Fence of ownership: Common property versus individual property regimes in England, France, Africa and the United States

A pervasive myth accompanied the rise of a Western system of exclusively individual real property: Europe gave birth to capitalism and to modernity in a process that required a Western system of exclusively individual real property replace pre-capitalist, pre-modern common property systems.; Marxist and nonMarxist historians agreed that English commoners and French peasants favoring common property systems represented a pre-capitalist reaction against capitalism. Yet in France the state never had the power to force conversion of common property to exclusively individual property. French peasants used their common property system to regulate the market and provide a rural safety net while urban industry and alternative forms of rural safety nets developed. Common property still survives to a degree as does its spirit in locally controlled regulation of the market.; Common property systems in England, France, Africa and among American Indians are not anti-market but rather regulate the market, acting as a grassroots democratic check on the power of elites expressed through states and state-enforced markets. I describe the long history of elite attacks on common property communities that nonetheless alter Western law and economics to suit common property needs.; Through interviews with government officials in Guinea, I show that conversion of common to exclusively individual property, promoted by the World Bank, and embodied in Guinea's new land code, is seen as necessary to move Guinea towards capitalist modernity. Yet officials acknowledge that Guinea cannot force this land reform on rural people except as institutional virtual reality (the law is not applied except as a way to close state agencies and courts to common property concepts).; In the United States, I contrast the histories of two American Indian reservations, White Earth and Menominee. White Earth was harmed by a history of forced conversion of common property to exclusively individual allotments that led to massive loss of land. The Menominee reservation resisted the destruction of its common property system and today participates in the market in a manner that preserves reservation ecology, democratic government and Menominee cultural identity.