PROPERTY AND PRIVILEGE

    Property is theft. 
                --P. J. Proudhon
   
    Property is liberty. 
                --P. J. Proudhon

    Property is impossible. 
                --P. J. Proudhon
   
    Consistency is the hobgoblin of the small minds
                --Ralph Waldo Emerson
               
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.

    "Property is theft" means that property, 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; swords and shot were the original coins of transaction.

    "Property is liberty" means that property, 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 comingled 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 is impossible" means that property creates so much conflict of interest that society is in perpetual undeclared civil war and must eventually devour itself (and the properties 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 this chaos

    It is not averred, of course, that property 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, is property. The distinction can be made by an IQ above 70 and is absurdly simple.  The test is to ask, of any title of ownership your are asked to accept it 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 and represents liberty; if it be the latter, it is property and represents theft.