Reddit reviews Property Is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader
We found 3 Reddit comments about Property Is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Some market-friendly anti-capitalism might be good by way of introduction:
> Well yes, I guess I just don't get it...or at least understand the purpose. I made a thread a while ago aimed at not necessarily socialists but anyone who believed in personal property. The question was, what is the purpose of making such a distinction? What are the ramifications (for yourself, for society)?
> I still don't understand that. That is, what the purpose is of making the distinction. I can admit that property ownership is wrong, but then can't accept that personal ownership (derived from use) is any more right.
This in particular is where we usually result to Proudhon who tackles the issue directly in a compendium of different works. The general idea seems to be that private property isn't natural to us, what is, is possessiveness as a human disposition. It isn't that if I have a PC in my house, everyone in my community is entitled to use it, or that nothing that I have is truly mine. Privatizing the means of production, vast amounts of natural resources, arable land, etc, isn't natural to who we are. I'll leave it to any other socialist to wants to expand or add an addendum to that, but that's basically it.
> Regarding your point about ideologues. Ancaps usually split themselves into the categories "deontological" and "consequential" (not mutually exclusive, i would say i'm more deotonlogical). ancaps tend to believe ancap philosophy is more of a conclusion arrived at, rather than a political ideology to promote, that relates most closely to how you should act in situations. being anarchists first, they obviosuly believe the state is irrational or immoral, but that capitalism is what would arise if there is no state. the deontological pathway is the moral question. that is they arrived at ancap by trying to figure out how best to act or think morally and believe ancap philosophy best categorizes this and falls in line with their beliefs (and considering the subject of this thread that is the way i answered). consequentialist ancaps use pragmatics to arrive at the same conclusion. that is, they believe an ancap society would be the best that is most productive, most "free", most respectful, and so on. They're logic is not necessarily amoral, just that they believe that regardless of whether ancap/anarchism/statist ideologies are the most morally sound, ancap philosophy creates the best result for everyone involved.
Thanks for going into it more. Part of what is frustrating in speaking to many ancap's is I rarely hear them explicitly state the value premise of their argument. Some are ancap's on a set of principles that has nothing to do with the results or efficacy of their system in practice. Others are for it because they actually believe it promotes ideals shared by say, Social Democrat's for example (results in greater levels of equality, level's the playing field, etc), and some believe it for a mix of both, and all these reasons get conflated a lot in the heat of the debate, switching back and forth between them as defense of their positions become more difficult.
> you might find that response just as ideologically based as well though, haha
It was insightful to say the least.
There's a book preview on Amazon as well: http://www.amazon.com/Property-Theft-Pierre-Joseph-Proudhon-Reader/dp/1849350248