Zoning & the Fourth Reich (Part 1)
by James Stivers of the McCroskey Territorial Agrarian Society
copyright, 2024
[Author’s Note: The following is based primarily upon Wikipedia sources. For further research, use a search engine for words like “history of zoning,” “19th century land reform,” “peasants revolts,” “Bismarck,” the “Third Reich” and so on.]
For Part 2 go here: Part 2
Introduction: What is the Fourth Reich?
The term “Reich” (pronounced “rike” with a long “i” as in bike) is a uniquely German reference to its modern political history. The First Reich refers to its imperial period in which it was known as “the Holy Roman Empire.” Afterwards, the reign of the Kaisers – during the 19th Century until Germany’s defeat in World War I – represented the Second Reich. This was the age of Bismarck. Hitler’s Germany was self-proclaimed as the “Third Reich.”
“The Fourth Reich” is often used by social commentators to describe the authoritarian model of government which has been promoted by the corporate elite and the super rich during the modern industrial era. It is manifested in numerous “globalist” schemes using the façade of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Bank of International Settlements, and other international organizations and constructs. Some conspiracy theorists believe that the “Fourth Reich” refers to a “continuity of government” among Nazis who escaped Germany at the end of World War 2, but continue to use various secret societies and corporations to further Nazi goals. Through American initiatives such as “Operation Paper-Clip,” these theorists believe that many Nazis were harbored by sympathizers in the CIA.
Whether such theories are justified or not, regardless, it is appropriate, at least in metaphor, to describe ideas promoting authoritarian government as a “Fourth Reich,” even though it may not necessarily manifest an agenda of racism or genocide, of which the Nazis were guilty.
The German Empire which dominated central Europe during its expression as the “Holy Roman Empire” was a tenuous period of constant warfare with rivals: the Protestants within, then the French without (who also coveted the title) and then finally the Russians, who since the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th Century, looked upon itself as its successor and the “Third Rome.”
The Failure of 19th Century Land Reforms
A prominent feature of this historical period was the frequency of peasants’ revolts against medieval institutions. Various “land reforms” were implemented in the attempt to placate the peasants. But historians have conceded that these reforms tended to make matters worse for the peasants. Rarely were they beneficial. They generally had the effect of forcing the peasants off of the land and into the cities, where squalid poverty was the result for those who could not work in the factories or serve in the military.
When any outcome is contrary to its declared goal, the phenomenon invites closer scrutiny. Historians might dismiss these unfortunate outcomes as “accidents” of history, or perhaps credit them to extraneous circumstances. But it is possible that the results were intentional.
The current wave of mass migration from Third World countries into Europe and North America is illustrative. Although frequent philosophical platitudes for diversity and humanitarian sympathies are offered as an excuse, the political and economic goals are becoming increasingly evident: a new controllable voting block, cheap labor, and military recruits. Just as the peasant migrations of previous eras, the world elite are dissatisfied with Western Civilization, especially its religious and political heritage of limited government. These mob migrations are being used as a Fifth Column to destroy that civilization.
If these by-gone land reforms failed, it would be worth asking “Why did they fail?”
We learn that the availability of land to the newly liberated peasant did not serve to resolve the contentions for land reform. Simple logic would have supposed that breaking-up the large estates of the landed gentry into smaller units fit for peasant management should have been a boon to production and the well-being of the peasant class, not its opposite.
We discover, more importantly, that although free of his overlord, the peasant still did not enjoy individual autonomy in his land tenure – or “fee simple” as it was in Anglo-Saxon law. Unlike his American counterpart, where the former peasant was not merely the tenant on the land of another, but was a citizen with “property rights,” the European tenant “possessed” the land, but did not possess within his person “the right to property” – a right which once belonged to an autonomous nobility. That “title of nobility” was passed-on to a different institution. The peasant had to answer to a new overlord: the state.
The American Colonists, in contrast, were initially peasants, in fact, if not by name. Most of the first Colonists came as indentured servants either by choice to pay for the voyage or as a penalty for crime. The prospects of a vast continent lent itself to isolation and exemption from the scrutiny of a centralized power. This lured many who wanted a fresh start.
Consequently, the failure of European land reforms stems from the fact that the “centralized” power was never abolished, merely transferred. Land barons were replaced by commissars, and the peasant was subjected to state-mandated land-use regulations which in the end changed nothing.
Even the Marxist system which played upon the disaffected peasant populations for revolutionary support, could only offer an elite “Vanguard” to take the place of the nobles and commissars.
Zoning & Land Tenure in the American System
American landholders were truly autonomous and in the early years were even free from a land tax, which was only introduced much later, and started as a voluntary system of self-assessment to support public works (roads, bridges, and schools). Land could never be seized for failure to pay a tax, only a usufruct in which the owner temporarily forfeited its use and its “fruits” until the obligations were paid. Only much later did it become the onerous system it is today.
Zoning, which goes hand-in-hand with the property tax scheme, is land use regulation that does not recognize land tenure as an expression of individual property rights but rather as the use of land for the public good which conforms to central planning. With zoning, property “owners” have no true autonomy but must operate within the confines of “codes,” which are often changed and can only be known by consulting clerks, attorneys or other government officials. Permits and waivers are frequently required which usually involve a long bureaucratic process, site analysis by “experts,” and of course, the payment of fees which are often costly. It results first in a system of patronage, then syndicalism.
While by other names, zoning can be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon and the Hammurabi Code, the use of modern zoning was perhaps first exploited by Otto Von Bismarck. Imposed first in the conquered lands, then in the cities, and finally, in the countryside, Bismarck was a genius at social organization and is best known for his methods to promote industrialization and age-segregated education. He followed a military model with military discipline in the factories, the schools and finally in agriculture. The goal was to keep the population and economy on a constant war-footing to protect against surprise attack and to preserve the empire, that being considered the “highest good.”
Hitler and the Nazis inherited this organizational structure and were able to exploit it to revive Germany as a world-power in a short period of time. Industrialists around the world admired Hitler’s achievement. In the early years, he was known to receive assistance from prominent Wall Street bankers and even American “patriots” such as Henry Ford – well-known for his own paternalism and “cult-like” control of his workers – who offered support to Hitler during the pre-war years.
In America, zoning was first launched to enforce racial segregation. Later, it was designed to confine the poor on “the other side of the tracks” so that the wealthy and middle class need not encounter them and their vulgar habits.
What was once true of Christian societies in which the land contained a varied representation of all classes and a healthy cross-current of social encounters which offered an elevation of condition for the underclass who benefited from the personal charity and example of their betters to improve themselves, zoning became a social form of “excommunication” – a sort of societal “casting into outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” We get the expression of “outcast” to label people who are not allowed social encounters with the other classes of a community. This is the end result of zoning.
The legal authority for this alien law system was provided by the courts in various assertions of “the police power,” “eminent domain,” and “public nuisance” ordinances. Property rights were no longer regarded as residing in the citizen but rather in the legislative power: at the state level, of course in the respective legislature, at the local level, in the county commission or the city council.
In the American system, government has always had a role over “the commons” and those functions enumerated by its constitutions and charters. Because human activity is congested in the cities, the construction of streets and utility lines for water, sewer and power, required closer government management. City dwellers have always recognized that their property rights are limited but also protected. If the citizen complies with the city codes, he cannot be sued by a disgruntled neighbor for his use and development of his property.
However, quickly, these powers were exploited by a criminal syndicate to persecute independent businesses and shops. Adopting the “bigger is better” mantra, small business owners were forced to sell, either to larger firms or to eminent domain for public works projects. Those that could escape, did so into what became the suburbs, and with the invention of the automobile, workers became further removed from their places of employment.
In the countryside, it has always been different. The property owner enjoys the protections of the common law and is largely autonomous to develop his estate as he sees fit. Throughout America’s history, homesteads became manors with outlying home sites for relatives, workers, and guests. Barns, shops, and other structures were built or dismantled, as the need arose, to accommodate the estate’s various cottage industries and economic pursuits through the generations.
The Current Situation
That changed later in the 20th Century.
Today, issues reserved to the public domain, such as water rights, are being used to eliminate small farmers (those who live on five acres or less). In Oregon, for example, cottage size dairies are ordered (as of 2024) to “cease and desist” because they are using their wells for irrigation and the slurry from their tiny barnyards are alleged to risk contaminating ground water.
Such specious reasoning is used to justify persecuting small farmers. Of the over two million small farms throughout the country, half have been forced out of business since 2021. Eco-fanatics control state bureaucracies.
It seems incomprehensible to these bureaucratic “hostiles” that they are, in effect, at war against the food security of the American people. . .
(to be continued)
For Part 2, go here: Part 2