Land Commons

1. see Land as Commons
2. see Food as Common and Community

Discussion

Land as Community Property

Gene Callahan:

"Reading James C. Scott's excellent Seeing Like a State. He gives, as an example of how land was traditionally held, the following: "Rural living in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Denmark, for example, was organized by ejerlav, whose members had certain rights for using local arable, waste, and forest land. It would had have been impossible in such a community to associate a household or individual with a particular holding on a cadastral map."

This is just an example of the way land was typically held before the current system of clearly defined freehold of lots was imposed by the state on a reluctant society, and not by any process of "mixing one's labor" with virgin land. Land was owned by communities first.

I fully anticipate the objection, "But communities can't own anything!" Like "Only individuals choose," this is an obvious falsehood which is embraced precisely because it defends radically individualistic property arrangements against the force of historical truths such as those noted by Scott." (http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2011/08/homesteading.html)

More Information

1. Documents collated via http://files.uniteddiversity.com/Money_and_Economics/Land_Value_Tax/
2. http://commonsabundance.net/wiki/land/