Customer Reviews

The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All

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Historian Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged and history teacher at the University of Toledo in Ohio, USA, has written a splendid book on Magna Carta. He studies a wide range of references to Magna Carta, particularly the US Supreme Court's references.

In the early 13th century, Britain's landed aristocracy was destroying the woodlands for commercial profit, undermining the wooded basis of material life and expropriating the indigenous people. The people then forced two charters on King John at Runnymede in 1215 - Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest.

The two charters became the common law of the land. Magna Carta's Chapter 39 laid down habeas corpus, trial by jury, a ban on torture, and due process.

However, the ruling class has wiped the Charter of the Forest from memory. It has also twisted Magna Carta into a defence of private property, corporations' rights and laissez-faire. But the two charters should not be separated. Political and legal rights exist only on an economic basis. To be free citizens, we need to be free producers.

What did the Charter of the Forest say? It limited expropriation and upheld the principles of neighbourhood, subsistence, travel, anti-enclosure and reparations. It pointed towards ending the commodity form of wealth, and to protecting the people from privatisers, autocrats and militarists. It was against false idols and for the right of resistance. It defended the commons, maintaining that all property should be vested in the community, and that labour should be organised for the benefit of all.

The ruling class has always feared and detested the peoples of the world. Linebaugh cites the 1885 Report of Indian Famine Commission, which blamed the famine on `the ignorance of the people, their obstinacy and their dislike for work'.

Marx described in Das Kapital how the ruling class in Britain stole the common land and transformed it into modern private property, first in Britain, then in the Empire. Now again, we are experiencing the theft of the commons, the privatisation of our energy resources and the destruction of the building societies.

I picked up Peter Linebaugh's Magna Carta Manifesto expecting an historical tour of the Magna Carta's influence on Western political-legal development over the intervening centuries. There was enough of that, but one mostly gets instead a non-fiction acid trip through forest culture and the meadows of Runneymeade, New York City on a good day.

Linbaugh's argument is true brilliance, if less-than-perfectly coherent: that despite the universal rhetorical reverence in which the Magna Carta is held, Western governments have never truly embraced the spirit of that great document, and continue to defy its most important articles through the eradication of customary economic rights (as embodied in the English "common") and prolonged (if interrupted) history of usurpations against the liberties of those out-of-favor. His proof is obvious, so Linebaugh respects the reader by withholding much of it, devoting himself primarily to context instead. It's a tour of the arts and humanities, with hard truths carved into monuments, captured on canvas, exposed and encrypted through poetry, poetry, and poetry. The tone is socialistic, the flavor is utopian, as though truth really does set one free. Here is a book about justice; let it enhance your mind.

The issue of "LIberties and Commons" is very much up in the world right now. This is a dry, but well done
history of the Magna Carta. The passage from Olde England to private property England, and across the ocean to the pre-revolutionary USA. And now, world-wide, we are back to the issue of Commons and Private Property.
Very relevant. Who are the contemporary Robin Hoods? The Kings? The Sherriffs? And who wants to join up with the Merry Band?

This is a wonderful book that makes immense sense read alongside Karl Polanyi's "the Great Transformation", the masterpiece of political economy written in the 1940's.
I find Linebaugh's approach to these issues, viewing the use of law "social contracts" and constitutions through a lense rooted squarely in history and political-economy both instructive and fascinating. I myself had never given much time to pondering the "Magna Carta" idea or considering its implications for a liberating political-economy but this book explores these issues exceptionally well.
A former instructor of mine at Bosphorus University, Dr. Huricihan 'slamo'lu,actually more-or-less pioneered the field of "political economy of law" but this work is very much in the same vein and is an outstanding contribution to the analysis and solution of one of the key issues we face today; the struggle to preserve and extend the "commons" against the all-consuming transformation being wrought on society by unrestrained (or rather, "barely restrained")private power.
I thoroughly recommend this book for anyone interested in social justice and the struggle for a more humane world.

Linebaugh's book is REAL history--with documentation that can be contested. While I disagree that the Magna Carta was a document of "liberty" the book is filled with so much insight that it is worhy of his great teacher Edward Thompson.His comparison with the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence is brilliant. I agree with the levelers Walwyn and Overton and with the digger Winstanely--Magna Carta (as a guarantee of rights) is not worth a "mess of poridge". But this is a very great book. Enough said

I came across this book as I was researching for my own book and I must say I was blown away. Linebaugh while completely unknown to me prior to reading this has just become a go to resource. I'm blown away by the depth of knowledge contained here. I can only hope that my book will someday be regarded as I now regard this book.

Linebaugh (yes, its not "Limbaugh") does some good, and some other stuff as well. His basic, and welcome contribution is to emphasize the seldom noticed "Charter of the Forests," the little brother of the Magna Carta, which deserves more attention.

Linebaug's disservice is seeing everything through "commoning" lenses, i.e., communist theory. If you, like me, don't read much Marxist revisionism, you will have a weary time plowing through all the references to "imminent" communists (largely unknown to me), who seem to have more ways of cooking the same communal stuff than Italian chefs have for preparing pasta.

And the distraction is regretable because it obscures an important point: since the time of William the Conquerer the way we have contolled and organized the economic use of land has been one of the central formative factors in the development of Western Civilization - if Western Civilization matters to progressive intellectuals any more.

Linebaugh sees nothing but goodness in "commoning" but I wondered how he would react if I "commoned" his car or his house or his library.