I don’t understand what “give the land back” means. Would you mind explaining it?
There are a lot of poor, oppressed people who live on land their ancestors didn’t own. In the US, all Black people and most native Americans don’t live within 1000 km of where their ancestors lived 600 years ago. So when land is given back, what happens to the people that currently reside there? Do natives become landlords? Is there ethnic cleansing? Or is it only land where people don’t reside? Also, many native cultures didn’t even have land ownership, so how do you give land back without forcing them into a western mould?
Commons - land maintained by the people in common - are a very common thing in non-capitalist societies. People in medieval England used to tend their animals on common land and get pissed at people who let their animals graze too much, eventually kicking them out by force if they continued to act selfishly.
Basically, acting selfishly is treated as a crime. Breaking into someone’s home to sleep there when there is a vacant home available is selfish. Taking all the computers from the public library to earn respect in the next village over is selfish. Meanwhile doing good is appreciated and means others will do good to you in turn, but by default people are considered deserving of all basic necessities.
You might get a Mad Max scenario if you magically get unguarded commons by fiat. But we live in capitalism where the commons are looted into non-existence by default. For an anticapitalist movement to be successful, it has to guard and maintain its own commons against capitalism, compared to which Mad Maxoids are child’s play. If we live in a society where private property can be abolished, we live in a society where the commons can be guarded.
Why would it? Private property only refers to land, we can just centrally manage land use through some system that’s fairer than capitalism. It seems like really quite a minor change compared to what I usually advocate for tbh
It means that it’s up to the natives. It sucks for the descendants of settlers, but the alternative, that the descendants of the people it was stolen from keep being oppressed is worse. The natives get to say what happens on their land, and withholding stewardship until there is an alternative that the settlers agree to is perpetuating oppression. Land back means land back.
I know it’s up to the natives, that’s why I’m asking. Because if they choose to build an oppressive system then those with power within the new system are the new oppressors to fight, and it would be nice to avoid that.
Oppressors can only exist if there are oppressed. It’s a dialectical relationship. And if you give the land back and the stewardship of the land into the hand of the oppressed, there won’t be an oppressive system by the definition of what oppression is. Could a new oppressive system (lets just say capitalism from now on) arise from that? Sure, even the USSR wasn’t immune to liberalism festering in it’s vanguard party leading to a complete collapse.
In fact, the soviet system and the october revolution with its subsequent wars give a good idea what giving the land to the people that work on it looks like.
There’s a weird dissonance in these conversations where “justice” turns into “poetic justice” without the speaker realizing it. It’s an ironic reversal of positions that sounds good without any rational backing for why it would be good.
Would it be a satisfying narrative loop to result in indigenous people retaking what they historically had? Of course.
Does being a member of a marginalized group grant some specific virtue that makes you a just leader or caretaker? …Maybe tangentially? At the very least you might have more practical understanding of oppression.
Does being in a marginalized group that has a bloodline traced to an arbitrarily collection of humans who once lived in a place give you some inherent “connectedness” to (or “ownership” of) that place?..
No. That’s actually a pretty fucked up line of reasoning. That kind of argument is what propped up “Europe for Aryans” and “Blacks back to Africa”.
Your value in a community is in the bonds you have to it. Sure, some of those are family bonds, but a lifetime is far more than just that. We’re strengthened by our living connections to each other today, not by our unchosen connections to a string of dead people who can’t reciprocate.
None of us can go back in time and reverse genocides; how can those tragedies get special correction beyond curing the echoes of injustice that exist today?
In my opinion there are two simple facts:
People can housed, fed and have their specific needs cared for regardless of background
The core value in acknowledging the past is in correcting our course on current and future injustice
If we were committed to live by those the rest becomes moot.
I don’t understand what “give the land back” means. Would you mind explaining it?
There are a lot of poor, oppressed people who live on land their ancestors didn’t own. In the US, all Black people and most native Americans don’t live within 1000 km of where their ancestors lived 600 years ago. So when land is given back, what happens to the people that currently reside there? Do natives become landlords? Is there ethnic cleansing? Or is it only land where people don’t reside? Also, many native cultures didn’t even have land ownership, so how do you give land back without forcing them into a western mould?
We could just abolish private property rights and accept that no individual or corporation can own land. That would be my preferred solution.
How does that function in practice? Doesn’t that just immediately turn into a stupid bullshit version of mad max?
Commons - land maintained by the people in common - are a very common thing in non-capitalist societies. People in medieval England used to tend their animals on common land and get pissed at people who let their animals graze too much, eventually kicking them out by force if they continued to act selfishly.
Basically, acting selfishly is treated as a crime. Breaking into someone’s home to sleep there when there is a vacant home available is selfish. Taking all the computers from the public library to earn respect in the next village over is selfish. Meanwhile doing good is appreciated and means others will do good to you in turn, but by default people are considered deserving of all basic necessities.
You might get a Mad Max scenario if you magically get unguarded commons by fiat. But we live in capitalism where the commons are looted into non-existence by default. For an anticapitalist movement to be successful, it has to guard and maintain its own commons against capitalism, compared to which Mad Maxoids are child’s play. If we live in a society where private property can be abolished, we live in a society where the commons can be guarded.
How do you enforce it? How do you prevent enforcers from seizing power if they have a monopoly on violence?
Why would it? Private property only refers to land, we can just centrally manage land use through some system that’s fairer than capitalism. It seems like really quite a minor change compared to what I usually advocate for tbh
You lost me at “centrally manage.” That never works out.
Yeah the current system we have is working perfectly let’s never change it because change is scary
If you centrally manage things we’ll be right back here in a couple hundred years anyway, so go on with your bad self.
You would have to overthrow capitalism first. Which would be quite the task in the good old USA.
We need to do that anyways, Capitalism inevitably leads to fascism.
It means that it’s up to the natives. It sucks for the descendants of settlers, but the alternative, that the descendants of the people it was stolen from keep being oppressed is worse. The natives get to say what happens on their land, and withholding stewardship until there is an alternative that the settlers agree to is perpetuating oppression. Land back means land back.
I know it’s up to the natives, that’s why I’m asking. Because if they choose to build an oppressive system then those with power within the new system are the new oppressors to fight, and it would be nice to avoid that.
Oppressors can only exist if there are oppressed. It’s a dialectical relationship. And if you give the land back and the stewardship of the land into the hand of the oppressed, there won’t be an oppressive system by the definition of what oppression is. Could a new oppressive system (lets just say capitalism from now on) arise from that? Sure, even the USSR wasn’t immune to liberalism festering in it’s vanguard party leading to a complete collapse.
In fact, the soviet system and the october revolution with its subsequent wars give a good idea what giving the land to the people that work on it looks like.
There’s a weird dissonance in these conversations where “justice” turns into “poetic justice” without the speaker realizing it. It’s an ironic reversal of positions that sounds good without any rational backing for why it would be good.
Would it be a satisfying narrative loop to result in indigenous people retaking what they historically had? Of course.
Does being a member of a marginalized group grant some specific virtue that makes you a just leader or caretaker? …Maybe tangentially? At the very least you might have more practical understanding of oppression.
Does being in a marginalized group that has a bloodline traced to an arbitrarily collection of humans who once lived in a place give you some inherent “connectedness” to (or “ownership” of) that place?..
No. That’s actually a pretty fucked up line of reasoning. That kind of argument is what propped up “Europe for Aryans” and “Blacks back to Africa”.
Your value in a community is in the bonds you have to it. Sure, some of those are family bonds, but a lifetime is far more than just that. We’re strengthened by our living connections to each other today, not by our unchosen connections to a string of dead people who can’t reciprocate.
None of us can go back in time and reverse genocides; how can those tragedies get special correction beyond curing the echoes of injustice that exist today?
In my opinion there are two simple facts:
If we were committed to live by those the rest becomes moot.
Yeah forget about sending those squatters back to Europe. We don’t fucking want them.
Well the germans had to deal with the settlers the soviets sent back across the Oder it’s not like there isn’t historical precedent for it…
Oof, but then we’re stuck with them!