PFP301 | Fusillo, Daniels, Dürr, Gabb, Kinsella, Discussion, Q&A (PFS 2025)

by Stephan Kinsella on December 8, 2025

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 301.

This panel discussion is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Alessandro Fusillo (Italy), Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple) (England), David Dürr (Switzerland), Sean Gabb (England), Stephan Kinsella (USA), Discussion, Q&A. Shownotes and transcript below.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Grok shownotes

PFP301 | Fusillo, Daniels, Dürr, Gabb, Kinsella Discussion & Q&A (PFS 2025)

In this lively Q&A session from the Property and Freedom Society 2025 conference, panelists Alessandro Fusillo, Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple), David Dürr, Sean Gabb, and Stephan Kinsella field audience questions on Swiss anarchism, ancient and modern slavery, voluntary contracts, gun culture, immigration in a stateless society, and the libertarian implications of pirate governance.

Key Topics & Highlights:

[0:02] The Röstigraben & Swiss Anarchism
David Dürr explains the “Röstigraben” — the cultural and linguistic divide between German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland — as a symbolic fault line reflecting resistance to centralization in Bern. He suggests that Swiss federalism’s horizontal structure may naturally evolve into anarchic coexistence, especially under external pressure from larger blocs.
[4:40] Slave Manumission in Ancient Rome
Sean Gabb discusses the high turnover of slaves in elite Roman households, driven by moral obligation, commercial incentives, and legal loopholes (e.g., freeing slaves to avoid torture-based testimony). While urban and domestic slaves often gained freedom, rural and mining slaves had near-zero prospects — fueling revolts like Spartacus.
[9:32] Switzerland 2048: A Path to Anarcho-Capitalism?
Dürr presents his speculative book imagining Switzerland stateless by 2048. Triggered by financial collapse — rating agencies downgrading federal bonds amid tax resistance — he views the state as a 5,000-year evolutionary mismatch with human nature, destined to fail.
[14:31] Panel Debate: Is Voluntary Slavery Libertarian?
- Kinsella: Firmly rejects Walter Block’s defense of voluntary slavery contracts. Following Rothbard, he argues that the human will is inalienable and forms the foundational basis of self-ownership — not homesteading or external acquisition. Thus, no verbal or written declaration can alienate one’s body or future liberty. He dismisses Block’s extreme hypothetical (a father selling himself to fund his son’s cancer treatment) as far-fetched and unconvincing. Kinsella acknowledges historical uses of slavery contracts in Rome as pragmatic workarounds (e.g., to bypass citizenship restrictions), but insists these were artifacts of a statist legal order — not justifications for permitting such contracts in a free society. As a hypothetical libertarian judge, he would void any slavery contract ab initio on public policy grounds, equating it to enforcing a murder-for-hire agreement.
- Dürr: Allows limited, time-bound voluntary membership in restrictive organizations — but never enforceable on non-signers.
- Gabb: Observes many prefer unfreedom (e.g., prisoners recidivating for structure).
- Fusillo: Calls state citizenship the true modern “voluntary” slavery — an invalid contract enabling conscription and human sacrifice.
[24:54] Ancient vs. Modern Slavery
Gabb contrasts race-based, hereditary New World slavery with the ancient world’s fluid, meritocratic version. Freed Roman slaves blended in; freed American slaves remained visibly marked. Roman law offered more humane provisions than English common law.
[28:18] Swiss Gun Culture & Decentralization
Dürr links Switzerland’s militia tradition (guns kept at home) to its decentralized ethos. Recent regulations reflect growing statism, but in anarchy, private defense services would emerge via market demand — not top-down control.
[34:32] Immigration Without a State
Dürr argues welfare magnetism, not open borders, drives mass migration. In a stateless society, competing charities and communities would fund aid selectively, reducing abuse and scale compared to monopolized state programs.
[37:26] Pirates, Property, and the American Revolution
Fusillo reveals his talk’s inspiration: pirate ships as proto-anarchist societies with democratic constitutions. Drawing on Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook, he ties pirate loot markets in colonial America to anti-elite sentiment. Were slave plantations “legitimate” property? Pirate theft, like early industrial displacement, raises Rothbardian questions about just title — challenging Marxist and mainstream histories alike.

A wide-ranging, provocative discussion blending history, law, psychology, and radical political theory — essential listening for libertarians and anarcho-curious alike.

Grok/youtube transcript

Röstigraben and Swiss Cultural Divide

[0:02]

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, we’ll start with the last speaker first. So, David, I found it very astonishing that in your talk you didn’t mention a single time—and to concur with me, you didn’t mention the Röstigraben and the Visa. So, please explain to us their significance for Swiss anarchism. Did I understand it correctly that you want some comments on the Röstigraben?

David Dürr: Do you know what the Röstigraben is in Switzerland? This is the frontier we have, so to speak, between a cultural frontier—between the German-speaking part and the French-speaking part. Or you can say the west of Switzerland, which is the Romandie where they speak French, and the western or central part which is Deutschschweiz where they speak German. There is a cultural difference, that’s true.

You can go back—my very simplified slides, historical slides—that is a part: Romandie culturally a part of France, one could say, simplified maybe not, but these south-eastern parts of France. While the rest of Switzerland, or the main rest beside the Italian-speaking parties, is part of the former Holy German Roman Empire. There are cultural differences and one often sees them, notices them if there are votes or if there are elections to the federal parliament, that some tendencies are stronger in the French part and others in the German part.

Then they speak of this Röstigraben. Röstigraben is a meal—baked potatoes, something like that—with this tip for Switzerland. Maybe I’m not quite sure, but I think in Romandie they eat less this Rösti while we eat it more in the German-speaking part. That could be, but it’s an interesting line. Not too seldom it has very much to do with resistance against the centre of this country, which is in the German-speaking part.

There is a nice play on words. If in Romandie, in the French-speaking part, there is a public vote, a general federal vote, and they think there is a tendency more to centralization—that Bern, which is the capital, tries to centralize—they say “Röstigraben,” which is a play on words meaning you’re restricted, you’re suppressed by the centre. That’s why they say this. This is nice, but it’s an important issue.

I would say if the anarchist principle can endure and be maintained, it’s still possible that all these parts are somehow together on a horizontal level. Maybe what is common for all of them is not to have a common entity. I can imagine, namely if around them are very strong blocks and maybe some totalitarian blocks also, that this is an aspect: not to be a member of anything around and internally not to have a centre. So this is my comment on the Röstigraben.

By the way, Rösti is something very good. I recommend it with sort of sliced meat and so on, but that’s another story.

Slave Survival Rates and Incentives for Manumission in Ancient Rome

[4:40]

Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Sean. I guess a couple times you mentioned that the slaves who did not die in slavery were a very small subset of the total population of slaves. I’m curious to know if you have an idea of what kind of percentage that subset makes up, and if there were any other catalysts or incentives to free a slave besides the conclusion of a contract or to marry them.

Sean Gabb: Statistics from the ancient world are very problematic, and that’s putting it mildly. We don’t have statistics and I don’t believe it’s possible to derive statistics. However, freeing slaves was considered in some respects an obligation on masters.

If, for example, a slave saved your son when he fell out of a boat, you were not legally obliged, but you were morally obliged to free the slave on the spot. If a slave did you a particular service, you were obliged to free the slave on the spot. Very often you would make an informal contract with a slave. As I said this morning, you look after my wife’s hair for the next seven years, make sure that she doesn’t have any serious complaints against you, and I’ll free you.

Many Roman households, wealthy Roman households, could have as many as four or five thousand slaves in them. Masters would need special officers called nomenclatores whose job it was to follow the master around, whispering in his ear, “Oh, that’s Genius. That’s the slave boy you won at a game of dice last month.”

How do you keep control of an army of slaves? As I said, you could terrorize them. You could hang them up on hooks and whip them. You could kill them. You could crucify them. You could do whatever you liked. But the result of that would be a rather fraught household. Or you could just free a seventh of them every year or something. Many masters took that approach, quite often because senators were banned from engaging in trade.

A senator who was rather commercially minded—and there were many of those—would free one of his slaves and set him up in business with himself as a sleeping partner. The senator would have a strong directing influence over the business, but formally it would be conducted by his freedman. So there were many reasons—moral and commercial and simple keeping-the-peace reasons—that would drive masters to free their slaves.

There was a time during Roman history, which came to an end largely in the second century AD, when it was legally useful to free your slaves. If you had committed a crime, your slaves could be examined—and you see, slaves had to be examined under torture. If you were accused of a crime, you would free all of your slaves so they couldn’t be examined under torture and compelled to give evidence against you. So there were many, many reasons for freeing slaves.

I’ve said that deriving statistics is difficult. It’s not always impossible. Of those people around Pompeii and Herculaneum who were able to afford gravestones, more than half were freed slaves. So that gives you some kind of idea for the turnover between slavery and freedom in the Roman Empire. But as I said, the great dark mass of slaves—the ones working in the mines, in the quarries, in the fields—they did not have much opportunity for freedom.

It is those slaves who fed the Spartacus slave revolt and the other great slave revolts in the late Republican period. They were the slaves who formed the armies of internal bandits who swept through the western provinces in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Sorry, I could talk at length about this, but I won’t. Does that give you a sort of answer?

Unidentified Speaker: It’s quite a crowd today.

Viability of Anarcho-Capitalism in Switzerland by 2048

[9:32]

Unidentified Speaker: My question is for David Dürr. I’m not sure if I really understood the 2048 thing. Do you think there’s a viable change in Switzerland to anarcho-capitalism in the next 30 years? In your book that unfortunately I cannot read because I don’t know German, do you talk about how this could happen? I’m not sure I totally got that.

David Dürr: I’m not sure whether I understood you acoustically correctly. Could you—

Unidentified Speaker: No, I’m sorry. I’m not sure if I understood the whole 2048 thing. Do you think in Switzerland there’s a viable change to anarchy in the next 30 years? In your book that unfortunately I cannot read because I don’t know German, do you talk about how this could happen? I’m not sure I totally got that.

David Dürr: If I understand you correctly, you wanted this program, so to speak, from 1848 to 2048. Of course this is in part wishful thinking also, or some daydreams. But I think one could imagine that things like that happen. What I try to do in this little book here is looking back—not from here what is the next step that goes there, but let’s assume we are in the year 2048. I will be then 96 years old and maybe young—sorry, yes—and maybe at that event present as a participant, and then looking back what went on which led to this development that this organization was liquidated.

Some thoughts I had: that the economic laws could have a strong influence, that rating agencies would say, “No, these federal bonds are not AAA anymore,” because there are some movements that challenge the right of the state to take taxes and to print money and all these crimes on the financial level. That’s why: are you really sure that it’s still AAA? Maybe one or the other or some media would then say no, perhaps not anymore, and so the interest rate goes up and they could not refinance anymore—things like that.

But of course in a way it’s wishful thinking, but there could be signs that go in this direction. I think in general such important changes—so overcoming the state, and of course ultimately not only in small Switzerland but also in other parts of the world—in any event, this is something that fundamental and that big that it’s hard to decide a program how to do it.

I would say if it takes place—and I’m generally quite confident that it will take place—then it’s interesting to look at it, to support it, to calm people that this is a good development and not a bad one—things like that. But once it is successful that states are overcome, then it’s because that was the development: because this concept of state did not prove viable with this species of Homo sapiens. It doesn’t fit to this species and that’s why it must disappear.

It’s not old. It’s just 5,000 years old, this principle, and this is very short compared with the cultural evolution of humans which is 100,000 years. So the state is an error of behavioural evolution. This is my theory, but it’s not more precise to answer this question that you have.

Panel Discussion: Compatibility of Voluntary Slavery with Libertarian Principles

[14:31]

Unidentified Speaker: My question concerns the entire panel and it’s based on a point raised by Sean in his talk about voluntary slavery. A few years back Walter Block started publishing a couple of articles. He made the case for voluntary slavery and he went so far as to assert that if it’s not possible in the libertarian legal code to admit of something like voluntary slavery, then this would be some sort of contradiction. I would like all of you to state what you think about this idea. Is voluntary slavery compatible with universal libertarian principles? If so, why? If not, why not? Very shortly, your one or two main considerations.

Stephan Kinsella: I’ve disagreed with Walter in person and in print on this issue. I agree with Rothbard that the body is inalienable because the will is inalienable, and the will is the source of ownership of one’s body, not homesteading. So there’s just no way to abandon your body by a mere declaration. I don’t agree with Walter.

The example he gives is: if you’re not permitted to sell yourself into slavery, terrible things could happen—like a father couldn’t sell himself into slavery to get money from a billionaire to pay for his son’s cancer treatment or something like that—which just seems too far-fetched. In Sean’s example, I think it was clever—the example Sean gave was like a type of green card, a clever workaround to Roman laws on citizenship. So if you didn’t have the state in the first place and the concept of citizenship, you couldn’t make the argument Walter makes that, well, if you didn’t have slavery, there wouldn’t be a way to have a workaround to the state’s immigration or citizenship laws.

No, I think Walter’s wrong on the voluntary slavery issue, and I’ve written in detail in print as to why slavery is a horrible institution. In those societies where it did exist, such as the Roman Empire, you can see contracts of voluntary slavery as an alternative to our own system of student loans, apprenticeship agreements, and all sorts of other things. But that does not justify any kind of voluntary or contractual slavery in our own society.

If I were a judge in a libertarian society, I would just rule any such contract as void from the very beginning. I’d rule it as void on the grounds of public policy or whatever you’d call that in a libertarian society. I just wouldn’t allow it, in the same way as I wouldn’t allow contracts for murder to be enforced. It’s of the same kind.

David Dürr: I think an interesting application of a slavery contract is being a member of the state. This is what we discussed already briefly. In a way you can ask: is it legal or is it enforceable in case it is disputed that somebody signs a contract to become a member of an organization that restrains and reduces his fundamental rights from morning to night, takes taxes from him, gives him regulations, things like that. What one can approve this?

There are many people who say, “I think we need the state in its very intrusive character—who takes taxes, who makes regulations about everything in all details. This is necessary and I agree that I become a member. I will obey all this.” I think that’s possible that somebody signs a contract like that. Of course, if it’s too tight—and this is also a principle one finds in all legal traditions of contract—if it’s too tight and too long, there comes the moment where you can notice and step back in contracts. There is something like a generation, 20 to 30 years, and then it’s enough. It’s not a precise deadline, but contractual obligations are valid, but not too long if they are too intrusive.

In principle, that could be possible. Once you sign a very strong membership into such an organization, it’s valid, but after a certain time at least you have the right to retreat from it and then to be free again. What is the most important difference, of course, with the state is that such contracts are only valid for those who sign it. You can become a member voluntarily and maybe tie yourself for 20 years or so, but not force anybody else. I think that’s the big difference, and this maybe makes the state, in a bad sense, slavery for those that do not sign and are nevertheless forced to obey all these restrictions. So it’s a new form of slavery, one could say.

Sean Gabb: I don’t know whether what I’m about to say is relevant really to this question, but I will make the observation that a large number of people do not want to be free and find freedom a terrible burden. In my experience in a prison, I found that about a third of prisoners actually preferred life in prison where they had to make no decisions for themselves than life outside. They didn’t want it for the rest of their lives, but they wanted it for a time because the burdens of freedom were too great.

In a sense they signed a kind of contract of voluntary slavery by making sure that they were caught and sent to prison—because in Britain you actually have to want to be caught by the police to be caught by them. Many of them did want to be caught. When they were released, many of them went and did some very silly crime in order to get back into prison. I don’t know whether that’s relevant to this question, but it is to me a remarkable psychological reality.

Alessandro Fusillo: Speaking of prisons, there’s this story of a guy who was condemned by an Italian court and they awarded him the possibility to serve his term at home with his wife, and he escaped from home and surrendered himself to the prison and said, “I’d rather be in prison than with my wife.” So maybe marriage can be seen as a form of voluntary slavery as well.

Jokes aside, I think voluntary slavery is an invalid contract, as Stefan was saying, because ownership of your body is inalienable and your will is inalienable—if it exists. I have doubts as well about free will, but still. The problem is I think the biggest example of so-called voluntary slavery that we have is membership of a state, because this is the common narrative: we are part of a social contract and we surrender some of our—or most of our—freedoms in exchange for security from this state. I think this is the biggest example of more-or-less voluntary slavery. They convince us that it’s voluntary. In fact, it’s not voluntary. It’s an invalid contract.

Which raises the question—and sometimes it’s a contract which entails the fact that you must accept to be killed for the state, because once there is conscription—and now we have the European Union clamoring again for war against Russia or whatever—if you are conscripted you are literally forced to give up your life in this contract of voluntary slavery. So it’s even worse: it’s a sort of human sacrifice on the altar of the state.

But if it’s a contract and if this contract is invalid, then there must be a way out of this contract. This is the whole question of libertarian philosophy. The contract with the state, first of all, it doesn’t exist, and second, if it exists, it’s an invalid contract. We have the right, as Herbert Spencer wrote, to ignore the state. This is the main issue about this form of voluntary slavery.

Key Differences Between Ancient and Modern “Shadow” Slavery

[24:54]

Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Dr. Gabb. What are the key differences between ancient slavery versus modern shadow slavery?

Sean Gabb: Thank you. Well, Sophia, there are a number of important differences. The most important, I would say, is that in North America and in the European colonial possessions in the New World, slavery after the middle of the 17th century became increasingly a matter of racial difference. The slaves were generally a different race from the master population.

There was the possibility of freeing slaves in, I believe, most of the American slave jurisdictions, but you no longer had the shackles on your wrist, but you still had the black skin on your body. In the ancient world, slavery was what you might call an equal-opportunity status. Anyone could be a slave. There were black slaves. There were German slaves with blonde hair. There were Syrian slaves. There were slaves of every possible sort. So there was no necessary continuing stigma if you obtained freedom.

There was some stigma for people who in their time as slaves had been prostitutes. These people suffered continuing infamy even after being freed. But generally speaking, if you were a slave and you were freed, you looked like everybody else around you. There was no continuing stigma. You might be looked down on by the upper classes—“Oh, he was a slave once,” you know—but that does not appear to have been a general belief. So that is the main difference.

I suppose this is not exactly answering your question, but Stefan is probably the expert on this. In those American jurisdictions which followed the Roman law, the treatment of slaves was generally somewhat more humane than in those jurisdictions which followed the common law, because Roman law has all manner of provisions built in for the management of slaves and for their discipline. Whereas in English common law, slavery was always rather difficult: were slaves human beings or were they simple pieces of property? Were they in the same category as farm animals and cats and dogs?

Whereas in the Roman-law jurisdictions of the New World, slaves were a separate class, subject quite often to the humanizing provisions of the later emperors. Does that answer your question? I think the main difference is that slavery in the New World was marked by racial differences. In the ancient world, there were no racial differences. Slaves could be from anywhere and very often were.

Swiss Gun Culture, Regulation, and Anarchism

[28:18]

Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Professor Dürr. Switzerland has always had a really strong gun culture, and probably this has helped to maintain the peace and the decentralization in the country. However, I believe that gun regulations have increased over time. Will you relate this to the loss of internal anarchy, and if these changes in Switzerland—gun laws—

David Dürr: To be frank, I don’t hear that well acoustically. Do you mean these problems like immigration? Did I understand?

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, like the gun culture that is really big in Switzerland. How is this loss in internal anarchism maybe related to and has affected this gun culture? Because I believe there has been an increase in gun regulations and stuff in Switzerland. I’m not sure, but that’s what I heard in the last years.

David Dürr: I’m still not sure whether I got your question. You mean these cultural differences we have?

Unidentified Speaker: No, the guns.

David Dürr: Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. Yes. Now I got it. I always have people that help me to understand. That’s good.

Yes, there is actually an old tradition in Switzerland that from military service you have your gun at home in your cupboard and you are ready every day to defend your country. That’s not that clearly the case today. At least one has the possibility—in certain situations you have even the obligation—to put it back after military service or repetition service; then you have to put it back. The argument is that it’s dangerous that so many weapons are around in private households. This is now your topic, this question.

What’s about in a society where there is no state and no public police, no official police, but people have their arms at home, their weapons at home? Yes, I think this is this general question that is, I think, heavily debated in the United States, for instance—that there are some very liberal attitudes that everybody has the right to buy and to have weapons; others say you have to regulate it much more.

I think there are statistics that there is not more violence if you are liberal with the weapons than if it’s regulated. Those that do want to commit crimes, they find their weapons somehow. Those who use it reliably and only if it’s necessary, they do not create the danger for society.

Maybe a general aspect here: if you imagine a country without a state—and in the case of Switzerland without having official soldiers with their weapons at home—who cares for the national defence? Which is a big issue, of course. That is not quite easy to answer, but the general answer I would say is: as soon as there is a demand for something like security, and also international security, there will be supply. There will be offers. There will be services that you can hire. There will be possibilities to coordinate such necessities with other countries.

I could imagine that in a process of overcoming the state, things like security—and namely international security—could be something that is not the first step. Maybe it’s one of the later steps that the international defence organization will be reduced. Did I get your question more or less at least?

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Only that I don’t know if it’s related—this recent regulation—with the idea that you say, the loss of the internal anarchy in Switzerland.

David Dürr: Again—can you help?

Unidentified Speaker: Is there a relationship between—

David Dürr: Yeah, yeah. Well, or maybe what about discussing it afterwards? It maybe goes too much into the details, and so I would be glad to. Yes.

Immigration Management in a Stateless Switzerland

[34:32]

Unidentified Speaker: I would want to make the question that you thought she said at the beginning: the relation between the internal anarchy in Switzerland and how immigration has been managed, and the changes—maybe in the immigration—how the immigration problem has been treated in Switzerland through the years with these changes.

David Dürr: Now this is immigration. Yeah, this is which I thought it was before. Oh yes.

So immigration: of course once you do not have a strong police at the border or things like that, then you just think you are overflowed by immigration. I don’t think that this is necessarily the case, because I think one of the strongest elements of these problems we know today in Europe generally is not that so many refugees are coming to these countries, but that these countries have programs to attract them. This is the social welfare state or some programs—maybe well-thought, I wouldn’t refuse that, maybe with good intentions—but nevertheless it is these programs that attract many refugees that are not really in an emergency situation, that just come here to profit from these programs.

In a society without states, I would say there are also programs, because people have a general attitude to help other people in case of need. But these will be different organizations—churches, charitable associations, things like that—which are in a certain competition also among them, that have to raise money, and they do have to be careful with these means. They will not be abused that easily than a monopolistic social welfare state.

I could imagine that this problem will be much smaller for a country that has no monopolized system of goodness towards poor people and towards refugees in need. Was that the question?

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah. Excellent.

Inspiration, Research, and Links Between Pirates and the American Revolution

[37:26]

Unidentified Speaker: Alessandro, thank you for your presentation. Three questions. Number one, what was the inspiration for choosing the topic? Number two, in your research, did you reference Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook, which is a book that covers the same topic? Number three, the title alluded to the American Revolution; could you provide a little more expansion on that linkage?

Alessandro Fusillo: The inspiration is mostly by chance. I like reading a lot and I stumbled upon the topic of pirates. I have always been fascinated with pirates, of course. So this is maybe one of the reasons. There’s lots of literature about pirates, as I told—unfortunately it’s mostly from Marxist writers like Christopher Hill or Marcus Rediker or Linebaugh. There are lots, but they are good books, so you have lots of information, especially statistical information, that you get a clear picture of the pirates.

There is in fact a libertarian book about pirates—an Austrian-economics analysis of the regulations of the pirate ships—by an author whose name is Leeson. It’s a very interesting book, and he says yes, they were criminals mostly, but their regulations were only dictated by self-interest. If you let self-interest free play, then you end up with a system which is just, at least for the people who belong to this subsystem—so the individual pirate ship. But they had also, we could say, international regulations, because there were relationships between pirate ships and they were regulated by basic principles that they all shared.

I don’t know The Invisible Hook—I will take the book. Okay, okay, Invisible Hook—yeah, okay, sorry, yeah, yeah. Okay, then yes, I studied this book and it’s a very interesting book. I think this is a very good libertarian interpretation of these regulations about pirates.

Then, last question: they are not only the pirates, but they are somehow connected with the American Revolution. First fact: pirates sold their loot in the British colonies in North America—sometimes legally, sometimes illegally—but there was a big relationship between pirates, Caribbean pirates, and the British colonies in North America. What pirates thought and how their life was, this influenced the people there. Of course, not only them—there were lots of people coming from England escaping maybe religious regulations and bringing with them the tradition of the English Revolution.

In my opinion this made sure that there was widespread popular support for the American Revolution. The American Revolution, of course—the heads of the revolution were the Founding Fathers. They were in a way aristocrats themselves. They were affluent people. For example, Jefferson held slaves himself, lots of slaves. They were very educated. They all were fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. It was an elite. But they could count on widespread popular support because these deeply ingrained ideas of liberty were very important in the American populace, which gave birth to the American Revolution.

Then there’s another topic, and this is very important. Of course pirates did violate private property because they stole. But the big question is—and this was a question raised especially by Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty—if we start considering legitimate the existing relationships of property, which is the starting point, then we should analyze if they are truly legitimate.

The question comes: is the private property of a slave-owning plantation owner in Jamaica legitimate? How would you consider stealing from the ship of such a person? Is the wealth of a big class of people legitimate? I think what happened in Britain—and which gave cause to lots of rebellions and at the end to an American Revolution—was some sort of revenge. There was a big class of people who felt disenfranchised because they were literally kicked out of their homelands in England or in Scotland or in Ireland, and they were expropriated. They wanted to have back their ownership, or maybe they wanted to take revenge on the same elites who stole from them—who stole the common lands, who stole the farms, and who exerted total control on the government.

At that time the global elites—which still dominate in the world—began winning and taking more and more property. The reaction, especially by the English state, was a very harsh reaction. There are stories about all the people who were hanged at Tyburn in London. I think Sean has one book about Tyburn—I bought it today, by the way; it was very interesting. They wanted to make an example. You could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief. Okay, at the time it was maybe a valuable property, but the defence of private property by the British Empire was very harsh.

The question arises: was it real property? Was it legitimate property? Did these masses of often criminals have a reason to try to get back what had been stolen? This is a big question, and this puts also in question the Industrial Revolution, because all these people who were evicted from their lands and who got to London—of course the early industries could offer them better living conditions than what they would have had on the land, where they would be quasi-slaves. It wasn’t a life very different from that of a Roman slave in some farm of some latifundist.

But still, these people—the story of the exploiting of these people by the Marxists, I think we should review it from a libertarian point of view. Sure, the story that the factory owner exploits the workers because he takes advantage of the plus-value is stupid because it’s a Marxist interpretation. But still these people had been evicted from their land before. So they had some claim to get back what they lost.

Again, the new organization both of agriculture and of manufacturing and of industry was way better in terms of productivity, and this is the reason why usually Marxist historians say, “Oh, it’s okay because it’s the progress of the materialist interpretation of history.” But still it was unjust for these people suffering from what happened. I think from the ethical libertarian point of view it would be important to review this part of history and not leave it only to Marxists.

[Applause]