NABNYC

In Howard Zinn's book A People's History of The United States, he writes about the various cultures that inhabited what is now called the U.S. before the Europeans arrived, the groups we call Native Americans, all of whom were exterminated by the European immigrants through intentional government policies of genocide, in some cases paying the immigrants for each killing. Zinn notes that the immigrants all agreed "their" culture was far superior to that of the natives. Zinn argues the opposite was true.

Many of the original inhabitants of the U.S. did not believe in private property. Everybody owned everything. Every member of the tribe owned all the land, the resources, the food, the water, the trees. They often lived together in large enclosed areas. Even the concept of owning people (i.e. marriage) was limited, and any woman who tired of her husband simply put his belongings outside her sleeping area, and he moved on.

Zinn suggests that without the concept of private property, there would be little violence (people fight over greed and power to obtain more assets and wealth). Without violence at the local level, it would be almost impossible to rally people to wage war against others.

We glorify violence, admire the men who are "strong," because they can beat up others and take what they want. Our culture encourages us to raise our boys to love war so they too will be willing to engage in genocide against others.

Naomi Klein also recently wrote that we need to promote the idea of common ownership of the nation's resources. If we all (the "commons") own the land, water, minerals, ores, trees, animals, beaches, oceans, then private interests would not be allowed to exploit those resources for their own benefit. Without the enormous rewards from private property, if everyone just earned a reasonable wage and the rest of the available money was used to improve our commonly-owned nation, the underlying basis for violence -- a desire to get more than everyone else -- is gone.

To stop war, we need to minimize the role of private property, limit it to basic necessities and expand it to include conceptual property "rights" that we all own. The right to a job, a living wage, healthcare, education, shelter, decent food, clean water and air.

We also need strong affirmative action programs to ensure women receive their share of all the good jobs, and their share of income. Any company or institution that has less than 50% women in the better jobs should be fined, and that money used to pay supplemental income to women until the 21% difference in wages is eliminated. The same is true for non-whites. We need to equalize income and relative position to stop men from treating women (and their children) as private property owned by men.