Stop, Thief!

The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance

Peter Linebaugh

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781604869019
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In this majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart. "Neither the state nor the market, " say the planetary commoners. These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons.

From Thomas Paine to the Luddites, from Karl Marx—who concluded his great study of capitalism with the enclosure of commons—to the practical dreamer William Morris—who made communism into a verb and advocated communizing industry and agriculture—to the 20th-century communist historian E.P. Thompson, Linebaugh brings to life the vital commonist tradition. He traces the red thread from the great revolt of commoners in 1381 to the enclosures of Ireland, and the American commons, where European immigrants who had been expelled from their commons met the immense commons of the native peoples and the underground African-American urban commons. Illuminating these struggles in this indispensable collection, Linebaugh reignites the ancient cry, "STOP, THIEF!"

Index

“Passim” (literally “scattered”) indicates intermittent discussion of a topic over a cluster of pages.

Abingdon, Lord. See Bertie, Montague, 5^th earl of Abingdon

Ablett, Noah, 149

abolitionists and abolitionism, 28, 201–2, 208–13 passim, 220

abortion, 40, 241

accumulation, capitalist. See capitalist accumulation

accumulation, primary/primitive. See primary/primitive accumulation

“Adam delved” (couplet). See “When Adam delved” (couplet)

Adams, John, 177, 197, 225

Adams, Samuel, 185

Africa, 67–68, 91, 143, 189, 235, 255. See also Egypt

African Americans, 202, 208–12 passim. See also slaves and slavery

Agbetu, Toyin, 69

Age of Reason, The (Paine), 193, 195

Agrarian Justice (Paine), 178, 194–95, 197–98

agriculture, 68, 81, 121–27 passim, 195–97 passim; transition to, 69, 228; England, 144, 168, 179, 195–97 passim; Jefferson view, 219; Native American, 228, 230; Prussia, 54–55; Scotland, 32. See also plantations

alcohol, 230, 231, 233–34, 238, 241, 242–43

Aldini, Giovanni, 40

Alexander, Sally, 149, 154

Alfred the Great, 123, 211

Althusser, Louis, 72

America. See Latin America; North America

American Committee for Cultural Freedom, 116

American Crisis (Paine periodical). See Crisis (Paine periodical)

American culture, 118, 265n25

American Revolution, 166–67, 180–81, 191, 195

Amistad, 211

anarchists and anarchism, 96, 111, 132, 173, 239, 266n36; Haymarket Affair, 125

Ancient Society (Morgan), 239

Anderson, Perry, 120

animals, 124–25, 180, 218, 234; classification, 185; Frank Thompson on, 130; humans as, 198, 223, 225, 232; in Seneca cosmology, 245–46. See also cattle and cattle trade; grazi...