MTBC: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All
This is the regular meeting of the Moving Train Book Club, for June, 2010. The selection this month is Peter Linebaugh's 376 page 2009 book about the history of Magna Carta (and it's almost forgotten companion, the Charter of the Forest) and it's impact on social, legal and philosophical evolution ever since.
This choice was triggered by the discussion over the previous book club selection "The Value of Nothing," which cited this book in its discussion of commoning. Since Magna Carta is so central to Western Civilization, it seemed this perpetually relevant and rarely read core document should be better known and respected today.
Unfortunately, the discussion will be led by John Edstrom, a confessed ignoramus on the subject.
This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny--and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture--are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
I stumbled across this book while reading Raj Patel's "The Value of Nothing." He introduced it in his discussion of commoning. The implications drawn from Linebaugh's book concerning moral politics and economis seemed borderline profound for what I'd thought was a desicated fossil of Western Civilization. Its especially interesting to see how our core concepts of rights have evolved and mutated over time and circumstances.
So common rights differ from human rights. First, common rights are embedded in a particular ecology with its local husbandry. For commoners, the expression "law of the land" from chapter 39 does not refer to the will of the sovereign. Commoners think first not of title deeds, but of human deeds: how will this land be tilled? Does it require manuring? What grows there? They begin to explore. You might call it a natural attitude. Second, commoning is embedded in a labor process; it inheres in a particular praxis of field, upland, forest, marsh, coast. Common rights are entered into by labor. Third, commoning is collective. Fourth, being independent of the state, commoning is independent also of the temporality of the law and state. Magna Carta does not list rights, it grants perpetuities. It goes deep into human history.
Coming as it did at the beginning of post-classical civilization it stands at the beginning of our modern traditions and theories of government and civil rights, and so deserves some respect and consideration.
I've only read about 1/3 of the book so far. Its as interesting and challenging as I'd expected and a positive treasure trove of arcane trivia about our shabby beginings. What really shocking, to me, is that it seems that Maga Carta and it's historically long forgotten companion document, The Charter of the Forest, actually got most of it and we the people have been losing ground since 1215.
I'll update this later.
| Attachment | Size |
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| mtbc june 2010.pdf | 392.57 KB |
Where:
Newport, OR
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