@@edsondosreis1568 He means that justice is sought by man as a value when he is equal, similiarly society seeks order through the mantra of decentralisation and masterlessness
Equality is a pipe dream and ironically so is "order" I live in San Francisco and the minimum wage is 16.15. - I am seriously considering getting a job.
@@sallylauper8222 you live in a capitalist society, in a capitalist center. it's not a pipe dream, you just have not seen real life. you are living in an infinite present, the cancellation of the future, a wage slave, just because you have the so-called right to something, doesn't actually give you access to that. your region is privatized, bought, distributed unevenely, you are living in modern feudalism. you are saying anything that isnt feudalism is a pipe dream? that's a mistake
@@edsondosreis1568 how does it make no sense? equality is only equality if it is equal for all, right? if one person were to control or say how and why equality is, wouldnt that person actaully be more equal than the rest? "were all equal, just some of us more than others" actually translates to, some of us are equal, and the rest are not. same with justice justice is only justice when it is just for all. if a person can use justice against a person that cannot, that is actually injustice in itself. so how is order any different? if a person is ordering you around thats authorotative, that means they have power over you. do the same rules of order work on them as they do for you? where, then, is actually the order, if only some parts are ordered, and others have power relations and are chaotic. that is simply the illusion of order, so that one person can selfishly trample over you, as you lay defeated and commanded. that is not a systemically divided and mathematically equal world, it is a predatorial, opportunist wasteland, and the only people willing to fix it are those who react to how bad it is but don't propose any real solution, and those who say they are changing it, but do nothing.
Stirner is actually a person that I can call with full confidence a genius, he was ruined online, but from reading the ego and its own I learned so much about the world and a lot of things that he wrote about is reasonable
I really liked your video. I'm currently libertarian being pulled downward and to the left towards the quadrant inhabited by Proudhon, Tucker, Spooner, de Cleyre and even Kropotkin. 2020 was a strange year indeed, and has brought me almost full circle to where i was(or thought I was)nearly thirty years ago. Anarchism is one of the most misunderstood ideologies so thank you for the elucidation and the fun with the miniatures!
check out Malatesta, Bakunin and Rothbard too! for more recent theory - Mark Fisher, maybe David Graeber also. i was also libertarian when younger. now im an anarcho-socialist /post-leftist (so left libertarian) with influences from various theorists, i also believe in market socialism, Proudhon made good points about that. i think progressive economically right-wing libertarians have common ground with us so it's not surprising you have been pulled to the left. although the mainstream libertarian right type is extremely conservative and hyperfixated on the free market, exaggerating individual responsibility and other capitalist pipe dreams..
Nice! I was where you are about twenty years ago and it's an exciting place to be. I miss that feeling of reading Kropotkin or Proudhon for the first time. Left libertarianism is the best libertarianism!
I remember i found your channel via your Baudrillard video and ever since you've been one of the best philosophy channels on TH-cam for me. Thanks a lot for your content!
You should see what not only Proudhon, but others such as David Ricardo (even Adam Smith) said about the rentier class. (ie. Adam Smith "Landlords are parasites") A good economist that talks about it (unfortunately, he goes to Marx and ignores Proudhon, which is a shame since Marx plagiarized Proudhon... badly) is economist Michael Hudson.
This writer was loved and visited Leo Tolstoy who shared many of his opinions on Anarchy and Christian values being one and the same and the only real solution to a Golden age of the Kingdom of heaven coming to Earth.
Very interesting justifications, not only obviously in line with that of Marx's extensive highlighting of contradiction in a similar capacity, but from conceiving of alternative first assumptions to equalize them. Even Adam Smith himself pointed out the injustice of rent extraction within his own conception of capitalism, Chapter 11 in Wealth of Nations laying out in great detail how the justifying logic of capitalism quite clearly contradicted by it in that it is value extracted _without_ value produced and an inherent potentiality to the protection of private property by the state and therefore _must_ be addressed to suppress such exploitative and unjustified use of social mechanisms. _"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_ Good thing society definitely incorporated such considerations of principles into contemporary "economics" and didn't just completely ignore them or something...
@@radroatchthat's a bold claim. What did marx steal in particular? I'd be pretty interested to hear this, as I've just begun reading Marx's Poverty of Philosophy, a criticism of a work by proudhon.
@@grumpfrog8602 It's not a claim uniquely made by me, and not hard to look up: Property, surplus value, historical materialism, class struggle, etc. Even wiki lists Proudhon on a page on 'Influences on Karl Marx'. They were not always antagonistic to each other, that came latter. That antagonism itself was bore as much from similarities, in the sense of infighting over the ideology of the movement. The only reason that I use the word steal instead of influenced is because of how much Marx latter denigrated Proudhon and didn't credit him.
@@radroatch The difference is that Proudhon's theory, just like any others' Anarchists, is idealistic by nature. Marx offers a method - Revolution - to overcome private property. Anarchists believe they can overthrow state with a couple of strikes.
This is why, when pressed, most neoclassical economists will move away from relying on notions of justice when defending private property relations under Capitalism, and instead base their ultimate defence on a Utilitarian rationalisation. They will often admit that, yes, Capitalism is ultimately based on unjust expropriation in the past, but it’s consequences are so preferable as to make this a desirable trade off in a Utilitarian calculus. I have also heard them try to naturalise the concept of private property by pointing to animals which mark and enforce a territory, claiming that this proves human nature is just fundamentally biased toward this particular arrangement. Both of these apologies are of course misguided, but, as we all know well, those with a vested interest will often try anything to stay in power.
Simplistic! Most defenders of the market and economists thereof have about as much interest in political theory as your average pigshit, ignorant Marxist or dopey anarchist. If the 'capitalist' did bother to defend the market, the political theory they'd use is far more sophisticated than the garbage spewed by the left - Marxists in particular. In political theory, we owe a debt to the likes of Popper, Berlin and esp Rawls - they helped construct decent and cogent arguments for the left. It is thanks to these scholars, in large part, that we may debate with the left in political theory - and make intelligible points and counter-points. Marxists, OTOH, have no idea about or concern for the niceties of debate in political theory. When they do engage, it's always a car crash moment. The entire modern structure of the arguments have been built in their absence - cos they couldn't be bothered to put in a shift, due to their deep arrogance and superstition. Don't take my word for it, ask their world-class experts - profs Dunning and Kruger. FYI I can see why you say defences of markets are utilitarian - it's cos you are badly read and you assume everyone else is as stupid as you. That's quite natural. If, however, you press such defences, you will actually find, in the Anglosphere particularly, it often rests on something very much like Aristotelian ethics. However, it is a mix and other things need to be taken into account. The more you know about these other things, the more you'll see. Keep reading and when your balls drop, you'll understand. I would also remind you that both Adam Smith and David Hume had a lot to say on relevant matters - but of course their genius pales into insignificance when compared to your professors Dunning and Kruger. If you want to nut pick to build monsters in your own oh-so superior head, I can't stop you.
@@damianbylightning6823 Throwing around ad hominems and something that may be understood as an argument from authority (if any argument was made at all) doesn't reflect well on your ability to defend your positions.
@@danilthorstensson8902 I don't think I'm smart. I also detest most intellectuals. I also detest people who say things like "you aren’t as smart as you think". Such people are usually the bag carriers, the groupies and the rimmers of moron intellectuals. Please, if you can't think of an argument, don't fall back on some lame cliché. Better to say fuck all.
@@vincent-of-the-bog Oh dear, someone's triggered. Ok, tell me where I'm wrong. I look forward to your instruction. I may even take you seriously - but I doubt it.
So, in other words.. what's mine is mine because I worked hard for it (labor) B.U.T. at the same time, you shouldn't deprive others of working to achieve that same property that gives them the right to live. Classical in viewpoint. I can respect that
All your videos are great but your videos incorporating anarchist theory & theorists are definitely my favourite. Have you thought about doing something on contemporary anarchist theory? Like In Defense of Looting by Osterweill, How Non-Violence Protects the State by Gelderloos, or perhaps something from Black and/or Indigenous anarchists.
right is not mutual, in the sense that all are equal before it. But rather, it is mutual insofar as those who take and sustain their seizure have the mutual respect of those who cannot take from them.
Loved the video!😄 Quick question: I have been moving further left as of late. I still, from my right libertarian days, subscribe to lockean homesteading as being legitimate, assuming that the lockean proviso applies. I dont believe in private property that derived from the enclosure acts/state privilege etc or believe that homesteading can be used on common property. Only on land which is unowned. I am personally okay with landlord'ism or absentee ownership (in a hypothetical anarchist society as I believe that with the abolition of the states land monopoly and capitalism that people would have better alternatives and that people who did choose to live under a landlord or work for a capitalist would for all intents and purposes be doing it voluntarily (if they would even choose to at all). I generally dislike landlordism and capitalist hierarchies but as you can see I am okay with it, hypothetically, assuming socialism is pervasive. I am in a slightly confused place and I obviously need to read more, but I also feel like I understand the use and occupancy position (somewhat). Do you, as a socialist, think that my stance on the validity of lockean homesteading is unreasonable? Or that I am failing to grasp something essential? I would love to hear anyones opinion 😊
I think the Locke's argument is flawed because of the reasons explained in the video. There are problems in every system: Socialism, Capitalism and Anarchism if taken in extreme. For example the core of capitalism is private property and the problem it creates is wage slavery, waste of human potential due to wage slavery (if a poor child can't have a basic education and he is stuck in making ends meet, then that potential is wasted). While socialism can provide the redistribution of wealth and have a safety net for the poor child, it has it's own problems The problem with socialism is increasing restrictions on individual freedom, authoritarianism. The problem with anarchy (I assume anarchy with no government) is ciaos since there is no one for adjudicating disputes, and this leads to violence and jungle's rule (mighty is right). The ideal position is to live in moderation and take good points from each system and remove bad points from each. (These points can be captured by careful thought doing philosophy, watching out our assumptions and preconditions and learning from past experience And then enacting those as laws. But for enacting those laws we need a kind of government, but since government is prone to give in to pressure groups and can be corrupt so it is long road to come near to the ideal position)
@@ayaz372 "The problem with socialism is increasing restrictions on individual freedom, authoritarianism" This is a subjective claim, not an objective observation.
I’ve always thought this. I can “own” property, but if I fail to pay taxes, I can lose that property. How can I lose that which I truly own? If I can lose that property for failure to regularly pay a fee then by definition I do not actually own the land at all. Property ownership then is nothing more than temporary rental of land from a higher authority, a government, who actually owns the land. Government then is giving you temporary exclusive rights of access to that land for a rental fee or tax. Failure to pay that fee could result in eviction just the same as a landlord can evict you from your rented apartment. All of this makes the lofty dream of land ownership rather futile.
Hey, man. Would it be possible for you to do a video on art or art history? Stuff like abstract expressionism? I remember seeing a Rothko in one of of your videos and it made me wonder.
I think the ideals of mutualism are all you need. It doesn't matter so much how resources are allocated, so long as they're allocated by peaceful consent.
@@alexber8838agreed, unfortunately, as I get older. People will fight to the death to protect possessions which they could easily live without. People will sacrifice their families for possessions. The idea that resources can be peacefully distributed by mutual consent as a societal system is a fantasy because you cannot rob humans of their capacity for violence and subjugation. You must have a force which can suppress that attitude from those who do not share your sense of morality or shared humanity, and still allow you to share a society with them.
@@deawinter If people are not able to distribute and colaborate themselves, how would a higher force do it? A force implemented by the same people, composed by the same people. In corrupted societies, that higher force usually ends up policing for the strongest party or for their own. After all, they are citizens in a uniform.
I heavily challenge the notion that proudhon wasnt a "wide-ranging and difficult author", he actually had a progressive social science running throughout his work, and his writing style can make him quite difficult to parse (and quote, see: Stirner and Marx's critiques, though Marx blatantly made stuff up too). What is Property? Is obviously one of his earliest works, and his theory of property evolves, going through atleast 3 stages. It's unfortunate that anarchists have such a shallow reading of him (sortof like De Mollanari is for ancaps), even those who proporedly come from a "proudhonian" lineage (i.e. Tucker).
Can you give advice on which books to read in order for how to properly understand Proudhon? Everywhere they say it's hard to read because of the back and forth of ideas and contradiction play. I read what is property but couldn't get the full understanding since he also referred to the general discourse and notions of his time in France. Do I even have to know the history of mid 19. centruty france to actually go on. Thank you
@@Zineas I had a whole wall of text but it all got deleted cause I went out of youtube for too long jaja. But I'll just say that Wilbur has some great articles that make understanding proudhon a whole lot easier, plus he has a reddit (u/humanispherian) and answers questions on r/mutualism quite often. There is also a pdf online called *Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - Essential Writings* which has WIP, Système des contradictions économiques, a letter to Marx, etc. Gotta get back to work now lol A whole bunch of stuff is also still in the process of translation to English
@@tristanreynolds5135 yeah I asked a number of questions to humanisferian in reddit before. Truly a great guy. Thank you, I'll check the essentials thing
@@Zineas "The Federative principle" was an effort he made to make a shorter, understandable work. But it only covers his political thinking, not economy, property, justice. "General idea of the revolution in the nineteenth century" covers his revolutionary thinking, one of his best books and a favourite of Bakunin. "The political capacity of the working classes" title is self explainable, but another effort to make things shorter and to the point. I think you started in the right place by reading "What is property?", you have to grasp Proudhon's critique of property to understand his work. Also the book on Justice (1858) is said to be important, I have not found a translation to English or Spanish yet. Lot of translations here: anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/property-is-theft
"It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds... There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue... Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before..." -Thomas Paine (Agrarian Justice) "Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came." -Thomas Paine (Agrarian Justice) "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who can not find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land." -Thomas Jefferson (a letter to James Madison, 1785) "... a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature..." -Thomas Jefferson (a letter to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, 1816) "All Property indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages.- He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." -Benjamin Franklin (a letter to Robert Morris, 1783) "That the too long continued shame of this Nation, viz. permission of any to suffer such poverty as to beg their bread, may be forthwith effectually remedied; and to that purpose, that the poor be enabled to chuse their Trustees to discover all Stocks, Houses, Lands, &c. which of right belong to them and their use, that they may speedily receive the benefit thereof, and that some good improvement may be made of waste Grounds for their use..." -John Lilburne (An Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwel, 1649) "That the right of the Poor, in their Commons, may be preserved, and freed from the Usurpations, Enclosures, and Encroachments of all manner of Projectors, Undertakers, &c. and that all servile Tenures of Lands, as by Copy-holds, or the like, be abolished and holden for naught." -various Levellers (The Fundamental Lawes and Liberties of England, 1653) "As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce." -Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, book 1 chapter 6) "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality, part 2) "Some ancient legislators, as Lycurgus and Romulus, made an equal division of lands. A settlement of this kind can never take place but upon the foundation of a new republic; or when the old one is so corrupt, and the minds of the people so disposed, that the poor think themselves obliged to demand, and the rich obliged to consent to, a remedy of this nature... The law which prohibited people's having two inheritances was extremely well adapted for a democracy. It derived its origin from the equal distribution of lands and portions made to each citizen. The law would not permit a single man to possess more than a single portion... It is not sufficient in a well regulated democracy that the divisions of land be equal; they ought also to be small, as was customary among the Romans. God forbid, said Curius to his soldiers, that a citizen should look upon that as a small piece of land, which is sufficient to support a man." -Charles Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws, book 5 chapter 5) "In the primitive state of communion, men had, without distinction, a right to the use of every thing, as far as was necessary to the discharge of their natural obligations. And as nothing could deprive them of this right, the introduction of domain and property could not take place without leaving to every man the necessary use of things,-that is to say, the use absolutely required for the fulfilment of his natural obligations." -Emer de Vattel (Law of Nations, book 2 chapter 9 section 117) "The earth was designed to feed its inhabitants; and he who is in want of every thing is not obliged to starve because all property is vested in others." -Emer de Vattel (Law of Nations, book 2 chapter 9 section 120) "This is what Cicero meant when he wrote: "This then is the most comprehensive bond that unites together men as men and all to all; and under it the common right to all things that nature has produced for the common use of man is to be maintained." All things which can be used without loss to any one else come under this category. Hence, says Cicero, comes the well known prohibition: 'Deny no one the water that flows by'. For running water considered as such and not as a stream, is classed by the jurists among the things common to all mankind; as is done also by Ovid: 'Why do you deny me water? Its use is free to all. Nature has made neither sun nor air nor waves private property; they are public gifts'..." -Hugo Grotius (Mare Liberum, chapter 5)
Well now I understand what it means and I have to say that it is the just as outlandisch as i thougth it would be. Don't get me wrong I'm pretty socialist leaning but this kind of stuff needs to be read in the time frame it was written in. Take it as a thing to hodl up to the world and say lets not go back to that instead of this is the state of the world because we are a long ways away from the world he lived in when he wrote this. We are heading there again but we're not ther yet.
I never could understood a socialist system, although I love their theories and criticisms. Indeed, means are common and possessions are socially contributed. But, what does this exclusive production and necessary occupation mean? If one 'rented' an acre and only worked with a quarter of it, can someone says I want the rest of it because they are not utilizing it as a whole however utilization means? If one cut out marble from a mountain does they get the exclusivity of the product even though this is an unrenewable product and they didn't actually do much to produce it? If one found a diamond or wanted to rent a land where treasures are hidden under, is it about who proclaims it first? who can claim such resources? It is easy have a vague idea like that in a small society, a tribe for example, where social order is easily maintained by common knowledge of a close-knit. But, in a large society, if lands are common unless occupied out of necessity and mixed with labor, who does one know if they have a right to proclaim the rented land or know when the evict the person not using it? Utilization, necessity, and labor are all very relative and vague. And so, in an attempt to replace the unlawful but clear Capitalist notion of property, what is occupation? I am all in favour of cultural domination over economical, just like economical dominated politics of the middle-ages and the political dominated the religious. But, can culture bring order and become semi-unified in a large society? I always have this problem with socialist theories: they work in a village not a country.
Great question. I see this applying to my city. We have empty lots with realtor's for-sale signs, abandoned buildings with keep-out signs, empty houses with labelled values you couldn't pay off at $1,000 a month for 30 years, and a growing homeless population. I think Proudhon's call to action was establishing local credit unions to make loans for home and business ownership. Public monetary investment: a centre-left proposal. That could just as easily be done by a city or a nation. Add to that a ban on owning rental or investment properties. And a reasonable cap on how much land you can hoard around your house.
Perhaps your misunderstanding stems from the fact in your premises you keep referring to absentee property rights, via rent. Your argument: a) rent a plot of land from absentee owner b) occupier/s cultivate only x amount of a c) a-x=c equal to the amount of injustice (inefficiency via externality) Removing the circular logic: d) occupies land for cultivation e) cultivation of land x axiomatically is equal to d f) d=e=f therefore this premises injustice is equal to Nil. And now to reorder this: c-a=x equal to the condition of the absentee ownership ie property So to conclude in your own argument when ordered properly property is the issue.
@@radroatch So you mean that it is not that I rent an acre of land and cultivate half of it means that I'm unlawfully occupying half an acre but that the land I'm occupying now is actually only half an acre and thusly I'm not unlawfully occupying any land. I think It doesn't really solve the problem because things now are relative: who will keep the record of my cultivation and thusly determine what land I occupy? Who will determine what is considered cultivation? We need as such a third part like an institution or a judicial system with set laws. If we do so, then, It needs to be a matter of 'renting a land and occupying part of it' and not 'I cultivated this part of land first and I'm not trespassing on your land because I'm the criteria of cultivation and I say that what you call your land is not actually cultivated and what I've done is called cultivation'. It is a necessary outcome since your logic of land=cultivation instead of land=rented property means there is no prior mediation and is only a matter of "I came first and set my tent, so It's mine" instead of "I lawfully occupied this land and I'll cultivate it as I wish". As such, what will happen is that people will fight over a land and both will say ' I cultivated first', 'my wish for the property should be considered a cultivation' before the land is granted to them 'by law'. And so, it is crucial that the land is rented before cultivation or else there will be a domestication war of cultivation, such as fighting who has the right to extract the oil reserve pockets before a mediator grants one side and not the other the land. Then again, in addition to the fight over cultivation, there is still the problem of the nature of cultivation. Is extracting a finite resource of high value first or owning a private part of wilderness allowed [e.g. occupying an acre of land without cultivation because free-space to wander about is still a valuable thing]?
And there it is. The "original sin" was not taking the fruit, it was God declaring it off limits. Property IS the problem. If God is everything (and indeed It is), how then can a thing be owned exclusively among us? Property is a uniquely religious/cultist concept.
It's difficult to respond with a kind of opposite viewpoint in any concise way However I have an anti-socialism view of "What is property?" that's anarchistic I hope people will take this introduction and think about it over enough times to see the limits of every great thinker This line of thinking reminds me of when I was a Marxist in my early 20s Proudhon definitely thought it out more generally and less systemically by comparison to Marx, I appreciate that! Still trying to liv by the notion that "property is theft" will end up in most cases fruitless even with those who speak passionately the mantra together, however the premise "taxation is theft" more agreements and peace can be sustained At least that's what I've found Anyway! I hope you're going to make documents explaining the failures of both premises as well as their successes among your unbiased exposés introducing viewpoints I've much appreciated your examples of thoughts in history not only the abstractions of what could be practiced; oh pragmatism how do I balance you with my disposition of being a romanticist? - Your Quality Anarchist
i find Proudon's argument abit hard to digest. if the labor of picking an apple from a tree grants right of property for increasing its use value through labor, how is the pickpocketing of an item an individual carries from point A to point B any different? does that make only objects that are in immediate use the property of their holders?
Property is different from life and liberty because it must be pursued and acquired. I legally, morally, and ethically own the screen I'm watching this video on because I pursued and acquired it. I don't have a right to occupation but I do have the right to pursue occupation if I wish it.
Land title is very different than owning your shirt. In Canada the class of ownership of land for most is called fee-simple. What that means is that people on the title to the land but not the land itself and that title is subject to rights and responsibilities and very strict limits based on common law and statutes.
i'm an anarchist at heart. and to me its a utopian ideal for society, but more of a frame of mind as an individual society. what is the anarchists answer to overpopulation? the right to assure ur own survival sometimes clashes with others. haha it works better in a utopian world of enlightenment and brotherhood, not so much the hellscape dystopia the world is in, and really has always been in.
Agamben blows Proudhon out of the water. Our libertes are not 'ours' either, but not in the stoical sense, but rather by the fact that states can seize our liberties at will within any state of exception. The japanese american citizens held the same liberties as any other citizen, and yet by the state of exception of WW2, they were stripped of these rights. They didn't possess them, but rather, they were allowed to have them. So it is with all of us, for all things.
common law: occupation [ possession]= 9/10 of the law J Swift deals with this by making a race live hundreds of years / immortal it all depends on who is doing / how is done / the populating perhaps
Can you also make a video on Herman Hoppes' The economics and ethics of private property? Surely Prodhoun arguments will look like unevolve and obsolete
Enjoyed the video, but have some serious reservations about Proudhon's thesis. 3:30 in or so Proudon gets to the his analysis of how property rights are not like other absolute rights. Namely not like right to life. He makes the claim that property rights don't seem to be absolute rights. We pay taxes,many government can take them in eminent domain cases. If the were absolute then then no one could make a claim to them. Classical liberalism knew of property is different that the one being critiqued. This fact is evidenced in the concept of in(un)alienable rights (life Liberty and pursuit of happiness (Declaration of Independence) or Locke's original "Second Treatise of government," (life, liberty, and property) define property as owning one's self, one's speech, one's activity, one's work product. None are absolute in that for societal benefit one can take property because it was used in the commission of a crime. One's life can be taken, and physical property taken, and their work can be taken even on the classically liberal ideology. Proudhon is equivocating the word "property" to mean something much less than his recent contemporaries Jefferson, Paine, and Locke? Is Proudhon going to ask us to account for "Justice," and "Laws" and not justify his own narrow view of "Property?" Without dealing with definitions and without examining deeply where these natural rights derive our video skips to less foundational concepts of property law. It seems that firstly we need to look at the claims of natural rights advocates to identify objective moral values and duties from "a creator" We Inuit these laws with our faculty of moral intuition, and we proceed from these morals to societal laws built upon them. I never heard any further grounding of rights whatsoever by Proudhon in this video, does he have such a argument? "Property is the right of increase claimed by the proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own." Proudhon's first axiom Nice a priori presupposition, but before we go any further, is it true? Can anyone mention any property they have that was acquired the way Proudhon's axiom suggests? I can't think of a single thing! Homes, cars, phones, dog, horses at my farm. Nothing acquired as a result of, "Stamping it as my own." If that were the case then the hell with social media, we should all be in the stamp-making business! I grant that this stamping phenomena has happened in history. He should have started with a similar modest claim as his axiom. But the claim Proudhon is making is that this presupposition is a or even the essential axiomatic feature of gaining property and that claim is a strong claim and false prima facie
I don't think Proudhon was talking about phone screens when he discusses property. Yours is the first video that pops up when i search 'what is property?'. My nephew, you must take greater care if your intent is to educate, or to accurately portray the ideas of history that preclude your contemporary education. Otherwise this entire enterprise is pointless. He meant property that has potential to better people's lives; primarily the means to produce, which could be thought of as the raw resources of the planet/galaxy, or even the very dirt we carelessly trod around on (because that's where your food comes from. Happy Meals require grass, and animals, and peasants to package it all...+ a toy! to distract you from the homeless fellow American in the dumpster by the drivethru. Shhhh! Turn away. Indifference is mercy. Church tomorrow.) Land Reform Now! Divide all federal land (excluding national parks) amongst the landless! I'd rather starve on my own land than work in Walmart and beg for welfare scraps. It's possible that organized working poor have already pooled their money and are building bunkers within BLM wildernesses. I'm an abolitionist. I had slavery to Walmart and Amazon. Dear United Nations, please send Blue Helmets to evacuate refugees of Runaway Capitalism.
The concept of property (at least in practice) is older than humans. Animals have territories which they establish for themselves, and vigorously defend against interlopers. Humans are just fancy animals.
More or less however I feel the animal comparisons is half true. While Animals do have territory they occupy. Animals don't rent to other animals land and then jack up the rent on a whim. The difference between us and animal we are aware of what we are doing and at the same could solve the problem. I believe King Cuck Though Slime discuss in his landlord video. th-cam.com/video/g2EWQ4v9wbA/w-d-xo.html If you I take 1000 dollars from you and brought you a Nintendo Switch does that make it better ?
Property is theft, thus i can take everything you have unless i use violence, is suggesting that doing any action is ok behaviour unless you use direct violence. So threaths and not respecting contracts or promises would also be fine. Perhaps even if someone is gonna attack you but hasnt yet means that you cant intercept the attack, even if its obvious; you simply have to wait until they hurt you first. If property is theft then you should be able to take everything even the clothes and occupy their home and destroy windows to come inside, as long as you dot use violence on the person. You could take all their tools, food and chances for survival and it would be fine. Would poisoning or leading someone to their death or a e vere danger be fine? Youre not using violence, you are merely making the food in the house they live toxic, thats your right as long as you dont hurt anyone. Its not as if its that persons own food, or not like youre being violent. Could i climb a mountain or dive in caves with someone and then without violence take the crucial equipment they used and leave them there stranded? And if property is sometimes theft but not always then its not really that consistent of an ideology. I mean why would property be theft when protecting a billionaire's banana tree in his 17th house that he hasnt visited in 10years from starving kids, but not be when a billionaire wants to take a poor kids food without violence?
Justice presupposes that we can determine what is "just" which we can't ever really do. Also equality is compulsory and there are many humans who do not want to be equal. Not because they want more than others but simply maybe don't even want everything that is available to them... :D Also what if some of those men on the fictional island decide to live together? Would 2 humans really need twice as much land than one human? And even if they didn't form "couples" they could decide to build one big common building where they'd have small personal spaces and large common areas. And they could decide to in a democratic way. I wonder how they would organise their common lives... I think there is no effective way to abolish property, but personally find decommodification and collective (not state) property to be the least bad solution for this problem. Stuff like cooperatives, commons and so on. #PersonalIsPolitical :D
The bit where he says that occupation requires the consent of others came out of nowhere and seems like a non-sequitur. Why does occupation require the consent of others? I don't need someone's consent to find a random piece of land and put a fence on it, I can just do it. I don't get it.
Hi - to clarify, he is talking about attempts to justify property, i.e. apportion it in a way which is actually *just*, not just what you could do. So yes, you *could* simply fence a piece of land, but that rests on an implicit assumption not of justice but of 'might makes right', i.e. you had the power to do so, so you could/did and that is thus right or at least acceptable, but then on that same logic, what is to stop anyone else from also claiming it? Why does your fence mean they cannot demolish yours and put up their own? On the basis that you expect it to be justifiably yours, you would require others to consent to, or at least tolerate and not infringe upon, 'your' piece of land.
@@chrishancock4813 This isn't "might makes right". A few seconds earlier, he put up a quote that mentioned "1st occupant", which implies a first come first served occupation conferring ownership of the land - a very common notion. That's a principle not "might makes right". There's no requirement that others consent under that principle. If that's not what Proudhon was talking about, why did he say "1st occupant"? If occupation (people being there) at any given time conferred ownership, land ownership would be meaningless and it wouldn't have even been thought of as a candidate for "justification".
@@marsglorious Yes but the idea of first occupant falls apart pretty quickly under scrutiny too, doesn't it - especially when there's no necessity of that transferring inter-generationally, so even if you could point to a theoretical 'first occupant', why extend that further? And the implicit 'might makes right' is in the fact that the only thing stopping others from occupying it despite your 'ownership' of it, or doing so subsequently, is a tacit agreement that others will respect the boundaries you are trying to impose, i.e. their consent or some sort of social contract with implicit consent.
@@marsglorious It requires the consent of the community in the form of recognition of that occupation (with all the rights which are implicit to that state of affairs). You are in, essence, barring all of the community from accessing that land and its resources (an erga omnes prerogative). What Proudhon recognizes and defends is what we call possession (in opposition to ownership or dominion). Possession is a defacto state of affairs, a material reality, the actual occupation and utilization of the land and its resources. Dominion, or ownership, is a dejure (legal fiction) state of affairs that grants the individual exclusive rights to the land and its resources that go beyond use and occupation (they can sell the exclusive rights to the land, they can rent the use and occupation of the land under their own terms and they can pass on the exclusive rights to their heirs) it's a dejure state of affairs because it's independent of the material reality of the land itself. Proudhon (and mutualism) champions usufructs (occupation and use property) so as long as you are using and occupying the land you are entitled to its fruits (It follows from this that the 1st person occupying the land and using it has preference over the others as long as that occupation is taking place).
@@chrishancock4813 There's no necessity to transferring it intergenerationally but with an inheritance system, you can. There's no inconsistency. The requirement for the consent or social contract assumes you can't defend your land singlehandedly and then it is just might makes right as you said. However, this renders any discussion of the principles of land ownership redundant. I can't see what the point of Proudhon's writings here are then; justifications don't apply if people immediately revert to might makes right? No shit. That's trivial.
@@daddyleon, you're born subject to the authority of your parents who lived subject to the authority of others. The conceptual space for Prouhdon's (or any social contract theorists) freely associating individuals who entered into society as equals doesn't exist.
@@Ruairitrick Ah, so you're saying children are property who inherit both their freedom & autonomy as well as the other non-human property of their parents? That's a very interesting and radical idea.
@@daddyleon, I wouldn't say their property as this relation is much older than the property form (which emerges from a central authority in early civilization as the grant of a holding). Just that children are born subject to the authority of their parents who are in turn subject to the social center which all orders necessitate and from which authority emerges (in the oldest orders this often takes the form of a totem which is interpreted by a shaman). Thus the whole social contract premise of free and equal agents who enter into society on contractual terms is deeply flawed.
Proudhon didn't think property rights were a mistake... they merely stood in the way of his revolution, so he discarded them. Agenda always comes at the expense of truth. Additionally, "natural rights" and not the right of the strong to take from the weak. They are merely the rights we observe humans to have in the state of nature, those which are self evident: life, liberty, property. Furthermore, natural rights are not generated under law, laws conform to them. The state of nature precedes government, that's the fucking point of it. You have displayed a fundamental ignorance in professing otherwise.
Your “Natural Rights” are only observed by humans in cloud cuckoo land. It’ just a convenient dogma to justify your political position, unless you can provide scientific/anthropological evidence that supports your claims, of course. Cheers.
@@alrisan71 Insult and rationalization add nothing to the conversation. The very name "natural" rights denotes that they are observable in nature. Empiricism, ie science, like Fauci. If one wants to argue the nihilist perspective that an individual has no right to "life", a case can be made, but no system of rights, or anything else for that matter, will emerge. If one wants to argue that the individual receives their rights from the collective, you will need to demonstrate where from the rights of the collective arise. If the lone individual has no value, why is a group of them valuable? Even a million times zero is zero.
man, from his existence does not have the right to occupation. This would be an awful teleology, a prima causa. Of course, this is not real, it is an abstraction, it is a part of our political text. A positive capitulation etched upon a negative space.
“As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property?
@@edsondosreis1568 He means that justice is sought by man as a value when he is equal, similiarly society seeks order through the mantra of decentralisation and masterlessness
@@edsondosreis1568 i am not a good scholar of proudhon. You can read his works to gain an understanding of what he thought :)
Equality is a pipe dream and ironically so is "order" I live in San Francisco and the minimum wage is 16.15. - I am seriously considering getting a job.
@@sallylauper8222 you live in a capitalist society, in a capitalist center. it's not a pipe dream, you just have not seen real life. you are living in an infinite present, the cancellation of the future, a wage slave, just because you have the so-called right to something, doesn't actually give you access to that. your region is privatized, bought, distributed unevenely, you are living in modern feudalism. you are saying anything that isnt feudalism is a pipe dream? that's a mistake
@@edsondosreis1568 how does it make no sense? equality is only equality if it is equal for all, right? if one person were to control or say how and why equality is, wouldnt that person actaully be more equal than the rest? "were all equal, just some of us more than others" actually translates to, some of us are equal, and the rest are not. same with justice justice is only justice when it is just for all. if a person can use justice against a person that cannot, that is actually injustice in itself. so how is order any different? if a person is ordering you around thats authorotative, that means they have power over you. do the same rules of order work on them as they do for you? where, then, is actually the order, if only some parts are ordered, and others have power relations and are chaotic. that is simply the illusion of order, so that one person can selfishly trample over you, as you lay defeated and commanded. that is not a systemically divided and mathematically equal world, it is a predatorial, opportunist wasteland, and the only people willing to fix it are those who react to how bad it is but don't propose any real solution, and those who say they are changing it, but do nothing.
This is something that indigenous communities have known for sooo long. Excellent video, glad to be a Patron
The One Dish One Spoon law came to mind while I was listening to this.
Mesoamerican empires have something to teach you 😂
Yes, that is true. Indigenous people have been implementing the trade of goods and also the equal share of property for lifetimes
Would be interesting to see your coverage of Max Stirner/Egoism.
Ditto
I would also enjoy this.
Yes!
@@kronzklanz3035 egocomes: *screeching even louder*
Stirner is actually a person that I can call with full confidence a genius, he was ruined online, but from reading the ego and its own I learned so much about the world and a lot of things that he wrote about is reasonable
I really liked your video. I'm currently libertarian being pulled downward and to the left towards the quadrant inhabited by Proudhon, Tucker, Spooner, de Cleyre and even Kropotkin. 2020 was a strange year indeed, and has brought me almost full circle to where i was(or thought I was)nearly thirty years ago. Anarchism is one of the most misunderstood ideologies so thank you for the elucidation and the fun with the miniatures!
Get The Anarchist Handbook by Michael Malice
Well, welcome back.
Nice! Where do you stand today?
check out Malatesta, Bakunin and Rothbard too! for more recent theory - Mark Fisher, maybe David Graeber also. i was also libertarian when younger. now im an anarcho-socialist /post-leftist (so left libertarian) with influences from various theorists, i also believe in market socialism, Proudhon made good points about that. i think progressive economically right-wing libertarians have common ground with us so it's not surprising you have been pulled to the left. although the mainstream libertarian right type is extremely conservative and hyperfixated on the free market, exaggerating individual responsibility and other capitalist pipe dreams..
Nice! I was where you are about twenty years ago and it's an exciting place to be. I miss that feeling of reading Kropotkin or Proudhon for the first time. Left libertarianism is the best libertarianism!
I remember i found your channel via your Baudrillard video and ever since you've been one of the best philosophy channels on TH-cam for me. Thanks a lot for your content!
Great introduction to Proudhon.
It's so funny hearing this, it's like someone is telling me what I've been saying for years. Never knew I had an actua...long dead soul mate.
I was the same way m8, turns out you got a zillion like minded ones scattered across the past and present
@@allencummings7564 Yes! We might sometimes be lonely, but we're not alone.
Same here
You should see what not only Proudhon, but others such as David Ricardo (even Adam Smith) said about the rentier class. (ie. Adam Smith "Landlords are parasites") A good economist that talks about it (unfortunately, he goes to Marx and ignores Proudhon, which is a shame since Marx plagiarized Proudhon... badly) is economist Michael Hudson.
@@alen7480 Thanks for the tips!
You have done a remarkable job of summarizing and communicating the ideas of a text that is remarkably in-depth and abstract. Very nice work!
You could make one video about Bakunin and his views on oppression
bakunin is wild, i'd love a video
This writer was loved and visited Leo Tolstoy who shared many of his opinions on Anarchy and Christian values being one and the same and the only real solution to a Golden age of the Kingdom of heaven coming to Earth.
Very interesting justifications, not only obviously in line with that of Marx's extensive highlighting of contradiction in a similar capacity, but from conceiving of alternative first assumptions to equalize them. Even Adam Smith himself pointed out the injustice of rent extraction within his own conception of capitalism, Chapter 11 in Wealth of Nations laying out in great detail how the justifying logic of capitalism quite clearly contradicted by it in that it is value extracted _without_ value produced and an inherent potentiality to the protection of private property by the state and therefore _must_ be addressed to suppress such exploitative and unjustified use of social mechanisms.
_"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_
Good thing society definitely incorporated such considerations of principles into contemporary "economics" and didn't just completely ignore them or something...
Whispers _it's because Marx stole ideas from Proudhon_
@@radroatchthat's a bold claim. What did marx steal in particular? I'd be pretty interested to hear this, as I've just begun reading Marx's Poverty of Philosophy, a criticism of a work by proudhon.
@@grumpfrog8602 It's not a claim uniquely made by me, and not hard to look up: Property, surplus value, historical materialism, class struggle, etc.
Even wiki lists Proudhon on a page on 'Influences on Karl Marx'.
They were not always antagonistic to each other, that came latter. That antagonism itself was bore as much from similarities, in the sense of infighting over the ideology of the movement.
The only reason that I use the word steal instead of influenced is because of how much Marx latter denigrated Proudhon and didn't credit him.
@@radroatch The difference is that Proudhon's theory, just like any others' Anarchists, is idealistic by nature. Marx offers a method - Revolution - to overcome private property. Anarchists believe they can overthrow state with a couple of strikes.
@@grumpfrog8602 Oh BTW, poverty of philosophy is just a strawman of proudhons position by Marx.
Glad to see such a well made and in depth analysis for Proudhon and Mutualism.
This is why, when pressed, most neoclassical economists will move away from relying on notions of justice when defending private property relations under Capitalism, and instead base their ultimate defence on a Utilitarian rationalisation. They will often admit that, yes, Capitalism is ultimately based on unjust expropriation in the past, but it’s consequences are so preferable as to make this a desirable trade off in a Utilitarian calculus. I have also heard them try to naturalise the concept of private property by pointing to animals which mark and enforce a territory, claiming that this proves human nature is just fundamentally biased toward this particular arrangement. Both of these apologies are of course misguided, but, as we all know well, those with a vested interest will often try anything to stay in power.
Simplistic!
Most defenders of the market and economists thereof have about as much interest in political theory as your average pigshit, ignorant Marxist or dopey anarchist.
If the 'capitalist' did bother to defend the market, the political theory they'd use is far more sophisticated than the garbage spewed by the left - Marxists in particular. In political theory, we owe a debt to the likes of Popper, Berlin and esp Rawls - they helped construct decent and cogent arguments for the left. It is thanks to these scholars, in large part, that we may debate with the left in political theory - and make intelligible points and counter-points.
Marxists, OTOH, have no idea about or concern for the niceties of debate in political theory. When they do engage, it's always a car crash moment. The entire modern structure of the arguments have been built in their absence - cos they couldn't be bothered to put in a shift, due to their deep arrogance and superstition. Don't take my word for it, ask their world-class experts - profs Dunning and Kruger.
FYI I can see why you say defences of markets are utilitarian - it's cos you are badly read and you assume everyone else is as stupid as you. That's quite natural. If, however, you press such defences, you will actually find, in the Anglosphere particularly, it often rests on something very much like Aristotelian ethics. However, it is a mix and other things need to be taken into account. The more you know about these other things, the more you'll see. Keep reading and when your balls drop, you'll understand.
I would also remind you that both Adam Smith and David Hume had a lot to say on relevant matters - but of course their genius pales into insignificance when compared to your professors Dunning and Kruger. If you want to nut pick to build monsters in your own oh-so superior head, I can't stop you.
Damian bylightning you aren’t as smart as you think
@@damianbylightning6823 Throwing around ad hominems and something that may be understood as an argument from authority (if any argument was made at all) doesn't reflect well on your ability to defend your positions.
@@danilthorstensson8902 I don't think I'm smart. I also detest most intellectuals. I also detest people who say things like "you aren’t as smart as you think". Such people are usually the bag carriers, the groupies and the rimmers of moron intellectuals.
Please, if you can't think of an argument, don't fall back on some lame cliché. Better to say fuck all.
@@vincent-of-the-bog Oh dear, someone's triggered.
Ok, tell me where I'm wrong. I look forward to your instruction. I may even take you seriously - but I doubt it.
Proudhon is right always was. embrace it
2:31 can confirm, those pens are really really good to write with, would recommend.
Extraordinary video one of my favorites so far
So, in other words.. what's mine is mine because I worked hard for it (labor) B.U.T. at the same time, you shouldn't deprive others of working to achieve that same property that gives them the right to live. Classical in viewpoint. I can respect that
Mate, been watching your videos for ages now, you're amazing at what you do, thank you!
This is becoming a very important subject.
Ancaps who try to claim Proudhon should watch this first
All your videos are great but your videos incorporating anarchist theory & theorists are definitely my favourite. Have you thought about doing something on contemporary anarchist theory? Like In Defense of Looting by Osterweill, How Non-Violence Protects the State by Gelderloos, or perhaps something from Black and/or Indigenous anarchists.
Really enjoyed this video format. Looking forward to more!
Super amped for this. Thank you.
a video on Proudhon necessitates one on Stirner imo
The Creator’s ego isnt pleased
Amazing well done video. I hope to see more content relating to proudhon👏
As I was watching this I got an ad for a property management company
Hilarious
Thought provoking and informative. Thanks a ton. I love your videos.
Truly remarkable. Must watch for everyone.😊😊😊
right is not mutual, in the sense that all are equal before it. But rather, it is mutual insofar as those who take and sustain their seizure have the mutual respect of those who cannot take from them.
quarantine made me a mutualist
Loved it.
Great work
Loved the video!😄 Quick question:
I have been moving further left as of late. I still, from my right libertarian days, subscribe to lockean homesteading as being legitimate, assuming that the lockean proviso applies. I dont believe in private property that derived from the enclosure acts/state privilege etc or believe that homesteading can be used on common property. Only on land which is unowned. I am personally okay with landlord'ism or absentee ownership (in a hypothetical anarchist society as I believe that with the abolition of the states land monopoly and capitalism that people would have better alternatives and that people who did choose to live under a landlord or work for a capitalist would for all intents and purposes be doing it voluntarily (if they would even choose to at all).
I generally dislike landlordism and capitalist hierarchies but as you can see I am okay with it, hypothetically, assuming socialism is pervasive.
I am in a slightly confused place and I obviously need to read more, but I also feel like I understand the use and occupancy position (somewhat). Do you, as a socialist, think that my stance on the validity of lockean homesteading is unreasonable? Or that I am failing to grasp something essential?
I would love to hear anyones opinion 😊
I think the Locke's argument is flawed because of the reasons explained in the video.
There are problems in every system: Socialism, Capitalism and Anarchism if taken in extreme.
For example the core of capitalism is private property and the problem it creates is wage slavery, waste of human potential due to wage slavery (if a poor child can't have a basic education and he is stuck in making ends meet, then that potential is wasted). While socialism can provide the redistribution of wealth and have a safety net for the poor child, it has it's own problems
The problem with socialism is increasing restrictions on individual freedom, authoritarianism.
The problem with anarchy (I assume anarchy with no government) is ciaos since there is no one for adjudicating disputes, and this leads to violence and jungle's rule (mighty is right).
The ideal position is to live in moderation and take good points from each system and remove bad points from each. (These points can be captured by careful thought doing philosophy, watching out our assumptions and preconditions and learning from past experience And then enacting those as laws. But for enacting those laws we need a kind of government, but since government is prone to give in to pressure groups and can be corrupt so it is long road to come near to the ideal position)
@@ayaz372 "The problem with socialism is increasing restrictions on individual freedom, authoritarianism"
This is a subjective claim, not an objective observation.
Beautifully done.
That was some excellent food for thought. Thank you!
Love the Intro!😊😊
Great stuff, thanks!
angry Engels has entered the chat
We haven't come as far from feudalism as we like to think
I’ve always thought this. I can “own” property, but if I fail to pay taxes, I can lose that property. How can I lose that which I truly own? If I can lose that property for failure to regularly pay a fee then by definition I do not actually own the land at all. Property ownership then is nothing more than temporary rental of land from a higher authority, a government, who actually owns the land. Government then is giving you temporary exclusive rights of access to that land for a rental fee or tax. Failure to pay that fee could result in eviction just the same as a landlord can evict you from your rented apartment. All of this makes the lofty dream of land ownership rather futile.
Grear channel and great videos keep it up man
great work
Weirdest baking channel I've stumbled upon in Quarantine tbh
Totally thought he was making an artisanal sourdough
Thanks!
fucking brilliant explanation, thanks a lot
Great video!
really good!!
Hey, man. Would it be possible for you to do a video on art or art history? Stuff like abstract expressionism? I remember seeing a Rothko in one of of your videos and it made me wonder.
Great video this is accurate! thank you
Hell yes!
Love the video! beautiful explanation with the toys!
Great vid
Theft
*SPOILER ALERT*
I wonder if/how colonialism effected his views
Congrats on going fulltime!
I think the ideals of mutualism are all you need.
It doesn't matter so much how resources are allocated, so long as they're allocated by peaceful consent.
Conflict exist because obviously there is no consent in resource allocation.
@@alexber8838agreed, unfortunately, as I get older. People will fight to the death to protect possessions which they could easily live without. People will sacrifice their families for possessions. The idea that resources can be peacefully distributed by mutual consent as a societal system is a fantasy because you cannot rob humans of their capacity for violence and subjugation. You must have a force which can suppress that attitude from those who do not share your sense of morality or shared humanity, and still allow you to share a society with them.
@@deawinter If people are not able to distribute and colaborate themselves, how would a higher force do it? A force implemented by the same people, composed by the same people.
In corrupted societies, that higher force usually ends up policing for the strongest party or for their own. After all, they are citizens in a uniform.
Proudhon dressed like a hipster
Thank you :)
Has he covered Bakunin??
Lovely
Property is a spook because we live in a society.
I heavily challenge the notion that proudhon wasnt a "wide-ranging and difficult author", he actually had a progressive social science running throughout his work, and his writing style can make him quite difficult to parse (and quote, see: Stirner and Marx's critiques, though Marx blatantly made stuff up too). What is Property? Is obviously one of his earliest works, and his theory of property evolves, going through atleast 3 stages. It's unfortunate that anarchists have such a shallow reading of him (sortof like De Mollanari is for ancaps), even those who proporedly come from a "proudhonian" lineage (i.e. Tucker).
Can you give advice on which books to read in order for how to properly understand Proudhon? Everywhere they say it's hard to read because of the back and forth of ideas and contradiction play. I read what is property but couldn't get the full understanding since he also referred to the general discourse and notions of his time in France. Do I even have to know the history of mid 19. centruty france to actually go on. Thank you
@@Zineas I had a whole wall of text but it all got deleted cause I went out of youtube for too long jaja.
But I'll just say that Wilbur has some great articles that make understanding proudhon a whole lot easier, plus he has a reddit (u/humanispherian) and answers questions on r/mutualism quite often. There is also a pdf online called *Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - Essential Writings* which has WIP, Système des contradictions économiques, a letter to Marx, etc. Gotta get back to work now lol
A whole bunch of stuff is also still in the process of translation to English
@@tristanreynolds5135 yeah I asked a number of questions to humanisferian in reddit before. Truly a great guy. Thank you, I'll check the essentials thing
@@Zineas "The Federative principle" was an effort he made to make a shorter, understandable work. But it only covers his political thinking, not economy, property, justice.
"General idea of the revolution in the nineteenth century" covers his revolutionary thinking, one of his best books and a favourite of Bakunin.
"The political capacity of the working classes" title is self explainable, but another effort to make things shorter and to the point.
I think you started in the right place by reading "What is property?", you have to grasp Proudhon's critique of property to understand his work.
Also the book on Justice (1858) is said to be important, I have not found a translation to English or Spanish yet.
Lot of translations here: anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/property-is-theft
@@marcelofernandez743 It's interesting why they do not translate works of someone as influential as proudhon. Thank you for the info =)
Its worth mentioning that he and Bakunin predicted where marxism will end. In tyrany.
Entergaging!
Yeah,, knead it.. knead it roughly.. 😘
"It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds... There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue... Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before..."
-Thomas Paine (Agrarian Justice)
"Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."
-Thomas Paine (Agrarian Justice)
"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who can not find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land."
-Thomas Jefferson (a letter to James Madison, 1785)
"... a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature..."
-Thomas Jefferson (a letter to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, 1816)
"All Property indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages.- He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."
-Benjamin Franklin (a letter to Robert Morris, 1783)
"That the too long continued shame of this Nation, viz. permission of any to suffer such poverty as to beg their bread, may be forthwith effectually remedied; and to that purpose, that the poor be enabled to chuse their Trustees to discover all Stocks, Houses, Lands, &c. which of right belong to them and their use, that they may speedily receive the benefit thereof, and that some good improvement may be made of waste Grounds for their use..."
-John Lilburne (An Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwel, 1649)
"That the right of the Poor, in their Commons, may be preserved, and freed from the Usurpations, Enclosures, and Encroachments of all manner of Projectors, Undertakers, &c. and that all servile Tenures of Lands, as by Copy-holds, or the like, be abolished and holden for naught."
-various Levellers (The Fundamental Lawes and Liberties of England, 1653)
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
-Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, book 1 chapter 6)
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality, part 2)
"Some ancient legislators, as Lycurgus and Romulus, made an equal division of lands. A settlement of this kind can never take place but upon the foundation of a new republic; or when the old one is so corrupt, and the minds of the people so disposed, that the poor think themselves obliged to demand, and the rich obliged to consent to, a remedy of this nature... The law which prohibited people's having two inheritances was extremely well adapted for a democracy. It derived its origin from the equal distribution of lands and portions made to each citizen. The law would not permit a single man to possess more than a single portion... It is not sufficient in a well regulated democracy that the divisions of land be equal; they ought also to be small, as was customary among the Romans. God forbid, said Curius to his soldiers, that a citizen should look upon that as a small piece of land, which is sufficient to support a man."
-Charles Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws, book 5 chapter 5)
"In the primitive state of communion, men had, without distinction, a right to the use of every thing, as far as was necessary to the discharge of their natural obligations. And as nothing could deprive them of this right, the introduction of domain and property could not take place without leaving to every man the necessary use of things,-that is to say, the use absolutely required for the fulfilment of his natural obligations."
-Emer de Vattel (Law of Nations, book 2 chapter 9 section 117)
"The earth was designed to feed its inhabitants; and he who is in want of every thing is not obliged to starve because all property is vested in others."
-Emer de Vattel (Law of Nations, book 2 chapter 9 section 120)
"This is what Cicero meant when he wrote: "This then is the most comprehensive bond that unites together men as men and all to all; and under it the common right to all things that nature has produced for the common use of man is to be maintained." All things which can be used without loss to any one else come under this category. Hence, says Cicero, comes the well known prohibition: 'Deny no one the water that flows by'. For running water considered as such and not as a stream, is classed by the jurists among the things common to all mankind; as is done also by Ovid: 'Why do you deny me water? Its use is free to all. Nature has made neither sun nor air nor waves private property; they are public gifts'..."
-Hugo Grotius (Mare Liberum, chapter 5)
Well now I understand what it means and I have to say that it is the just as outlandisch as i thougth it would be. Don't get me wrong I'm pretty socialist leaning but this kind of stuff needs to be read in the time frame it was written in. Take it as a thing to hodl up to the world and say lets not go back to that instead of this is the state of the world because we are a long ways away from the world he lived in when he wrote this. We are heading there again but we're not ther yet.
I never could understood a socialist system, although I love their theories and criticisms. Indeed, means are common and possessions are socially contributed. But, what does this exclusive production and necessary occupation mean? If one 'rented' an acre and only worked with a quarter of it, can someone says I want the rest of it because they are not utilizing it as a whole however utilization means? If one cut out marble from a mountain does they get the exclusivity of the product even though this is an unrenewable product and they didn't actually do much to produce it? If one found a diamond or wanted to rent a land where treasures are hidden under, is it about who proclaims it first? who can claim such resources? It is easy have a vague idea like that in a small society, a tribe for example, where social order is easily maintained by common knowledge of a close-knit. But, in a large society, if lands are common unless occupied out of necessity and mixed with labor, who does one know if they have a right to proclaim the rented land or know when the evict the person not using it? Utilization, necessity, and labor are all very relative and vague. And so, in an attempt to replace the unlawful but clear Capitalist notion of property, what is occupation? I am all in favour of cultural domination over economical, just like economical dominated politics of the middle-ages and the political dominated the religious. But, can culture bring order and become semi-unified in a large society? I always have this problem with socialist theories: they work in a village not a country.
Great question. I see this applying to my city. We have empty lots with realtor's for-sale signs, abandoned buildings with keep-out signs, empty houses with labelled values you couldn't pay off at $1,000 a month for 30 years, and a growing homeless population. I think Proudhon's call to action was establishing local credit unions to make loans for home and business ownership. Public monetary investment: a centre-left proposal. That could just as easily be done by a city or a nation. Add to that a ban on owning rental or investment properties. And a reasonable cap on how much land you can hoard around your house.
Perhaps your misunderstanding stems from the fact in your premises you keep referring to absentee property rights, via rent.
Your argument:
a) rent a plot of land from absentee owner
b) occupier/s cultivate only x amount of a
c) a-x=c equal to the amount of injustice (inefficiency via externality)
Removing the circular logic:
d) occupies land for cultivation
e) cultivation of land x axiomatically is equal to d
f) d=e=f therefore this premises injustice is equal to Nil.
And now to reorder this:
c-a=x equal to the condition of the absentee ownership ie property
So to conclude in your own argument when ordered properly property is the issue.
@@radroatch So you mean that it is not that I rent an acre of land and cultivate half of it means that I'm unlawfully occupying half an acre but that the land I'm occupying now is actually only half an acre and thusly I'm not unlawfully occupying any land. I think It doesn't really solve the problem because things now are relative: who will keep the record of my cultivation and thusly determine what land I occupy? Who will determine what is considered cultivation? We need as such a third part like an institution or a judicial system with set laws. If we do so, then, It needs to be a matter of 'renting a land and occupying part of it' and not 'I cultivated this part of land first and I'm not trespassing on your land because I'm the criteria of cultivation and I say that what you call your land is not actually cultivated and what I've done is called cultivation'. It is a necessary outcome since your logic of land=cultivation instead of land=rented property means there is no prior mediation and is only a matter of "I came first and set my tent, so It's mine" instead of "I lawfully occupied this land and I'll cultivate it as I wish". As such, what will happen is that people will fight over a land and both will say ' I cultivated first', 'my wish for the property should be considered a cultivation' before the land is granted to them 'by law'. And so, it is crucial that the land is rented before cultivation or else there will be a domestication war of cultivation, such as fighting who has the right to extract the oil reserve pockets before a mediator grants one side and not the other the land. Then again, in addition to the fight over cultivation, there is still the problem of the nature of cultivation. Is extracting a finite resource of high value first or owning a private part of wilderness allowed [e.g. occupying an acre of land without cultivation because free-space to wander about is still a valuable thing]?
Why is Proudhon wearing trousers though
Love the video and your explanation with the figurines but you couldn’t have zoomed out a little instead of trying to fit in the frame behind them? 😂
And there it is. The "original sin" was not taking the fruit, it was God declaring it off limits. Property IS the problem. If God is everything (and indeed It is), how then can a thing be owned exclusively among us? Property is a uniquely religious/cultist concept.
It's difficult to respond with a kind of opposite viewpoint in any concise way
However I have an anti-socialism view of "What is property?" that's anarchistic
I hope people will take this introduction and think about it over enough times to see the limits of every great thinker
This line of thinking reminds me of when I was a Marxist in my early 20s
Proudhon definitely thought it out more generally and less systemically by comparison to Marx, I appreciate that!
Still trying to liv by the notion that "property is theft" will end up in most cases fruitless even with those who speak passionately the mantra together, however the premise "taxation is theft" more agreements and peace can be sustained
At least that's what I've found
Anyway! I hope you're going to make documents explaining the failures of both premises as well as their successes among your unbiased exposés introducing viewpoints
I've much appreciated your examples of thoughts in history not only the abstractions of what could be practiced; oh pragmatism how do I balance you with my disposition of being a romanticist?
- Your Quality Anarchist
What a collection of confused and mutually exclusive half-baked single-liners.
I guess when it comes to survival I don't know if I care about justice.
i find Proudon's argument abit hard to digest. if the labor of picking an apple from a tree grants right of property for increasing its use value through labor, how is the pickpocketing of an item an individual carries from point A to point B any different? does that make only objects that are in immediate use the property of their holders?
No because value added is a socially calculated device, and pickpocketing is socially calculated (rightly imo) as a value subtracted.
Property is different from life and liberty because it must be pursued and acquired. I legally, morally, and ethically own the screen I'm watching this video on because I pursued and acquired it. I don't have a right to occupation but I do have the right to pursue occupation if I wish it.
No private thought or cultural dialogue of rights is healthy if it does not include responcability, a dymanic duo.
So what you're saying is: I need to buy an apartment house.
Land title is very different than owning your shirt.
In Canada the class of ownership of land for most is called fee-simple.
What that means is that people on the title to the land but not the land itself and that title is subject to rights and responsibilities and very strict limits based on common law and statutes.
i'm an anarchist at heart. and to me its a utopian ideal for society, but more of a frame of mind as an individual society. what is the anarchists answer to overpopulation? the right to assure ur own survival sometimes clashes with others. haha it works better in a utopian world of enlightenment and brotherhood, not so much the hellscape dystopia the world is in, and really has always been in.
Agamben blows Proudhon out of the water. Our libertes are not 'ours' either, but not in the stoical sense, but rather by the fact that states can seize our liberties at will within any state of exception. The japanese american citizens held the same liberties as any other citizen, and yet by the state of exception of WW2, they were stripped of these rights. They didn't possess them, but rather, they were allowed to have them. So it is with all of us, for all things.
In the word of that hippie from Futurama, "you can't own property, man"
common law: occupation [ possession]= 9/10 of the law
J Swift deals with this by making a race live hundreds of years / immortal
it all depends on who is doing / how is done / the populating perhaps
"Property is theft... except in certain cases".
Doesn't quite have the same revolutionary ring to it, eh?
I mean, nuance matters.
@@superduperjew Good battle cries don't tend to contain qualifiers.
No actually my screen is mine thanks
Can you also make a video on Herman Hoppes' The economics and ethics of private property? Surely Prodhoun arguments will look like unevolve and obsolete
Unfortunately he only seems to do left-wing thinkers, besides Nozick, and he only did Nozick bc N was involved with Rawls.
Enjoyed the video, but have some serious reservations about Proudhon's thesis.
3:30 in or so Proudon gets to the his analysis of how property rights are not like other absolute rights. Namely not like right to life. He makes the claim that property rights don't seem to be absolute rights. We pay taxes,many government can take them in eminent domain cases. If the were absolute then then no one could make a claim to them.
Classical liberalism knew of property is different that the one being critiqued. This fact is evidenced in the concept of in(un)alienable rights (life Liberty and pursuit of happiness (Declaration of Independence) or Locke's original "Second Treatise of government," (life, liberty, and property) define property as owning one's self, one's speech, one's activity, one's work product.
None are absolute in that for societal benefit one can take property because it was used in the commission of a crime. One's life can be taken, and physical property taken, and their work can be taken even on the classically liberal ideology.
Proudhon is equivocating the word "property" to mean something much less than his recent contemporaries Jefferson, Paine, and Locke?
Is Proudhon going to ask us to account for "Justice," and "Laws" and not justify his own narrow view of "Property?"
Without dealing with definitions and without examining deeply where these natural rights derive our video skips to less foundational concepts of property law.
It seems that firstly we need to look at the claims of natural rights advocates to identify objective moral values and duties from "a creator"
We Inuit these laws with our faculty of moral intuition, and we proceed from these morals to societal laws built upon them.
I never heard any further grounding of rights whatsoever by Proudhon in this video, does he have such a argument?
"Property is the right of increase claimed by the proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own."
Proudhon's first axiom
Nice a priori presupposition, but before we go any further, is it true?
Can anyone mention any property they have that was acquired the way Proudhon's axiom suggests? I can't think of a single thing! Homes, cars, phones, dog, horses at my farm. Nothing acquired as a result of, "Stamping it as my own."
If that were the case then the hell with social media, we should all be in the stamp-making business!
I grant that this stamping phenomena has happened in history. He should have started with a similar modest claim as his axiom. But the claim Proudhon is making is that this presupposition is a or even the essential axiomatic feature of gaining property and that claim is a strong claim and false prima facie
People could save a lot of money on miniature trees if they just bought some weed. Two birds one stone
I don't think Proudhon was talking about phone screens when he discusses property.
Yours is the first video that pops up when i search 'what is property?'.
My nephew, you must take greater care if your intent is to educate, or to accurately portray the ideas of history that preclude your contemporary education. Otherwise this entire enterprise is pointless.
He meant property that has potential to better people's lives; primarily the means to produce, which could be thought of as the raw resources of the planet/galaxy, or even the very dirt we carelessly trod around on (because that's where your food comes from. Happy Meals require grass, and animals, and peasants to package it all...+ a toy! to distract you from the homeless fellow American in the dumpster by the drivethru. Shhhh! Turn away. Indifference is mercy. Church tomorrow.)
Land Reform Now!
Divide all federal land (excluding national parks) amongst the landless!
I'd rather starve on my own land than work in Walmart and beg for welfare scraps.
It's possible that organized working poor have already pooled their money and are building bunkers within BLM wildernesses.
I'm an abolitionist. I had slavery to Walmart and Amazon.
Dear United Nations, please send Blue Helmets to evacuate refugees of Runaway Capitalism.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Yes Because The People Can Control Property
"Property is Theft!"
Great video. If possible, please also cover Hayek on law and justice. He is one of the philosophers often misrepresented.
The concept of property (at least in practice) is older than humans.
Animals have territories which they establish for themselves, and vigorously defend against interlopers.
Humans are just fancy animals.
but that's occupation, not property.
No animal rents its territory out to other animals. That's an argument for occupation, not property as it's understood today.
Occupation=\=property
Humans and hunter gatherers=\=to fixed occupation, we're a roaming species till we became agrarian.
More or less however I feel the animal comparisons is half true. While Animals do have territory they occupy. Animals don't rent to other animals land and then jack up the rent on a whim. The difference between us and animal we are aware of what we are doing and at the same could solve the problem.
I believe King Cuck Though Slime discuss in his landlord video.
th-cam.com/video/g2EWQ4v9wbA/w-d-xo.html
If you I take 1000 dollars from you and brought you a Nintendo Switch does that make it better ?
Property is theft, thus i can take everything you have unless i use violence, is suggesting that doing any action is ok behaviour unless you use direct violence. So threaths and not respecting contracts or promises would also be fine. Perhaps even if someone is gonna attack you but hasnt yet means that you cant intercept the attack, even if its obvious; you simply have to wait until they hurt you first.
If property is theft then you should be able to take everything even the clothes and occupy their home and destroy windows to come inside, as long as you dot use violence on the person. You could take all their tools, food and chances for survival and it would be fine. Would poisoning or leading someone to their death or a e vere danger be fine? Youre not using violence, you are merely making the food in the house they live toxic, thats your right as long as you dont hurt anyone. Its not as if its that persons own food, or not like youre being violent.
Could i climb a mountain or dive in caves with someone and then without violence take the crucial equipment they used and leave them there stranded?
And if property is sometimes theft but not always then its not really that consistent of an ideology. I mean why would property be theft when protecting a billionaire's banana tree in his 17th house that he hasnt visited in 10years from starving kids, but not be when a billionaire wants to take a poor kids food without violence?
Justice presupposes that we can determine what is "just" which we can't ever really do. Also equality is compulsory and there are many humans who do not want to be equal. Not because they want more than others but simply maybe don't even want everything that is available to them... :D
Also what if some of those men on the fictional island decide to live together? Would 2 humans really need twice as much land than one human? And even if they didn't form "couples" they could decide to build one big common building where they'd have small personal spaces and large common areas. And they could decide to in a democratic way. I wonder how they would organise their common lives... I think there is no effective way to abolish property, but personally find decommodification and collective (not state) property to be the least bad solution for this problem. Stuff like cooperatives, commons and so on.
#PersonalIsPolitical :D
Property is _theft?_
Then _public_ property is theft.
The bit where he says that occupation requires the consent of others came out of nowhere and seems like a non-sequitur. Why does occupation require the consent of others? I don't need someone's consent to find a random piece of land and put a fence on it, I can just do it. I don't get it.
Hi - to clarify, he is talking about attempts to justify property, i.e. apportion it in a way which is actually *just*, not just what you could do. So yes, you *could* simply fence a piece of land, but that rests on an implicit assumption not of justice but of 'might makes right', i.e. you had the power to do so, so you could/did and that is thus right or at least acceptable, but then on that same logic, what is to stop anyone else from also claiming it? Why does your fence mean they cannot demolish yours and put up their own? On the basis that you expect it to be justifiably yours, you would require others to consent to, or at least tolerate and not infringe upon, 'your' piece of land.
@@chrishancock4813 This isn't "might makes right". A few seconds earlier, he put up a quote that mentioned "1st occupant", which implies a first come first served occupation conferring ownership of the land - a very common notion. That's a principle not "might makes right". There's no requirement that others consent under that principle. If that's not what Proudhon was talking about, why did he say "1st occupant"? If occupation (people being there) at any given time conferred ownership, land ownership would be meaningless and it wouldn't have even been thought of as a candidate for "justification".
@@marsglorious Yes but the idea of first occupant falls apart pretty quickly under scrutiny too, doesn't it - especially when there's no necessity of that transferring inter-generationally, so even if you could point to a theoretical 'first occupant', why extend that further? And the implicit 'might makes right' is in the fact that the only thing stopping others from occupying it despite your 'ownership' of it, or doing so subsequently, is a tacit agreement that others will respect the boundaries you are trying to impose, i.e. their consent or some sort of social contract with implicit consent.
@@marsglorious
It requires the consent of the community in the form of recognition of that occupation (with all the rights which are implicit to that state of affairs). You are in, essence, barring all of the community from accessing that land and its resources (an erga omnes prerogative).
What Proudhon recognizes and defends is what we call possession (in opposition to ownership or dominion). Possession is a defacto state of affairs, a material reality, the actual occupation and utilization of the land and its resources. Dominion, or ownership, is a dejure (legal fiction) state of affairs that grants the individual exclusive rights to the land and its resources that go beyond use and occupation (they can sell the exclusive rights to the land, they can rent the use and occupation of the land under their own terms and they can pass on the exclusive rights to their heirs) it's a dejure state of affairs because it's independent of the material reality of the land itself.
Proudhon (and mutualism) champions usufructs (occupation and use property) so as long as you are using and occupying the land you are entitled to its fruits (It follows from this that the 1st person occupying the land and using it has preference over the others as long as that occupation is taking place).
@@chrishancock4813 There's no necessity to transferring it intergenerationally but with an inheritance system, you can. There's no inconsistency.
The requirement for the consent or social contract assumes you can't defend your land singlehandedly and then it is just might makes right as you said. However, this renders any discussion of the principles of land ownership redundant. I can't see what the point of Proudhon's writings here are then; justifications don't apply if people immediately revert to might makes right? No shit. That's trivial.
Humans don't just pop into existence out of nothing. They have parents.
Yes, but what's your point?
The sins of the father, apparently
@@daddyleon, you're born subject to the authority of your parents who lived subject to the authority of others. The conceptual space for Prouhdon's (or any social contract theorists) freely associating individuals who entered into society as equals doesn't exist.
@@Ruairitrick Ah, so you're saying children are property who inherit both their freedom & autonomy as well as the other non-human property of their parents? That's a very interesting and radical idea.
@@daddyleon, I wouldn't say their property as this relation is much older than the property form (which emerges from a central authority in early civilization as the grant of a holding). Just that children are born subject to the authority of their parents who are in turn subject to the social center which all orders necessitate and from which authority emerges (in the oldest orders this often takes the form of a totem which is interpreted by a shaman). Thus the whole social contract premise of free and equal agents who enter into society on contractual terms is deeply flawed.
Mmmm, sugar cookie
You wouldn't run out of land because people die. If the original occupiers all had a piece of land, their progeny would inherit that land.
Proudhon didn't think property rights were a mistake... they merely stood in the way of his revolution, so he discarded them. Agenda always comes at the expense of truth.
Additionally, "natural rights" and not the right of the strong to take from the weak. They are merely the rights we observe humans to have in the state of nature, those which are self evident: life, liberty, property.
Furthermore, natural rights are not generated under law, laws conform to them. The state of nature precedes government, that's the fucking point of it. You have displayed a fundamental ignorance in professing otherwise.
Your “Natural Rights” are only observed by humans in cloud cuckoo land. It’ just a convenient dogma to justify your political position, unless you can provide scientific/anthropological evidence that supports your claims, of course. Cheers.
@@alrisan71 Insult and rationalization add nothing to the conversation.
The very name "natural" rights denotes that they are observable in nature. Empiricism, ie science, like Fauci.
If one wants to argue the nihilist perspective that an individual has no right to "life", a case can be made, but no system of rights, or anything else for that matter, will emerge.
If one wants to argue that the individual receives their rights from the collective, you will need to demonstrate where from the rights of the collective arise.
If the lone individual has no value, why is a group of them valuable? Even a million times zero is zero.
No to vaccine passports, no to forced or coerced vaccines.
man, from his existence does not have the right to occupation. This would be an awful teleology, a prima causa. Of course, this is not real, it is an abstraction, it is a part of our political text. A positive capitulation etched upon a negative space.