Thread by @ScottHRoberts1, I have a different kind of thread for you all today. I'm [...]

I have a different kind of thread for you all today. I'm not sure Twitter is a good medium for a theoretical discussion, but let's try.

What you need to know philosophically about arguments for the expropriation of land without compensation.

First, why do we care what kind of moral/political philosophical claims underpin EWC? There are a few reasons. The most important is that quality of debate about legislation is improved when everyone understands the theoretical basis of the arguments in that debate.

If you tell me I should shave my head, for example, I should ask you why before we argue. Is it some religious norm? Would I'd look better with a buzz cut? (I don't.) Or will it be good for my health because I have lice? I need reasons before I can argue.

This is the work we're going to be doing: *why* do EWC proponents like the EFF and radical elements in the ANC believe the state should take away privately-owned land to be 'redistributed'?

Given that many proponents of EWC claim to be Marxists and socialists, the obvious starting point is egalitarianism — the belief that equality (especially in the sense of how much stuff each person has) is good.

There are two kinds of egalitarians: (1) telic egalitarians and (1) deontic egalitarians. They are distinguished by their different reasons for thinking equality is a moral good.

(1) Telic egalitarians believe inequality is *intrinsically* bad. That is, it is in itself bad if people aren't equal.

(2) Deontic egalitarians believe inequality is *instrumentally* bad. That is, inequality is bad for some reason other than a lack of equality.

The distinction becomes more clear when considering examples. If I believe that inequality is bad because it leads to higher crime rates, I am a type (2) egalitarian because I have appealed to some moral reason other than equality.

Usually, the moral reasons a type (2) egalitarian must appeal to have to do with justice. I'm not going to get too much into why this is so.

Most reasonable egalitarians are type (2). This is because type (1)s run into a very difficult objection: the 'leveling-down' objection.

Basically, a type (1)s are committed to the view that regardless of *how* equality is achieved, it must be regarded as a good. If there are two blind students in a class of 30, they are morally committed to blinding 28 people to achieve equality of sight.

Of course, gouging out people's eyes for equality's sake is a morally insane action. If people identify themselves as type (1) egalitarians, they can be quickly dismissed as unreasonable.

Lots of land discourse is type (1) egalitarianism though: "we don't care if everyone becomes poor, we want the land to be equally distributed because equality is good". What a crazy claim.

It's usually possible to find out if a South African truly is a type (1) egalitarian though by asking if white people who don't own land should be given land when it's redistributed. If they say no, they're only pretending to be a type (1) egalitarian.

It's much more difficult to be a type (2) egalitarian, though, because this requires you to find an injustice that can be corrected through the application of equality.

Remember, type (2) egalitarians believe inequality is bad for some other reason. What could those reasons be? There are a few options, but I'm just going to canvas one. It's the most common and also the most interesting.

EFF-types often rely on a justice argument that looks strikingly libertarian (!) in nature because it was articulated by Robert Nozick. It's called entitlement theory.

The basic idea is that my ownership of something is only just if I acquired the thing by just means.

If I stole the thing, or if it was transferred to me by someone who stole it, my holding of the thing is unjust. This injustice is corrected by 'reversing the chain' and restoring the title of the person who most recently justly held the thing: eg the owner before the theft.

This is actually a good argument on the surface, so let's put it into standard form:

(P1) Colonialists acquired land through unjust acquisition, or unjust transfer from its
rightful owners.

(P2) Any present holdings in land are tainted if there was any previous unjust acquisition
or unjust transfer of that land.

(P3) In order to rectify the tainted holdings of the descendants of colonialists, we need to
make it as if the injustice never occurred.

Therefore, land must be expropriated from the descendants of colonialists without
compensation for redistribution to the descendants of the land’s rightful owners.

There's a major challenge for (P1): proving that all colonialists' land was unjustly acquired. There was, of course, some uninhabited, uncultivated land here when colonialists arrived and settled it. In that case, at least, the colonialists' holdings would not be unjust.

One therefore needs to look at the ownership history of each piece of land and settle the question on a case-by-case basis. This is historically difficult. In the pre-colonial past, there have been conquests and migrations throughout Africa.

Most notable is the killing and displacement of Khoisan natives of Southern Africa by 'Bantu' peoples from the north. Given that many EWC proponents speak Bantu languages, the historical fact is that their ancestors were themselves invaders around 1000 years ago.

Another problem with entitlement theory is that it is extremely difficult to apply intergenerationally, especially when people are exercising free choice: who's to say that even if my distant ancestor was not dispossesed, my grandfather wouldn't have freely sold the land anyway?

There is always the assertion that all land in Africa belongs to all native Africans because of their being 'from the continent'. I challenge any black person to go rob another black person of their farm and use this as a justification.

This leads us on to the conclusion, then, which is that calls for EWC are a purely nationalist endeavour that has little to do with actual justice. This is not to say that it's not desirable for black people to own land and to own more of it.

If one is committed to this aim, though, then it follows that they should be politically committed to whatever course of action is most conducive to prosperity and the long-term acquisition of wealth.

History has shown us that the only way to achieve this goal is through protection of property rights, a growing economy and employment that creates and sustains wealth. There are other things, too, like using tax to fund opportunity-creating things like education.

The finer details of how to achieve broad prosperity is subject for another day. But, at the very least, we know that property rights are of fundamental importance if black people are to achieve real, sustainable wealth. Wherever property rights are disregarded, poverty follows.

We should be very suspicious of the motivations of anyone who insists otherwise. Nationalist-socialists sell poor people dreams of huge farms laden with cattle, millions of rands of turnover and fancy cars. And, like all of us would, they leap at the prospect.

The sad economic reality, though, is that such policies just leave most people worse off while those in charge siphon off the remaining wealth. They have in every country which has attempted widescale redistribution after abolishing property rights.

My two cents: it seems that the most moral political policy in South Africa is one that tolerates inequality insofar as the least well off in society are also reaping its benefits in the form of employment and increasing prosperity.

Such a policy, while not radical, is also most likely to lead to the deracialisation of the economy in an economically and socially sustainable way.

Unfortunately, it takes time and doesn't make for salacious headlines and therefore lacks appeal. Such is the way of the world.

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