George Monbiot - Capitalism is destroying the Earth. We need a new human right for future generations
The young people taking to the streets for the climate strike are right: their future is being stolen. The economy is an environmental
pyramid scheme, dumping its liabilities on the young and the unborn. Its
current growth depends on inter-generational theft. At the heart of
capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as
great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase
as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless
of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you
can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as
much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the
world’s natural wealth.
But why? What just
principle equates the numbers in your bank account with a right to own the fabric
of the Earth? Most people I ask are completely stumped by this question. The
standard justification goes back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of
Government, published in 1689. He claimed that you acquire a right to own
natural wealth by mixing your labour with it: the fruit you pick, the minerals
you dig and the land you till become your exclusive property, because you put
the work in. This argument was
developed by the jurist William Blackstone in the 18th century, whose books were
immensely influential in England, America and elsewhere. He contended that a
man’s right to “sole and despotic dominion” over land was established by the
person who first occupied it, to produce food. This right could then be
exchanged for money. This is the underlying rationale for the great pyramid
scheme. And it makes no sense.
For a start, it
assumes a Year Zero. At this arbitrary point, a person could step on to a piece
of land, mix their labour with it, and claim it as theirs. Locke used America
as an example of the blank slate on which people could establish their rights.
But the land (as Blackstone admitted) became a blank slate only through
the extermination of those who lived there. Not only could the
colonist erase all prior rights, he could also erase all future rights. By
mixing your labour with the land once, you and your descendants acquire the
right to it in perpetuity, until you decide to sell it. You thereby prevent all
future claimants from gaining natural wealth by the same means... read more:
