The privatization of everything: When public goods become profit centers and citizens become customers The English enclosure movement, unfolding over several centuries and reaching its most destructive phase between 1750 and 1850, converted the common lands that had sustained peasant agricultural communities for generations into private property serving the economic interests of the landed gentry and early industrial capital. Peasants who had farmed commons, grazed animals on shared pastures, and gathered fuel from shared…
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