The Corner

Rousseau On Private Property

Kind of makes it hard to like the guy. From a friend:

I think your learned reader may have missed some things, like this from JJR’s Discourse on Inequality:

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. Humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders, if only someone had ripped up the fences or filled in the ditches and said, “Do not listen to this pretender! You are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth are everyone’s property and that the land is no-one’s property!” ’

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