Taxation is theft

A popular claim made by right-libertarians is that taxation is theft.

Materialist analysis

In purely materialist terms, property rights are only meaningful in as far as they are enforced by some authority. The holder needs to be assured that whenever another person infringes on his rights, this activity will be stopped, and the perpetrator punished. Without this, the supposed rights do not exist, outside of maybe in someone's imagination. Understanding this, it is obvious that taxation cannot be theft, since taxation is always levied by the same authority that enforces property rights in the first place. This authority demands that, if you want the possibility to hold property, you must accept that you're subject to taxes. It is part of the deal.

Therefore, we can conclude that "taxation is theft" is not a material claim, but idealist to the core. Rather than describe the current material reality of property relations, it refers to some personal utopia where property law is arranged perfectly like the speaker wishes it to be. Property is thought of as an abstract truth that exists over and above the real activity of human beings.

A similar analysis can be performed of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's claim that "property is theft." While this claim very clearly stresses the fact that poverty only exists through violent deprivation, it is formally incorrect and needs to be taken metaphorically, since before we can speak of "theft" we must first already have a concept of "property." Proudhon himself knew this, and explained the precise sense in which it had to be understood at the start of his book What is Property? (1840).