Civil disobedience - Bob Swann, Tolstoy, MLK, Schumacher and Ghandi

[BillG]

http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/essay_new_peace.html

Bob Swann served two and a half years in prison during World War II as a conscientious objector. Much of that time he spent in solitary confinement, a punishment imposed because he refused to cooperate with the prison?s policy of racial segregation. The long hours in solitary gave him much time for contemplation. Prison was his monastery and his university. He read greedily and engaged in active debate about the issues of war and peace with other conscientious objectors. After much consideration, Bob concluded there were three root causes of war:

1. The commodification of land, enabling it to be sold on the market and resulting in the accumulation of land in the hands of a relatively few. This concentration of ownership prevents the poor from gaining affordable access to land to build their homes and earn their livelihood. The result is great wealth alongside unrelenting poverty. Without land it is hard to achieve even modest self-sufficiency and a sense of a dignity.

2. A system of nationally issued currencies that places the question of who has access to credit in the hands of nation-states which over-issue currency out of varied political agendas, including financing of war-related activities. This practice creates inflation and deprives regions of a powerful tool for place-based and culturally appropriate economic development.

3. The loss of community in the face of ever more powerful global economic interests, which erodes the sense of responsibility to neighbors and to local ecology that comes with daily interactions.

When Bob left prison he earned his livelihood as a carpenter and designer of buildings while continuing to look for ways to create equitable economies. In the 1960s, as the civil rights movement grew ever stronger in the southern states, the old guard saw its own power diminishing and lashed out, burning African-American churches as a weapon of fear. Bob?s skills as a carpenter were needed to rebuild the churches, and he organized crews of black and white Americans to work together, reforging the courage to struggle on toward peace and dignity. In the South Bob met Slater King, the cousin or Martin Luther King, and other civil rights leaders. From them he learned that African-Americans were being prevented from fulfilling their dreams because of their inability to gain access to land. It was a pressing problem that fueled the civil unrest.

Bob knew of the land reform work of Vinoba Bhave, the trusted associate of Gandhi. Vinoba walked from village to village in India seeking a way to alleviate the widening social discrepancies he witnessed. Wherever he went, crowds gathered to listen to their beloved spiritual leader. Vinoba asked boldly, ?Those of you with more land than you need, would you not give your excess to my brothers and sisters, who have no land to build their homes nor cultivate their crops?? Moved by the man and his appeal, wealthy villagers deeded their land to Vinoba so that he could reconvey it to the landless.

In this way the Bhoodan or Land Gift movement was born. But soon Vinoba saw that the poor, who did not have the money to buy tools to work the land and seeds to sow it, simply sold the land back to the wealthy. They then wandered into the even greater poverty of the cities. Therefore Vinoba changed the Bhoodan movement to the Gramdan movement, or Village Gift movement. The land was given to the village, and villagers were given use rights. They were not tempted to trade the land for quick money. If they left the land, it was redistributed to those who could use it.

Our Russian friends here at this meeting may recall how beautifully this concept is described in Tolstoy?s wonderful last novel  Resurrection. Tolstoy outlines a process of redistribution of land in which estate owners return the land, not to individual peasants but to the villages. The villages then allocate land use, charging a rent according to quality of site and soil. The rent supports schools, health clinics, road improvement, and the general welfare of the villagers.

With Vinoba?s example in mind, Bob Swann worked with Slater King to create the first community land trust in North America to provide farm land for African-American farmers in Georgia. There are now more than one hundred community land trusts around the United States.

The Georgia group studied the lease agreements used by the Jewish National Fund to develop their own legal documents. A significant portion of the land of Israel is owned by the Jewish National Fund, which leases the land to individuals and intentional communities such as a ?kibbutz.? The leases call for private ownership of buildings and other improvements on the land, but the land itself remains owned by the Fund. Bob called for a democratically structured, regional membership base for community land trusts so that they would remain accountable to the people and priorities of a particular place.

Turning his attention to the problem of credit, Bob felt that instead of nations having the power to determine who has access to credit, it should again be regional communities. Self-regulated communities striving for self-sufficiency are best qualified to determine their own need for credit and the criteria for its issue. Out of this understanding Bob started what has become known as a local currency movement in the United States.

A simple way of imagining how a community can issue money is to think of a farmer. Each spring the farmer needs seeds to sow the field. A regional community that knows the farmer and wishes to support a local source of food can band together and issue credit to that farmer for the seeds. Essentially the community can create new money, based solely on its confidence in the future productivity of the farmer. Local residents recognize that the planting of those seeds will result in a harvest of crops worth fifty times the value of the original seeds. They trade in the local currency without reservation because its value remains sound as long as it is issued only for productive purposes. Small communities, once thinking themselves dependent on the largess of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, can take back the power to issue their own credit and determine their own economic destinies based on local resources and local production.

Bob recommended that while the issue of currencies should be at the local level, their standard should be universal. He suggested using a kilowatt hour of electricity as that standard. Energy is a component of all production; its cost is a factor in determining the price of goods. At the same time, energy can be produced in all regions based on renewable resources, an unending source of wealth for a region. So while currencies may be created locally, based on factors determined by the particular needs of the region, these same currencies can be traded in other regions using a common international standard.

In addition to land reform and monetary reform, Bob?s third objective was to develop a means to foster local economies and local communities so as to bring about an economics of peace. J. C. Kumarappa, the Gandhian economist, helped guide this initiative. In his beautiful book  Why the Village Movement is a chapter entitled ?The Role of Women.? He addresses the women of the villages with these thoughts: ?You, my sisters, perhaps it is your husband who earns the money for your family, but it is you who are determining how that money is spent; and in so doing you are deciding the fate of your village. You may choose to buy the beautiful silk made in France or Belgium, or you may choose the khadi cloth made by your sister and your neighbor. When you choose the khadi cloth, you are investing in more than cloth, you are investing in your neighbor, her children, and your village. As you watch the children walking to school in the morning, fed by the earnings of their mother, you realize that you and they are woven together through the cloth. You and your village are richer in proportion to the number of such stories that unite you.?

At the E. F. Schumacher Society we are creating model ways for consumers to support local producers. Goods consumed in a region are best created in the region in full view and with full local knowledge of production methods. A strong local economy is dependent on cooperative social patterns and a rich local culture.

An example of this approach is the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement founded by our late neighbor, Robyn Van En, at Indian Line Farm. In a CSA a group of families guarantees a yearly income to a farmer in exchange for a portion of the harvest. The families work together to create a situation that invites a farmer to farm by sharing in the risk of the undertaking. There are now over one thousand CSA farms in North America alone, and the movement is spreading as consumers seek a local alternative to factory-farmed food.

These principles of community self-sufficiency and economic renewal are at the heart of the work of Malladi Rama Krishna who is here with us today. Krishna is the new director of the J. C. Kumarappa Ashram in Hyderabad, India, founded by Michael Windey of the Village Reconstruction Organization.

But to return to the purpose of this gathering: as the troubling consequences of the events of the past week continue to unfold, we are charged with how to initiate a Global Dialogue for Peace. Bob Swann?s life is instructive. He was privileged during his time in prison to read and discuss the writings of some of the world?s great cultural leaders on the topic of peace, and that led him to his life?s work of developing practical steps for economic reform.

At the E. F. Schumacher Society we are privileged to be stewards of Fritz Schumacher?s personal library, which has a similar story to tell. It is a library of books and papers, not on economics but on religion and philosophy, all carefully underlined and annotated. It took a thorough inquiry into life?s big questions?What is the role of the human being on earth? What is right conduct based on that understanding??for Fritz Schumacher to develop a new, human-scale, place-based approach to economics. His now famous essays are collected in  Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, judged one of the hundred most influential books of the last century.

It is therefore appropriate that gathered here at this Global Dialogue for Peace are leaders representing all of our great religious traditions. Only when we are able to penetrate into that which is universal in religious thought, and then link that understanding to a practical knowledge and affection for local place and local community, can we build a vision for a new peace.

By all rights this founding of a new peace is a spiritual mission and at the same time an economic mission, an environmental mission, and a humanitarian mission. It will require a collaboration of individuals and cultural organizations working together to succeed. Its sign of success will be the renewal of local communities around the world. Both our own village and the Earth are our home and responsibility. Let us greet one other in this common citizenship, informed by the lessons we have learned from living well in a particular place.

[Michael Fisher]

#2:? Caused by government.

#3:? Caused by government.

#1:? Caused by government and the victim mentality.

Vinoba asked boldly, ?Those of you with more land than you need, would you not give your excess to my brothers and sisters, who have no land to build their homes nor cultivate their crops?? Moved by the man and his appeal, wealthy villagers deeded their land to Vinoba so that he could reconvey it to the landless.

In this way the Bhoodan or Land Gift movement was born. But soon Vinoba saw that the poor, who did not have the money to buy tools to work the land and seeds to sow it, simply sold the land back to the wealthy. They then wandered into the even greater poverty of the cities.

They're "so poor" that when given land for free by people who wish to help them be self-sufficient, they sold it and went back to being poor?? That is very obviously a personal choice.? It's not that they couldn't cultivate crops, like even the poorest of the poor do all over the world - it's that they don't WANT to.? Many people all over the world choose to be poor.? I choose to be poor even though I have some money.? I call it "living simply".? Others would say I need to be given something because I'm so "poor".? I reject that.

Without government, land is commoditized naturally.? I do not see poverty-by-choice as an excuse to steal money from land owners.

The ends are great.? Promoting living within your means, helping the poor, self-sufficiency, and independent living is great.? These are best done without government.? However, artificially subsidizing poverty-by-choice through forceful theft of money from land owners is not acceptable in my opinion.

Even if they cry about it all day long, many people choose to be poor by their actions and we just should get over it.? It's better to help those who really want it with a hand up (volunteerism and non-government charity) rather than a handout, promote independent living (like Borsodi), and stop treating the poor like they're victims.? As long as we treat the poor-by-choice like they're victims, they will continue to suffer from the victim mentality.

[BillG]

promote independent living (like Borsodi)

Borsodi founded the Exeter "Constant" alternative currency experiment with Bob Swann

They were both Georgists!

[Michael Fisher]

Borsodi founded the Exeter "Constant" alternative currency experiment with Bob Swann

They were both Georgists!

I doubt it.  I highly doubt all these people you call georgists are actually georgists.  Every movement tries to claim everyone is aligned with their movement.  This is nothing new. 

Georgists have an extremely difficult time getting their ideas across for some reason.  This makes it even more unlikely that all of these people are georgists.

[BillG]

Borsodi founded the Exeter "Constant" alternative currency experiment with Bob Swann

They were both Georgists!

I doubt it.? I highly doubt all these people you call georgists are actually georgists.? Every movement tries to claim everyone is aligned with their movement.? This is nothing new.?

Georgists have an extremely difficult time getting their ideas across for some reason.? This makes it even more unlikely that all of these people are georgists.

if you will just open your eyes and mind you will see...

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/schwartzman_on_ralph_borsodi.html

quote:
Ralph Borsodi (1883-1977), America's "voice for decentralism", was a leader who lived and practiced his ideals. I remember him best in the 1960s when, in his eighties, with his wife, Clara, he persisted in "homesteading" at the edge of Exeter. New Hampshire. I had invited him to be guest speaker at one of Fragment's weekly seminars in New York City. Borsodi's letters revealed his forthright commitments:

"I'll be glad to meet your group in March. I'll be in New York arranging to assist Jayaprakash Narayan in his tour of the United States... I want to interest Fragments editors in a conference for the New Right. By the New Right I mean those of us who believe in a really free economy -- not the pseudo-free economy we now have, which is based upon a dishonest system of land tenure, a completely dishonest money system, and an equally dishonest system of social privileges of every conceivable kind."

In another of his spirited letters, he said:

"Some of us are discussing a second conference ... dealing with the land question. Our subject would be land reform in the underdeveloped nations. Different programs of land reform would be carefully examined. Some friends have helped me organize The International Foundation For Independence. The Foundation will operate on the principle that every large tract of land which it makes available to farmers and villagers in the underdeveloped nations should be organized into an enclave for economic rent."

Later, he invited our help:

"Our conference on money reform is developing well. I wonder if you would take the initiative in setting up a similar conference dealing with land reform. The subject would be establishing enclaves of economic rent as a means of abolishing landlordism in the undeveloped countries of the world...

"Specifically, we are interested in having the independence Foundation develop Vinoba Bhave's program of Gramdan, which tends to collectivize ownership in the village, into a program in which this collectivized land is then leased to individual holders in perpetuity.

"These holders would be paying ground rent to the village and would in effect be creating enclaves of economic rent such as warren described in his Annals. There are 18,000 of these Gramdan villages in India, most of which are ripe for this method of dealing with the Problem of land reform."

To my inquiry, Borsodi elaborated his proposal:

"We propose to organize enclaves of economic rent based on the indenture of possession of land which we used in our experiments during the depression (1933-1945) with the School of Living (Suffern, N.Y.) and the International Independence Foundation. Opportunity exists to organize the 18,000 villages in India which have opted for the Gramdan program. Enclaves of this sort would thus accord with the principles of Henry George -- and could be extended in every nation in which the International Foundation for Independence will operate."

All this resulted in a dinner in New York City on the night of December 2, 1966, and a later discussion at the New School for Social Research. Professor Nimbark of the New School faculty acted as the host. That night, Fragments editors -- Oscar Johannsen, Sydney Mayers, Leonard KIemfeld, Herbert Roseman, and I, together with the lovely ladies of our group -- picked up Ralph Borsodi at his hotel and took him as guest of honor to a restaurant. We had a delightful time, as did he.

Then came the Round Table Discussion. Others present Were Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Franz Pick, Gordon Lamayer, Robert Swann and others. Borsodi was excellent in his roles as Moderator and proponent of his currency plan. Borsodi startled us with, "Why have a central bank at all?" with its powerful control over economic decisions. His alternative is creation of currency by individual groups of financial institutions, backed by gold, commodities, commercial paper or other real wealth in existence. (The U.S. Treasury would be confined to setting standards and policing against misrepresentation). Borsodi convinced many that this could put an end to government manipulation of "debt" money that is inflating and disrupting the economy.

I remember partially opposing him by quoting Henry George that what is accomplished by money reform "is small as compared with what is accomplished by credit-reform". A lively discussion followed.

When he died, eleven years later, the world lost a dedicated idealist. I mourned the loss of a great leader, using the term as Ralph Borsodi used and defined it, "Leaders should consecrate themselves to the search for the realization of what is true, what is good and what is beautiful."

That was Ralph Borsodi's search. That was also his realization. What he did and what he accomplished could be justly described as "true" and "good" and "beautiful".

[Michael Fisher]

If "landlordism" is a problem in some poor village, and a non-government agency solves the problem by purchasing a large amount of land, leasing it for cheap, and giving the money to the poor, then that does not oppose my principles because it does not violate anyone's rights and requires no government to implement or manage it.

If the government does this, or if the money benefits a government (any organization with a monopoly of force over an area), then it violates my principles.

The only question is how to stop the georgists from buying all the available land and leasing it out.  Most people will probably opt to own their land.

As it stands now, the scheme wouldn't work because the government is in the way.  It controls how property is developed, used, divided, etc.

[BillG]

If "landlordism" is a problem in some poor village, and a non-government agency solves the problem by purchasing a large amount of land, leasing it for cheap, and giving the money to the poor, then that does not oppose my principles because it does not violate anyone's rights and requires no government to implement or manage it.

If the government does this, or if the money benefits a government (any organization with a monopoly of force over an area), then it violates my principles.

The only question is how to stop the georgists from buying all the available land and leasing it out.? Most people will probably opt to own their land.

As it stands now, the scheme wouldn't work because the government is in the way.? It controls how property is developed, used, divided, etc.

there is no documented human civilization inwhich force is not used in dominion over a territory - none.

[Michael Fisher]

there is no documented human civilization inwhich force is not used in dominion over a territory - none.

Indeed, it seems like everyone wants a monopoly of force over everyone else.

But it's not difficult to imagine a land where people only have a monopoly of force over their own property (property that was not obtained through force).

[BillG]

there is no documented human civilization inwhich force is not used in dominion over a territory - none.

Indeed, it seems like everyone wants a monopoly of force over everyone else.

But it's not difficult to imagine a land where people only have a monopoly of force over their own property (property that was not obtained through force).

yes - labor-based property rights.

as you have said all useful products come from the earth via labor...it is difficult to imagine because no documented human civilization has not used force in dominion over a territory.

homesteading of land is fine up to Locke's Proviso beyond which the legal and monetary obligation backed by state force violates the labor-based property rights of those excluded.

there's no place in the US that does not command economic rent for the landowner violating Locke's Proviso.

[Michael Fisher]

homesteading of land is fine up to Locke's Proviso beyond which the legal and monetary obligation backed by state force violates the labor-based property rights of those excluded.

there's no place in the US that does not command economic rent for the landowner violating Locke's Proviso.

What?  ???

[BillG]

homesteading of land is fine up to Locke's Proviso beyond which the legal and monetary obligation backed by state force violates the labor-based property rights of those excluded.

there's no place in the US that does not command economic rent for the landowner violating Locke's Proviso.

What?? ???

there is no such thing as property not obtained by force if you trace the title back to the original homesteading act within modern civilization.

[Ron Helwig]

My take on Locke is that he was wrong when he said that by "mixing your labor" with the land, that gives you ownership of it. No. What it does is gives you ownership of the product of your labor.

We know that owning land is the most efficient method of allocating that scarce resource (one of the few actual scarce resources), so it makes sense that there should be property in land. That's why we have government manage claims of land ownership. (Could we have a non-government set of entities do this? I believe we could, eventually)

Owning the product of your labor is a right. Not owning the product of your labor is slavery.

Owning a piece of land is a "civil right", akin to "intellectual property" (but with a stronger basis of support for land than IP).

BTW, the idea that in a free market economy (with sound protection of property in land ownership) the ownership of land will produce an oppressive distribution of power via landlordism was pretty well dismissed by Coase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_Theorem.

[BillG]

My take on Locke is that he was wrong when he said that by "mixing your labor" with the land, that gives you ownership of it. No. What it does is gives you ownership of the product of your labor.

We know that owning land is the most efficient method of allocating that scarce resource (one of the few actual scarce resources), so it makes sense that there should be property in land. That's why we have government manage claims of land ownership. (Could we have a non-government set of entities do this? I believe we could, eventually)

Owning the product of your labor is a right. Not owning the product of your labor is slavery.

Owning a piece of land is a "civil right", akin to "intellectual property" (but with a stronger basis of support for land than IP).

BTW, the idea that in a free market economy (with sound protection of property in land ownership) the ownership of land will produce an oppressive distribution of power via landlordism was pretty well dismissed by Coase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_Theorem.

ownership is a bundle of rights (use, possession, exclusion, transferability - any of which can be alienated) not a single right.

Locke's Proviso defined the conditions upon which ownership was defined as just ("spoilage" was another condition).

Beyond Locke's Proviso - "enough and as good left for others" - economic rent becomes a tax on the ABSOLUTE right to the fruits of our labor (as you said).

[Ron Helwig]

Beyond Locke's Proviso - "enough and as good left for others" - economic rent becomes a tax on the ABSOLUTE right to the fruits of our labor (as you said).

Please define "enough" 

[BillG]

Beyond Locke's Proviso - "enough and as good left for others" - economic rent becomes a tax on the ABSOLUTE right to the fruits of our labor (as you said).

Please define "enough"?

the market defines it very nicely.

if there is not "enough" then I will have to pay economic rent to someone.

otherwise why would I rent if I could homestead somewhere else for free if I did not subjectively determine that I would be materially better off paying someone rent to locate in a specific location that they already "own"...

kinda like saying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...