Property is theft
The theme of “property” is really interesting. The more I study it, the more subtleties I discover that give me grist for my favorite idea “the innocence to exist”. I'll try to get to the bottom of it.
Definition of “property” - Dictionary of the French Academy: “12th century. Borrowed from the legal Latin proprietas, “proper character; right of possession, thing possessed”, itself derived from proprius, “which belongs to one's own, characteristic”. The right by which a good or thing belongs to someone, who can enjoy and dispose of it in the most absolute manner, within the limits established by law or by regulations. Ownership is acquired by contract, by inheritance or by prescription. He has the enjoyment, not the ownership, of the land. A title, a certificate, a deed of ownership. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to property. The government has taken steps to promote home ownership or, simply, ownership.”
(Note: “right” is an artificial human concept; nature only includes power. Law is a human invention. Right is therefore made by law. To say that a right is established within the bounds of the law is a pleonasm. )
(Reminder: laws made by dead people are not valid laws. Laws are dead with the people who made them. Any old law must therefore be invalidated immediately. A law applies to a partner only if he or she has accepted the law of the association. If that person is not under a valid contract, no law can be applied to him. No one can be forced into partnership. The term “society” used in the French Human Rights and Constitution is worthless if it means that France is an association. One cannot punish an associate who does not respect a rule he has signed, one can only remind him of the rule or kick him out of the association. Personally, I have not signed any social contract and I have never accepted the law of ownership, in particular. What about you?)
Those who are beginning to know me will not be surprised that I am still talking about the innocence to exist since it is the theme of this video series; if there is an implication to this innocence of our existence, it is the aberrant notion of property that we must talk about. In what way would the innocence to exist imply, as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon told us, that property is theft?
The term “property” has multiple meanings, so there is often confusion of meaning. (See the article on the meaning → The link is in the presentation.)
Owning something necessary for their existence to other people should not be a possibility. Owning the air, the water or directly or indirectly the food necessary for other living beings and especially humans, should be outlawed. Ownership of the soil should therefore be proscribed if the soil produces food or if it carries water or filters it. If the owner is supposed to do what he wants with his land, he cannot be allowed to pollute it, or do anything else with it, since this land can be used to feed others. The problem is the same with the Nations. Brazil, for example, owns the Amazon and its trees, which are a global public good necessary for World life; Brazil should not be allowed to do whatever it wants with it.
If property is theft, then you cannot take a piece of land, no matter how small. You cannot take a tomato that has grown on that piece of land and as a result of the tomato's acquisition of the soil elements that are that land. By eating the tomato necessary to maintain your body in a functioning state you become a piece of that land. You have appropriated the land and are a part of it that you cannot return (as it is). You cannot live without owning a piece of the land.
If property is theft; then the national territory is stolen property (from whom?) (Besides according to the definition this property was not subject to any contract, so the nation is effectively stolen territory.). And if ownership of national territory is theft then all subsets of private property within the nation are also theft. The nationals that we all are (in France for example) are collective owners of the Nation; and we are also the farmers. We are therefore both landlords and tenant farmers of the Nation. Isn't it strange that we have to buy a piece of land in this national land that is already ours from birth when we want to settle down? This is sort of a sub-ownership, the equivalent of a sub-lease. Everyone knows that the State can dislodge by simple déclaration of public interest an owner when he needs the land for a road layout, for example. (By selling us a piece of land that we already own, the state is cheating us.)
Proudhon was wondering how to make us all owners, but in a real Democracy we are, aren't we? Yet nowhere have I seen my name tag on any piece of national land!
Proudhon, like the vast majority of philosophers, does not really question the system. He fiddles with human logic. He tries to untangle a few nodes from the system, but it does not get out of the system. He does not try to see (at least he has not seen) where the human problem really comes from. While Proudhon questioned property, Darwin invented evolution and questioned the divine origin of humanity. Belle Epoque ! Today we can focus on the notion of innocence to exist which should challenge our individual and national relationships... Aren't you aware of your own innocence to exist? Are you not aware that basically you were “forced” into existence, that you were presented with the fait accompli of existence? (whether you're a rationalist, atheist, agnostic, believer, or whatever!)
Can the innocence to exist serve to demonstrate, more fundamentally than Proudhon does, that property is indeed theft?
Why compel us to exist if it is to fight against our fellow human beings who have not only accepted our birth, but who have demanded it so that we serve as their coerced associates (slave companions of slaves)? Why fight to acquire properties, only one property? Why fight to take over a corner of the planet, when that little corner should have been prepared well in advance to accommodate us? Are we human or just territorial beasts? And why make more humans than necessary, but necessary for what exactly? Isn't it the amount of humans that creates the need to grab a piece of territory to keep others from stealing it from us? But why take over a corner of the planet if we were few?
Can you find a single valid reason to perpetuate humanity or society, both of which are ultimately unsustainable? We serve to sustain the unsustainable! Think carefully. You don't exist, then you are “made”. Why? Why assemble elements of the universe to constitute the brief life of an actor recorder who records his own actions before disappearing? The more numerous we are, the less our acts modify the cultural system which evolves and will disappear with society and humanity. The more numerous we are, the less the individual has social impact, the less he is culturally important. Our as perfect understanding of the universe as possible will be useless in the end. The principle of existence of a conscious, sensitive, and intelligent entity is frankly absurd.
Your parents have the property of their bodies and therefore allow themselves to launch your construction starting from the elements which constitute them themselves, ovum and spermatozoid. It should therefore be deduced that since these initial cells as well as the replication mechanism of the ovum belong to them, you should belong to them once your construction is finished. If you made an in vitro baby or a clone of yourselves, would they belong to you? However, they would be real fabrications, all the initial elements of which belong to you as well as the work done! But the parents cannot bring themselves to do this since they themselves should belong to their own parents, who themselves, etc...
An owner of land is first of all the owner of the geographical place; a parcel of land bounded on the national territory. Is he the owner of the material located on this place? I think that in the current conditions of overpopulation we have the “right” not to be dislodged from a place for the duration of our life, which is not equivalent to being the owner of the ground. I don't own the air I breathe, but society should let me breathe clean air without my having to buy it. The same should be true for everything that keeps a body alive, healthy food and clean water. I am not the owner of my body, I am this body, and I have the right to have it function at its best all the time (society should be the guarantor of this since it has imposed its existence on me in order to associate me without my consent). But if I lose a limb, a useful part of my body, I am the owner of it; and this is the only case of effective ownership that we should have. But there are so many of us on earth that everyone is jealous of the one who has taken a place. All human problems are caused by the number of humans. There are too many of us. And since a single human being has no reason to exist in itself, why is this multitude necessary?
If the soil belongs to the owner, then the food produced on that soil by that soil belongs to him, and remains his property indefinitely since the soil remains his property. But since I buy the food, thus a part of the owner's soil, I become the owner of this soil which constitutes my body. It is as if a tree had to buy the ground on which it grows. I have therefore bought my body, which is forbidden by law. A man cannot buy himself in order to emancipate himself. To buy his food is to buy his freedom, it is to constantly want to get out of slavery without ever achieving it. But since it is forbidden for a human being to be enslaved and therefore to belong to another, then the soil, generator and precursor of human beings, cannot belong to anyone. And food, including water and air, must be freely given.
It must therefore be admitted that for the very essence of life, humanity has renounced the notion of ownership. A human being cannot belong to another human being. The ownership of another human being is not only forbidden by law and human rights, but it is considered as slavery. (This is hypocritically written, but it is not in fact since we all buy our bodies after being forced into existence to serve).
There are far too many of us on earth and this leads to inextricable situations and systems. We are owned indirectly through money since we are forced by the needs of our bodies to buy our food and therefore our own lives. Capitalism has reduced us to this. If this is not slavery, what is it? The owners of the money (the thieves of this money), the capitalists and the rulers of the Nation are our owners. They steal our life by forcing us to acquire it by our work. It is an exchange by blackmail, without saying it openly, “you work or you suffer”! They tax us and impose our work on us; not our money, our work, therefore our life, therefore our body.
Our work is our life time, our body is working. It is not an abstract concept that is at work. When our body (our head) works, it is in the power of the one who makes it work. We are during our working time the property of our bosses. And since we are subjected to this duty by need, by suffering and therefore by blackmail, we are indeed non-free objects belonging to other people. A percentage of freedom is no freedom at all. Our body is stolen from us. The life, which was imposed to us to serve, serves indeed to the society. We are social property.
Ownership of our bodies by others than ourselves is not only theft, but slavery. Yet society forbids even indirect slavery. Our lives, which our parents claim to have “given us,” are stolen from us by the society that makes the laws saying that slavery and theft are forbidden. This is aberrant.
You do not belong to your parents or to society. They have no right to you, no right of ownership; the law says so, human rights say so. And yet, try to escape from social property anywhere on the planet! In France you cannot feed yourself without working, and if you work you are taxed, that is to say that a part of your work, therefore of your time, therefore of your body, is monopolized by the State without your authorization. You thus belong de facto to the society. It is indirect slavery (because without saying it) which should be abolished like any slavery since the Law affirms it. The society has stolen you, as one steals an object. From whom did it steal you? Answer: from yourselves since you are also forced members of society. You are stolen thieves. It is up to you to put down this system. So stop giving birth for nothing. And to begin with, stop giving birth without understanding the general scheme.
You were forced to exist. Free will is not constrained; you therefore have no free will (the existence of free will is not a democratic decision; it is a fact, or not, possibly demonstrated by science), but you are innocent of existing and innocent of all the nonsense you do in your life; including by the very people who constrain you the most (leaders and capitalists who are therefore innocent of the crimes they commit). You can only defeat the system and fix it when you understand and accept it.
We went from subjects (of his majesty) to members (of a Nation). We have therefore acquired autonomy between partners. This autonomy between partners confers on us (if we accept the association since it is constrained) rights and duties (our freedom ends where that of others begins). Proudhon, like all philosophers, forgot the initial constraint imposed on us to exist. We are no longer subjects, but free beings and associates. We must therefore in this acceptance of freedom and the meaning of this libertarian system call into question all our human relationships, starting with the unwanted initiation by each of us to exist. We have all been presented with the fait accompli of existence, and as we are, human animal and not god. We are not the owner of anything, but we have the right to survive as humans since desired by existing associates, that is to say rich in our common heritage. Those who exist must prepare the existence as perfect as possible of those whom they will compel to exist for social service, possibly as partners; otherwise don't make children, don't make associates who wouldn't want to associate because the life you're offering them is too stupid.
We are all equals and associates from birth, and no one belonging to anyone means that the parents do not own their children who therefore lose their privileged link with their parents. This should lead in a national community to the abolition of inheritance by birth privilege, since if the parents do not own the children the converse is true, which implies that the children do not own the property of the parents. . Society has already abolished the birthright which should, by the principle of association, lead to the same result as the abolition of inheritance. The concept of family is recognized by the privileged tutoring of parents over their children, but that is not a property, tutoring can be taken away from them. There is a better solution to the particular heritage, it is the national heritage since we have all been forced to exist to serve society. We are all heirs of human culture and should share in it. We should receive from birth a Minimum Due of Existence (MDE); it would be the least we could do as humans to take us away from our bestial origin.
Try instead to invite others to exist!
End - E. Berlherm
Notes on Proudhon - Property :
Proudhon - Property: “...the law is the rule according to which social needs must be satisfied; the people do not vote it, the legislator does not express it: the scientist discovers it and formulates it.” → I confirm and add: I am not a scholar, but it is an absolute truth that we are all compelled to exist (with all the implications of coercion) for social needs (with all the implications of association) and that we are innocent to exist (with all the implications of our absolute innocence). The law must be made in this sense.
Proudhon - Property: “Whatever therefore the capacity of a man, as soon as this capacity is created, he no longer belongs to himself; like the matter that an industrious hand shapes, he had the faculty of becoming, the society made him into being. Will the vase say to the potter: I am what I am, and I owe you nothing?” → Proudhon took things upside down because of the ambient religiosity, it is not a benefit for anyone to have been made to serve. No person is made perfect, nor educated perfectly, nor installed in a perfect world. By what right do we make a person? What more right do we have to make it with all these imperfections? A person has every right to resent the person and his conniving associates who fabricated it. So anyone can say, “I am not a vase, I am a sentient, conscious being. I owe you my imperfections and the shit you put me in. I am only what I am, and if I am, and if I am only that, it is your fault. I didn't ask you anything. You presented me with the fait accompli of existence. It is you who owes me everything since you impose existence on me, and you take yourself for a human being, give me this existence and in the best conditions. Otherwise take care of me. I am no one's slave and obligated, let alone you and your accomplices. Life is not a gift, and for many life is a torment.”
Proudhon - Property: “Indeed, if under the terms of the social pact, property has equality as a condition, from the moment when this equality no longer exists, the pact is broken and all property becomes usurpation.” → at birth we are all equal, and all up against the wall. We all have the right to climb it (the right, but not necessarily the ability). This wall is pyramidal and everyone has the right to try to reach the top. But we are not all born at the same time, and when we are born another is already at the top of the pyramid and most are already far above us. So where is the equality? Not to mention the many birth and lifetime disabilities, and the urge to climb the wall; not everyone has a taste for climbing. If you are put up against the wall without your consent, are you required to climb?
Proudhon - Property: “On the sign of these sumptuous stores that his indigence admires, the worker reads in large letters: it is your work, and you will have none; Sic vos non vobis!“ → It was you who built this yacht, but you will never sail on it. It was you who built this palace but you will never live in it. You built this Rolls, but you'll only get a nail. You produced this caviar, so eat turnips.
Proudhon - Theory of Property (1866): “The French Republican Constitution of 1793, which defined property: “The right to enjoy the fruit of one's labor,” was grossly mistaken; it should have said: “Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of at one's will the property of others, the fruit of the industry and labor of others.” → Proudhon could go further and say that to dispose of the labor of others is to be the owner of others.
