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Quote by Lierre Keith

“John Locke, called the Father of Liberalism, made the argument that the individual instead of the community was the foundation of society. He believed that government existed by the consent of the governed, not by divine right. But the reason government is necessary is to defend private property, to keep people from stealing from each other. This idea appealed to the wealthy for an obvious reason: they wanted to keep their wealth. From the perspective of the poor, things look decidedly different. The rich are able to accumulate wealth by taking the labor of the poor and by turning the commons into privately owned commodities; therefore, defending the accumulation of wealth in a system that has no other moral constraints is in effect defending theft, not protecting against it.”

Quote by Lierre Keith

Book:Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet
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Work

Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet

This book delves into the theoretical and practical aspects of environmental activism, offering a comprehensive strategy for combating ecological degradation and promoting sustainable living. more

Author

Lierre Keith
Lierre Keith

Lierre Keith is a writer born in 1964. Her works often explore themes such as ecology, social justice, and feminism. more

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“[T]he power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your father shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land.”

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“It is also interesting to observe that communal ownership violates every instinct of human nature. It destroys initiative, nullifies free agency, suppresses inventive exploration, minimizes the dignity of the individual and makes a god out of an abstract thing called "The State"- to which is delegated complete, unrestricted control over life, liberty and property. . . Like so many other weak systems of government, it can survive only in an atmosphere of a slave state, ruled by a king or a dictator.”

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“Boredom has a bad reputation. In a world of constant entertainment, the slightest lull sends us to our phones. Yet boredom can be a doorway. When we are bored, our minds begin to wander. Without external input, we may turn inward. Ideas bubble up. Connections form. Boredom is the soil from which creativity often grows.”

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“The vulgar Marxist concept of 'private enterprise' was totally misconstrued by man's irrationality; it was understood to mean that the liberal development of society precluded every private possession. Naturally, this was widely exploited by political reaction. Quite obviously, social development and individual freedom have nothing to do with the so-called abolishment of private property. Marx's concept of private property did not refer to man's shirts, pants, typewriters, toilet paper, books, beds, savings, houses, real estate, etc. This concept was used exclusively in reference to the private ownership of the social means of production, i.e., those means of production that determine the general course of society. In other words: railroads, waterworks, generating plants, coal mines, etc. The 'socialization of the means of production' became such a bugbear precisely because it was confounded to mean the 'private exploitation' of chickens, shirts, books, residences, etc., in conformity with the ideology of the expropriated.”

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“The notion that property is the means to all other means was ruled out by the new radicals. The deep seated ressentiment towards private property, indeed towards anything private, blocked the conclusion that follows from any impartial examination of wealth-producing and freedom-favouring mechanisms: an effective world improvement would call for the most general possible propertization. Instead, the political metanoeticians enthused over general dispossession, akin to the founders of Christian orders who wanted to own everything communally and nothing individually. The most important insight into the dynamics of economic modernization remained inaccessible to them: money created by lending on property is the universal means of world improvement. They are all the blinder to the fact that for the meantime, only the modern tax state, the anonymous hyper-billionaire, can act as a general world-improver, naturally in alliance with the local meliorists - not only because of its traditional school power, but most of all thanks to its redistributive power, which took on unbelievable proportions in the course of the twentieth century. The current tax state, for its part, can only survive as long as it is based on a property economy whose actors put up no resistance when half of their total product is taken away, year after year, by the very visible hand of the national treasury for the sake of communal tasks. What the un-calm understands least of all is the simple fact that when government expenditures constitute almost 50 per cent of the gross national product, this fulfills the requirements of actually existing liberal-fiscal semi-socialism, regardless of what label is used to describe this situation - whether people call it the New Deal, 'social market economy' or 'neoliberalism'. What the system lacks for total perfection is a homogeneous worldwide tax sphere and the long-overdue propertization of the impoverished world.”

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“Tax relief through deductions is very precarious. It is a way for the government to let you keep a little cash without conceding that it is your money. Tax deductions can be taken away. . . "An income tax deduction is a matter of legislative grace," the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1943. In other words, all income belongs to the state. If it allows you to use some of it for purposes it chooses, be grateful. But don't think it is yours as a matter of right. That is where the Sixteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution has delivered us.”

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