Voluntaryism - a way we can all agree

[Lydanderfeen]

Hi! I would like to make the arguement that voluntaryism is the true anarchy and would like to contrast other systems with it, bearing in mind that voluntaryism is not a system. Voluntaryism is very simple; you do not initiate force, fraud or coersion against others. All states violate this natural law because they all exist by the initiation of force. States call it taxation but in truth it is theft. If I take something from you against your will-regardless of my intended use for it-I am stealing from you. Going further, If i backup my action with men with guns than my theft is all the more obvious. Any system that is built upon this immoral initiation of force is an immoral and violent system. Since no individual has a right to steal from another person, how can an individual give that right to a collective? How can I delegate to some external entitiy rights which i never possessed in the first place?

In a voluntaryist society (more of an unsociety) the marxists could have their society so long as it was on land they justly aquired and people existing on that land had the right to leave at any time and agreed to the terms of the marxist community. Individuals who possesed land in the confines of the marxist community would not be subject to the marxist community but would be individuals unto themselves. So also a communist, cryptoanarchist, etc, etc, any community you imagine could exist in a voluntaryist society as long as it does not initaiate force, fraud or coersion against others.

Voluntaryism is the best un-system because it allows people who want to form communities or just be left alone to have their life and wishes respected and honored. Statist systems force individuals into a system whether they want to or not and use violence and threats of violence to keep them in it against their will.


Anyone advocating for socialism or any other ism under the statist paradim is no better than any other statist. There is no difference in kind between state socialism, state fascism, state communism, etc, there are only differences in degree. They are all essentially the same type of systems just different degrees of oppression. Do you really think that a monopoly system is going to be controllable and do what you or your followers think it should do? Just look at how laws are formed in any government to see that's not the case: someone has an idea for a new law-they get funding-write the law-law gets changed by political class against written intent-law is not implemented by people who understand the intention of it but by people who have no idea about it-complete failure ensues, the system was never intended to be functional. However, if your advocating these systems from a stateless perspective then i'm all for it. I'm all for you having the freedom to gather people who agree with you, legitimately purchase land and carry out your experiment. Lets see which system is the best. Peace

[DOOM]

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/t5/276720_147828788628822_4286597_n.jpg
Implying that businesses wouldn't just replace the state, using violent/non-violent coercion to justify their demands.
As if unleashed capitalism would suddenly make us humans "fair". Duh
Capitalism IS authoritarian by it's nature.

[ARomanCandle]

Voluntaryism is very simple; you do not initiate force, fraud or coersion against others... legitimately purchase land and carry out your experiment.

Do you realize how much force, fraud, and coercion is inherent in asking a person (or group) to "legitimately purchase land"?

It's so baffling when people recognize the inherent coercion of the state but do not recognize that same coercion within private ownership.

Anyhow, you cannot extract capitalism from the state. They are brothers in arms.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

And if we don't want to play along, who's going to force us to?

This is the same old libertarian reactionary drivel masquerading as progressiveness. "Hey guise you can have your system if you first accept my system of 'legitimate property' as binding upon the whole world". How about "no"?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Hah just out of curiosity, who is the lucky duck who gets to determine what is and is not "natural law"?

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Hah just out of curiosity, who is the lucky duck who gets to determine what is and is not "natural law"?

The person with the biggest hat.

At least that's how it goes in the Catholic Church, which is also quite big on natural law.

[Ahab Strange]

You seem to have already made your mind up about voluntarism superiority without having done much research about socialism or the huge variations in leftist thought.


Do you really think that a monopoly system is going to be controllable and do what you or your followers think it should do? Just look at how laws are formed in any government to see that's not the case: someone has an idea for a new law-they get funding-write the law-law gets changed by political class against written intent-law is not implemented by people who understand the intention of it but by people who have no idea about it-complete failure ensues, the system was never intended to be functional.

What monopoly's are you talking about here? Of the capitalists? Or some kind you corporate-state quango you seem to think is a necessity of socialism?

Voluntarism like to make out that property rights are "natural". How is this empirical? How can it be proven? Even if we were to argue that personal possessions are a "natural human right", how can something like a factory or a farm be by extension someones personal possession? Things that can only be put to proper use socially, through the collective activity of humans?

[Lydanderfeen]

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/t5/276720_147828788628822_4286597_n.jpg
Implying that businesses wouldn't just replace the state, using violent/non-violent coercion to justify their demands.
As if unleashed capitalism would suddenly make us humans "fair". Duh
Capitalism IS authoritarian by it's nature.

Corporations are legal fictions created by the state that cannot exist in a free market, they are products of the lack of competition created by the fascism between states and corporations. You can say no to a corporation, you can't say no to the state. It dos not benefit businesses to kill and treat their customers like shit otherwise they will lose customers. Only because of the legal status afforded them by the state are they able to behave the way they do today.

[Lydanderfeen]

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/t5/276720_147828788628822_4286597_n.jpg
Implying that businesses wouldn't just replace the state, using violent/non-violent coercion to justify their demands.
As if unleashed capitalism would suddenly make us humans "fair". Duh
Capitalism IS authoritarian by it's nature.

You mean like we have now? There is a big difference between businesses and corporations. Joe"a car repair is not the same as AT&T. Corporations are direct creations of the state, they would not exist in a free market due to competition. Right now corporations collude with the state to create regulation that prevents competition. You seem to think that corporations will take over in the absence of a monopoly of violence. What you fail to realize is that they do not have the perceived legitimacy of the state. People have been brainwashed to accept th state since thy were infants. They will not accept corporations acting like states. You can say no to walmart, you can't say no to government.

[Lydanderfeen]

Do you realize how much force, fraud, and coercion is inherent in asking a person (or group) to "legitimately purchase land"?

It's so baffling when people recognize the inherent coercion of the state but do not recognize that same coercion within private ownership.

Anyhow, you cannot extract capitalism from the state. They are brothers in arms.


I know that land ownership can be traced back to so and so who stole it from so and so and so on. But we have to start somewhere. Private property is natural IMO and part of keeping the piece. Can you be more specific?

[Lydanderfeen]

And if we don't want to play along, who's going to force us to?

This is the same old libertarian reactionary drivel masquerading as progressiveness. "Hey guise you can have your system if you first accept my system of 'legitimate property' as binding upon the whole world". How about "no"?

All I'm saying is don't steal, don't kill, don't commit fraud, etc. if I work hard and purchase a piece of land for sale by saving my money, what is wrong with that?

[Lydanderfeen]

Hah just out of curiosity, who is the lucky duck who gets to determine what is and is not "natural law"?

Natural law is discovered not invented. It begins with the fundamental truth that you own your own body, do you dispute this? Every species has thir own natural laws which you can witness by observing them, so do humans.

[Lydanderfeen]

You seem to have already made your mind up about voluntarism superiority without having done much research about socialism or the huge variations in leftist thought.



What monopoly's are you talking about here? Of the capitalists? Or some kind you corporate-state quango you seem to think is a necessity of socialism?

Voluntarism like to make out that property rights are "natural". How is this empirical? How can it be proven? Even if we were to argue that personal possessions are a "natural human right", how can something like a factory or a farm be by extension someones personal possession? Things that can only be put to proper use socially, through the collective activity of humans?

I don't know what you are referring to but generally the monopoly is the state, the organization which has the monopoly of violence.

If I take a risk by fronting the funds to purchase infrastructure to start a business then that infrastructure is mine. Someone who voluntarily decided to work for me does not own the factory, he owns the fruit of his labor which he earns by mixing his labor with my investment.

[Lydanderfeen]

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-prn2/t5/276720_147828788628822_4286597_n.jpg
Implying that businesses wouldn't just replace the state, using violent/non-violent coercion to justify their demands.
As if unleashed capitalism would suddenly make us humans "fair". Duh
Capitalism IS authoritarian by it's nature.


Who says it has to be capitalism? In a free society there would be capitalist sectors, socialist sectors, etc. my personal opinion is that the sectors which try to centrally control the market will fail miserably, but that doesn't matter because I am not forced to be a part of their system. I said let's not tolerate the initiation of force against peaceful people. People who don't agree with you should be free to say no to your system. As long as you don't steal from me and threaten me to conform to your system we have no issue. Live and let live.

[Lydanderfeen]

Why does every post have to be approved? That's pretty authoritarian and controlling.

[Q]

Why does every post have to be approved? That's pretty authoritarian and controlling.
Not at all. Have a look here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/introduction-forum-rules-t180696/index.html) as to why we do that.

[#FF0000]

I know that land ownership can be traced back to so and so who stole it from so and so and so on. But we have to start somewhere. Private property is natural IMO and part of keeping the piece. Can you be more specific?

So you're a-okay with initiating force in establishing private property but nowhere else? What do you mean private property is "natural"? How can it be natural if it did not exist for much (most?) of human existence? Why do we have such common disagreements over what is whose property, or what is property at all? Why has what is considered property changed over the course of human existence?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Lydanderfeen,

Firstly, your approach is absolutely ahistorical. For instance, do you realize that the state initially wasn't created "by the people and for the people", but was instead just a conglomeration of extremely rich folk? For fuck's sake, the majority didn't even have a right to vote! So it was created by the ruling classes to control the society and they obviously didn't give a damn about legitimacy or anything like that, they just enforced whatever they wanted to enforce, because they were the damn ruling class. How on earth do you imagine that the same wouldn't happen if you get rid off the sort of liberal state that we have now?

Secondly, your ideology pushes you and other adherents to say weird shit like "monopoly wouldn't exist without the state". It is idiotic and ahistorical - the monopolies started growing out of the free markets of 19th century. It's just a logical outcome of capitalism. Just look at the mergers & acquisitions at any point in time - it's huge, enormous. It naturally leads to monopolization of the market without any government interference... That's ignoring other ways that would be allowed in your voluntary market, like collusion between businesses to form monopolies for instance...

Thirdly, what do you even mean by supporting voluntaryism? Do we chop all the wealth into equal pieces and distributed equally among the entire population of the world, because that wealth was originated fraudulently, i.e. by corporation abusing state power, common land enclosures, primitive accumulation in general? Or do you support just getting rid of the state and letting all the corporations to keep their wealth hoping that the market will somehow solve the problem?

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

All I'm saying is don't steal, don't kill, don't commit fraud, etc. if I work hard and purchase a piece of land for sale by saving my money, what is wrong with that?

What is wrong, from the perspective of the proletariat, is that stealing, fraud, purchasing, and money, all of these are inseparable (given the state of the productive forces, which makes feudalism, guild-labor etc. impossible) from the capitalist mode of production, which is against our objective interests.


Natural law is discovered not invented. It begins with the fundamental truth that you own your own body, do you dispute this?

Yeah.

Where's your deed for your body?

[Ahab Strange]

There is a big difference between businesses and corporations. Joe"a car repair is not the same as AT&T. Corporations are direct creations of the state, they would not exist in a free market due to competition. Right now corporations collude with the state to create regulation that prevents competition. You seem to think that corporations will take over in the absence of a monopoly of violence. What you fail to realize is that they do not have the perceived legitimacy of the state. People have been brainwashed to accept th state since thy were infants. They will not accept corporations acting like states. You can say no to walmart, you can't say no to government.
Why will they not accept corporations acting like a state? They are authoritarian power structures with enormous resources. In the absence of a state what is to stop them enforcing their will through sheer belligerence due to their size? An enormous, well resourced mafia if you will? Perceived legitimacy doesn't matter, we would be straight back to a kind of industrial feudalism where the shots are called by those who own the worlds resources.

Ok, so say we got rid of corporations AND the state and reduced everyone to a world of small town mechanics and homesteaders, what then? What is to stop a corporation like entity forming again? If the means of production are private property and the system is a competitive market, there is nothing to stop some people obtaining more private property, and therefore more power, than others, thereby denying it to others. There is a coercive power structure right there




If I take a risk by fronting the funds to purchase infrastructure to start a business then that infrastructure is mine. Someone who voluntarily decided to work for me does not own the factory, he owns the fruit of his labor which he earns by mixing his labor with my investment. Lets break it down a bit.....


- The funds you front to buy infrastructure. That infrastructure was not built by you or by any one person but by the collective action of architects, builders etc. The fact that this factory was then turned into a commodity for exchange on a market does not negate this fact. You only own it by the nature of the market system, not through any virtue of your own other than having enough money to pay for it.


- You take no more risk than a worker does. You are only in a different position to him because, for whatever reason, you had the money to buy the capital. If your business starts to go awry then you can get shot of it. Maybe you might make a loss on is sale, but even so you still have some capital to fall back on. But the worker is as invested as you are. If he has no job at your factory, he starves. He has to capital to sell, or to generate a profit from. All he has is his ability to labour for you.


- He voluntarily decided to work for you, but it doesnt matter if he decided to work for you or work your competitor, the scenario for him is the same.


-He doesnt own the fruits of his labour at all. You do. The worker receives a wage, which is an arbitary price decided by the market as to how much workers cost to run. Yes you pay them and it may affect your profits, but the fruit of their labour is what they make in the factory, which is what YOU sell to make YOUR profits.


- Your investment is nothing more than the ability to command the labour of others. Whether that is the past work of previous workers in building the factory you now own, or the current labour of your employees working at the lathes. Whatever point on the chain of causality, accumulated wealth was created by workers. The fact is that wealth is owned by people other than workers and its ownership changes hands, doesn't justify itself.

[#FF0000]

Y'all should be replacing "corporations" with "businesses", btw. Corporations are specific legal entities.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Y'all should be replacing "corporations" with "businesses", btw. Corporations are specific legal entities.

Yeah, if I remember correctly the British crown is a corporation. The thing is, many people only oppose big business, mistakenly called "corporations" (although almost every one of these businesses is a corporation), because they are easy to stereotype as evil, whereas Ma and Pa shops are good, wholesome, apple-pie and whatever.

[Lydanderfeen]

So you're a-okay with initiating force in establishing private property but nowhere else? What do you mean private property is "natural"? How can it be natural if it did not exist for much (most?) of human existence? Why do we have such common disagreements over what is whose property, or what is property at all? Why has what is considered property changed over the course of human existence?

How am i initiating force by saying that if you work for something and you pay someone else money for the right to own for it for a period of time? So if there is no private property, can i come into you house and take a shit on the floor? After all you don't own it right?

Private property has always existed. If you went into another mans "cave" and tried to take his shit you would face reprocussions. Are you saying that you would not?

We have such disagreements over property because the state has created a fiction known as "public property" wherein they claim everyone owns it yet noone has the right to use it. Case in point, if i go onto "public property" and start a garden I will be arrested. If i decide i need to use a "public" police car to go to the store, i will be arrested. There is no public property, there is only private property.

What is considered private property has changed over the course of human existence because people gained more wealth through improvements in living standards provided by the free market, therefore people could naturally acquire more property.

[Lydanderfeen]

Lydanderfeen,

Firstly, your approach is absolutely ahistorical. For instance, do you realize that the state initially wasn't created "by the people and for the people", but was instead just a conglomeration of extremely rich folk? For fuck's sake, the majority didn't even have a right to vote! So it was created by the ruling classes to control the society and they obviously didn't give a damn about legitimacy or anything like that, they just enforced whatever they wanted to enforce, because they were the damn ruling class. How on earth do you imagine that the same wouldn't happen if you get rid off the sort of liberal state that we have now?

Secondly, your ideology pushes you and other adherents to say weird shit like "monopoly wouldn't exist without the state". It is idiotic and ahistorical - the monopolies started growing out of the free markets of 19th century. It's just a logical outcome of capitalism. Just look at the mergers & acquisitions at any point in time - it's huge, enormous. It naturally leads to monopolization of the market without any government interference... That's ignoring other ways that would be allowed in your voluntary market, like collusion between businesses to form monopolies for instance...

Thirdly, what do you even mean by supporting voluntaryism? Do we chop all the wealth into equal pieces and distributed equally among the entire population of the world, because that wealth was originated fraudulently, i.e. by corporation abusing state power, common land enclosures, primitive accumulation in general? Or do you support just getting rid of the state and letting all the corporations to keep their wealth hoping that the market will somehow solve the problem?

When i said "by the people and for the people" i was being sarcastic. The state was not started by rich folk. The earliest known origins of the state are in the tower of jericho. The state was initially roaming hoards of bandits. Soon they discovered they could make more money by staying in one place and forefully extracting wealth from the people. They used religion in the beginning to do this.

The state played a massive role in the creation of monopolies in the 1900s through fascism and war.

[Lydanderfeen]

What is wrong, from the perspective of the proletariat, is that stealing, fraud, purchasing, and money, all of these are inseparable (given the state of the productive forces, which makes feudalism, guild-labor etc. impossible) from the capitalist mode of production, which is against our objective interests.



Yeah.

Where's your deed for your body?

I don't need a deed for my body, everyone knows innately that the own their own body. Are you saying you don't realize your body is yours?

How is working and saving money and then purchasing a good stealing? Where is the direct victim? If i decide to voluntarily trade my labor for money, save that money and purchase something, who has been hurt? Where is the victim? Did someone force me to work there?

[Lydanderfeen]

Why will they not accept corporations acting like a state? They are authoritarian power structures with enormous resources. In the absence of a state what is to stop them enforcing their will through sheer belligerence due to their size? An enormous, well resourced mafia if you will? Perceived legitimacy doesn't matter, we would be straight back to a kind of industrial feudalism where the shots are called by those who own the worlds resources.

Ok, so say we got rid of corporations AND the state and reduced everyone to a world of small town mechanics and homesteaders, what then? What is to stop a corporation like entity forming again? If the means of production are private property and the system is a competitive market, there is nothing to stop some people obtaining more private property, and therefore more power, than others, thereby denying it to others. There is a coercive power structure right there


Lets break it down a bit.....


- The funds you front to buy infrastructure. That infrastructure was not built by you or by any one person but by the collective action of architects, builders etc. The fact that this factory was then turned into a commodity for exchange on a market does not negate this fact. You only own it by the nature of the market system, not through any virtue of your own other than having enough money to pay for it.


- You take no more risk than a worker does. You are only in a different position to him because, for whatever reason, you had the money to buy the capital. If your business starts to go awry then you can get shot of it. Maybe you might make a loss on is sale, but even so you still have some capital to fall back on. But the worker is as invested as you are. If he has no job at your factory, he starves. He has to capital to sell, or to generate a profit from. All he has is his ability to labour for you.


- He voluntarily decided to work for you, but it doesnt matter if he decided to work for you or work your competitor, the scenario for him is the same.


-He doesnt own the fruits of his labour at all. You do. The worker receives a wage, which is an arbitary price decided by the market as to how much workers cost to run. Yes you pay them and it may affect your profits, but the fruit of their labour is what they make in the factory, which is what YOU sell to make YOUR profits.


- Your investment is nothing more than the ability to command the labour of others. Whether that is the past work of previous workers in building the factory you now own, or the current labour of your employees working at the lathes. Whatever point on the chain of causality, accumulated wealth was created by workers. The fact is that wealth is owned by people other than workers and its ownership changes hands, doesn't justify itself.

The market is there to stop them from forcing will on people. People don't want to buy shoes from a company that uses force to make you buy their product, they want choice. The market is greater than corporations. With no barriers to entry other than natural ones like capital investment and hard work, someone would provide a better service in no time.

The enormous well established mafia you speak of is the state.

It is true that much of the worls resources are owned by a few, but this is because the power of the state. Most of those who have obtained vast wealth in our modern era have done so using the ring of power-the states ability to initiate force. Their wealth is unjustly gained. There is no way that people would submit to being ruled by Nike the way they would submit to being ruled by the state.

What will stop corporations from forming? Competition with unnatural barriers. I dont see the coercion in someone working hard, saving money and building another business. There would be alot more millionaries and practically no billionaires in a free market.

You earn money in a free market by providing goods and services, that is virtuous. Money is means to acquire more property and facilitate exchange, nothing else. That factory was built not by collective action but by people seeing an opportunity to make a profit. The architecht saw he could make a profit, the plumer did, etc ,etc. People don't work for free.

The worker does not starve if he has no job. He can get a different job or open his own business using a loan. The idea that because he does not work for me he starves is absurd. Are people just stupid lemmings that can't do anything for themselves?

Why does the worker have a right to claim the factory as his own? Please explain in detail the logic that the worker owns the factory.

The owner owns the factory because he took the risk to build it, it's that simple.

[Lydanderfeen]

Yeah, if I remember correctly the British crown is a corporation. The thing is, many people only oppose big business, mistakenly called "corporations" (although almost every one of these businesses is a corporation), because they are easy to stereotype as evil, whereas Ma and Pa shops are good, wholesome, apple-pie and whatever.

The marketplace is good and wholesome. Your typing on a computer created by someone who wanted to provide you a high quality good or service. You may be eating food from a small mom and pop shop that works hard to provide you a good or service. You rewarded them for their work by giving them money. The market is a beautiful thing in it's natural non-fascistic statist mode.

[Lydanderfeen]

The essential premises of voluntaryism are:

1. you own your own body
2. the INITIATION of force, fraud or coercion is always immoral.

Private property is not fraud orcoercion if it was obtained through market means(voluntary means) and not fascistic means using the state.

[Lydanderfeen]

I am an anarchist btw.

[Lydanderfeen]

check the voluntaryism wiki for more info, i am unable to post links.

[BIXX]

Alright, so voluntaryism sounds all fine and dandy, but say we want to start a non-capitalist commune. We have to buy that shit? From a capitalist? Fucking really?

For one, a capitalist will always need to expand to increase profits, and this even if they didn't make us buy our land, they will take it from us or their business will fail.

[Lydanderfeen]

Alright, so voluntaryism sounds all fine and dandy, but say we want to start a non-capitalist commune. We have to buy that shit? From a capitalist? Fucking really?

For one, a capitalist will always need to expand to increase profits, and this even if they didn't make us buy our land, they will take it from us or their business will fail.

Why do you assume that the person is a capitalist you are buying it from?you could always homestead some wild land, by mixing your labor with it-it becomes yours for as long as you use it.

I don't see why a capitalist would need to steal your land in order to keep thei buisness from failing. In a free society if someone tries to steal you land you can defend it unto death if you wish although it would be better to take the case before the community, bearing in mind that the capitalist is the aggressor and immoral one since he initiated force against you. It would not be hard to prove that and I don thank everyday people would support businesses that steal property since one day they might be the victim of this group. The capitalist would be shunned by the community and lose his buisnesses.

[bropasaran]

Hi! I would like to make the arguement that voluntaryism is the true anarchy and would like to contrast other systems with it, bearing in mind that voluntaryism is not a system. Voluntaryism is very simple; you do not initiate force, fraud or coersion against others.
One illogical detail is calling things that don't include involuntary action a violation of voluntaryism, e.g. fraud. Why is that a violation of voluntaryism, if I defraud you, I didn't coerce you, it you're fault you were stupid enough to believe me, should we protect you from your own mistakes? Didn't Rothbard say that protecting people from the consequences of their stupidity produces a society of stupid people? Could it be that you have a positive right to be told the truth? But any positive right of yours is a coercion against me! Why should I be forced to tell you the truth?

Also, another such thing is threat. How is that a violation of voluntaryism? If I threaten you, I am not coercing you, I'm just saying something, words don't coerce, initiation of force does, right? Maybe I don't have either the wish nor the means to coerse you, and am threatening in vain, is it my fault that you're stupid enough to believe my bluf? Same thing- why should you be protected from the conequences of your stupidity, and why should I be forced to tell the truth?

Just on those two details it is enough to see that applying voluntaryism consistently if even possible would lead to a such dystopia that would collapse itself.

More importantly- voluntaryists have a unique and a very narrow view of what coersion is. E.g. you fall into a well and I'm walking there and I can help you. If I say I'll help you and save your life if you agree to a contract to sign all your property to me, according to voluntaryism that's not coercion, because I didn't push you in the well.

When you think about that and realize the immorality and lunacy of such a view, you can extrapolate from that to the the concept of inequality of bargaining power in contracts, and see that equality of power among people is a neccessary part of any system that is meaningfully concerned with not violating the will (voluntas, thus voluntary) of people.


All states violate this natural law because they all exist by the initiation of force. States call it taxation but in truth it is theft.
That depends of what is your view of rights. And it is pretty ludicrous to insist on people's right to property, but laugh away rights to life and liberty, which are logically prior to it, or try to collapse them by the metaphysical/ religious notion of that people are property (which is also a category error) of themselves.

Also, minarchist argument that says that state is necessary demolishes taxes = theft notion; namely, the first thing is that inviolability of property follows from NAP, meaning it is logically subsequent to it. The second thing is- if there is no monopolitistic legislature and executive that proclaims NAP (/voluntaryism), that would mean that even following NAP is voluntary, thus making the non-state system immoral in the eyes of NAP, because NAP isn't upheld as a necessary rule of interaction, and thus- being that NAP is logically more fundamental then property, property being violated to a degree to uphold and preserve NAP is not only no contradiction, but a moral imperative.


If I take something from you against your will-regardless of my intended use for it-I am stealing from you.
That depends on the definition of property.

If one accepts existence of property, meaning a right to exclusive use untill transfer of title, then the only possible, rationally sounding theory supporting it is the labor theory of property, because the only thing that can justify such a title is some sort of permanent connection to the object, and the "mixing of labor" notion adresses that.

So, the theory of "first aquisition" goes out the window, because there is no such connection. If something is your just because you were the first to take it, then it is equally legitimate for me to take it the second you put it down. So, labor theory of property it is the only possible justification of property, and it is because of that formally accepted in theory by capitalists.

First problem with this theory is that is against the basis of early capitalism- the enclosure movement. Being that people didn't make the land (territory, soil, natural resources) they cannot own them, we can only own what we extract from the land by using labor (mixing labor with it). Therefore- landowners are illegitimate, all land must be either owned in common, or unowned (and then managed by all, so that it is not overused, which would harm people).

The second problem with this theory is that it is against wage-labor. If workers in a factory make a product, it is the product of their labor, and therefore must be theirs. When it is sold, all the money must go to them. Just like if I chop a tree and make a chair it is mine, likewise the workers of the factory should own the products they made. If property = product of labor, then chairs made in the chair factory must belond to the workers of that factory.

The third problem is that it is against rent. If I give you a machine to work with and you make something and then make money by selling that- that money is the product of your labor and thus must be your property. But if you must pay me some of that money for the use of the machine you used, that means that I am violating your right to property, and from that follows that every society that allows that and doesn't organize in a way that makes economy function in a way not violating that right- is illegitimate (and we must therefore organize a society where everyone has means of production and life available without having to use rent [or wage-labor ofc] to acquire them). Meaning, capitalism is illegitimate by the very notion of property it is allegedly based on.

Basically, none of the nice sounding theories of capitalism in fact justify capitalism, capitalism is unjustifyable.

[#FF0000]

Private property has always existed.

I guess that's why it

How did the first person come to own an entire river or lake? A parcel of land they didn't occupy or use at the time? How can someone come along and claim exclusive privilege of access and use over a lake without saying "this is mine, and I will hit you if you swim or fish here"?


If you went into another mans "cave" and tried to take his shit you would face reprocussions. Are you saying that you would not?

Except this never happened because, like I said, things were owned in common for most of human history up until the agricultural revolution. And even then, property then was very different than what is considered property now. And how property was acquired then violates the fuck out of the nonsensical "Non-aggression principal".

Further, I think there's a difference between private property and personal property-- but I wouldn't say either are "natural", because the concept of natural rights is absolute nonsense. Rights are entirely socially constructed, and I'd rather have that be the case than have someone try and derive some kind of theory of justice based on what they think is "natural".


We have such disagreements over property because the state has created a fiction known as "public property" wherein they claim everyone owns it yet noone has the right to use it. Case in point, if i go onto "public property" and start a garden I will be arrested. If i decide i need to use a "public" police car to go to the store, i will be arrested. There is no public property, there is only private property.


Yeah? Public property is the only area where we have disagreements? Not in intellectual property? Not in whether or not one can own bits of the human genome?

The state is necessary for property to exist in the first place -- indeed, the state and property came to exist simultaneously for that reason. How else can you define property without a state? What happens if I disagree with your concept of what constitutes property, or where your land starts and where mine begins?

[#FF0000]

I don't need a deed for my body, everyone knows innately that the own their own body. Are you saying you don't realize your body is yours?

Your body isn't yours. Your body is you. To say one owns their body is to put an artificial degree of separation between the self and the body.

I cannot imagine having an ontology that fucked up.

And further, self ownership is entirely antithetical to capitalism, because capitalism forces people to become workers and sell their labor to a boss. This is violence because property in this form cannot exist without someone initiating violence. Like I said earlier, one can't claim a vast parcel of land for themselves without force in the first place. "Voluntaryism" and related nonsense doesn't have a leg to stand on, because despite all the bleating about non-aggression and non-violence, the entire system of ownership depends on violence. It's completely ahistorical and totally ignores how property and the state actually developed.

[bropasaran]

That's only the first problem- that the notion is metaphysical, and in a religious way separates a person from his body.

But even if we ignore that, we come to a second problem- it commits a category error, because people are not property, but owners and users of property.

We say okay- the first problem goes away by being religious or by interpreting it as a metaphore, and the second problem goes away by giving property a new definition. But now we come to a third problem- it is not necessary to postulate self-ownership to negate other-ownership (slavery), which is it's main appeal, because the notions such as individual autonomy, indivudal sovereignty or right to liberty all do that without commiting the category error.

But we say, okay, we're not doing that on that appeal, but something else, so we ignore that third problem too, but then we come to a fourth problem- the notion conflates use and ownership, namely- just because I use my body doesn't mean I own it, being that ownership isn't based on use, but on title. Therefore, a more logical concept would be self-possession, because possession, as opossed to property is based on use.

That poses a fifth problem- if self-ownership is supposed to be a justification for property (that is- ownership follows from self-ownership), and we see that it is irrational to jump from use of one's body to ownership of one's own body because a more logical conclusion exists, namely self-possession, what kind of economic notion does that justify? Well, the notion of possession, occupancy-and-use, meaning- libertarian socialism.

But even if we ignore those fourth and the fift problems too, we come a sixth problem- if we accept self-ownership based on use of one's body, we must see self-ownership as inalienable (/untrasferable in contracts), because the use of one's body is absolute, at least until we make some sci-fi tech, I can't transfer the use of my body to you, only I can control my body. Unfortunately for capitalists, that doesn't only negate slavery, but also wage-labor, because my actions (my labor) are a de facto inalinable part of my self-ownership. Actually, David Ellerman (who's a capitalist btw, he accepts rent as legitimate) uses this basis for abolishing any thought that employment contract can be legitimate from from a legal perspective, explaining it's radical difference from provision of service contracts and fundamental similarities with the self-sale and the coverture marriage contracts, thus advocating that all firms must be worker owned and managed, as a necessary consequence of accepting the principle of self-ownership.

Again, the very principle that capitalists call upon to justify capitalism when seen and applied rationally doesn't exactly say anything in their favour.

[Ahab Strange]

There would be alot more millionaries and practically no billionaires in a free market. How can you possibly say that so confidently? There inst some arbitrary line from millionaires to billionaires where the government cheers when companies cross it and hands them a "billionaires certificate". If someone can obtain millions by their own performance in a free market with no state intervention, then what the hell is to stop them from obtaining billions?

Bear in mind the economies of scale that come with a large scale business, and how much easier it is for them produce things more efficiently and make more money? Once a company reaches that level of growth there does not NEED to be state for them to continue to grow. In fact a lack of state regulation (not something im in favour of mind) can allow them to be even more innovative with how they can streamline there costs and stay profitable. Most likely by suppressing workers wages and conditions besides other things.


The enormous well established mafia you speak of is the state. I do not disagree with this.


You earn money in a free market by providing goods and services, that is virtuous. Money is means to acquire more property and facilitate exchange, nothing else. That factory was built not by collective action but by people seeing an opportunity to make a profit. The architecht saw he could make a profit, the plumer did, etc ,etc. People don't work for free.
I understand how a market works, even an idealized one such as this. You are explaining how things are in a market, that doesn't make it empirically right or rational.

Of course the factory was built be collective action. By virtue of the fact that ONE PERSON CANNOT BUILD A FACTORY ALONE. Yes, in a market system, everyone does that becuase they will earn money out of it, but thats how the system works and they are compelled to earn money out if it to survive. That doesn't change the fact that a large and varied group of skilled humans came together to build something as a social activity, and it could not have been done otherwise. This is what we as socialists seek to build upon,the fact that everything is produced socially. Property rights are imagined. The concrete reality around us was built cooperatively by human effort.


Why does the worker have a right to claim the factory as his own? Please explain in detail the logic that the worker owns the factory.
Not the individual worker. All workers collectively. And might I make clear that I am not arguing that the worker DOES own the factory, in the current system or a free(er) market. And am arguing that they should, in a system not based on markets at all. In fact, we would argue that concepts of "ownership" should not apply to the means of production in the same way as personal possessions like, say, a toothbrush. What you asking me is to explain the vast and nuanced spectrum of leftist thought and theory. You can use the internet to learn as well as just evangelize you know.....


The owner owns the factory because he took the risk to build it, it's that simple. What you are saying here is " This is how the system works, therefore the system is justified" .

[Das war einmal]

Closet libertarian detected! Ha thought you got away by giving it another name huh :lol:


Voluntaryism is very simple; you do not initiate force, fraud or coersion against othersI guess we can expect everyone to simply honor these fine rules. Why didn't we think about this before? Oh wait thats right: if people are starving then force is perfectly acceptable means to survive. First comes food then morals. There, your theory is in shambles.

I do love me some libertarians, their whole philosophy is more idealistic then any other religion I can think off. At least they bother to wrap it up. The believe that people would honor some weird ground rules like 'thou shalt not initiate force, fraud or coercion' and the believe that everyone can be successful whether the circumstances are totally made out of weird fantasies which don't rhyme with reality. Everything is the fault of the 'evil state', capitalist companies fail to provide humanities best interest? 'Thats only cause there's no true free market!' - please, check the period of the industrial revolution where the state did nothing but provide protection for the capitalist. Better yet, check 1990's Russia to see what the lack of state, while having capitalism, will result in to.

[Das war einmal]

There is no difference in kind between state socialism, state fascism, state communism, etc, there are only differences in degree

There's a total difference. State communism is a contradiction. Fascism enables private enterprise, state socialism doesn't. Fascism is diametrically opposed to egalitarianism, while egalitarianism is at the core of socialism.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Dude, do you not realize 'business' and 'work' is inherently oppressive by it's very nature and permeates a culture of superficiality and suicidal decadence? It's inefficient and silly. It's like 2014, get with the times baby.

[Prometeo liberado]

So much for "..a way we can all agree".
How long did it take you to write that shit?

[bropasaran]

The owner owns the factory because he took the risk to build it, it's that simple.

What you are saying here is " This is how the system works, therefore the system is justified" .
Also another thing that is "simple" about the "risk justification" of capitalist incomes is that is implies that money and status of capitalists is more important then life and health of the working people.

It is claimed that capitalists take "risk" with businesses, and that if a business fails, they take the damage. It ludicrously ignores the far greater risk that the workers have, puting not only a portion of their wealth at line with that business, but their bodies- and if the business fails, they don't lose their superfluous riches, they lose their means of substinence. Then comes the idiotic answer- yes, but they can just go and work for some other capitalist. Well, if that does-away with their risk, how come it doesn't do-away with the capitalist risking his money?! What, he can't just go and work for some other capitalist if his investment fails? Is he bound by some natural law to be a part of the capitalist class and to have his opulence treated as more important then livelihood of other people? Seeing of what presupposition this line of "thinking" rests upon just shows how insanely ideological and stupid it is.

[ckaihatsu]

It's gotten to the point now where, whenever this kind of core political topic arises in conversation, I just say, "Look, it's about property rights or *human rights*."

This stark dichotomy cuts through all of the bullshit middle ground where people are trying to 'balance' or 'compromise' between these two elemental antagonistic interests.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

How am i initiating force by saying that if you work for something and you pay someone else money for the right to own for it for a period of time? So if there is no private property, can i come into you house and take a shit on the floor? After all you don't own it right?Private property itself rests upon force. It doesn't matter if you are working stocking shelves for 35 years to save up money or whether you had money the moment you were born. Private property=/= personal property. In communist society I would not own the house I live in, I would not have the rights to extract money or labor from people for rent but that doesn't allow everybody the right to enter the house and take a shit on my floor.


Private property has always existed. If you went into another mans "cave" and tried to take his shit you would face reprocussions. Are you saying that you would not?Well when people lived in caves the cave was usually home to the people in the tribe, not owned by one person. And even if this did happen from time to time this doesn't prove private property is natural. And why does everything have to be voluntary except for one of the most important factors in people's lives, private property? And if it is so natural why does it continuously have to be reinforced with violence? You'd think if all this stuff was so voluntary and natural there wouldn't need to be violence to keep it in place.


We have such disagreements over property because the state has created a fiction known as "public property" wherein they claim everyone owns it yet noone has the right to use it. Case in point, if i go onto "public property" and start a garden I will be arrested. If i decide i need to use a "public" police car to go to the store, i will be arrested. There is no public property, there is only private property.And what about common lands that existed and have existed for thousands of years across the globe? Everybody would have the right to hunt in said area, to forage in said area, to gather wood in said area, etc, etc. You're saying these just never existed? Hunter-gatherer societies would go hunt and forage and at the end of the day what resources the tribe gathered would communally be cooked and eaten together. Probably the only things not considered common property that anybody could use were the houses they slept in(if they weren't communal in the first place, many people like the Iroquois lived in houses which were basically big rooms with a number of families in them.) and tools they made and clothing.


What is considered private property has changed over the course of human existence because people gained more wealth through improvements in living standards provided by the free market, therefore people could naturally acquire more property.Well sometimes their living standards were raised. For other people they were thrown off the land and from the guilds into the cities where they made to be illegal and forced to work for capitalists or face extreme punishment, even death. And then there were the millions of people that weren't even considered to be human(because every human owns themselves right?), stolen from their lands or bought from slave traders, and forced to build the capitalist's society so they could acquire more property.


People don't want to buy shoes from a company that uses force to make you buy their product, they want choice.People also don't want to buy shoes made by people who are basically slaves yet people love buying up Nikes. Back in the day how much slave labor got taken advantage of by people outside the South? You could be a British person railing against the South or an abolitionist in the North and not even realize the cotton in your shirt was made from African slaves in the South. If I'm in the business of extracting raw materials from the ground to sell to capitalists who use it to build their products what happens when those capitalists don't care about working conditions in my company? What if they in fact demand that I lower costs by making my workers get paid very little(because I'm not going to make myself lose profits). As a consumer I don't know where every individual gets their oil to run machines. And even when I'm aware of the fact that Walmart treats their employees like shit and bring wages down among suppliers, when I'm strapped for cash to the point of counting nickels and dimes I'm probably going to go to Walmart for cheap prices. It's a vicious cycle isn't it?


It is true that much of the worls resources are owned by a few, but this is because the power of the state. Most of those who have obtained vast wealth in our modern era have done so using the ring of power-the states ability to initiate force. Their wealth is unjustly gained. There is no way that people would submit to being ruled by Nike the way they would submit to being ruled by the state.Of course people wouldn't bow to Nike like they do the state but the company is ruled by real people who own Nike and people like those that own Nike so it's totally plausible that a company can have enough power to control everyone like they're a state. This used to happen all the time in mining towns. The mine gave you company money that was only redeemable at the company store, the houses you lived in were owned by the company you payed rent to on land owned by the company. It's not only plausible in theory, it's happened concretely many a time before.

So as a believer in voluntarism how would you redistribute this property and wealth though that you claim is unjustly gained only because of the state?


You earn money in a free market by providing goods and services, that is virtuous. Money is means to acquire more property and facilitate exchange, nothing else. That factory was built not by collective action but by people seeing an opportunity to make a profit. The architecht saw he could make a profit, the plumer did, etc ,etc. People don't work for free.Are you living in a fantasy land or what? The factory wasn't built by workers, it was built by throwing money at things! Both are true in a sense, you need the capitalist to put down money for it, but this is not how things need to be, it's just how it currently is. We provide you with an alternative called communism. That factory will be built if it needs to be, if that's what the people would want because remember things still need to be built whether there's a capitalist sucking profits out of labor or not. And my guess is people are going to work if they want their iPhones to work.


The worker does not starve if he has no job. He can get a different job or open his own business using a loan. The idea that because he does not work for me he starves is absurd. Are people just stupid lemmings that can't do anything for themselves?And what if they're unemployed and can't find a job? People can go months at a time without finding work because there's so much competition for jobs especially during an economic crisis where tens of thousands line up for a thousand jobs. I can't go months with no food and water, can you? My funds will run out quicker than a capitalists. What if the bank doesn't think my business will draw a profit so they won't loan me money? What if I'm black listed by employers and banks because I spread communist propaganda? Millions of people starve to death every year while we can feed everyone on this planet, let's not act like it can't happen.

[ckaihatsu]

It's gotten to the point now where, whenever this kind of core political topic arises in conversation, I just say, "Look, it's about property rights or *human rights*."

This stark dichotomy cuts through all of the bullshit middle ground where people are trying to 'balance' or 'compromise' between these two elemental antagonistic interests.


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://s6.postimage.org/zc8b2rb3h/110211_Ideologies_Operations_Left_Centrifug.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/zc8b2rb3h/)