The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the States that were in rebellion as of 1 January 1863. No compensation was paid, because the US determined that that the slaveowners in those States did not have any property right in their slaves, so no property had been taken from them. At that time, however, the US did not determine that the slaveowners in other States did not have any property right in their slaves.
Thus, as of 1 January 1863, under US law, there existed a property right in slaves of slaveowners in the States that were not in rebellion, but there did not exist any property right in slaveowners of States that were in rebellion. In other words, the US annulled the property rights of some slaveowners but not of others.
So the claim that it is impossible to annul a property right in some members of a class of property without annulling that property right in all members of that class of property has a significant problem: By virtue of the Emancipation Proclamation, the US did exactly that.
And even after the Civil War ended, the US kept right on doing exactly that. Day after day, week after week, month after month, the situation under US law remained the same: There was such a thing as a property right in slaves owned by slaveowners in States which had not been in rebellion as of 1 January 1863, but there was no such thing as a property right in slaves owned by slaveowners in States which had been in rebellion as of 1 January 1863.
And that situation could have gone on even longer. It could be the case today. The Emancipation Proclamation did not require the Thirteenth Amendment.
Eventually, the US enacted the Thirteenth Amendment. By virtue of that change in the Constitution, the right to private property in human beings was annulled.
Anyone care to guess what the Leninists did?
This:
The Second Congress of Soviets, under Lenin, took an entirely different tack. On November 8, 1917, it declared: "The right to private property in the land is annulled forever."
The taking back of royals’ and (other) aristocrats’ real property – the kind of property referred to in
thestoat’s posting which triggered mine – would not, of course, be based on an annulment of all rights to private real property. It would, if the people of Britain were ever to gird up their loins and do what they should have done long ago, be based on the fact that the royals and (other) aristocrats did not have lawful entitlement in the first place to the property which is presently in their possession.
Taking property back from those who do not have lawful entitlement to possess has been embedded for centuries in the common law (from which the US legal system is descended). Placing such property in the hands of the government if its true owner cannot be ascertained is a similarly venerable practice. It is not based on the idea that the government is the owner of the property. Rather, it is based on the idea – in my opinion, an entirely sound idea – that it is better to place the property in the hands of the government in the hope (however faint) that its true owner may someday be ascertained than to leave it in the hands of the person who does not have any lawful entitlement to it.
So would confiscating the real property of British royals and (other) aristocrats be an exercise in Leninism?
Well, here’s a brain teaser:
The Leninists’ depriving landowners of real property by annulling all rights to private ownership of real property would be more like:
A. The US’s depriving slaveowners of slave property by annulling all rights to private ownership of slaves.
B. The British people’s taking back the real property in the possession of royals and other aristocrats, not by annulling all rights to private ownership of real property, but by determining that certain people in possession of certain real property are not lawfully entitled to possess that property.
Okay, pencils down.
Anyone besides
Lord My Utterances Are Not Merely The Standard By Which Truth Is Measured But The Very Engine By Which Truth Is Created Jim not get an “A”?
Reason is valuable only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe.
