"Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
>
> hal@finney.org wrote:
> >
> > Mike Lorrey writes, quoting Hal:
> > > > Actually, I think the resolution is that the slogan is short for
> > > > "*private* property is theft", and it envisions the existence of public
> > > > property. Hence theft is perfectly possible, and private property is
> > > > theft from the public.
> > >
> > > However, as my later comments state, if it is the public's chosen agent
> > > (i.e. government) which sells/rents/leases that property to individuals,
> > > it is not theft, since the public is getting freely exchanged value for
> > > that property which it wishes to sell.
> >
> > To be clear, I am not arguing that property is theft. Rather, I am
> > arguing against the position advanced by Samantha and supported by Mike,
> > that the slogan is self-contradictory and meaningless.
>
> It is. It makes no delineation between public and private property.
> Since the person who came up with it, Bakunin, was an anarchist, his
> position was that land is ownerless in its raw state, but he was not so
> pedantic about it as, say, a Georgist. He was not for the confiscation
> of the product of one's labor either. His quote got distorted by the
> statist communists and socialists who despised him so thoroughly.
I must correct myself here. It was Proudhon who said "property is
theft". I was reading his bio last night. His definition of property was
pretty strict, i.e. assets accrued by individuals derived from the
productive surplus of past generations, i.e. an industrial/scientific
base, that was beyond that necessary for the productivity of those
individuals. He saw the 'debt to society' that we all owe is that part
of our income derived from our productivity above and beyond what we
could have produced in a primitive state of nature, and the education to
provide the skills necessary to attain that productivity is the source
of this, an education from a knowledge base produced by all of humanity
that came before us. As such, he was most certainly not a Georgist, nor
did he agree with the meanings that Marx, Engels, and others would
ascribe to his aphorism in the future.
Where he may be wrong in his aphorism is as follows:
a) if information is free (as many current day socialists would claim),
then there is no debt to society that needs to be paid forward.
b) If the assets of the industrial and scientific base are created by
individuals, then they are paid, as individuals, during their lifetimes,
whereupon their property derived from their work ends up either in their
estates or else in the public domain. If we are dealing with
intellectual property, then its ownership expires in prescribed time
periods and no further debt to its creator is owed. If we are talking
industrial assets, those are owned by corporations or individuals, and
they derive income from their use consistent with the market demand for
their use. Society, or rather, the state, produces nothing, owns
nothing, and only exists as an instrument of force to confiscate the
product of productive individuals for the benefit of those who do not
produce.
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