Occasionally an article catches one’s eye that genuinely opens a raft of interesting new thoughts. That happened to the other day when I read this Guardian piece about a new area of Pirate Bay that offers templates for 3D printers to clone figures for Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Lord of the Rings table-top games.

Up until now, media piracy – as opposed to nautical banditry – has been concerned with freeing up access to information. In the 17th Century, with characters such as Henry Hill the Book Pirate (see this excellent short history of book piracy here), this was about giving the poor equal access to textual information by way of cheap editions of books and illicit pamphlets that were uncensored by the church or crown.

In the digital age this pirate spirit of free access to information was made orders of magnitude more easy as so much – words, music, images, videos, programs – was now no more than a package of 1′s and 0′s. That has wreaked havoc with the industries concerned with protecting their products and trying to make money out of them, but up until now the physical world has remained somewhat immune.

Sure, you could always buy a knock-off Rolex if you wanted to, but that still required some manufacturing work – even if it was substandard. That protection from digitised sharing afforded by the physical is now beginning to crumble. As Pirate Bay spokesman Winston Q2038 put it:

One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour.

This is still some way off, as 3D printers are still prohibitively expensive, but it wasn’t that long ago that the same could be said for DVD burners. What we are looking at in the near future is a world where many physical objects will be able to be pirated and copied right in the home. Like the design of that lampshade? Go to Pirate Bay and download the code for it. Lost a Scrabble tile? Just print one off. Found out where Paris Hilton lives? Print off a key to her house. Everyone will have one.

Of course, there will be symbiotic reaction from the physical world too. We will no long have keys – they’ll just not be safe. And true craftsmen will return to materials that will be more difficult to pirate. But others will embrace this world, and deliver extraordinary things to customers… bespoke will become ordinary; there will be no more original.

This dissolution of the physical into the digital has interesting implications for all art and craft… something I blogged about from a different angle way back in 2005 (ouch!):

“A work of video art is simply a video signal on a tape. Early analog video technology is termed ‘lossy’ – meaning that with every successive copy there is a noticable degradation in quality. Analog technologies still had some claim to the construction of an ‘original’ – the photograph had the negative, and the video has the master copy, from which further copies are struck. The negative and master thus have more value than their offspring.

“Digital video formats released by Sony in the 1990′s changed this condition completely, as they allowed for perfect reproduction. Video is now simply a piece of code – a string of ones and zeros that, unlike its analog parent, is wholly duplicable. Enabling the production of infinite clones with no discernable value hierarchy thus renders ‘original’ a meaningless term.”

That ‘perfect reproduction’ may well be heading out of the hard-drive, and onto the (physical) desktop. And, as ever, pirates will be there to chase down those who want to profiteer. Going to be interesting times.

In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site.

As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim is to look at the multiple forms of piracy – from Somalia to the internet to music to books to historic figures, fictional heroes and children’s fascination with everything pirate – and formulate some general principles that link all of them together.

It’s an ambitious project, but it’s going well, and I do believe that the thesis is not only a good one, but a timely one too. Piracy, and interest in it, is exploding in all areas of culture and commerce. So it seems high time to think intelligently not just about what piratic activity is going on, but why it is happening.

What I find interesting about these cases is that the US have become the world leaders in trying to battle piracy – and protecting their own intellectual property… and yet this is a country which was founded on pirate principles of minimal copyright. Why? Because the founding fathers understood that progress was only possible if the poorest had free access to knowledge – which at the time meant books. For decades the US refused to sign up to international book copyright agreements.

It seems that PIPA and SOPA are laws designed to protect the wealthy. These are people who have enclosed things that many consider should be part of the ‘commons’ – knowledge, code, biology, songs – and are unwilling to allow access that doesn’t go via their paywall. That may be good for their share price, but is no good for, as Henry Hill the book pirate of 1680 put it, ‘the benefit of the poor.’

The key question that has to be asked is this: why is piracy proliferating? Is it because people are naturally tight, and don’t want to pay? I don’t think so. I think it’s becoming so common because people are so fed up with the narrowed and capitalised world that demands taxation and profit at every turn.

If you’re reading this blog post, you are almost certainly doing so on a digital device made in China. And that means you’re almost certainly doing so on a device made in Shenzhen.

Don’t know where Shenzhen is? Neither did I. It’s here:

View Larger Map

It’s a city bigger than New York or London, yet it was built only in the last 30 years. It’s one of China’s largest manufacturing hubs, and thus where ‘all our shit’ gets made. By hand. In 15 hour shifts. By workers as young as 12.

Conditions are poor. Really poor. You would not want to do this, and you would not want your children to do this. No one is allowed to speak while on shift.

If you use these products, which we all do, and if they’ve helped save you hours of labour time by speeding up communication, then you can damn well afford the 40 mins it will take to sit and listen to this piece on This American Life about a reporter who went to the factories of Shenzhen, and what he found. Let me put it more clearly: if you are reading this, you have a duty to listen to this.

Do it now.

//

Having listened, I’ve been thinking about the workers there, and it seems that things are coming to a head in terms of protest. Here’s a Reuters report from yesterday:

Thousands of Chinese workers protesting over compensation and job security at a Sanyo Electric Co Ltd plant clashed with police in southern Shenzhen, media said on Monday, the latest outbreak of labor unrest in China’s manufacturing hub.

In case that leaves you panicked – don’t be. The article continues: ‘No impact was expected on clients from the stoppage at the factory…’ Phew. All your devices will still get made.

The FoxConn plant, which makes pretty much all of Apple’s products, as well as things for other major brands, was also in the news as a ‘mass suicide’ was planned a few days ago by 150 workers protesting at appalling conditions there.

I’ve blogged about this here before (Expensive Machines Made by Cheap People), but I do think it’s high time that people began to take more notice, and put pressure on Apple and others to demand that conditions are improved. Yes, that’ll mean we pay more for products… but do you not kind of think that that’s worth it?

With the writing I’m doing on piracy I have been mulling whether conditions in these factories are in any way analogous to the oppressive regimes sailors found themselves in in the early 1700′s. In both cases they were doing semi-skilled hard labour that made other people incredibly rich, but left them injured and impoverished. The question is, what would a Chinese manufacturing piracy look like? Hijacking of containers of new iPhones ready for export? Now THAT would get the Hipsters in a twist to do something…

It seems extraordinary that in a Communist country workers are having to battle for fair access to the wealth that is being created… but as Western capitalism finds a new host with cheaper labour, it’s perhaps not surprising at all. I’m really not sure what the best step forward is here, and how it might best be possible to put pressure on Apple and others… any ideas or links, do share please.

“If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” George Bernard Shaw.

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” Thomas Jefferson.

“The Iliad and The Odyssey can be spread throughout the world without anyone being deprived of them as a consequence.” Lewis Hyde

I’ve been thinking about these ideas (known in economics as non-excludable and non-rival goods) in relation to a novel I’m writing.

One of the things that’s struck me is that the shared project of human progress has moved away from these non-rival principles and become ‘excludable.’ The principles of profit mean that ideas that might be placed in the commons for the benefit of all are high-fenced, so only those who can pay get a look in, and those who consider themselves the ‘creator’ get infinite compensation for their stroke of genius. Feels a long way from Jefferson’s original American vision…

I received a present the other day – a book through the post from an ex-colleague: ‘Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition.’ It’s a fascinating read.

Admittedly, I was a little wary: there’s a long history of ‘actually, they were gay’ books which would have us believe that Jesus, St Paul, Shakespeare and even George Michael (ok, fair enough) were all gay… but this book is not that at all.

As the author points out, it would be tempting to think ‘yes, there was probably homosexual activity on ships, because, like prisoners, they didn’t have any other outlet.’ But this is to entirely miss the point. Pirates had escaped the prison conditions of the naval ships. They were free men. And some of them – not all – but some of them formed intentionally all-male communities.

Why is this important? Firstly, for reasons that are non-purient. I’m just not interested in an ‘exotic’ twist to the piracy thesis. I think it’s important because it shows, again, how pirates emerged to create TAZ spaces in which taboos could be broken. The emergence of these ‘transgressive’ communities began the process of the deadened orthodoxy being challenged and changed. This is the archetype I’ve been working on in the book from an economic, religious and social perspective… but I’m really glad to be able to expand that into sexual politics too.

Challenging material for some, I’m sure. But that’s what this is all about. As the author writes in the introduction:

‘the major portion of the literature has been concerned with piratical deeds than with pirates. Its appeal, one would surmise from the content, is to an audience of small boys, retired naval officers, and other primarily concerned with cannon, cutlass, gore and decks awash with blood… the opportunity to investigate one of the unique groups in human history has been ignored.’

So, yes, if you thought all this pirate stuff was just about eye-patches and children’s parties, think again. What these challenging and marginal communities of (mostly) men did at the turn of the 18th century has an enormous amount to offer us as we seek to challenge the hegemony of white, Christian capitalist, hierarchical and misogynistic power structures that fanned out in Empire building and did damage that we still suffer today.

I’m hoping to have the 1st draft finished in the next couple of months… just taking time.

“We fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.” Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III

In the previous post I tried to set out a distinction between death (which can remain beautiful – a frozen moment just beyond life) and decay (which is always grotesque – all beauty drain and consumed by maggots) and then examine how, in ecological terms, decay is healthy, while unrotting death fails to complete the cycle of life. It is only once decay sets in that a body can become useful again.

All ecosystems require the evolution of appropriate agents of decay to remain healthy. I finished by expressing a hunch that ritual can be seen as an agent of decay in our culture, and that currently it is lacking. There is plenty of death – plenty of redundancy and refuse – but little decay. The end result of this is a lot of dead material to trip us up, but fewer and fewer resources released back into the ground to fund newness.

I’ve been re-reading Hamlet recently, and re-reading Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare alongside it too. The section that deals with Hamlet describes the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet (occasionally corrupted as Hamlet in various public records). Reading into the events of the time, the funeral of the boy must have had added strain: Shakespeare’s family had definite Catholic leanings, and yet the ceremony in 1596 would have had to have been a strictly Protestant affair. As such, families such as Shakespeare’s may well have grieved the loss of the more colourful and rich Catholic ritual that expressed a far more open relationship with the dead.

“It is possible that he found the service, with its deliberate refusal to address the dead child as ‘thou’, its reduction of ritual, its narrowing of ceremony, its denial of any possibility of communication, painfully inadequate.”

The theatre of funeral was removed; the agent of decay reduced. Bodies were lowered, cold, into the ground, like coal. Unfit for transition. At the same time, the theatres in London were regularly shut by the Protestant moralisers. Early 17th century London was a society unsure of how to decompose the dead material that surrounded, and use it to regenerate.

It feels as if we are at a similar place today. With the economic crisis and accompanying political crises, as well as the crumbling of trust in the press with phone-hacking scandals and the Leveson inquiry, it seems as though there is a lot of ‘dead’ material around. What we can now see is that the problem is whether we can evolve appropriate agents of decay to help process this dead material and reformulate it.

The Occupy protest movement is perhaps part of this process. Right-wing observers like to portray those involved as dirty maggots and bottom-feeders anyway, but this should perhaps be taken as a compliment. They are crawling over the dead matter, trying to work out what can yet be reused, and how these rich resources can fund new directions.

It strikes me that this is precisely where the church ought to be basing itself. As a faith based on death and resurrection, Christianity’s natural habitat is decaying matter. This is what others fled from in disgust – the lepers, the sick – but what Jesus went straight towards, mixing mud and spit.

Locating oneself in this place of decay is going to be profoundly uncomfortable. There is something heroic about those who can preach death of faith: it is cold and hard, steel sharp and cutting. But the reason why the communities that Pete Rollins is talking about in Insurrection offer such a shocking vision is that they are not based around the death of faith, but around the putrid decay of faith – the decomposition of it into something more base, more akin to shit, to soil, to raw earth… where, as compost, it can feed newness.

This is perhaps the best description of Ikon: a putrid community. One that embraces not just death, but decay and decomposition.

There is a theological problem here though. The orthodox idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection is very keen to affirm that Jesus’ body did not see any decay. To evangelical belief the idea of Jesus’ bruised and broken dead body carries with it a mystique of martyrdom and heroism… but the idea of it entering a state of decay is totally taboo. And yet, there is a sense in which it was only by the decaying of this body that its riches could be released.

In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul says that

“though outwardly we are decaying, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day…”

Perhaps we need to see this not as a negative-positive construction, but as a positive-positive one. The outward decay is to be welcomed…is the very thing that funds the inner renewal.

Either way, what we must certainly do is ensure that the theatre of ritual remains… that agents of decay are encouraged and given space, and that we do not hold on to our dead too tightly. The old, embalmed Lenins we all keep must be allowed to warm and rot.

Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items.

Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now earning nearly 120 times the wage of the average employee (when 30 years ago it was about 13 time) it seems people are finally waking up and demanding equality, and movement towards a financial system in which people, not just profits, matter.

Secondly, there’s the Leveson inquiry into the behaviour of the press, and in particular the mess over phone hacking. Behind all of the lurid details of whose messages were listened to and which celebrities were outed for doing what, we have to remember that the driving force behind all of this was simple: selling more papers. We simply cannot express disgust at what went on if we too were titillated into reading the stuff. It seems now that finally people are waking up and demanding a media in which people, not just puerile stories for profits, matter.

Thirdly, a shocking report into the state of the care system, which has left countless elderly and vulnerable people abused and maltreated.

‘Findings included carers neglecting tasks because councils paid for too little of their time.’

As the reporter highlighted on a piece on the radio this morning, people are finally waking up to the fact that a genuine sense of empathy needs to be restored to a care system that has been run by council accountants and bean-counters for too long.

With all of these disperate stories, the over-arching sense I get is that there appears to be an awakening to the terrible poverty at the heart of capitalism. The market has failed, not because it hasn’t always turned a profit, but because the market has let people down. Capitalism has proved profitable for some, but has impoverished the spirits of so so many more.

Over the weekend I went to the Bank of Ideas building that the Occupy London protesters are now squatting in Sun Street. And though yes, there are unrealistic idealists, what I found was a network of concerned and genuinely caring people.

Perhaps in the midst of what is a pretty depressing news cycle at the moment we can find hope in this resurgence of empathy, of a wider realisation that people, ordinary people, do matter, and our laws and systems do need to reflect that first and foremost.

Seems to be an annual posting I know (see 2010‘s and 2009‘s!) but I’m really passionate about reclaiming Guy Fawkes night. Why? Partly because it’s very very English. This is not imported, it’s not some pagan festival that the Christians co-opted, and it’s not something that can be easily marketed and commodified by Supermarkets – unlike the nonsense of Halloween.

If you haven’t seen or read V for Vendetta, I highly recommend it. Every time I look at it it seems to be more prescient and more appropriate for the extraordinary times we find ourselves in. It’s legacy is, of course, the fabulous mask – a terrifically stirring and potent image of protest.

That was set in a time of fascist control in Britain, and one man’s attempt to stir up revolution. As we light fires and set off fireworks over this weekend, we need to consider our revolutionary intent.

What is wonderful about the 5th of November is that it is a story with so many layers. Originally, bonfires were lit in celebration of the fact that the Catholic assassination plot against James 1 had been foiled, and parliament had been spared. However, it’s pretty clear that Fawkes was stitched up, and that the whole thing was a double plot to stir up anti-catholic sentiment.

The Occupy London movement has been cleverly deflected by the powerful and hidden regime of the Corporation of London into a story about St Paul’s Cathedral… But thankfully it looks like that is over, and it seems appropriate as we come to 5th of November that St Paul’s is looking steady and supportive, and that the firestorm is hitting where it always should have been.

Latterly, the fires and fireworks came to signify protests at class inequality – especially in places such as Lewes, and I hope that something of that can be imbued into the celebrations we have now: a night of burning and bombing, a reminder to those who abuse power that they will not get away with it. That’s why I think this image of St Paul’s surviving the blitz is so right for now…

I think it’s time to get round the City on Saturday night, get some masks and occupy Parliament Square…Let’s put some rockets up some asses!

One of the key questions that has been often asked about the ‘Occupy’ protests is ‘what are your proposed alternatives?’ This, I think, is often asked with a background attitude of ‘I really don’t think you have any alternatives, do you?’ The implication being, before you moan about how bad things are, make sure you have a fully worked solution to how you can undertake improvements.

One comment on a previous posted ended with this:

What alternative ways of living are the occupiers proposing? and what alternative are you proposing? If you’re really suggesting the occupiers mutiny, as opposed to just complain, then surely that entails appropriating St Paul’s as rebel territory and mugging any banker that comes within range? If that’s not the plan, what are the new ways of living that will transform our society?

Couple of points on this.

Firstly, it is part of the corruption of power to insist that any protest or critique against the dominant system comes fully formed. When you’re being beaten down, it is entirely valid to simply scream in frustration, without any idea what changes need to be made.

Secondly, that said, I do want to reflect on the sorts of changes that I think we need to see. Importantly, they do not involve mugging bankers. In fact, in some ways it would be inappropriate to blame the bankers at all. Why? Because bankers are not ‘bad guys in an essentially good system.’ They simply lucky guys in an essentially unfair and unjust system.

Zizek makes this point in his typical style in the video above, when he comments that Hitler was never violent enough. Why? Because, however radical, he worked only to make the system work for him. Counter this, Gandhi was far more violent – why? Because he wanted to dismantle the system entirely. He wanted the whole thing to stop and change.

So the point is not to mug the bankers as some attempt to redistribute the wealth that they have pooled into their possession. The only ethic behind this is jealousy – you’ve got more than me, so give me some. The fundamental point is that we need a different system – or, more poignantly, a different ethic.

In other words, the changes that need to be made need first to come at the inner, personal level. We need to deal with our own desires to be rich and wealthy, to use more than our fair share of resources. Without that, all we are wanting is to swap places with those who have done better than ourselves out of the current system.

Interestingly, the debabcle at St Pauls fits nicely into this. Why? Because at the centre of the debate is the ethical question of what constitutes ‘Christian’ economics. What Would Jesus Do? is the right question here, but, it seems, the Anglican church has come a very long way from that original radical ethic. Compare this:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

(Acts 4, 32 – 35)

to this:

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast.

(38th Article of the Church of England)

There are nuances and interpretations, I’m well aware. But the grandeur and opulence of St Pauls does seem to sit rather too comfortably in the Corporation of London…and does seem a very very long way away from the spirit of radical equality that the gospels and new testament talk so much about.

Mutiny

Or just read the text…

In May 1724, in a small bookshop just a stone’s throw from here under the imposing shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral, a plain, leather-bound volume went on sale among the fine bibles and illuminated religious texts of the day.

What it lacked in aesthetics it made up with its arresting title: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. Captain Charles Johnson’s book was an instant hit, lapped up by the same crowds who flocked to the banks of the Thames to see the bodies of freshly executed pirates hanging in chains.

Why, nearly 300 years later, do we still flock to all things pirate? Why are we happy for our children to dress up in eye patches and torn trousers to go to pirate parties when we would probably be less happy to send them off to one with an ‘aggravated robbery’ theme?

The brutally violent lives of sea-faring 18th Century thieves have long been domesticated into polite children’s books with titles like Pirates Don’t Change Nappies and Shiver Me Letters – a Pirate ABC, yet while children point cardboard swords into the backs friends, demanding they walk to their death from chipboard planks laid on the floor, we know that Somali fishermen are holding men at gun-point, demanding millions of dollars in ransom payments, while across in Brussels, having won a huge section of the youth vote in Sweden, the leader of The Pirate Party is enjoying the trappings of being a member of the European parliament. In countless homes hooky DVDs that Hollywood technologists will have used sophisticated encryption and watermarking techniques to prevent copying of are being watched illegally, following frightening warnings about copyright and media theft, despite the story-line itself being buxomly full of swash-buckling thievery. Perhaps the striped t-shirt and eye-patch is all wrong. Children should be sent to parties with a plastic bag of pirated movies, or arrived in inflatable ribs, toting AK47’s.

Pirates are everywhere. Why? In his 1724 book, Captain Charles Johnson called them ‘hostis humanis generis’ – the enemies of all mankind – so why do pirates adorn t-shirts, skateboards… and even baby bottles?

Why do we think children should be dressed in images of death and violence?

The reason is this: deep down, we know that pirates say something to us about freedom from oppression, about standing up to systemic violence, and about taking back free access to that which has been enclosed and privatised by the wealthy.

Captain Johnson’s description of pirates – as romantic and sometimes daring people, who were nonetheless needlessly violent, greedy and out to pillage all they could from the good Empires of England and Spain – is the impression most of us are left with now.

The historical truth is somewhat different. Sailors aboard Royal Naval ships and merchant vessels were some of the sorriest men alive. Here were poor men who found themselves, in the words of surgeon of the time, ‘caught in a machine from which there was no escape, bar desertion, incapacitation, or death.’ Historian Marcus Rediker writes that

‘sailors suffered cramped, claustrophobic quarters, “food” that was often as rotten as it was meagre… they experienced as a matter of course devastating disease, disabling accidents, shipwreck and premature death. They faced discipline from their officers that was brutal at best and often murderous.’

The merchant ships were the engine of the emerging global capitalism. They transported slaves from West Africa to the plantations, and sugar and other commodities back to England – where they were sold for huge profits, all of which went to the small number of merchants and shareholders. The sailors on these vessels were utterly excluded from this wealth. Though providing the skill and muscle to make the entire enterprise work, they were brutally treated and could expect to live only a couple of years. If injured, they were thrown overboard or abandoned on land to die.

The decision to ‘turn pirate’ was a decision to wrestle back some autonomy. These sailors knew they were going to die anyway – at least by turning pirate they could enjoy life for a while. ‘A merry life, but a short one,’ was their motto.

When they did turn pirate, life on a ship changed dramatically. Officers were democratically elected – and could be democratically removed too. Food was shared equally among men of all rank. When booty was collected the Captain only took two shares where the lowest took one – income differentials that would make modern CEOs faint. Pirate Captains like Bartholomew Roberts had his crew sign up to a code, which demanded no fights on board, no gambling, and lights out by 8pm. Moreover, anyone injured in the course of duties could expect generous compensation. Loss of a limb would be met with a payment of around £20,000 in today’s money. This was healthcare for the common man as had been never seen before.

Have you ever wondered at the clichéd view of the pirate with their wooden leg, hooked hand and eye patch? It may seem ridiculous, but does this not speak to us of a society that did not discriminate against the disabled? Pirate vessels were hugely inclusive, welcoming people of all races and faiths. Pirates would attack slave ships and invite slaves to join them – setting free those that didn’t.

Yes, there was violence and theft. But we have to understand that the levels of violence were dramatically less than that which they had come from, and they saw their theft from Royal ships as no more than what they deserved – for these merchants with their special charters were simply robbing other ships from other nations, and plundering colonies of their natural resources.

What pirates were doing was reacting against a capitalism that was exploiting them, but from which they were totally excluded. Rediker again:

‘Pirates abolished the wage relation central to the process of capitalist accumulation. So rather than work for wages using the tools and machine (the ship) owned by a capitalist merchant, pirates commanded the ship as their own property and shared equally in the risk of their common adventure.’

They were, in other words, standing in the long tradition of beating down those who enclosed ‘the commons.’ Back on land, in the years surrounding the ‘golden age’ of piracy, landowners were increasingly enclosing land that had been worked in common in order to work it for their own profits. This movement of enclosure was one of the most destructive acts in English history, as it removed people from the land that sustained them, and eventually led to them moving to cities to sell their labour in the factories of the industrial revolution.

This is why pirates still resonate with us now: pirates always emerge where economies or cultures have become ‘blocked.’ Where the commons has become enclosed for the good of the wealthy, pirates will rise up and agitate until things change.

We see this in the Atlantic piracy of the early 1700’s, which bubbled up as global shipping grew, making a few very wealthy, at a huge human cost.

We see this in the book piracy of the same time, where illicit publishers like ‘Henry Hill the Pirate’ disobey the crown and the guild of printers to produce cheap editions of books ‘for the benefit of the poor.’ Publishing was a blocked monopoly – the crown granting the right to print to a very small number of guilded printers, who in turn would never print anything critical of the crown.

And we see this in Somalia too – where men who have had their waters ransacked of fish by huge European trawlers, and then poisoned by surrounding states dumping toxic waste, see the billions of dollars of consumer goods being shipped past their barren shores in steel containers and think, ‘you owe me a little of that.’

We see it too closer to home in our music collections, where people grew tired of another £15 on an album of tired songs written by bands with fat contracts who frankly didn’t deserve it. Mick Jagger can rant all he likes about wanting 70 year copyright on his material, but he must know deep down that all The Stones did was sing the blues, and the blues have always been drawn from the deep musical commons that stretches way back before recording was even possible.

And now we see it here at St Paul’s too.

Why do find pirates everywhere? Because we know that in every part of life ‘the commons’ is being eroded and enclosed and privatised for the good of the few at the expense of the many.

Bar a few village ponds and the odd piece of heath, the earth we walk on has been enclosed, and the shared rights that we used to hold together are now held by private owners. We have survived the factories, yes. But our alienation from the land that we still depend on for our daily sustenance, and for the raw materials that are the building blocks of our houses, clothes and possessions has had a profound impact. Unaware of how food was made, we started to lack any care for what ended up on our plates. Unaware of what went into the clothes we wore, we allowed sweat-shops to prosper. Lifted from the earth by air-conditioned cars – privatized, enclosed transportation – we remained ignorant of a climate that is out of control. And as we plug in our headphones to listen to another X-Factor winner covering a song we can no longer quite place, we no longer hear the buskers on the underground, moved from their tunnels into specially branded zones.

We didn’t have time to think about these things, because rather than spending our time living, we had to spend more time earning a living: 9 – 5 the polite contractual joke as we do all we can to rake in what we can to pay the mortgage while we can and save what little we can for the rapidly retreating retirement that we can hardly believe will ever materialise.

We didn’t have time for leisure, because inflation had forced everything up save our salaries, all to bail out a tiny clique of money-men who bet wildly on how much debt they could sell us, and, having lost big-time, went crying to the government, threatening to pull the whole financial system down around them if their private losses couldn’t be shared publicly.

Yes, the only commons we have left are the publicly-owned debts we share having bailed out the privately owned banks.

We didn’t have time, we didn’t think, we weren’t aware. But fuck it, now we have time, now we are thinking, and now we are aware. And now were are here, at St Pauls, where pirate mania first began.

We are not much brutalised, nor often beaten or left unpaid, but our lives are no less reduced, narrowed and controlled by powerful forces far beyond our control. So now, more than ever, we need pirates to rise up again against the princes, the captains and merchants, raise the Jolly Roger, and restore to life some democracy, some fairness… and not a little merriment.

Avast occupiers, stay strong and mutiny!