#Problems of Agricultural Labourers

[exopelagic]

this election feels so hollow even though it’s likely ostensibly gonna be a good outcome. labour really just sucks fucking ass rn huh

[fancyperfectionsweets]

🪾 Astrology Observations 6

🦂 People who have scorpio (Pisces rising) or Chiron in the 9th house have a difficult time with education. They usually encounter problems not made by them in the area and thus, are forced to earn earlier than their peers. (Problems could be things like parents refusing/unable to pay for their higher education, disabilities popping up that hamper them)

🌚 I have noticed that weirdly gemini moons also start working earlier than their peers but that is usually not because of limitations or financial problems but ambitions. They want stimulation and experience. Jobs help them stay calm. (If they are not pursuing their personal endeavours)

🕷️ I have a theory of the 6th house being a malefic. In ancient astrology, "jobs" were looked down upon. This was because being an agricultural civilization, vedic/ancient astrologers used to think jobs=labour=exploitation. While not a lot has changed in modern day (lol) but we still have better living conditions as compared to toiling in the fields and doing minimum wage jobs. Since the 6th house is considered the house of jobs, having planets here means that you'd be more likely to work a job. This is why planets in the 6th house were considered to be bad. This, and the fact that it's also the house of enemies.

However, when it comes to modern day, my personal observation is that people who have malefics in this house Mars, Pluto, Saturn, constantly struggle with jobs and end up working in places that have a toxic work environment. Martian influence especially is common among people who are fired out of nowhere. The flip side is also true. If you have benefics such as venus or Jupiter, it's actually not a bad placement for your work life. You'd be able to gain recognition more easily and your work will be rewarded.

🎠 ketu + Saturn in the first house feels like a cursed placement throughout life. These people have to learn to escape their fundamental self to achieve what they want. It's one of those placements where you need to let the universe take the reins after working hard. If you ignore that and give into your desires, it'll fail you. A very painful transformative placement that feels like a life long lesson.

👹 let's talk about the guru chandal yog. One of the most hated placements. If jupiter sits with Rahu (North Node), it'll create this yog. This is a "blessing stopper" placement. You can be an expert in an area and this yoga can make you lose horribly in that field. It can take away opportunities in hand. If Jupiter is in a rahuvian nakshatra, this yog can be seen forming. This can only be countered if Jupiter sits in the 4th house or is exalted. Double whammy if the moon is well placed.

🌟 jupiter in the 1st house is THE optimist placement. You tend to ovestimate yourself and while a lot of times god himself saves your ass, you'd benefit from being a realist than an optimist. And check your zodiac for this?? I've always overestimated how much school work I can do. I have my jupiter in Capricorn. Lol. I met someone with a jupiter in cancer and she's an absolute optimist when it comes to her being a "caring person". Like she'll commit to everyone: she'll commit to hang out with you while simultaneously promising to do your homework and also cook for you and then everything falls apart because how are you going to do all of this together, girl. 😭

🫀 this is not my observation but someone else's but it kinda fit true in my case so I'm just checking if y'all see this happened with any of y'all. You tend to meet your spouse early in life if you have a jupiter + venus conjunction (especially in the 3rd, 5th, 9th or 11th house), your 7th lord or darkaraka planet in 3rd, 5th, 9th or 11th house. You may also meet your spouse as kids and then get together with them later in life.

🌙 where your moon is, you'd look for validation there. It's in the 11th house, you'd want to have validating friendships, 2nd house? Yep. You value yourself in your ability to make money, have savings. Moon nakshatra's can also have an effect here.

🌌 Mercury in Scorpio here. I'm not trying to hurt y'all with my words. I'm just blunt 😭

If I do want to hurt with words though, you'll know. We don't hold back and we make it obvious.

🕸️ I think people don't understand why astrologers love exalted planets so let me put in a thought as to why exaltation is awesome. Let's say your sun is exalted (in Aries) but Saturn sits there too (Saturn debilitates in Aries). But, Saturn won't be able to give bad effects because the Sun will "handle" it. If you have an exalted planet and another planet who is weak or debilitated is sitting with it, it'll not create a problem. I can also see this in parivartan yog. Although I feel the effects somewhat are different? Like exalted planets are self assured and confident by themselves but let's say, you have a parivartan yog with Sun-Saturn. So, if you're not feeling confident, some planet that is strong in your chart will come out and help you up. How do I know? Personal experience. My Saturn and Mercury are in parivartan yog. With Mercury, sits my sun. I also have a parivartan yog between Jupiter and Saturn. So yeah, I had stage fright (weakened Sun characteristic), wasn't sure of my public speaking skills. Guess who always encouraged me? My uncle (mercury), grandma (Saturn) and then I finally met a teacher who pushed me to face those fears and actually get rid of my public speaking and stage fright (Jupiter). Isn't that interesting?

💱 Taurus moons and their motivation for money need to be respected. They are so focused and strict when it comes to money. Love it!

❤️‍🔥 Everytime I see the 7th house lord in 8th, I just know this person is going to make huge sacrifices for their relationship/marriage to work. This is because 7th house lord, indicator of marital life, comes into the house of transformation: 8th house. I've seen people move places, quit their jobs, sacrifice their careers for love if they have this placement.

📛 Funnily enough, after my "mars darkaraka men are toxic" observation, I met some women whose darkarakas were mars and one of them straight up admitted she likes "the bad boys" 😭 😭 and is very aware so she started dating a guy that she'd not label as a bad boy and it's her happiest relationship ever

💘 This may or may not be true but people with strong darkarakas (Moon, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter darkaraka, exalted darkaraka, darkara sitting with exalted planets) tend to meet their partners later in life. I think this happens because the darkaraka being the special someone, wants to make you worthy of your partner. You need to learn your lessons before you meet them so it works.

🐈‍⬛ Weirdly, strong mercurial energy in the 6th house (House zodiac is virgo or gemini), Rahuvian or ketuvian influence and especially, Jupiter influence makes the native a pet lover. All the people who love to keep pets in their house and even take care of strays like their own have such strong mercury/Jupiter energy or have their 6th house lord make connection with their chart mercury/, Jupiter. Also, I know someone who has Jupiter there and she'll just randomly adopt any pet she can. 😭 😙❤️ She's the type you see on tiktok making reels like "I brought this dog/cat randomly without telling my spouse" I love y'all sm. Another fun thing I've seen is that mercury and jupiter influence makes you ohk with any animal as a pet (especially if you have Uranus there) but rahuvian influence makes a lot of people to have cats and ketu's influence tells me you're very likely to have a dog as a pet. (I kinda googled this after writing it and came to know vedic astrology says that ketu=dogs and rahu=cat. Makes sense. Lol.)

[psychotrenny]

Socio-economic conditions in mid-17th century England were largely pretty miserable to live through, but government attempts to mitigate them through laws to ensure full employment could have some pretty funny results. Being legally compelled to keep your useless fail maid around sounds like the plot of a comedy GL, but for some citizens of Stuart England it was just the reality that they had to face

By requiring masters to engage apprentices for seven-year terms and servants (in agriculture and in most trades) for the whole year rather than the day, it prevented employers from hiring labor only when there was work to be done and prevented the diligent and effective worker from replacing the ineffective. The intention to spread work is apparent in the observation of the Essex justices that labor by the day caused "the great depauperization of other labourers.' But labor by the year meant that work could be strung out to occupy an unnecessary amount of time, because whether or not a master had enough work to occupy his servants they had to stay and he had to keep them. The records show many instances of masters attempting to turn away a servant or apprentice before the stipulated term was up, only to have him sent back by the courts with orders that the master "entertain" him for the full period'. We even have the extraordinary spectacle of the runaway master, the man who illegally fled from his servants and thus evaded his responsibility to employ and support them

Edmund Morgan (1971) The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18. The American Historical Review Volume 76 Issue 3

[reasonsforhope]

"Abby Allen has no problem with her neighbours peering over her luxuriant hedges to see what she is up to on her farm.

For years she has been carrying out ad hoc experiments with wildlife and farming techniques; in her lush Devon fields native cattle graze alongside 400-year-old hedgerows, with birds and butterflies enjoying the species-rich pasture.

Under the environmental land management scheme (ELMS), introduced by the government in 2021, those experiments were finally being funded. “We have a neighbour who has always been more of an intensive farmer,” she says, but he is now considering leaving fields unploughed to help the soil. “It genuinely is having such a huge impact in changing people’s mindsets who traditionally would never have thought about farming in this way.”

The new nature payments scheme followed the UK’s exit from the EU, when the government decided to scrap the common agricultural payments scheme, which gave a flat subsidy dependent on the number of acres a farmer managed. In its place came ELMS, which pays farmers for things such as planting hedges, sowing wildflowers for birds to feed on and leaving corners of their land wild for nature.

But these schemes are now at threat of defunding, as the Labour government has refused to commit to the £2.4bn a year spending pot put in place by the previous Conservative government. With spending tight and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, cutting back on infrastructure and hinting at tax rises, a cut to the ELMS scheme may be on her list.

However, government data released last week found the schemes were working to tentatively bring nature back to England’s farmland. Butterflies, bees and bats are among the wildlife being boosted by ELMS, with birds among the chief beneficiaries, particularly ones that largely feed on invertebrates. An average of 25% more breeding birds were found in areas utilising the eco-friendly schemes.

...there are also farmers who welcome the schemes. Allen says the ELMS has helped her farm provide data and funds to expand and improve the good things they were doing for nature. “Some of the money available around things like soil testing and monitoring – instead of us going ‘we think these are the right things to do and providing these benefits,’ we can now measure it. The exciting thing now is there is money available to measure and monitor and kind of prove that you’re doing the right things. And so then you can find appropriate funding to do more of that.”

Allen, who is in the Nature Friendly Farming Network, manages a network of farms in England, most of which are using the ELMS. This includes chicken farms where the poultry spend their life outside rather than in sheds and other regenerative livestock businesses...

Mark Spencer was an environment minister until 2024 when he lost his seat, but now spends more time in the fields admiring the fruits of his and his family’s labour. He says that a few years of nature-friendly agriculture has restored lapwings and owls.

“On the farm, I haven’t seen lapwings in any number for what feels like a whole generation. You know, as a kid, when I was in my early teens, you’d see lapwings. We used to call them peewits. We’d see them all the time, and they sort of disappeared.

“But then, me and my neighbours changed the way we did cropping, left space in the fields for them to nest, and suddenly they returned. You need to have a piece of land where you’re not having mechanical machinery go over it on a regular basis, because otherwise you destroy the nest. We’ve also got baby owls in our owl box now for the first time in 15 years. They look mega, to be honest, these little owls, little balls of fluff. It is rewarding.”"

-via The Guardian, August 23, 2024

[petula-xx]

Forced Farm Work Doesn't Work

I see that America is thinking of using forced labour to replace deported immigrants on farms. Human ethics issues aside, I don't think this will be a good deal for farmers.

Here's why....

For 11 years I worked seasonally at an organic certified blueberry farm. The first couple of years I worked for piece rates along with overseas backpackers. Eventually I worked up to being the leading hand. I trained and supervised the workers, planned the harvest days, managed the packing shed, inventory and learned how to prune and manage blueberry plants. I learnt a lot. I sweated a lot.

Fruit picking is hard work in often extreme weather conditions - for berries you are working in the heat. To be of any use to a farmer the picker needs to work at speed, maintain high standards, pick correctly, handle the fruit properly, sort, grade and pack accurately and do this for hours on end, days on end and in many cases for months on end.

The farmer needs people who can shoulder this work. Damaged fruit through rough handling, unripe fruit picked too soon, damaged plants or crops not getting harvested in time cost the farmer their livelihood. A picker needs to be able to learn quick, work quick and endure. Training people up takes time. This becomes wasted time (and money) if the picker leaves the job or does not become a useful resource for the farmer.

Anyone in government who thinks that forcing people (immigrants, welfare recipients, addicts, single mums, whatever) into farm work to make them 'pay their way' is delusional.

Agricultural conscription will not 'help' farmers. Sending farmers a forced mixed bag of 'too hard basket' people to deal with is an insult to the farming profession and the people who work in it. It also shows a complete ignorance about what it takes to produce food and get it to the table.

America, if you have a rural labour shortage problem right now then ask YOUR FARMERS what it is that they need to fix it. I can guarantee that it will not be busloads of rounded up welfare recipients.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I am so sick of people using “girlboss feminism” to put down Katara fans who don’t like her LOK arc

Wanting a female character to be a badass warrior is not girlboss feminism. Capitalism is not yet a force of oppression in Katara’s youth, so there is no way for Katara to be a girlboss unless she joins force with Cabbage Man, pioneers industrial agriculture, and begins exploiting the labour of Earth Kingdom farmers.

I think it’s very disingenuous to mobilize the anti-capitalist critique inherent in the term “girlboss” to put down a Girl Power fantasy. The issue with girlboss feminism is not, and has never been, that women want power, or money, or recognition. The problem with girlboss feminism has always been that exploiting other people, especially other women, for your own gain is not feminist.

I honestly miss when fandoms would call female characters Mary Sues, because at least back then we didn’t pretend that women wanting power was an inherently bad thing.

[scotianostra]

June 10th 1768 saw construction start on the Forth and Clyde canal, it was to take 22 years to complete.

The building of a canal across Scotland was first discussed during the reign of Charles II. It was not until the mid-1700s that the building of the Forth and Clyde Canal or “The Great Canal” as it was referred to then, became an actual possibility with funding being raised to carry out the work. The canal was to be built across the Central Belt of Scotland from east to west. The first spadeful was dug out in June 10th 1768 and the construction continued for 22 years including a 7 year period when no work was carried out due to lack of funds. It was the Canal Company’s policy to try to recruit locally to provide employment in the areas the canal crossed.

The work was hard and was manual labour with the use of picks and shovels to dig out heavy wet earth. Wages were about 10d (£0.04p) per day and the workers were a tough lot. Discipline was often hard to maintain and drink was cheap and plentiful causing various problems. Theft of tools and other equipment was common and often the workers were seasonal due to also working in the agricultural land surrounding the canal works. None the less the work was done and the canal was dug. Water was first let into the canal in 1773 when it was filled as far as Kirkintilloch, which increased this town’s profile with additional trades appearing in the area. It was 2 years later that the canal opened as far as Stockingfield, Maryhill. A cut was also made towards Glasgow as far as Hamiltonhill and then funds ran short and worked stopped for 7 years.

In 1784 work resumed when the Government of the time approved a loan of £50,000 to the Canal Company, the money coming from the Forfeited Estates Fund (a legacy of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745) and this allowed the canal to reach Bowling. The Forth and Clyde Canal was opened from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde in the summer of 1790 with the first boat navigating its channel in August of that year.

The length of the Canal from eastern sea lock to the western sea lock was 35 miles. In 1791 the Glasgow Branch was extended from Hamiltonhill to Port Dundas giving it a length of 3.5 miles. There are 39 locks to navigate on the canal with 20 locks on the eastern section the firth of Forth to Wyndford and 19 on the western section from Maryhill to Bowling on the Firth of Clyde. The canal was crossed by many bascule bridges and made use of aqueducts such as the one over the Luggie at Kirkintilloch and the river Kelvin in Glasgow.

The canal served three main purposes. It allowed seagoing vessels passage from east to west or vice versa, therefore avoiding the long passage around the north of Scotland. It provided the fast movement of goods. Agricultural produce, mineral resources and locally produced goods could be transported more easily across Scotland. It also acted as a way for travellers to move across Scotland using “Swift” boats that linked to coach services.

The Forth and Clyde Canal had an active life into the years of the Second World War though by this time railways were carrying more goods around the country. Trade was slowly falling away though transits through the canal and day tripping continued. Eventually on 1st January 1963 the Forth and Clyde Canal closed to through traffic.

As part of the millennium celebrations in 2000, National Lottery funds were used to regenerate both canals. A boat lifting device, the Falkirk Wheel, was built to connect the Union and Forth & Clyde canals and once more allow boats to travel from the Clyde or Glasgow to Edinburgh, with a new canal connection to the River Carron and hence the River Forth. The Falkirk Wheel opened on 27 May 2002 and is now a tourist attraction. The Helix project, which includes the magnificent Kelpies is also part of this ongoing regeneration.

The pics are my own from a cycle ride along the canal at Falkirk in 2016.

[whencyclopedia]

Repartimiento

The Repartimiento system was a distribution of rights to Spanish colonialists and municipalities, which allowed them to extract forced but low-paid labour from local communities in conquered territories. Designed to replace the inefficient encomienda system, the repartimiento system was eventually only used for crucial industries such as food and cloth production and precious metal mining.

The Encomienda System

When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World in the 16th century, they searched for and shared out the resources they came across. Initially, this was gold, silver, and other precious materials, but as the European colonization of the Americas got underway, labour and slaves became just as valuable. The right to extract labour from a local population – used for working agricultural lands, particularly plantations, and mines – was awarded by the Spanish colonial administration as a license called an encomienda. The license applied to the individual holder and was not tied to any specific area of land, even a town could hold an encomienda. In return for this free labour, the Europeans were expected to give military protection to their labourers and to offer them the opportunity to be converted to Christianity. A holder of an encomienda, therefore, had to fund a parish priest. Although the system was very close to slavery, license-holders could not sell their labourers. The pope had prohibited the slavery of indigenous Americans in 1537, but this scruple clearly did not apply to imported Africans.

From the viewpoint of the Spanish, the encomienda system worked for a while, but it was highly inefficient. Many indigenous peoples, understandably, made attempts to escape. Many were unused and unsuited to working on large-scale agricultural schemes. European-born diseases devastated local populations making it much more difficult to find the labour the Spanish required. Overexploitation of the labourers they could find – literally working and starving them to death – became such a problem that voices in the Establishment back in Spain began to be raised in protest. It was noted, too, that many license-holders did not fulfil their spiritual obligations to their labourers. Bodies like the Council of the Indies, which managed all of Spain's colonies, began to search for a better alternative to the encomienda system. The twin aims of colonization were the extraction of resources and the saving of souls by converting local peoples to Christianity. The encomienda system seemed to be failing on both fronts. The answer the authorities came up with was the repartimiento system.

With rapacious conquistadors and unprincipled settlers eager to extract all they could from colonies, any attempt at change was bound to face practical problems. The first attempt to abolish the encomienda system came in 1542, and a set of New Laws hoped to reduce its application. These attempts failed. The next serious attempt at reform came in 1573 when Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598) outlawed any use of the encomienda system in any new territories. Although it was no longer a major aspect of the colonial economy by the end of the 16th century, it was not until the 18th century that the encomienda system finally died out.

Continue reading...

[seat-safety-switch]

Gardening is very important. We can't eat weeds, except for the ones we can. If nobody knows how to grow food, or at the very least pretty flowers, we're all gonna starve to death. Big business loves to keep a lock on this knowledge, running huge agricultural operations that destroy the planet just to put a piece of wilted, year-old lettuce on your burger. When you empower yourself to grow plants, then you can eat those plants.

There's a problem for a lot of people, and it's the same problem I have: space. Gardens take up a lot of room, because you need to eat a surprising amount of food in one year to survive. For me, I have several decrepit old cars leaking their vital fluids into the Earth, so it's maybe not a great idea to grow something I'm going to eat later in that soil. The answer is guerrilla gardening.

Just like freedom fighting, the difference between "illegal trespass" and "person trying to beautify their neighbourhood" is your attitude. When you are building a bunch of elaborate seed bombs and chucking them out of the window of your car onto the median while driving twenty over the limit on the highway, then it's a good idea to have some good PR prattle on hand for the state troopers.

What crop to grow? I recommend potatoes. Potatoes have been grown in outer fucking space, in drainage ditches, the broken soil of alleys, and wherever in your vegetable garden you don't want potatoes to grow. They're nature's strongest warrior, capable of imbuing your body with a day's worth of starchy energy for labour. In a pinch, they can also be turned into fuel, high-test liquor, or ammunition.

So the next time you can't quite finish that bag of potatoes from the grocery store before all the creepy roots start popping out of it, don't worry. Just chuck all that shit into the first pile of dirt you see while out and about in your neighbourhood. Trust me, they thrive on the negligence, and you'll help feed the community. Provided the community likes eating potatoes they found growing in the mouldy carpet of a partly-collapsed Blockbuster Video.

[mllemaenad]

Okay, but ... there is no Antaam.

I'm not trying to be a pedant here. Most people in Thedas won't speak much Qunlat, and they don't care about Qunari philosphy. I actually think it's fairly realistic that people are just using "Antaam" to mean "Qunari guys with swords".

But in this specific context, I think we have to point out that there is no Antaam.

"Antaam" is Qunlat for "body". It signifies one of three parts of the Qunari population: those that deal with warfare. So, yeah, the army. They rebelled in large enough numbers that Par Vollen effectively no longer has an army: any remaining soldiers have been absorbed into the Ben-Hassrath.

The game has repeatedly made clear that the Antaam shattered post-rebellion. There is no longer a single cohesive force, but a bunch of bandits and pirates rampaging all over the place.

This is obviously unpleasant for the people who encounter them, but from a tactical perspective Par Vollen's enemies should be salivating.

There is no Antaam.

There is no overall goal or battle plan:

It is easy to think that the Antaam broke from the Qunari as one, but the reality is that of a vase shattering into countless shards, each broken in its own way, reflecting the warlord who now leads each kith. Some, like the Butcher in Treviso, use their new freedom to indulge in cultures long forbidden to them. Others, like Ataashok (Dragon King) or Isskatari (Master Killer) in Rivain, reject foreign cultures and either lean on the trappings of the Antaam or invent a heritage to inspire the loyalty of their soldiers. What seems consistent among the Antaam warlords is cruelty, from Baqounasaar (Flaming Wind), whose ships terrorize the northern coast, to Kashtaar (Jewel-Taker), whose kith have become a bandit army in the mountains outside Marothius. I believe the reason to be twofold: first, these kithshoks feared that their army might turn upon them as they turned upon the Arishok, so they drive their soldiers through fear; and second, there are very few kind and thoughtful Antaam. – Warlords of the Antaam

They're all just doing whatever they feel like! I don't even see how there can be an alliance between "the Antaam" and the evanuris. They'd have to approach each warlord individually. I can accept that they made deals with some, but hardly all of them, and from the conversations with the Butcher and the Dragon King they've clearly made different deals with each group.

And because they no longer follow the Qun, they've lost access to all of their supply lines. No one's sending food from Par Vollen! No one's forging new swords or armour!

This means that they all now have to divert a bunch of their time and attention to figuring out where to get breakfast and what everyone is going to wear. Yes, that can mean raids for supplies, but that's still different from conquest. Even if they use slave labour from captured territories they still have to put people on organising and supervising that – and as no one in the Antaam would know anything about agriculture that's got to be hilarious to watch.

I can accept that they won a few quick victories at the start because they behaved in unexpected ways. I can even accept that they walked all over Antiva, because apparently the Antivans are idiots.

But this should have turned the tide for Tevinter – and I mean well before the Blighted dragons showed up. They should have been talking about invading Par Vollen. And "the Antaam" is no longer the enemy in a war ... they're a pirate problem.

I mean, come on, "get past the navy"? What, the evanuris paid off a couple of Kathabans to cooperate for a few minutes? Get one of Isabela's people to drop messages to one group that the other one is hoarding treasure – or better yet, food. They'll have meltdowns and start stabbing each other. Wave something shiny in the other direction and watch them go chase it. Navy my arse.

There is no Antaam.

[mrhaitch]

Hello, Mr. Haitch

You mentioned before in one of your answers that "climate and social justice are inextricably linked." Do you mind saying how so?

Thank you!

Our current geological age - the Anthropocene - is inextricably linked to the history of capitalism, no matter how you date it. The three main theories are that it began in 1945 at the close of the second world war and the international trade agreements and advent of nuclear testing; that it began with the industrial revolution; or (and this is the theory I subscribe to) it began between 1492 and 1610 with European colonialism in the Americas.

The anthropocene is defined as an age of globalised human control and impact on the earth's environment, ranging from climate change to biodiversity, and the early history of Europe's colonisation of the Americas fits the bill pretty well. Beginning in 1492 the indigenous population of the Americas collapsed by 95% (population estimates run from 60 million to 120+, the loss represents about a 10% global population loss), along with vast amounts of infrastructure including cities, towns, trading outposts, road networks, irrigation systems, and so on - all in an area (especially equatorial America) where the local flora grows rapidly. The deaths of so many with so few colonisers to replace them saw a rapacious period of reforestation, creating a massive carbon sink which drew down an estimated 13 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, ushering in The Little Ice Age. Global temperatures fell for the first time since the agricultural revolution, and put huge stress on an already fracturing feudal system. Over the course of 200 years Europe went through fits of social and political revolution, where the aristocracy were (sometimes violently) deposed by an ascendant merchant class ushering in our current age of liberal democracy, the enshrining of private property, and fixation on trade and prosperity.

The population collapse also provided a rationale for the Atlantic slave trade, as the enslaved workforce the Europeans had been using up until then were pretty much all dead.

With me so far?

Since the industrial revolution our economic system has been reliant on exponential growth, leading to an ever increasing appetite for raw materials, land, and cheap (or free) labour. The environmental and human costs have increased in lock step with one another - both crises borne of the same root. We cannot address one without addressing the other.

This is a very condensed version of the argument and I'm glossing over a lot here. If you're interested I'd recommend tracking down the following texts (usually available at libraries, particularly University ones):

The American Holocaust, David Stannard

The Human Planet, Lewis and Maslin

The Problem of Nature, David Arnold

The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert

History and Human Nature, RC Solomon

[ghelgheli]

According to Marx, metabolic rift appears in three different levels and forms. First and most fundamentally, metabolic rift is the material disruption of cyclical processes in natural metabolism under the regime of capital. Marx’s favourite example is the exhaustion of the soil by modern agriculture. Modern large-scale, industrial agriculture makes plants absorb soil nutrition as much as and as fast as possible so that they can be sold to customers in large cities even beyond national borders. It was Justus von Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry (1862) and his theory of metabolism that prompted Marx to integrate an analysis of the ‘robbery’ system of agriculture into Capital. [...]

Liebig harshly criticized modern ‘robbery agriculture’ (Raubbau), which only aims at the maximization of short-term profit and lets plants absorb as many nutrients from the soil as possible without replenishing them. Market competition drives farmers to large-scale agriculture, intensifying land usage without sufficient management and care. As a consequence, modern capitalist agriculture created a dangerous disruption in the metabolic cycle of soil nutrients. [...]

Marx formulated the problem of soil exhaustion as a contradiction created by capitalist production in the metabolism between humans and nature. Insofar as value cannot fully take the metabolism between humans and nature into account and capitalist production prioritizes the infinite accumulation of value, the realization of sustainable production within capitalism faces insurmountable barriers.

This fundamental level of metabolic rift in the form of the disruption of material flow cannot occur without being supplemented and reinforced by two further dimensions. The second dimension of metabolic rift is the spatial rift. Marx highly valued Liebig in Capital because his Agricultural Chemistry provided a scientific foundation for his earlier critical analysis of the social division of labour, which he conceptualized as the ‘contradiction between town and country’ in The German Ideology. Liebig lamented that those crops that are sold in modern large cities do not return to the original soil after they are consumed by the workers. Instead, they flow into the rivers as sewage via water closets, only strengthening the tendency towards soil exhaustion.

This antagonistic spatial relationship between town and country – it can be called ‘spatial rift’ – is founded upon a violent process of so-called primitive accumulation accompanied by depeasantization and massive urban growth of the working-class population concentrated in large cities. This not only necessitates the long-distance transport of products but also significantly increases the demand for agricultural products in large cities, leading to continuous cropping without fallowing under large-scale agriculture, which is intensified even more through market competition. In other words, robbery agriculture does not exist without the social division of labour unique to capitalist production, which is based upon the concentration of the working class in large cities and the corresponding necessity for the constant transport of their food from the countryside. [...]

The third dimension of metabolic rift is the temporal rift. As is obvious from the slow formation of soil nutrients and fossil fuels and the accelerating circulation of capital, there emerges a rift between nature’s time and capital’s time. Capital constantly attempts to shorten its turnover time and maximize valorization in a given time – the shortening of turnover time is an effective way of increasing the quantity of profit in the face of the decreasing rate of profit. This process is accompanied by increasing demands for floating capital in the form of cheap and abundant raw and auxiliary materials. Furthermore, capital constantly revolutionizes the production process, augmenting productive forces with an unprecedented speed compared with precapitalist societies. Productive forces can double or triple with the introduction of new machines, but nature cannot change its formation processes of phosphor or fossil fuel, so ‘it was likely that productivity in the production of raw materials would tend not to increase as rapidly as productivity in general (and, accordingly, the growing requirements for raw materials)’ (Lebowitz 2009: 138). This tendency can never be fully suspended because natural cycles exist independently of capital’s demands. Capital cannot produce without nature, but it also wishes that nature would vanish. [...]

The contradiction of capitalist accumulation is that increases in the social productivity are accompanied by a decrease in natural productivity due to robbery [... i]t is thus essential for capital to secure stable access to cheap resources, energy and food. [...]

The exploration of the earth and the invention of new technologies cannot repair the rift. The rift remains ‘irreparable’ in capitalism. This is because capital attempts to overcome rifts without recognizing its own absolute limits, which it cannot do. Instead, it simply attempts to relativize the absolute. This is what Marx meant when he wrote ‘every limit appears a barrier to overcome’ (Grundrisse: 408). Capital constantly invents new technologies, develops means of transportation, discovers new use-values and expands markets to overcome natural limits. [...]

Corresponding to the three dimensions of metabolic rifts, there are also three ways of shifting them. First, there is technological shift. Although Liebig warned about the collapse of European civilization due to robbery agriculture in the 19th century, his prediction apparently did not come true. This is largely thanks to Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who invented the so-called Haber-Bosch process in 1906 that enabled the industrial mass production of ammonia (NH3) by fixing nitrogen from the air, and thus of chemical fertilizer to maintain soil fertility. Historically speaking, the problem of soil exhaustion due to a lack of inorganic substances was largely resolved thanks to this invention. Nevertheless, the Haber-Bosch process did not heal the rift but only shifted, generating other problems on a larger scale.

The production of NH3 uses a massive amount of natural gas as a source of hydrogen (H). In other words, it squanders another limited resource in order to produce ammonia as a remedy to soil exhaustion, but it is also quite energy intensive, producing a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) (responsible for 1 per cent of the total carbon emission in the world). Furthermore, excessive applications of chemical fertilizer leach into the environment, causing eutrophication and red tide, while nitrogen oxide pollutes water. Overdependence on chemical fertilizer disrupts soil ecology, so that it results in soil erosion, low water- and nutrient-holding capacity, and increased vulnerability to diseases and insects. Consequently, more frequent irrigation, a larger amount of fertilizer and more powerful equipment become necessary, together with pesticides. This kind of industrial agriculture consumes not just water but large quantities of oil also, which makes agriculture a serious driver of climate change. [...]

[T]here remains a constant need to shift the rift under capitalism, which continues to bring about new problems. This contradiction becomes more discernible in considering the second type of shifting the metabolic rift – that is, spatial shift, which expands the antagonism of the city and the countryside to a global scale in favour of the Global North. Spatial shift creates externality by a geographic displacement of ecological burdens to another social group living somewhere else. Again, Marx discussed this issue in relation to soil exhaustion in core capitalist countries in the 19th century. On the coast of Peru there were small islands consisting of the excrement of seabirds called guano that had accumulated over many years to form ‘guano islands’. [...]

In the 19th century, guano became ‘necessary’ to sustain soil fertility in Europe. Millions of tons of guano were dug up and continuously exported to Europe, resulting in its rapid exhaustion. Extractivism was accompanied by the brutal oppression of Indigenous people and the severe exploitation of thousands of Chinese ‘c**lies’ working under cruel conditions. Ultimately, the exhaustion of guano reserves provoked the Guano War (1865–6) and the Saltpetre War (1879–84) in the battle for the remaining guano reserves. As John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark (2009) argue, such a solution in favour of the Global North resulted in ‘ecological imperialism’. Although ecological imperialism shifts the rift to the peripheries and makes its imminent violence invisible in the centre, the metabolic rift only deepens on a global scale through long-distance trade, and the nutrient cycle becomes even more severely disrupted.

The third dimension of metabolic shift is the temporal shift. The discrepancy between nature’s time and capital’s time does not immediately bring about an ecological disaster because nature possesses ‘elasticity’. Its limits are not static but modifiable to a great extent. Climate crisis is a representative case of this metabolic shift. Massive CO2 emissions due to the excessive usage of fossil fuels is an apparent cause of climate change, but the emission of greenhouse gas does not immediately crystallize as climate breakdown. Capital exploits the opportunities opened up by this time lag to secure more profits from previous investments in drills and pipelines. Since capital reflects the voice of current shareholders, but not that of future generations, the costs are shifted onto the latter. As a result, future generations suffer from consequences for which they are not responsible. Marx characterized such an attitude inherent to capitalist development with the slogan ‘Après moi le déluge!’ (Capital I: 381).

This time lag generated by a temporal shift also induces a hope that it would be possible to invent new epoch-making technologies to combat against the ecological crisis in the future. In fact, one may think that it is better to continue economic growth which promotes technological development, rather than over-reducing carbon dioxide emissions and adversely affecting the economy. However, even if new negative emission technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) are invented, it will take a long time for them to spread throughout society and replace the old ones. In the meantime, the environmental crisis will continue to worsen due to our current inaction. As a result, the expected effects of the new technology can be cancelled out.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene

[seriousbrat]

100% agree on the last post! James is the norm in terms of teenage boys in his society, unfortunately that is not speaking much of that society considering he’s blackmailing his crush through doing harm to her friend and pantsing people. Which is honestly the problem, that specific behavior isn’t seen as an issue it’s the other stuff he does (his arrogance is what’s mostly focused on by the other characters). Looking at violence and gender in that society and how it functions, I really don’t think James is transgressing any of these norms but falling right into them. Which again is the problem. His behavior is a product of the culture which shaped him, that’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.

Exactly. Like on a scale from Woke Feminist King to Inbetweener, I think James would have been decent enough, average, like I said, maybe even a little bit better than average because of his sense of 'honour' or whatever lol. But not that much.

Also, I know people might not agree with this but I do think the WW is less misogynistic than the Muggle. I think this is logical in a society where magical ability is what primarily contributes to raw labour rather than physical strength. Not to get Marxism 101 on everyone but if we look at the origins of patriarchy as based in the Agricultural Revolution, the division of labour following the emergence of private property (men work in fields, women produce men to work fields, men accumulate resources) is somewhat lessened if everyone can use magic equally, and when women can defend themselves very effectively against becoming the resources that are accumulated.

I say somewhat because yes, women (cis women, I don't think we can expect neolithic farmers or Engels to be trans inclusive haha) are still the ones who can give birth. Obviously for this reason (and also because of influence from the Muggle world) the WW is still a patriarchy and misogyny does still exist, just slightly less acutely than in the real world, and women have an easier time advancing within it.

(((In pureblood society, because they value bloodlines and heirs, there is undoubtedly more misogyny. But we know from pottermore that pureblood supremacy is a relatively recent advent, certainly much more recent than the Agricultural Revolution and the emergence of private property haha. I can imagine that misogyny grew stronger alongside pureblood supremacy quite naturally. This is why Narcissa acts more as a handmaids tale esque wife to Lucius than Lily or Tonks or even Molly and Fleur, who are still housewives themselves.)))

I think there's evidence of women generally faring a bit better in the WW, such as female Ministers long, loooong before Muggle women even had the vote, and culturally I think this is reflected too:

From the intro to Beedle the Bard, which goes on to talk about 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' in which the female character does have a passive role, so it's not like this is unheard of, just a bit less common. In 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune,' the aforementioned Asha, Altheda, and Amata are all much more useful and powerful and active characters than Sir Luckless who basically just follows them around. (I actually really like that story, and 'Hairy Heart' is delightfully creepy. Probably my faves.) James would have grown up with these stories.

Anyway this got VERY off track but for for this reason too, I think James and the other Marauders would probably be a little bit better than their Muggle equivalents, but also not perfect. Just like Ron, to whom it's perfectly normal that Hermione would be top in everything and that Gwenog Jones ('THE Gwenog Jones') would be someone to idolise, but he also displays misogyny such as when he calls Hermione a 'scarlet woman' lol. As do others. (For contrast, ask an average teen boy in our world to name 3 female football players. Yeah.)

And yes maybe some of it is jkr's learnt misogyny leaking through too, from growing up in a patriarchy along with the rest of us (and let's be objective about this, she has been a victim of it too, very much so.) But personally I think the WW still being misogynistic but slightly better than irl actually ends up being realistically relatable while also providing a level of escapism and aspiration for young girls. It doesn't feel that inconsistent to me but idk. Hermione easily outstripping her male peers in intelligence and talent, Ginny and other female Quidditch players being on the level of men and often better, and this just being accepted, was inspiring for me, anyway.

[fatehbaz]

all the time, gotta walk away, for a moment, take a break, infuriated, when reading about European implementation of forced labour, particularly and especially thinking about nineteenth and early twentieth centuries plantations, whether it's sugarcane or rubber or tea or banana, whether it's British plantations in Assam or Malaya; Belgian plantations in Congo; French plantations in West Africa; Dutch plantations in Java; de facto United States-controlled plantations in Haiti or Guatemala or Cuba or Colombia. and the story is always: "and then the government tried to find a way to reimpose slavery under a different name. and then the government destroyed vast regions of forest for monoculture plantations. and then the government forced thousands to become homeless and then criminalized poverty to force people into plantation work or prison labor." like the plantation industries are central (entangled with every commodity and every infrastructure project) and their directors are influencing each other despite spatial distance between London and the Caribbean and the Philippines.

and so the same few dozen administrators and companies and institutions keep making appearances everywhere, like they have outsized influence in history. like they are important nodes in a network. and they all cite each other, and write letters to each other, and send plant collection gifts to each other, and attend each other's lectures, and inspire other companies and colonial powers to adapt their policies/techniques.

but. important that we ought not characterize some systems and forces (surveillance apparatuses, industrial might, capitalism itself) as willful or always conscious. this is a critical addendum. a lot of those forces are self-perpetuating, or at least not, like, a sentient monster. we ought to avoid imagining a hypothetical boardroom full of be-suited businessmen smoking cigars and plotting schemes. this runs the risk of misunderstanding the forces that kill us, runs the risk of attributing qualities to those forces that they don't actually possess. but sometimes, in some cases, there really are, like, a few particular assholes with a disproportionate amount of influence making problems for everyone else.

not to over-simplify, but sometimes it's like the same prominent people, and a few key well-placed connections and enablers in research institutions or infrastructure companies. they're prison wardens and lietuenant governors and medical doctors and engineers and military commanders and botanists and bankers, and they all co-ordinate these multi-faceted plans to dispossess the locals, build the roads, occupy the local government, co-erce the labour, tend the plants, ship the products.

so you'll be reading the story of like a decade in British Singapore and you're like "oh, i bet that one ambitious British surgeon who is into 'economics' and is obsessed with tigers and has the big nutmeg garden in his backyard is gonna show up again" and sure enough he does. but also sometimes you're reading about another situation halfway across the planet and then they surprise you (because so many of them are wealthy and influential and friends with each other) and it'll be like "oh you're reading about a British officer displacing local people to construct a new building in Nigeria? surprise cameo! he just got a letter from the dude at the university back in London or the agriculturalist in Jamaica or the urban planner from Bombay, they all went to school together and they're also all investors in the same rubber plantation in Malaya". so you'll see repeated references to the same names like "the British governor of Bengal" or "[a financial institution or bank from Paris or New York City]" or "[a specific colonial doctor/laboratory that does unethical experiments or eugenics stuff]" or "lead tropical agriculture adviser to [major corporation]" or "the United Fruit Company" and it's like "not you again"

[deathiscallingihungup]

TW TRUMP

TW US POLITICS

Key points from this very informative video on recent plans in the US.

We already know brown people are being held in concentration camps

ICE are ramping up the disappearing of innocent, hard working immigrants in America.

ICE are turning their attention to brown individuals working in the agriculture industry

50 percent of agriculture workers in the US are undocumented workers.

80 percent of agriculture workers in the US were not born in the US.

We know that this doesn't matter to ICE and the Trump Administration- they are simply racially profiling and targetting brown people and individuals with latino-sounding surnames.

Because of the recent deportations under the Trump admninistration, there is becoming an increasing shortage in farm workers.

Republicans never cared about criminals, yall, if they cared about law and order, Trump would be behind bars right now. And! To the people that say "my vote doesn't matter either way" and "they (trump and kamala) are both bad" THIS SHIT WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND PROTEST.

This is an ethnic cleansing of brown, latino and non-white people.

There is enough alligators in "Alligator Alcatraz" to kill and eat 65 million people. We have 65 million Latinos in this country.

Auschwitz didn't start out as a death camp either.

There is a logical progression from concentration camp (where we are right now), to forced labour/ slave camps, to death camps.

The Trump Administration, in response to the shortage in farm workers, are planning on moving concentration camps to forced labour camps by renting human beings out to farm owners.

The owners of the farms will "own" these people.

This is human trafficking.

Trump acknowledged, in an interview, that undocumented immigrants work "10, 15 years, no problem". It was NEVER about reducing crime. How could it be? Undocumented immigrants are multiple times less likely to commit a violent or bad crime.

Migrant farm workers on the West Coast are organizing a strike.

This is putting great risk to themselves and is a great sacrifice.

Support these individuals by not buying from the farms they are striking on.

More details will be announced, however, only immediately before the strikes will take place.

[anarchblr]

also this was a million years ago (and by a million I mean two) so i don't know if you remember it, but I encountered an essay by Mariátegui where he argues that the Inca had communism despite living under a monarchy. that was from the third essay from Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, "The Problem of Land" that seemed like it fit with what you've talked about where the Leninist definition of a state allows for absurd claims like "monarchy with a proletarian class character"

"Inca communism, which cannot be negated or disparaged for having developed under the autocratic regime of the Incas, is therefore designated as agrarian communism. The essential traits of the Inca economy, according to the careful definition of our historical process by Cesar Ugarte, were the following:

Collective ownership of farmland by the ayllu or group of related families, although the property was divided into individual and non-transferable lots; collective ownership of waters, pasture, and woodlands by the marca or tribe, or the federation of ayllus settled around a village; cooperative labor; individual allotment of harvests and produce."

Oh that was your?!

I'm so sorry that, because I'm shadowbanned, you might've not seen my initial reply, but I figure you're referring to this?

In any case, I think Mariategui, assuming that the quote is to be taken at face value with no added context, is wrong in calling it "communism" for a variety of reasons.

In all honesty, it is true that the ayllu is a communal, agrarian domestic sphere, but it's not communism.

Such kind of communal productive forces of society have existed proibably since time immemorial; the south american ayllu, central american milpas, the mesoamerican chinampas, north american owachira, the european commons, etc.

It should be better understood as a sort of rudimentary collectivism that was the base unit for other economic systems that could grow up from it, much like how Marx talked about the so-called "asiatic mode of production":

"Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, for example, some of which continue to exist to this day, are based on the possession of the land in common, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves as a fixed plan and basis for action whenever a new community is started. The communities occupy areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, and each forms a compact whole producing all it requires. Most of the products are destined for direct use by the community itself, and are not commodities. [..] It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a part of that surplus cannot become a commodity until it has reached the hands of the state, because from time immemorial a certain quantity of the community's production has found its way to the state as rent in kind. The form of the community varies in different parts of India. In the simplest communities, the land is tilled in common, and the produce is divided among the members. At the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries. Alongside the mass of people thus occupied in the same way, we find the 'chief inhabitant', who is judge, police authority and tax-gatherer in one; [..] the Brahmin [..]; the calendar-Brahmin [..]. This dozen or so of individuals is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole mechanism reveals a systematic division of labour [..] The simplicity of the productive organism in these self-sufficing communities which constantly reproduce themselves in the same form and, when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the same spot and with the same name - this simplicity supplies the key to the riddle of the unchangeability of Asiatic societies, which is in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic states, and their never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the fundamental economic elements of society remains untouched by the storms which blow up in the cloudy regions of politics."

-Karl Marx, Capital vol. I, pg. 477-79, Penguin Ed.

and the corresponding footnote:

'Under this simple form . . . the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered, and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by war, famine, and disease, the same name. the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged' (T. Stamford, Raffies, late Lieut.-Gov. of Java, The History of Java, London, 1817, Vol. 1, p. 285).

all emphasis has been mine.

hope this has been illuminating