Theoretically it's possible that people could defend their own private property. It doesn't seem very plausible to me either, though.
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Private property and the state
One thing that's always confused me about the libertarian tea party types is the the argument that their ideology somehow brings liberty and freedom. How do they reply to the paradox that you have to have a state to enforce contracts and private property rights?
Private property (particularly land) seems to me to be a huge obstacle to liberty and yet their whole ideology hinges on it.
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Theoretically it's possible that people could defend their own private property. It doesn't seem very plausible to me either, though.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
This is one of those group-subjective things, like 'karma', where everyone has to believe in it and consistently act accordingly, for it to work out properly -- the basis for a cult, in other words.
The Proudhon's considerations of "What is property?" are the best for that. According to him, there is (private) property or freedom/liberty. They can't be both. When there is property, there is no equality. There will always emerge some difference in wealth which means inequality. And if there is inequality, there is no freedom for all, but only for few. Those who have will deprive a freedom of those who don't have for money employing them. For many those who have will have a freedom to do whatever they want with those who don't
have for money.
About a state that is necessary to maintain a private property and so on, you can cite Adam Smith from "The Wealth of Nations". For example:
"Among nations of hunters, as there is scarce any property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, so there is seldom any established magistrate or any regular administration of justice. Men who have no property can injure one another only in their persons or reputations. But when one man kills, wounds, beats, or defames another, though he to whom the injury is done suffers, he who does it receives no benefit. It is otherwise with the injuries to property. The benefit of the person who does the injury is often equal to the loss of him who suffers it. Envy, malice, or resentment are the only passions which can prompt one man to injure another in his person or reputation. But the greater part of men are not very frequently under the influence of those passions, and the very worst of men are so only occasionally. As their gratification too, how agreeable soever it may be to certain characters, is not attended with any real or permanent advantage, it is in the greater part of men commonly restrained by prudential considerations. Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government."
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ok05/ch01b.htm
Adam Smith is capitalist guru. He's cited by all "free market" ideologist. He wasn't socialist in any way. But he admits that state is necessary for private property. And thusly, he gives a perfect argument.
"Property is theft."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"the system of wage labor is a system of slavery"
Karl Heinrich Marx
You people know there are real world examples of societies upholding private property without a state, right? Adam Smith was wrong about more than just that.
pleace elaborate about those societies. and what was adam smith wrong about? probally not many people have read smith to know what you're talking about exactly.
All i want is a Marxist Hunk.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Sure, here's some literature. It's quiet a read though:
http://www.notbeinggoverned.com/anar...-tried-part-i/
http://www.notbeinggoverned.com/anar...erald-anarchy/
http://www.notbeinggoverned.com/anar...rt-3-fire-ice/
http://www.notbeinggoverned.com/anar...hy-in-the-usa/
http://www.notbeinggoverned.com/anar...g-anti-nation/
Smith was also a supporter of the labor theory of value, which is nonsense, and some forms of protectionism I can't recall right now.
Jeez, just opened the first one. Moresnet. It had was a buffer between other states basically. The two states had royal overseers there, there was a mayor, they used napoleonic penal codes, it was a state. It was a state where the government didn't tax much, but it's a state.
Libertarianism is really just an argument about the degrees or priorities of the capitalist state.
Moresnet is the weakest example, others are much clearer. But there's no need to go into the past for trying to find stateless protection of private property. My property isn't being protected by the state at all, even worse, the state is actually the biggest aggressor over my property rights. My car is privately insured, my residence has a privately managed alarm system, since it was broken into this december, my workplace is being protected by private security, every concert I ever went to had private security... The war on drugs should have made it clear by now, that cops don't protect private property, but enforce the will of the state.
But the will of the state is to protect privite property! In the US it's like the first thing on all the official governing documents... life, property, etc.
Libertarians just don't like the arrangement of government, they support the capitalist state - just a different conception of it.
Where does government get it's money and position? They get revenue from capitalism, they get their position by being able to deliver things to big donners or to industry. Capitalist government beurocracy can not be seperated from capitalism! A capitalist government has no independant will of it's own, it's just there to try and ensure that business, on a collective level, is flowing. If government crosses some industries or companies, it's for the "greater good" of capitalism in their view. Maybe you disagree, but that's their function. If Wal-Mart drives other businesses out, are they agaist "capitalism"?
Can PEOPLE self-govern? Do we need police? Yes for the first, No on the second. But CAPITALISM does need some kind of "law enforcement" be it privite or public, CAPITALISM needs people to be governed in some way, needs to settle disagreements between companies and to manage the labor pool. Capitalism sometimes needs reforms too or else the whole system will fail. This last thing is generally what Libertarians call government and they don't think it's needed, but they are wrong from a capitalist stand-point. It's only because the working class is weak that some capitalists think the government serves no purpose. If there was a mass strike or working class insurrection, present libertarians would be complaining that there isn't a strong enough central force to maintain order. I guess if they are principled they would wonder why the state can't hire Blackwater... but it's the same, just differnet ways of organizing armed bodies of men to protect captialist property and social relationships.
Christ -- I'd be the very *last* person looking to clarify something from the standpoint of libertarianism, so I apologize in advance.... (grin)
I doubt that libertarians would be pro-Blackwater since at least, in regards to politics, they tend to be *critical* of the state, as over the U.S. invasion and killing in Iraq (though not about Afghanistan the same way) -- I tend to think of them as 'left nationalist', due to their stances on empirical foreign policy.
Ha, well yes, maybe neo-Pinkertons would have been a better example. XE (blackwater) has been getting into "homeland privite defense" from my understanding, so that's where I was comming from. Whenever I've pressed Libertarians about how to keep "business-order" - like if people just went in mass to rob someplace or if workers went on strike and created real pickets, "Privite security" is generally the answer people have given me.
In terms of forgin policy, they do tend to be isolationist these days - at least the Ron Paul types. But that, I think, again shows that they don't actually understand capitalism, they only understand small-business which they mistake for capitalism in total.
And the will of the state is to promote and ensure a flowing, growing overall (capitalist) economy. This means protecting overall property rights, trade, etc - even if it also means collecting public funds to build a bridge to create infrustruture to make domestic industry or commerce more attractive to invest in.
If you have a car and an alarmed residence, then very very very likely you live in a state - specifically a capitalist one. And an alarm doesn't protect your property rights, it sends some electricity somewhere and notifies a security firm if a window is broken. If someone broke into your house and claimed that they owned the house and not you... then what's protecting your claim? Some documents authorized by some kind of official thing backed by a state to ensure it's "legality". Property, capitalism in general, needs LAW - but is the paper magic? No, it represents real people and concrete things - so the paper is just an agreement, but it's an agreement backed up by "the state"... which usually means some armed guys.
The momentary absense of police when your car is broken into is not the non-existance of a state in that momemnt. In fact police are relativly newer than capitalism. Would you consider the antebellum south to be "Anarchy"? They had very little "government" in the sense you are useing the term state. In fact they didn't have regular police - they let the market handle the retrival of property by offering rewards for vigillentes to capture runaways or hiring gangs of poor farmers to hunt for refugees.
Without the Law you'd have no "property", and the Law implies the existance of a state.
