The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation. The Magna Carta Manifesto [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] Four figures, bicycle, and estovers in the garden of the tomb of Humayun, New Delhi. Photo by the author. The Magna Carta Manifesto Liberties and Commons for All Peter Linebaugh UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta manifesto : liberties and commons for all / Peter Linebaugh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-24726-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Magna Carta. 2. Civil rights. 3. Constitutional history— United States. I. Title. jn147.l56 2008 323.44—dc22 2007025516 Manufactured in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 10987654321 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634–01 (Permanence of Paper). Michaela Brennan, Amjad Domani, Mike Ferner, Al Hart, Terry Lodge, gallant and true “and she shall have in the meantime her reasonable estovers in the common.” Chap. 7, Magna Carta (1217) Arthur. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Woman. King of the who? Arthur. The Britons. Woman. Who are the Britons? Arthur. We all are. We are all Britons. I am your king. Woman. I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) CONTENTS Illustrations xi Preface xiii 1. Introduction 1 2. Two Charters 21 3. The Commodity and the Commons 46 4. Charters Lost and Found 69 5. The Charters in Blackface and Whiteface 94 6. 1776 and Runnamede 119 7. The Law of the Jungle 144 8. Magna Carta and the U.S. Supreme Court 170 9. Icon and Idol 192 10. This Land Was Made by You and Me 218 11. The Constitution of the Commons 242 12. Conclusion 269 Appendix 1. Magna Carta 281 2. The Charter of the Forest 296 Glossary 301 Further Reading 313 Index 321 ILLUSTRATIONS 1. A multi-use enclosure at Runnymede 33 2. Paper money designed by Paul Revere, 1775 and 1776 128 3. Graph showing citations of the Magna Carta in Supreme Court cases 174 4. Mural of Magna Carta in old Cuyahoga County courthouse, Cleveland, Ohio, by Frank Brangwyn 194 5. Mural of Magna Carta in capitol building, Madison, Wisconsin, by Albert Herter 198 6. Panel from door of U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington DC: Edward Coke and James I 206 7. Panel from door of U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington DC: Archbishop Stephen Langton and King John 207 xi xii / Illustrations 8. Frieze in U.S. Supreme Court chambers: King John 209 9. Triptych mural of Magna Carta in federal courthouse, Terre Haute, Indiana, by Frederick Webb Ross 211 10. Memorial rotunda at Runnymede, by Edward Maufe 213 11. Plinth at center of rotunda, Runnymede 214 12. Text engraved on plinth, Runnymede 214 13. Diamond-wearing capitalists from mural in Terre Haute junior high school, by Gilbert Wilson 257 PREFACE Communism was certainly the bugaboo of my cold war child- hood when the FBI came knocking at the door and went snoop- ing around the neighborhood. Nevertheless, as I think about it in light of the “fall of Communism” on the one hand and the plan- etary movement to “reclaim the commons” on the other, ele- ments of the commons have never been far. As a child in postwar London I explored bombed-out build- ings, taking what I pleased with disregard of danger and private property alike. A year or two later on Hampstead Heath I freely collected horse chestnuts in season to marinate for the game of conkers. Once two older boys, Cockneys, took away from me an air pistol I had taken myself from the rubble of a bombed-out building (“finders keepers”). “All right, mate, you want to fight?” Quickly I discovered the philosophy of “easy come easy go,” and saved myself a bruising. Such were childhood lessons in the ambiguity of English commoning. As an American I was “common,” which meant I was not part xiii xiv / Preface of the upper branches of the class structure where posh accents, expensive schools, and privilege were the rule. My great aunt Ruth had marched in parades with Civil War veterans: I be- longed to a republic that had freed the slaves. Moreover, while I had always known that my paternal grandfather was an Indian lawyer who spoke the languages of the Five Civilized Tribes of Okalahoma, only recently have I learned that he was orphaned at the time when the communal lands of the Oklahoma Indians were privatized and relinquished to white guardians. Later in life when I crossed paths in the Boston Fenway with Governor Michael Dukakis out for his morning “power walk” he turned a neighborly blind eye to my gathering windfalls for my fireplace. This book began as a pamphlet prepared as a gift to friends from Paris, Chiapas, and Boston in 2002 who were gathered dur- ing a winter storm at Christmas dinner in Brooklyn. The Hon- orable Elizabeth Benjamin sprang to its aid. It was immediately nurtured by Deborah Chasman of The Boston Review. Much later it received a respectful hearing at the centennial meeting in Chicago of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Bristol Radical History group (U.K.) provided an Atlantic setting for a discussion of these ideas. I tried out these ideas at seminars at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and at a conference at Sarai, in New Delhi. Micky West and the Braudel Center of SUNY Binghamton, Dave Roediger and Carl Estabrook at a seminar at the University of Illi- nois at Urbana-Champaign, and Bryan Palmer at the Canadian Historical Association were invaluable interlocutors. My rumi- nations after these trips were always welcomed by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch. The esteemed Preface /xv Gustavo Esteva of the Universidad de la Tierra, Oaxaca, en- couraged this work by putting it to use. I thank Jeff Lustig for inviting me to speak on the subject to an exhilarating conference of the California Studies Association. Manuel Yang and John Little, students at the University of Toledo, accompanied me on road trips in the Midwest searching hither and yon for signs of Magna Carta and commoning. Kate Linebaugh gave steadfast support; Riley Ann Linebaugh pro- vided decisive interpretations of Monty Python. The book owes much to generous conversations with Iain Boal over several years and to his colleagues of Retort. I thank colleagues at Toledo, Stephanie Gilmore and Timothy Messer-Kruse. I thank Staughton Lynd, Vijay Prashad, and Rebecca Solnit for reading and commenting on a complete draft. I was privileged to meet Maria Mies on her way to Seattle in 1999. She, together with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, blazed paths I have tried to follow. Massimo de Angelis, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brown- hill have written inspiring works on the same theme. For answers to queries and helpful comments I thank An- thony Arnove, Antoinette Burton, Tom Chisholm, Steve Cola- trella, Harry Cleaver, Brenda Coughlin, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Nicholas Faraclas, Geoff Field, Jim Fleming, Eric Foner, Paul Gilroy, Dee Dee Halleck, Doug Hay, Ruth Herndon, Steve Hin- dle, Wythe Holt, Winston James, Peter Jaszi, Lewanne Jones, Chitra Joshi, Joel Kovel, Terry Lodge, Doug Lummis, Mukul Mangalik, David Montgomery, Prabhu Mohapatra, Jeanette Neeson, Michael Ratner, Dave Riker, John Roosa, Sumit Sarkar, Deborah Valenze, Richard Walker, Ken Wark, Kevin Whelan, Bruce Tyler Wick, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and JoAnn Wypijew- ski. Thanks to James Landman of the American Bar Association xvi / Preface and to MetaMute magazine. I thank Phoebe Ballard of the Uni- versity of Toledo for the graphic in chapter nine, and I thank Mark Horan of the Toledo Carlson Library for help with Lexis- Nexis. I thank my editors at the University of California Press: Niels Hooper for unflagging encouragement, Edith Gladstone for peerless copyediting, Rachel Lockman for patience, and Kate Warne for keeping everything on track. Commoners, all. chapter one Introduction [The bourgeoisie] has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848) In a communiqué from the Lancandan jungle of Central America Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesman of the revolt of indigenous people that burst upon the world in 1994, referred to Magna Carta. The brilliant postmodern revolt of Mexico cited a tedious premodern source of England in 1215. That reference prompted this book. To be sure its overall genesis lay within the emergency posed by the autocratic aggressions of the Bush regime but what actually prodded me to put pen to paper on this subject was a mistake in translation, or rather an absence of translation al- together, because in Mexico it so happens everybody calls the con- stitution the magna carta.