This page provides a glossary of terms beginning ‘L’. Each term usually provides links to other relevant materials on the FRAW site, and/or to Wikipedia and other on-line sources.
Before settled agriculture arose there were no fields – everyone roamed free like wild animals. The growth of organized agriculture ‘inclosed’ the land, separating both its specific use, control, and the property rights which arose from this arrangement. One of the most well-documented examples of this process began in Early Modern England in the Fifteenth Century, and accelerated in the Seventeenth Century, inclosing much of the land area (and removing rural people to new urban settlements) by the late Nineteenth Century. In Scotland and Wales (and later across the British Empire) people were cleared from the land as an act of political and cultural supremacy – imposing the colonial power of the English ruling elite. Land inclosure arose in tandem with industrialization and the growth of the first mass urban areas, forcing people from subsistence on the land into urban wage labour. This process also gave rise to the ideology of liberal economics, and severing people from the land forced them into working within this system in order to survive.
‘Land rights’ refers to the traditional or legal framework which protects the access, rights to collect materials, and to grow food, of local and especially indigenous peoples – overriding any external or state interest. Land rights is a contentious issue because it seeks to over-turn the traditional system of ‘private’ property rights – held by an individual or corporation – in favour of the collective interest of the local community to carry out their traditional lifestyle or subsistence (a.k.a. ‘peasant’) agriculture. In many states few have land rights since hisotric inequality has concentrated land ownership amongst a very few people; but in order to achieve long-term sustainability more people will need access to land to expand low impact lifestyles, necessitating a shift in approaches to land rights over exclusive property rights.
‘Late stage’ capitalism has various interpretations, but generally it refers to the Marxist concept that capitalism must ultimately collapse under the weight of its own expansion and consolidation, and that fuelled by technology, globalization, and the faltering of Western economies, that point is approaching. Another similar idea is ‘limbic capitalism’, which refers to an evolving capitalist economy where technological adaptation – such as digital platforms – create a regression of individual well-being as concentrated economic forces prey upon the population’s weaknesses to extract value. What these visions share is the idea that somehow capitalism is becoming ever-more problematic, but while the Marxist’s belief in a fixed historical progress would see this as the final ‘crisis of capitalism’ preceding a socialist revolution, a non-Marxist argument could also view this as a breakdown preceding a regression into a form of ‘digital feudalism’/Neofeudalism. Either way, the stark contrast between the popular visions of capitalism promoted by mainstream politics and the media, and people’s actual experience of daily life, create a disturbing cognitive dissonance that reinforce feelings of dread and hopelessness, with seemingly no way out of the ‘perma-crisis’.
Left-wing politics are the range of political ideologies seeking social and economic equality, in opposition to social hierarchy and the exploitation this inevitably gives rise to. This is a broad spectrum, however: meaning at the centrist end of the spectrum are social democrats who may still believe in the need for the state, and the state’s role in guaranteeing property rights; in contrast to various Marxists who believe in a strong state which collectivizes its resources for all; and at the ‘extreme’ Left end, anti-state anarchists who believe in bottom-up, state-less forms of governance. While the generic terms ‘Leftist’, ‘Socialist’, or ‘Communist’ are often used interchangeably, in reality the different visions each group has about the state and people’s relationship to it makes these philosophies mutually exclusive – leading to the often-use comic trope about Leftist divisions and in-fighting.
It’s impossible to summarise such a broad philosophy in a paragraph, but… Liberalism is a political and economic ideology based around free trade, low regulated markets, and property rights. Often called ‘classical’, or more recently ‘neoclassical’ economics, this is the ideological system which dominates Western states across the political centre- and centre-left – in contrast to the Neoliberal economics of the centre-right. Liberal economic ideology dominate both political, economic, and social discourse in the West, largely excluding any other economic perspective, and irrespective of the evidence that this model is now failing. While dominant from the late Nineteenth Century until the 1970s recession, in combination with the rise of globalization, Liberalism has largely given way to Neoliberalism, and as a result economic inequality and poverty has once again begun to rise in the states which most benefited from Liberal economic policy in the Twentieth Century.
Libertarianism is the belief that the individual must be sovereign, and not subject to the arbitrary power of states or other non-state agencies. Libertarianism is curious in that it is a philosophy which straddles the political spectrum, often involving resistance to government regulation (and especially taxation) and a belief in the absolute primacy of personal freedoms – including sexual and gender issues. Unlike the traditional idea of ‘human rights’, which must be granted and regulated by the state, Libertarianism argues that these are an inalienable part of human existence which cannot be regulated or controlled. Where the Left and Right differ is around the issue of economic power, and especially property rights, where view on the Right tends to favour the absolute protection of private rights, while on the Left the rights to property may be based around use-value or communal agreement.
The concept of the ‘lifeboat’ is an model for how communities can navigate the collapse of industrial/technological society through the creation of small groups, who develop the skills to survive independently of states and corporations. The idea was popularized by figures on the Right, such as Garret Hardin, whose individualist approach inspired 1970s survivalists who sought to move ‘back to the land’. Latterly this idea has also been adopted by Anarchists on the Left who see it as a model for mutual aid and co-operative options to deal with societal collapse. Although the early models related to the fear that food and natural resources were depleting rapidly, and so self-reliant rural communities were the only viable alternative, in recent times this idea has taken-on a strongly anti-technology dimension. The more society becomes reliant upon brittle technologies that are likely to fail, the ability of any community to organize for a failure of those systems not only makes sense, but can provide a focus for community organizing to deal with the crisis of Western capitalism more generally.
All human action require energy and resources to undertake. The purpose of life-cycle analysis (LCA) is to measure those impacts over the entire ‘life-cycle’ of products or services, reporting the total impact from ‘the cradle to the grave’. LCA requires a ‘boundary’ to be placed around the process, deciding which effects/impacts will be measured, and only those actions taking place within the boundary of measurement are logged. This means that when LCA analyses disagree, usually when industrial interests disagree with independent/academic research, those differences are most often accounted for by differences in the measurement boundary. Drawing a tight boundary lessens impacts, while a broad one increases them. For example the nuclear industry, when measuring the impacts of nuclear power, still do not consider the impacts of waste fuel disposal on the grounds that this is a decision for government to take. Gathering together many different LCA studies which represent a particular industry, or an average person, creates an ‘ecological footprint’ for that that representative person or industrial sector.
Published in 1972, ‘The Limits to Growth’ was based upon ground-breaking scientific research that provided a deep ecological counter-point to the economic and physical theories embodied by Technological Society. It demonstrated that current development trends would lead to a collapse of the human system in the middle of the next century – and subsequent revisions with the latest research and statistics have supported that conclusion. The economics and political establishment of the time led a campaign of condemnation, and demonized The Club of Rome whose financial support had enabled the scientists behind the study to carry out the research. Such was the official opposition to any discussion of the ‘The Limits to Growth’ issue that the ‘green’ movement, captured by Neoliberalism in the 1990s, rarely ever refer to the study or its projections due to the toxic arguments the study evokes – despite the fact it provides a basis in data and Earth systems research for the points their campaigns seek to make. It still, however, remains one of the most accurate econometric projects of all time.
A ‘logical fallacy’ is a statement or argument which is not valid within its own terms. There are some thirty to forty ‘formal fallacies’ which can be used to analyse public statements or written works to test the claims being made; and when a logical fallacy is found that can be used as a basis to argue against the points made without having to contest the facts, instead, merely showing that the way those facts or claims were presented is not valid.
Low impact development (LID) is a system which integrates a persons need for food, shelter, and a certain measure of energy and raw materials, within a single or communally shared plot of land – which, because of the greater economic and resource efficiency, significantly lowers a person’s ecological footprint compared to the traditional model of urban living. Though there are a few poorly supported state models, such as the Welsh Assembly’s ‘One Planet Living’ policy, predominantly Britain’s systems of planning control, building control, and local taxation, do not allow people to easily create low impact developments – not least because of the economic costs of doing so within Britain’s land oligopoly. As a result most of those who achieve a ‘low impact’ living arrangement must have previously had the resources to purchase/develop land, or have worked within the mainstream economic process for a considerable time in order to do so.
The Luddites were a disparate group of workers and trades-people who carried out direct action against new factories and machinery in England from 1811. Those involved in the action against machines during the 1810s described themselves as followers of ‘General Ludd’ – hence why the establishment invented the label ‘Luddite’. The ‘Swing Riots’ of the 1830s targeted new farm machinery across much of Southern and Eastern England, and were so called as those involved were said to follow ‘Captain Swing’. To be clear Luddites werre not opposed to technology per se, they were opposed to technologies which were ‘harmful to commonality’; that is, they concentrated economic power amongst a few individuals to the detriment of the ordinary people in society. During the later Industrial and Technological Revolutions, ‘Luddite’ was a pejoritative label used against those who opposed new technology and business practices. However, in recent times that label has been re-appropriated by those opposing new, in particular digital technologies, who call themselves Neo-Luddites.