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  • Hog [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Exactly, it's kind of not wrong at first: you are not free so long as you are not part of the propertied class, but then it just contradicts itself by asserting that private property laws... make society free??

    • ChapoBapo [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      "You are not free so long as you are not part of the propertied class, therefore we must protect the propertied class" like ???

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        It follows, you need property to be free, those with property are free, we need to protect property rights to protect freedom (of the property owning class).

        • ChapoBapo [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          You know not to be needlessly pedantic, and it's been a minute since I did took philosophy 101, but I'm really not sure it does follow, so lets just see here:

          • People who have a job, get an allowance or rely on charity are free only to the extent that someone else does not fire them or otherwise withhold that money
          • People who have property are free to use their resources without relying on others
          • People who have property must be protected
          • Therefore rules to protect property are necessary for true freedom

          But this is clearly not a good argument - if people require protection of their property to be free, then how are they more free than people who rely on others to protect their income?

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            I wasn't agreeing, I was just saying that the point I think it's trying to make is that true freedom is owning land, so you need to protect property rights to protect that freedom. Without property rights, you can't own land, so you can't be truly free.

            Like everything in capitalism, only commodity matters, so non-land owners do not exist beyond their acknowledgement by individual landowners through charity. Their freedom isn't even a question of import because non-land owners aren't real (in the capitalist sense).

            • joshuaism [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Meanwhile Mao says political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Let's ask Chinese landlords who is right!

            • ChapoBapo [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Yeah for sure I don't think anyone on chapo dot chat agrees with the textbook on the merits here

          • NonWonderDog [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I think the subsumed argument here is that freedom is given by someone more powerful, that the natural state of non-ownership is equivalent to slavery, and that the ultimate power is the state.

            For property owners, that freedom is given to them by the state in the form of property protections.

            For workers, that freedom is given to them by capital in the form of a paycheck.

            A worker without a paycheck is equivalent to a landlord without property, which is equivalent to slavery. Therefore all freedom springs from property protection, because if the state didn't guarantee freedom to the capital class then nobody would be free.

            Which is beyond batshit.

    • TalonOfAnathrax [none/use name,undecided]
      ·
      4 years ago

      No, that makes perfect sense as long as you assume that all the readers are part of the propertied class. You are free because you have property, so if we removed the property laws and you lost your property you would no longer be free.

      Obviously nobody who doesn't have property would ever be a part of this sort of course. "Can those people even read?"