Take Everything, Let "Society" Sort It Out | The Conquest of The Conquest of Bread, Part 4

Chapter 4 is titled "Expropriation," and (perhaps unsurprisingly) it is another chapter of assertions not backed up by significant arguments.

He advances the idea that everyone should have a skilled trade, and requires the capital goods necessary to ply that trade to fall from the sky, since expropriation is a great way to ensure that tools end up broken and in unskilled hands.

He attempts to muddy the waters by equating conquest by aggression (illegitimate) with lawful and voluntary trade (legitimate). He fails to provide any reasonable structure for property ownership.

Part of the problem with asserting there is no property is that property isn't just titles. Any good that can be consumed has an owner: the person who consumes it. One cannot simply abolish titles and assume "society" will figure out who gets to consume what.

He puts forward a nonsensical set of requirements on the conduct of those in control of capital goods and requires them to spend huge amounts of time in relatively unproductive labor. He makes another Physiocratic error assuming that the value of management, entrepreneurship, and training are zero.

He proposes a system that would seriously hamper the creation of capital, thereby reducing productivity. Then he, in gross contradiction, says that only a few hours' labor will be needed per day to enjoy all of civilization's highest benefits.

Finally, he drives the final nail into the coffin of his system by arguing for a non-falsifiable fallback for the judgment of his system's success or failure. Partial implementations of his system, he says, may make things worse, but only when expropriation encompasses all of humanity will things get any better. It is an argument only disprovable by the extinction of humanity.

Frankly, I was expecting a little more from a writer who gets so much respect. We may or may not continue with our conquest, but I feel vindicated at this point that the writings I've covered which claimed to debunk anarcho-communism were not beating strawmen.

For show notes, check my blog: https://marginalnonhermit.com/?p=724

Articles cited: David Gordon, "Violence, Homesteading, and the Origins of Private Property" https://mises.org/mises-wire/violence-homesteading-and-origins-private-property

Murray N. Rothbard, "For a New Liberty" https://mises.org/library/book/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

Peter G. Klein, "Entrepreneurship, Arbitrage, and Capital" https://mises.org/mises-wire/entrepreneurship-arbitrage-and-capital

Check out my new sci-fi novel, "Pursuit of the Heliotrope" https://a.co/d/4enGWzh

Intro music by Zakhar Valaha, courtesy Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/users/good_b_music-22836301/