From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Re: Libertarianism and Government
Date: 10 Apr 92 12:21:42 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Apr9.233020.16418@odin.corp.sgi.com> thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>In article <46291@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>
>> Try to be a little more clear with terms here. "Anarchism", like
>> "libertarianism" is an word with several referents. The 
>> Anarchism of Kropotkin and Bookchin, for example, is  a political
>> philosophy which seeks to replace private-property/centralized-state
>> systems with those based on communalism and personal liberty. 
>
>And what personal liberty actually means without private property
>is left as an exercise for the reader.

I don't want to offend anyone here, but rather than exercising one's
imagination, it is possible to go to a library and read a book or two.
Murray Bookchin has published quite a bit, "Remaking Society"
is a recent one, and "The Ecology of Freedom" is another interesting one. 
Peter Kropotkin's work can be found readily,  and ditto for Emma Goldman 
an interesting advocate of both civil liberties and abolition of private
property. One could also, if not in fear of having bad thoughts, read
some of the essays of Noam Chomsky for a glimpse of what used to be
called "libertarianism" before the term was appropriated by those who might
better be called "propertarians". 
Here's Kropotkin for those who believe that going into a public
library might damage the free market:
	Laws on property are not made to guarantee either to the individual
	or to societty the enjoyment of the produce of their own labor. On
	the contrary, they are made to rob the producer of a part of what he
	has created, and to secure to certain other people that portion of
	the produce which they have stolen either from the producer or from
	society as a whole. When, for example, the law establishes Mr.
	So-and-So's right to a house, it is not establishing his right to a
	cottage he has built for himself, or to a house he has erected with
	the help of some of his friends. In that case no one would have
	disputed his right. On the contrary, the law is establishing his
	right to a house which is not the product of his labor; first of all
	because he has had it built for him by others to whom he has not
	paid the full value of their work, and next because the house
	represents a social value which he could not have produced for
	himself., ... The same house built in the middle of 
	Siberia would not have the value it possesses in a large town, and,
	as we know, that value arises from the labor of something like 50
	generations of men who have built the town, beautified it, supplied
	it with water and gas, fine promenades, colleges, theatres, shops,
	railways and roads leading in all directions. Thus, by recognizing
	the right of Mr. So-and-So to a particular house in Paris,London, or
	Rouen, the law is unjustly appropriating to him a certain portion of
	the produce of the labor of mankind in general. And it is precisley
	because this appropriation and all other forms of property bearing
	the same chaaracter are a crying injustice, that a whole arsenal of
	laws and a whole army of soldiers, policemen, and judges are needed
	to maintain it against the good sense and just feeling inherent in
	humanity. (from Law and Authority 1886)

-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu