ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that property is constituted within a paradoxical field of vague boundaries, personal relations, poetry and violence. Property, piracy and State are connected. Piracy enabled private accumulation of disposable wealth – and has been hallowed by the State. The ordering system of property not only requires successful exercise of power and violence, but also may require what it brands as disorder to be justified. Libertarian pro-capitalist anarchists can argue that intellectual property laws infringe common 'heritage' and 'production', are a form of piracy, a monopoly corruption of the market, and even used to dilute responsibility for murder, as when potential poisons are concealed through those laws. Hume argues that while property – and the security of property – is fundamental to a well-functioning society, it is not a natural 'thing' but a relationship based in human patterns of imagining and habitual social life.
