Gift Economy of Property Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism — No. 5

August 3, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Life as experience tears up programs, treads decorum under foot, breaks the windows, descends from the ivory tower. It abandons the City of Established Facts, out through the Gate of Settled Matters and roams, vagabond, in the open countryside of the Unforeseen.” Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism: Project page Related links: “The Gift Economy of Property“ “Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks“ “Property, Individuality and Collective Force“ “What could justify property?“ Pierre Leroux in “The Present” and “The Spirit of the Age” Posts: Rambles in the Fields of Anarchist Individualism No. 5. — Give and Take: The First Society I would, […]

How does property become anarchist?

March 21, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

If we want a clear indication of the gulf between the possible (resultant) anarchism suggested by Proudhon’s mature work and the historical anarchism that emerged in the late 19th century, we probably don’t have to look beyond the almost universal suspicion that Proudhon’s final works themselves mark a retreat from the anarchist project — and the fact that the resultant anarchy that seems to occupy a central place in that work simply does not seem to register among our theoretical options.

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Occupancy-and-Use: Neo-Proudhonian Remarks

July 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

This post originally appeared at the Center for a Stateless Society, as part of an exchange on occupancy-and-use property. Those familiar with the rest of my work will recognize the proposal for “mutual extrication” as essentially a reintroduction, in different terms, of the “gift economy of property.” There is a great deal that could be said in response to Kevin Carson’s opening statement, from the “neo-Proudhonian” mutualist perspective, but I’ll try to keep things at least relatively short. Like Kevin, my introduction to the notion of occupancy-and-use land tenure was through the works of Benjamin R. Tucker and the Liberty […]

To “property” via “mutual extrication”

November 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been taking part in a C4SS-sponsored discussion of occupancy-and-use property norms, “Occupancy and Use: Potential Applications and Possible Shortcomings,” which is now appearing on the Center’s website. The exchange opened with a piece by Kevin Carson, “Are We All Mutualists?,” which suggests that perhaps the answer is “yes.” A series of responses will be posted every other day, with my “Neo-Proudhonian Remarks” already posted under the title “Limiting Conditions and Local Desires.” For me, this first response was an opportunity to talk again about the development of Proudhon’s thoughts on property, but also to return to the question of […]

The Larger Antinomy

April 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Contr’un Revisted: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I. “When Jesus Christ, explaining to the people the different articles of the Decalogue, taught them that polygamy had been permitted to the ancients because of the rudeness of their intelligence, but that it had not been thus in the beginning; that a bad desire is equal to a fornication consummated; that insult and affront are as reprehensible as murder and blows; that he is a parricide who says to his poor father: “This morning I have prayed to God for you; that will benefit […]

The Gift Economy of Property (2.0)

April 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Contr’un Revisited: Related: The Gift Economy of Property Trajectories: Proudhon and Property The Larger Antinomy The Gift Economy of Property I. Thesis An adequate, non-simplist, mutualist theory of what is proper to individual human beings, seeking to do justice to the range of things we denominate by the word “property,” will have to account for the nearly unbridgeable separateness that we experience in consciousness, as well as the inextricable interconnection which is our material reality. It will have to, in essence, respond to Max Stirner and Pierre Leroux (or any number of other advocates of a roughly ecological universal circulus.) […]

Picking up dropped threads

April 20, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Lots of things have intervened in the discussion of mutualist property theory over the last two years, not the least of which has been a whole lot of additional research and translation. It has, for one reason or another, been a little more than I could manage to pick up where I left the fairly straightforward exploration of the question which was interrupted in the midst of the “property is impossible” series, way back in June 2010. But there’s no getting on to the next phase of things without wrapping up this particular discussion, so I’m working on finally pulling […]

Property and the Essence of Mutualism

November 5, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] “My principle, which will appear astonishing to you, citizens, my principle is yours; it is property itself.”—P.-J. Proudhon In my writings on mutualist property theory, I have been attempting to supplement a somewhat strange lacuna in Proudhon’s theory, his failure—in at least one important sense—to ever really directly answer the question posed in his first major work, What is Property? In order to do that, I’ve been drawing on the work of Max Stirner, which, despite Stirner’s sense that he was opposing Proudhon’s position, seems to primarily address “property” in precisely the senses that Proudhon didn’t even make much […]

Responses on mutualist property theory: Self-ownership

January 12, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Given the amount that I’ve already written about mutualist property theory, both historically and in the context of “the gift economy of property,” and the specific context of the C4SS symposium, there wasn’t much chance that my post on mutualist land theory was going to be a summary of my own theory. Instead, it was really a series of reasons why I couldn’t just engage the question in terms of abandonment, with some gestures back at the theory I’ve been building. That sort of thing never quite cuts it in the blogosphere, as the comments make clear. I sympathize with […]

What is property? — Some thoughts about how to proceed

October 29, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve had a couple of useful discussions of property over the last few weeks—over coffee and ale with Apio Ludicrus and online with Derek Wittorff—where the question of the points of contact between Proudhon and Stirner have come up again. There is work being translated that will eventually help to clarify similarities and differences, but there’s also a bit of analytic preparing of the terrain that needs to be done, and could easily be done right now. What I want to try to do right now is to differentiate some of the things that “property” means in these two […]