The theft of wood

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The theft of wood and the 'origins' of Marx's critique of political eocnomy. Barbara Harriss-White writes:

 'At the age of 24 and soon after completing his doctoral thesis, Marx wrote the Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood (1842), in which he recognized private property as theft, the interests embodied in it as antithetical to those represented in customary law and the state as the guardian of private property. Arguably, the seed of his later political economy was germinated by this early analysis of wood theft which he wrote for the Rheinische Zeitung' (p. 102).

 Let us then now read such Debates. More later.

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