Once upon a year

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Philosophy of Anarchy

IS PROPERTY THEFT?

“If you asked me ‘what is slavery’, I would tell you ‘it is murder’, […] if you asked me ‘what is property’, I would answer ‘it is theft’” wrote Proudhon in 1840 in What is property[1]? Although Proudhon came back to this statement later on, this statement alone, and often taken out of context, has been the origin for countless philosophical arguments on property, theft and law, but also liberty. Indeed the formulation notwithstanding, that is no sole question of theft that Proudhon reflects on, but of Nature, Liberty and Justice. It is also a question of work, and the exclusion of others within the act of ownership. Therefore to understand this statement, and possibly refute it, there needs to be a reflection on whatever is property, possession, but also liberty, exploitation… leading to an ongoing debate of anarchists and capitalists over the right to own.

In Law, one distinguishes three pillars structural of property (whether private or collective – public or State-owned): the use, fruit and alienation (usus, fructus and abusus). The use (usus), is the right to use of a good (house, apple, etc) without one being able to dispute it to you. The fruit (or fructus), it is the free pleasure of what a good produces. The typical example is the orchard or the kitchen garden, whose fruits (and vegetables) go to the beneficiary owner, in most cases (there is however cases where the holder of the usus is not the same one as that of the fructus). The exercise of these two rights is possession, which thus makes it possible to profit from the usufruct of a good.

In Philosophy, the distinction between the three pillars is decisive if we want to distinguish the property that can be considered as theft (fructus) and the property that frees people (abusus).

How could property be at the same time exclusive and liberating? How can it be at the same time exploiting, thievery, and a way towards freedom and independence?

This dispute is not a young one. Proudhon was not the first philosopher to discuss the notion of rightful ownership. In Jacques le Fataliste[2], Diderot discussed through a powerful allegory the unrightfully claimed castle of Nature. Through time philosophers have asked themselves what distinguishes nature from society, and the act of claiming a piece of Nature a one’s own is an act of humanization of Nature. Ownership is the first step to creating a civil society and getting out of the State of Nature. However the real step to getting out of the State of Nature is that one that sets men free. Ownership, though literally a characteristic of free men in most modern societies (especially through voting laws), is not philosophically freeing. For Hegel, freedom is sprung not from ownership (fructus) but from the act of possession that is work (abusus).

We will see that the ownership can be considered as thievery, because only work can give value. Those who benefit from goods through their sole ownership (fructus) exploit the value of work of other people without working themselves and steal them from their rightful value. Moreover ownership as the exclusion of others from the owned good is a constraint of other’s liberties. However, as Proudhon recognized it himself later on, not all property is necessarily negative. The civil State sprung from claims of property, the property of goods is also a way to protect, save and preserve them against their disappearance or alienation. Moreover there is risk in ownership and investment of capital, implying work and effort on the owner’s part.

It is commonly accepted amongst philosophers who have studied the concept of the State of Nature that such a state knows no concept of property. All is everyone’s and anything is common, collective, unprotected.

Hobbes supported this view that property is not a natural right. “Out of society, each one has so much right on all things that it cannot be prevailed from him and has the possession of none; but in the republic, each one enjoys its particular right peacefully.”[3] (De Cive, 1642). Before the formation of society, whereas everyone enjoys the fruits of nature, none can call it his own, and none can claim its exclusive fructus.

But men, as we know from empirical experience, have claimed that right. It does not mean that it is a rightful claim, and proves that it is unnatural; such is the lesson of Jacques the Fatalist. “I do not belong to anybody and I belong to everyone. You were there before entering and will still be here when you leave. ” Such is the enigmatic inscription that Jacques and his Master read at the frontispiece of a castle discovered during a storm that constrained them to take refuge. Diderot, in this extract of Jacques the Fatalist, takes part of this movement of thought which calls in question the notion of property. This castle is an allegory of Nature (as we can decipher from the second part of the inscription). Later on, visiting the interior, Jacques and his master make a discovery that has not changed since Diderot wrote his essay: “What shocked more the Jacques and his Master was to find a score of daring adventurers, who had seized the most superb apartments, which they always thought to be too small; who claimed against the common right and the true direction of the inscription that the castle had been bequeathed to them like any property… ”

Nature belongs to anybody, the property is not thus ever but one abuse of power… It is not natural; here is the lesson which it is advisable to draw from the reading of the inscription of the castle.

Property is exploitation. The owner does not produce anything. He steals the fruit of the work of those which use its goods and condemns them to have nothing. In The Master-Slave dialectic [4](also translated as Lordship and Bondage), Hegel theorized that the only true free man is the worker, even enslaved, for the exploitation (usus) of an object frees, whereas the master, though free, is truly enslaved by the sole pleasure of the object (fructus). Hegel is one of the main advocators of this philosophical argument that work is the true freedom, and that through work men realize themselves. A table before men is a log, but after being touched, worked on, the log is transformed, humanized, it is no longer a mere accident but the product of a thought, a project, and a physical transformation. After being owned a table is a table, and enjoyed, eaten on, looked at, it is still a table, unchanged, without the print of its owner. The worker on the other hand learned about the table, the wood, and the time it took, the way to modify such an object. Working, the worker has realized himself as a table-maker, learned in the process and freed himself through his work and the independence that if needed he could make another table. The owner in the act of owning does not know anything about himself, or the table. He depends on the worker for the place he eats. He is not free.

In the anarchist-socialist philosophy, the exploitation of others for work is the very definition of thievery. Each penny which enlarges the fortune of the owners is stolen from the wages of the workers. It is not right that the workman who does all the work is maintained in poverty whereas the owner who is an idle has all the benefit. The possession of goods (grounds, money, and capital) perverts this process and devalues work. The owner indeed rents what he has to the non-owners who need to work. He does not work himself, and the wages that he pays the workers are such that the workers cannot invest them or transform them into capital. The owner is not giving to his employees as much as they would have benefiting from the sole object of their work if they owned and did not have to depend on the owner for a place to work. Moreover Proudhon attacks the principle of interests, which in his period are undefined in time, for that small portion of the product of work goes to the owner without him having to put in any work in the process. By doing this, he steals to the active people their benefit. Rent, revenue, interest rates, rights and taxes of all kinds, such are the means by which the owner despoils the workers of the product of their work. When this phenomenon spreads on the scale of society, it leads to an increasing impoverishment and social injustice. Property is thus a source of misery for a majority of the population, even if the access is theoretically free. The workers will never be able to become owners, because they are maintained in the dependence by those who exploit them.

Property implies an exclusive right of the owner on a good, which it can oppose to all those who are not owner of this good. Consequently, the property imprisons the not-owners of a good compared to this one. But there is more. As one could not be owner of all the goods, one is fatally limited, excluded, imprisoned by the exercises of properties of which we are not the holders. Property does not release at all: it encloses in a yoke under pretext of stability in the social reports/ratios the unit of the goods of a manner such as a man can die of thirst beside a well or of cold, close to a private home.

Another impact of the property: the need for defending it. If we have the illusion to live free in a State of right, concrete reality is very different: vigils, cops, conveyors, lock, keys, alarms, etc are there to recall us that the property must be defended to exist because its balance is continuously disputed by those which are called robbers. But there are several implications to this defense of private property. Firstly, and because the State protects private property, property implies police, for the defense of one’s good is the defense against other’s will to use or appropriate said good. Instead of a protecting State sprung from the state of nature to bring civil law and protection to all men, property creates a police state self-nourishing on the necessity to protect private property from hostile interests and take-over. Being unable to differentiate between potential threats to property and other civilians, the State constrains everyone to a single category, the citizens. The State’s sole purpose becomes therefore to prevent citizens from violating owner’s properties. Property and ownership bring liberty constrains and police enforcement to the world. Property can therefore be blamed for the theft of rights, right to absolute movement (interdiction to violate private property, breaking an entrance, robbery…). As one is master in his own home, one could also blame such property to constrain not only the fruit of any good place in such home, but also the constrain to actions, speech, and everything that the ‘master’ based on such property thinks himself entitled to claim (‘in my house, follow my rules, do as I say and do not say what I do not want to hear’).

The only solution to prevent injustice and let liberty prevail is therefore the suppression of property. In 1516, Thomas More was persuaded of it: «... the single means of distributing the goods with equality, justice and of constituting the happiness of mankind is the abolition of property».[5] Utopia, literally ‘nowhere’, has come to be seen as -as its subtitle reckoned- the best possible state, a state based on mutualism and without ownership. Utopia is the mutualist state by excellence and the lack of war, poverty, unemployment… makes it an enviable perspective – to a certain extent. It is a proof – though fictional – that there can be no property without falling into the initial ultra-violent state of Nature.

The criticism of property is in two forms: the criticism of the appropriation, and the criticism of conservation, which are always to the detriment of someone else.

Property is considered by numerous philosophers to be unnatural, one of the main differences from the state of Nature to the state of Law. Conversely, in his "Two Treatises of Government"[6] Locke argues that the State is merely there to protect the citizen’s natural right of property. The fruit of the union of the earth and one’s body leads to a natural right of ownership of a part of earth by one. To Locke, property is actually a natural right, which civil society is only there to protect. Hobbes, and later Rousseau, argued that property exists only through civil laws given by the sovereign. Locke's account of the methods of and limits of property acquisition in the state of nature differ from those of Hobbes. Hobbes argued that property was a civil right; Locke that property was a natural right.

“The first which, having enclosed a ground, thought of saying: This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe it, was the true founder of the civil society”[7] said Rousseau. Such discourse, to him, was at the origin of violence, crimes, murders, wars… for “you are lost, if you forget that fruits belong to all, and the earth to no one” (second discourse).

Rousseau’s conception of property is that property founded civil society.

His conception of society was that in so doing, it ruined it for men and that society was at the origin of the second most important inequality among men: moral inequality. However this conception gives property a new meaning, it is the founder of society.

When we consider some philosophical conceptions and theories of the State of Nature, within which men are wolves to men (Hobbes), the contraction of such society is a positive state.

Moreover Property is seen by many as a fundamental right: “Property being an inviolable and crowned right, no one can be prevented from its exercise”[8]. I our modern occidental societies, property is one of the most fundamental rights. Our liberty consists in part in our capacity to possess some things as our own. It is the basis for the capitalism and the society of consumption. But more importantly, property was once one major difference between individuals. Property differentiated between free men and slaves, men and women (who could not possess and were therefore second class citizens dependent on their husbands or fathers), and between those who voted and those who could not through the cens, system of suffrage based on a tax threshold system or property ownership.

Property is a liberator since owning gives the independence necessary to vote, but also to be able to stand against the state (nobles in France, Medieval order, British Lords…) and guarantee the honesty and standing of the government. It is harder to get leverage on someone who could potentially insure his own sustenance and is in charge of one’s own business. A worker, dependent on the one who gives him work, would be easier to put pressure on, would be less free and less independent than the proprietor who is potentially self-sufficient.

Jules Favre said “in my profound conviction, property, reward for work, […] [is] an eternal institution which […] will stay a basis for the democratic order we will found”.[9] Indeed property is the reward that one gets in exchange for work. Those who merit find themselves rightful owners of objects worked for. Thus in our society everyone can access to property according to one’s means and merit.

Moreover in liberal societies, the wealth of an individual depends on the risks that one takes with what is his and compared to the stakes that are in the balance. An owner struggles everyday to fructify its property, and by taking risks with what is his, is actually making proof of the intensity and the quality of its commercial handling of land, property, actions… etc. Property is the recompense of the entrepreneur, the risk taker. When the worker only works and goes back home, satisfied with the rent of his work force to sustain himself and those at his charge, the owner is risking his property every day, fights daily to insure the success of his enterprise.

Property may appear as a wrongful exploitation of workforce by idle property or capital owners making profit out of the poor and excluding the rest of the world from property wrongfully obtained. But property is a major component of liberty, political and social independence, and a ground for civil society. Finally, we can say that property is also a ground for democracy and preservation.

The socialist, pseudo-Marxist, communist and pseudo-anarchist economies have thus far never succeeded in maintaining a valid and durable society. Indeed, they always failed for some reason often because people could not sustain a work not motivated by individualist gain and profit, or because they reached a critical size that forbad them to work efficiently. Stephen Peplow[10] tells the story of a 17^th century Massachusetts anarchist colony that starved to death because one person decided not to work, and everyone else followed his example.

Even Proudhon came back and explained that he had been misinterpreted in his own quote. He affirmed in fine that “property is freedom”. He explained that when he said that property is theft, it had been included/understood with misconception: it designated in fact idle land-owners who, in his opinion, stole the profits from the workers. More generally, he spoke about the people who draw an income without working. In Theory of the property, he affirms that “property is the only force which can be used as counterweight to the State”. Thus, « Proudhon can retain the idea of property as theft, and at the same time offer a new definition of it as liberty. There is the constant possibility of abuse, exploitation, which spells theft. At the same time property is a spontaneous creation of society and a bulwark against the ever-encroaching power of the State ». [11]Thus property is a principal eternal contradiction which explains society.

In the Tragedy of the Commons[12], Hardin tells us indirectly that property is not only liberating, it is preserving. When the pasture belongs to all, the maximization of each is to use and abuse it until there is no more left and the soil, damaged, is unusable. According to Hardin however, owning the pasture would never lead to such a consequence, for ownership leads pastors to take care of the land. Their interest instead of overusing the pasture until death follows, is to keep and nurture the pastures so that their sheep will always be able to enjoy the pastures and their benefit will be longer lasting. Mutualism in this story is the very reason of exploitation and irreparable damage to the commons. Property, on the contrary, ensures preservation of the commons. Common goods are never as well kept as individual goods. Property in this case is a benefit for the good itself. The example of the Bengal tiger enters the same category. Commons that are not common good (which the use of does not exclude others use of) disappear, whereas people have greater incentive of sustaining their goods and preserving them. Property is therefore a positive for goods which, if mutual, would be destroyed but selfish overuse.

We have seen that Proudhon’s sentence was but an initial thought on private property under certain circumstances, namely wrongful means of ownership and monopoly of usage exploiting workers by undeserving owners. However, looking into the arguments against ownership and those arguing that property is a means of freedom, it appears that there is not one clear answer as to whether property if theft. Property can be considered as undeserved appropriation of goods that should not be benefiting (fructus) those who do not possess them (usus), but it is at the same time liberating and can reveal beneficial aspects.

There is a positive and a negative side to property. Positive, for property is a fundamental right and a guarantee of freedom and independence of the owner regarding other social forces trying to exercise power, authority and political influence over him. Negative, if property is abusive, and always when wrongfully obtained and is the monopole of few owners dictating their laws and imposing their interests on the majority who only has the minimum. The most important right considering property is to guarantee equal access and non exclusive benefice. However Marx himself was against mutualism, for the total absence of ownership can sometimes have unfortunate consequences as we have seen.

An anarchic society is a “form of social organization in which nobody is in charge; nobody tries to control other people, assuming human beings can be good if left to their own devices”. [13]However it does not require the absence of property, but the absence of hierarchy. Therefore if everyone has enough to live everyday and if there is no hierarchy, there needs to be neither property nor absence of property for a society to live in “anarchy”. However the vision of men is important. If men are intrinsically good and able to live without violating others, then there can be absence of property. Unfortunately, if we consider that men are violent and individualist, a society without the rule of law to protect and ensure the safety of people and goods would be nothing but the worse of states of nature. There would be nothing but violence and no protection or preservation of commons. It would be chaos not anarchy.

[1] What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1840

[2] Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, Denis Diderot, 1796.

[3] De Cive, Thomas Hobbes, 1642.

[4] The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1807

[5] Utopia, On the best state of a republic and on the new island of Utopia, Thomas More, 1516.

[6] Two Treatise of Government, John Locke, 1690.

[7] Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1754.

[8] Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, Declaration of rights of men and citizen, 26 août 1789.

[9] Le Mercure Segusien, Jules Favre, 1848.

[10] Stephen Peplow, meeting of The Hong Kong Philosophy Cafe's Kowloon Branch, July 31, 2002.

[11] Social Philosophy in France, Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1994.

[12] Tragedy of the Commons, Garrett Hardin, Science, 1968.

[13] Stephen Peplow, ibid.

Amitiés socialo-anarchistes (ou pas..
Lucile

Once upon a year

jeudi 14 mai 2009

Rapport de Stage

lundi 4 mai 2009

Moment tant attendu

lundi 27 avril 2009

Come on get higher

Is property theft?

[10] Stephen Peplow, meeting of The Hong Kong Philosophy Cafe's Kowloon Branch, July 31, 2002.

jeudi 23 avril 2009

Make your body happy

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