Is Private Property Theft?
To be clear, this isn't a question I (or anyone) can definitively answer because the definitions of the words involved are changing along with the technology and concepts which underly them. I got to thinking about it today because of this great post by @ekklesiagora:
An Intro to Anarchism: Democratization and/or Privatization of Government
In a reply to me on that post, @ekklesiagora links to this essay which I read: Property is Theft/Property is Liberty By W. J. Whitman.
After reading it, I thought I'd go ahead and reply with some thoughts as a new post (along with a reply to his comment). I hope you enjoy it as a respectful dialogue between open minded individuals exchanging ideas.
Strap in, here we go!
Proudhon sees property (as distinct from possession) as the privilege of “unearned increase.”
How does he (or we) define "earned" verses "unearned" here?
Any surplus value contributed to a piece of land by the labor of the occupant is unjustly transferred to the landlord upon the end of the lease.
And who does this, exactly? Why would a renter contribute value to a property they don't own? Have you ever had renters? Mostly what they do is break things the owner has to pay for (I own a rental property myself, so I'm saying this out of personal experience).
the renter builds a house on the land before becoming insolvent
Does this actually happen today?
monopoly privilege
When there is choice and voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange, where is the monopoly? Or are we talking about natural monopoly verses government created monopoly?
Being anti-capitalist is part of the definition of anarchism. The critique of hierarchy is a necessary part of anarchist theory.
I take issue with that definition. I see it as "without rulers" but hierarchy in and of itself is not bad (only in how it's used or defended or if it's involuntary). Voluntary organizations, as an example, may choose to develop hierarchies within their organization for delegation and efficiency purposes. Does that mean there are "rulers" in the "no rulers" sense of anarchists who reject State government with its monopoly on the use of force? I see them as very different. Voluntary organization don't have weaponized enforcers.
capitalistic property titles
This, to me, is almost a form of poisoning the well. If I can develop a form of property which does not require state-backed property titles (such as with smart contracts, blockchain technology solutions, etc), then this entire line of thinking becomes invalid. To claim property = government is a lack of imagination and creativity, IMO.
It is theft because it implies the use of legal privilege to grant “rights” that are unnatural and don’t naturally follow from possession and use in itself. Anarcho-capitalism would ultimately rely on violence in order to defend a privilege that would not naturally exist.
How is this not a naturalistic fallacy? Is airplane flight "natural"? If not, we clearly shouldn't abandon it. Modern society lends itself to specialization and varying degrees of prosperity. The evidence shows most everyone is prospering (even those on the bottom rung). See Steven Pinker's work for more on this. Many believe this prosperity is a result of the philosophy of liberty which includes private property and a rise in economic freedom.
Capitalism is predicated on feudal property arrangements. Capitalism was built upon feudalism. Capitalism is not a free-market.
cap·i·tal·ism
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
feu·dal·ism
the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
These concepts are different. One talks about private ownership in exclusion of the state. The other directly involves not just a state, but monarchy power and military service. I don't see why people can rationally throw these terms together in today's reality. Yes, forms of capitalism do involve state power for protectionism and state-created monopolies. That does not mean the version of capitalism anarcho-capitalism follows is the same thing (clearly).
A great deal of the things that were supposedly produced by “free-market capitalism,” were really produced largely by government intervention.
Isn't that like saying, "In communist countries, the government determines the price of bread, so clearly there is no other way to figure out that price"?
Until we have societies functioning without government, talk of failures of previous systems can't be used as justification against a future system without government.
actually existing capitalism is not synonymous with a free market. Unfortunately, vulgar libertarians today often fail to recognize this.
This, I think, is a great point! Capitalism, as a word, has been twisted enough to mean much more than the definition I added above. Most people can't imagine private property and capital without the State, much like communists can't imagine the price of bread determined by the market and not by government. IMO, it's a lack of familiarity and personal experience, not a logical inconsistency.
Historically, that “primitive accumulation of capital” came about because of government intervention.
And United States land came from stealing from the Native Americans, etc, etc. I get this argument, but I don't think it does anyone any favors. We have to figure out where we are today. Maybe some large, multinational corporations are sitting on some stolen, government monopolized funds. That doesn't mean every small business owner (like myself) fits in the same category. This just paints with too-wide a brush for me.
As Karl Marx observed, this disparity came about because of feudalism and feudalist arrangements that were backed by government.
So why are we bashing capitalism again? This argument only works if you equate capitalism to feudalism which I see as a misuse of the words.
Would you say that a “free trade” system between certain Native American tribes in 1300AD was “capitalism,” even if the trade system was based upon barter?
Have you read the book Origins of Virtue? I think it makes a strong argument for economic activity among the Native Americans which was very similar to many things we see today including specialization, different economic values along a trade route based on supply and demand, surplus creation and accumulation of value for the purpose of trade (couldn't this be considered capital?), etc. The size and scale of the modern economy requires some things which can't compare to 1300AD, so a direct comparison there isn't hugely valuable, IMO.
The history lesson on Feudalism is interesting, but do you really think that has a direct relationship to the type of voluntary society anarcho-capitalists are working to build?
Without this artificial legal privilege, the primitive accumulation of capital and the divide between the capitalist class and the proletariat could never have come about.
I have trouble understanding this because I see human ambition as very different from person to person. Some will work harder and do more to accumulate wealth than others. Again, if they could do so without government, what would prevent them from doing so and why would it be bad? If their stores of value was justly acquired via voluntary exchange, who, exactly is the victim?
Even a non-state arrangement can take on a certain system of property that leads to social hierarchy that is coercive and undesirable
That is a valid concern, for sure. I'd like to see more examples of property without the State before I'd jump to the conclusion that it would be worse than what we have now. Again, technology solutions can help here in amazing ways.
One time and place might require feesimple property in order to maximize liberty and minimize tyranny, while another time and place might require communistic arrangements to achieve the same goal.
Interesting perspective. I see this lending to the acknowledgement that technology today provides for non-violent, moral mechanisms for property ownership that do not rely on feudalistic practices.
Absentee landlords would no longer be able to collect rent, as the legal ownership would shift to the occupant.
As a rental property owner, this sounds ridiculous to me. Did my renters invest the time, energy, risk, and capital to purchase the property? If they trash the place (which has happened to me time and time again to various degrees), who pays for it? If something breaks, who is responsible to fix it as soon as possible? Also, if I didn't provide the property at a reasonable rental price, where would that person live? This is a voluntary exchange for mutual benefit. Renters have the option to become owners just as the owners who used to be renters transitioned after savings, investing, and a hell of a lot of hard work which many others are unwilling to do.
Abandoned and unused land could be homesteaded, and the homesteader could thereby acquire legal ownership.
That doesn't sound like too bad of a deal to me, considering much of the land is "owned" by the government. I'd prefer squatters develop meaningful contracts with the current owners in exchange for land use. If they improve the land, as an example, they get to use it at a steep discount or for free in exchange for that improvement. Again, the original investment to purchase the land can't be ignored, IMO. To do so (and then to take the land) would be the real theft, IMO.
As to workers' ownerships, have you ever owned a business? I've been building one for over 9 years. My business partner and I offered partial ownership to our team members, and they rejected the proposal. They didn't want to take on the risk of ownership but preferred the steady paycheck. Perspective is important here, and if you've owned a business and tried to work through these issues directly, it changes your perspective.
As usual, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Indeed. :) I really like how you are open minded to various forms of property management, I just hope you're open to expanding your thinking to include voluntary exchange based ownership justly obtained via benefitting others in the market place.
Now on to your Steemit comment.
I would argue that capitalistic property is nothing more than "legal privilege" or an artificial arrangement imposed by arbitrary violence.
I would argue that superimposes the corruption of government we've seen for thousands of years on top of what anarcho-capitalists view as a new approach done via voluntary exchange with no monopoly protectionism backed by violent government force.
The distinction between "natural property" and "artifical property" is quite interesting, but I keep thinking it's a naturalistic fallacy. We are no longer hunter-gatherers. Without government protectionism, accumulating capital and wealth can be a justified result of benefitting others.
Capitalistic property requires legal institutions, systems of enforcement, and violence.
If someone was to convince you of mechanisms for enabling property which didn't require violence, would you change your opinion? It might still include systems of enforcement, but I see that as no different than me saying, "No, you can't have that. It's mine."
the owner will call the police and have the man forcibly removed. So capitalistic property is based on the violation of the Non-Aggression Principle.
It doesn't have to be "the police." Let's instead talk about private protection firms or some other arbitration mechanism without the State. If someone takes your personal property, then you are justified in using defensive force to get that property back. Again, this is based on the philosophy of liberty as described here:
The challenge I have with your line of thinking is it seems you've defined property into (what seems to me) almost arbitrary categories. In one, defensive force is allowed. In the other, it is not. That's confusing to me. If I work to create value through justified, mutually beneficial trade with others, I think I should keep ownership of that value, regardless how much of it there is or what form it takes. To argue at some arbitrary point it goes beyond my "personal" property seems inconsistent to me since I still earned it.
Furthermore, this sort of property leads to inequality and hierarchy.
Maybe. But again, I don't automatically see those as negative things. Inequality of opportunity is certainly discouraging and we should all work to remove it, but inequality of outcome will always be with us, no matter what we do. Hierarchy, again, can be okay as long as it is voluntarily set up.
but they still want the arbitrary and authoritarian system of legal privilege in regards to property titles.
No, not really. I'd prefer other, voluntary mechanisms to protect my property ownership based on mutual agreement within the community.
You wind up with haves and have-nots.
But won't we always have this? The differences in human ambition and abilities will always create this situation. To fight against it, to me, is futile. Instead, we should encourage compassion, empathy, charity and promote systems for helping those who can't help themselves. Also, it's not just as simple as "haves" and "have-nots" because even the "have-nots" in America today live better than kings of old.
Ultimately, the most important challenge for empathetic anarcho-capitalists today is to convince others a society structured under Voluntaryism ideals would take care of those who can't take care of themselves.
Sure, he can choose his employer, but that's just choosing a master, not enjoying real freedom.
I wonder if your version of "real freedom" actually exists. Nature will always be a "boss" the way you've described it. We all have to create value for others in order to obtain value from them to meet our needs. I don't see a way around this short of a Star Trek post scarcity (which, again, I doubt due to the vast differences in human ambition).
In summary, thank you!
I've spent a couple years now in various Facebook anarchist debate groups discussing these topics. I think each side has a lot to offer the other, and, ultimately, we both agree the violent monopoly that is government is far worse than either of our proposed ideological worlds. My main criticism with the "property is theft" thinking, I think, is how anarcho-capitalists would be fine with them building their own commune somewhere without any concerns. The anarcho-capitalists want to be free to do the same in their own geographic region, but, from what I understand, this would not be allowed by the "property is theft" crowd. That, to me, violates NAP principles. If we can go with a live and let live strategy, each community could operate under their own ideology, and we could figure out which system suits different personalities better. Much hunch is they will both have great value for those who fully agree with and accept the concepts. I can see a mutualism or Georgism system working well for those who have no ambition for property beyond personal property. I can also see it not working well at all for people like Elon Musk who's stated goal is to acquire a lot of wealth in order to make the human race a multi-planetary species and send humans to Mars within the next 8 years.
Either way, I really enjoyed reading your post, your comment, and your essay. Thank you for letting me respond in detail. I hope we can work together with many others to build new forms of society which don't rely on primitive ideas like coercive government.
Image Source
Modified CC0 Pixabay image
"It is theft because it implies the use of legal privilege to grant “rights” that are unnatural and don’t naturally follow from possession and use in itself. Anarcho-capitalism would ultimately rely on violence in order to defend a privilege that would not naturally exist."
I take issue with that assertion, that property is somehow an unnatural manifestation of human creativity. Even many of the rodents and snakes that populate my back yard are territorial in nature, and they will defend their territory violently.
I think, on the contrary, that property accumulation is a natural consequence of scarcity. Scarcity is a natural consequence of population growth (including in the case of wild animals). All animals, including humans, will tend to expand in population until resources are scarce enough to "cull the herd" so to speak. An individual's survival depends upon property in these situations, and it is certainly not immoral to simply be alive.
There must be a system of distributing property in these situations of scarcity, and the anarcho-capitalist model is the only one I've seen that would rely entirely on decentralized non-coercive systems to allow that distribution to happen. This model contains an acknowledgement of the natural state of things, and so it is structured in a way that addresses inherent problems associated with scarcity that nature dictates.
One major difference between humans and other animals however, is that humans have the capacity to stop procreating in their own self-interest when scarcity dictates. As such, humanity doesn't need to end up in a situation in which the "herd is culled," because we can individually engineer our respective situations to manage our level of wealth or lack thereof. This is the one thing in the scenario of property ownership that isn't natural, or goes against nature, and I say thank goodness for that. This ability to stop procreating when scarcity is sufficiently high is the one thing that's going to save us from famine as we approach the ceiling of our ingenuity (if there is such a thing).
Very well said. I really liked this point:
I'm all for a Star Trek reality, I just don't think that's our currently reality. I also acknowledge we have the power to change "nature" and reality as we've somewhat moved beyond natural evolution to create our own future. It's going to be quite interesting to see where this all goes, but for now humans have different ambitions which, for now, ensure we won't have post scarcity any time soon.
Thanks for a great comment.
No. Private property is not theft. Taxation, however, is.
I would like to know how someone gets to be the proprietor of say a piece of land, what right did he have to get it? You know like the original English settlers in the USA, Australia, West Indies etc, what was their right to gain property of that land?
There has to be a reason for them being able to do this and I know just what it is, it is the use of force, as has always been the case, you grab land because you can and then you invent laws that legalize this. So I would think that property is theft, but then again I think this theft is necessary or else there would really be chaos. I like may anarchist ideas, but I have always had the idea that any human endeavor ultimately ends in a group obtaining too many privileges and forming a ruling group of elites and bam we are back with a government. I think whatever way you take your options you will always end up with the privileged and the guys who have to work their backs off for a living. This is life and it will be very difficult to change it, perhaps in a far distant future when all our needs can be met by artificial intelligence doing all the work and even then I bet there would be a central entity in charge.
Excuse me if it is sometimes difficult to understand what I am writing my native language is Spanish so I might mistake the order of the words in the idea I am trying to express.
Anyway I really enjoyed reading your article, nice for a debate.
This is a very difficult question which few have been able to solve in a satisfactory moral way. Some argue a form of Georgism is the way to go, while still others think use and improvement or homesteading is what matters. Maybe still others will think in terms of protection, like Johan Eliasch who bought up 400,000 acres of rainforest to protect it. Land is quite difficult to "own" because we can't take it with us and it varies widely in quality and availability. It's the home for other valuable resources as well. In many places it's abundant, but undesirable. In others, it's scarce and rich with value do to other externalities like climate, access, and proximity to other communities and resources.
Just because it was obtained immorally in the past by people who are now long dead does not mean we can't strive towards a moral ownership today. To the best of my knowledge, a market system is still the most effective way to determine value and transfer of ownership. Yes, it's massively distorted because of government and corporate banker interests which are directly part of government through their revolving door system and regulatory capture, but that doesn't mean the concept itself of voluntary, mutually beneficial trade via justly accumulated value is invalid. The "have nots" today still have opportunity to build a life for themselves and eventually justly obtain land, though it may take many decades for them while others may inherit it over night.
Nature is not fair. Life is not fair. It's noble of us to strive for equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome, IMO, is not only impossible but undesirable as well. Humans are unique and that leads to many differences.
On the conversation of property, land is surely the most complicated topic. That said, very few people today are actually using violence to obtain it.
Many financially successful people I know work much harder than others. It may not be physical labor, but it's no less taxing from a mental and psychological perspective, full of risk, hardship, failure, and determination. We all have our starting points thanks to our genes. We also have neuroplasticity to rise up and become just about anything we're determined enough to obtain.
interesting read as always
Thanks Tarzan!
Holy shit. Well done my man very well done. I am impressed and that is not an easy job.
Thanks :)
I skimmed through it for now. I'll have to read it more thoroughly and give a detailed response later.
The article I linked on "Property is Theft" was written by me, but I have since changed my position and embraced geo-libertarianism. I tend to revise my views a lot as I discover new arguments and new ideas. So don't expect this to be a debate as much as a discussion. I will just offer some clarification on certain points and give my thoughts about some of your points.
Excellent! That's what I was hoping for as I read your original post. Too many people are far too dogmatic on these topics, IMO, and if we're unwilling to accept new information and change, we'll never grow.
I look forward to your clarifications and would like to know more about geo-libertarianism.
I'm trying to think of how to go about writing a response to this. My response is gonna be a little scattered. My thought earlier today was maybe moving this conversation to Orkut and linking it on Steemit, that way there could be a more conversational back-and-forth rather than a series of dissertations. Unfortunately, I just learned that Orkut no longer exists. I'd like to have this conversation on a forum where it could be more of a continuous thread for dialogue, but not like a chat room. There's a lot of things that we are approaching from different perspectives and we are using terms differently. I don't think our different definitions are equally valid though, so there's discussion to be had there too.
If you're open to a conversation on a public forum like that, and happen to know of a good forum we can use, let me know. Personally, I just like to do Steemit posts on a single topic, and this seems like it needs to be more of a dialogue on several related topics.
Sorry, I haven't replied to this yet. I'm not very interested in using other mediums at the moment. The nesting limit is annoying, for sure, but dialogues can still take place in a forum-like manner here.
And that is the problem with framing, language, and philosophy. If we go deep enough, we'll find many disagreements on how we view and define words. That's why these discussions often don't really change minds. Hopefully though, over time, people will grab bits and pieces of meaning that they value and use to further shape their views in the future.
I started off as a right-libertarian, having studied Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman shortly after getting out of high school. I was also very religious, deeply influenced by C.S. Lewis, Cornelius van Til, and Eastern Orthodox theology. I ended up reading Rothbard, becoming sympathetic to anarcho-capitalism but rejecting it in favor of individualist anarchism of the Lysander Spooner/Benjamin Tucker variety (partially because I had been influenced by Wendell Barry and by distributist ideas). Ultimately I started drifting more and more to the left, embracing a mixture of mutualism and libertarian municipalism. I also became an atheist somewhere along the way (thanks to Karl Popper and Mises). My general rule is that I follow the logic wherever it leads, so my views tend to be pretty flexible in response to new insights.
I might be open to having a dialogue on Steemit at some point, but I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment with other things.
That's a really great overview of your philosophical journey. Thanks for sharing! Mine is somewhat similar, in many regards, but I came to it later in life, I think. I'm still learning about mutualism and haven't read Wendell Barry, so I'm sure I have much more to learn which will certainly impact my thinking even more over time. One thing I do enjoy challenging my anarcho-capitalist friends with is to clearly articulate what they view as the real emergent properties that exist as many human beings come together and how his philosophy deals with the problems which emerge that are more than the sum of the parts.