An-Caps, An-Coms, & Property
4/10/15

 

“Hi. I have a few questions about personal and private property. From what I know, personal property is fine with anarcho-communists but they want to abolish private property and personal property is anything that is not land and such. Now what I want know are a few things
1). To what extent do an-caps believe in personal property? Private property?
2). Can private property be considered theft if obtained in a illegitimate way?
3). Can you be an an-cap and still be against privatization of certain things?
I love your page!  Thank you.”

 

 

 

I’m glad you enjoy the content I post.  Thank you!

 

1)  To what extent do ancaps believe in personal property? Private property?

 

I cannot fairly and justly speak for all ‘an-caps.’  However, I can tell you that the root of all an-cap ideology should be complete and total voluntary interactions.  This idea stems from the understanding that property ownership begins with your own body, mind, and time.  So in terms of that kind of property extending to others kinds, which would be equivalent to personal property, then the answer is yes.

 

In my book, Liberty Defined, I refine that idea further by stating every individual owns his / her three natural resources, time, intellect, and labor and all refinements of these three resources unless otherwise voluntarily and ABSOLUTELY free of duress entered into a contract with another; such as gainful employment where you refine your time, intellect, and labor with the tools and assignments offered by an employer.

 

Concerning the idea of property in terms of land and homes and ipods…only one of these things is not like the other.  The Land.  What constitutes land ownership?  Typically some kind of homesteading; or better known as making improvements to the land for some specific purpose that maintains and or improves the quality of the owner’s life in some regards.  There are other means to this but homesteading tends to be the most popular.

 

Today most of that is passed down via voluntary interactions and contracts.  Unless an offspring or descendent of a land-property can prove they have a stronger claim on the land via an unwarranted act of aggression or clerical error in the land’s property filing for common knowledge of its ownership, then the land belongs to whoever holds the strongest common knowledge claim on it in association with deeds, titles, etc.

 

So yes, an-caps believe in both since both kinds of property are required to maintain in order to fulfill all voluntary interactions.  An-coms beliving in personal property but not land property produce conflict in their ideologies that must appeal to some authority to determine which is which and when which becomes which.  This happens because personal property must start out as some kind of private-land property or be acquired from some private-land property.  (Such as needing to gather wood for a fire to keep warm, farm a field, or raise cattle for food.)  So in order for an an-com to be consistent he / she would have to respect property rights in both regards.

 

2)  Can private property be considered theft if obtained in an illegitimate way?

 

I am not certain I understand the basis of this question entirely; but I’m going to answer it in terms of the following:  Private property is considered an act of theft if it is not utilized by the individual claiming ownership over it in such a way that benefits more people than not.

 

I’ve heard similar statements before.  And I have absolutely no idea where they came from.  Private property cannot be considered an act of theft because others believe they can better utilize it.  I’ve had others also tell me that people should not own land beyond what they can maintain exclusively by themselves.

 

As far as I can tell such arguments are made almost exclusively, in my experiences, by those who fail to recognize a means of maintaining and or improving the quality of their lives by actually producing wealth (that which is useful in directly satisfying one or more of the four basics of life; sustenance, security, shelter, and happiness.)

 

However, the question you asked also made some emphasis on being acquired in “an illegitimate” way.  The property can be considered stolen and the current claim on it can be challenged as mentioned in my answer to the first question; but beyond that, I don’t think so.

 

3)  Can you be an ancap and still be against privatization of certain things?

 

The short answer is no.  To not privatize is to make public which is just a clever wording of government controlled.  So to claim to be an an-cap and want even just one thing not privatized would make that individual no longer an an-cap but a minarchist; an advocate for at least very, very limited government; an an-com perhaps.

 

An-caps, anarchists, and voluntaryists should all be about the same thing at their core; completely and totally against all unwarranted-not within the realm of self defense; your own specifically first and foremost-interactions against others. 

 

An-caps (anarcho-capitlists) is just a fancy term for being heavily pro-economic exchange with ZERO unwarranted interjections of others in such transactions.  In other words, an-caps are just focusing more on the economic exchange aspect of voluntary interactions; but still maintain that all interactions should be voluntary 100% of the time.

 

Anarchists are the same and there really is no need for the hyphen.  It’s just a slur created by a few to give a bad connotation to that specific set of anarchists as opposed to anarcho-communists.  But again, the differences between the two  (an-cap and an-com) is that an-caps should be pushing for 100% voluntary and duress free interactions while an-coms will justify the violation of consent to beings interacted with for some supposed greater good.