Self-Ownership

[JazzRemington]

The concept of self-ownership, as espoused by Libertarians (the non-anarchist variety, that is) is rather strange. Basically, how can one own one's self?

No one bothers to ask or define several key parts of this idea: 1) what is the self, 2) who are you, and 3) how do you own your self?

As for the first instance, what exactly is the self? Is it a collection of body parts and organs arranged to a specific plan, a collection of emotions and experiences, or something else? It seems that the self is a structurally distinct element from other things in material reality. This also seems to have something in common with the second instance, the definition of you. If the self is distinct and can be owned, then who is the person who or that owns a particular self? If YOU own your self, who are YOU? If You are the self, then it seems rather silly to say "the self owns itself" or "the self owns the self". You have to be a structurally distinct thing from the self because it wouldn't make any sense any other way. I own the chair I sit on as I type this, so would that mean I am this chair?

As for the third instance, what is the nature of this ownership? How is it that you came to own your self? Can you ever NOT own yourself? Can you sell the self and still be you?

The only real answer to all this is that you do not own yourself, but rather you ARE yourself.

But this posses a problem because how can we say things like "I hurt my arm" or "I am going to lift with my knees" and have any meaning? I think that it isn't a problem because even if we didn't have the concept of "self-ownership" we would still understand what is meant. Before this concept (which from what I understand dates back to the earliest anarchists such as Proudhon, Warren, and Stirner), it was understood what "my arm" or "my body" meant.

[monkeydust]

The difference is more semantic than real. You can argue that it doesn't "make sense" for someone to literally own themself (how can you own who you are?). The important point is that you, and not someone else, decides what happens to you, your mind, and your body.

[Genosse Kotze]

You do indeed bring up some interesting points, however, since right wing libertarians are über-free marketiers and equate private ownership as the crux of all freedoms, maybe what they mean by self-ownership is that any person is entirely free do whatever he/she wants to do with him/herself? It's a fucked up notion that everything is so liberalized that even you are nothing more than something that can be owned.

It would be interesting to ask one of these folks how it is that people are as free as they can be within this Capitalist system, which all of them uphold. As a worker you are forced to "sell your time" to a capitalist, and during this time one could hardly say that said worker is free. During the time you have sold to the capitalist, you must do what he commands, and seeing as you have to work for the rest of your days until you finally can't anymore, I wonder when it is that a person will ever be free. I guess you can always quit your job without anybody busting your balls about it, but even then dropping out of the rat race altogether isn't a viable option, since you are foced to sell your time in the first place so that you can live.

One thing that this "self ownership" does allow for is suicide. If I buy a TV I can do whatever I like with it, including busting it up with a sledge hammer, and I guess the same goes with my life/body (although you made a point of some ambiguity here). I think people should be allowed to kill themselves without having to worry about others interfering, but ending ones life isn't the same as destroying a TV you own. Like you said, "I am me", and not "I own me."

I think it's just private ownership, which is what they equate with 'freedom', taken to the ultimate extreme: just internalized private ownership

[praxicoide]

As for the first instance, what exactly is the self? Is it a collection of body parts and organs arranged to a specific plan, a collection of emotions and experiences, or something else? It seems that the self is a structurally distinct element from other things in material reality. This also seems to have something in common with the second instance, the definition of you. If the self is distinct and can be owned, then who is the person who or that owns a particular self? If YOU own your self, who are YOU? If You are the self, then it seems rather silly to say "the self owns itself" or "the self owns the self". You have to be a structurally distinct thing from the self because it wouldn't make any sense any other way. I own the chair I sit on as I type this, so would that mean I am this chair?

Ha! You've nailed the problem with all liberal-derived philosophies, I think. We don't know enough about the "individual", simply stating it as a starting point and "owner" of its actions, forgetting that this individual is a historical emergence. What we call "I" or "self" is, as you say, a collection of parts, organs and processes, with converging or diverging actions. Our consciousness is sort of an external window through which these resolved conflicts are shown, giving us the illusion of being one coherent narrative with a free will coming from a compartmentalized "self", divorced from outside factors.


As for the third instance, what is the nature of this ownership? How is it that you came to own your self? Can you ever NOT own yourself? Can you sell the self and still be you?

This brings up the issue of autonomy, which is fictitious, because there is no distinct "self" opposed to an "outside world"; the world is in a degree constituted by this self and the self is constituted to a degree by this world, through the social medium. What's important here is to realize this and use it to work for greater actual, not nominal, autonomy.

[Mariam]

The only real answer to all this is that you do not own yourself, but rather you ARE yourself.

Being yourself, would mean in a reversed statement owning it, even in cases of some kind of lack of any actual self-ownership (slaves are owned, but still believe to have some kind of possession over their individual entities).

Self-ownership, is not only "my arm", it has to do with all components of the human being: "my fear", "my thoughts", "my hand" and so forth.
Being able to think for yourself with no external pressure is a simple way to claim your self-ownership.

Though it might not be enough to claim self-ownership, according to one's belief of his individual being or just be knowing "thyself" and whatever that self is capable of, it needs to be asserted through practicing self-ownership through the manifestation of individuality.

[JazzRemington]

Being yourself, would mean in a reversed statement owning it, even in cases of some kind of lack of any actual self-ownership (slaves are owned, but still believe to have some kind of possession over their individual entities).

Owning yourself implies that you are not yourself but something else, and no one seems to be able to explain who or what that something else is. As I've said, I own this chair that I'm sitting on but that does not make me the chair.

[Mariam]

Owning yourself implies that you are not yourself but something else, and no one seems to be able to explain who or what that something else is. As I've said, I own this chair that I'm sitting on but that does not make me the chair.

The chair comparison is rather unfair, after all the chair is an external separate entity that you might (or might not) claim your possession of it while being (or not) attached\sitting on it.
In the case of "yourself" you are the owner and the owned are the same entity, no need to view them as two separate things.

[JazzRemington]

Again, the way the sentence of framed it implies that owner and owned are too separate things. You are not something you owned, but if the thing that is owned is the owner, than why not just say "you are yourself"? Why use mixed up words like "you own yourself" that have no meaning upon analysis?

[Kwisatz Haderach]

What I always ask libertarians is:

If you own your body, can you sell your body or its products? Could you sell yourself into slavery - or sell your child into slavery (if you are a woman), since the child's body is a product of your body, and you own all the products of your body?

Private property, by definition, is something that can be bought and sold. Self-ownership justifies slavery.

[Floyce White]

JazzRemington: "The concept of self-ownership, as espoused by libertarians (the non-anarchist variety, that is) is rather strange. Basically, how can one own one's self?"

The abstract concept of "own one's self" is not valid.

"Personal possession is just as odious as any other form of property. A 'claim' is something you make to other people; property is a method of interacting with others. In the hypothetical absence of any conflict, to say that 'I own my shirt,' 'you own your shirt,' and 'we own our shirts' is not interaction, therefore it is the trivial case--as in mathematics when all variables are set to zero. The claim to own some things used by only you and your kin would be entirely unnecessary--and the implied threat of violence to enforce that claim would be anti-social--if not for the need to put up a passive defense against the system of accumulation of wealth and its encroaching dispossession that does not distinguish between things used by one or by many. Personal property is a method of struggle on terms set by the oppressors."

(Whose Class Struggle? (http://www.geocities.com/antiproperty/index.html#A21) October 1, 2005.)

Merely stringing together the words "own" and "self" is hardly a basis for understanding the world. As I said in that article:

"Anyone can compound words as a rhetorical device, but it does not imply any reasoning."

In a recent post at Revleft (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=69292&st=32) I said:

"...a person does not threaten or commit violence against himself to enforce a claim of ownership. Property is not a physical thing. It is a claim made upon the things that others use. It is a relation of violence between people."

JazzRemington: "But this poses a problem because how can we say things like 'I hurt my arm' or 'I am going to lift with my knees' and have any meaning?"

Today's language is the product of thousands of years of class society. Of course simple descriptors are loaded with classist insinuations.

"Every violent act and threat of harm is based on a mistaken idea: that one person should tell another what to do. Power over others is achieved by claiming possession of the things that other people use. Power over others becomes a method of human relations--a social system--in which every thing, every place, every idea is someone's property."

(Against Socialism--For Communism (http://www.geocities.com/antiproperty/index.html#A11), September 29, 2001.)

[JazzRemington]

Originally posted by Edric [email protected] 13, 2007 05:25 pm
What I always ask libertarians is:

If you own your body, can you sell your body or its products? Could you sell yourself into slavery - or sell your child into slavery (if you are a woman), since the child's body is a product of your body, and you own all the products of your body?

Private property, by definition, is something that can be bought and sold. Self-ownership justifies slavery.
That's pretty much what libertarians say. Since you own yourself, you can sell yourself into slavery if you choose to.

As for children, there appears to be inconsistency in their logic. Since, as you said, a child is product of the mother and father, they should be able to do anything they want to the child regardless of how old it is. But most follow the old classical liberal adage that once a person is so many years old or is considered an adult (by whatever standard) said person is considered a separate, autonomous person and is no one's property by his or her self's.