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Title: On property and freedom Author: Benjamin Tucker Date: 28 January 1888 Language: en Topics: property, Freedom Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from http://www.panarchy.org/tucker/property.html Notes: Benjamin Tucker replies to two questions posed by a certain S. Blodgett in the pages of Liberty magazine.
Do you think property rights can inhere in anything not produced by the
labor or aid of man?
I do not believe in any inherent right of property. Property is a social
convention, and may assume many forms. Only that form of property can
endure, however, which is based on the principle of equal liberty. All
other forms must result in misery, crime, and conflict. The Anarchistic
form of property has already been defined as “that which secures each in
the possession of his own products, or of such products of others as he
may have obtained unconditionally without the use of fraud or force, and
in the realization of all titles to such products which he may hold by
virtue of free contract with others.” It will be seen from this
definition that Anarchistic property concerns only products. But
anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended, whether
it be a piece of iron or a piece of land. [1]
You say, “Anarchism being neither more nor less than the principle of
equal liberty,” etc. Now, if government were so reformed as to confine
its operations to the protection of “equal liberty,” would you have any
quarrel with it? If so, what and why?
If “government” confined itself to the protection of equal liberty,
Anarchists would have no quarrel with it; but such protection they do
not call government. Criticism of the Anarchistic idea which does not
consider Anarchistic definitions is futile. The Anarchist defines
government as invasion, nothing more or less. Protection against
invasion, then, is the opposite of government. Anarchists, in favoring
the abolition of government. favor the abolition of invasion, not of
protection against invasion.
It may tend to a clearer understanding if I add that all States, to
become non-invasive, must abandon first the primary act of invasion upon
which all them rest: the collection of taxes by force — and that
anarchists look upon the change in social conditions which will result
when economic freedom is allowed as far more efficiently protective
against invasion than any machinery of restraint, in the absence of
economic freedom, possibly can be.
[1] It should be stated, however, that in the case of land, or of any
other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it
in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles
except such as are based on actual occupancy and use.