Anarchist Property

[Melodramatic]

I have deemed myself an anarchist for a short while now, and my views of anarchism changed at a steady pace since, moving from a good-intentions right "anarchism" (an uncomfortable period on my part) to a much more leftist approach.

In this time I have yet to have answered an irritating question, one that perhaps ignited my shift towards left anarchism.

How does property work in anarchism?

What, given lack of state, determines the legitimacy of a property claim? What gives one the "right" to exclude another form a price of real or chattel property? In what cases do anarchists respect such a title and in what cases do they deem it illegitimate?

I am aware that such may variate under anarchism, in different communities there may be different laws. But I am looking for the "meta-system", for the basic "laws" of interaction that you deem would not require a state or create one in order to maintain, regardless of communal conventions.

I have myself been acquainted with the use and occupancy principle, and deemed myself a Mutualist for a while, until I began to doubt some of its major theories about a week ago. While I liked the property theory, it too proved itself lacking, given my understanding of it.

Regardless I wish to hear the general opinions of anarchists on these matters.

[Guest]

all theories on property are moot given the lack of understanding (on all sides) of the current state of property.

most people (again, on all sides) believe that something called "private property" exists for the average individual. this simply is not the case. if it were the case, one would be able to get "allodial" title to one's property, and allodial title is not available in any jurisdiction. the person who thinks they own a piece of land is actually merely a tenant of the sovereign, to whom he or she pays a tribute (rent) or property tax. A tenant is not an owner.

So who is the owner? Who does have allodial title to the land under your feet?

let's take the example of a house in california. if you research the title, you can see who the previous "owner" was. you can see who the "owner" before that was. and if you go all the way back you will end up with the king of spain. before his minions came along, no one "owned" the land. there were certainly some people using it, though!

at this point in the explanation, the knee-jerk moron reaction usually kicks in and people start squawking about how the king of spain is irrelevant; that was a long time ago, we aren't responsible, blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda.

the truth is that if you do the research, right now, today, you will find that the queen of england owns 89% of the land mass of canada. not only does she own the land, but she owns all the mineral wealth beneath those lands. and yet, oddly, she does not top the published lists of the world's wealthiest people... furthermore, she is the sovereign of the nation of canada. her role is not merely symbolic - it was very recently that she dissolved the candian parliament. as i've demonstrated, people in canada who think that they "own" land actually only have title to it as tenants, and that the ownership is in the hands of the sovereign.

therefore, the queen of england owns 100% of the land in canada.

we humans have barely moved from primitivism. ownership of land is the ability to hold it against all comers. if one were to challenge the queen's ownership in any sort of meaningful way, the violent forces of the queen, including the militarys of canada, the US, and the UK, would be used against you. this is the primitive, but also operative, definition of property.

if we are to evolve and stop being primitive morons, the notion of property has to change. the current system which allows a single family to own entire swaths of continents simply will not work. the current illusion which confuses ownership with tenancy also will not work.

no matter what an ideology's stance on property is; whether it calls for abolishment of property (anarchism), the "free trade" of property (liberalism, or in the US, libertarianism), or the state ownership of property (marxism), there can be no reform without recognition of the current system and its ills.

[dougfurst]

Excellent response, and thought provoking...certainly the current state of affairs is laughably illegitimate, but what of the future...what system would actually work and be just, fair, and equitable?

One idea I've had and it nags at me constantly is the whole idea of "accumulated" wealth and it's illegitimacy. Were there no money in the first place, if people could be convinced to abandon the idea altogether, no entities could accumulate such enormous piles of it, which "freezes" it, and in doing so also human potential as "stored energy." This energy wouldn't disappear, but rather disperse among the many...Even with 7 billion people on the planet there is plenty of everything...houses, food, water, maybe not luxury items like diamond rings and the like, but plenty of resources. Plenty of land. People of good conscience wouldn't let a child starve while they idly watched...the more people wake up to the theft that has already occurred, they more they realize that EVERYONE could share equally and still only utilize a fraction of the "stored energy" I speak of.