The key point in all of this is how to get to there from here. Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute has nary a clue. I like to think I have some idea on how to do this, of course most of my proposals are then labeled statist or socialist – or even Marxian. Those who do so ignore the fact that you can’t get to a stateless society by simple abolition or declaration. It is and must be an evolution.

Common ownership means an individual equal access opportunity right to use.

So there is:

1. individual exclusive use (private exclusive).
2. individual equal access opportunity right to use (in common).
3. joint exclusive use based on consensus (collective).

Common usage means that anyone can access and/or use so long as they are not infringing on any other individual’s equal right to the same. Infringement is determined after the fact.

Collective usage means that one must get the permission of all the other owners (consensus) or their delegated authority prior to access and/or use.

http://mises.org/etexts/ourenemy.pdf [Free PDF download]

You might also look into a current of libertarian thought referred to as “panarchism” describing governments (under “panarchy”) as voluntary associations characterized by exterritoriality (lack of a coercively imposed geographic monopoly):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panarchism

Panarchism often gets criticized that it’s “just anarcho-capitalism in disguise”, but that is looking at it backwards, IMO. What I would say is that despite theoretical differences among anarchists, the point is that voluntaryism and free association result in “governments” or “dispute resolution organizations” or “private defense agencies” or “workers councils” or “workers federations” or “collectives” or “communes” whose behavior are necessarily better described by the economic understanding of how open competition works among enterprises rather than relations among “states” today in the criminal/monopolistic/tyrannical sense of the term.

The market doesn’t care if your private law and private security dress up in funny clothes. People who want them can keep their flags and anthems as long as they stop pointing guns at people who would prefer to opt out or take their “business” elsewhere.

However, I think there is a need to carefully distinguish the difference between State and government. Can we have government without State? Can societies function without some leader or authority who decides on behalf of everyone?

Various satisfactory anarchist answers can be given to the above questions, I believe.

Recently I came accross a book in which the author was claiming that monarchy in its natural pre-modern constituent would be the best form of government. Especially if there were no feudal relations. When Henry seized the land from the monastaries and broke with the Roman Catholic Church had he held onto the land as Royal Property to be used by all the subjects, instead of giving it to certain rich families, the history of Britain would have been very different. The land always remains the property of the King, the King is constrained by Natural and Divine Law, the King could not force his people to join in armies to fight for him (like States do). The King has power already and has no need to pander to special interests, the other sections of the society also constrain the King.

“I advocate the one I explained because it best conforms with principles of justice, rather than one in which the ethos states that everything is sort of up for grabs, and you’re supposed to invest your labor energy into the production of something and be content with someone else just taking control of it without your consent, or without compensation to you, and yet you would still be expected to keep on producing.”

are you suggesting that i think everything should be “up for grabs”; because i certainly do not suggest that or think that.

i am making a legitimate effort to get at the heart of the matter here.

to use the example of the press: who is this someone else who wants to CONTROL rather than just use your printing press when you’re not? are there hordes of people who are waiting for the absence of property rules in order to gobble up everyone else’s hard-earned efforts? doesn’t equal access/market-entry freedom decrease the likelihood of these people existing anyway?

and yes, i am monopolizing the shirt on my back. (again, i’m not an anarcho-communist, but to borrow a phrase) “the watch factory/machine belongs to everyone but the watch is yours) that is, in Kevin’s sense, a potential generally-agreed-to property rule. is it not?

and i am monopolizing my body, thus, creating privacy. but my body and privacy have never prevented others from achieving what they need in live to survive, whereas property has.

Kevin:

A. the more i think about this, the more i think it is just semantics.

B. common forest and public rights of way IS what i mean by “owned by no one”, but i feel that that could be extended to any non-personal items or space; such as machinery or land.

C. when i said: “does this imply that profit is contingent upon the lack of market-entry freedom?” to this, i believe you answered “yes”

D. ok, so both libertarians and anarchists have property rules.

E. what does IMO mean?

F. “In the meantime, the previously planted trees would be untended, and the fruit would rot unpicked, which would raise questions of constructive abandonment even among many Lockeans.” This is point that i was trying to make. however, i’m (obviously) not an articulate writer.

G. “And in practice, that means there’d be a lot of stuff totally wrecked or left in worse condition than it was before, as anyone who ever loaned a cassette to a friend probably learned.”

I feel that this common scenario is due to the fact that people take bad care of things not considered their own. After years of only worrying about your own possessions, people get used to devaluing the possessions of others, which is why our streets and hi-ways are littered with trash. “i don’t give a shit, it’s not MINE” It is true that it’s not theirs, because it’s the governments, (or private property). however, if streets (and other places) were commons (as Kevin describes) then people would feel a larger sense of ownership, and thus responsibility and i think we’d see less garbage everywhere.

H. Absent a state, where do people who “don’t contribute anything” who steal people’s shit come from (not location but mentally). Without a state, or other expropriating force, where do they get the power to steal your shit?

I. “Absent property, where on the world can you have a RIGHT to privacy, and be able to count on being alone as a matter of right, without anyone walking in on you without permission?”
Only in a society where systematic violation of privacy by the state (and corporate advertising)
is the norm would people be hell bent on violating your privacy. and wouldn’t those remaining post-state hell-bent people violate your privacy anyway, regardless of the rules agreed to.

J. Just as libertarians do not disallow from their theoretical framework, the gift economy, or collective work/action, anarchists would never disallow individual autonomy in work or anything else. Therefore, why are anarchists and left-libertarians not better friends?

K. “In a market anarchist system, whether Tuckerite, Georgist, or even thoroughgoing Lockean, the vast majority of land would be unowned” good!

L. “Well, it seems to me that the practical import of what you said above works against this. If I build a printing press and can’t exclude you from using it without permission, IMO that would be a form of involuntary exchange. Voluntary exchange means my absolute right to give or exchange my labor product, or withhold it, as I see fit.”

I guess i agree. however i want to create 4 scenarios to illustrate my point.

1. an individual knits herself a sweater.
here, i don’t think anyone disagrees that a good “rule” is that she gets to decide.

2. Machine Tool Syndicate No. 9 (haha) makes needles to knitting.
here, the syndicate can democratically decide where the needles go to. a good rule.

3. Machine Tool Syndicate No. 9 makes a printing press.
the syndicate gets to decide. hopefully they will decide that it becomes part of the commons so any individuals or syndicates 1 through 9 can use it. if they decide otherwise, they should at least provide the plans to other individuals or syndicates (or whoever).

4. an individual makes a printing press.
the individual gets to decide.

#3 and #4 is where it gets hairy for me.
my question for this individual would be the same for the syndicate: “what is your motivation for not ‘donating’ the USE of this machine to the commons? do you know that individuals and groups in this community could really use a printing press, and that by not giving it to the commons, it is to the detriment to everyone?” on the other hand, a witch hunt of angry syndicalists can’t just come and take it from him.
what do we do when we can’t come to an agreement?
what is more important, need or property rights?

as libertarians living in a state-less society, i’m sure the anarchists and libertarians could reach some kind of agreement. i just don’t think i know what it is.

M. i feel that because anarchists focus on concepts like mutual aid, solidarity, etc, that it renders most discussion on property superfluous. kind of the like the argument that criminality, and the need for police and prisons will mostly disappear without the state and capitalism, if everyone has the things they need, or at least the fair/equal ability to create them, what need would their be for robbery, deceit, and expropriation? and anarchists will just roll their eyes if you use the old “what about that one guy who messes everything up” and repy: “take him out and then there is no ‘one guy’ ” it’s just plain self defense.

in other words, anarchists are not just trying to equal the playing field, we’re trying to change and the maimed character structures of people. living in this fucked up world for so long, we’re miserable on the inside, so we do things to hurt each other. this is one major reason anarchists have specifically sought out all forms of authority and hierarchy, (like racism, sexism, or homophobia) not just the big 3 (state, capital, religion)

i feel that if one knows why these things need to go, that it’s easy to see that without them, people will automatically (yes, only gradually) become better people, thus eliminating the need for strong protections. our so-called “natures” will have been changed.

that to me is the difference between, anarchists and left-libertarians, aside from semantics.

P.M.Lawrence
i did read what brad wrote, that doesn’t mean i have to agree with what he wrote. i think YOU missed mine and Kevin’s point about commons, or as i put it, owned by no-one. i am an anarchist and in NO WAY think the state should own anything, or exist at all. there seems to be a false dichotomy between state-owned and private-owned. who owned things before civilization? NO ONE!

“For example, a Japanese tourist once pushed into a queue in front of me. I was taken completely by surprise so without thinking I just grabbed him by the collar and threw him hopping on one leg across the floor. None of the other tourists in his group went to his assistance.”
i agree with your generalization and your specific point here.
my point is that personal possessions (like books and apples), personal privacy etc are one thing and that land, and things like printing presses and apple trees are another.

the cinema example proves the point i’ve been making the whole time. the theater functions as a commons in regards to seating (some company obviously owns it). people sit all over the place. then, during intermission Jerry gets up and leaves his coat in seat 43. Jane gets up from seat 86 but leaves nothing there. Neither seat is owned by either person, however, i would not have any qualms sitting in seat 86 after returning. Yet i would refrain from sitting in 43 because jerry made an obvious temporary claim to that space. i would refrain Not because his “property” is there and thus should be respected (it should). but because it’s a useful demarcation. Jane declared no demarcation and since at least 1/2 the theater was empty, she could easily sit somewhere else. If, on the other hand, the theater was full (except Jane’s seat), i would not sit in it. If i sat in it and she came back and gave me the look, i’d happily get up and sit in the aisle or figure out something else to do.

i think i’ve just gotten into cinema semantics.

as to your point about statists and anarchists co-existing: statists NEVER co-exist. that is why they always need to expand. that is why there are few indigenous people left. “to be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed…..”

“For example, a Japanese tourist once pushed into a queue in front of me. I was taken completely by surprise so without thinking I just grabbed him by the collar and threw him hopping on one leg across the floor. None of the other tourists in his group went to his assistance.”

Good for you. Reminds me of a time when some crackhead was hassling me on the street and I threw him into a slush puddle (there had just been a big snow that was starting to melt). I’ve had to deal with a good number of such incidents, actually.

Kevin:

“I certainly agree differences in the specific rules aren’t just semantics. But IMO saying some sets of rules are property and some aren’t is semantics. Any community will have some set of rules setting priority of access rights to scarce goods, whether the rules are anarcho-communist, Bakuninist, syndicalist, or whatever.”

Given the original topic of this thread, I’d say this principle is relevant to the non-economic, social or cultural realm as well. There are sincere libertarians on both sides of the abortion question, for instance. Any resolution more or less requires an arbitrary definition of when life begins, or when life is non-sentient to the point where the removal of legal protection is justifiable. Taken to extremes, “pro-life” and “pro-choice” arguments could be used to justify prohibition of contraception on end or infanticide on the other. We could apply the same analysis to animal rights, capital punishment, immigration, children’s rights against parental authority, and many other things. So customary rules with some degree of arbitrariness and subjectivity will naturally have a role to play in any real world society. Fortunately, there are a lot of good real world models available:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/feb/17/classics-cambridgeuniversity

That doesn’t sound as though you did read up what Brad Spangler (for one) wrote. He made it clear that state owned property only makes sense if you have previously accepted the position that the state is an entity, a “person”, because property really has to do with connecting persons to things as owners and property – though there is room for disagreement about just what a person is and just what a thing is. It should be clear that things that are not owned by some sort of owner are not property, by definition, just things. That means that “property that is owned by no-one” is a contradiction in terms.

He also wrote “absent a state, by what means is private property garunteed? do we all just agree?”

Human concepts of property are generalisations of animal territoriality. They are enforced by the owners, which for people can include their associations with others. The key point is that property or territory is signalled, so others can see it would be so seriously defended that it would take an effort to take it away and so that yet others can see that defending it isn’t aggression and are less likely to take sides against the owner. For example, a Japanese tourist once pushed into a queue in front of me. I was taken completely by surprise so without thinking I just grabbed him by the collar and threw him hopping on one leg across the floor. None of the other tourists in his group went to his assistance.

“if that’s so, it seems equally as plausible that we could agree to live without it. or at least agree not fuck with each other and each other’s stuff, and means of survival and living. doesn’t this render private property superfluous?”

No – “each other’s stuff” is what property is. Marking off separate ownership helps sort it out and makes it more convenient to work with, like returning to the same seat in a cinema after an intermission.

I would have said that mutualism was the “natural” (as mathematicians would say) extension of individualist anarchism that recognises that individuals can and do associate and admits the consequences and products of that sort of association so long as they don’t undercut the individual starting point. I have sometimes wondered something rather Jesuitical, whether an anarchist would be true to his principles if he agreed to co-exist with statists on the basis that, since they wanted rule and he didn’t want to be ruled, he should be their ruler (hey, he’s not demanding that they accept his rule, just rejecting any rule over himself but his own – they’re the ones insisting on a unified rule, and they’re welcome to come over from the dark side instead). But I fear that, certainly over generations, that would corrupt the rulers (it was India that made the British Empire into an empire, while Britain only made it British, and likewise the free barbarians of the Dark Ages became a European aristocracy).

“i would like to clarify that there are more kinds of property besides private and state-owned
for example, property that is owned by no-one.”

I’m not sure what you mean by “owned by no one,” but if you mean things like public rights of way, common pasture or forest, etc., I’m with you 100%. That’s one of my main issues with Hoppe’s universal appropriationism.

“1. when kevin says: ‘The natural state of affairs is for entrepreneurial profit to gravitate toward zero, when market entry is free.’, does this mean that market-entry freedom and non-psychic profit (i.e. money) are inversely proportional? does this imply that profit is contingent upon the lack of market-entry freedom?”

I believe the normal price trajectory for reproducible goods is toward production cost, and the normal rate of entrepreneurial profit is always tending toward zero. If market entry is free, any excess of demand over supply will be met by new entrants, and any new innovation will be adopted by competitors, until entrepreneurial profit vanishes. An astute entrepreneur may look for new opportunities to anticipate demand, but will have to keep doing so all the time–instead of living off one-hit wonders like so much of the existing rentier class.

“2. in my understanding, the scarcity you speak of is a result of the expropriation of the state (and other historical expropriators like empires, warlords, etc that rely on force) rather than existing as a natural state of affairs. and, even the stricktest anarcho-communist goes by the slogan ‘the watch factory belongs to the workers who use it, but the watch belongs to you.’
this, i believe, is analogous to your concept of ‘labor-requiring moveable objects.’”

Well, what the anarcho-communists and syndicalists talk about is IMO just another system of private property rights. I.e., a set of rules determing who has priority of access rights to a given tangible object or space at a given time. And they result from the laws of physics–the fact that the same tangible object cannot be in two pockets at the same time, and two people can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Regarding land in particular, artificial property rights and expropriation by landed oligarchies certainly increases land scarcity to artificial levels. But the scarity of sites favorably located to a particular community is a matter of physical reality, not economic systems. If I farm a piece of land, you can’t farm the same space I’m using without undoing or damaging my work and impairing my ability to live off the proceeds of my labor. Any local consensus on the rules for determing who has the primary access right at a given time is a set of property rights rules IMO, regardless of semantic disagreements over the terminology.

And re your question in a subsequent post, IP is fundamentally different because it creates artificial scarcity where none exists, as opposed to providing necessary rules for the game where scarcity is real.

“2a. doesn’t a non-private, non-state ‘ownership’ of the factory (or whatever), ensure that market-entry freedom we’re looking for? what if some dude picks the land with all the apple trees and no one near-by can ‘compete’ because there is no other access to apples. however, if the land was owned by no-one, anyone who wanted to make apple sauce, juice, or cidar could use that land with apple trees and thus have more market-entry freedom.”

In the past I’ve argued for common rights to land based on a history of such usage rooted in custom. I’ve also argued for a meta-system, or panarchy, in which local communities determine their own property rules. Lockean, Ingalls-Tucker, and Georgist communities could coexist peacefully on those terms. The “non-private, non-state ‘ownership’” you refer to is, IMO, indeed a genuine form of ownership. It is a set of rules making sure nobody off the street just walks into a factory worked by Machine Tool Syndicate No. 9 and starts messing with the machinery or carrying stuff off, or gets in the way during production hours. Even if the community is residual owner of all land and assigns possession rights based on public consensus, that’s a property system.

“2b. if some guy plants 20,000 apple trees, and forbids the use of them to others because he mixed his labor’ with the land, doesn’t that violate some lockean sense of fair use because he couldn’t possibly use all the apples from the 20,000 trees by himself?”

Never mind using them. How could one guy plant that many, unless he was somebody like Johnny Appleseed spending an entire lifetime at it? And even so, it would take an enormous amount of time, even if he worked at it 100 hrs. a week for years. In the meantime, the previously planted trees would be untended, and the fruit would rot unpicked, which would raise questions of constructive abandonment even among many Lockeans.

“3. One commenter on brad’s thread said the following: ‘If we have acquired the use of it by purely voluntary, non-aggressive means–either by voluntary exchange of property titles, gift, or having been granted the temporary use of it by the rightful holder of title–then we do have the right to use it and exclude others from using it at our discretion.’ in reference to a privately owned printing press.

“what makes it so that under certain circumstances, (as described above by the commenter, and apparently many libertarians) we can reserve the right to exclude others from access?
isn’t this a monopoly? and just because he says so? isn’t the problem with a monopoly is that it’s a monopoly and NOT whether or not the monopolizer acquired his monopoly justifiably? what (psychological or other) motivation would there be to exclude others from using the printing press?”

What Bob Kaercher said.

“i’m not talking about a scenario where it’s 3am and a neighbor wants to use the loud machine and wake up the neighborhood at the expense of everyone’s sleep, when they could easily use it in the morning.”

Regardless of when they want to use it, it’s the product of my labor. There’s no way I can have a secure right in the product of my own labor, consistent with somebody else’s right to use my stuff without my permission. And in practice, that means there’d be a lot of stuff totally wrecked or left in worse condition than it was before, as anyone who ever loaned a casette to a friend probably learned. As a moral matter, why should I bother working to build something, just so someone who never contributed to building it can have the same right to use it I do? Ever read “The Little Red Hen”?

“4. absent a state, by what means is private property garunteed? do we all just agree? (not a bad thing)”

Sure. It requires a majority consensus in a locality.

“4a. if that’s so, it seems equally as plausible that we could agree to live without it. or at least agree not fuck with each other and each other’s stuff, and means of survival and living. doesn’t this render private property superfluous?”

But your agreement is what I would call a set of property rules.

“5. doesn’t private property limit the amount of places you can go? aside from property you own and property you have permission to be on, near, or use, where else can you go?”

You can go on common property that everyone in the community shares, rights of way, etc. But let’s turn your question around. Absent property, where on the world can you have a RIGHT to privacy, and be able to count on being alone as a matter of right, without anyone walking in on you without permission?

“5a. why should we be limited to only certain areas; isn’t that what we have now?”

It’s certainly not what we have now in degree. What we have now is people being excluded from vast tracts of vacant and unimproved land by people with no legitimate title to it. In a market anarchist system, whether Tuckerite, Georgist, or even thoroughgoing Lockean, the vast majority of land would be unowned, and would likely remain.

“6. i know that gift economics are not excluded by libertarianism, but it seems de-emphasized (gift economics are important to me).”

That’s largely a cultural thing and differs from one person to another, I suspect. For the more left-leaning market anarchist, like Brad, Charles, Roderick et al, they’re a central part of the positive vision of how society would be organized. I’ve put a great deal of emphasis on P2P, which is a form of gift economy, in my views on stateless economic organization.

“while i’m glad to see that brad said this: ‘I’m not saying that production and exchange are all there is to life, but only that the production and exchange that does occur ought to be voluntary.’ because i don’t think any anarchist would disagree.”

Well, it seems to me that the practical import of what you said above works against this. If I build a printing press and can’t exclude you from using it without permission, IMO that would be a form of involuntary exchange. Voluntary exchange means my absolute right to give or exchange my labor product, or withhold it, as I see fit.

“are there many left-libertarians who advocate for what kevin mentioned as ‘thick libertarianism’?”

I’m aware, among leading exponents, of Chris Sciabarra, Roderick Long, Charles Johnson, Matt MacKenzie, Brad Spangler, and Arthur Silber. I’m sure I missed some. As for how many libertarians share the view, it’s probably a minority interest.

“7. what is the distinction between an agorist and a mutualist?”

Agorism is the baby of the late Samuel Edward Konkin III, a far-left Rothbardian working in the tradition of Rothbard’s attempted Old Right-New Left alliance ca. 1970. Check out “New Libertarian Manifesto” (Brad has a pdf up at Agorism.Info), and you’ll get the gist of it. The old LeftLibertarian yahoogroup was created by Konkin for fellow agorists, with Movement of the Libertarian Left as their main political organization. After an ugly squabble there’s no need getting into, some of us moved to the new LeftLibertarian2 yahoogroup, and Roderick et al organized the Alliance of the Libertarian Left as an alternative organization. The new groups differ from the old in not being explicitly Agorist, although Agorists and Rothbardist-Konkinists are clearly the core; the group includes a diversified range of Georgists and mutualists, and other assorted left-libertarian types.

Mutualism is a school of anarchism going back to Proudhon, that favors possessory ownershhip of land and an economy organized around mutual credit and cooperatives.