Friday, 24 August 2007

Property is theft?


In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. This is considered one of the most influential works of anarchist philosophy and is the origin of the rallying cry "property is theft!" In it, Proudhon poses this question;
With this question in mind, I would like to expand upon the distinction between "private property" and "personal possessions" I made in What I believe in. In doing so, I would like to make particular reference to the "anarcho"-capitalists of the Austrian School of Economics.

Like most anarchists, I consider "anarcho"-capitalism to be an oxymoron, as by its very nature capitalism is not anarchic. An-caps have taken the dictionary definition of anarchy as "no government" and pasted it onto their ideology, utterly forgetting that anarchism is in fact a movement of philosophy and activism, with a long history and tradition, based upon principles of libertarian socialism and opposed to all forms of hierarchy and domination, not just the state. Going further, I would even suggest that an-caps do not want to dismantle the machinery of the state, but merely privatise it.

Murray Rothbard, for an "anarcho"-capitalist, is brilliant at inadvertently demonstrating the genuine end of his movement. The dilemma he posed was this: what if a King, responding to the threat of a strong right-wing "libertarian" movement, "employ[s] a cunning stratagem," where he "proclaims his government to be dissolved, but just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire land area of his kingdom to the 'ownership' of himself and his relatives." Rather than taxes, his subjects now pay rent and he can "regulate the lives of all the people who presume to live on" his property as he wishes. A king by another name - landlord. Rothbard's next remarks highlight precisely how close the parallel is:
This glaring contradiction is again demonstrated by Rothbard when he correctly identifies the state as illegitimate because it "arrogates to itself a monopoly of force… over a given area territorial area" and yet then defends private property because "[o]bviously, in a free society, Smith has the ultimate decision-making power over his own just property, Jones over his, etc." In both cases the get out clause, the only difference Rothbard can cite between the State and private property, is that the latter was acquired "justly."

So, what makes property just? According to "anarcho"-capitalists and right-"libertarians," the Homestead Principle:

Simply, there is no requirement under the homesteading principle that a resource is in regular use for the proprietor to retain it, only that it has been transformed once through labor. After this, the propertarian may transfer ownership to someone else, discard, or rent the property with no stipulations on any further labour input. But is that not how states came into being? The concept of nationhood arose prior to the state, and it was the rise of feudalism which used the labour of those nations to develop the lord's or king's "property" (dominion). The king, lord, or baron, as the propertarian, gained property through accumulation of wealth and power and the use of such to gain dominion over a land. Yet again, Rothbard's own words speak against "anarcho"-capitalist thought:
Of course, he qualified this by saying that of course the state does not "justly" own its property but both the state and the capitalist in fact acquired property by "homesteading," however he might have used the term to (falsely) differentiate "just" private property from illegitimate state property. Returning to Proudhon in 1840, we find the Homstead Principle already effectively refuted;
So, although "the liberty and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security of the poor; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each other" we see that "the rich man’s right of property, on the contrary, has to be continually defended against the poor man’s desire for property." The very notion of private property renders, for example, travellers' camps "illegal." Nor are they the only ones who, in the propertarian system, must contest for the "legality" of their homes or die freezing in the streets / steal from and kill others to survive because they have no home. Private property, by its very definition, needs to be enforced. Whether a state or its private equivalent in protection and security companies, the private propertarian needs someone to act against trespassing - a "crime" which, as it involves no victims, no violence, no loss of safety or liberty, should not even exist.

The anarchist's argument with private property, then, is that it is exploitative, it is coercive, and it entrenches the class system whereby the few live in privilege whilst the great many face poverty and deprivation. As the writers of An Anarchist FAQ put it, "social relations between capitalists and employees can never be equal, because private ownership of the means of production gives rise to social hierarchy and relations of coercive authority and subordination."


Whilst it is true that the tenant or employee does benefit from their transaction - they now have a roof over their head or a way to provide for themselves and their family - this does not mean the transaction is non-coercive. There is no equal footing in the relationship, especially when it comes to potential loss. The landlord or employer can afford to reject a potential tenant or employee - he can always find others in such an event. But the tenant or employee has no choice.

Even if it is not that one, he must submit to some landlord or employer. If not, he is left homeless or jobless. The threat is there: work or starve, rent or be without shelter. These are choices, yes, but the choice is akin to the mugger's "give me money or die," not to the ice cream vendor's "raspberry or vanilla." Likewise, it is also true that the threat is not made by the employer or landlord themselves, but the threat nonetheless remains, created by the very system of private property they operate in. Not all heads of state are despots or tyrants, and some can even have the very best of intentions, but that does not negate the fact that the system itself is one of dominion and servility. Once again, What Is Property sums up this position perfectly;

On race and nationality




For Bookchin, the key fact is this;









What is crime?

Emma Goldman once said that a society gets the crime that it deserves. It is not surprising, therefore, that in our society - where property rights are considered a central guiding principle of law - that 90 percent of crime is currently motivated by evils stemming from private property such as poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and alienation. Nor that between 1979 and 1992, when Britain was governed by a government firmly comitted to the free market the crime rate more than doubled, exceeding the 5 million mark in 1992, thanks to the social disruption, atomisation of individuals, and increased poverty caused by unregulated capitalism.

So, if we accept the principle that crime does not stem from “human nature,” or the “evil gene,” and is in fact determined by root causes in society, and that by tackling the underlying causes of such problems we make 90% of crime redundant, what do we have left? What is the remaining 10%?

In my opinion, that remaining 10% all boils down to one thing - removing the liberty of others. This may vary in method and extremity (such as personal violence or incitement to such, sexual assault, enslavement, oppression, or murder) but the underlying wrong remains the same. All other “crimes,” such as drugs, are not crimes at all but syptomatic in the victims of the single crime I have mentioned above. Eric Fromm puts this better than I can:
It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of man’s sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived . . . the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually interdependent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive towards life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive towards destruction; the more life is realised, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which particular hostile tendencies — either against others or against oneself — are nourished.
So, how do we deal with it? One thing is for sure - police and law enforcement are not the answer. They are a part of the problem. Therefore this problem should not be entrusted, as it is today, to a special, official body because, as Peter Kropotkin said, “when we imagine that we have made great advances in introducing, for instance, the jury [or the police], all we have done is to return to the institutions of the so-called ‘barbarians’ after having changed it to the advantage of the ruling classes.”

What, then, is the solution? Who shall be in charge of justice if not the police? Simple: the people. There is a widevariety of debate as to the specifics wihin anarchist circles but, as Errico Malatesta suggested, “when differences were to arise between men, would not arbitration voluntarily accepted, or pressure of public opinion, be perhaps more likely to establish where the right lies than through an irresponsible magistrate which has the right to adjudicate on everything and everybody and is inevitably incompetent and therefore unjust?”

Thoughts on freedom of speech

There are two arguments in favour of absolute freedom of speech: the principled argument, and the pragmatic one.

The principled argument is that if, like John Milton, we are to demand “the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,” then it is obvious that any limitations on speech begin to erode that liberty. To be able to set such limits on speech, then one must be in a position of authority and power. Even disregarding the anarchist stance that any authority which cannot bear a strong burden of proof is illegitimate, we are still left with the fact that anybody in power is, above all else, guided by a need to preserve that power. Thus, if they are willing to limit what you can say on seemingly reasonable grounds - for example, hate speech - then it will not be too long before they extend these limits.

If we are to try and censure that which is hateful or offensive, then an obvious question arises: who is left to decide what is hateful and offensive? What safeguards do we have against these definitions encroaching too far? Quite simply, we have none, as the existence of such “crimes” as treason and blasphemy demonstrate. It is not too hard to imagine, or indeed to see in the form of today’s “anti-terror” legislation, the very notion of dissent against those with power becoming a crime. As George Washington said, “if the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

The most elegant summation of the principle of absolute free speech was made by Charles Bradlaugh:
The more pragmatic argument for absolute freedom of speech is quite simple: open and honest debate from all sides is a far more effective way of promoting good ideas and destroying bad ideas than censorship and oppression.

Too often, those who stand in opposition to bad ideas - be it fascism, racism, religious extremism, or anything else - talk about the need to deny such groups the “oxygen of publicity.” History and experience have shown, however, that publicity is only “oxygen” for good ideas that work to the benefit of people and society. To bad ideas, those that work to the detriment of liberty and progress, public exposure serves only as “poison.” They thrive underground, benefiting from their status as “martyrs” to censorship and “totalitarianism,” attracting to their cause so many who - following a human instinct to support that which is censored - would not be on their side if they truly knew the sordid details of what they are supporting.

In a world with truly free speech, however, you will encounter opinions you deem offensive to your view of the world. Because, as Salman Rushdie rightly notes, “without the freedom to offend, it [freedom of expression] ceases to exist.” Upon encountering such offence, it is your duty - and nobody elses - to oppose it; not with censorship, but with words of your own.

Any opinion that cannot withstand dissent and dissection is not worth hearing and will quickly be destroyed by reason. This is a basic principle of the Enlightenment, and an invisible regulator of discussion that makes censorship unnessecary and harmful.

Noam Chomsky has stated that “if you do not believe in freedom of speech for those you despise, then you don’t believe in it at all.” This is demonstrably true, and it is the reason why those who truly believe in free speech and freedom of conscience should repeat - even to the vilest enemy who wishes them dead - Voltaire’s maxim that “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.”

Resistance and violence

There has long been a broad debate within resistance movements over the use of violence. The best example of such is within the Civil Rights Movement, and the schizm between the followers of Martin Luther King and of Malcolm X's Nation of Islam. It's an important debate, and one which must continue so that we are never complacent and so that the lines drawn are valid to ourselves rather than arbitrary.

Within anarchism, too, this issue is an important one. The most obvious reason for this is that anarchism is, in the popular imagination and the stories spun by the state and media, synonymous with terrorism. It is a common perception, indeed one that I learned in history at secondary school, that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which catalysed the start of the Great War, was committed by an anarchist. In fact, both Gavrilo Princip and The Black Hand organisation to which he belonged were Serbian nationalists. Similar false attachments to terrorism have followed anarchism through the twentieth century, the connection more easily made after the publication f the ridiculous Anarchist Cookbook.

However, anarchist theory and anarchists in general reject terrorism as a means to achieve their goals. According to Mikhail Bakunin "we wish not to kill persons, but to abolish status and its perquisites" and anarchism "does not mean the death of the individuals who make up the bourgeoisie, but the death of the bourgeoisie as a political and social entity economically distinct from the working class." An anarchist pamphlet from 1979, You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship spells out the anarchist position in quite unequivocal terms:

Anarchism did go through a well-known phase of "Propaganda of the Deed," wherein important political figures were assassinated, but this was widely recognised as counter-productive. Peter Kropotkin acknowledged that this "spate of terrorist acts" only succeeded in motivating "the authorities into taking repressive action against the movement" and that they were "not in his view consistent with the anarchist ideal and did little or nothing to promote popular revolt."

What of violence that is not terrorism, though? Where do anarchists stand in the choice between non-violent civil disobedience and violent resistance to authority? Quite simply, anarchists are in favour of direct action. Rudolph Rocker defined this as "every method of immediate warfare by the workers against their economic and political oppressors. Among these the outstanding are: the strike, in all its graduations from the simple wage struggle to the general strike; the boycott; sabotage in all its countless forms; anti-militarist propaganda, and in particularly critical cases,... armed resistance of the people for the protection of life and liberty."

Anarchists are not against reforms, as any and every improvement in the lives and freedoms of the working classes is indeed welcome, but we reject reformism, the notion that reform alone can shape society for the better. Ultimately, it is not the beneficience of the rulers but the activism of the people that will bring about the society we want to see. This is what direct action is all about, and it is neither exclusively violent nor exclusively non-violent, as Voltairine De Cleyre explained;
Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his convictions, was a direct actionist. Some thirty years ago I recall that the Salvation Army was vigorously practicing direct action in the maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble, and pray. Over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned; but they kept right on singing, praying, and marching, till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone. The Industrial Workers [of the World] are now conducting the same fight, and have, in a number of cases, compelled the officials to let them alone by the same direct tactics.



These actions are generally not due to any one's reasoning overmuch on the respective merits of directness or indirectness, but are the spontaneous retorts of those who feel oppressed by a situation. In other words, all people are, most of the time, believers in the principle of direct action, and practicers of it.
So, anarchists do not utterly eschew violence. Indeed, it can be utterly necessary for self- and community-defence. The fight against fascism, most notably General Franco in revolutionary Spain or organised neo-Nazis in modern Russia, is testament to this. But this is far from the full extent of our arsenal. Though violence (or, more accurately, resistance against state violence) can ignite the passion of rebellion, it cannot shape a revolution. Alexander Berkman, in his ABC of Anarchism ties up this thought eloquently;

Why I am an atheist

I see no logical or rational reason to believe in any kind of creator deity. Not only is there no solid evidence of any kind to support the existence of God (faith is, essentially, belief in spite of a complete absence of evidence) but the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent designer raises more questions that it answers.

For me, the clincher is this: if it is highly improbable that our universe, consisting of countless stars and planets in at least 100 billion galaxies and infinitely expanding, came to be from nothing (or more accurately from the point-singularity event we call the Big Bang), how much more improbable is the supremely complex being supposed to have designed it? The existence of a God at the Beginning begs the question “who created God?” which leads us to an infinite regress that is inescapable.

That initial spark of creation (which the Large Hadron Collider attempts to emulate) was a single, simple event that had to only happen once. One-off events are far more probable if simple than if complex, tipping the odds distinctly against God who (to use the term of “Intelligent Design Theorists”) is of an irreducible complexity almost beyond comprehension. Darwinian natural selection shows us how complex processes and beings can gradually emerge from simplicity, and leads us to seek out simplicity in origins, thereby near enough ruling out God.

Although we cannot completely disprove God’s existence, this is irrelevant as we can likewise not disprove Thor, Zeus, Santa, the Easter Bunny, or any other creation of myth/fiction. We can, however, judge that his existence is so improbable that he almost certainly does not exist. We do not “know” there is no God as Carl Jung “knows” there is one, as atheism is not a faith position, but the shades of probability and reason lead us to lean strongly towards that position.