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A universal law in the Aristotelian sense derived from the condition of being human (in contrast to the sources of positive law) that postulates that those who have occupied a particular territory before all others are naturally entitled to that territory; consequently, they have prior claims over it against all interlopers. The concept of citizenship by birth, for instance, derives its legitimacy from this law. As may be surmised, the abrogation of this law is only possible under conditions of violence. The profound and sobering implications of this law can be deduced from the following thought experiment: What if, tomorrow, Native Americans were to acquire the power sufficient to propel them to the headship (in all senses of the word, political, military, etc.) of the Americas? How would citizenship of the present descendants of all those who have migrated into the Americas over the centuries, literally at the point of the gun, be now defined? A taste of the answer—however repugnant it may be to all those who believe in the desirability of a multicultural democracy in that country, and anywhere else for that matter—is to be found today in the ongoing events in Zimbabwe (Will South Africa be next?) where the moral claims to citizenship by its white residents have been proven to have rested all along on armed political power that slipped out of their hands with independence in the 1980s. In other words, regardless of how one wishes to prevaricate on this matter: citizenship in lands that were colonized by Europeans, where the original inhabitants are still present today, ultimately resides in monopoly over power, and not moral claims. (See also the counterpart of this law, the Law of Historical Irreversibility.)
A universal law in the Aristotelian sense derived from the condition of being human (in contrast to the sources of positive law) that postulates that those who have occupied a particular territory before all others are naturally entitled to that territory; consequently, they have prior claims over it against all interlopers. The concept of citizenship by birth, for instance, derives its legitimacy from this law. As may be surmised, the abrogation of this law is only possible under conditions of violence. The profound and sobering implications of this law can be deduced from the following thought experiment: What if, tomorrow, Native Americans were to acquire the power sufficient to propel them to the headship (in all senses of the word, political, military, etc.) of the Americas? How would citizenship of the present descendants of all those who have migrated into the Americas over the centuries, literally at the point of the gun, be now defined? A taste of the answer—however repugnant it may be to all those who believe in the desirability of a multicultural democracy in that country, and anywhere else for that matter—is to be found today in the ongoing events in Zimbabwe (Will South Africa be next?) where the moral claims to citizenship by its white residents have been proven to have rested all along on armed political power that slipped out of their hands with independence in the 1980s. In other words, regardless of how one wishes to prevaricate on this matter: citizenship in lands that were colonized by Europeans, where the original inhabitants are still present today, ultimately resides in monopoly over power, and not moral claims. (See also the counterpart of this law, the Law of Historical Irreversibility.)
NOTES
NOTES
[1]. From page 1065 of her article that was published in the American Historical Review, 79, No. 4 (1974), pp. 1063-1088. More recently, another historian, Susan Reynolds, helped to complete the project started by Brown with the publication of her monumental work: Fiefs and Vassals: the Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford University Press, 1994)—she, in fact, not only indicates that her book was inspired by Brown’s article, but she dedicates it to Brown. In this painstakingly researched work she lays to rest the inaccurate model of medieval European society that the term feudalism has traditionally been used to describe. Note that she makes a clear distinction between feudalism as used by traditional historians, which is her primary concern, and that used to describe a particular mode of production; as she points out: “I have deliberately omitted almost all of the vast and important subject of relations between lords and peasants—in other words the whole subject of feudalism in its Marxist sense. Such relations seem to be of only indirect relevance to the concepts of fiefs and vassalage [meaning feudalism traditionally defined] as they have been understood since the sixteenth century.” (p. 15)
[1]. From page 1065 of her article that was published in the American Historical Review, 79, No. 4 (1974), pp. 1063-1088. More recently, another historian, Susan Reynolds, helped to complete the project started by Brown with the publication of her monumental work: Fiefs and Vassals: the Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford University Press, 1994)—she, in fact, not only indicates that her book was inspired by Brown’s article, but she dedicates it to Brown. In this painstakingly researched work she lays to rest the inaccurate model of medieval European society that the term feudalism has traditionally been used to describe. Note that she makes a clear distinction between feudalism as used by traditional historians, which is her primary concern, and that used to describe a particular mode of production; as she points out: “I have deliberately omitted almost all of the vast and important subject of relations between lords and peasants—in other words the whole subject of feudalism in its Marxist sense. Such relations seem to be of only indirect relevance to the concepts of fiefs and vassalage [meaning feudalism traditionally defined] as they have been understood since the sixteenth century.” (p. 15)
[2]. I cannot resist repeating here, for the umpteenth time, that strange as it may appear to many of you, capitalism, as the dominant mode of production in which the pursuit of profit-driven limitless accumulation of wealth for its own sake by a tiny minority, on the basis of its monopolistic ownership and/or control of the means of production, as well as the coercive means to enforce it, entails for the majority the complete surrender of their time and labor to the capitalist class against the backdrop of pauperization as a permanent feature of capitalism, is a relatively new human invention (and not a dispensation from God).
[2]. I cannot resist repeating here, for the umpteenth time, that strange as it may appear to many of you, capitalism, as the dominant mode of production in which the pursuit of profit-driven limitless accumulation of wealth for its own sake by a tiny minority, on the basis of its monopolistic ownership and/or control of the means of production, as well as the coercive means to enforce it, entails for the majority the complete surrender of their time and labor to the capitalist class against the backdrop of pauperization as a permanent feature of capitalism, is a relatively new human invention (and not a dispensation from God).
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