Yesterday we looked at what Karl Polanyi had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part XIII
C. B. Macpherson turns that “exclusive property” idea on its head.
       C.B. Macpherson’s book, Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions, like Schlatter’s before him, is an anthology of theories about property, but in his conclusion he comes up with a more original idea. All previous classical, or Lockean versions of the right to own property, as individuals, meant that the individual has the right to exclude others from his property. But Macpherson’s idea is that all individuals should have the right not to be excluded from the use of property for their labor (Macpherson 1978, 199-207). I think it’s a clever, sneaky way of switching to collectivist mode without alerting the guardians of Lockeanism, but I won’t tell on him. After all, if we all owned the environment together, collectively, then, de facto, nobody would be excluded from the use of it.
Monday: "Herman E. Daly & John B. Cobb knew that the Native Americans had the right idea all along."
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what Henry George had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part XII
Karl Polanyi, the “not quite Karl Marx” guy
       Karl Polanyi, in his book The Great Transformation, originally published in 1944, during the Second World War, discusses the big three elements of the market system that all economics textbooks talk about; land, labor, and capital. In the market system, these three commodities, along with goods and services, have their prices in rent, wages, and interest respectively. However, Polanyi argues, effectively I believe, that these are fictitious commodities, only invented by industrialists to keep the self regulated market system going. Goods and services, he argues, really are “commodities here empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market; markets, again, are empirically defined as actual contacts between buyers and sellers” (Polanyi 1975, 72). But land, labor and capital, even though they have been artificially turned into commodities, are not and should not be commodities. Labor is just a name for what people do to live, land is just another name for the natural environment, and money is a just a social agreement about what constitutes a medium of exchange, and none of the three are actually produced the way goods and services are produced, as commodities for buying and selling.
       I am not able to refute Polanyi’s argument that making these into commodities really is essential to a self-regulating market, but whether or no, I agree that they are not really produced and should not really be commodities. If they are not really essential to a self-regulating market, then we can stop using them in this way and the market system can continue without them. If they really are essential to the market system, then I suggest that we get rid of the market system and try a much more regulated political economy. Richard Schlatter writes a redundant anthology
       Richard Schlatter, in the conclusion to his 1951 book, Private Property: The History of an Idea, after assessing many theories of private property throughout history, including the Christian medieval and reformation thought, notes that the Classical theory of the natural right to property, as fashioned by John Locke, is almost impossible to defend in modern Capitalist theory, and yet it is still being used, in different situations and even by opposing viewpoints (Schlatter 1951, 278, 281). At first glance, he seems to be confusing Locke’s theory of labor with the State of Nature theory, but on second reading I realize that he is right; nobody uses the State of Nature theory anymore, yet everybody, Capitalist and Socialist alike, feels comfortable with Locke’s labor theory, even though it is no more valid than any other theory. Also, Locke’s theory can be easily modified to fit either a collectivist rights theory or an individualist rights theory. Laborers, as individuals have a right to the fruits of their labor (Free Market economics) and laborers collectively have a right to the fruits of their labor (Socialism and Communism). Schlatter’s most ironic point is that modern Capitalists still pay lip service to that theory, even though their economic activities work against it.
Friday: C. B. Macpherson turns that “exclusive property” idea on its head.
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what Thomas Skidmore had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part XI
Henry George likes only one kind of tax
       Another nineteenth century philosopher of political economy, Henry George, (1839 – 1897) wrote Progress and Poverty, in which he says almost exactly the same things that Tom Paine was saying about the relationship between wealth and poverty, although he has different remedies for the evils of modern society. Like Thomas Paine, Henry George saw that wealth created poverty and, also in agreement with Paine, that people living in other than industrial societies may seem poorer compared to the wealthy, but are still much better off than the poor in those more technologically “advanced” societies.
       Henry George’s “purple prose” style is so bad that it is good, especially if you are writing for National Lampoon, or some such periodical, and I wonder if that might not have been the reason for his not being taken seriously in his own time. He writes gushingly of the hoped-for utopian paradise that was promised by the industrial revolution, and then brings us down with a jolting thud. After noting that poverty and wealth exist side by side in all civilized societies, he explains that the common cause is industrial depressions which always accompanies material progress, that “where material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized – that is to say, where populations is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed – we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most enforced idleness“ (George [1879], 6).
       Unlike Thomas Paine’s rent on land, Henry George’s remedy is a single tax on land. But, like Paine, he was not threatening to rob anyone of their land. “I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.” (George [1879], 405).
       I noticed that George has confused the terms “rent” and “tax,” but I will show, in my conclusion that that is not really a problem. Whether one calls it a “tax “or a “rent” will only make a difference as to how the idea is presented, and to whom it is presented. As David Hume might have said, if he was living in our day, it is no big deal to consider a tax as just a rent. It is just another artifice of the mind.
       Henry George was not just some deductive theorist wondering “what if….” He was an inductive, empirical economist, and he did his homework. Progress and Poverty is a long book, and it is full of good economic data. What is more, he does not blame capitalists for poverty; he considers them victims as well, of the injustices brought about by landowners. His economic arguments show how his single tax on land is good for Capitalism.
       George argues that “…Taxes on the value of land not only do not check production as do most other taxes, but they tend to increase production, by destroying speculative rent.“ Then he cites speculative rent as a cause of industrial depressions all over the world. “causing more waste and probably more suffering than would a general war. “ Taxes on the land, he argues would keep the land from being left idle. “The dog in the manger who, in this country especially, so wastes productive power, would be choked off“ (George [1879], 413).
       Gathering up all those thoughts from previous ages, let us now compare them to the moderns.
      Thursday: Karl Polanyi, the “not quite Karl Marx” guy
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th.
       My website

Yesterday we looked at what The Founding Fathers had to say about private property
Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part X
Thomas Skidmore has a plan to save the whole world
       The title of Thomas Skidmore’s book, The Rights of Man to Property, could be misleading to those who are looking for a philosophy that justifies unlimited individual ownership of private property in the Lockean sense.
       In the preface to his book, he rejected as absurd the idea that some are born to rule and others to be ruled. He maintained that the possession of too much wealth allows property owners to live on the labor of others because property is distributed unequally.(Skidmore [1829], 3-6). He anticipated Proudhon (or maybe Proudhon paraphrased him?) because he used the same metaphor that Proudhon will later use (“Property is theft”), claiming that property should be taken away from those who abuse the privilege “… on the same principle, that a sword or a pistol may be wrested from a robber…” (Skidmore [1829], 3). He argued, as did his predecessors, that there is no legitimate claim to private property by individuals, but said that, even if there were a legitimate claim, the abuse of power negates any claim to legitimacy.(Skidmore [1829], 4-5).
       In the first chapter Skidmore quoted Thomas Paine’s prophesy, (written in The Rights of Man), that there would be no more monarchies in Europe after 1800. Skidmore proudly pointed out that while the prophesy did not come true in Europe, the logical explanation for why it did come true in America is simply America’s great literacy rate. He claimed that those who cannot read or understand what they have read were only one twentieth of the population of New York State, while in France the ratio was 17 out of 30 (over half their population) (Skidmore [1829], 9). (I am not sure why he chose France for this statistic since they also threw out their monarchy.) After quoting his researched statistics showing that literacy is also high in other states besides New York (his home state), he optimistically hoped that the 1% very wealthy citizens can be outvoted by the 99% non-wealthy, but literate, citizens, to carry out the legal reforms that he was proposing in his book (Skidmore [1829], 17).
       Skidmore had high hopes for the newly invented political institution called Democracy, wherein all citizens have the right to vote. He expressed pity for all previous, non-democratic states that could not correct the evil that is private property, and he then discussed the problems in ancient Rome’s Agrarian Law.
       When Skidmore talked of Roman Agrarian laws he echoed Cicero in pointing out that even though the original intent of the laws was to place a limit on the size of privately owned land and to take the excess for the public domain and to give some to land-less citizens including Roman soldiers, the Patrician class “were, therefore extremely unwilling to give them up; and such was the structure of their political fabric at the time that they alone had the power of originating all laws, the Agrarian as well as every other. They were, therefore, disposed, as often as they dared, to render it nugatory, or of little effect” (Skidmore [1829] 20). He went on to lament the fate of the ancient Romans “Who could not succeed in permanently establishing the Agrarian law.” To do so, Skidmore maintained, would require that the majority overrule the minority and understand “the origin and fountain of all right, and of course all power” Then he excused the ancient Romans because the printing press hadn’t yet been invented, and he really wanted to link good political policy to literacy (Skidmore [1829] 21,22).
       But there are two different issues under discussion here. One is the injustice of wealthy landowners having power over all the laws, and the other is the specifics of the laws themselves. Skidmore was against the former but not necessarily for the latter. Instead of restrictions on the size of privately held property, he wanted all men to hold an equal amount of property no matter what size it is, so that every man could labor only for himself (except for contributions to the public good). Apparently someone who he only referred to as Mr. Raymond (he offered no citations) had written that the idea of equal division of land is against the dictates of nature. Mr. Raymond was an easy straw man for Skidmore to dispatch with the obvious question of: why would an unequal division of land be considered natural? He noted that in countries where public land is held in common by all citizens, if it were to be divided up for private use, the natural division would be of equal parcels. In the state of nature thus was the case so why would government go against the state of nature? (Skidmore [1829] 27,28).
       But Skidmore was a rationalist, relying on a priori knowledge. He said that “rights are like truths, capable of being understood alike by all men, as much so as the demonstrations of Euclid.” His corollary to that logic was that “if what are called so (rights) are not so understood, it is proof that they are not rights but the arbitrary commands of power”(Skidmore [1829] 31). If I were to turn that logic into a syllogism, my conclusion would be something like: since not all men understand an equal distribution of land as a right, any solution would have to be an arbitrary command of power. I believe that is what all social contract theories have in common, regardless of anyone’s idea of natural rights or the state of nature. And Skidmore got on board with that anyway, since he was trying to drum up public support for a very complicated program of changes in property laws that would eventually give everyone in the world an equal amount of private property. The accent is on the word “private.” Never mind that in the original state of nature, land was commonly held by all without any social contract. This was Skidmore’s way of dealing with the effects of civilization.
       In his conclusion, Skidmore made an analogy to men at a dinner table eating all the food before the other guests arrive and then making up the rules that the late-comers are to obey. He also said there would be no wars if soldiers had been given their fair share of property in the first place because all wars are over property (Skidmore [1829], 359).
Wednesday: “Henry George likes only one kind of tax.”

Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Last week we looked at what Thomas Paine had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part IX
Native Americans get suckered by scam artists
       David Hume viewed property as a relation between an object and its possessor. With land, he says it is even more psychological. “The sight of a thing is seldom a considerable relation and is only regarded as such when the object is hidden or very obscure, in which case we find that the view alone conveys a property.” By that logic, he says, a nation can claim a whole continent by being the first to discover it. “It is however, remarkable that both in the case of discovery and that of possession, the first discoverer and possessor must join to the relation an intention of rendering himself proprietor (Hume [1740], 506). Of course Christopher Columbus and all subsequent conquistadors had been appointed proxy “proprietors” by their patron governments, thus the right of possession. But how did they rationalize away the idea that the present occupants might also have a legitimate claim to possession? For that answer, we look to the Doctrine of Discovery.
       During the time of the Crusades, and for years after, all European nations were united in their allegiance to Christianity, and all non-Christian nations were considered enemies. In five Hundred Years of Injustice: The Legacy of Fifteenth Century Religions Prejudice, Steve Newcomb documents the history of property right by conquest. “In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued to King Alfonso V of Portugal the bull Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories (Newcomb 1992, 1). As “discovery” and colonization became all the rage among European nations after Columbus, they each made agreements to honor each others claims, except when they didn’t. The overseas land-rush thus caused much violence by the European nations not only against the indigenous peoples who happened to already occupy those lands, but often against each other, especially after the Protestant revolution when the Christian nations were no longer united by Catholicism.
       However, as Newcomb points out in the rest of his research, the Catholic Popes kept on issuing bulls (the line that divided all of the South American continent between Portugal on the east and Spain on the west is a good example.) and even some Protestant nations decided to honor them when it became politically expedient to do so.
       “In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was quietly adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, Johnson v. McIntosh. In Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion, since the “Christian European nations had assumed ‘ultimate dominion’ over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery, and that - upon ‘discovery’ - the Indians had lost ‘their rights to complete sovereignty as independent nations’ and only retained a right of ‘occupancy’ in their lands” (Newcomb 1992, 2). I can really appreciate the logic of the U.S. government here. Locke’s theory of labor was sacred to all God-fearing American politicians and legal experts. If you are a farmer, then farming is your labor and your labor gives you the right to own the land. If you are a conquistador, then conquistadoring is your labor &c. &c. America couldn’t, after all, refuse to accept such already accepted wisdom.
       I have already mentioned how Locke paid lip service to the Native Americans by using them as examples of his theory of labor (Locke [1690], 338) The “Nations of Americans” used bows and arrows to take possession of game animals and hides, and they used trees to build their homes, but they only (unwittingly) used Locke’s labor theory to justify their personal possessions. In spite of what Locke meant, or what anybody else thought he meant, the Native Americans never tried to take possession of the land itself because they had no such concept. The land to them was nature, wholly a part of their environment which included the water and the air and the sunshine. So I guess the European’s attitude was like “Oh well, if they don’t want it…” and when they couldn’t trick them out of it, they took it by force. After all, the Christian nations had honored the Doctrine of Discovery as law for centuries, and the newly formed government of the United States naturally inherited it from the English, purchased if from the French, and re-conquered it from the Spanish. The Native Americans never understood what was happening until it was too late, and Chief Justice Marshall declared it a done deal.
       David Wilkins, in “A History of Federal Indian Policy” tells the long sad tale of Native Americans’ treatment by the Federal Government over the “land as a commodity” economic system. During those periods when the Government tried to redress past injustices by giving land back to the Indians, it was on the condition that the Indians learn to use it as a commodity, to help them assimilate into the free-market system. (Wilkins 2002). Thomas Paine, Henry George, Karl Polanyi and others would explain how this economic attitude was devastating to poor white people in America and Europe, but it was even more devastating to the Native Americans because they didn’t even understand what the white man meant by “land.”
      Tuesday: "Thomas Skidmore Had A Plan to Save the Whole World"

Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th, 2015.
My rants on private property began on July 14th, 2015.

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what The Founding Fathers had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VIII
Thomas Paine wants a non-violent revolution, legally
       Now we come to a thinker who realized that property, as land, was linked to injustice. Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809) continued in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, & Hume but, instead of positing a hypothetical “State of Nature,” he used, as a real-life example, the situation of our Native Americans. “There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state” He goes on to point out that compared to the poor in industrialized Europe, “The life of an Indian is a continual holiday” (Paine [1795], 11).
       Paine continues by explaining that the problem of private property as land is one of the causes of this inequity. “It is a position not be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
       “Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue“ (Paine [1795], 12, 13).
       The “plan” to which Paine refers, is his plan to pay retribution to poor people on the premise that their poverty is due to their being denied their natural right to the common property, because it was taken from them by rich landowners.
       “In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessing.
       “Having this in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
       “To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property” (Paine [1795], 14, 15).
       This idea was never adopted in Paine’s time. To those who consider it an extremely radical idea, I want to address a few remarks. (1) Paine never called for a violent revolution to take land away from the rich. The American and French Revolutions had already happened and all he wanted was for the new regimes to adopt his plan. (2) He allows landowners to keep their land, he only wants them to pay rent to the community. These ideas too, I will elaborate on more later. Now let us continue our chronological survey of the issues arising out of the concept of “private property.”
      Monday: "Native Americans Get Suckered By Scam Artists."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what David Hume had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VII
The Founding Fathers thought John Locke was some kind of genius
       Hobbes, Locke, and Hume had all been published before the American Revolution, but most historians agree, from some letters between colonial revolutionaries, and even in some of the wording of the Declaration of Independence, that the Founding Fathers were most influenced by Locke’s Two Treatises on Government. They wanted freedom from English rule, but they had no problem with the British tradition of land owners running their government. If, as in the theory of democracy, government is by the people and for the people, then land must be a commodity that all the people should be able to buy, Individually, that is, not collectively.
       Both as part of profiting from their colonies and to finance their war against France, the British government set up a rigid system for selling land to colonists. After the revolutionary war, the new American government did the same to pay for their revolutionary war and to expand into the western territories. As Malcom J. Rohrbough, writes, in The Land Office Business, the government had already promised land grants to Revolutionary War veterans, and the need to expand and put land in the hands of the citizens made the Americans much less rigid in the structures of the land offices created for that purpose. For instance, “The real estate northwest of the Ohio River remained attractive to speculators, however; and through their influence in congress and the failure of established practices to produce sufficient revenue through small sales, entrepreneurs succeeded in introducing the sale of large tracts” (Rohrbough 1968, 1-11). And William Cronon, in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, writes, “Few other regions in the United States were better suited to the system which the government had used since 1785 for selling public lands, subdividing the nation into a vast grid of square-mile sections whose purpose was to turn land into real estate by the most economically expedient method. By imposing the same abstract and homogeneous grid pattern on all land, no matter how ecologically diverse, government surveyors made it marketable” (Cronon 1968, 102).
       In part II I will discuss the social consequences of this transformation of land into a marketable commodity, but next I want to discuss how the new economic system perpetuates itself through the legal and political institutions.
       The Founding Fathers of the new American nation envisioned a government wherein only property owners had the right to vote. In a letter to James Sullivan dated May 26, 1776, dated May 26, 1776, (before the Declaration of Independence) discussing any new laws that would come with Independence from Great Britain, John Adams tries to justify not allowing women and men without property the right to vote. He uses two, slightly different arguments.
       Adams’ first argument is about women; their “delicacy,” their inexperience in important public matters, and their dependency on men. (That third point is a circular argument, but nobody called him on it at the time: women wouldn’t be dependent on men if they had the vote.) His argument against voting rights for children and men without property rests on the same points as the argument against women; inexperience and dependency. As to men without property, his reasoning is that, having no property of their own, they have no experience with important public matters. Also, he claims that men without property are dependent on men who do own property, and therefore have no will of their own (Adams [1776]). If men without property did vote, Adams thinks, it would corrupt the “one man, one vote” ideal, because then the men who had the most slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers, or any other kind of debtor, would have the most votes by proxy.
       Adams second argument does not directly speak to inequalities of age, gender, or class, but just falls back on Tradition. Men of property have always had the vote, and to make any changes in tradition would open up a floodgate of minorities clamoring for the vote (Adams [1776]).
       In the Federalist paper #10, James Madison explains what is wrong with a direct democracy and pushes for a “republic” that is, a government whose laws are made by elected representatives of the people, rather than by the people themselves. His argument rests on addressing the problem of factions that can split the people‘s consensus. He claims that a republic can prevent a minority faction from forcing its will on the majority, but worries that a majority might take over the government. He writes: “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed” (Madison [1778]). I am not sure how the spirit and form of popular government is preserved when a wealthy minority can override the wishes of the majority but that is what a republican form of government can do, especially when “the public good” is defined as protecting private property.
       But not all property owners are created equal; small farmers are not as wealthy as the big plantation owners. Men who signed themselves as “Federal Farmer,” wrote “to the Republican” what are also called “the Anti-federalist Papers,” voicing their concerns about the political structure of this republican form of government that the Federalists were proposing for the new Constitution of the United States.
       In Federal Farmer letter no. 3, one astutely predicts that in a Republican government, the elected officials will usually come from the upper classes, without any care for the needs and interests of the lower classes. His solution seems, at first, a logical one. He writes “…we ought to provide for dividing each state into a proper number of districts, and for confining the electors in each district to the choice of some men, who shall have a permanent interest and residence in it” (Federal Farmer [1787]). However, history has shown that even with men elected from their home districts, most elected representatives will still be wealthier than their constituents.
       Thomas Jefferson, like Madison, was a property owner and also assumed that property meant land as well as personal possessions, but unlike the Federalists he did not necessarily side with the rich, saying that he was “not among those who feared the people” (Jefferson [1816]). And when he warned of too heavy taxation because of government debts, he first mentioned the taxing “in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements,” the kind of personal possessions that everyone has regardless of class, and the kind of property justified by Locke. Jefferson only mentioned the tax burden of landowners secondly (Jefferson [1816]).
       Eventually, men without property in the United States were granted the franchise, but by this time the economics of the industrial revolution and the expansion of the western territories had given the most political power to the wealthy landowners.
      Friday: "Thomas Paine Wants A Non-Violent Revolution, Legally”
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what John Locke had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VI
David Hume understands us
       David Hume (1711 – 1776) has continued the tradition of Hobbes and Locke to derive our right to private property from the social contract. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume describes three different species of “goods.” They are “the internal satisfaction of our minds, the external advantages of our body, and the enjoyment of such possessions as we have acquired by our industry and good fortune” (Hume [1740], 487). The internal goods are perfectly secure, the external advantages of our bodies we can lose “but can be of no advantage to him who deprives us of them“ (Hume [1740], 487). The third, our personal possessions, can not only be taken from us, but others may profit from them. In addition to this instability, “…from their looseness and easy transitions from one person to another (my italics),” there is also scarcity of possessions, and therefore it is the duty of society to put them on the same footing as the other two.(Hume [1740], 487, 488).
       Hume has described man’s natural “affections” to desire other people’s goods, and then explains why society should protect the individual’s right to his private possessions. A few paragraphs later he states, “The remedy then, is not derived from nature, but from artifice; (Hume [1740], 489). By “artifice,” he means the social contract, or conventional law. In other words, Hume is saying that, in order to protect our own goods from theft, we must all agree not to steal from each other. Unlike previous philosophers he is not invoking some “natural Law” to justify this, but admits that it is an artificial concept, created by men and for men. (I am using the sexist terms of that period because that is what they meant in those days.)
       But notice, I italicized Hume’s phrase, “…from their looseness and easy transitions from one person to another.” Does this sound like he is justifying a right to private “real estate, land, “property? I do not think so. I believe that Hume’s discussion of the subject is more logical than Locke’s, but most of the modern philosophers defer to Locke, and slight Hume, when justifying their so-called “right to private property.” Why? Because what Hume does have to say about land, as property, will not justify any right of possession. In point of fact, Hume says that the relationship between men who use the land, and the land itself, is just that, a relationship based on use, not ownership. Both Locke and Hume were philosophers of Epistemology, as well as Political Economy, but Hume, more than Locke, has kept his political theory consistent with his theories of the mind. To explain the relationship of men to the land he says:
       “Since, therefore, we can feign a new relation, and even an absurd one, in order to compleat any union, it will easily be imagined, that if there be any relations, which depend on the mind, it will readily conjoin them to any preceding relation, and unite, by a new bond, such objects as have already been an union in the fancy….by modifying the general rule concerning the stability of possessions. And as property forms a relation betwixt a person and an object, it is natural to found it on some preceding relation, and as property is nothing but a constant possession, secured by the laws of society, it is natural to add it to the present posssession, which is a relation that resembles it…. But we may observe, that though the rule of this assignment of property to the present possessor be natural, and by that means useful, yet its utility extends not beyond the first formation of society “(Hume [1740], 505).
       However, while Hume does not logically justify any “right” to landed private property, he does accept that society has assumed it.
       As for justifying right by possession or conquest, Hume has a clever passage where he makes fun of ancient Greeks competing with each other for claim to a deserted town, first by racing to see who could get there first, and then by throwing spears at the wall to claim the territory. (Hume [1740], 506).
      Thursday: "Our Founding Fathers Thought John Locke Was Some Kind Of Genius."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what Thomas Hobbes had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part V
John Locke labors for a living
       John Locke (1632 – 1704) had a more mellow take on the original “State of Nature” than did Hobbes and, as a result, his theory about the social contract is more benign and less cynical. He does believe in the right to private property and goes at great lengths to describe how men earn their property by their labor. In his 2nd of Two Treatises on Civil Government, Chapter V, “Of Property,” Section 27, he states,
       “The labor of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property” (Locke [1690], 329).
       This sounds like he is talking about personal possessions as property, but then in Section 32, he says, “But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist in it, but the earth itself, as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest, I think it is plain that property in that, too, is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property” (Locke [1690], .332).” I am arguing that his conclusion does not necessarily follow from his premise.
       All the improvements that people have made by their labor are still only upon the fruits of the land, not the land itself. A person can take as much from the land as he wants, and fashion them into anything he wants, and call those his possessions, his personal property, but the land remains only the land, an arbitrary enclosure of a measurement on the face of the earth. He can’t take it with him to market, and he can’t pick it up and store it somewhere else. He has not really improved it because after he has done with using it, and has moved on to greener pastures, it remains as it was before he found it, with only the potential for someone else to use it. (I realize that the agricultural argument maintains that cultivated land has been improved, but with the anti-ecological practices of modern agribusiness, farmlands are less sustainable after use. But even without that, not all land use is agricultural and any new use of the land has to start all over from scratch.)
       Land (real estate) values are an arbitrary economic social construct, invented by men who wanted to claim and then resell the land for their own profit. Calling a donkey a “horse” does not a horse make, and calling land “property” commits the same fallacy. I will elaborate on that theme later, but first, let us hear from another philosopher, David Hume.
      Wednesday: "David Hume Understand Us."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Last week we looked at what Cicero had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part IV
Thomas Hobbes hedges his political bets
       Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), was not a champion of the common people, but he was one of the proponents (along with Locke, Hume, and Rousseau), of the theory that a social contract evolved out of the state of nature. Also, like other philosophers before him, he listed three types of governments which he called Commonwealths. In chapter XIX of his book, Leviathan, he writes: “The difference of Common-wealths, consisteth in the difference of the Soveraign, or the Person representative of all and every one of the Multitude” (Hobbes [1651], 142). He explains that the sovereign can be one man or an assembly of men. (That was how he was able to appeal to both sides in the English civil war. He was always a loyal monarchist, but Cromwell allowed him back into England because of this quasi-parliamentary idea, where he bided his time until the restoration of his favorite pupil, Charles Stuart II.) He named the three sovereigns who represent all men in a commonwealth: one man is a Monarchy, a few men are an Aristocracy, and all men are a Democracy. Then he points out, sarcastically I think, that these three kinds of governments had different names in the past. “But they are not the names of other Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked” (Hobbes [1651], 142). Monarchy (when misliked) is called Tyranny, Aristocracy is called Oligarchy, and Democracy is called Anarchy.
       Hobbes had some interesting things to say about property as it relates to society as a whole. Those who would look to him for verification of their “right to private property” ideology will not find it in Leviathan. In Chapter XXIX he lists several “doctrines repugnant to the commonwealth.” The fifth of these bad ideas is “that every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods; such, as excluded the right of the sovereign” (Hobbes [1651], 250). He explains that this right only excludes other citizens from his property, but property, rather than being a natural right, is a right only granted by the sovereign. The sovereign, whether it be a king or a parliament, is part of the social contract that people set up to protect themselves from the viciousness of the original state of nature. So the sovereign can protect one man’s property from the encroachment of another, but the sovereign itself cannot be excluded from the property or he couldn’t “perform the office they have put him into”(Hobbes [1651], 250), which means collecting taxes to pay for the military and police protection that the government affords. Those passages included personal items as property, but then he gets more specific about landed property. In chapter XXIV, he writes that the division of land is apportioned according to only the sovereign, and not to the judgments of any subjects (Hobbes [1651] 190). As we shall see, not all theories of the social contract evolving out of the state of nature, describe either the original state of nature the same way, or of the same form of social contract.
      Tuesday: "John Locke Labors For A Living".
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Friday, July 17, 2015


Yesterday we looked at what Aristotle had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part III
Roman Agrarian Law doesn’t solve what it is supposed to solve
       Dr. Andrew Stephenson, in the first page of his academic treatise, “Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic,” writes that the early Romans were noted for their good “agriculture and stock raising,” and that “This character, joined to the spirit of order and private avarice, which in a marked degree distinguished the Romans, has contributed to the development among them of a civil law which is perhaps the most remarkable monument which antiquity has left us. This civil code has become the basis of the law of European peoples, and recommends the civilization of Rome to the veneration of mankind” (Stephenson. 1891, 1). As he documents in the rest of his research paper, and as we shall see throughout the rest of history, the Romans did, indeed, leave us with a legal system in which landowners do make the laws that benefit only themselves and perpetuate their power, in spite of all subsequent normative philosophizing about democracy and equality. Cicero doesn’t like oligarchies and gets murdered over it
       Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.E.), was both a historian of the classical Age and a philosopher in his own right. He followed in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle of writing political philosophy. Copying Plato’s style, Cicero wrote in dialogue form; his main character, Scipio, assumes the part of Plato’s Socrates; and like Socrates, Scipio was a real historical figure.
       But living, as he did, in a time when the Roman republic had devolved into a corrupt empire, he did not approve of the power of the oligarchies. Like Plato, he valued an aristocracy, or meritocracy, of educated and talented rulers, but “As for those ’aristocrats’ who have not been granted the title by the people’s consent but have appropriated it through their own electoral assembly, who could endure them?” (Cicero [46B.C.E.?], 23).
       From Ancient Roman times to the present, laws written by property owners have always favored property owners. But, as Cicero himself points out, part of the blame rests with the uneducated people in a democracy who elect rich and famous people to office. “When, as a result of this vulgar misconception, a few with money, not worth, have gained control of the state” (Cicero [46B.C.E.?], 23 - 24). Like both Plato and Aristotle, Cicero has written about what he believes to be the ideal state, but as a political scientist, he also compares political philosophy to political reality. Sadly, Cicero was not a fan of Julius Cesar’s and “was murdered at the insistence of Antony” (Cicero 1998, title page).
      Monday: "Thomas Hobbes Hedges His Political Bets."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

       My website

Yesterday we looked at what Plato had to say about private property

Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part II
Aristotle studies political science
       Aristotle was critical of both Plato’s The Republic and The Laws, and considered, in Book Three of his Politics, how the three different kinds of governments were practiced in different countries, many of them as mixtures of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy (Aristotle [350 B.C.E]). He is not being theoretical here, but is using examples of real governments that existed in his time.
       In part V of Book Two of Politics, Aristotle considers whether citizens should own property in common or not. “Property should be in a certain sense common, but as a general rule, private; for when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another and will make more progress, because everyone will be attending to his own business (Aristotle [350 B.C.E]). It is not clear what he means by “in a certain sense” property should be held in common, because he is clearly advocating private ownership of property. But I want to hold that thought, and come back to it in my conclusion because, with more specific qualifications, that idea can be applicable to our modern economic system.
       In Parts VII and VIII of Book Three of Politics, Aristotle says that the three forms of government can be subject to abuses. “Tyranny, as I was saying, is monarchy exercising the rule of a master over the political society; oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands; democracy, the opposite, when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers” He also points out that abuse of the monarchy is the worst kind of abuse, abuse of oligarchy second worst, and abuse of democracy is the most tolerable (Aristotle [350 B.C.E]).
       In Book Four, Aristotle reaffirms his description of the three types of governments and the three types of abuses of same, but goes on to further point out that there is also more than one form of each type. For instance in part IV he posits that an oligarchy is not always a rule by the few because it is possible that the rich could outnumber the poor and deprive them of a share in government. The only example he uses of this unique political situation is “as was the case at Colophon…before the Lydian War“ (Aristotle [350 B.C.E]). In part V he lists four, slightly different versions of oligarchies that pretty much covers most of the existing states in his time and ours. Later, during the Roman period, we will see that oligarchies predominate when there is no outright tyranny of a monarchy.
      Tomorrow: “Roman Agrarian Law doesn’t solve what it is supposed to solve” and “Cicero Doesn't Like Oligarchies and Gets murdered Over It.”
       My website

Yesterday we heard what Jean Jacques Rousseau and Pierre-Joseph Proudon had to day about private property. Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part I
       Professor Richard Schlatter, in his Private Property: The History of an Idea, writes, “In the history of the theory of property, it is not what Plato meant, but what men thought he meant that is important” (Schlatter 1951, 11,12). I wholeheartedly concur: I treat all non-living philosophers this way; that is philosophers to whom I cannot send an instant email asking them what they meant.
       Theories about private property do not come to us in a vacuum, they are usually based on some first premises, or even other philosophic theories. The first question a theorist must ask is: what is the definition of private property? Does it mean just the “things” people can possess? Or does that also include the land on the surface of the earth? Most often private property is deemed a “right.” But then “rights” are theories that also need first premises, and those first premises are based on theories of human “equality” v. “inequality,” and then all of those theories are divided by the question of “natural” v. “conventional.” Next, theories of property become related to theories of liberty, and finally: theories of property & liberty become premises in theories of distributive justice, which is the whole point of questioning property in the first place. Plato invents the “perfect state”        Concerning “natural” v. “conventional” law: in the first dialogue of Book I of Plato’s The Laws, the Athenian Stranger asks Cleinias and Megillus if their laws were written by some man, or by the gods. Their answer is, of course, (since this is Plato, after all), that the laws come from the gods. Even Minos, Rhadamanthus, and other lawmakers had to consult the gods for their inspiration (Plato2 [360 B.C.E.]) .
       Plato, the extreme idealist/ rationalist, believed that the “forms” were more real than our common-sense idea of reality; that the general was more real than the particular, so almost all of his premises have to be taken on faith; on his a priori knowledge. I had better put forth my own argument now because it will be coming up again and again as we continue our survey of the literature: No matter what is the basic premise on which we base “natural law,” if that law cannot be enforced, it is meaningless as a working concept. To be enforced, it must become a conventional law, and then it is no longer a natural law. There are two syllogisms in that argument and both my first premises are based on empirical experience, not on either inspiration or validation by the gods.
#1
A law that cannot be enforced is meaningless
Natural law cannot be enforced unless people agree to enforce it
If no people agree to enforce natural law then natural law is meaningless.
#2
A law can be enforced if people agree to enforce it.
When people agree to enforce a law it is, by definition, a conventional law.
A natural law can be enforced when it becomes a conventional law.

       The logic I used above for “Law,” also applies to “Rights” and “Equality.” All three terms are rationalist terms, denoting a general or universal category, and all three terms are going to be used in further arguments about property. As an empiricist and nominalist, I am only concerned with particular instances, and even then I have to analyze the differences between the personal constructs of particular philosophers, and the social constructs of particular societies, given a particular time and place.
       Ironically, Plato validates my perspective rather than his own. Further on, but still in Book I of The Laws, the Athenian asks Cleinias (who is from Crete), why their laws decree common meals, gymnastics, and the wearing of weapons. Cleinias answers that Crete is not like Thessaly, and continues his explanation, using practical arguments based on empirical observation (Plato2 [360 B.C.E.]). (I have no problem with arguments validated by gods, as long as the gods are empiricists and are using inductive logic, and a posteriori experience.) Next, the subject of “inequality” is brought into the arguments. The inequality discussed in this dialogue concerns different terrains in different countries, but the example of runners and terrains points out the relationship of people to their environments: i.e. bad terrain: poor runners, good terrain: good runners, but more important is Plato’s argument that particular inequalities are due to particular unequal situations, hence the need for different particular laws. As for the question of common meals, Cleinias answers that the legislators took into consideration that the citizens in the fields have to eat together as a protection against common enemies (Plato2 [360 B.C.E.]). Again, a particular law is passed that addresses a particular situation in a particular time and place. Whether it is what Plato meant or not, I am going to argue that all theories about laws, equality, rights, and property should be judged by that criterion, and as we continue our survey of the literature I will show why this is the best philosophic method, for this particular subject.
      Many political philosophers, since the ancient Greeks, have described three kinds of governments; monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Plato began this tradition in The Republic, by listing four, but the first, “Timarchy,“ was a special case relating to Sparta, a military dictatorship that Plato somehow differentiated from other forms of tyranny (Plato1 [360 B.C.E.], 359). His “tyranny” would correspond to “monarchy,” as his “oligarchy” would correspond to “aristocracy.” Whether subsequent philosophers have known they were paraphrasing previous philosophers by listing these three forms of government, or actually believed they were presenting original thought is not relevant to this discussion. However, some have even taken the trouble to compare the relative merits of each. Some have chosen one kind or another for the basis of their own political philosophy, others have taken the more pragmatic approach and discussed why each kind may be better suited to a particular time, place and social context.
      In The Republic, Plato did not believe in private property for the Guardians, his Philosopher kings (Plato1 [360 B.C.E.], 182-187), but in The Laws he allowed the lower classes to own private property (Plato2 [360 B.C.E.]). Plato, in calling the four traditional forms of government “imperfect societies” (Plato1 [360 B.C.E.], 356), seems to be taking great pains to argue that in his “perfect” society, the Guardians are not an aristocracy or an oligarchy, precisely because they are not wealthy landowners.
       I have always wondered why Plato never thought of the concept of “Philosopher Citizens,“ which is my idea of a well educated democracy. The answer, to my mind, is that further reading of The Republic reveals his distain for democracy due to his belief that people are born into their social castes (based on his intuition, not on empirical, scientific fact). While it is true that people are born into specific environments, it is because of this belief system of Plato and other political philosophers with similar prejudices, that most people are prevented, by the political-economic system that follows from that belief system, to ever rise above their original station in life. In other words, for a political philosopher who claims that people are born into their stations, that claim becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Furthermore, his description of his Guardians is not much different from that of those philosophers who advocate rule by a special group of talented and capable men, (as opposed to a one-man monarchy or an all-inclusive democracy), except that Plato was the only philosopher who would not allow his meritocracy to own property.
       I will be using the term “oligarchy” from now on to describe rule by a select group of men. The term “aristocracy” is usually used to denote those particular oligarchies that have inherited their titles and/or their land, but all oligarchies, throughout history, have owned land whether their positions were inherited, appointed, or elected. In Plato’s argument against oligarchies he clearly points out that their wealth is what is wrong with their rule (Plato1 [360 B.C.E.], 366). He is the first, but not the last, philosopher to point this out, and subsequent philosophers will use empirical evidence, not divine revelation, to make that case.
      Stay tuned tomorrow when we hear what Aristotle had to say on this subject in Part II "Aristotle Studies Political Science".
       My website

Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that)
      The philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote:
       “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’”
--Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.

       And another radical philosopher once said:
"Property is theft." --Pierre-Joseph Prodhoun.

      Since I agree with both of those sentiments I guess you could call me a radical, as well. In the most recent blog posts I have challenged your racial identities. Now I will challenge your right to own property. I do not mean your toys and other possessions like cars, boats, clothes, and TV sets. I also am not challenging your right to own a home, just your right to own the land (real estate) underneath your house. Remember, in these blog posts I am defining property as land and/or real estate I have done quite a bit of research to back me up. In fact, most of this rant comes from my senior thesis when I graduated from SSU. It will take a few weeks for me to cover the whole subject here, so tell all your friends to tune in, especially those with racial identities who make money from owning property.
       My website

We Are All People of Color Part III
       Last week I asked the question :Why does anyone need "race" as a personal identity anyway? What kind of person thinks that the color of their skin is more important than what they are accomplishing (if anything) towards ending racism and working towards world peace? How does the "Us v. Them" mentality make anyone a better person or contribute to the ending of racism? Why do some people insist that everyone else has to give up their racism, but will not give up their own?
       I understand the concept of "white privilege," but that wording creates a dangerous division between people who should be united, and an unnecessary misconception about the real difference between those with economic power and those without. Men of color often have "Male Privilege" over women, and in religious cultures those that wield economic privilege can dictate what the masses believe.
       Most lighter skinned people who are offered "white privilege" do not want it or ask for it, it is imposed upon them by a racist system controlled by those 1%ers who wield economic power for the twofold purpose of 1. creating that racial division, 2. exploiting in other ways the very same lighter skinned brothers and sisters who are ostensibly "privileged."
       What all that does is hide the fact that the exploitation is economic, not racial. I don't think the 1%ers who control the economy even believe in racism themselves, they just like to encourage racial identity to keep the masses divided. Hasn't anyone noticed that in most of the rest of the world (i.e. not Europe or North America) the political dictators and economic 1%ers are not "white" but colored? There are no genetic markers to determine either the exploited or the exploiters, people of any color can be be both.
       No matter what color your skin is, you can practice these exercises to really work towards that post-racial society that we all are hoping to achieve someday.

• 1. Try not thinking in terms of black, white, yellow, red, brown or whatever, as discrete digits that put people in racial categories. Instead, observe people around you and try to guess what shades their skin is on an arbitrary black to white scale with 100 values.
• 2. If you do not know the persons you are observing, try to guess what their cultural characteristics are: i.e. language, political affiliation, religion, country of origin, level of education, etc. Notice that you will begin to rely on the clothes they wear and the way they speak rather than the shade of their skin tone. You can even do this with people whom you perceive as having the exact shade of melanin as yourself.
• 3. Now try it on yourself. Think about your own cultural and sub-cultural characteristic and think about how you came to learn them.
• 3a. Did you learn them of your own free will?
• 3b. Did you accept them from a racist of whom you have chosen a racial category?
• 3c. Or did you learn them from someone who claims to be a spokesman for your own racial category and who also tells you how to think and act to be true to your racial identity?
• 3d. If either 3b or 3c, ask yourself who gains by this? Your own existential freedom or the political power of the self-styled "racial spokespersons?"

       Anything that can be learned can also be unlearned. I have devised the above psychological exercises based on both existentialist and pragmatist philosophy and psychology. In future blog posts I will go into more detail about personal and social constructs, and one of my favorite philosopher - psychologists, Dr. George A. Kelly (1905 - 1966).
       But separate from our personal and social constructs, there are problems in our political economic system. Racial identity only makes them more insidious by masking them.
       So tomorrow I want to discuss how we are all economically exploited through private property.
       My website

We Are All People of Color Part II
       Yesterday I said that the varieties of human skin color, nose size, eye shape, and hair texture; superficial genetic descriptions; are not digital like a box of crayons, but more analog like the visual band of the electromagnetic spectrum. And as superficial genetic descriptions they cannot tell us anything about what kind of a person we are describing. Fact: you cannot inherit culture through your genes. Culture is learned behavior, and anything that can be learned can be unlearned.
       Even when two individuals have exactly the same heredetary characteristics, even if they are siblings, you cannot assume that they have the same politics, religion, economic class, education, etc., To determine these specific cultural differences you have to see how they behave, talk to them, know them as individuals, not as part of a group. They may fall into a general group after you have done that, but you cannot assume anything before you have met them personally. The word "prejudice" means "a pre-judgement," judging without learning the specific facts of a case.
       My problem with some people who call themselves "Progressives" is that they think it is okay to encourage people's racial identities. We are not yet living in a truly post-racial society, but many "liberals" who decry that situation are also contributing to the permanence of racism. Why is it okay for some people to be racists but not others? Why are melanin challenged racists considered evil, but their darker brothers and sisters get a free pass? How does that help us move on to a post-racial society?
       We are all people of (some) color. Only albinos are "white," The rest of us come in an analog spectrum of shades of skin color that defies digital racial categories. How many "races" are there? Even the racists, depending on who you ask, cannot agree on how many "races" there are and/or what physical descriptions (skin color, eye shape, nose size, hair texture) count as identifiers of race. Since it was racists who invented racial identity in the first place, why is it okay for people who do not want to be thought of as racists to accept it? "Hispanic" is a language-based cultural category, not a racial category, so why are some of them claiming to not be white? And since the racist slave-owners and segregationists invented the idea that being 1/4 black made you all black, but being 3/4 white does not make you white, why do some of those who have been victims of racism continue to believe it? Why do those many individuals (and they are now growing in number), who come from so-called "bi-racial" families be forced to choose one racial identiy over another?
      
       Why does anyone need "race" as a personal identity anyway? What kind of person thinks that the color of their skin is more important than what they are accomplishing (if anything) towards ending racism and working towards world peace?
       More about that on Monday. Happy weekend, drive safely.
       My website

We Are All People of Color. Part I
       Today I read an article from the Associated Press, published in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, headlined "State's Latinos outnumber whites" and based on "U.S. Census Bureau figures released in late June." The second paragraph then mentioned "Hispanic Californians" as outnumbering "white Californians." My first reactions were "so what?" and "who cares?" My second set of ruminations concerned the continuing normalization of racism by the powers that be. Racism is insidiously normalized by the acceptance of the public of racists terminology without the critical thinking that should be questioning the meaning of this terminology.
       Point 1. "White" is a racial term. What does it really mean? Who is "white" and by what criteria are they thus determined?
       Point 2. "Latino" and "Hispanic" are cultural terms, not racial identities, and point 2.2, why are they used interchangeably? "Hispanic" is a quasi-cultural, language-based category, but those who speak Spanish come from a wide variety of cultures and sub-cultures. Why are they being lumped together and why are they being contrasted with "whites?" As for the term "Latino," why is it used interchangeably with "Hispanic?" Latinos could also speak Italian, Portuguese, or French and, again, they too come from a wide variety of cultures and sub-cultures. So the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" are questionable even as cultural categories, but the real evil is that they are used as racial categories, especially since so many Spanish-speaking people are also "white." But why do we accept these arbitrary racial divisions in the first place?
       Going back to point 1, why is there even a racial category of "white?" Answer: because the white racists and supremists who identify as "white" have planted that meme in our culture. Even those who are victimized by it still accept it. Racial identity, by anyone of any color, is racism.
       In the first place, scientifically, there is no such thing as "race". I have already belabored that point on my website (www.peacemoon.org ) but the point is that the concept of "race" is both a personal construct and a social construct. These psychological constructs have made those who accept them believe that the color of a person's skin (or hair texture, or nose size, or eye shape, etc.) can somehow tell you something important about a person or group of people. I believe that pretty much defines racism The above mentioned superficial physical descriptive characteristics are only just that: superficial physical descriptions. Also, they are not digital like a box of crayons, they are more analog like the visual band of the electromagnet spectrum. There is an extremely wide range of these physical characteristics, but they are all determined by heredity (nature), not environment (nurture) which includes politics, economic class, religion, education, etc. etc.
More about this tomorrow My website