Holte's corner

Robin Hood II --Outlaws and Criminal Systems

http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=1645&blog_id=15

The Robin Hood story is important to me because it's narrative encapsulates in an understandable way, a lot of issues important to myself -- and to other progressive thinkers in this "post modern" period.

The "hero" in the Robin Hood story is an outlaw. The question of why he is an outlaw dramatizes why societies need to embrace the principle of equality (as embodied in equal protection of the law and equal access to common goods). The context of the myth dramatizes why the issue of dividing the commons is both important -- and nuanced. And finally the story dramatizes how unjust systems generate outlaws. If the system itself wasn't oppressive "Robin Hood" could never become a hero. In my earlier post I introduced the subject. Here I'd like to explain how unjust societies, including our own, can and do create outlaws, and maybe some meditations on what to do about it.

Most of the versions of the myth of Robin Hood agree he became an outlaw because of unjust taxes and the Kings Prohibition on hunting deer. Some embellesh a bit, but the context is that the Nobles and Kings of England claimed exclusive rights over the forests of England. They literally owned every lock, stock and barrel of the country. The idea of sovereignity is inextricably tied to the idea of ownership. And Feudal Europe was a place where hierarchies of strong men -- barons and Kings -- owned most of the people who didn't live in "Free Cities" -- who were claimed by the king (or Emperor) who had set them free -- of the barons. The difference between a King and a baron was a matter of whether that baron was owned in turn by some other person. This feudal ownership was akin to slavery and was oppressive.

And the myth of Robin Hood arose, because the nobles and kings pushed the people of England to starvation. They forbade hunting in the forests, fishing in streams, drinking water from Noble property, or eating food belonging to the nobles. And as a result they criminalized people who otherwise might have obeyed the law and created outlaws like Robin Hood.

Robin Hood was popular not because he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, but because the rich were robbing from the poor and enlarging their domains at the expense of commoners, "yeomen," like himself. His resistance to the King was eventually successful. Not because he consciously resisted the King, but because his example inspired "Yeomen" throughout English History, to dare presume that they could be successful, resist oppression, and stand up for their "rights" as Englishmen even if they'd become branded as outlaws at some point. English and Scots eventually won the rights to fish in streams, cut peat for their fires, burn kindling in the winter, and other rights necessary to survival, from those barons who owned the forests, the farm-lands, the streams, the roads, and other common systems people needed to survive. These informal rights became embodied in "common law" and concepts like "common sense."

As such, real or myth, by inspiring common people with stories of a man who successfully resisted oppression, the Robin Hood myth lead to the revival of the principles of democracy and the birth of the United States. Common law was created by the struggle between ordinary "commoners" and the barons and kings of England. And only in England and later the US did commoners come out even remotely ahead prior to the French Revolution.

The Colonists were resisting the effort of bankers in alliance with the crown to impose monopolies on the colonies. When they did the Boston Tea Party they were as much inspired by Robin Hood's myth, and the traditions of English Common law, as by any Indian behavior. So we can thank Robin Hood for our democracy.

Chris

Posted by cholte at September 13, 2007 05:54 PM