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Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, And Resistance
In bold and intelligently written essays, 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. From Thomas Paine to the Luddites and 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, and all the while urges the ancient spark of resistance.
294 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2013
43 people are currently reading
747 people want to read
About the author
Peter Linebaugh
26 books89 followersPeter Linebaugh is an American Marxist historian who specializes in British history, Irish history, labor history, and the history of the colonial Atlantic.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 17, 2014
Any collection of essays is going to feature repetition and a couple humdinger entries. In this case, I didn't mind the repetition (probably because I could only get around to one essay per week or so) and the only essays that didn't utterly captivate me were an older, Marx-specific piece and parts of a couple biographical illuminations of folks I had little prior context for. I thoroughly admire Linebaugh's excited weaving of international threads, I find it addictive, inspiring, fuel for the fire.
Recommended essays: "The City and the Commons: A Story for Our Times", "The Commons, the Castle, the Witch, and the Lynx", and "Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: Machine-Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811-12" (that last one is also available as a pamphlet from PM Press).
Recommended essays: "The City and the Commons: A Story for Our Times", "The Commons, the Castle, the Witch, and the Lynx", and "Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: Machine-Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811-12" (that last one is also available as a pamphlet from PM Press).
February 24, 2015
Not what I expected. The author is capable of lucid, informative prose, but only it seems in short bursts; I found so many of the essays meandering and disjointed. Worth skimming, perhaps, but you probably don't need to do what I did: read all of it just so you can mark it as another book read on Goodreads.
September 14, 2014
Linebaugh is a treasure. His work continues on the track that his mentor EP Thompson set him on. Digging deep into the past to recover the rich lives of those who were pushed around and off the common land by the new rich of fenced land and sheep, the city and the factory, the prison and penal exile.
"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity." (Thompson,1963) Why not quote the sentence that captured a generation's interest in social history.
Linebaugh with his mate Rediker are at the top of that social history impulse with __The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic __(2001)
Stop, Thief! collects Linebaugh essays and reviews from the last ten years. great reading.
"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity." (Thompson,1963) Why not quote the sentence that captured a generation's interest in social history.
Linebaugh with his mate Rediker are at the top of that social history impulse with __The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic __(2001)
Stop, Thief! collects Linebaugh essays and reviews from the last ten years. great reading.
June 28, 2014
A collection of writings looking at the historical theft of the common land. Very informative and well written. A book that makes you feel angry at the theft of land once held in common across the planet by rich thieves.
December 28, 2024
A collection of articles from four decades of Linebaugh’s work discussing the commons, what it was, how it was attacked, who fought to save it and what it could be in future as a philosophical and physical reality. Looking at what's left of the commons worldwide it's hard to understand what that physical reality meant to ordinary people say 550 years ago in England or North America.
We know it was factual, not utopian. Vast prairies, woods, rivers and coastlines in their seasons provided most of what people needed to thrive and develop their knowledge, skills and cultures. Wild animals and plants, fruit and mushrooms for food, tools and basic medicines, food for livestock and building materials for housing.
In England before enclosures for example, small plots of land were regularly redistributed to share out the best land and everywhere communities enforced strict rules about when and how land and water could be used to protect those resources and everything they contained.
Various powerful people at different times and places decided ordinary people could no longer, hunt, fish or gather fuel. Land was redistributed again but theirs was taken away and they were expected to entirely work for other people. This behaviour restricted access to previously open land with hedges and new rules enforced against the commoners by Law, with thousands of new crimes and barbaric punishments.
More profit could be made from larger plots of land, or the gold discovered, or thousands of sheep than the tenants or traditional inhabitants. Subsistence farming and nomadic cultures were forcibly destroyed
Linebaugh quoted US President Thomas Jefferson letter to Benjamin Hawkins in 1803,
“The best that the Indians can do is to sell their land and become U.S. citizens. The chiefs can get rich, the men will take the plough, women give up the hoe, exceptional souls may go to college, and the whiskey keg is full for the rest.”
Linebaugh politely took apart Garrett Hardin's loathsome article, “Tragedy of the Commons” published in Science magazine in 1968. Hardin's “data” was based on the arguments of that notorious 18/19th century hater of ordinary people, Thomas Malthus and flawed maths.
And he describes the riotous battles against enclosures, impositions, land theft and all the rapine and murder that went with it. Hundreds and thousands resisted this long class war, from tearing down fences and forcibly controlling prices to killing white settlers and Custer's troops.
Linebaugh's breadth of reading meant some references assume knowledge that I don't have, but it wasn't a major difficulty and had me thinking about old problems from different angles.
We know it was factual, not utopian. Vast prairies, woods, rivers and coastlines in their seasons provided most of what people needed to thrive and develop their knowledge, skills and cultures. Wild animals and plants, fruit and mushrooms for food, tools and basic medicines, food for livestock and building materials for housing.
In England before enclosures for example, small plots of land were regularly redistributed to share out the best land and everywhere communities enforced strict rules about when and how land and water could be used to protect those resources and everything they contained.
Various powerful people at different times and places decided ordinary people could no longer, hunt, fish or gather fuel. Land was redistributed again but theirs was taken away and they were expected to entirely work for other people. This behaviour restricted access to previously open land with hedges and new rules enforced against the commoners by Law, with thousands of new crimes and barbaric punishments.
More profit could be made from larger plots of land, or the gold discovered, or thousands of sheep than the tenants or traditional inhabitants. Subsistence farming and nomadic cultures were forcibly destroyed
Linebaugh quoted US President Thomas Jefferson letter to Benjamin Hawkins in 1803,
“The best that the Indians can do is to sell their land and become U.S. citizens. The chiefs can get rich, the men will take the plough, women give up the hoe, exceptional souls may go to college, and the whiskey keg is full for the rest.”
Linebaugh politely took apart Garrett Hardin's loathsome article, “Tragedy of the Commons” published in Science magazine in 1968. Hardin's “data” was based on the arguments of that notorious 18/19th century hater of ordinary people, Thomas Malthus and flawed maths.
And he describes the riotous battles against enclosures, impositions, land theft and all the rapine and murder that went with it. Hundreds and thousands resisted this long class war, from tearing down fences and forcibly controlling prices to killing white settlers and Custer's troops.
Linebaugh's breadth of reading meant some references assume knowledge that I don't have, but it wasn't a major difficulty and had me thinking about old problems from different angles.
November 14, 2017
This is a collection of essays, each of which featuring a different aspect of the authors research into the impact of property laws on political history. On my bookmark I wrote a single remark for each chapter, but did not notate which chapter bore which remark. The following are these remarks presented in loosely chronological respective order and without direct context, which I hope will help others who are wondering what some abstract takeaways from this book might be.
Toronto + River Thames / Tecumseh
What is the contemporary translation of the French Revolution?
food, health, security, housing, gender, ecology, knowledge, semantics, working class, being, knowing, politics, law, economy, history, religion, poets & writers, England
(1516-1783) "Utopia"-"Panopticon"
"lumpenproletariat"
Agbetu in Westminster Abbey 2007
Louisiana Purchase 1803 - Civil War 1861
Custom>Perquisite>Privilege>Plunder
|CRIMINALIZATION|
Paris Commune 1871 - Abolish nightwork/guillotine
Alfred Sauvy 1952 "Third World" (Capitalist West, Soviet East, -Latin America/South Asia/Africa-) <> 1st Millennium "Third Estate" (Nobles, Priests, -commons-)
Concrete Universals: Slave trade, witch burnings, irish famine, native genocide, enclosure [crimes of modernism]
Elinor Ostrom NOBEL
Babeuf Conspiracy - Sir John Sinclairs Essay on Commons and Wastelands
Com (together) + Munis (under obligation)
Toronto + River Thames / Tecumseh
What is the contemporary translation of the French Revolution?
food, health, security, housing, gender, ecology, knowledge, semantics, working class, being, knowing, politics, law, economy, history, religion, poets & writers, England
(1516-1783) "Utopia"-"Panopticon"
"lumpenproletariat"
Agbetu in Westminster Abbey 2007
Louisiana Purchase 1803 - Civil War 1861
Custom>Perquisite>Privilege>Plunder
|CRIMINALIZATION|
Paris Commune 1871 - Abolish nightwork/guillotine
Alfred Sauvy 1952 "Third World" (Capitalist West, Soviet East, -Latin America/South Asia/Africa-) <> 1st Millennium "Third Estate" (Nobles, Priests, -commons-)
Concrete Universals: Slave trade, witch burnings, irish famine, native genocide, enclosure [crimes of modernism]
Elinor Ostrom NOBEL
Babeuf Conspiracy - Sir John Sinclairs Essay on Commons and Wastelands
Com (together) + Munis (under obligation)
April 9, 2014
Linebaugh sees such struggles as in a continuum with today's battles to prevent further erosion of our rights. For this author, the struggle for a new commons, is as important as the fight to protect what we have and had.
Peter Linebaugh's writing is filled with passion, forgotten histories, and literary quotes. Here are Shelley and Wordsworth, Frankenstein's monster and the words of miners, peasants and all those men and women who've struggled at the bottom of the society.
Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...
Peter Linebaugh's writing is filled with passion, forgotten histories, and literary quotes. Here are Shelley and Wordsworth, Frankenstein's monster and the words of miners, peasants and all those men and women who've struggled at the bottom of the society.
Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...
March 26, 2020
There are some interesting ideas in this book on the continuity between commoning, as practised in feudal Europe, pre-conquest America, and revolutionary America, and communism as described by Marx and Engels. But some of the writing is impenetrable and some terminology unexplained.
July 11, 2018
I'll do this later. Good collection of essays, but ends abruptly.
September 16, 2021
A collection of essays over the past 40 years from Linebaugh, all organized around the idea of the commons, commoning, and enclosure. Linebaugh's writing is full of wit, humor, and incisive insight. Through an interrogation of history, literature, philosophy, and his own thinking, he throws light on forgotten or little-known corners and stories of the slow process of enclosure of these communal spaces by capitalism. Each throwaway line opens up new vistas and can inspire a deep-dive into further study. From the British enclosures to the First People extermination in the Americas, this is a tour de force that forces a long hard look at the abominable human toll of the rise of capitalism, and provides a glimmer of hope that we may be able to turn back the inexorable tide of privatization.
February 25, 2022
3.5
A interesting collection of writings. Does become a bit repetitive at times and some of the chapters are a bit specific as they come from introductions, forwards etc. A bit of a general history background would probably be useful here as there is a lot of name references and events woven together. Overall, a further expansion of some themes related to Linebaugh's other works in the Many Headed Hydra, etc. A good reference point for some general discussions on primitive/primary accumulation and doing 'history from below'.
A interesting collection of writings. Does become a bit repetitive at times and some of the chapters are a bit specific as they come from introductions, forwards etc. A bit of a general history background would probably be useful here as there is a lot of name references and events woven together. Overall, a further expansion of some themes related to Linebaugh's other works in the Many Headed Hydra, etc. A good reference point for some general discussions on primitive/primary accumulation and doing 'history from below'.
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July 23, 2024Linebaugh is certainly a fascinating historian with a remarkable depth of knowledge.
Less recognized but equally significant is his skillful writing. From his selection of intriguing historical instances that captivate the reader from the very beginning to his use of concise, direct sentences, I think this collection of essays flows with an ease rarely found in academic writing. His tone is sincere and calm, sometimes bordering on the poetic, making this an enjoyable read.
Less recognized but equally significant is his skillful writing. From his selection of intriguing historical instances that captivate the reader from the very beginning to his use of concise, direct sentences, I think this collection of essays flows with an ease rarely found in academic writing. His tone is sincere and calm, sometimes bordering on the poetic, making this an enjoyable read.
January 26, 2022
3.5
Very interesting and it taught me a lot and I'm a fan of PM Press - however it's quite intellectualised meaning not accessible for all (ironically). it's like the literary opposite of the commons ha ha
Very interesting and it taught me a lot and I'm a fan of PM Press - however it's quite intellectualised meaning not accessible for all (ironically). it's like the literary opposite of the commons ha ha
February 3, 2023
Interesting and important ideas but poorly edited making certain sentences impossible to parse :/ Also highly confusing is Linebaugh’s tendency to introduce characters without actually introducing them and then suddenly moving on.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews