Kevin Carson wrote: > As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the absence >of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two >criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) that >labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was >possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally >privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such privilege >were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of >value-added.
I haven't read Tucker, but I've always thought that Von Mises is correct when he says that the essential mark of socialism is that "one will alone, acts, irrespective of whose will it is" (Human Action, p 695.) To me, this "essential mark" implies an absence of private property rights. Alex Robson
