#propertarianism — Public Fediverse posts

despite the term’s appropriation by the US far right, “libertarianism” was originally a left wing, anarchist, and communist movement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

real libertarians sometimes call US far right guys “propertarians” - their philosophy has very little to do with freedom (& tends to be a gateway into authoritarian / fascist sympathies). Anyway, that said, I couldn’t personally care less about reclaiming the term - but it’s sort of a funny chain of ideological custody.

#libertarian #libertarianism #uspol #propertarian #propertarianism #fascism #gop #farright

Propertarians—neoliberals, “an”caps, and others who work ideologically for the propertied class—imagine that freedom can coexist with private property.

By that latter, I’m specifically talking about private ownership of the means of production, the resources and social processes we use together to materially and socially provision ourselves.

But what if you found yourself completely surrounded—enclosed, if you would, by other peoples’ private property?

Propertarians call this “entrapment” and add a kludge to their logic: if you’re entrapped by someone else’s property, you have a right to an *easement* to transition through their property.

On the other side, most of them* pretend, you’ll find unowned resources you can “homestead” by mixing your labor, transforming it magically into your permanently private property.

There’s a big problem with this idea, though: human beings have been around as a distinct species for probably over 200,000 years and we’ve inhabited most of the planet for tens of thousands of years:

“Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands.”

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118

There’s no more homesteading unowned land. That ship sailed millennia ago. Private property is utterly incompatible with any meaningful freedom to say no to others. There is no anarchism compatible with capitalism.

#anarchism #capitalism #ancaps #propertarianism #anticapitalism #property #privateproperty #archeology #anthropology