an occasional magazine about land rights
Manifesto
The market (however attractive it may appear) is built
on promises: the only source of wealth is the earth. Anyone who has land has
access to energy, water, nourishment, shelter, healing, wisdom, ancestors and a
grave. Ivan Illich spoke of "a society of convivial tools that allows men
to achieve purposes with energy fully under their control". The ultimate
convivial tool, the mother of all the others, is the earth.
Yet the earth is more than a tool cupboard, for
although the earth gives, it dictates its terms; and its terms alter from place
to place. So it is that agriculture begets human culture; and cultural
diversity, like biological diversity, flowers in obedience to the conditions
that the earth imposes. The first and inevitable effect of the global market is
to uproot and destroy land-based human cultures. The final and inevitable
achievement of a rootless global market will be to destroy itself.
In a shrunken world, taxed to keep the wheels of
industry accelerating, land and its resources are increasingly contested. Six
billion people compete to acquire land for a variety of conflicting uses: land
for food, for water, for energy, for timber, for carbon sinks, for housing, for
wildlife, for recreation, for investment. The politics of land — who owns it,
who controls it and who has access to it — is more important than ever, though
you might not think so from a superficial reading of government policy and the
media. The purpose of this magazine is to focus attention back onto the
politics of land.
Rome fell; the Soviet Empire collapsed; the stars and
stripes are fading in the west. Nothing is forever in history, except geography.
Capitalism is a confidence trick, a dazzling edifice built on paper promises.
It may stand longer than some of us anticipate, but when it crumbles, the land
will remain.
"The
market is built on promises: the only source of wealth is the Earth"
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