A relatively new blog set up by Kevin Carson is a nice counterbalance to the corporatists at the ASi and some of the wingnuts at Samizdata (where does that term come from I wonder - I worked out its counterpart Moonbat - I assume from George Monbiot - but wingnut?). This post on property and the meaning thereof, looked at three contrasting statements from Proudhon and is well worth a read.
On property, I'm sure someone has done it, but I never can work out why all these corporatists, defending the right of corporations to own property, never ask the question of how they acquired that property in the first place. In hunter/gatherer times, without formal ownership, there must have been some way of apportioning access to hunting and gathering lands. That may have involved violence, but seems just as likely to have been a form of timesharing access.
By the time we get to feudalism, when both land and people are property vested ultimately in the King, some form of violence must have been done to wrest control and to hold both land and people in this way. All modern property ownership in Europe can presumably trace its roots back to then, while in the US, the European settlers took the land they wanted from the indigenous peoples. To argue otherwise is to place yourself alongside the Boers and the roots of Apartheid.
I don't pretend to have studied the transition - although I'm sure Marx and others did - so if anyone has a pointer to where I start I would be grateful.
