The Decadent Worker

PROPERTY AND PRIVILEGE

“Property is theft.” — P.-J. Proudhon
“Property is liberty.” — P.-J. Proudhon
“Property is impossible.” — P.-J. Proudhon

…Proudhon, by piling up his contradictions this way, was not merely being French; he was trying to indicate that the abstraction ‘property’ covers a variety of phenomena, some pernicious and some beneficial. Let us borrow a device from the semanticists and examine his triad with subscripts attached for maximum clarity.

‘Property(1) is theft’ means that property(1), created by the artificial laws of feudal, capitalist and other authoritarian societies, is based on armed robbery. Land titles, for instance, are clear examples of property(1); swords and shot were the original coins of transaction.

‘Property(2) is liberty’ means that property(2), that which will be voluntarily honored in a voluntary (anarchist) society, is the foundation of the liberty in that society. The more people’s interests are commingled and confused, as in collectivism, the more they will be stepping on each other’s toes; only when the rules of the game declare clearly ‘This is mine and this is thine,’ and the game is voluntarily accepted as worthwhile by all parties to it, can true independence be achieved.

‘Property(3) is impossible’ means that property(3) (= property(1))creates so much conflict of interest that society is in perpetual undeclared civil war and must eventually devour itself (and properties (1) and (3) as well). In short, Proudhon, in his own way, foresaw the Snafu Principle. He also foresaw that communism would only perpetuate and aggravate the conflicts, and that anarchy is the only viable alternative to chaos.

It is not averred, of course, that property(2) will come into existence only in a totally voluntary society; many forms of it already exist. The error of most alleged libertarians — especially the followers(!) of the egregious Ayn Rand — is to assume that all property(1) is property(2)/. The distinction can be made by any IQ above 70 and is absurdly simple. The test is to ask, of any title of ownership you are asked to accept or which you ask others to accept, ‘Would this be honored in a free society of rationalists, or does it require the armed might of a State to force people to honor it?’ If it be the former, it is property(2) and represents liberty; if it be the latter, it is property(1) and represents theft. — Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Leviathan, Part III of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Appendix Zain

Former guests include Eugene V. Debs and Alexander Berkman. Recently scene of an instance of spontaneous combustion, these historic accommodations are now back to business as usual. Debs maintained he could not himself be free as long as anyone else was in prison. Berkman said: “I had to leave.”

“As we shall see, secret societies did play a far more important role than is commonly realized in the life of Karl Marx as well as in the birth of communism generally,” says David Tame in “Secret Societies in the Life of Karl Marx,” Critique #25. Marx seems to have belonged to so many secret societies that the problem is determining which, if any of them, were relevant.

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