WEBVTT NOTE 8. Interpersonal Relations: Ownership and Aggression 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.320 Chapter 8 Interpersonal Relations, Ownership and Aggression 2 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:15.020 We have so far been discussing the free society, the society of peaceful cooperation and voluntary 3 00:00:15.020 --> 00:00:17.820 interpersonal relations. 4 00:00:17.820 --> 00:00:23.300 There is, however, another and contrasting type of interpersonal relation, the use of 5 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:27.800 aggressive violence by one man against another. 6 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:33.340 What such aggressive violence means is that one man invades the property of another without 7 00:00:33.340 --> 00:00:35.620 the victim's consent. 8 00:00:35.620 --> 00:00:41.600 The invasion may be against a man's property in his person, as in the case of bodily assault, 9 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:47.280 or against his property in tangible goods, as in robbery or trespass. 10 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:53.320 In either case, the aggressor imposes his will over the natural property of another. 11 00:00:53.320 --> 00:01:01.960 He deprives the other man of his freedom of action, and of the full exercise of his natural self-ownership. 12 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:08.040 Let us set aside for a moment the corollary but more complex case of tangible property, 13 00:01:08.040 --> 00:01:13.520 and concentrate on the question of a man's ownership rights to his own body. 14 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:16.040 Here there are two alternatives. 15 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:21.400 Either we may lay down a rule that each man should be permitted, that is, have the right 16 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:28.480 to the full ownership of his own body, or we may rule that he may not have such complete 17 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:30.340 ownership. 18 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:37.340 If he does, then we have the libertarian natural law for a free society as treated above. 19 00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:45.000 But if he does not, if each man is not entitled to full and 100% self-ownership, then what 20 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:46.880 does this imply? 21 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:54.240 It implies either one of two conditions, one, the communist one of universal and equal other 22 00:01:54.240 --> 00:02:02.240 ownership, or two, partial ownership of one group by another, a system of rule by one 23 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:05.100 class over another. 24 00:02:05.100 --> 00:02:13.120 These are the only logical alternatives to a state of 100% self-ownership for all. 25 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:17.920 Professor George Mavrodis of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Michigan 26 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:25.600 objects that there is another logical alternative, namely that no one owns anybody, either himself 27 00:02:25.600 --> 00:02:29.600 or anyone else, nor any share of anybody. 28 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:35.520 However, since ownership signifies range of control, this would mean that no one would 29 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:42.680 be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish. 30 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:45.720 Let us consider alternative two. 31 00:02:45.720 --> 00:02:52.620 Here one person or group of persons, G, are entitled to own not only themselves, but also 32 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:59.740 the remainder of society, R. But, apart from many other problems and difficulties with 33 00:02:59.740 --> 00:03:06.080 this kind of system, we cannot here have a universal or natural law ethic for the human 34 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:07.480 race. 35 00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:13.340 We can only have a partial and arbitrary ethic, similar to the view that Hohenzollerns are 36 00:03:13.340 --> 00:03:16.640 by nature entitled to rule over non-Hohenzollerns. 37 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:25.280 Indeed, the ethic which states that Class G is entitled to rule over Class R implies 38 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:31.340 that the latter, R, are sub-human beings who do not have a right to participate as full 39 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:36.000 humans in the rights of self-ownership enjoyed by G. 40 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:41.200 But this of course violates the initial assumption that we are carving out an ethic for human 41 00:03:41.200 --> 00:03:44.800 beings as such. 42 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:47.400 What then of alternative one? 43 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:55.920 This is the view that considering individuals A, B, C, no man is entitled to 100% ownership 44 00:03:55.920 --> 00:03:57.720 of his own person. 45 00:03:57.720 --> 00:04:04.840 Instead, an equal part of the ownership of A's body should be vested in B, C, and the 46 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:08.680 The same should hold true for each of the others. 47 00:04:08.680 --> 00:04:14.080 This view, at least, does have the merit of being a universal rule, applying to every 48 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:19.680 person in the society, but it suffers from numerous other difficulties. 49 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:25.900 In the first place, in practice, if there are more than a very few people in the society, 50 00:04:25.900 --> 00:04:33.120 this alternative must break down and reduce to alternative two, partial rule by some over 51 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:34.400 others. 52 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:41.040 For it is physically impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and 53 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:47.480 thereby to exercise his equal share of partial ownership over every other man. 54 00:04:47.480 --> 00:04:54.800 In practice, then, this concept of universal and equal other ownership is utopian and impossible, 55 00:04:54.800 --> 00:05:00.260 and supervision, and therefore ownership of others, necessarily becomes a specialized 56 00:05:00.260 --> 00:05:02.880 activity of a ruling class. 57 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:10.080 Hence, no society which does not have full self-ownership for everyone can enjoy a universal 58 00:05:10.080 --> 00:05:11.520 ethic. 59 00:05:11.520 --> 00:05:18.640 For this reason alone, 100% self-ownership for every man is the only viable political 60 00:05:18.640 --> 00:05:21.680 ethic for mankind. 61 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:26.600 But suppose for the sake of argument that this utopia could be sustained. 62 00:05:26.600 --> 00:05:27.980 What then? 63 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:34.380 In the first place, it is surely absurd to hold that no man is entitled to own himself, 64 00:05:34.380 --> 00:05:42.020 and yet to hold that each of these very men is entitled to own a part of all other men. 65 00:05:42.020 --> 00:05:46.100 But more than that, would our utopia be desirable? 66 00:05:46.100 --> 00:05:52.380 Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without 67 00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:56.620 prior approval by everyone else in society? 68 00:05:56.620 --> 00:06:03.260 Clearly, no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. 69 00:06:03.260 --> 00:06:09.640 But if a world of zero or near-zero self-ownership spells death for the human race, then any 70 00:06:09.640 --> 00:06:15.740 steps in that direction also contravene the law of what is best for man and his life on 71 00:06:15.740 --> 00:06:17.300 earth. 72 00:06:17.300 --> 00:06:23.580 And as we saw above, any ethic where one group is given full ownership of another violates 73 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:29.540 is the most elemental rule for any ethic that it apply to every man. 74 00:06:29.540 --> 00:06:34.900 No partial ethics are any better, though they may seem superficially more plausible, than 75 00:06:34.900 --> 00:06:39.460 the theory of all power to the Hohenzollerns. 76 00:06:39.460 --> 00:06:46.620 In contrast, the society of absolute self-ownership for all rests on the primordial fact of natural 77 00:06:46.620 --> 00:06:53.380 self-ownership by every man, and on the fact that each man may only live and prosper as 78 00:06:53.380 --> 00:07:00.380 As he exercises his natural freedom of choice, adopts values, learns how to achieve them, 79 00:07:00.380 --> 00:07:08.180 etc., by virtue of being a man, he must use his mind to adopt ends and means. 80 00:07:08.180 --> 00:07:13.500 If someone aggresses against him to change his freely selected course, this violates 81 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:14.820 his nature. 82 00:07:14.820 --> 00:07:17.900 It violates the way he must function. 83 00:07:17.900 --> 00:07:24.340 In short, an aggressor interposes violence to thwart the natural course of a man's freely 84 00:07:24.340 --> 00:07:32.140 adopted ideas and values, and to thwart his actions based upon such values. 85 00:07:32.140 --> 00:07:37.780 We cannot fully explain the natural laws of property and of violence without expanding 86 00:07:37.780 --> 00:07:41.580 our discussion to cover tangible property. 87 00:07:41.580 --> 00:07:47.100 For men are not floating wraiths, they are beings who can only survive by grappling with 88 00:07:47.100 --> 00:07:50.820 with and transforming material objects. 89 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:54.740 Let us return to our island of Crusoe and Friday. 90 00:07:54.740 --> 00:08:00.780 Crusoe, isolated at first, has used his free will and self-ownership to learn about his 91 00:08:00.780 --> 00:08:07.240 wants and values and how to satisfy them by transforming nature-given resources through 92 00:08:07.240 --> 00:08:09.940 mixing them with his labor. 93 00:08:09.940 --> 00:08:14.140 He has thereby produced and created property. 94 00:08:14.140 --> 00:08:18.520 Now suppose that Friday lands in another part of this island. 95 00:08:18.520 --> 00:08:22.060 He confronts two possible courses of action. 96 00:08:22.060 --> 00:08:29.180 He may, like Crusoe, become a producer, transform unused soil by his labor, and most likely 97 00:08:29.180 --> 00:08:33.180 exchange his product for that of the other man. 98 00:08:33.180 --> 00:08:40.100 In short, he may engage in production and exchange, in also creating property. 99 00:08:40.100 --> 00:08:42.700 Or he may decide upon another course. 100 00:08:42.700 --> 00:08:48.540 He may spare himself the effort of production and exchange, and go over and seize by violence 101 00:08:48.540 --> 00:08:50.980 the fruits of Crusoe's labor. 102 00:08:50.980 --> 00:08:55.100 He may aggress against the producer. 103 00:08:55.100 --> 00:09:00.700 If Friday chooses the course of labor and production, then he in natural fact, as in 104 00:09:00.700 --> 00:09:06.900 the case of Crusoe, will own the land area which he clears and uses, as well as the fruits 105 00:09:06.900 --> 00:09:08.860 of its product. 106 00:09:08.860 --> 00:09:14.860 But, as we have noted above, suppose that Crusoe decides to claim more than his natural 107 00:09:14.860 --> 00:09:20.820 degree of ownership, and asserts that, by virtue of merely landing first on the island, 108 00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:27.180 he really owns the entire island, even though he had made no previous use of it. 109 00:09:27.180 --> 00:09:34.300 If he does so, then he is, in our view, illegitimately pressing his property claim beyond its homesteading 110 00:09:34.300 --> 00:09:53.140 Some theorists have maintained, in what we might call the Columbus Complex, that the 111 00:09:53.140 --> 00:09:59.460 first discoverer of a new, unowned island or continent can rightfully own the entire 112 00:09:59.460 --> 00:10:03.140 area by simply asserting his claim. 113 00:10:03.140 --> 00:10:08.800 In that case, Columbus, if in fact he had actually landed on the American continent, 114 00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:14.140 and if there had been no Indians living there, could have rightfully asserted his private 115 00:10:14.140 --> 00:10:17.440 ownership of the entire continent. 116 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:23.520 In natural fact, however, since Columbus would only have been able actually to use, to mix 117 00:10:23.520 --> 00:10:30.600 his labor with, a small part of the continent, the rest then properly continues to be unowned 118 00:10:30.600 --> 00:10:36.200 until the next homesteaders arrive and carve out their rightful property in parts of the continent. 119 00:10:37.560 --> 00:10:43.720 A modified variant of this Columbus complex holds that the first discoverer of a new island or 120 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:50.600 continent could properly lay claim to the entire continent by himself walking around it or hiring 121 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:57.880 others to do so, and thereby laying out a boundary for the area. In our view, however, their claim 122 00:10:57.880 --> 00:11:04.740 Time would still be no more than to the boundary itself and not to any of the land within it, 123 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:11.700 for only the boundary will have been transformed and used by man. 124 00:11:11.700 --> 00:11:17.180 Let us turn from Crusoe and Friday and consider the question of a sculptor who has just created 125 00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:23.140 a work of sculpture by transforming clay and other materials, and let us for the moment 126 00:11:23.140 --> 00:11:27.760 wave the question of property rights in the clay and the tools. 127 00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:33.060 The question now becomes, who should properly own this work of art as it emerges from the 128 00:11:33.060 --> 00:11:35.540 fashioning of the sculptor? 129 00:11:35.540 --> 00:11:40.180 Once again, as in the case of the ownership of people's bodies, there are only three 130 00:11:40.180 --> 00:11:42.060 logical positions. 131 00:11:42.060 --> 00:11:47.380 One, that the sculptor, the creator of the work of art, should have the property right 132 00:11:47.380 --> 00:11:54.660 in His Creation, 2. that another man or group of men have the right in that creation, that 133 00:11:54.660 --> 00:12:02.300 is, to expropriate it by force without the sculptor's consent, or 3. the communist solution, 134 00:12:02.300 --> 00:12:07.660 that every individual in the world has an equal, quotal right to share in the ownership 135 00:12:07.660 --> 00:12:09.940 of the sculpture. 136 00:12:09.940 --> 00:12:15.020 Put this starkly, there are very few people who would deny the monstrous injustice in 137 00:12:15.020 --> 00:12:20.520 in either a group or the world community seizing ownership of the sculpture. 138 00:12:20.520 --> 00:12:25.020 For the sculptor has in fact created this work of art. 139 00:12:25.020 --> 00:12:31.000 Not of course in the sense that he has created matter, but that he has produced it by transforming 140 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:37.420 nature-given matter, the clay, into another form in accordance with his own ideas and 141 00:12:37.420 --> 00:12:40.140 his own labor and energy. 142 00:12:40.140 --> 00:12:46.440 Generally, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must use and transform 143 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:52.900 material natural objects in order to survive, then he has the right to own the product that 144 00:12:52.900 --> 00:13:00.480 he has made by his energy and effort into a veritable extension of his own personality. 145 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:05.080 Such is the case of the sculptor, who has placed the stamp of his own person on the 146 00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:09.700 raw material by mixing his labor with the clay. 147 00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:15.540 But if the sculptor has done so, then so has every producer who has homesteaded or mixed 148 00:13:15.540 --> 00:13:19.580 his labor with the objects of nature. 149 00:13:19.580 --> 00:13:24.660 Any group of people who expropriated the work of the sculptor would be clearly aggressive 150 00:13:24.660 --> 00:13:30.420 and parasitical, benefiting at the expense of the expropriated. 151 00:13:30.420 --> 00:13:34.940 As most people would agree, they would be clearly violating the right of the sculptor 152 00:13:34.940 --> 00:13:39.500 to his product, to the extension of his personality. 153 00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:45.500 And this would be true whether a group or the world commune did the expropriation, except 154 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:51.500 that, as in the case of communal ownership of persons, in practice this expropriation 155 00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:58.240 would have to be performed by a group of men in the name of the world community. 156 00:13:58.240 --> 00:14:04.220 But as we have indicated, if the sculptor has the right to his own product, or transformed 157 00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:10.420 and Materials of Nature, then so have the other producers, so have the men who extracted 158 00:14:10.420 --> 00:14:15.340 the clay from the ground and sold it to the sculptor, or the men who produced the tools 159 00:14:15.340 --> 00:14:18.020 with which he worked on the clay. 160 00:14:18.020 --> 00:14:20.980 For these men, too, were producers. 161 00:14:20.980 --> 00:14:27.660 They too mixed their ideas and their technological know-how with the nature-given soil to emerge 162 00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:30.020 with a valued product. 163 00:14:30.020 --> 00:14:36.700 They too have mixed their labor and energies with the soil, and so they too are entitled 164 00:14:36.700 --> 00:14:40.540 to the ownership of the goods they produced. 165 00:14:40.540 --> 00:14:45.980 If every man has the right to own his own person and therefore his own labor, and if 166 00:14:45.980 --> 00:14:51.860 by extension he owns whatever property he has created or gathered out of the previously 167 00:14:51.860 --> 00:14:58.060 Unused, Unowned State of Nature Then who has the right to own or control the 168 00:14:58.060 --> 00:15:00.100 earth itself? 169 00:15:00.100 --> 00:15:06.060 In short, if the gatherer has the right to own the acorns or berries he picks, or the 170 00:15:06.060 --> 00:15:12.060 farmer his crop of wheat, who has the right to own the land on which these activities 171 00:15:12.060 --> 00:15:13.900 have taken place? 172 00:15:13.900 --> 00:15:19.980 Again, the justification for the ownership of ground land is the same for that of any 173 00:15:19.980 --> 00:15:21.740 other property. 174 00:15:21.740 --> 00:15:25.680 For no man actually ever creates matter. 175 00:15:25.680 --> 00:15:31.860 What he does is to take nature-given matter and transform it by means of his ideas and 176 00:15:31.860 --> 00:15:33.760 labor energy. 177 00:15:33.760 --> 00:15:39.300 But this is precisely what the pioneer, the homesteader, does when he clears and uses 178 00:15:39.300 --> 00:15:45.260 previously unused virgin land and brings it into his private ownership. 179 00:15:45.260 --> 00:15:51.580 The homesteader, just as the sculptor or miner, has transformed the nature-given soil by his 180 00:15:51.580 --> 00:15:54.360 is labor and his personality. 181 00:15:54.360 --> 00:16:00.220 The homesteader is just as much a producer as the others, and therefore just as legitimately 182 00:16:00.220 --> 00:16:03.040 the owner of his property. 183 00:16:03.040 --> 00:16:09.120 As in the case of the sculptor, it is difficult to see the morality of some other group expropriating 184 00:16:09.120 --> 00:16:12.720 the product and labor of the homesteader. 185 00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:18.920 And as in the other cases, the world communist solution boils down in practice to a ruling 186 00:16:18.920 --> 00:16:19.920 group. 187 00:16:19.920 --> 00:16:37.420 Furthermore, the land communalists, who claim that the entire world population really owns the land in common, run up against the natural fact that before the homesteader, no one really used and controlled and hence owned the land. 188 00:16:37.420 --> 00:16:47.420 The pioneer or homesteader is the man who first brings the valueless, unused natural objects into production and use. 189 00:16:47.420 --> 00:16:57.420 And so, there are only two paths for man to acquire property and wealth, production or coercive expropriation. 190 00:16:57.420 --> 00:17:06.420 Or, as the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer perceptively put it, there are only two means to the acquisition of wealth. 191 00:17:06.420 --> 00:17:12.420 One is the method of production generally followed by voluntary exchange of such products. 192 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:16.420 This is what Oppenheimer called the economic means. 193 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:25.420 The other method is the unilateral seizure of the products of another, the expropriation of another man's property by violence. 194 00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:32.420 This predatory method of getting wealth, Oppenheimer aptly termed, the political means. 195 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:39.420 Now the man who seizes another's property is living in basic contradiction to his own nature as a man. 196 00:17:39.420 --> 00:17:47.420 For we have seen that man can only live and prosper by his own production and exchange of products. 197 00:17:47.420 --> 00:17:52.420 The aggressor, on the other hand, is not a producer at all, but a predator. 198 00:17:52.420 --> 00:17:56.420 He lives parasitically off the labor and product of others. 199 00:17:56.420 --> 00:18:08.420 Hence, instead of living in accordance with the nature of man, the aggressor is a parasite who feeds unilaterally by exploiting the labor and energy of other men. 200 00:18:08.420 --> 00:18:23.420 Here is clearly a complete violation of any kind of universal ethic, for man clearly cannot live as a parasite. Parasites must have non-parasites, producers, to feed upon. 201 00:18:23.420 --> 00:18:33.420 The parasite not only fails to add to the social total of goods and services, he depends completely on the production of the host body. 202 00:18:33.420 --> 00:18:48.420 And yet, any increase in coercive parasitism decreases ipso facto the quantity and the output of the producers, until finally, if the producers die out, the parasites will quickly follow suit. 203 00:18:48.420 --> 00:19:02.420 Thus, parasitism cannot be a universal ethic, and in fact, the growth of parasitism attacks and diminishes the production by which both host and parasite survive. 204 00:19:02.420 --> 00:19:10.420 Coercive exploitation or parasitism injure the processes of production for everyone in the society. 205 00:19:10.420 --> 00:19:21.420 Any way that it may be considered, parasitic predation and robbery violate not only the nature of the victim whose self and product are violated, 206 00:19:21.420 --> 00:19:27.420 but also the nature of the aggressor himself who abandons the natural way of production, 207 00:19:27.420 --> 00:19:38.420 of using his mind to transform nature and exchange with other producers for the way of parasitic expropriation of the work and product of others. 208 00:19:38.420 --> 00:19:44.420 In the deepest sense, the aggressor injures himself as well as his unfortunate victim. 209 00:19:44.420 --> 00:19:52.420 This is fully as true for the complex modern society as it is for Crusoe and Friday on their island.