[PEN-L:11509] Re: Home Mortgage Deduction

["William S. Lear" <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, July 29, 1997 at 13:50:38 (-0700) Max B. Sawicky writes:
>> this be held socially, how do you square that view with the historical
>> fact that productive property was originally stolen from workers
>> through enclosures and other means backed by state violence, and is
>> now maintained in the hands of the few by threat or outright violence?
>
>I ignore that view.  I don't know what we're supposed to
>do about land expropriation that occurred x-hundred
>years ago.  The remainder of your description is a
>fevered characterization of the routine enforcement of
>laws concerning private property.  As I indicated above,
>I don't think socializing some property is as important as
>other goals, nor that it is well-founded in many cases.

Thanks for the lecture, but we're not only talking about expropriation
of land that occurred "x-hundred years ago" or this year for that
matter, since that still occurs around the world under the aegis of
the World Bank and its buddies.  I suppose, following this logic, one
might as well pretend that slavery never existed when arguing about
current problems with racism.  I suppose, further, that you have never
heard of the phenomenon of de-skilling workers?  Of destroying
small-scale family-based industry as capitalism marches forward?  How
about the current fashion in government for supporting tax and
incentive structures that help to wipe out family-based agriculture
both here and around the world?  I have heard, despite my feverish
condition, that the large-scale theft of skills from workers, even
destruction of worker communities, was a fairly recent, even
continuing occurrence.  Or is the work of David Noble, Jeremy Brecher,
David Demarest, Richard Edwards, or David Montgomery too sweaty for
you to bother with, since it deals with such distasteful upleasantries
of the past?


Bill