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How Usury Encloses The Commons

November 15, 2014
Martin Conway

(Left/Above: the Trillions that they rake in in Usury every year allow the Bankers to hire endless numbers of fools in pretty suits to explain it’s all for the greater good and they have their media parade these people before an ever more desensitized public. This particular specimen, Fine Gael Senator Martin Conway, while trying to sell water meters to the Irish, managed to say on television ‘water does not just fall out of the sky, you know’.)

The Enclosure of the Commons is an ongoing process, in which the peoples of the World are disowned from their natural heritage. Paying for their own land, their own water and soon their own sunlight and air. It’s an integral part of our complete enslavement.

Usury has, throughout the ages, driven this disownment of the commoner.

Complete liberation of the Commons is a key goal in the struggle for real economic freedom. Commoners have a right to access to their fair share of the Commons at cost price.

The Commons are “the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth.”

The difference between the Commons and Capital is that Capital goods were created by men, the Commons were created by God.

Capital should be owned by its creator or by those who have purchased it. The Commons are part of our common heritage and every human being has by natural law rights to his fair share in them.

Capital goods that were created in the common interest, with public means, must also be considered part of the Commons. For instance a public railway system.

The commoner is anybody with rights to the Commons.

The historical context
Throughout history, there is an ongoing battle between the rich and the many for control of the Commons. It’s a key part of our economic history.

Currently, we are in the endgame of this process: the people have been basically completely disowned already and after the coming collapse, the ultra wealthy and the State will consolidate what up till now remained in the hands of the middle class.

The same process brought the 1000 year old Roman Empire down: when it collapsed, all land and most other assets had been centralized in the hands of a very few through Usury and this unsustainable situation was ultimately the reason why it was brought down.

In Medieval Europe, the Landed Aristocracy and the Vatican owned the Land and the commoner lost about 10 to 20% of his production in rents and taxes to his ‘Lords’. Unskilled Labor worked about 15 weeks a year to feed a family. A Craftsman could afford to work even less.

There is no reason to idealize the situation. Life was brutal in many ways and the distinction between the Aristocracy and the common man was enormous. Serfdom is hardly what we are looking for. The spiritual tyranny of the Vatican came with many outrages.

Still, there can be no doubt at all that the standard of living in Britain in the late Medieval era was much higher than for instance during the 19th century. While Britain ruled the waves, the British common man faced an abject fate in the sweatshops, should he manage to escape the press gangs.

Only after the war did things really improve for the commoner. But over the last 40 years real wages have been declining constantly, meaning all economic ‘growth’ is being gobbled up by the 0,001%.

So what’s going on? How is it possible that in the ‘rich West’ the commoner must now work 40 hours per week, up to 50 weeks a year for sustenance? That 150 years ago, normal people were far worse off than their ancestors in the Middle Ages?

What happened?

Well, Usury happened, and Usury started buying up the Commons, gaining rents, while raising them too. People are more and more forced to pay more and more for what was always theirs.

Usurpation of the Commons

Usurpation of the Commons is sold as 'privatization' and is also known as 'enclosure'.

Usurpation of the Commons is sold as ‘privatization’ and is also known as ‘enclosure’.

It’s an ongoing process, continuing very much today. Globally. Water is the main front at the moment. An excellent example is Ireland: the IMF (Usury) forced the Irish Government to install water meters at private homes. Part of the ‘structural adjustments’ ‘necessary’ for making available the next tranche of loans (which are needed service the old loans). This prepares for the next step: privatizing the water utility.

This step has already been taken in Detroit, another place ‘needing’ bail outs after it was suckered by the bankers’ derivative hoax. The obvious result: rising prices, people being cut off from what is of course basically their own property.

Meanwhile, they’re creating artificial scarcity, by destroying competition and alternative sources. Fracking is undoubtedly a huge part of that.

And it’s not just water. Even sunlight is now under attack. In Spain draconian fines are threatened to those who dare use solar panels. The Solar Police is allowed to enter Spanish private quarters without a warrant if they suspect somebody may leeching off of the sun, which is just another finite resource, that ‘doesn’t just fall out of the sky, you know’.

‘Next they’ll tax us for breathing’, is an old running gag. But it’s not a joke and there is every reason to believe that at some point either the State or a Corporation will claim ‘air is not a human right’ and is a ‘finite resource’.

How the Money Power busted the Landed ‘Aristocracy’
In Medieval Europe, say starting around the 13th century, when urbanization started and the first Kings managed to forge the basics of the Nation States, Usury was already on board. Lending to the Kings, not even at interest, but in return for concessions. Taking over sources of income from the State.

Providing the Landed Aristocracy with mortgages (who would then default), slowly but surely started centralizing Land in the hands of richer and richer Plutocrats. The Protocols extensively describe this process. They boast how they managed to make the Kings believe that borrowing was in their interest, while at 5% already after 20 years the whole principal was paid in interest, without even denting the debt itself. While the Kings could have taken everything in taxation from their people directly.

They also report on slowly but surely pushing out the Landed Aristocracy, both through Usury and marriage. They point at the French Revolution as the coup de grace for the Aristocracy as a political force. But they remained a problem, because their land holdings allowed them and their people to at least live freely from their own lands, allowing them real sovereignty. This issue was finally settled in the 19th and 20th century by taxing land holdings.

While 1789 settled matters in the West, the Protocols predated 1917, which destroyed the old arrangements in the East. Even in America the basic conflict is visible, with the Landed Plutocrats framing the Constitution, while the Bankers established control in the early 19th century through Hamilton.

Another infamous example is post 1066 Britain, when William the Conqueror allowed the Jews into England. With them came Usury and the shetar, their contracts, subverting classical English common law. Within decades Jews were the richest people in the country.

Jews were, like most Gentiles, forbidden to own land, but ways were found to make it possible for debtors to collateralize land holdings and the issue quickly became a major plague. The Magna Carta was the first reaction against their practices and in 1290 they were kicked out of the country, until that despicable (ask the Irish) Calvinist stooge of Jewish Amsterdam Finance, Cromwell, let them back in.

Usury leads to escalating rents
Usury not only allows for enclosure of the Commons, it also allows for higher rents. For instance: to buy some land, most people will need a mortgage. A mortgage costs 150% of the principal in Usury over 30 years. Landlords pass these costs on to tenants. Even when the mortgage has been paid off, and there is no cost for capital to pass on anymore, there is the wholly artificial idea of ‘opportunity cost’. The money invested in Land could have been profitably invested elsewhere and the ‘loss’ of this ‘opportunity’ must be ‘compensated’.

Nowadays about 75% of rents for housing are Usury or ‘opportunity cost’ passed on by the landlord.

Conclusion
The idea that people need to pay for the land they live on from the moment they were born is strictly for humans only. No other species has a brain powerful enough to spin reality into such absurdity.

Nobody can call himself free if he’s a slave to landlordism, just as he cannot be free as long as he is chained by Usury and scarce money.

Classical Economists, like Adam Smith, Ricardo and the people before them, considered Land, Labor and Capital to be the factors of production. 

Modern Economics‘, beginning with Karl Marx, managed to obscure this.

We need to reestablish again the difference between man made goods and our natural heritage, so that we can have a clear view of our rights and duties.

Land reform and the wider liberation of the Commons is a key target in the struggle against the Plutocracy.

As we have seen, it is Usury that has managed to usurp the Commons, overtaking the Landed Aristocracy that preceded it as the main power, so monetary reform is obviously the main goal.

But Land reform is definitely its younger brother and part of the same fight.

Related:
The Public Vs. Private Dialectic, Or: Money As Part Of The Commons

Unfortunately, current land reform proposals, most notably Georgism, are lacking, mainly because of their mistaken trust in the State and taxation.
In a forthcoming article we’ll discuss how we can equitably reform land, without empowering the State and/or its opulent owners.

39 Comments
  1. Al Fontaine permalink

    Mr. Migchels,

    Thank you for another very good essay on history, economics and usury. In it you have referred a topic which is dear to me, to wit, the suffering of the Irish under the Calvinist spirit. May I draw on your knowledge of this subject and ask you for some reading suggestions?

    Thank you very much.

  2. Anthony wrote: “Usury has, throughout the ages, driven this disownment of the commoner.”

    If by “usury” you mean charging interest on debt then you are missing the bigger point. It is the debt itself that is the tool that creates national financial slavery.

    The “common wealth” has been replaced by the national debt as nation states choose to borrow all of their money from a privately owned banking monopoly that has none.

    In 1941, congressman Wright Patman asked Marriner Eccles, governor of the Federal Reserve board how the Fed gets the money to buy government bonds:

    Eccles: “We createded it”

    Patman: “Out of what?”

    Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money”

    Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government’s credit?”

    Eccles: “That is what our money system is, If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

    This important exchange tells us two things:

    The money created for free by the banks, is solely backed by the credit of the people and the property of the United States. The banks add nothing, not even a guarantee that the money won’t lose value but yet they benefit by collecting interest on money they never had. If the interest is not paid, then the banks collect the pledged collateral, either way they win.

    If government bonds are fully secured by the credit of the people and the property of the United States, why aren’t they simply issued as money instead of bonds? Why is a parasitic private monopoly required? By entering into this arrangement, we essentially made our government subservient to the international banking cartel – we gave away our financial sovereignty which is the basis of our freedom and independence.

    The Fed does not create money, it creates debt which we accept as money. This is why the United States cannot add to its national wealth without adding to its national debt.

    Instead of a national debt, we should build the national wealth by creating our own money.

    • Nono Larry, it’s not the debt, it’s the Usury on the debt, make no mistake.

      However, to a banker, as to most folks, debt and Usury are nowadays synonyms. It seems unthinkable, debt without Usury.

      But the facts are that for the debt, real items were purchased. For the Usury, we get nothing.

      Why do we hear about scrapping debts, but NEVER about an interest-strike, or even just 5 years of no interest-payments, so that the debt can be repaid?

      No, without Usury on the debt, the debts would quickly wither away. It’s the Usury that is the profit for the Usurer.

      The Bank just prints the money and gains nothing from it: they retire the money when it is repaid.

      It’s the Usury why they lend. Money creation itself is a total side issue.

      Which, by the way, is why we hear all about money creation and debt these days. Just another distraction.

      • I would say that usury and debt are two sides of one coin.

      • Anthony wrote: “Nono Larry, it’s not the debt, it’s the Usury on the debt, make no mistake.”

        Do you think it is ok for nation states to continue to borrow all of their money from private banks provided the loans/bonds are written at 0% interest?

        • you’re both right. it is the usury that causes all the problems (and control of humanity) but the government can issue its money and nobody will ever owe it back – it would be created and paid out for infrastructure, public services etc., and monitored and retired as and when needed.

          there is never any debt as such. and you’re absolutely right – this is the key to defeating the not-so-secret-anymore enemy that has infiltrated every system and apparatus of state, as well as all the world ‘ngos,’ and creating the free and beautiful world people are now looking for.

          have you heard about the guernsey pound? brilliant and simple illustration:

          http://www.michaeljournal.org/guernsey.htm

          • daznez wrote: “but the government can issue its money and nobody will ever owe it back… there is never any debt as such… – this is the key to defeating the not-so-secret-anymore enemy that has infiltrated every system and apparatus of state”

            Yes, I totally agree!

            You linked to the Michael Journal and an article on Guernsey by Louis Even which I think explains much:

            Guernsey’s monetary experiment – “But ten years after the first issue, the island had become so prosperous, thanks to the activity allowed by a sufficient volume of money, that the banks of England had en eye on this island.

            “English bankers set up branches in the island and brought the population around to orthodox rules. “It was unsound,“ they said, “to let the government finance its enterprises without getting into debt.”

            “The bankers did everything to stop further issues to introduce the system of interest-bearing loans to the government and to withdraw from the island the State money that had been paid out into circulation.

            “There was some resistance, but the bankers won their point, with their usual methods, and on October 9, 1836, the States of Guernsey had abdicated their sovereign prerogative over the control of the volume of money. From then on, the amount of the national currency decreased gradually, and was replaced by money issued by private bankers in the form of loans getting the island into debt.”

            It seems so simple that it should not need to be explained that yes, sovereign nations should issue their own money free from debt to any other entity.

            No doubt, the private sector and local government should have access to interest free money via secured loans but the sovereign should never, ever, be in debt!

        • jim koconis permalink

          anthony is correct in pointing out that the problem isn’t debt, but rather the usury on the debt. all money is both a symbol of debt and credit. you cannot have one without the other. debt is a necessary condition for money to exist. money only represents a debt or a credit.

          usury unnaturally increases the debt but not the credit.

          the only instance where money represent something other than debt or credit is between the instant it is created and before the time it is deployed into the economy (spent – with the hope that it will be spent on something ‘creditable’. credit means ‘to believe’. the belief is that what one receives in exchange for money is useful, meaningful, good, beneficial)

          consequently, money only exists as money when it is spend. saving money is a form of usury just as charging interest on loaned money is a form of usury. money’s sole purpose is to symbolize both debt and credit simultaneously.

          larry is correct to point out that the government can and should create all the money rather than sell interest bearing bonds. in fact, a government only should perform this act of creation one time.
          an economy could just as efficiently operate on a money supply of $100 as it could on a money supply of $100,000,000,000,000. the reason, of course, is that money simply represents a relationship between debt and credit. a larger money supply doesn’t increase anyone’s debts or credits.

          usury doesn’t harm the general economy either if it is on existing money. however, if usury is charged on money that is unrepresentative of a real credit then it depreciates the purchasing strength of all other existing money. this is a form of theft.

          the only solution to this problem is for the government to establish a fixed money supply – once and for all time. doing so would not eliminate usury between consenting parties but it would provide for a scientific and transparent system that people could both understand usefully employ.

          usury will always exist because human beings are, to a large part, very selfish. most people spend a good part their waking hours trying to figure out a scheme that will provide them the largest return with the least cost.

    • Usury and debt are two sides of one coin.

  3. jim koconis permalink

    you have a great website michael. i follow it all the time and wish everyone did. very few people have actually studied or understand the ‘exchange system’ whereby human beings acquire the necessities of life – commonly called the ‘monetary system’ but more accurately identified as the ‘ symbolic system’.

    ‘money’ is only the particular name for a symbol. all symbols are fictions (created out of nothing – ex nihlo} and deployed by their creators to convince others that they accurately and faithfully represent something real. but they never do! it is impossible for a symbol to ever represent anything other than the fiction it, in fact, is.

    usury is a weapon based upon this fiction. without the fiction (money = a symbol) usury could not exist. in order to eliminate usury one would have to strip the human imagination of its proclivity to communicate via symbols – which of course cannot ever happen.

    why?

    god has designed human reality so that all communication is symbolic – including the exchanges required to secure the necessities of life. and god has done this for the most benevolent of reasons.

    usury is not simply the ‘interest’ levied on hypothecated (fake-symbolic) money (fake- symbolic). usury is primarily the very purpose for which any and all money is ever created and deployed.

    in other words – without usury money would not and could not exist. you cannot have money without usury. they both belong to the very same fiction – separated only by the degree that the human imagination might exercise itself in creating illusions.

    perhaps, this all sounds a bit weird or goofy. it is not.

    money alone doesn’t make the world go around – but usury and money do. we all live in a sewer. it’s time we submit to that unfortunate reality and look for comfort outside in god’s wisdom.

  4. Davros permalink

    “‘Next they’ll tax us for breathing’, is an old running gag.” The reason for the Global Warming Hoax. If they called the “Carbon Tax” a “Breathing Tax”, too many sheeple might catch on, but in reality, carbon dioxide and oxygen are just different sides of the same chemical equation.

  5. A Thought for Discussion

    An asset with intrinsic material value can and does function, for practical purposes, as a medium of exchange. But a medium of exchange need not be an asset with intrinsic material value. It can be a piece of paper backed by a human individual’s or a human collective’s word or promise of intrinsic material value.

    That piece of paper then has, for practical purposes, intrinsic material value (and may be considered an asset) to the extent that the individual’s or the collective’s word or promise is good.

    That piece of paper serves as a medium of exchange (marvel of marvels!) and is, for practical purposes and certainly in the short run, an asset. And why not? In the long run, well, who knows? In the long run we are all dead anyway.

    There are natural evolutionary forces at work that can in the long run vitiate the existing level of societal trust that makes the medium of exchange fail in its single most important function which is to facilitate trade. i.e., the exchange of assets.

    Good governance consists 1) in monitoring the natural de-evolutionary processes in order to counter their negative effects and 2) in monitoring the natural evolutionary processes in order to promote their positive effects.

    Good governance is easily enough accomplished. It is the human will, the human understanding and the human knowledge, i.e., the human wisdom, to do so that is lacking among the reformers. On the material level reforming the monetary system is key. On the spiritual level reforming the mental system is key.

    The Christians talk of repentance which from the origins of the word “repent” means “re-think”. Humanity needs a new matrix, a matrix that incorporates the process of re-thinking as a natural and essential aspect of the new matrix. And that requires ideologically balanced creativity, an open ended matrix not a closed system of thought. And that requires leadership of the sort that only an avatar can provide.

    We are all avatars. We are all incarnated deities. We are all complete and potentially fully functional holographic fragments of the one Source known variously as God, Jehovah, Allah or what-have-you. We need one leader, one duci, one fuehrer who recognizes that truth, repents, i.e., re-thinks, and then injects it into the human collective consciousness by hook or crook and with cojones (huevos, balls, or in the case of a female, one with a cunt), by God!

  6. Usury is forbidden by the Natural Law. If you wish to cancel a debt raised at usury like a mortgage, use the letter at p6 of the following:

    https://www.scribd.com/doc/125475076/Many-are-called-Few-are-chosen

    The background to my research is here:

    https://www.scribd.com/doc/52405961/The-Third-and-Final-Testament-Part-1

    Maxims of Law

    We hold these truths to be self-evident ,
    The Book of Love,
    The Third and Final Testament, Part 1, from page 29

    The paramount nature of the Law over legislation, judicial rulings etc

    Is it not written in your law?
    The Book of Love, TTFT, Pt 1, from page 51

    Page 55, ibid, shows that in legalese, the words ‘must’ and ‘shall’ are synonymous with ‘may’and therefore confer a choice not a duty

    • The religious chair would be subordinate to a tripartite, trans-secular, super-departmental agency subordinate to the Presidency. Religions tend towards a self-defined and self-limited closed system of thought.

  7. Ross N. permalink

    There are other ways to enclose land that have nothing to do with usury. Money cannot be disconnected from its legal underpinnings. And, the highest legal form of money (and its system) must have morality encoded as part of system framework. Otherwise, you get a private international “credit” world run by aristocratic money and power elites, Their credit can pop into being based on oil reserves, land, etc. Aristocratic money is used to pay off clergy.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40162.htm

    Excerpt from above link:

    This is how international business is actually carried out – it’s a perfect libertarian world, since there is no international government; this market is unregulated to so extreme an extent that even ethnic cleansings and mass-murders go unpunished — it’s a pure free market, which operates on an international scale (the only scale where libertarianism exists in even nearly this pure a form); this libertarianism is an exemplar of the conservative ideal: pure liberty for aristocrats, total lack of accountability .

    • John Cummings permalink

      Libertarians are the flip side to Communists and run by the same crowd. Dialectical collisions=profit. The Gentile socialists are winning the Russian Revolution, finance the Reds, put in a bunch of Jewish bankers and marketers(which what Trotsky really was) and walla, you have contracts for Standard Oil and GE(and several others). Lenin joins the gentiles and opposes War Communism? Kill him. Stalin throws out the Jews, bring Hitler as a divider. Hitler goes into pre-christian mysticism madness by 1938, comes WWII. “Asiatic’ Communism helps establish the military industrial complex, finance communism and anti-communism(Birchers) for war profits(Korea,Nam). Guy tells everybody to cut the crap out, kill him(JFK). Asiatic Communism dies out, push “Islamic Terrorists” with the Neo-Cons in the anti-communist role.

      I am amazed people don’t see the dialectic of this. I didn’t see it to the Islamic stuff, I will admit. It hit me like a load of rocks.

      • “Hitler goes into pre-christian mysticism madness by 1938”

        Sounds like Jewish nonsense.

        Hitler fought to free Europe from Jewish perpetual interest slavery.

        Liberalism, Communism, Capitalism and Libertarianism are all Jewish constructs

        Lenin didn’t join the gentiles. He manoeuvred to butcher them being the good Jew that he was. Job well done.

        Stalin didn’t throw out the Jew. He was one that married 3 Jewish whores and introduced legislation making “anti Semitism” punishable by death.

        John 8 44

        By the way the word gentile does not mean non Jew.

        • MichaelfromCT permalink

          Many of you are mad! First,if you’re a genuine Christian,you’d love the Jewish people and witness to them.In medieval Europe,the job of usury/lender/collector of interest was given to Jews because of the Biblical prohibition against usury-something I don’t understand completely,because its also in Jewish law(Torah,and other writings),not to exact usury.And the guy who mentioned Cromwell,and”ask the Irish”- well the Irish STILL show themselves uncivilized to rule themselves,and would be utter savages,if Britain did leave them alone.The only answer to the economic conundrum the US,and the civilized world is in,is to back the currency with Gold,and Silver again.We’d quickly get out of this rut,and begin to watch our spending,and learn to live more conservatively.

          • Are we mad, or are you still well within the box?

            I can offer you http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/faux-economics for a quick deprogramming from the banker memes concerning gold and silver being ‘honest’ or ‘sound’ money. All the gold is owned by the bankers and they have been preparing the transition to a new gold standard for decades now.

            They always have the ‘opposition’ clamor for what they were intending anyway.

          • MichaelfromCT permalink

            I agree with some of what you’re saying,but the precious metals that the people own-physical metals-like myself,belong to us-the people that hold them,and can sell/barter them as needed.Fractional gold+silver seems the most prudent and safest way to me.As long as I’m not foolish enough to purchase it,but allow the company to store it in one of their vaults,I’m okay I believe.I don’t trust banks,or safety deposit boxes.In the event of a bank holiday,which happened under the Roosevelt administration,the citizens would have absolutely NO access to their assets.

  8. somogyifrank permalink

    The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

  9. John Cummings permalink

    Anthony sounds like a 19th century Christian Socialist. Francis Bellamy anybody?

  10. Slay Usura permalink

    Tradition Betrayed: The False Prophets of Modernism (Darwin, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsXKtE5PNI

  11. Reblogged this on peter quiggins (Tierney) ''Killer Culture'' and commented:
    Excellent post

  12. moriyah permalink

    Best article on usury in 50yrs outside the Bible.

  13. Joseph Glynn permalink

    Great synthesis.
    The Tao te Ching says ‘The truth that can be told, is not the whole truth’,..but I think Anthony Migchel’s ‘How Usury Encloses the Commons’ comes as close as anything I’ve read to summarising the means of covert and overt human enslavement through private monopoly of land, the earth birthright of all. and privatisation of the issuance and selective allocation of credit money.

    I have long believed that the COLLUSION of these two ancient and fundamental monopolisms; the private monopoly of land ….and the bankers private monopoly on the issuance and allocation of credit money..dictates history and.crashed the Global political economy in 2007/8 and still devastates our future prospects.

  14. Reblogged this on cén fáth arís and commented:
    Another excellent article on the real problem – usury

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