No Land, No Money, No Job

[Mark Brown]

No Land, No Money, No Job
written by Greenman

While the rich continue their frenzy of consumption the unemployed and low
paid are still seen as immoral. they have to believe it because their
debt-ridden economy relies on the suppression of dissent.


This is a summary of a long article on housing, work and unemploment which
is on my blog.

The economic structure of the modern Industrial society is based on the
appropriation of the land; this process also creates the financial
hierarchy of values dependent on the landowners ability to extort rents.
Further to this process the commodification of labour enabled by the
necessity of paying rent and survival gives us the context of the division
of wage values and its relation to unemployment.

Historically speaking, land was stolen from the peasants as a common
resource and was known as the commons, giving us the idea of common land
or more euphemistically a village common. However this idea rightly refers
to the common wealth or common good and also has overtones of common
sense; effectively that in society which was shared and acted as a means
of social cohesion both economic and spiritual.

Fundamentally it was this concept of a cultural binding force which was
attacked by Enclosures or Clearances, rather than the modern idea that
wealth was something contained within a material dimension which could be
separated from the human process integral to its cultural conception. This
article looks at the ways in which the motivation of the Aristocratic land
grabbers concealed a deeper sense of denial of the livelihood of the
common people as a natural paradigm.

>From this perspective of how land came to be considered a resource to be
exploited for the private gain of a capitalist class, the concept of
Labour emerges as a quantification of the production process which is
distinct from any previous culture of subsistence. In so far as work is
defined in terms of its usefulness to Industry, unemployment merely acts
as a negative description of the compulsion to work for an employer. As
such it is loaded with all the stigmatisation of non-conformity to the
myth of the work ethic.

The crucial factor in the equation of work with production and classical
economics is the sense that not only does it define the moral basis on
which people are forced into slave labour and low wages, but by pretending
that such a situation reflects the laziness of those unwilling to join
such a system it effectively obscures the appalling working conditions
forced on the labourer. Through their conformity to the industrial process
the peasants are forced to accept a denial of the nurturing effect of work
in its natural context.

Equally, as the capitalist system gives rise to new forms of technology
and communications, civil unrest polarises society between political
ideology and pure financial regulation. It is the culture of scientific
rationalism which exerts a greater pressure and gives us the modern
paradox that while ownership is championed as the ultimate virtue it is,
nonetheless, an expression of our cultures complete denaturisation and
defines the absence of a sense of belonging.

Greenman
 Homepage: http://www.green-culture.blogspot.com
 Email: bbbyoung at btinternet.com