Freedomain Radio

 I a fellow mutualist am going to respond to Jalfo and his concerns of landlords and homelessness.

Let's say a homeless person decides to sleep on the fence of someone's farmland. The landlord will either do two things. Either he will

1) not criminalize this man's homelessness.

or

2) he will pay a gaurd or a police man to make sure the homeless person doesn't sleep there.

In the short-run, paying a gaurd to make sure the homeless person doesn't sleep on your property is economicly efficient, however, in the long-run it's a huge waste of money. Wouldn't it make more sense as a long-term solution. to just buy the homeless person a cheap home rather than perpetually pay a guard to gaurd your property? That's what I'm thinking. I believe the AmazingAthiest posted a video where he cited an article that argued that criminalizing homelessness is less cost-effective than actually taking care of the homeless.

Now, rent is a different issue which you and I probably agree with, but I think you are wrong in assuming that since property owners are entitled to kicking out the homeless that nothing will be done to help them.

cowen70:

I'm not sure I understood mutualism.

cowen70:

Is it the sort of thing that can be summed up easily in order for me to better understand it?

Jalfro:

See below.  Of course, to fully understand these principles, you need to follow the arguments that lead up to them.  Personally, I  don't agree with them all, but I find points 2, 5, 8 and 10 particularly convincing and points 3 and 4 particularly dodgy.  They are all worthy of serious consideration.

Now, I would call myself a Modern Mutualist and not a Proudhonian Mutualist. I'm not a mutualist in the original sense because think Proudhon is both wrong about a lot of things and I hate his language. A lot of times I can't tell what the hell he is saying. It's sounds autistic to me. To me mutualism simply is worker's ownership of the means of production in the contex of a LF free market.

Jalfro:

From pages 198-199, What is Property? by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, published by IndyPublish.com, McLean, Virginia, ISBN 1-4043-3907-8, no date:

"1. Individual possession is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrated it.  Property is the suicide of society.  Possession is a right; property is against right.  Suppress property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification of the principle, you will revolutionize the law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.

 I make a distinction between what I call "capitalist property" and "socialist property". I don't try to make a distinction between property and possession since those sound instinctively the same. I agree that basing ownership on use and occupancy is a much better way for society to run than having property based on first use, perpetual ownership regardless of use.

Jalfro:

2. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.

This presents problems both to home and the workplace. Is Proudhon saying that everyone has an equal right to enter my house and take my property even though I have been using my property and have been occupying my house? What about workers owning the means of production. Is Proudhon saying the workers who currently own their business cannot decide who gets join the cooperative effort and who doesn't. What if there is a free loader? Do the responsible workers just simply have to accept him even though he is doing no work or is stealing company equipment? If Proudhon is argueing for either of these things I'm am against what he is saying here.

Jalfro:

3. The effect of labour being the same for all, property is lost in the common prosperity.

To foster efficiency, you need a division of labor. To have a division of labor, you need a division of profit. Equality of outcomes is a horrible idea.

Jalfro:

4. All human labour being the result of collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary.  To speak more exactly, labor destroys property.

I agree. Workers should own the means of production. Labor doesn't destroy property, they just take it for themselves to manage. Again, I don't like Proudhon's language even thouhg I agree with what he is saying here.

Jalfro:

5. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and robbery.

Shouldn't the people who are more skilled in doing X get paid more than people who are less skilled in doing X? Again, you can't have a division of labor without a division of profit.

Jalfro:

6. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.  Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of labourers (like their rights and duties) should be equal.

No, the necessariy condition for commerce is the liberty of the contracting parties and the mutuality of the transaction.  If the thing you trying to get from another person is either 1) scientifically equal or 2) equal in value than you will not make a transaction. Both sides of a trade percieves an inequality of value. I believe wages should be determined by the free market. They should not be forced to be equal.

Jalfro:

7. Products are bought only by products.  Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.  Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.

1) Proudhon is using the word "profit" in a way that is not typically used.

2) I allready explained why Proudhon is wrong on the nature of exchange.

So Proudhon is just plain wrong here.

Jalfro:

8. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice.  Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of equitable or proportional law only.

So what? Is Proudhon really expecting us at the point of a gun to lift other people's self-esteem, be friends, express gratitude and admiration? How can that possibly be an anarchist poltiical postion? I'm assuming this just a social preference, but I could be wrong. I can never tell what the hell Proudhon is saying because his language is so bad.

Jalfro:

9. Free association, liberty - whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges - is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.

I believe liberty and free association is important, but I don' think it is subject solely to preserving workers ownership of the means of production.

Jalfro:

10. Politics is the science of liberty.  The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression.  Society finds its highest perfectin in the union of order with anarchy."

Politics is just the disputes of madmen.

I'm not sure who is agruing for what at the moment , but from those quotes of Prodhoun's I don't agree with him.

I'd also wonder what the difference between "Capatilist" and "Socialist" property would be.

 "Capitalist property" is what socialists would typically call "private property". "Socialist property" is what socialists would typically call "possession". There are other types of property such as "personal property" which would be like a car, or a house, or a guitar. Stuff that has nothing to do with the workplace. For me, what socialists call "personal property" is more private than what they call "private property", so you'll never hear me use that term. For me there are two types of property: capitalist and socialist. Adding an extra type "personal" just confuses the hell out of people. And property and possession sound to me to be instinctively the same thing, so I do not use those terms. I make a distinction between "capitalist property" and "socialist property".

Also, mutualists and socialists alike make the mistake of complaining how bad property is when actually they are only talking about how bad capitalist property is. Because of this, anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-socialists can't have useful debates with each other. Because of the terms they use, the other side's philosophy looks completely absurd to them. I understand why the capitalists are so dumbfounded. Someone who routinely shouts about how bad "property" is and how good "possession" is sounds completely crazy. I agree.

I call myself a Modern Mutualist because

1) I don't like the terms used by classical mutualists and socialists, especially Proudhon.

2) I don't completely ignore modern economic theory and I make subtle changes to classical mutualism because of it. I myself am heavily influenced by the Austrian school of Economics even though I wouldn't call myself a staunch supporter of capitalism.

DaveDoggOwns:

 "Capitalist property" is what socialists would typically call "private property". "Socialist property" is what socialists would typically call "possession". There are other types of property such as "personal property" which would be like a car, or a house, or a guitar. Stuff that has nothing to do with the workplace. For me, what socialists call "personal property" is more private than what they call "private property", so you'll never hear me use that term. For me there are two types of property: capitalist and socialist. Adding an extra type "personal" just confuses the hell out of people. And property and possession sound to me to be instinctively the same thing, so I do not use those terms. I make a distinction between "capitalist property" and "socialist property".

Also, mutualists and socialists alike make the mistake of complaining how bad property is when actually they are only talking about how bad capitalist property is. Because of this, anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-socialists can't have useful debates with each other. Because of the terms they use, the other side's philosophy looks completely absurd to them. I understand why the capitalists are so dumbfounded. Someone who routinely shouts about how bad "property" is and how good "possession" is sounds completely crazy. I agree.

I call myself a Modern Mutualist because

1) I don't like the terms used by classical mutualists and socialists, especially Proudhon.

2) I don't completely ignore modern economic theory and I make subtle changes to classical mutualism because of it. I myself am heavily influenced by the Austrian school of Economics even though I wouldn't call myself a staunch supporter of capitalism.

If you were trying to clear things up for me then it didn't work

So I'll have a stab at covering the possibilities and giving my opinion.

If you have property that is defined by the nature of the owner then I think that is not universally applicable and therefore not good the same applies to the number of owners.

If you have property defined by the intent of the owner(s) then this only matters if force is involved.

I could perhaps be described as a sort of Mutualist in that I was (am) a self described GeoAnarchist but recently I have been thinking about that too. I had thought that went something like this.

Self ownership and therefore ownership of labour are axiomatic but this does not lead to ownership of resources, but if no one owns the resources there are two ways of looking at it one would be that the first person to"mix their labour" with the resource gets to claim it for me this makes sense in the making of discrete components like a guitar etc because the labour brought a new "thing" into existence but it doesn't work so well with land as the land is not "made new".

The other extreme is that we all own it, not just those alive but all those yet to come and that if you use something you must compensate others for the use they can no longer derive because you have it, this IMO would work OK for land but not so good for resources made into "things".

At the moment I'm favouring the  latter course because I can more clearly see how it could be applied, but I could be wrong.

Sorry about the long kind of OT post but I find this kind of arguement has caused me to rexamine my position and that helps.

 Whoa, whoa, whoa. When I talk about "capitalist property" or "socialist property" I am not defining property based on the intent of the owner.

Capitalist property(usually called "private property" by socialists) is property that stems forth from first use or "mixing labor".. The owner perpetually owns this property regardless of use or occupancy.

Socialist property (usualy called "possession") is property that stems forth from use or occupancy. The owner has to routinely use this property or occupy it to have exclusive control over it.

I agree there is nothing axiomatic about ownership of resources, but we need ownership of resources though to get somewhere. I never really considered Geoanarchism. Since I prefer socialist property, I always thought ownership of land was either irelevant toward ownership of other things or ownership of land should not be allowed.

Let's say you own a house or are building a house somewhere that is unoccupied. I always thought ownership of land underneath the house was irelevant to owning the house.

thanks guys, this is turning into a good discussion.

There's a lot of good points being made, so I'm just going to pick up on a some that DaveDoggOwns made early on.

DaveDoggOwns:

 

2. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.

This presents problems both to home and the workplace. Is Proudhon saying that everyone has an equal right to enter my house and take my property even though I have been using my property and have been occupying my house? What about workers owning the means of production. Is Proudhon saying the workers who currently own their business cannot decide who gets join the cooperative effort and who doesn't. What if there is a free loader? Do the responsible workers just simply have to accept him even though he is doing no work or is stealing company equipment? If Proudhon is argueing for either of these things I'm am against what he is saying here.

I think that Proudhon is thinking mainly about land here and I think that when you restrict the principle to land, then it holds good, since land is a more or less finite resource.  For things that have been produced through labour Keeling's argument makes much more sense.  A business should be under the control of the workers and they clearly have the right to discipline, or eject a member who is violating the rules of the collective.  After all, if property is theft, then theft is also property. 

I don't think the land underneath an unoccupied house is irrelevant though, if you are not using it, a homeless person has a perfect right to claim it.  Logically, this would mean that they have the right to remove your house from the site, if you refuse to do so yourself.   Practically, it's probably better all round if you allow them to move into it.

DaveDoggOwns:

3. The effect of labour being the same for all, property is lost in the common prosperity.

To foster efficiency, you need a division of labor. To have a division of labor, you need a division of profit. Equality of outcomes is a horrible idea.

I agree that equality of outcomes is a horrible idea, like violence (even defensive violence), it prepares the ground for state control.  On the other hand, there needs to be some limitation on inequality of outcomes, which are bad for everybody, even the relatively well off.  Applying Proudhon's doctrine to land distribution is one way of ensuring this. 

Another issue that needs to be addressed is education.  We all benefit from educational provision that we did not ourselves produce (this will be true under any system we devise) and we cannot (at this point in history) pretend that everyone has benefited from the same advantages.  So I maintain that we all have a duty to our fellow human beings, at least with regards to protecting their basic rights to life, education and freedom of expression.

Strictly speaking, the only inequality of outcome that can be ethically justified is that which arises through effort, though I suspect that it would be impossible to design a system that ensured this.

I don't accept that a division of labour requires a division of profit.  It is quite possible to organize (at least small enterprises) on the basis of collective ownership and co-operation.

 

 

DaveDoggOwns:

8. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice.  Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of equitable or proportional law only.

 

So what? Is Proudhon really expecting us at the point of a gun to lift other people's self-esteem, be friends, express gratitude and admiration? How can that possibly be an anarchist poltiical postion? I'm assuming this just a social preference, but I could be wrong.

 

No, I think he's saying almost the exact opposite of this, though I can understand your confusion!  What he means is that since survival necessitates our engagement in productive activity, we cannot expect to have total freedom in the economic sphere.  But in the social sphere, we can have complete freedom of association and expression.  Remember, for Proudhon "law" does not mean "the government by man of man", it means the expression of our own sense of natural justice.

I think this can be clearly illustrated if you compare Bill Gates to Linus Torvalds.  I believe that Proudhon would see the former's vast fortune as illegitimate, as it is based on state enforced property laws.  On the other hand, Torvalds has only a reasonable income, but he also has the gratitude and respect of millions, for his contribution to free software.  I think that Proudhon would see this as perfectly just.

DaveDoggOwns:

I can never tell what the hell Proudhon is saying because his language is so bad.

Remember, he was writing 170 years ago, and in French, so he can't necessarily be held responisble for all the obscurity!

 If you own a house you don't need to own the land under it. Let's say someone tries ot claim the land under your house. This would be pointless since it doesn't change the fact you own the house. He/she couldn't change the nature of the land underneath the house without ruining the property. So owning the land under my house is just plain pointless.

DaveDoggOwns:

 If you own a house you don't need to own the land under it. Let's say someone tries ot claim the land under your house. This would be pointless since it doesn't change the fact you own the house. He/she couldn't change the nature of the land underneath the house without ruining the property. So owning the land under my house is just plain pointless.

How much area is devoted to Housiong as opposed to say Agriculture or Mining or Industry don't you feel judging applicability merely by housing to be to narrow?

From my experience debating with leftist anarchist the ideas under that umbrella are just really diverse and confused.

Some varieties of left anarchism are much worse then the current state. These are usually the ones that don't differentiate between forced and voluntary hierarchies at all and tend to try to eliminate all hierarchies by solution such as direct democracy where they claim everyone will be totally equal.

A state with absolute power run by direct democracy with people voting on every issue would produce a truly horrid society. To call this anarchism is ofcourse also absurd but they do. But ofcourse a government is not a government if you call it the anarchist/anarchic federation ... right.

Then there are some of them who believe in that the federation should have limited powers such as controlling all trade between communities but the communities themselves shall have no leadership. Actually that guy eventually admitted to not being a real anarchist...

Some believe the federation should ban those who choose a capitalist way of life from owning land but allow them to settle wherever they want and do nothing else to restrict there activities...

Then there are a few of them who actually are anarchists. They would do nothing except speak to people of they used there freedom to create a capitalist society. They just prefer everyone to share everything but will not use force or coercion as we define it to make it happen.

They usually still have some issues with ownership of land, but then again so do I and there wouldn't be any government around to enforce anything anyway so the exact same principles for ownership of land would arise from voluntary exchange regardless...

 

 I don't actually have a problem with ownership of land that is acquired through homesteading and trade. I just think sometimes ownership of land is unnecessary.

Zedd, I agree. That is why I was reluctant to call myself an "anarcho-syndicalist". A lot of the ideas in AS are instinctively statist such as a global federation of unions outlawing capitalism everywhere. If your economic system can only be sustained by using violence against more efficient systems than it is time to rethink your philosophy.

Well said Zedd and DaveDoggOwns (last comment). I've been skimming this thread last couple of days in disappointment. I was tempted to get in, but then I'm tired of repeating my arguments which I've already expressed many posts below. I just frown at all this relativizing of property into a mere idea that has no roots in actual human nature and even more fundamentally the causal nature of the universe itself. There's so much misunderstanding of it. Nobody even seems to touch the fundamentals and instead just hovers in the cloudy realms of the abstractions which they haven't bothered to connect with reality, abstractions sourced from personal preferences and propaganda formerly exposed to. And no using isolated out of context examples and stories to make these ideas sound credible doesn't work since the logic is already broken.

Property was never a problem, not even land ownership. What was a problem always was force and fraud, that is, essentially property violations. To seek to blame anything else is to fall into a trap. You deny ANY property (even land ownership) and you're inevitably gonna support coercion and that's gonna be just going back to step one, as if history taught you nothing.

 

 

memeverse:

Property was never a problem, not even land ownership. 

The problem with land that I see is that ownership of land has almost never been granted according to Lockean principles of what property is. 

Usually who shall own what land was decided thru war or by the state and not according to who first starts to actually do something with it.
Also Lockean property rights shouldn't make land ownership absolute except for the land that you use to live on where you need privacy or if you build enclosures.

If you are just growing wood you are not disturbed by me picking berries there for instance and it makes no sense you should own anything else then the trees you planted and the right to have them grow there without harmful interference.