James Leroy Wilson's one-man magazine.

Friday, May 13, 2005

It's about land, not coercion

I wrote the following in an e-mail regarding Butler Shaffer's article at Lew Rockwell on how one's view of the state should be "top-down," with anarchists at the top and communists and fascists at the bottom:

I appreciate the article. I agree that, in terms of coercion, a vertical distinction is more appropriate than a horizontal one. I would keep the left-right spectrum in tact, however,for a different reason. The State's coercion of individuals springs from its monopolization of land. It is the ultimate landlord, the rent collector of all rent collectors. I think the left-right distinction is still the best means of describing one's view of private property in land, of exclusive and permanent land ownership. In the absence of the immoral, violent monstrosity called the State, four questions remain:

1. Will there still be classes of rent-collecters and rent-payers?
2. Should there be?
3. Why?
4. Would the rent-collectors (holders of land) become de facto States in and of themselves?

How one answers these questions would still place themin the left-right spectrum somewhere, much as the French Parliament. So there can be (and are) left-anarchists and right-anarchists (and communists on the left, fascists on the right).

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