diggers and permaculture

[james armstrong]

Hello Julie,
Yes,  good point about the long term  aims which I share 
and I see the downside of ownership of land is exclusiveness and the further aim  to use  landlessness as a way of sytematically exploiting people, e.g. by colonialism, by  monopolising  house provision , and  by garnering private taxes on food from those of us who consume food- all of us!   Few know that the 197,000 who own nearly all Britain's bulk land have  worked the system so that the rest of us pay  our taxes  taxes via CAP  to the landowners. Quite a sophisticated coup. Best wishes, James  
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:28:53 +0000
From: wearealldubsolution at yahoo.co.uk
Subject: diggers and permaculture
To: james36armstrong at hotmail.com

Hi James,

I get your point - however there are many "deep greens" (or bio-leftists as David Orton of greenweb.ca calls them) who would be uncomfortable with the idea of competing with other species.  You could say that it is competing with other species and using all as resources for our own that has comprehensively fecked the planet.  I've been teaching about Winstanley and co since the mid-seventies and certainly regard myself as a digger but am also in tune with ( and some interaction with) U.S. panthers ( far from middle class) HP Newton was clear about how corporate capital has destroyed the natural habitat which should be a commonwealth " for all of us to share".

There are certainly people advocating permaculture who care feck all about socialism or about urban folk and whose practices are more damaging than digging has ever been .
 But the real purpose of permacultural thinking is to concentrate on improving the long term biodiversity and fertility of the habitat rather than getting as much out of the land in the short term as possible.  The idea of owning a bit of land for "self-sufficent" survival is anyway crap as "noone should buy or sell the land for private gain".  That said, digging and ploughing in the modern context of factory farming and use of fertilisers is self-defeating.

Personally I do a lot of digging but not for agriculture ( which I do by mulching and bui8lding up soil).  I dig secret houses underground .  

I have written a book in which I advocate another kind of digging.  I argue that just as we need to develop wild life corridors so creatures can get from one conserved habitat to another, so we also need to dig ( virtual) underground tunnels to connect dissenting communities to share support, techniques and
 solidarity.

love and peas,
Julie

 		 	   		  
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