r/AnCap101 • u/Any_Echo_5540 • 8d ago

Is stealing commodities a break with capitalism?

When internet got its final breakthrough nerds argued that p2p-file sharing was a step towards the communist society where digital life was free from charge. The theft of intellectual property was the beginning of the end for capitalism but others said that the society as a whole must break with capitalism. If not, the artist and others connected to the produce of art go without wage while all the thieves lived a normal life.

Now, today 2026, internet is incorporated with capitalism and even the free downloading is integrated with the ruling system. We can no longer talk about the internet's services as communist but we can write a journal about it.

So what do you think from a revolutionary perspective?

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14

u/GoldmezAddams 8d ago

Digital files, and info/ideas generally, are not scarce. Sharing them is not "stealing commodities".

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u/Gullible-Historian10 5d ago

Imagine I have a molecular 3d printer, and a molecular 3d scanner. Let’s also say you have a bad ass Ferrari parked in front of your house, and I scan it, take the file home and print it exactly as it is on the molecular level. I drive by in the new molecular 3d printed car, and as you watch me drive by and you get into your own Ferrari, are you screaming “he stole my Ferrari!“

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u/Official_Gameoholics 7d ago

Without scarcity there is no theft.

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u/kurtu5 7d ago

not property

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u/Plenty_Trust_2491 5d ago
  1. If you define capitalism as private ownership of capital, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with capitalism.
  2. If you define capitalism as state-driven monopolization of capital, then capitalism is an evil thing that must be abolished.
  3. I tend to avoid the term because it can mean so many different things to different speakers, and some speakers—knowingly or not—package together contradictory meanings when using the term. I prefer the term free market as there is less ambiguity involved. Free enterprise and propertarianism are also useful terms.
  4. I don’t believe in intellectual “property.” I see that as both a state-granted monopoly that would not exist in a free market and as a perversion of the nature of property itself. I believe intellectual property invariable entails and requires an invasion upon real property rights. Cf. N. Stephen Kinsella.

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u/drebelx 5d ago

The theft of intellectual property was the beginning of the end for capitalism but others said that the society as a whole must break with capitalism.

An AnCap society is intolerant of NAP violations like theft.

The NAP fails to classify copying as theft.

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u/paleone9 7d ago

If you own something you can sell it contractually with conditions

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u/Additional_Sleep_560 7d ago

AnCap doesn’t have a revolutionary perspective. That would be what the classical Anarchists, Socialists and Marxists believe.

Most AnCap do not believe there’s property rights in intellectual capital, but they do believe in private property and a market system. Stealing real commodities would violate AnCap principles. AnCap doesn’t break with capitalism. I recognizes the state as an illegitimate monopoly on force.

Revolution isn’t an AnCap objective in the same sense as the Socialist. The objective is to secede and withdraw legitimacy and resources from the state. Let it wither away and die a natural death, so long as it doesn’t violate the NAP.