Modernity, the Commons and Capitalism

One ancient mode, or should I say primitive mode of shelter, was to use the trees as the home space. Upon reaching the ground floor and starting to walk on twos, the human animal began to seek other modes of shelter such as caves and other natural barriers or enclaves that served as good sources for home-making and the protection from the elements or other natural dangers that the human animal faced in the primitive world.

Cyril Aydon, A Brief History of Mankind: 150,000 Years of Human History (2009) (2007); Hannah Holmes, A Natural History of Our Lives (Atlantic Books, 2010) (2008).

Let us start from the beginning, beyond our primitivism stage of existence, the laying of the foundation of the modern age---the Enlightenment and the arrival of Industrialization---unanchored the human animal in the pursuit of capital and investments wherever they existed. In other words, the human animal was set free from its anchorage to the land. And, so, capital replaced land as the key ingredient in modernist times. This new age also brought in a new political and social world, just as steep as the primitive ages in jumping from a Hunter-Gatherer stage to the Agricultural Age. What has become clear, over the last few centuries, is the realization that the human animal is not tamable and in fact a very deadly animal. Liberalism, conservatism, socialism, existentialism, fascism and other major political philosophies miss one thing: that our species is a deadly animal---a blood-soaked animal, even among the most generous reading of history. We, as a species, were bred long before we fell off the trees, walked on twos, etc. upon the milk of violence and bloodshed. Why? We can blame “Nature.” It layered on top of a lizard brain (a reptilian brain), an ape (mammalian) brain. Primates containing within their evolutionary history the amphibian and the reptilian structures of previous ions of biological and evolutionary development---‘nature’ not discarding previous structures completely but modifying them for further use. That is, previous ions of biological development, before the mammal makes an appearance on planet earth, nature was busy developing the process and modifications in the survival of biological entities on planet earth. Nature (the evolutionary process) used the patterns of previous species in layering on mammalian/primate brain on top of amphibian/reptilian brain. This mix of different species contained, in our species’ brain structure, has bred our species, sort to speak, for violence and bloodshed.

An aggressive posture, with regard, to using other animals as food, even though our species evolved from pre-humanoid tree animals that took most of its supplies from leafy greens and fruit to becoming an omnivore. Even though the human animal is neither a pure vegetarian or carnivore animal, it can use either food supply to get its required calories per day---had our species been a pure carnivore, slaughter would probably would have been much more ingrained in our genes; the contemplation, of the human animal as a pure carnivore, is too frightful to fathom---which, of course, would translate into greater bloodshed. Omnivore animals are less deadly and dangerous than carnivore animals.

Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (1967).

How does the modern human animal allocate space under industrial and post-industrial societies? We know the history of agricultural societies and the methods they used in the allocation of land. They worked the land and lived off the land. What is clear is that, with the rise of capital and technological development, land has become a second-class citizen to the rising tide of capital formation and capital accumulation. The Common Law began to accommodate the needs of industry and business during the early part of the 19^th century. According to the eminent legal historian, Morton J. Horwitz: “[M]ill acts adopted in a large number of states and territories on the model of the Massachusetts law were, more than any legal measure, crucial in dethroning landed property from the supreme position it had occupied in the eighteenth century world view, and ultimately, in transforming real estate into just another cash-valued commodity.”

Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 48 (1977).

As the Common Law was being transformed, in the United States to accommodate business and industry, the Enclosure movement

J. A. Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (1977).

How is the word ‘Commons’ being used here? The idea of the Commons has a long history. The Commons harkens back to medieval English history. It refers to a manor and its commons as a way of life for the English for well over a thousand years before the rise of capitalism and the acceleration of the Enclosure movement and finally its extinction by the mid-19^th century. We are defining a Commons, as a piece of property surrounding a manor or a point of centrality for any given community, that can be used by the locals for their own purposes and ends. That is, in demarcating a modern Commons, or the bringing-back of a Commons model, based on medieval English traditions, would require certain modifications, in-light of the eclipsing of the Agricultural age, by the Industrial age. A modern definition of a Commons can simple be of any central point, in given communities, that leaves surrounding area open for use by the commoners, or put more modernly, the people of those communities. The Commons is a piece of property that is open to all in the community for their use. It is not public property, in the sense that it is open for the whole world to use but restricted for the use and benefit of the locals living in that community. However, the modern Commons, instead of the Commons surrounding the Manor House, as in ancient times, the modern Commons surrounds the City Hall or Town Hall or Central House, so designated as ideal for establishing the Commons, and such central entity will govern, support, and execute the will of the community to have and establish their particular type of Commons. A much broader definition of the Commons also includes what is referred to as Common-Pool

Modern Common-Pool resources encompasses a very wide range of issues beyond the scope of this article such as Environmental issues which deal with a much larger chunk of the modern economy than land-use issues. Nevertheless, learning to deal with Common-Pool resources becomes essential for cooperative efforts to reduce the impact of the human animal on planet earth and its natural resources.

In the case of Land-Use matters, involving the setting up a Commons, market economists would be horrified at such a messy prospect. According to capitalists, these communal paradoxes can disappear and be vanquished by introducing the principles of private property ownership of land. Private property can better accomplish a clean-up of environment and contamination issues by markets. The point of efficiency is one thing, the point of sharing communal property effectively is another. To prevent anarchy in dealing with Commons or Common Pool Resource problems requires a strong central authority, granted by the commoners, in the monitoring and enforcement of rules, for usage of common land. The centrality of the matter is ground zero, local centrality, rather than national centrality, since those closest to the ground are the most knowledgeable as to how best to deal with the Commons. By mathematization and strict scientific analysis is not the best way to deal with Commons issues but by those with hands-on-the-ground, in midst of the ebb and flow of communities, that rise and fall over time and require the workings and justice systems of the commons work and re-worked to make the necessary adjustments, as the flow of life is not stationary but dynamic and must be continuously adjust with proper and fair solutions as demanded on the ground. It is an issue of dynamic phenomenology.

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction of Phenomenological Philosophy (David Carr trans., 1970) (1936); Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (1981 paperback ed.)(1978).

During the early history of the United States, the unbounded frontier

Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (2006).

In the United States, land use was primarily left to the States and Local governmental entities to deal with, mostly local governments. And this is the proper process, that land use be dealt with primarily by the locals, but that does not absolve the Federal & State governments of not providing any resources or assistance to the local communities to better monitor, enforce, distribute, and resolve local land use matters. That is, local governments do not have adequate resources to properly and fairly deal with land use issues. Should Commons property start popping up around communities all over the United States, it will require all hands onboard—Federal, State, and Local—to make the new system work. Of course, this becomes essential, especially the role of the Federal government, in taking the lead in matters involving and dealing with wide scale Common-Pool issues such as the environment, oceans, and climate change.

The early days of America and up to the close of the 19^th century, America had abundant land for the taking. The major issue was the development of that land. The unbounded frontier of America provided the space to make the obligations of property holders as minimal as possible, since any serious obligations could provoke them to pick up stakes and move elsewhere. But since the frontier has long been closed, there needs to be tighter regulations of land use and the need for national policies, giving lawmakers stronger tools to police the landscape and public domain space from the encroachment of private property.

Land use management has basically fallen to private hands, essentially the most powerful interests. Currently, the public property/public space has been rendered as second class property under capitalism via the growth of the corporation. With minimal restrains by the public sector over the corporate interests, due to the influence exerted by Big Business in the USA and under the political and philosophical dogma that free markets, individualism and private property ownership is the gold standard of life, public interests have become subservient to private interests. Although the use of anti-trust legislation exists, it is weak and not strong enough to curb or contain the corporate structure.

George E. Garvey & Gerald J. Garvey, Law and Economic Growth: Antitrust, Regulation and the American Growth System (ann. ed. 1990); Edwin Mansfield, Monopoly Power and Economic Performance: Problems of the Modern Economy (4th ed. 1978); John E. Kwoka, Jr. & Laurence J. White, The Antitrust Revolution: The Role of Economics (2d ed. 1994).

As indicated earlier, the problems and paradoxes of the Commons is not a science problem

Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 Sci. 1243–48 (1968); Ronald Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, 3 J.L. Econ. 1–44 (1960); Russell Hardin, Collective Action (1982); Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965); Ostrom, supranote 9.

The concept of the Commons and community have suffered under capitalism if not eliminated altogether. If the concept of public space is to be well regarded, from its low regard in American history, it is imperative that public institutions be respected and strengthened to serve as a “countervailing” force to privateers and profiteers such as the modern corporations. John Kenneth Galbraith has made the case, in his 1952 book, American Capitalism, that a capitalist system, left unchecked by countervailing forces, will tend towards the monopolization of resources.

John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (2012) (1952); John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (3d rev. ed., 1978); Immanuel Wallerstein, After Liberalism (1995); Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America (25th ann. ed. 2007).

The modern Commons must be able to determine: Whatever is grown on the Commons/or taken off the Commons is for one's own benefit or the local community, but not for national or international sale. What is grown/or taken from the Commons is for local benefit only. 1)

Commons property is not private nor public property. Should one want to make use of the Commons, then so be it. Since the Commons is not private property, one cannot reserve the property or keep the property upon leaving the community. In other words, Commons property does not travel with the user.

Liberalism in the United States has come to mean the right to buy stuff, regardless of environmental damage because the whole economy depends on making and selling stuff.

Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870–920 (1990).

How has it come about that America is enslaved in the factory system of production psychology? And the factory system mentality pervades (even though manufacturing jobs have left the USA in droves); maybe, it is because such a system raised the United States from a reginal power to a world power; in that it first gave Americans domination over North America and later domination of the globe.

Joshua B. Freeman, American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945–2000 (2012).

One such alternative to capitalist production is to nurture the Commons (and other green spaces) and to grant people rights to the land for their immediate use. An earlier generation of Americans, the Progressives and Populists, at the close of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, attempted to wrest control from Big Business interests with some success.

Charles Derber, Regime Change Begins at Home: Freeing America from Corporate Rule 29–30 (2004):

Despite its awesome power, this first corporate regime forced a radical challenge by the Populists, fiery farmers and plain-spoken people from the heartland who created the People's Party in 1892, captured the Democratic Party in 1896, and launched one of the country's most politics of regime change. They proclaimed in 1892 that corporations were being used “enslave and impoverish the people. Corporate feudality has taken the place of chattel slavery.” While the Populists melted away with the 1896 presidential defeat of their candidate, William Jennings Bryan, they helped give rise to the reform movement of the Progressive Era under the “trust-buster,” President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1907, Roosevelt called for “the effective and thorough-going supervision by the National Government of all the operations of the big interstate business concerns,” a direct challenge to the “free market” regime discourse of the robber barons.

To take the human animal into an artificial world is to remove that animal from its natural settings and primitivism that it has existed since the dawn of civilization. Once again, the animal becomes free to gather the resources it needs for survival from the land, in the location of its existence, rather than roaming the land as in Hunter-Gatherer times. It looks like capitalism has brought forth a new Hunter-Gatherer age by sending the worker to roam the globe to find, produce, and utilize capital in the most efficient manner possible. Although establishing a Commons, in and of itself, is insufficient to provide the human animal complete safety and control over the boom and bust cycles of capitalism, it at least takes the first step in the integration of that animal to its community. Most likely a modern Commons, in the utilization of land, will only go so far and no further in meeting all the needs of modern human in the Industrial Age. That is, whether a Commons is used as a garden, re-training centers, retooling and repurposing skills centers, such as job re-training centers, is a determination for the locals to decide how best to setup and run their Commons. During the medieval times sheep grazing and wood collection might make a good use of the Commons, but during modern times, skill and re-tooling one's skills, may make better sense. The capitalist cycle uproots the workers from their localities, so that their labor power can be used wherever the systems needs them. The urban and suburban geographical spaces along with demographic shifts ebb and flow with each capitalist boom and bust cycle.

Bruce Katz & Robert E. Long, Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000, Vols. 1, 2 & 3 (2003, 2005, 2006).

The return of the Commons (the attempt to bring back the Commons) is one small step towards returning the animal to the garden. Once again as a reminder of its biological connection with its primitive aspects and as a functional alternative to the mathematization and commodification of space and time.

Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–600 (1997).

It should not mean that cities of the future must be based on the factory model of production. And cities, like Detroit or other cities that have been depopulated due to the bust cycles of capitalism, are given a second chance of revival, by re-engineering themselves, by dedicating more open space/green space/environmentally friendly space for the greening of their cities and greater space availability for the Commons.

Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1947); Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 1 (1968) (1937).

The problem of property acquisition, distribution, rationalization, and use is directly connected with the modern age via its connection to the Age of Reason/Age of Science, Enlightenment, and Post-Enlightenment

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1957); Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (reprint ed. 1989) (1930); Andre Groz, Critique of Economic Reason (1989); Edward A. Purcell, Jr., The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism & the Problem of Value (1973).

In other words, the accountancy of everything of value and the discounting of the environmental aspects to life such as air, water and land that can be contaminated at will because they cannot be privatized and put into the accounting books. It is assumed under capitalist conditions that everything can be parceled, chopped up and distributed to the highest bidder. Natural entities like the oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, air, etc., unappropriated property that are used by the public are there for the taking or contamination simply as externalities of doing business.

Because under modern conditions, it is assumed that the human animal can be individualized and marked off or cut off from nature from which it came and become an appendage of the machine---just as in previous ages it was an appendage of the plough. Capitalism has not freed the human animal from the modern plough, just substituted modern forms of ploughs that the animal can be yoked to. If we know anything about the Age of Reason, it was an effort to expel religion, superstition, and mysticism from the day to day world, and replace the medieval world with common sense, science, mathematics, and the questioning of one's presuppositions before leaping off the ground.

Modern societies have transformed the natural landscape in pursuit of beliefs of efficiency and productivity in the use of the landscape, under a capitalist ideology. The prioritization of the use of the landscape for the commodification process has eclipsed other modes of non-capitalist Being. Prior ages had their own transformative belief of the landscape to meet the needs of those living at the time. Under capitalist ideology, the solution to human problems being the-to-at-hand animal

Heidegger, supranote 26.

The bottom line being that work along with technological assistance can assist human power to bring nature under our control and dominion. These technological developments also tie the human animal and relate that animal to artificially created spaces and environments---through the efficient use of technology, that create the space or bubble for in-space living. That is, human animals create artificial spaces along a given landscape. The impact of that artificial space may be minimal or can be rather an extensive overhaul to meet the real or artificial needs of those making the change to the landscape---by way of extreme example, think of the artificial conditions that must be created to put the human animal into space once it leaves its natural environment, earth. No animal can live on the landscape of the moon without drastic reconstructions and reconfigurations to simulate earth conditions. During earlier times, the human animal lacking in how-to knowledge and technological tools was only able to make minimal modifications to the landscape. Aliens landing at the site thousands of years later would not be able to see the remains or the footprints left behind by the human animal in primitive spaces using primitive tools. But with greater technological prowess, it becomes real and very dangerous that a life-blood animal, like a human, with limited use and control of rational thinking and actions can devastate the natural landscape in an instant. Of course, the underlying presumption, under the Age of Reason/Enlightenment Age, that human reason can do away with its primitive belief structures and come up with efficient strategies to maximize the good for all. Of course today, with a more nuanced view of the rational capabilities of natural animals, with a mixture of amphibian, reptilian, and mammalian brain structures, sits uneasily besides the beliefs of the Enlightenment generation of intellectuals.

Our solution to capitalism and the rationalization of land use will be: we can start by attempting to create de-rationalized landscape/land-space---decommodification and de-glorification of markets and the transformation of living, from one of acquiring products and commodities, to one that is one (in unity) with the land that sustains us.

Polanyi, supranote 39.

Those that have land ownership have a privilege to use the land from the State, but not the right to the ownership of the land itself. That is, the ultimate control of the land always rests with the State, but the State grants the owner certain rights and privileges to the land that has been improved upon by its legal owner. However, the title owner to the land only holds provisional or conditional control, until the State has a need either to take the land from the private owner for public use via the takings clause or via eminent domain processes, as per the specification of the 5^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

George Skouras, Takings Law and the Supreme Court: Judicial Oversight of the Regulatory State’s Acquisition, Use, and Control of Private Property (2000 paperback ed.) (1998)); George Skouras, On the Formation of the American Corporate State: The Fuller Supreme Court, 1888–1910 J. Juris. 37 (2011).

If human animals do not have capital resources to sustain themselves, then they should have recourse to return to the land itself. Since the land is a natural resource, all creatures can claim a space on it, be it humanoid or not. Should that landscape become privatized or monopolized, as is the case under modernist/capitalist conditions, then life under that landscape becomes a privilege of the owners. Land cannot be bought or sold like any other commodity. However, during early in the 19^th century, Morton Horwitz, in his major work, The Transformation of American Law 1780–1860, tells us how land was being transformed into capital. “As a result, the mill acts adopted in a large number of states and territories on the model of Massachusetts law were, more than any other legal measure, crucial in dethroning landed property from its supreme position it had occupied in the eighteenth century world view, and ultimately, in transforming real estate into just another cash-valued commodity.”

Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 47–48 (1979).

According to modern Western political philosophy, the land is tied up with the sovereign or the sovereign has the power to decide how land is to be used and divided amongst the populace. However, if the land is foundational to life, then the sovereign,

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Penguin Books, 1968 paperback ed.) (1651); so, the two British philosophers, (Hobbes and Locke) serving as foundational heads of the Enlightenment, along with the coming of the French Revolution and French intellectuals, were important sources in shaping the American Republic; of course local American intellectuals/politicians such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were susceptible to the ideas of reason.

So, what is to be done?

Elinor Ostrom, James Walker& Roy. Gardner, Covenants With and Without the Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible, 40 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 309–17 (1992).

Now, if life is beyond the materiality of existence, it is not to say the obverse is true; that it must be spirituality that is the necessary element to living life. No, materiality is the condition of life but to appreciate life requires reflection, self-reflection and otherness-reflection, to fit into nature properly. Those that find spirit or mystery in nature should not be pushed aside in the name of materialism. The proper natural fit can only be obtained when each individual is thrown into a particular civilizational mold but starts to build themselves as experiential and cognitive beings during the course of their lives---not according to the dicta of the given, but the dicta of the possible within the restraints of the civilizational mold they find themselves in---that is, the civilization one is thrown into becomes the horizon the possible because no one can escape their civilization they are thrown into, that is to say one does not get to pick the times one is born into.

Freud, supranote 39; Polanyi, supranote 44; Madam Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism, (2d ed. 1993); Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Guenther Roth & Claus Wittich trans., 1978) (1922).

What is the American way to materialism? Produce it and they will buy it; build it and they will come. The American creed, as it has developed over the span of the Industrial Revolution, and only found in embryonic form prior to the Civil War, is that materialism is the be-all and end-all of the American system and the American way of life. This belief in materialism is in a sense a throwback to more primitive conditions of life, in that the acquisition of land, property, and objects were the very fabric of life itself. One would have assumed that machines and robots would have eased the burdens of humans, and in supporting a civilization that transcended the more barbarous activities forced upon human animals for their existence on planet earth in earlier times and would have progressed to non-materialist development of self. Yes, there have been many preachers over the centuries advocated for the development of the spirit rather than materialist concerns. In a sense, all religions preach such a message, but none of the previous civilizations could offer alternatives to the barbarous conditions the human animal faced on earth---so it was basically an empty message if humanity could do nothing about its daily barbarous activity.

Of course, modern day tele-preachers, with their tele-churches have eroded any semblance to the early Calvinist Protestantism. But there is something in the Protestant spirit that, unlike other religions, frees the individual to master the world in the glory of God or as a manifestation of God's will on earth. Of course, this phenomenon of Calvinistic Protestantism was noticed early on by Max Weber.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Peter Baehr & Gordon C. Wells trans., 2002) (1905).

The necessity for the quick destruction of products is the key to modern society renewing itself by the employment of what otherwise would be idle hands---the unemployed being thrown off the line if the production line ceased to move forward. The assembly line, in the making of and assembly of cheap goods, that could be used once and discarded as quickly as possible to help continue to feed the workers on the line. That is, in order to sustain and maintain the capitalist system of production, nature itself must be destroyed in order to produce enough commodities to keep the workers at their tasks and hence curb any from revolting or revolution.

Life for production, not life for living. Globalization and free trade are good for the capitalists but bad for the workers. It has become unfortunate that the trend for re-locating work to the cheapest places on the globe, now more than 150 years in the making, has not been able to be reversed or contained, to give the masses a better chance at life because it is justified and sold under principles of rationality, efficiency, modernity, and progress. It might be progress for the top 1% but a nightmare for the remaining 99%.

Ray Ginger, Age of Excess: American Life from the End of Reconstruction to World War I (1965); Klein, supranote 32.

What does this mean? The support of industry at the expense of family and community. The idea of bringing back the Commons can serve to open-up space to alternative experiences outside the commodification experience.

Liberals, like John Rawls, have the belief that fairness and justice can be restored under a veil of ignorance in the distribution of talent and resources. He belongs to the social contract tradition.

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (rev. ed. 1999) (1971).

Rawls must have been aware that there is no period in human history that has been able to escape battle, war, killings, bloodshed, etc. for any extended period of time, and such a bipedal animal would use all available weapons in its toolbox, at any historical time, to carry forward killing on a small scale or in mass. As I indicated at the start of this paper, I suppose we can blame ‘Nature’ for this disposition; if we can ask ‘Nature’ why it has infused the human animal with such a deadly aspect/nature: ‘Nature’, in your infinite wisdom, why did you bring forth a species like the human being via a method of layering neo-cortex on top of more primitive and earlier brain, on top the brain stem rather than start afresh in the construction of the human animal? I fear ‘Nature’ will respond with silence. The way evolution operates is not by discarding previous patterns that survived but building on them; if a fish or a reptile could prove resilient and survive, why not add additional brain on top of existing brain? The vertebrate pattern did no start afresh but built up from the invertebrate pattern of previous ions of development.

Clearly, Rawls starts from a utopian proposition. Equality and freedom are metaphysical concepts. No two animals are identical. So, no two animals can biologically be compared as identical, but only similar. Similarity is not identity. The only equality that can exists is a metaphysical equality or mathematical equality. The liberty Rawls speaks of is only historically contingent liberty and hence has no universality. Currently, in America the corporation rules,

Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, (25th ann. ed. 2007) (1982).

The major conclusion derived here is that open space must remain open within city, suburban, and rural settings. The control of space for market use has displaced animal living for the accommodation of transactional living---living from moment to moment in the ledgers of the transactional books. We see this most clearly when the capitalist boom and bust cycles throws workers into the streets without any recourse for them to fall back on alternative opportunities, since the capitalist enterprise has cut off land-use except for capitalistic activity.

Let us summarize what this article has attempted to do: it has attempted to claim the Commons from the profiteers for the people. It has found a historical point of entry into the Anglo-American tradition before it was eclipsed by capitalism. It has put forth the normative claim that ALL members of a given community have a stake in the Commons; this is not a privilege offered by the profiteers or the government but a natural right based on a person's existence, and their existence cannot be taken away from them either by the government sector or the profiteers; and the Commons automatically attaches upon the formation of any community. The capitalist distributional model is unjust and unfair to all those that cannot command commodities under modern capitalism. That is to say that, modern capitalist conditions benefit a small section of society or community and excludes vast amounts of people from its benefits because it is exclusively based on the privileging of property ownership as an entrance point to the community. It generates a non-personal existence based on the non-personal commodity transaction. This yields a poor harvest as to the quality and nature of life for the human animal. It does not elevate the human animal but tries to extract its labor power and time on planet earth in exchange for wages. It is destructive of communities as it is the broader society in general. There is currently nothing on the horizon that will eliminate capitalism. However, by taking small steps to providing alternative means of existence to capitalism, we are hopefully firing the first shots towards its ultimate modification and demise. If it cannot be done in one swoop, then by taking small bites sizes out of it, until the day comes that other ways of Being can come into existence, that is not based on the cash-nexus and alternatives to the capitalist ways of Being can be seen on the horizon.

The article attempted to open-up the landscape to alternative use of space to the capitalist/utilitarian uses and to offer a way of life or revive ways of life that have been destroyed by markets and capitalism. It is an effort to give an equal opportunity to dispossessed people; by checking capitalism to only a portion of the life-cycle demands of the individual and not the totality-of-human existence and Being; that there be reserved to Being a portion of existence that is non-commercial, non-marketable, or on the selling block of capitalism---that some physical space remain open and available for the locals rather than gobbled up by the turbines of capitalist industrialization. That is, that some natural resources and spaces be off-the-market, not for sale.