CONNECTION AND DIVERGENCE

I was moved to note the connection that Ayn Rand and Isaiah Berlin have (the Russian Revolution) and their divergent responses because of something Isaiah Berlin wrote about the great empiricist philosopher David Hume and the German irrationalist Johann Hamann (click on for larger image):



Last night I found another odd connection, this time betweem the libertarian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and one of the great defenders of laisser-faire, Ludwig Von Mises. You may recall one line from Proudhon:

Eventually, in 1838, a scholarship awarded by the Besançon Academy enabled him to study in Paris. Now, with leisure to formulate his ideas, he wrote his first significant book, Qu'est-ce que la propriété? (1840; What Is Property?, 1876). This created a sensation, for Proudhon not only declared, “I am an anarchist”; he also stated, “Property is theft!”

In his critique of Socialism in all it's flavors, Von Mises admitted that Proudhon was at least half-correct:

All ownership derives from occupation and violence. ... That all rights derive from violence, all ownership from appropriation or robbery, we may freely admit to those who oppose ownership on considerations of natural law. ... Violence and Law, War and Peace, are the two poles of social life; but its content is economic action.