Show threadRDJul 31, 2023

@jlou

So instead of recognizing that Locke was inconsistent and maybe even pushing a hidden agenda, you've chosen to reinterpret him to make him consistent with your pet philosophy, am I understanding correctly?

Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy I am criticizing Locke here. Locke is not consistent with my philosophy
Show threadRDJul 31, 2023

@jlou @blair_fix

Locke's place in the structure of liberalism and capitalism is the significant thing here, not your pet interpretation of what he "really meant".

Show threadJ LouJul 31, 2023
@RD4Anarchy @blair_fix This is not my pet interpretation. This is C. B. Macpherson's interpretation
Show threadAndy MouseJan 9, 2024

@RD4Anarchy Great thread. Thanks for putting this together

@blair_fix

Show threadRDJan 9, 2024

@andymouse @blair_fix

Thanks and you're welcome, it's the least I can do.

Show threadRDJun 29, 2023

Here is another reference about roles of men and women in past societies:

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-shattering-myth-men-hunters-women.html

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers

Analysis of data from dozens of foraging societies around the world shows that women hunt in at least 79% of these societies, opposing the widespread belief that men exclusively hunt and women exclusively gather. Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University, US, and colleagues presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 28, 2023.

Phys.org
Show threadRDJun 30, 2023

More info:

https://www.science.org/content/article/worldwide-survey-kills-myth-man-hunter

Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 29, 2023

@RD4Anarchy

Reminds me of this

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03104-8

The big-game hunter buried in an ancient grave: a female teenager

The burial and others like it suggest that female hunters were common in the Americas thousands of years ago.

Show threadCyMay 9, 2024
The State as enemy is a problematic narrative, because then what do you call it when people work together and cooperate? That's not a state? That is why state propaganda actively attacks the state, because if you avoid cooperation for fear of it being oppression, then the organized state can oppress you without anyone else interfering. It's not their business after all!

If you believe that a state is neccessarily an oppressive regime, then you can never form an egalitarian state, leaving you easy pickings for authoritarians.
Show threadRDMay 9, 2024

@cy

>>...what do you call it when people work together and cooperate? That's not a state?<<

No, that's not what a state is. Did you read the linked article?
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/the-state-our-ancient-enemy/

btw, there are a couple other essays that go along with that one:

Coercion: Fundamental to the Modern State
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/coercion-fundamental-to-the-modern-state/

Ideology: Coercion's Spin Doctor
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/ideology-coercions-spin-doctor/

The State, Our Ancient Enemy

The State, as a tool of ruling class rule, hasn't changed in 6,000 years, so why would it now?

The Commoner
Show threadCyMay 9, 2024
I'm saying it's a bait and switch. Your words are being hijacked. Smash the state they say, destroy welfare. The state is making us weak! Destroy our ancient enemy, unions! Those are states! Invading our corporate family! Cripple corporate regulations, get the state out of our business. Free trade! Small state! Small state!

What's that? Stop doubling the size of the police force? Don't be silly. The state is not a state. It's a social contract of mutual benefit, agreed upon by our forefathers. No coercion involved!

See how they can twist your rhetoric? Don't oppose "the state." Oppose the problem. Oppose tyranny, bureaucracy, rent and debt.
Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 9, 2024

@cy @RD4Anarchy

What

Show threadRDMay 9, 2024

@cy

>>Oppose tyranny, bureaucracy, rent and debt.<<

Opposing those things puts one in direct opposition to state 🤷‍♂️ I'm not going to beat around the bush about it.

I'm not going to stop using the word capitalism because incoherent ancaps like to misuse the word, ascribing nonsense definitions to it and fantasizing about capitalism without state.

I'm not going to stop explaining to liberals that there is no "social contract", police should be abolished, and our forefathers were patriarchal, genocidal, slave-owning, white supremacist greedy elites pulling this shit out of their asses and writing it down to solidify their power and justify their privilege and all their crimes against humanity.

I suggest you explore further the entire thread which the post you replied to came from, there are tons of empirical references in their to counter any rhetorical attacks.

Show threadCyMay 10, 2024
Opposing your definition of state is a good idea. Very similar things to your states exist though, that people are easily misled to think are bad too, undermining your goals. There are organizations, associations that can oppose things like rent and debt. Movements, even first nations that have made progress to ending colonialism and patriarchy. We can't fight this alone. We have to come together as communities, societies and friends, and show people there are other ways to live. They think your definition of state is the only way things can be, and the articles you provide agree it is the only way, even if they say it must be destroyed. I'm tired of apocalyptic prophecies.
Show threadRDMay 10, 2024

@cy

Anarchists are not opposed to organizations, associations, communities, societies, or friends. We oppose hierarchical power structures, not voluntary associations. We are not opposed to organizing.

>>Very similar things to your states exist though, that people are easily misled to think are bad too, undermining your goals.<<

I don't think this is really a thing, or at least not a significant concern. Do you have any examples of this?

Of course if any of these things you're referring to really *are* similar to states (with strict hierarchy, elites, coercion, enclosure, exploitation, control, etc) then they *are* bad things.

Show threadCyMay 10, 2024
I'm referring to things like the post office, which has been stripped of funding because "state bad," and all that accomplished was us paying scummy delivery companies more to do the same thing.
Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy @RD4Anarchy

The neoliberals who have starved public services of funds are not anti-state. They’re very much in favor of state violence that serves capital.

Show threadRDMay 10, 2024

@HeavenlyPossum @cy

Exactly. This was about their vision of state, not a result of any anti-state movement.

Also, the post office is not anything remotely similar to a state. Those who gutted it weren't trying to eliminate a state-like structure, they just want that structure to be privatized.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy @RD4Anarchy

Reminds me of Graeber’s point about abolishing the state and seeing what remains—what aspects of it people would truly want to sustain if free to choose. He suggested the NHS but the USPS is another good example of the sort of institution I could readily imagine free people running for themselves.

Show threadRDMay 10, 2024

@HeavenlyPossum @cy

This example also comes to mind:

China's ancient water pipe networks show they were a communal effort with no evidence of a centralized state authority
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-china-ancient-pipe-networks-communal.html

China's ancient water pipe networks show they were a communal effort with no evidence of a centralized state authority

A system of ancient ceramic water pipes, the oldest ever unearthed in China, shows that neolithic people were capable of complex engineering feats without the need for a centralized state authority, finds a new study by University College London researchers.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy @RD4Anarchy

Yeah, voluntary human cooperation (I can’t believe I have to say this) predates the state by, you know, 300,000 years or so.

Show threadCyMay 10, 2024
In theory free people do run it. There are just other people trying to stop those people and prevent it from being run freely. That's why I oppose tyranny, to have it where free people run things for each other. By the people, for the people, etc.
Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy

No, in *pretense* free people run it, but in reality it is an arm of state bureaucracy and product of state violence.

Free people *could* run it, sure.

Show threadCyMay 10, 2024
that is what the bureaucracy claims, at least. They love appropriating nice things and telling us that that thing is their arm, and their product. I don't believe they are the post office though, or the library. They just want us to think they are.
Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy

Right, and we don’t have to take their claims at face value.

There are many services the state has co-opted, but that doesn’t mean they’re somehow integral to the state. We could get rid of the state and still cooperate to send each other letters in the mail.

The sort of rhetoric you’ve expressed concern about is hardly anti-state. Right-wing discourse is often deeply hostile to the idea of the state doing anything that could empower the weak, but that’s not the same as being *anti-state.* Someone like Trump might want to defund the USPS for his own purposes and use rhetoric about small government and low taxes, but he’s not about to abolish, say, the cops—an institution that’s actually integral to the state.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 9, 2024

@cy @RD4Anarchy

The state is not a synonym for “when people work together and cooperate.” If that’s how you’re using it, then I assure you that you’re referring to something other than what anarchists are referring to when they use that term.

Show threadCyMay 10, 2024
I just don't want to have to read Kropotkin to understand that means "Community investigators good, police bad."
Show threadHeavenlyPossumMay 10, 2024

@cy

That’s fine! But it’s silly to accuse an anarchist of opposing cooperation or being vulnerable to manipulation by authority because they’re using a term differently than you are.