The English enclosure movement dismantled rural communities by seizing common land.

Evidence

The loss of a primordial agrarian community, Marx’s story of so-called primitive accumulation and its role in the foundations of capitalist society, was part fable, part historical account of the enclosure movement, for instance. The enclosure movement usually refers to the historical moment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England when common land was appropriated by the English government and aristocracy, taken from those who lived on the land who were then forced to rent the land they lived on back from the new aristocratic “owners.” In the process, family members had to leave and work in factories in cities, destroying rural community in the name of capitalist “progress” through the theft of resources. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The English Enclosure Acts forced peasants off commons land into factory labor. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1365; Fen drainage enriched wealthy landlords while destroying peasants’ common-supported livelihoods — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 296