12.10.2013

When i Rise to Power Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo Will Be Secretary of Land Reform

Of course the Vegas odds on a 65 yr old hermit iconoclast becoming Emperor soon are VERY long. But, whoever the next Emperor turns out to be he/she will have to make some big changes. At the top of my list would be land reform and Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, the eccentric mayor of Marinaleda in impoverished Andalusia, Spain's communist model village, would be an ideal choice for Secretary of Land Reform.

Marinaleda, used to suffer terrible hardships. Then, led by the mayor, the village declared itself a communist utopia and took farmland to provide for everyone. Could it be the answer to modern capitalism's failings? Who knows, but it's a very successful small scale model that is an excellent place to start. We can all now answer a capitalist's questions like, What's your alternative?, with "Marinaleda".

Marinaleda is a small fertile area populated by many like minded, hard working people with a long agrarian history. So some tweaking of the model may be necessary in our various towns and cities, but beneath the many headed hydra of extractive capitalism lies the fact that all wealth comes from the earth. The present 'order' has created chaos, it so unequal that millions starve while others gorge.

We're not broke, we've been robbed. The solution to widespread environmental insult [including global warming], to resource wars, to inequality in the face of abundance, begins with land reform.

"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath