Stealing the Common from the goose.

By Ann Pettifor

1st September, 2001.

"They hang the man and flog the woman

Who steals the goose from off the Common;

But let the greater criminal loose

Who steals the Common from the goose".

I spent my summer break under the big skies of east Suffolk, in England, where this old rhyme is well known. It dates from one of the most brutal periods of English history, the so-called "enclosures" when landowners used discredited laws and a corrupt Parliament to forcibly evict the poor from common land. And then mercilessly punished the poor for stealing the odd goose.

The rhyme sums up nicely the imbalances and injustice of Suffolk’s eighteenth century political economy. But it also has a resonance for today’s global economy, where the weak, corrupt elites of poor nations are castigated; but the greater criminals, those who steal our global commons - go free.

In those days the aristocrats and landowners of Suffolk, like international creditors today, were an omnipotent class, controlling the universities, the Church, the law "and all the springs of life and discussion". They used Parliament, the powers of local government and local courts, and the influence of the Church to fabulously enrich themselves, while actively impoverishing and punishing the landless. This was social exclusion on a grand scale. But the landed class went further than that. Yeomen, small farmers and labourers were not only denied access to the land by the Acts of Enclosure. Once they were excluded, no stone was left unturned, no risk taken that might prevent the rich from getting even richer.

The parallels with today’s global forms of exploitation, appropriation and wealth accumulation could not be clearer.

Back then the active impoverishment of one class and the active enrichment of another was carried out under the hegemony of an ideology which was a mix of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, then "in full power". It was a political economy which the historians J and B Hammond say "robbed poverty of its sting for the rich, by representing it as "Nature’s medicine"…When the misery of the poor reacted on their own comfort, as in the case of poaching or crime or the pressure on the rates, they were aware of it and took measures to protect their own property, but of any social problem outside these relations they were entirely unconscious".

The Hammonds could as well be describing the attitude of international creditors to their own role in the economic and environmental degradation of today’s world. "Nothing to do with me, guv" is their approach to social, environmental and political problems in poor, debtor nations.

But while there are parallels with the past, there are also differences. The wealth appropriated by today’s equivalent of the Dukes of Marlborough and Abingdon (who enclosed Otmoor in Oxfordshire) would have aroused great envy in those aristocrats.. International bankers, creditors and investors have re-cycled the same old discredited economic ideological mix of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo to justify the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many; but this time they are armed with new, more sophisticated forms of appropriation. Privatisation is just one of the economic and political weapons in the armoury of international creditors for use against poor debtor nations. Like the Acts of Enclosure it is used to routinely strip poor nations of precious, vital assets like land, water, forests, energy and minerals. This "asset stripping" is legitimised by a remote and unaccountable institution (the IMF) and is carried out in the name of increased efficiency and productivity.

The governments of the G7, in particular the US, go further. They use their dominant power in the "parliaments" of the IMF, World Bank and WTO to grab unequal use of the global commons that is the earth’s atmosphere. Poor people in highly indebted nations, like the poor in Fielding’s novels, have no recourse to a system of justice; no form of democratic appeal. Those living through the floods and droughts caused by global climate change are as vulnerable and powerless as the children of eighteenth century labourers.

But while here in Suffolk there are powerful parallels and lessons from the past, there are also harbingers for the future.

The picturesque village of Dunwich is perched on the edge of the sea. A small museum bears witness to its history as a great seaport; but also to the corruption of its landed class. Its current predicament highlights the risks taken by today’s masters of the global commons.

Dunwich was once a "rotten borough" of about 2000 souls, where two hundred years ago only 12 people had the right to elect two Members. These Members sat in London, in a Parliament that was then as remote and unaccountable to the people of Dunwich, as the IMF in Washington is to the poor of Mozambique.

Today the power of that "rotten borough" has well and truly gone.

But so, sadly, has the town. Most of old Dunwich lies one and a half miles beneath the rising levels of a stormy, unforgiving North Sea. It is predicted to rise by about five feet during the next century, as a result of global warming, and threatens the whole of the East Anglian coast.

There are lessons for us all in Suffolk’s past; but also in its present, and uncertain future.