They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose
It's one variant of a folk poem from England during the time of the enclosures. There are a bunch of verses and variations, but that's the first one I heard and the only I can remember. I like it as a concise reminder that large parts of our current status quo were first enacted violently on people who knew it was wrong and fought back constantly. People have been saying this shit for centuries, it's just they all get killed for it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n52-YK6OTyE&list=OLAK5uy_mzr6N-RwLnzOgDpGOThTikinmZBzcA5XQ&index=8
I like the old school ACAB anthem
Yeah, but not all the songs fit into my vibe all the time. Song on the Times and Smashing of the Van seem to really push my buttons.
So I have something interesting regarding this.
I used to think "The commons was England being based, huh. We'll give them one." It kinda made no sense, but I bit the bullet.
But remember what England is: originally Celtic, with Roman, then Saxon and Norman layers.
It all made sense whenI read Recognizing and Moving on from a Failed Paradigm: The Case of Agricultural Landscapes in Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 400-800. Susan Oosthuizen 1 Journal of Archaeological Research volume 24, pages 179-227 (2016)
She shows that the commonage tradition is a remainder of Britain's indigenous Celtic lifeways, which then got compromised and mixed with imperialistic legal systems like the Roman. This makes an internal English struggle a struggle between based communal nativelaws and property-based invaderlaws
Also trade unions and the idea of solidarity being a key leftist concept have roots in England with the Tolpuddle martyrs
we weren't always like this but were made so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY
Trads, conservatives, and other dorks insists that property is a natural concept born out of human selfishness.
Yet history show that whenever they are left unsupervised for even just a moment, the commoners would always try to rebel against the rulers and redistribute wealth.
Chumbawumba has an album of olde tyme British rebel songs!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5zQ1xNekgr4MeiVCfCIVpJFYr1G8sGz
Someone probably linked it already but The True Levellers Standard Advanced is fucking good and good to read. Try it
