Chapter 10 The Problem of Land Theft
A particularly important application of our theory of property titles is the case of landed property.
For one thing, land is a fixed, quotal portion of the earth, and therefore the ground land endures virtually permanently.
Historical investigation of land titles, therefore, would have to go back much further than for other, more perishable goods.
However, this is by no means a critical problem, for, as we have seen, where the victims are lost in antiquity,
the land properly belongs to any non-criminals who are in current possession.
Suppose, for example, that Henry Jones first stole a piece of land from its legitimate
owner, James Smith.
What is the current status of the title of current possessor, Henry Jones X?
Or of the man who might be the current possessor by purchasing the land from Henry Jones X?
If Smith and his descendants are lost to antiquity, then title to the land properly and legitimately
belongs to the current Jones, or the man who has purchased it from him, in direct application
of our theory of property titles.
A second problem, and one that sharply differentiates land from other property, is that the very
existence of capital goods, consumers' goods, or the monetary commodity, is at least a prima
There has been a facie demonstration that these goods had been used and transformed,
that human labor had been mixed with natural resources to produce them.
For capital goods, consumer goods and money do not exist by themselves in nature.
They must be created by human labor's alteration of the given conditions of nature.
But any area of land, which is given by nature, might never have been used and transformed,
and therefore any existing property title to never used land would have to be considered
invalid.
For we have seen that title to an unowned resource, such as land, comes properly only
from the expenditure of labor to transform that resource into use.
Therefore, if any land has never been so transformed, no one can legitimately claim its ownership.
Suppose, for example, that Mr. Green legally owns a certain acreage of land of which the
northwest portion has never been transformed from its natural state by Green or by anyone
else.
Libertarian theory will morally validate his claim for the rest of the land, provided as
As the theory requires, that there is no identifiable victim, or that Green had not himself stolen
the land.
But libertarian theory must invalidate his claim to ownership of the Northwest portion.
Now so long as no settler appears who will initially transform the Northwest portion,
there is no real difficulty.
Brown's claim may be invalid, but it is also mere meaningless verbiage.
He is not yet a criminal aggressor against anyone else.
But should another man appear who does transform the land, and should Green oust him by force
from the property, or employ others to do so, then Green becomes at that point a criminal
aggressor against land justly owned by another.
The same would be true if Green should use violence to prevent another settler from entering
Landing upon this never used land and transforming it into use.
Thus, to return to our Crusoe model, Crusoe, landing upon a large island, may grandiosely
trumpet to the winds his ownership of the entire island, but in natural fact he owns
only the part that he settles and transforms into use.
Or, as noted above, Crusoe might be a solitary Columbus landing upon a newly discovered continent.
But so long as no other person appears on the scene, Crusoe's claim is so much empty
verbiage and fantasy, with no foundation in natural fact.
But should a newcomer, a Friday, appear on the scene and begin to transform unused land,
Then any enforcement of Crusoe's invalid claim would constitute criminal aggression against
the newcomer and invasion of the latter's property rights.
Note that we are not saying that in order for property and land to be valid, it must
be continually in use.
The only requirement is that the land be once put into use, and thus become the property
of the one who has mixed his labor with, who imprinted the stamp of his personal energy
upon, the land. After that use, there is no more reason to disallow the land's remaining
idle than there is to disown someone for storing his watch in a desk drawer. One form of invalid
land title, then, is any claim to land that has never been put into use. The enforcement
of such a claim against a first user then becomes an act of aggression against a legitimate
property right. In practice, it must be noted, it is not at all difficult to distinguish
land in its natural virgin state from land that has at some time been transformed by
man for his use. The hand of man will in some way be evident.
One problem, however, that sometimes arises in the validity of land titles is the question
of adverse possession.
Let us suppose that a man, Green, comes upon a section of land not obviously owned by someone.
There is no fence, perhaps, and no one on the premises.
Green assumes that the land is unowned.
He proceeds to work the land, uses it for a length of time, and then the original owner
The owner of the land appears on the scene and orders Green's eviction.
Who is right?
The common law of adverse possession arbitrarily sets a time span of twenty years, after which
the intruder, despite his aggression against the property of another, retains absolute
ownership of the land.
But our libertarian theory holds that land needs only to be transformed once by man to
to pass into private ownership.
Therefore, if Green comes upon land that in any way bears the mark of a former human use,
it is his responsibility to assume that the land is owned by someone.
Any intrusion upon his land, without further inquiry, must be done at the risk of the newcomer
being an aggressor.
It is of course possible that the previously owned land has been abandoned, but the newcomer
Remember must not assume blithely that land which has obviously been transformed by man
is no longer owned by anyone.
He must take steps to find out if his new title to the land is clear, as we have seen
is in fact done in the title search business.
Of course, everyone should have the right to abandon any property he wishes.
In the libertarian society no one can be forced to own property which he wishes to abandon.
On the other hand, if green comes upon land that has obviously never been transformed
by anyone, he can move on to it at once and with impunity, for in the libertarian society
no one can have a valid title to land that has never been transformed.
In the present world, when most land areas have been pressed into service, the invalidating
of land titles from never being used would not be very extensive.
More important nowadays would be invalidating a land title because of a continuing seizure
of landed property by aggressors.
We have already discussed the case of Jones's ancestors having seized a parcel of land from
of the Smith Family, while Jones uses and owns the land in the present day.
But suppose that centuries ago Smith was tilling the soil and therefore legitimately owning
the land, and then that Jones came along and settled down near Smith, claiming by use of
coercion the title to Smith's land, and extracting payment or rent from Smith for the privilege
of continuing to till the soil.
It is that now, centuries later, Smith's descendants, or for that matter, other unrelated families, are now tilling the soil, while Jones' descendants, or those who purchased their claims, still continue to exact tribute from the modern tillers.
Where is the true property right in such a case?
It should be clear that here, just as in the case of slavery, we have a case of continuing
aggression against the true owners, the true possessors of the land, the tillers, or peasants,
by the illegitimate owner, the man whose original and continuing claim to the land
and its fruits has come from coercion and violence.
Just as the original Jones was a continuing aggressor against the original Smith, so the
The modern peasants are being aggressed against by the modern holder of the Jones-derived
land title.
In this case of what we might call feudalism or land monopoly, the feudal or monopolist
landlords have no legitimate claim to the property.
The current tenants, or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property.
And as in the case of slavery, the land titles should be transferred to the peasants without
Compensation to the Monopoly Landlords.
Note that feudalism, as we have defined it, is not restricted to the case where the peasant
is also coerced by violence to remain on the Lord's land to keep cultivating it, roughly
the institution of serfdom.
Nor is it restricted to cases where additional measures of violence are used to bolster and
should maintain feudal land holdings, such as the state's prevention by violence of any landlord's sale or bequest of his land into smaller subdivisions.
Such measures include entail, forcibly preventing the landowner from selling his land, and primogeniture,
coercively preventing him from bequeathing his land except intact to his eldest son.
All that feudalism in our sense requires is the seizure by violence of landed property from its true owners, the transformers of land, and the continuation of that kind of relationship over the years.
Feudal land rent, then, is the precise equivalent of paying a continuing annual tribute by producers to their predatory conquerors.
Feudal land rent is therefore a form of permanent tribute.
Note also that the peasants in question need not be the descendants of the original victims.
For since the aggression is continuing so long as this relation of feudal aggression remains in force,
the current peasants are the contemporary victims and the currently legitimate property owners.
In short, in the case of feudal land or land monopoly, both of our conditions obtain for
invalidating current property titles.
For not only the original, but also the current land title is criminal, and the current victims
can very easily be identified.
Our above hypothetical case of the King of Ruritania and his relatives is one example
All of a means by which feudalism can get started in a land area.
After the king's action, he and his relatives become feudal landlords of their quotal portions
of ruritania, each one extracting coercive tribute in the form of feudal rent from the
inhabitants.
We do not of course mean to imply that all land rent is illegitimate and a form of continuing
tribute.
On the contrary, there is no reason in a libertarian society why a person transforming land may
not then rent it out or sell it to someone else.
Indeed, that is precisely what will occur.
How then can we distinguish between feudal rent and legitimate rent?
Between feudal tenancies and legitimate tenancies?
Again, we apply our rules for deciding upon the validity of property titles.
We look to see if the origin of the land title is criminal, and, in the current case, whether
the aggression upon the producers of the land, the peasants, is still continuing.
If we know that these conditions hold, then there is no problem, for the identification
of both aggressor and victim is remarkably clear-cut.
But if we don't know whether these conditions obtain, then, applying our rule, lacking a
A clear identifiability of the criminal, we conclude that the land title and the charge
of rent is just and legitimate and not feudal.
In practice, since in a feudal situation criminality is both old and continuing, and the peasant
victims are readily identifiable, feudalism is one of the easiest forms of invalid title
to Detect.