[extropy-chat] Authenticity, extropy, libertarianism, and history

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
> One of the reasons I liked libertarian, back in the day, was that it
> seemed
> much more specific than the other labels, though even libertarian has
> conflict
> with its original meaning ("property is theft!" anarchists such as
> Bakunin.)

You've got two errors in there.

Firstly, it wasn't Bakunin who said that, it was Proudhon. Secondly,
Proudhon specifically meant the phrase with respect to the inherited
absentee landlordism that was the French aristocracy. In this respect,
he was a proto-Georgist, which resides off in the left-hand side of the
Libertarian territory. 

Proudhon's idea was that, contrary to the Lockean justification for
property ownership (that by mixing one's labor with the land, one  came
to own it by making it useful and therefore valuable through labored
improvement), many of those who inherit land do not mix their labor
(not always, at least, as the landed peasantry labor, on the land they
will inherit, from childhood), and nor, generally, in the case of
aristocracy, do their parents, grandparents, etc. back in history to
some ancestor who stole the land, or bought it from someone who stole
it, etc.

It is because of this situation of ancestor of aristocracy as thief
back in the barbarian middle ages that Proudhon made his famous
declaration, as receipt of stolen goods is still theft, no matter how
ignorant or in good faith the current posessor came to posess them, by
his logic. The failure of this logic is of course the problem of
punishing the sons for the sins of the father.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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