in his article "confiscation and the homestead principle" [1969], murray rothbard, following the "homestead principle" (what in lockean terms is "appropriation" by labour), comes to some interesting conclusions, such as advocating for common ownership of land, worker ownership of factories and even racial reparations:
https://panarchy.org/rothbard/confiscation.htmlhe begins thusly,
<"The principle in the Communist countries should be: land to the peasants and the factories to the workers, thereby getting the property out of the hands of the State and into private, homesteading hands. The homesteading principle means that the way that unowned property gets into private ownership is by the principle that this property justly belongs to the person who finds, occupies, and transforms it by his labor."he sees the reappropriation of property (or the expropriation of expropriators) as an imperative aspect of this right of labour:
<"any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty."the question then arises, who is granted the right of the homesteaded property?
<"Take, for example, the State universities. This is property built on funds stolen from the taxpayers. Since the State has not found or put into effect a way of returning ownership of this property to the taxpaying public, the proper owners of this university are the “homesteaders”, those who have already been using and therefore “mixing their labor” with the facilities [.] This means student and/or faculty ownership of the universities."rothbard here directly states that property should belong to those who use it. he continues, stating that any entity which has government funding rightfully belongs to the public, since they pay for it:
<"Columbia University, for example, which receives nearly two-thirds of its income from government, is only a “private” college in the most ironic sense. It deserves a similar fate of virtuous homesteading confiscation […] But we must face the fact that it might prove the most practical route to first nationalize the property as a prelude to redistribution."after this, he begins to discuss slavery:
<"[in russia, 1861] The land should have gone to the serfs themselves, for under the homestead principle they had tilled the land and deserved its title. Furthermore, the serfs were entitled to a host of reparations from their masters for the centuries of oppression and exploitation. The fact that the land remained in the hands of the lords paved the way inexorably for the Bolshevik Revolution, since the revolution that had freed the serfs remained unfinished."rothbard is making striking remarks; that the bolsheviks were rectifying an historical exploitation, which should have been resolved by reparations from feudal lords. he then makes extrapolation to the negro slaves of the US, citing contemporary issues as directly causal to their lack of compensation from slavery:
<"The same is true of the abolition of slavery in the United States. The slaves gained their freedom, it is true, but the land, the plantations that they had tilled and therefore deserved to own under the homestead principle, remained in the hands of their former masters. Furthermore, no reparations were granted the slaves for their oppression out of the hides of their masters. Hence the abolition of slavery remained unfinished, and the seeds of a new revolt have remained to intensify to the present day. Hence, the great importance of the shift in Negro demands from greater welfare handouts to “reparations”, reparations for the years of slavery and exploitation and for the failure to grant the Negroes their land, the failure to heed the Radical abolitionist’s call for “40 acres and a mule” to the former slaves. In many cases, moreover, the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed."rothbard does not blame the negro for his own plight thus, but sees his struggle as one responding to historical inequalities (such as what led to the bolshevik revolution, but which should be solved by other means). he ends his article thus:
<"It is justice vs. injustice, innocence vs. criminality that must be our major libertarian focus."to me, this article is quite startling in its radical consistency to liberal values, from foundations in locke and original property. to me, marx's description of "primitive accumulation" and his consequent notion of expropriating expropriators [capital vol. 1, ch. 32] can be recontextualised in a liberal light, therefore, where a people whose property was stolen by the capitalist state must be returned to them.