Hayley Smith-Kirkham

CH 203H Slovic, Sagebiel

Final Paper

Property Rights as the Foundation of American Culture and the Loss of Food Autonomy

The first person, who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and
found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes,
battles and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes would not that man have saved mankind,
who should have pulled up the stakes, or filled up the ditch, crying out to his fellows, “Beware of listening
to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and that the
earth itself belongs to nobody.”
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Capitalism is responsible for remarkable and fascinating developments in human

progress, from iPods to fast food, single-family housing to heart defibrillators and global

tourism. The system feigns to be more or less voluntary—if you want an iPod, work hard

enough to be able to buy one. But when the capitalist system controls the basic

necessities of human life, it is no longer voluntary. American culture is built upon this

system that determines how we acquire the necessities of life, how we live and interact,

and how we measure success. Capitalism, in turn, relies on the complete implementation

of property rights, which entails the loss of our food autonomy. Becoming dependent on

an industrial system for food, we lose our dependence on, respect for, and understanding

of the natural world.

The United States’ two hundred year success story is largely a story of

capitalism’s rise. Karl Marx, not merely a radical but often credited as the father of

modern sociology, considered a society’s economic means of production as the basis

upon which the “superstructure” of culture is built. North America offered the early

colonists endlessly fecund lands without the histories and legacies of feudalism,
Catholicism, and power struggles that had already divided up Europe into the hands of

the powerful. What’s more, by pushing away and eventually devastating the native

populations, the colonists effectively blotted out the land’s history of hunter-gatherer

subsistence. Thus, America was a blank slate on which the story of capitalism could be

written. The colonization of the New World was itself a direct result of the emergence of

mercantilism in Europe. The colonies in New England, Virginia, and New York were

founded by profit-seeking corporations (Gordon 37). The puritans were not seeking

religious freedom alone, but also freedom from the controlling hands of the Catholic

Church and the disintegrating feudal system, so that they could pursue their own profits.

The Protestant work ethic arose from the Calvinist belief that one’s prosperity on earth

reflected his chances of reaching heaven after death. Although surely coincidental, it is

interesting to note that the founding document of capitalism—Adam Smith’s The Wealth

of Nations—was published the very year the United States gained independence.

In the four hundred or so years since King James signed The Virginia Company’s

charter, the United States succeeded in becoming the most powerful economy in the

world. The 20th century saw the U.S. emerge the victor in the ideological standoff that

was the Cold War. Was it a victory of the United States, or a victory of capitalism? The

two are not entirely separable. The American Dream, the American work ethic, all of

these pinnacles of American culture rely on and reflect the mechanisms of capitalism—

individualism, working for wages and not for subsistence, “things” being a measure of

success, and so on.

The capitalist system does not succeed arbitrarily, but relies on a system of laws

that allow markets to function by the “invisible hand” Adam Smith described. The most
central and imperative laws for the functioning of the capitalist system are those of

property rights. There are four characteristics of property rights that must be upheld in

every case in order for the system to function properly. The following descriptions were

taken from an introductory text on environmental economics. First, property rights must

be comprehensive. This requires that all resources be either privately or collectively

owned, and all entitlements are defined, well known, and enforced. Secondly, they must

be exclusive, so that all benefits and costs from the property (which can be land, a

resource, infrastructure—anything from a pond to the computer on which this is being

typed) accrue to the owner alone. Thirdly, they must be transferable through a voluntary

exchange, which usually takes the form of buying and selling in free markets. Lastly,

they must be secure from involuntary seizure or encroachment by other people, firms,

and the government (Hanley 14). All of these characteristics contribute to the loss of

food autonomy, and will be explored in depth.

It is important to establish a working definition of food autonomy. In a paper

titled “Deep Food Autonomy,” published by the Indigenous Research Center of the

Americas at UC Davis, food autonomy is defined as “a people’s or a community’s ability

to independently and fairly control both the quantity and the quality/appropriateness of

their food as well as their collectively owned knowledge about food” (Gould). It is

important, however, that this term is prefaced by the word “deep.” The paper also gives a

definition for this quality; “creating profound changes based on holistic values and

beliefs, in particular those of Indigenous people, as opposed to simply technical changes

or damage containment such as sustainable development.” A more general definition of

food autonomy could be the ability to acquire sustenance vital to life outside of the wage
system. This is not to say that all food should be free—Kraft has as much right to its

profits as any other business. Rather, the capitalist system should not eliminate or control

all other avenues for acquiring food. If it is impossible to survive in even the most basic

way without working for money and using that money to buy food, then the exchange of

one’s time for wages is no longer voluntary—it is wage slavery.

Humans evolved as any other animal, and did not evolve to need grocery stores.

Biologically humans are omnivores, and most omnivores are scavengers (Rufus 30). The

idea of humans as scavengers is further supported by the fact that “closely related animals

almost invariably have nearly identical feeding and dietary behaviors,” and our closest

relative, the chimpanzee, is a known omnivorous scavenger “using all possible avenues to

acquire food” (Rufus 31-32). The scavenger aspect of human nature is found in hunter-

gatherer societies—all early humans were hunter-gatherers, and the demise of these

groups often came only with the introduction of “civilization.” As Rufus points out,

“hunter-gatherer” can be read as “predator-scavenger”—early humans hunted and

scavenged for the fruits (literal and figurative) of their environment (Rufus 48).

What, then, were the characteristics of civilization that required humans to end

their hunter-gatherer lifestyle and depend upon outside forces for their sustenance?

Civilization, in all cases, has led to the centralization of power (usually into government

bodies) and the establishment of cities. Environmental activist, author, and teacher

Derrick Jensen defines civilization as a culture (“a complex of stories, institutions, and

artifacts”) that leads to and emerges from the growth of cities. He defines cities as

“people living… in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and

other necessities of life. Thus a Tolowa village five hundred years ago where I live in
Tu’nes, now called Crescent City, California, would not have been a city, since the

Tolowa ate native salmon, clams, deer, huckleberries, and so on, and had no need to bring

in food from outside” (Jensen 17). Stanley Diamond, in his major work Guns, Germs,

and Steel, showed that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was sufficient to provide plentiful

sustenance and leisure time for peoples all over the world. It was necessary fact, though,

that these populations remained small in comparison to the cities that emerged from

civilization. As Jensen described, in order to feed high densities of people it was

necessary to bring in food from outside. This naturally led to the establishment of

agricultural societies.

It is important, though, to note that the loss of food autonomy only accompanies

civilizations that are based on private ownership. The Native Americans of the

Mississippi Valley were organized into chiefdoms and depended primarily on agriculture,

whereas those in the east were organized as tribes and were primarily hunter-gatherers

(Gordon 6). These chiefdoms more closely resemble a civilization, but retained the basic

characteristics of a communal, sustainable society. Similarly, Jensen makes a distinction

between the hunter-gatherer Tolowa peoples and the Aztecs. The Aztecs built great city-

states like Iztapalapa and Tenochtitlan, which required bringing in food from outside

(Jensen 17). They also had a monetary system, and land was controlled by kings and

nobles much like in feudal Europe. Thus, although agriculture is commonly associated

with civilization and hunting-gathering is associated with the “uncivilized,” it is only

when agriculture is privately run, and on a scale beyond subsistence, that it becomes

civilized and leads to the loss of food autonomy.

So, what are the ways in which private property rights eliminate food autonomy?
The first characteristic states that all resources must be privately or collectively owned.

Collectively owned resources are still privately owned—they are not open access. Thus,

individuals, firms, or the government own every possible food source in the geographical

area of the United States. Since property rights are exclusive, and all benefits accrue only

to the owner, even unused resources cannot be utilized by those who need them. Thus, it

is against the law even to take food from dumpsters outside grocery stores. Although it is

trash to the owner, it is still illegal to benefit from it. This is contrary to the scavenging

nature of humans, and supremely wasteful. Furthermore United States citizens can’t hunt

for food freely, but rather only in specific areas at specific times with specific permits.

Similarly, individuals cannot till wild or unused lands. Since all private property rights

are equally secure, the government has no recourse to liberate long unused resources.

This in particular has been the bane of squatters all across the United States.

The simple fact that citizens cannot freely plant food gardens on empty lots in

cities attests to their complete loss of food autonomy. The only options left are to buy

food from the grocery store, or to buy land to plant personal gardens. It is the simple fact

that all of these things require money, which requires participation in the capitalist

system, that entails a loss of autonomy. This kind of struggle occurred in Los Angeles a

few years ago and garnered widespread media attention. According to a 2006 news

article, “Los Angeles authorities are threatening a community farm with imminent

destruction in a local struggle between social and environmental values and individual

property rights” (Hoffman). The South Central Farm, a 14-acre urban farm in industrial

Los Angeles, supported over 300 individual plots feeding poor families in one of the

most crowded cities in the country. It had been built on unused lands, described as a
“wasteland” of concrete and glass. The farm supported these families for twelve years

before the holder of the land rights sold the land, to become a new warehouse (Hoffman).

Despite legal and direct action from the farm’s occupants and sympathizers, the farmers

were evicted and the gardens destroyed in 2006.

For Indigenous peoples whose cultures simply do not include ideas of private

ownership or the transferability of resources, the private property system can have

especially disastrous effects. The above-referenced paper from the Indigenous Research

Center “proposes that food has been used as a tool of colonization.” Native tribes of the

Pacific Northwest, for example, relied largely on salmon from rivers like the Klamath.

Their mythologies expressed values of sustainability and equity—one story depicts the

natural spirits punishing a man who attempts to take and keep more than his share of fish

from the river (Jensen). Jensen makes the claim that an additional benefit to the

installation of dams on these rivers—aside from producing energy to run the industrial

system—was to eliminate the natural food source of these peoples, forcing them to

assimilate into the capitalist system at least enough so that they added dollars to the

economy. President Jefferson’s plan for the Native Americans was similar, “…Two

measures are deemed expedient. First to encourage them to abandon hunting…

Secondly, to multiply trading houses among them… leading them thus to agriculture, to

manufactures, and civilization” (Zinn 126). It is clear that the principle concern was to

either destroy the Natives or integrate them into the economy—it was impossible that

they should remain with their unique communal cultures once the individualist, market-

based Americans arrived.

The loss of food autonomy has serious and deep-rooted consequences for
American culture. In the words of Wendell Berry, "One of the primary results - and

needs - of industrialism is the separation of people and places and products from their

histories. To the extent that we participate in the industrial economy, we do not know the

histories of our families or of our habitats or of our meals." When we depend on the

industrial system, we no longer depend directly on nature. This allows us to ignore the

nature that is necessarily involved in our daily lives, and we’re only conscious of nature

as being the wild places of U.S. national forests. As Lyanda Haupt describes, this leads

us to “set up a chasm between our daily lives (‘non-nature’) and wilder places (‘true

nature’), even though it is in our everyday lives, in our everyday homes, that we eat,

consume energy, run the faucet, compost, flush, learn, and live. It is here, in our lives,

that we must come to know our essential connection to the wilder earth, because it is

here, in the activity of our daily lives, that we most surely affect this earth, for good or for

ill” (Haupt 9). When we depend on the industrial system, we depend on our wages rather

than our environment. We lose our knowledge of and our respect for the earth that comes

with dependence and one-on-one contact. We no longer need to live sustainably, as all

hunter-gatherer communities know they must. The tribes of the Pacific Northwest

depended on the salmon, and over generations of interaction with the salmon they

became like caregivers, knowing not to take too many or less would return the next year

(Jensen). The anonymous, dispersed, and global nature of the way we acquire our food

eliminates the immediate need to live sustainably, or even a true understanding of what

living sustainably means. When all resources must have legal [human] owners, we lose

the respect for the land and its nonhuman inhabitants that is necessary for continued

coexistence.
Works Cited
Blaisdell, Bob ed. The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings. New
York: Dover Thrift Editions, 2003.

Gordon, John Steele. An Empire of Wealth. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.

Gould, Kerin. “Deep Food Autonomy.” Indigenous Research Center of the Americas,
2004.

Hanley, Nick et al. Introduction to Environmental Economics. New York: Oxford, 2001.

Haupt, Lyanda Lynn. Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness. New
York: Little, Brown & Company, 2009.

Hoffman, Jessica. “L.A. Urban Farmers Fight for Community Garden” The New
Standard. 5 Apr 2006. <http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/
3027>

Jensen, Derrick. A Language Older than Words. New York: Chelsea Green, 2004.

Jensen, Derrick. Endgame Vol. 1. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006.

Rufus, Anneli and Kristan Lawson. The Scavenger’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin,
2009.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins,
2003.