> "I think there are rights that don't depend on legal
>enactment or social convention. The right to freedom, not to be a slave, is
>one of them."
>
> Without enactment or social convention, what does a right mean?
It means there oughta be a law. Before the 13th Amendment existed, it should have been enacted, as the Abolitionsits argued.
You said
>"Property is a creature of the law, an entitlement purely enforceable by
>the
>state." but it's no less true of this "natural" right against slavery.
No, I think there are no natuarl property righst. Freedom is a natiral right, property is entirely conventional. That's my view.
The
>force of the "natural right" against slavery does not deter a pimp from
>beating a young girl into servitude, the force of the state - the group as
>a
>whole - does.
>
Sure, your point? I'm talking about what's right. How to make what's right effective is a different story.
>
> Okay, explain what you meant in this exchange:
>
>J.S.: "Except to democracies, law has generally been decreed from above by
>a
>King or other ruler, not agreed on by any popular body.
>
>dlaw: "The right to property is explicity guaranteed in the Constitution
>and
>is continuous throughout history, except among slave classes."
>
>J.S.: "That is, most of humanity for most of recorded history."
Just that most people haven't had a right to property in history; rather, they've been property. I wasn't saying that thsi fact had any moral implications by itself.
>
> I think you're clearly fence-sitting on this question of property rights
>because you can't resolve your belief that the bourgeoisie should be
>dispropriated with your understanding of law and the right of a person not
>to be dispropriated.
Not at all. I am not fence-sitting, and I think there is no natural right to property at all. Legal rights area nother story, but if we take over tomorrow and expropriate Bill Gates, etc., I will simply exult. The correct distribution of property and the best distribution of property rights depends entirely on what is socially useful to allow people to have.
So, you make the the distinction between "productive"
>and regular property and sneak in, by implication, this idea that the
>notion
>of property is somehow ahistorical.
Nit me, I think property is historical through and through. The dsitinction between productive and personal property is Marx's, or really, capitalism's,a nd it's not ad hoc. Ownership of productive property is power. Ownership of personal property is convenience.
>
> If I buy flour, yeast and water and make bread, that is both the product
>of
>my work and my personal property.
You are starting to highup on the chain. read my paper, I gave you the cite, ask me when you have done that; if you don't wantto raed minem I';ll give you other cites.
Are you proposing that a milliner should
>effectively lease his flour? He's not going to want it back when I'm done
>with it, is he?
Matter of fact, sort of yes. Here read Schweickart, Agaisnt Capitalsim.
>You say people don't have a right to
>the division of labor. That's crazy. Are you telling me that the person
>who fixes an irrigation pump should be able to tell me what to cook with
>the
>tomatoes he helped water? Suppose he doesn't like my chili recipe but the
>people I'm cooking for do?
I don't see how that follows from people not having a right to a division of labor. My point is just that a DoL isn't thes ort of thing one can have a right to, not without impsoing forced labor on others . . .
From each
>producer according to his ability, to each consumer according to his need.
>
That sounds good to me.
jks
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