Capitalism started in South Africa in 1652 when van Riebeeck erected the first fence which excluded everyone outside of that fence. Then he erected a castle which brought an element of violence to that enclosure. Capitalism started of as an enclosure movement progressively enclosing all available land as the most important means of production and alienating the vast majority of the people from the land, coercing them into wage labour, given that they have been deprived of all means of production and subsistence, we need to break down the fences of enclosure erected by capitalism. But the capitalist enclosure did not stop with the land, it continued to enclose entire communities, services such as health and education, housing, recreation, sport and entertainment, food and food production, spirituality and even our imaginations. It has convinced most people that they cannot escape from the walls and fences of the system. So how do we overcome it? We do so firstly by resisting the enclosure, the privatisation of land, life and limb. Then we proceed to tear down the fences and walls that divide us and put us in competition with each other, and that denies us social and collective control of the land, the means of production and everything else this system alienated from us. We start by thinking differently, imagining differently and proceed to acting and doing differently. If we do this collectively and socially we can push back enclosure and privatisation reclaiming the public and the commons finding our strength in cooperation, in our commonalities rather than our differences. Either we do this or we die as a species with this destructive selfish system that destroys the very environment we exist in. Capitalism is making it impossible for us to breathe, and we either smother with it, or we break out of its stranglehold.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 13:20:44 +0000
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