Property is Theft!
03 06 09 - 19:32 For countless generations, societies the world over have been divided fundamentally into two castes: those who own, but do not work and those who work, but do not own. This dichotomy is maintained through a multitude of means, as diverse as the minds which devise them. Ultimately, all established authority perpetuates itself though the use of violence and other types of force, such as the denial of food, education, and other human rights. It all boils down to who has the power to enforce the decisions they make on other people, regardless of the malignant effect these decisions have on the people affected by them. The evident fact is that those who possess power utilize force, in its varied and many forms, in order to perpetuate their status; and their status invariably comes at the expense of other human beings.This fundamental truth has changed very little over the many years of modern human existence. Those who are able to implement force, in whatever form and by whatever scheme, do so out of self-interest and primarily for the sake of personal gain. It has been these individuals who have possessed the means to influence society's development through the ages, and have done so for similar reasons. Ethical and doctrinal systems and institutions have variously been established in order to provide justification for these individuals and their exploitation of the masses. These systems, such as laws, governments, and dogma, at every turn prove their fallacy, as they are readily and judiciously applied to those do not possess the requisite power to influence them, and are widely and easily ingored by those who do possess such power. And again, at the root of their power is the use of violence, intimidation, and countless other heinous crimes which are broadly called "Authority" and ultimately are manifestations of force. This is what Mao Zedong meant when he famously quoted that "Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun". Or at the point of a sword, or a police baton, depending upon the context.
Bearing this Preamble in mind, let us proceed to the purpose of the article, the title of which I am borrowing from a pioneer of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The modern manifestations of the two castes mentioned earlier are the two ends of the economic equation: Capital and Labor. These names can be potentially deceptive, so before proceeding, let us define them better.
To say that Capital is "those that own but do not work" is not entirely accurate, as readers of Das Kapital will attest. Capital is itself a product of the working person's labor: A builder of ships produces capital in the form of boats, a writer of poems produces capital in the form of poetry, a cultivator of food produces capital in the form of food, a steel-smelter produces capital in the form of workable metal and tools, and so on and so on. Any worker that labors to produce anything produces capital, no matter what the product ultimately is. Even the labor itself can be capital in certain cases. "Labor", referred to earlier, then can be said to be the working people, those who "work but do not own". It is we who strive to produce, we the workers. "Labor", in this context, shall be said to be the efforts and products of people who strive to be productive in any capacity which produces capital.
So what then is "Capital", in the terms of the equation mentioned earlier? To refer to the phrase "those who own but do not work", Capital is the end of the equation wherein the productive labors and beneficial, ueful capital produced by working people are expropriated (Read: Stolen) by the ruling class for the express purposes mentioned earlier, namely personal, selish gain at the expense of their fellow human beings, and the hijacking of goods and services which they did not earn for the purpose of maintaining their lifestyles, status, and power. The monopoly of force possessed by the Ruling Class enables this grand crime, which is seen time and time again throughout the course of human history.
As mentioned earlier, the ruling class employs an endless variety of institutions and fallacies by which it justifies and perpetuates this ongoing process of expropriation and exploitation. Primary among these methods are deception and misinformation, which are disseminated widely and variously through docrtinal institutions such as schools, churches, and vaious other means of distributing information (henceforth refered to broadly as 'the media'). George Orwell once said "A trained dog will jump through a loop when a whip is cracked; A truly well-trained dog will jump when no whip is present." The same is true for people. While the ruling class maintains a monopoly on the use of force, it is not always practical or even possible to utilize this force on a scale necessary to maintain their control and status. Through the manipulation of the common discourse and distribution of fallacious misinformation (by which the ruling class is itself often decieved), working people come to believe that certain practical realities prevent them from achieving their own productive goals, as well as require them to remain in their situation of exploitation and servitude. Indeed, it is often the case that these "practical realities" can manifest with very real and very severe consequences, up to and including the use of force against them as individuals by the established authority. Through control of the media, education, and common discourse, individuals are encouraged to feel isolated and dysfunctional if they find thmeselves classified by prevailing perceptions as being "deviant" or "dissenting", and in conjunction with real consequences provided through the use of force, are strongly discouraged from activities and lines of thought which countermand the status of servitude imposed upon them by the established authorities.
One such fallacy, the focus of this article, particularly present in western capitalist (Read: "Plutocracy", or "Kleptocracy") societies, is the lie which is widely known as "Property". The institutions established and controlled by the ruling class, "those who own but do not work", will provide very specific yet remarkably vague qualifications for what property actually is; the definitions change quickly and easily around the requirements of those individuals who possess power and ill-gotten wealth, so as to better accomodate the expropration of Capital from those who produce it. The indefinate character of property as it exists in the carefully cultivated "reality" constructed by the ruling-class serves them well, as it enables them to change it at will and in response to their ever expanding quest to exploit the working peoples of the world. In reality, many societies have widely varying definitions, some have none at all, for what property in fact is. Generally, the consensus seems to be that property is closely related to habitation and responsibility. Beyond that, there is little consesus. Indeed, what property is seems to be a primarily cultural distinction, subject heavily to individual interpretation.
Let us consider the following hypothetical. A wealthy man buys a plot of fertile land, and orders the construction of a large, well-built house. He pays "his" capital (which as mentioned earlier, was expropriated from the work of others) to the established authority of the region, and to another wealthy man who commands a team of builders. In short order, the house is built. Very soon, the work is done, and the wealthy man hires a gardener who, with great skill and care, raises a bountiful garden on the site. The wealthy man feels confident and satisfied that the house belongs to him, and that he owns that land upon which it has been built. The wealthy man is sure that the garden belongs to him, and claims all the vegetables within to be his property.
But he is lying to himself, and stealing from everyone else!
It was not he who built the house; no, it took the labor of a dozen skilled men, whose trade the wealthy man knows nothing about. It was not he who harvested the timbers, or mixed the cement, or forged the nails, for the wealthy man knows nothing of these honest crafts, nor could he achieve any of them on his own even if he did. Though he lives there and populates the house with many fine things, none of which he built or has the skill to maintain, the house is too large for one man to maintain, and the wealthy man knows nothing of maintaining a house, so he hires it done. Maids, repairmen, et cetera. Even if he knew these trades, a wealthy man's house is much too large to be maintained by a single wealthy man, so he must exploit the labors of an endless number of other human beings in order to satisfy his vain lifestyle. Is the house his? Absolutely not, for he did not labor to produce it or any aspect of it!
And what of the Garden he says he owns, and the produce within? The land was fertile long before anyone lived there, and would have been whether or not anyone did. The wealthy man does not labor in the garden, and does not care for the plants within. Out of incompetance or laziness, he hires someone else to work land which the wealthy man claims is his own, to produce vegetables which the wealthy man claims as his own. But without the labors of that gardener, the land would remain fertile, but vegetable-free! And without the labors of that gardener, weeds and pests would shortly overtake the garden, returning it to its original condition within less than a year. Indeed, that produce is far more the product of the Gardener's labor than the wealthy man's capital!
The same is true for any means of production. Like the garden in our example, a wealthy man cannot own a factory, or a workshop, or any other means of production which require the labor of working people. For those implements would not function or produce without those labors and the maintenance of those individuals acquianted with them, and neither can he own anything produced via the labors of those honest people, for he had no role in their production!
Does the land belong to the wealthy man? Hardly! The planet earth is far more ancient than any man--- that ground was there long before the wealthy man drew his first gasp of life, and shall continue to be there long after his body is less than ash and dust. For the earth, the wealthy man's life is fleeting beyond measure, and the wealthy man can no more own the land beneath his feet than he can claim ownership of the clouds above his head. No matter how wealthy he may be, all the capital he may expend or labor he may exploit in his efforts to control either will amount to nothing and be ground to less than nothing by the endless procession of time.
Indeed, the authority from whom the wealthy man "bought" the land has no right to it either; for if we trace back the roots of history, we find that in the past as today, established authority has always employed violence in order to achieve its goals. This has been particularly true in the case of land acquisiton. In every land, it is a story of warfare and pillage, of slaughter and rape; kings and generals and emperors and presidents, each employing their own force to brutal effect, removing peoples from their lands and generations later themselves being removed by the same means and the same titles, held by different people separated by the gulf of time, though with the same odious and malicious intent. It is a story with which those of us from North and South America should be particularly familiar.
So what then is property? As it is defined now, by the established authority and by the ruling class, Property is Theft of the honest labors of other human beings, expolited and subjugated for the sake of the perpetuation of the same machinations that provide for their enslavement--- at best.
At worst it is the legacy of the rape of the earth and the wholesale slaughter of its rightful inhabitants, justified only by the greed and bloodlust of the ruling class of the past, which seeks to extend its control ever onward into a future it hopes also to own.
-Hale
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