So you can steal someoneâs property and your heirs can inherit it, as long as the the person you stole it from is dead, along with all of their relatives? This doesnât make any sense to me, but I think I need to read the entire thing.
Discussion
Itâs a long essay, Iâm paraphrasing.
Rothbardâs fundamental premise is the idea that each individual owns themselves and the property they create through their efforts. Nobody creates matter, we transform it, and through that transformation we create value. The sculptor doesnât create the rock, but transforms the rock into a sculpture through effort.
For land, the mixing of oneâs effort to improve and live on it is called homesteading. Rothbardâs homestead principle is that whoever uses/improves/lives on otherwise unowned land becomes its owner. No one else has authority over that land.
So if property (land or other) is stolen by anyone (the State, petty criminals or other), the property still belongs to the victim. That is, the victim holds title and is entitled to the return of the property.
As long as the thief and victim both live, itâs a simple matter. The thief must give back the property (and face possible additional punishment, which is out of scope for the essay).
The problem becomes more complex as you consider the thiefâs heirs, the victimâs heirs, and, crucially, the case where the victim and all the victimâs heirs are either unidentifiable or deceased.
To your point, it sounds bad to say that the thiefâs heirs get to just keep the property if all the victimsâ heirs are gone. But what is the alternative?
In an anarcho-capitalist frame (of which Rothbard is a paragon) thereâs no one else to whom to appeal. Thereâs the thief, the victim and their respective heirs. Anyone else is merely a disinterested third party bystander.
To get any other outcome, one would need to submit to a class-based society, where members of some class hold superior title. For example an aristocracy, monarchy or other State, which claims the right to adjudicate these kinds of disputes and whoâs word holds sway.
In order to have a free and equal society without rulers (anarcho-) and with private property (capitalism), the least-bad option seems to be to have deceased victimsâ property return to nature to be homesteaded/salvaged by the next person who comes along. In the unfortunate case of land theft that weâve been discussing, that would be the thiefâs heirs.
âFor land, the mixing of oneâs effort to improve and live on it is called homesteading. Rothbardâs homestead principle is that whoever uses/improves/lives on otherwise unowned land becomes its owner. No one else has authority over that land.â
This was the same argument presented in two treatises and was used by colonizers to âclaimâ what Locke defined as âunusedâ or vacant land from AmerIndians.
Others have argued that hunting and land-clearing certainly consti- tute use and occupation and, therefore, Amerindians have title to their traditional lands: they 'hunted all the country over âand for the expedition of their hunting voyages, they burnt up all underwoods in the country once or twice a year.
To circumvent this defence, opponents deployed the argument that only sedentary agriculture and improvement constitute the kind of use that gives rise to property rights and, therefore, hunting and gathering lands may be looked on as vacant wasteland.
It seems Rothbard believes the same thing and takes it another step beyond that and justifies the continuation of these claims. Which is convenient when dealing with a population without any written record of ownership, or who did not in anyway need to use the same institutions for record keeping.
I point out these things to highlight that these men whom many point out as heros for the sovereignty of the individual and personal freedoms, in fact used their definitions property to do the opposite of what they claimed to be doing. If we are to use their very definitions, oneâs they used to asset their freedoms in Europe, then itâs difficult to see how they could justify their actions in the colonies.
Subjective appraisal seems to be inescapable. Thereâs no objective line between stepping foot on a patch of land, occupying it seasonally, and enclosing it with a permanent fence.
David A. Freedman touches on this inescapable subjectivity towards the end of âThe Machinery of Freedomâ. I donât have the text in front of me, but the gist is that itâs subjective what one considers trespass. Somewhere between a single photon of light reflecting into oneâs eyes and outright breaking and entering. Thereâs no objective standard.
But in any case Iâd re-raise the question of what alternative is better? Suppose we reject Rothbardâs framing, that the thiefâs heirs are homesteaders if all the victimsâ heirs cannot be found. What ought to happen?
This is not a rhetorical question. What alternative framework would you recommend to solve the dilemma of historical theft in the present, where the victimsâ heirs cannot be identified or donât exist?
This is the question I have struggled with for a long time. I have not been able to answer it, but I do know that Rothbardâs is not good enough for me.