Commodification of common land vaulted capital past landowner supremacy globally

Evidence

By restricting access to land, the enclosures helped capital to transcend its original productivity-enhancing role and to grow exponentially in commanding power. Before long, the worldwide commodification of previously common lands had enabled capital to achieve supremacy in all corners of the globe. With the magnification of capital’s commanding power over labour, capital’s owners amassed great wealth. As their wealth accumulated, their social power proliferated. They graduated from being employers to agenda setters wherever big decisions were being made. Soon, capitalists could boss everyone around, including the landed gentry – even the royals. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 258

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s existing notes on how wealth converts to agenda-setting power — and to enclosure history from the trees/infrastructure article. — connects to: Modern power transferred from land ownership to capital ownership. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 247; Abuse of land stems from regarding it as owned commodity rather than community — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 10; Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1077 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Enclosing common lands converted capital into a commanding power that subordinated the old aristocracy. #expands (0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 258
• Capitalism’s triumph required first expropriating peasants from common lands #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 257
• Abuse of land stems from regarding it as owned commodity rather than community #expands (0.80) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 10
• US history centers fundamentally on control and commodification of land #corroborates (0.80)
• Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource #qualifies (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1077
• Colonial taxation converted communal land into male-owned private property #exemplifies (0.75) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 394
• Communal land doctrine yielded in practice to aristocratic grants after conquest #qualifies (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 349