The enclosure movement was but one way of creating the "land monopoly" which ensured the creation of a working class. The circumstances facing the ruling class in the Americas were distinctly different than in the Old World and so the "land monopoly" took a different form there. In the Americas, enclosures were unimportant as customary land rights did not really exist. Here the problem was that (after the original users of the land were eliminated, of course) there were vast tracks of land available for people to use.

Unsurprisingly, there was a movement towards independent farming and this pushed up the price of labour, by reducing the supply. Capitalists found it difficult to find workers willing to work for them at wages low enough to provide them with sufficient profits. It was due the difficulty in finding cheap enough labour that capitalists in America turned to slavery. All things being equal, wage labour is more productive than slavery. But in early America all things were not equal. Having access to cheap (indeed, free) land meant that working people had a choice, and few desired to become wage slaves. Because of this, capitalists turned to slavery in the South and the "land monopoly" in the North and West.

This was because, in the words of Maurice Dobbs, it "became clear to those who wished to reproduce capitalist relations of production in the new country that the foundation-stone of their endeavour must be the restriction of land-ownership to a minority and the exclusion of the majority from any share in [productive] property." [Studies in Capitalist Development, pp. 221-2] As one radical historian puts it, "[w]hen land is 'free' or 'cheap'. as it was in different regions of the United States before the 1830s, there was no compulsion for farmers to introduce labour-saving technology. As a result, 'independent household production' . . . hindered the development of capitalism . . . [by] allowing large portions of the population to escape wage labour." [Charlie Post, "The 'Agricultural Revolution' in the United States", pp. 216-228, Science and Society, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 221]

It was precisely this option (i.e. of independent production) that had to be destroyed in order for capitalist industry to develop. The state had to violate the holy laws of "supply and demand" by controlling the access to land in order to ensure the normal workings of "supply and demand" in the labour market (i.e. that the bargaining position on the labour market favoured employer over employee). Once this situation became the typical one (i.e. when the option of self-employment was effectively eliminated) a (protectionist based) "laissez-faire" approach could be adopted and state action used only to protect private property from the actions of the dispossessed.

So how was this transformation of land ownership achieved?

Instead of allowing settlers to appropriate their own farms as was the case before the 1830s, the state stepped in once the army had cleared out the original users. Its first major role was to enforce legal rights of property on unused land. Land stolen from the Native Americans was sold at auction to the highest bidders, namely speculators, who then sold it on to farmers. This process started right "after the revolution, [when] huge sections of land were bought up by rich speculators" and their claims supported by the law [Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, p. 125] Thus land which should have been free was sold to land-hungry farmers and the few enriched themselves at the expense of the many. Not only did this increase inequality within society, it also encouraged the development of wage labour — having to pay for land would have ensured that many immigrants remained on the East Coast until they had enough money. Thus a pool of people with little option but to sell their labour was increased due to state protection of unoccupied land. That the land usually ended up in the hands of farmers did not (could not) countermand the shift in class forces that this policy created.

This was also the essential role of the various "Homesteading Acts" and, in general, the "Federal land law in the 19th century provided for the sale of most of the public domain at public auction to the higher bidder . . . Actual settlers were forced to buy land from speculators, at prices considerably above the federal minimal price" (which few people could afford anyway) [Charlie Post, Op. Cit., p. 222]. Little wonder the Individualist Anarchists supported an "occupancy and use" system of land ownership as a key way of stopping capitalist and landlord usury as well as the development of capitalism itself.

This change in the appropriation of land had significant effects on agriculture and the desirability of taking up farming for immigrants. As Post notes, "[w]hen the social conditions for obtaining and maintaining possession of land change, as they did in the midwest between 1830 and 1840, pursuing the goal of preserving [family ownership and control] . . . produced very different results. In order to pay growing mortgages, debts and taxes, family farmers were compelled to specialise production toward cash crops and to market more and more of their output." [Op. Cit., p. 221-2]

So, in order to pay for land which was formerly free, farmers got themselves into debt and increasingly turned to the market to pay it off. Thus, the "Federal land system, by transforming land into a commodity and stimulating land speculation, made the midwestern farmers dependent upon markets for the continual possession of their farms." [Charlie Post, Op. Cit., p. 223] Once on the market, farmers had to invest in new machinery and this also got them into debt. In the face of a bad harvest or market glut, they could not repay their loans and their farms had to be sold to so do so. By 1880, 25% of all farms were rented by tenants, and the numbers kept rising.

This means that Murray Rothbard's comments that "once the land was purchased by the settler, the injustice disappeared" are nonsense — the injustice was transmitted to other parts of society and this, along with the legacy of the original injustice, lived on and helped transform society towards capitalism. In addition, his comments about "the establishment in North America of a truly libertarian land system" would be one the Individualist Anarchists would have seriously disagreed with! [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 73]

Thus state action, in restricting free access to the land, ensured that workers were dependent on wage labour. In addition, the "transformation of social property relations in northern agriculture set the stage for the 'agricultural revolution' of the 1840s and 1850s . . . [R]ising debts and taxes forced midwestern family farmers to compete as commodity producers in order to maintain their land-holding . . . The transformation . . . was the central precondition for the development of industrial capitalism in the United States." [Charlie Post, Ibid., p. 226]

In addition to seizing the land and distributing it in such a way as to benefit capitalist industry, the "government played its part in helping the bankers and hurting the farmers; it kept the amount of money - based in the gold supply - steady while the population rose, so there was less and less money in circulation. The farmer had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The bankers, getting loans back, were getting dollars worth more than when they loaned them out - a kind of interest on top of interest. That was why . . . farmers' movements [like the Individualist Anarchists, we must add] . . . [talked about] putting more money in circulation." [Howard Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 278]

Overall, therefore, state action ensured the transformation of America from a society of independent workers to a capitalist one. By creating and enforcing the "land monopoly" (of which state ownership of unoccupied land and its enforcement of landlord rights were the most important) the state ensured that the balance of class forces tipped in favour of the capitalist class. By removing the option of farming your own land, the US government created its own form of enclosure and the creation of a landless workforce with little option but to sell its liberty on the "free market". This, combined with protectionism, ensured the transformation of American society from a pre-capitalist one into a capitalist one. They was nothing "natural" about it.

Little wonder the Individualist Anarchist J.K. Ingalls attacked the "land monopoly" in the following words:

"The earth, with its vast resources of mineral wealth, its spontaneous productions and its fertile soil, the free gift of God and the common patrimony of mankind, has for long centuries been held in the grasp of one set of oppressors by right of conquest or right of discovery; and it is now held by another, through the right of purchase from them. All of man's natural possessions . . . have been claimed as property; nor has man himself escaped the insatiate jaws of greed. The invasion of his rights and possessions has resulted . . . in clothing property with a power to accumulate an income." [quoted by James Martin, Men Against the State, p. 142]