Homesteading Principle e Feudalismo

Num texto de Rothbard (descrevendo as primeiras comunidades do colonos) intitulado "The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in the US" pode ler-se:

"Providence, the first refugee settlement, was founded in 1636 by the young Reverend Roger Williams. A political and especially a religious libertarian, Williams was close to the Levellers — that great group of English laissez-faire individualists who constituted the "extreme left-wing" of the republican side in the English Civil War. At first, the Williams settlement was virtually anarchistic. As Williams described it, "the masters of families have ordinarily met once a fortnight and consulted about our common peace, watch and plenty; and mutual consent have finished all matters of speed and pace."

But this anarchistic idyll began to flounder in a tragically ironic trap that Williams had laid for himself and his followers. Williams had pioneered in scrupulously purchasing all the land from the Indians voluntarily — a method of land acquisition in sharp contrast to the brutal methods of extermination beloved by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. But the problem was that the Indians had erroneous theories of property. As collective tribes they laid claim to vast reaches of land on which they had only hunted. Not having transformed the land itself, they were not entitled to all of the land that they sold.

Hence, Williams and his group, by purchasing all of this unsettled land, willy-nilly acquired these illegitimate land titles. Thinking that he had been generous, voluntaristic and libertarian, Williams (and his group) fell into the trap of becoming a feudalistic group of landowners. Instead of automatically acquiring the land in Providence that they homesteaded, later settlers had to purchase or rent the land from the original Williams claimants. The result was that Williams and his original colleagues, who had formed "The Fellowship", found themselves in the position of being oligarchic rulers of Providence as well as Providence's land "monopolists." Once again, as so many times in history, land-monopoly and government went hand in hand."