Bromo > wrote in
:

>> He actually thought that was gone and passé. He was merely
>> stating that private ownership of land is either outright theft
>> of a communal resource or it perpetuates such a theft which
>> occured in the past.
>
> Marx was kind of goofy that way.

Hardly. It's a canny observation, and I gather one you were unaware
of until now.

I happen to agree with property
> rights - even hunter gatherer tribes had foraging grounds and
> would (and still do) defend territory - the "right" to forage off
> of it.

However, those were communal rights. You can't confuse communal and
individual rights. They are often at right angles to each others and
if individual rights obtain gain de cause, then communities cease to
exist.

> But rather than get into a giant argument about Communism in a
> food group - how is this related to food?

Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
pauperizing of the overall diet.

--

"I'm the master of low expectations."

GWB, aboard Air Force One, 04Jun2003

On 2/16/04 10:11 PM, in article ,
"Michel Boucher" > wrote:

> Bromo > wrote in
> :
>
>>> He actually thought that was gone and passé. He was merely
>>> stating that private ownership of land is either outright theft
>>> of a communal resource or it perpetuates such a theft which
>>> occured in the past.
>>
>> Marx was kind of goofy that way.
>
> Hardly. It's a canny observation, and I gather one you were unaware
> of until now.

Nope. Read Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Burke, Thomas Paine and Ayn Rand in my
youth.

On 2/16/04 10:11 PM, in article ,
"Michel Boucher" > wrote:

>> But rather than get into a giant argument about Communism in a
>> food group - how is this related to food?
>
> Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
> someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
> are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
> pauperizing of the overall diet.

Agriculture did that - since to be a successful farmer, one must be able to
work the land and get the food from it. Attempts at group ownership by
communist countries generally have led to starvation when there hadn't been
before.

Still, you seem rather dyed in the wool (presumptuous on my part, but the
posts seem to lead me in that way) so I do not expect you to change your
mind.

In ,
Bromo wrote :

> On 2/16/04 10:11 PM, in article
> , "Michel Boucher"
> > wrote:
>
>>> But rather than get into a giant argument about Communism in a
>>> food group - how is this related to food?
>>
>> Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
>> someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
>> are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
>> pauperizing of the overall diet.
>
> Agriculture did that - since to be a successful farmer, one must be
> able to work the land and get the food from it. Attempts at group
> ownership by communist countries generally have led to starvation
> when there hadn't been before.

I'ld rather say that the general restrictions of the diet comes from
various sources :

First the ever-increasing demographic pressure limited very severely the
access to extensive resources like berries et al. with very restricted
yields per acre.

There is the corollary that nobles restricted quite severely the hunting
rights, and kept hunting preserves from the ever-encroaching farmlands, as
game is of far more limited yield per acre than livestock, even if the
diverse nature of game was better than the omnipresent salted ham and
poultry/rabbit complement.

Second insufficient understanding of the diversification strategy : the
best yielding crop will give you the most to eat / exchange and thus
neighbours will tend to grow that crop too. And the limited fallows didn't
give the land enough time to recover, so they had to discover crop
rotations to get correct yields, but that limited even more the crops,
because only a few rotations were known to work.

Third the want for 'exotic' or 'easy' food, just how many people still know
jerusalem artichokes or medlar, which were common until the first half of
last century, but are so much a pain to process that potatoes and apples
just phased them out. (It's a little more complicated but one can figure it
out...)

And as for the failure of collectivisations, it has more to do with
psychology and politics than with theory, the way it was done, giving a
fixed salary to all hands without respect of yield and
de-responsabilisation of all the local management, bound by a stifling
bureaucracy, were absolutely no incentive to use the land at highest
efficency, and then the transportation system couldn't cope with the
massive transfers of foodstuffs from one part of the continent to another
giving dire starvation art times. But the latifundia of hispanic and
hispanoamerican fame are perhaps quite as bad a management system, what was
Zapata's warcry again ? 'Pan, tierra y libertad !' ;-)

--
Salutations, greetings,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald
Chris CII, Rennes, France

>> Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
>> someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
>> are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
>> pauperizing of the overall diet.
> Agriculture did that - since to be a successful farmer, one must be
> able to work the land and get the food from it.

That doesn't make any discernible sense. Who are these individual
farmers? - farming is almost always a collective enterprise, whether
by a neolithic village, extended family or a capitalist firm. The
number of farms where only one person works the land is a very small
proportion of the world total and always has been.

And in a capitalist society, the successful farmers are those who don't
farm at all but get others to do it for them. Ownership does not go
along with doing the work.

In fact I suspect that the entire production of those farms and
gardens worldwide where the owner is the only person doing the work
could just vanish and nobody would notice the difference.


> Attempts at group ownership by communist countries generally have
> led to starvation when there hadn't been before.

More often the other way round - see the comparison of India and China
at <http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm>

Ownership by banks or land management corporations is just as much
"group ownership" as ownership by the state or a self-managed
cooperative. The differences are whose interests ownership serves.

========> Email to "j-c" at this site; email to "bogus" will bounce <========
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html> food intolerance data & recipes,
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On 2/18/04 5:24 AM, in article , "bogus address"
> wrote:

>>> Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
>>> someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
>>> are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
>>> pauperizing of the overall diet.
>> Agriculture did that - since to be a successful farmer, one must be
>> able to work the land and get the food from it.
>
> That doesn't make any discernible sense. Who are these individual
> farmers? - farming is almost always a collective enterprise, whether
> by a neolithic village, extended family or a capitalist firm. The
> number of farms where only one person works the land is a very small
> proportion of the world total and always has been.

1 farmer might be 1 family. Happens all the time.