property is impossible Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

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 […]

Trajectories: Proudhon and Property

August 17, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been working on bookbinding and papermaking as much as property theory lately, trying to put together the first two issues of “The Wing: A Journal of Attractive Industry” (a very nuts-and-bolts, often how-to zine on environmentally responsible, craft-based micro-enterprise.) But I’ve also been working on the revision of Tucker’s What is Property? translation, and grappling with some issues raised by that and the research for the “Property is Impossible” posts, and that’s sent me back through the last two years’ worth of work on the property question, which really all grew out of the first Proudhon seminar. I compiled […]

Take me to the river…

July 18, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Let’s say we gather the usual suspects, down by the river, in the State of Nature, or thereabouts, for a bit of property theory and a few “good draughts.” John Locke says everybody can appropriate some river-water, as long as what they make their own “property” leaves “a whole river of the same water.” Now, Locke has a reputation for saying things like “my labor” when maybe he means the labor of someone else, so there’s some hesitation, but it seems like a pretty good deal, assuming it’s possible. Now, in literal terms, it seems impossible: a quantity of water, X, minus some non-zero “good draught,” G, is unlikely to = X. But, out in the State of Nature, talking about individual-scale “draughts” and a naturally resilient river-system, perhaps it is at least as good as possible.

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Property is impossible?

July 4, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third] Contr’un Revisited: [commentary coming soon] [/one_third][two_third_last] We’re getting closer to the river’s edge, but we’re not quite prepared to “take our draught” yet. It has always seemed to me that libertarian property theory is prone to leaping straight to property’s defense—the occasions for legitimate use of force—without lingering overlong on just what it is defending. The broader the discussion—and terms like “left-libertarian” and “market anarchist” attempt to cover pretty broad swathes of ideological territory—the more pronounced the problem. The left-libertarian theory of a “spectrum” of abandonment theories seems to me pretty sound, and useful, but I have my doubts […]

Responses on Locke’s proviso

June 30, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

In my initial thoughts on Locke’s proviso, I wasn’t doing much more than testing the waters, so to speak, or getting some new cards on the table. I had been wrestling, semi-unsuccessfully, with a follow-up post to my recent piece on markets, government and the environment, and decided it would make as much sense to tackle some key property issues head-on, as to wade any deeper, right now, into a debate that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere very useful. The responses so far suggest that maybe this stuff isn’t going anywhere either — at least without some real […]

Some thoughts on Locke’s proviso

June 25, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water […]