Talk:Property is theft!

message: What is not immediately clear when reading this article is that the term "property" is used here to mean real estate, or land, property, and not (I believe) any other kind of property (like stocks, a business, a car, or an apple or pencil for that matter).  I suggest that this be made clear from the outset.
--Serge 01:31, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is how Marx used "property."  Proudhon (at least in What is Property?) considered the legal concept of property as it existed in France as derived from Roman law.  This is very specifically stated in chapter 2. —Jemmytc 17:36, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Marx as well as Stirner were Germans, in german language there was until then no sharp difference between the term "Eigentum" and the term "Besitz" - both terms were understood as equally - they both simply misunderstood the terms while they both thought just in conservative authoritarian prussian state definitions of the nineteenth century I suppose - therefore their argument was incomplete - in the french original Proudhon said: "La possession est légale - propriété est illégale" in the german translation it would be "Der Besitz ist rechtlich, Eigentum ist widerrechtlich" the standard german citizen don't really know that there is a clear defined difference between possession and property, visit Germany and you will realize it for yourself. Stirner is known for his work "The Ego and His Own" which is translated in german:"Der Einzige und sein Eigentum", which translates literally as "The Unique One and His Property" - However, if you read it you will notice that Stirner meant possession and not just property. - it's just a matter of language problems - nothing more, nothing less Mesomorphos (talk) 06:12, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Property vs. real estate property

message: Proudhon believed in the control of the means of production by the workers themselves, and as a believer in the labour theory of value opposed profit-making enterprises. He believed that society should be organised as a federation of workers assemblies. True, he believed that goods should be exchanged in a market, but this market would have little in common with the capitalist idea of the free market (for example, goods were to be exchanged at "cost value", not whatever price would create the greatest profit). Workers self-management and the idea of a society organised as a federation of workers' organisations is of course key to most conceptions of libertarian socialism. No-one would suggest that Proudhon was a libertarian socialist exactly, but it seems perfectly reasonable to include a link to libertarian socialism. I haven't restored the link to communism, but a case certainly could be made. Proudhon had a significant influence on Marx's early writings. Cadr 00:38, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Justification for inclusion of libertarian socialism in links section

message: Is the sentence, "The former is considered illegitimate property, the latter legitimate property.", which occurs somewhere around the middle of the longest paragraph, mistyped?
--Denihilonihil 13:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it's right. Property is theft if it's that which isn't the result of labor. Property is freedom when it's the product of labor. If you protect unused land from others, you're stealing that land. If you protect your cornfield from others, it's freedom. For Proudhon, legitimate property can only come about through labor. RJII 19:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for clarification

message: There has to be some kind of documented response to this absurd premise:
: He proposed that "the laborer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced."
So when someone provides the capital to buy the equipment to run a diamond mine and pay wages to the miners, when a miner finds a diamond, the miner retains "a natural right of property in the diamond which he has produced"?  And when that miner takes his rough diamond to a cutter, whom he pays a wage to cut the diamond, the cutter owns the resulting cut diamonds he produces?  And when the cutter pays a jeweler to mount one of the cut diamonds in a gold ring, the resulting diamond ring produced by the jeweler belongs to the jeweler?  In a system that worked according to this principle, why would anyone be motivated to do anything except steal?  --Serge 21:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So the diamond miner is supposed to be more motivated when he doesn't get the diamond?  Hmmmm.  —Jemmytc 17:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Serge's comment does not indicate that. Your rebuttal doesn't address the issue he raises which is that if it is the case that "the laborer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced" then it is the case that multiple individuals could own the same property simultaneously. But more importantly he is suggesting that a rebuttal to the concept probably exists and should be provided for the article to be balanced. 216.36.186.2 (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps Proudhon was referring to a right more akin to copyright than to physical possession.--Cwiddofer (talk) 03:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Giving ownership to the one who provided labor is no more absurd than giving ownership to the one who provided capital. They both contributed. 68.226.67.24 (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Absurd notion 

message: These two quotes are completely contradictory:
: He proposed that "the laborer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced."
: "Property [is] a triumph of Liberty. For it is born of Liberty ... Property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State, because it shows no reverence for princes, rebels against society and is, in short, anarchist." 
Further explanation/clarification is needed.   --Serge 22:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Proudhon's philosophy of property was developed in a number of works and it is contradictory since he changed his views. -- Vision Thing -- 08:47, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradictory quotes 

message: "Property is theft !" is a slogan which is coined much sooner than Proudhon's book. It is first used by Brissot. Direct quote from Marx : "But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in the general legal concept of “property,” “la propriété,” he could not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before 1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: “La propriété’ c’est le vol.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm
:According to Robert Graham, "The claim that Proudhon took this phrase from the Girondin, J.P. Brissot de Warville, repeated by Marx after his break with Proudhon, has been decisively refuted by Robert L. Hoffman in his study, Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P.J. Proudhon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 46-48."  Anyway, I added mention of Brissot. —Jemmytc 17:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an old Christian saying, commonly attributed to St. Basil the Great.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.108.214.98 (talk) 16:45, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  He did not coined the slogan 

message: Is there any way we can get rid of this?  Right now, it looks absurd: the TOC follows the majority of the content.  I added a section heading, "Background", after the first two paragraphs -- just to move the TOC up, where it makes more sense to be.  Someone removed it.  Fine by me, it was just a hack.  But there has to be some way to get rid of the TOC?  Anyone?  —Jemmytc 21:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The magic incantation is __NOTOC__ --EmbraceParadox (talk) 14:41, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of contents 

message: Right, this edit war stops here. Either we come to consensus on what should be in the article, pursue dispute resolution or disengage from this article. Anyone makes a tendentious reversion, I'm going to recommend they be blocked. Skomorokh 13:05, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Enough 

message: I've protected the article temporarily so that the dispute can be resolve somewhere else than in the article itself.  The participants may wish to avail themselves of the dispute resolution options if they are unable to reach consensus here.  — Coren (talk) 14:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Coren. I've initiated a request for comment below. As someone of exotic tastes in political philosophy, I am in the unique position of being a participant in both WikiProject Objectivism (dormant) and the Anarchism taskforce. I've left comments with both asking for input here; I hope this is appropriate. Skomorokh 17:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit war 

message: Side comment I'm not participating in this RfC (i.e. you can go ahead and discount my opinion), but I would like to raise the issue of scope. We should decide whether this article is about the phrase "property is theft" in all its noteworthy uses and interpretations, or just about the phrase as Proudhon used and intended it. I would prefer the former; the non-Proudhonian material could be separated more forcefully than in the disputed version, i.e. instead of having a section on the "literal contradiction" of what Proudhon said ("no no no, this misunderstands Proudhon entirely"), we could have a section, late in the article, that said "The term has been noted outside the field of Proudhon scholarship by X, Y and Z in regards x, y, z". Thoughts? Skomorokh 11:00, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The expanded approach might solve some of the problems. Perhaps John Watts, who is also supposed to have used the phrase, could be included. Libertatia (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Scope

message: Vision Thing, would you check No Gods, No Masters, which I don't have here, to see whether the passage you added came from the System or from Confessions d'un révolutionnaire. Proudhon is referring to the System, and if I recall correctly the phrase "Property is liberty" appears first there (at least in the book-length texts.) Otherwise, that's a good start to clarifying. Libertatia (talk) 19:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In No Gods, No Masters chapter is titled The System of Economic Contradictions, but note indeed says "Extract taken from Confessions d'un revolutionnaire". -- Vision  Thing -- 19:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  System of Economic Contradictions? 

message: It seems to me that if, we simply fleshed out the history of Proudhon's use of the term, we would include enough potential logical contradictions to satisfy those dead set on seeing them, as well as clarify Proudhon's actual positions. As it is, the article doesn't do much. Minimally, it would be good to mention the works in which the phrase was featured and then at least these instances: 1) his 1842 explanation to the court of assize, where he said he wanted to universalize property-robbery; 2) Solution of the Social Problem, where he defined theft as "non-reciprocity" and added that "communism is theft;" 3) the System of Economic Contradictions, where he lays out explicitly the economic contradictions relating to property; 4) something from Theory of Property. Most of this could be easily furnished from the "Selected Writings" anthology. Libertatia (talk) 06:28, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Developing the article 

message: I'm sorry if this is mentioned in the discussion already & I didn't see it (there's so much) but I was wondering if anyone ever mentioned that with private property & all the fences the owners have to put up, like in wilderness areas, the fences prevent wild animals like deer & bears with babies from reaching food & water sources, so fences should be taken down? Stars4change (talk) 05:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Fences on private property

message: I've protected the article for a week, again, as things have devolved anew into edit warring.  Please settle down and agree on a consensus on the talk page about the final wording (and not basic principles you can then quibble over).  Further warring may lead to blocks.  — Coren (talk) 23:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: How do we agree on "final wording" when the scope of the article is unclear, and when there is a basic question about the proper application of critical sources that needs to be answered? Libertatia (talk) 01:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would recommend calm, rational discussion here on this talk page with a mind open enough to accept suggestions that do not exactly match your original position.  That seems to be the key to settling most disputes.  — Coren (talk) 01:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, having calmly laid out at least 5 reasons why the Branden criticism is neither appropriate, nor even a scholarly source, despite Branden's notability within other discourses, and having proposed a couple of compromises, I'm at a bit of a loss. I have not opposed a Criticisms section, despite the fact that both proposed criticisms seem to be partisan polemics of one sort or another. If it is Wikipedia policy that compromise is necessary even when it involves creating false impressions or advancing those sorts of polemics, simply because someone said something in print, then GIGO will have to rule. But there are very real concerns about at least 1) the accuracy of the criticism, beginning with the attribution to Proudhon of a different phrase than he actually used; 2) the scholarly nature of Branden's article, and the publication it appeared in (lack of references to Proudhon's texts, attack on "neo-mystics," etc; and 3) the lack of attention to the actual uses Proudhon made of the phrase. At base, Branden's article is not about Proudhon; it is an attack on philosophy professors who "victimize" students by taking any approach to language and logic other than the Rand/Branden one. Attending to 3) would make it clear that Proudhon does not treat ideas in the way the Branden claims, at which point it would be entirely inappropriate to include the criticism. But there needs to be some rationale for including the Branden material even as long as it will take to flesh out the article, and there doesn't seem to be any. Indeed, all the Wikipedia rules that make it difficult for us to use anarchist sources in anarchist articles ought to apply just as strongly to objectivist polemics. Libertatia (talk) 17:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The admins are useless.  "Talk it out, reach consensus" is all they ever say--in other words, "stop making a scene."  The admins will not get involved in--or even take the time to understand--the specifics of content disputes.  Apparently the WP orthodoxy does not admit the possibility of an infinite stream of bullshit which masquerades as good faith discussion as an edit-war strategy; and, anyway, it would take a lot of time and effort to verify that this is the situation with Wolfer, enough that nobody could be expected to put it in.  (Think of how much work it would require on Coren's part to verify your comments in the post above and you will see how hopeless is the situation.)  In any case, the only real recourse is to get SteveWolfer categorized as disruptive.  How to do that?  Well, maybe we'll find out.  (And here I thought he'd given up!  I wonder if he even read my comments to him; I wrote him a fucking essay, and then nothing...) —Jemmytc 10:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Meanwhile, RFC shows no consensus to include (and I didn't even add my silly "vote").  It's StevenWolfer against the world here--on the issue of whether the material should be included--so maybe it won't be too hard. —Jemmytc 10:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

text: Coren is here to tell us "the key to resolving most disputes."  The admins are living in a fantasy world where people come to agreement based on rational discussion as partners in a mutual search for truth.  Reality: the key to resolving disputes is that, in the general case, disputes don't get resolved.  People who are infected with a mind virus will not relent, will not listen, are not receptive to argument.  When you are arguing with Ferous Cranus, the only resolution is through power.  And Ferous Cranus can be found all over WP; WP policy cannot will him out of existence. —Jemmytc 12:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article protected.