The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose. Source
In the UK and France, during the medieval era, part of every landowners’ land was held as a commons for the people of the village. However, this changed around the 1700-1800s, when by law the land was enclosed for private use only.
By releasing themselves from their social obligations to provide for the poor, they gained the freedom to farm for profit. And this freedom, or so the story goes, is what allowed the increased efficiencies that we call the agricultural revolution. Commoners lost, in the bargain, the freedom once afforded to them by self-sufficiency. Dispossessed of land, they were now bound to wages. Source
Women in particular help rights to gather the wastes of the harvest. After enclosure, they were left dependent on men’s wages. This enclosure started in Europe, but was repeated as Europeans colonized other regions of the world.
Leaving the commons to the commoners, one eighteenth-century advocate of enclosure argued, would be like leaving North America to the Native Americans. It would be a waste, he meant. Imagine, he suggested, allowing the natives to exercise their ancient rights and to continue to occupy the land—they would do nothing more with it than what they were already doing, and they would not “improve” it. Improvement meant turning the land to profit. Enclosure wasn’t robbery, according to this logic, because the commoners made no profit off the commons, and thus had nothing worth taking. Source
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Topic relates to:
Commons & Public Goods Tragedy of The Commons Self-Governance of The Commons