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A thread on property as theft!
The phrase "property is theft" comes from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the father of market-anarchism. And the idea was affirmed by libertarian and market-anarchist theorists such as Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Albert Jay Nock.
The phrase "property is theft" comes from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the father of market-anarchism. And the idea was affirmed by libertarian and market-anarchist theorists such as Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Albert Jay Nock.
First, u need to distinguish "possessions" from "property." Possession is a matter of fact. Property is a legal or customary arrangement. "Property" proper is something that you could have a legal title to and take out a loan against.
Naturally, a person tills a plot of land & builds a little cabin and takes possession of it through labor. Then a gov't comes along and creates "titles" to land, conferring ownership not to the person building the house or working the fields but to whoever has that slip of paper.
That first arrangement (possession acquired through labor) is just. The second arrangement, whereby a person with an artificial property "right" can legally steal possession from the person who justly acquired it through honest labor and homesteading—that is theft!
Historically, this is precisely how the institution of property played out. England is a classic example. There were the "commons," which belonged to everyone/no one. U acquired possession of a portion of it through homesteading. Then, one day the gov't created artificial titles.
Gov't created the artificial institution of "property," which allowed landlords to take over legal ownership of other people's possessions. Suddenly, legal ownership of YOUR house was given to some friend of the king. Now, the new landlord required YOU to pay rent.
This new institution of artificial property, predicated on real theft, is what allowed for the vast accumulations of capital upon which capitalism is based. The Industrial Revolution was funded by this theft. And the inequality that exists in the modern world arose from this.
Property is theft because it leads to the equivalent of taxation. The landlord (or mortgagee) is essentially a little despot extracting rent. What is rent but a tax collected by a private individual on the basis of an artificial right granted to him by gov't?
So, the argument I was making with regard to taxes is this: Since rent is theft itself, it follows that a tax that confiscates unearned income from rentiers and gives it back to the victims of that initial theft is not actually theft but rather justice.
This rationale can be extended beyond a land value tax to redistribute rent. Things like "limited-liability corporations," "intellectual property," etc. are artificial institutions created by gov't that allow corporations & privileged people at the top to extract monopoly rents.
Companies like Disney, Monsanto, and Pfizer make most of their money off of "intellectual property." This means that most of their profits are just theft. They have a gov't-granted monopoly that helps them get rich. So taxes that redistribute some of that wealth are justified.
It's not theft to take some money from thieves and give it back to the victims whom they stole it from. But if we aren't going to abolish the institution of property in its current form, then we do need to do such redistribution for justice's sake.
Ideally, we'd tax the entirety of unearned income resulting from "property as theft" and redistribute the whole of the money by giving it directly back as a citizen's dividend (give the money directly back to the people). But, we live in an imperfect world, so...
Direct redistribution is best, but...if the stolen wealth is taxed back & used to fund things that benefit the victim, that is better than letting the thief keep the money, even if it isn't ideal. So, it's better for taxes to go to roads than to not tax big pharma and landlords.
It is better to take money from rentiers & use it to fund healthcare and public services that benefit the victims of rent-seeking than it is to let the rentiers keep all that stolen wealth. It is best to give money directly to the people in the form of a citizen's dividend (UBI).
You should check out my 3-part series on “property as theft: the libertarian socialist critique of property.” Part 1 ( https://tinyurl.com/uvnrg3s ) lays out the differences between “possessions” and “property” (the latter of which is a legal concept and the former a matter of fact).
Part 2 ( https://tinyurl.com/vlrelsg ) details how the accumulation of capital upon which capitalism is predicated was the result of government-sponsored theft of land from the people, as well as discussing Kropotkin’s critique of Marx.
Part 3 ( https://tinyurl.com/v787ej8 ) discusses the alternatives proposed by various schools of classical anarchism (aka libertarian socialism), as well as the proposal of Georgism (which is where taxes come in as a means of mitigating the negative effects of "property as theft").
