In most of the world, the commons were enclosed by states on behalf of the capital class, stealing our common inheritance and trampling on our ancient rights. There’s very little left of the commons in the world.
But! There are a handful of countries where people managed to codify rights to transit regardless of private property boundaries into law, almost all in the northernmost parts of Europe: Scotland, Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland, etc.
I don’t have a very good theory as to why rights to roam survived in these places but not others. It seems like a plausible explanation could involve how remote and mountainous most of these areas are—the state might have struggled to assert itself even in those areas subject to colonization and enclosure (like Scotland and Samiland), allowing previous rights of way to survive.
But that’s a guess at best. Anyone know the historical political economy behind this relic?
@HeavenlyPossum hmmm, Switzerland is probably the odd one out in that list, but the Nordic countries and Scotland did share some of a cultural mileau and are generally more minded towards the communal good and group identities to this day. Maybe there's also something about nations that are more a confederation of smaller, competitive groups like clans and Switzerland's kantons? Like, such a political economy doesn't enable a centralized state that can do that? Just guesses really 🤷🏼♀️
I don’t see Switzerland as an outlier—most of that country is pretty inaccessible which is why it won independence from the Habsburgs and never looked back. No strong metropole to consolidate private property rights over the whole country.
I’m generally reluctant to buy into cultural explanations—people everywhere used to mind the common good and made use of common property, so I don’t think it can serve as much of a diagnostic here.
@HeavenlyPossum oh, I was just saying geographically and culturally different, since Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Scotland had people going between them frequently the centuries before and during that, vs. Switzerland having different neighbors and cultures.
But yeah, if geography is a factor, I can see them having shared elements. I honestly wonder if a history of more of a confederated government vs. centralized/absolutist government (which was influenced be geography) might be key?
@HeavenlyPossum like, that's probably the biggest difference I can think vs. England and France. Did those rights get enshrined anywhere in the holy Roman empire? Because that too has a more confederated political system, so it might be a contrast
@HeavenlyPossum huh, and yeah, I don't think there's tons of shared cultural factors there like I hypothesized (sorry, trained as an anthropologist, so that's where my brain goes). I also thought maybe it was a Protestant vs. Catholic thing, since that's played such a big role in differing political economy in Europe...but Czechia was always pretty darn Catholic, I think?
I mean, there's probably never just one factor and a lot of chance, but it is interesting. Wonder what history folks think?
Czechia was hardcore Protestant (Hussites, etc) so that’s a point in favor.
So did hard-to-conquer peripheries go Protestant because they were full of rebellious people, or were they rebellious because they were Protestant? (I suspect the former.)
@HeavenlyPossum This is a really interesting question, and I also don't have the answer. Another example may be the status of "navigable waters" in the US, which are generally open to public use for both transportation and fishing even if the land on both sides is privately owned. I also don't know factually why this commons survived enclosure, but in this case, unlike the ones you mention, it's pretty easy to imagine a story about individual benefits from the commons, which reduce capital's extractive capabilities in the usual way, being minuscule in comparison from benefits capital takes from it.
It would have wiped out profits from selling slaves "down the river" if traders had had to pay every property owner to use their little piece of the Mississippi. My personal right to row from St. Paul to New Orleans and fish along the way maybe is a side effect not worth anyone's time to eliminate.
Tangentially, maybe you're already familiar with Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas, about a 16th century struggle over free transit in Germany? It's really something if you haven't read it.
I haven’t read it, but thanks for the recommendation.
On the question of “not worth anyone’s time to eliminate,” there is still an ongoing effort in England to enclose public footpaths for private owners, so I dunno.
@HeavenlyPossum@AdrianRiskin There was a bit in "An Unsocial Socialist" (which was a terrible novel) in which the main character is marching with some middle class protesters demanding the right to roam. That was written in 1883.
@HeavenlyPossum
This goes back to traditional nomadic livelihoods in these regions. However, transit rights usually do not include the permission to USE the land. What #commons are all about is not the land (or other commonly managed resources), this is only the material precondition. The main thing is a social condition enabling the commonly managed use of it, which is referred to as #commoning.
@HeavenlyPossum
Now i got you. In the context of commons, this is true of course. It's questionable, if it makes any sense at all to speak of "productive use" in the context of commons.
I was puzzled, because you've started your argument with the the traditional remains of transit rights in the contemporary jurisdiction of some countries.
@HeavenlyPossum Scotland isn't remote if you live in Scotland. It's right here. Enclosure came here relatively late, but I don't think that's the reason; and parts of Scotland were clan-based ('tribal') societies until relatively late, but I doubt that's the reason either.
At a guess, I'd point to the presbyterian version of Christianity, which emphasised equality rather than hierarchy. But if anyone has actual evidence, I'd be very interested to hear it!
I’m generally quite skeptical of cultural explanations for political economy. It’s not like the Anglicans (who are basically Catholics without the pope) didn’t fight and die in an attempt to preserve their commons.
Maybe the Presbyterian thing, but also I think there's something about the outdoors in Scots identity culture. There's a lot of walkable urban green space + kind of a romantic thing for wilderness even among city folk. (The tamed and forested land people think of as wild.)
That scene in Trainspotting springs to mind. The most disenfranchised white Scots you can imagine go out to the Highlands to talk about how "it's shite being Scottish."
There’s obviously a strong current of “outdoorsness” in all these countries. I wonder again if that isn’t a component of how generally sparsely populated, remote, and physically inaccessible so much of these countries are to the central state. In the same way that the mountains of northern Iraq and southern Turkey are a refuge to lots of communities that were otherwise wiped out or assimilated by centralizing states, I wonder if places like Scotland, Iceland, Switzerland, parts of Norway and Sweden, etc, were just too hard to enclose so they didn’t fully bother.
@HeavenlyPossum@simon_brooke You've got me thinking. School kids here learn about the Highland Clearances in quite graphic and formative ways, or at least they used to. It probably depends on the presentiments of your teacher, but I definitely heard about violent appropriation and enclosure of the commons, in quite radical terms, when I was like 10 years old, even though it didn't mean much til later. I wonder how common that kind of teaching is.
@MrBehemo@HeavenlyPossum I think it is quite common. The Highland Clearances are so recent, and were so utterly brutal. I mean, I think enclosure was brutal everywhere, but by the time of the clearances there was a well developed daily newspaper industry and there were a lot of contemporary accounts. Older enclosures were not nearly so public.
@HeavenlyPossum so, in Montana, there is a right to fish waterways -- they're considered public, even when they're on private lands. A very small version of this that nonetheless causes frictions.
That’s cool, I didn’t know that. Good for Montana! I do know there are bits and pieces left—beaches are all public in california, I think, but not much.
@HeavenlyPossum@ebrandom Yes, in California private parties can't own a beach below the high water mark. This is old, but the real battle was over access. This led to the 1972 creation of the Coastal Commission and the right to access even across private property. The right has been very broadly interpreted. The CCC has jurisdiction a mile inland, and has e.g. used the right to access to invalidate municipal beach curfews and anti-homeless parking regulations in beach cities. It's a huge source of ongoing conflict.
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