What is Private Property?

Private Property and its roles are often misunderstood

Here I will speak of private property in the leftist and anarchist sense, instead of the more common capitalist “legal” meaning. In leftism and anarchism three main different types of property are used: Private Property, Personal Property, and Collective Property. Today I will be going over Private Property.





Private Property


In many countries private property legally applies to everything you legally own. This is only correct in a “capitalist” sense. In a leftist sense private property is property which is used to accumulate profit. It is something you own, but do not labor on or use wholly yourself.

This includes: Railroads, factories, restaurants, and other non-cooperative businesses.

This profit comes directly from the workers, there is no other place it could come from. Profit is not magically created, it is taken. For every person that gets resources without working, another works without getting the resources they are due.

Also for those of you who will say: “just get a better job”, there is a youtube video directly below.










Legal Fictions


To quote Max Stirner:

“Private property exists by grace of law. It is not a fact, but a legal fiction.”

Private property can only exist with a state. No anarchist society has had private property.

A group that is socially above the workers is needed to keep private property. In most societies this is seperated into multiple levels. The first level is a form of guards. As with the workers something above these guards is needed to keep the private property in control of the rich. This works all the way up until we find the highest power. This highest power must employ a force to keep all the other forces in check. This force must willingly become subservient to the private property owners at all times, or they will lose their power. Lies and propaganda are often used to keep them in line. This “highest power” is a direct extension of the governing body. This group is often called the police.

This means that the government and the rich are also an inseparable force and that the private property only exists through violence.




The Origin of Private Property


I am not going into the origin of the idea for private property. I am going into where the private property we use of today came from.

Originally no private property existed. The majority of property was common property, property, which was not owned or controlled by one individual. This common property was often used for farming, leisure, or anything else the people saw fit. This changed with the enclosure acts, the birth of modern capitalism. The property was stolen through legal and violent acts and turned into private property. This property was used to extract resources from the working class, the people which were unable to gain this property themselves. This system runs to this day.

It doesn’t matter if you “bought” the property, it was originally stolen from the people through violence.

This clip of a youtube video sums it up nicely:








Private Property and Freedom

Every anarchist (and communist) wish to abolish private property. Anarchy seeks to do away with unjustified hierarchies, which is the literal definition of liberty. I have shown that private property is only upheld and created through violence. This means private property and freedom are mutually exclusive.

The worker himself is forced to sell his liberty hour by hour to the capitalist class just to survive. Just because the system gives them the rare opportunity take rise and take resources from others, does not make the workers free.




Want to learn more about Anarchy and Leftism? Subscribe and Upvote!

Sort:  

This was a great introductory post for Steemit users on the technicalities of the distinctions of property types. Of course, a good book you should read, if you haven't already, Das Kapital.

I have 30+ leftist books sitting right next to me, I have to wait for that one lol

I think Rawls/Meade have the best seminal dieas on fairness with regards to property ownership. If Steemit itself adopted some of the ideas of a property-owning democracy, the platform would be far better off. As an anarchist you probably disagree with any private ownership whatsoever; I tend to think allowing private ownership in a limited capacity can allow for more pragmatic models. I'm also of the opinion that abolishing private property entirely will end up violating egalitarian principles it hopes to establish through it.

"will end up violating egalitarian principles it hopes to establish through it."

You mean getting what you produce is bad? What lol

Thanks for this great and impeccable article . Followed you as well and I hope I will see more article like this ! Cheers

I will definitely be making more like this one in the future ;)

Hi @anarchyhasnogods I've published a post about you, check it out if you can, thanks.

32 Best Steemit Bloggers Of The Day To Follow 27th July 2017

https://steemit.com/steemit/@jzeek/32-best-steemit-blogger-of-the-day-to-follow-27th-july-2017

You're so cool!

Very nice read, followed, etc.
Keep it up.

Originally no private property existed. [...] This changed with the enclosure acts, the birth of modern capitalism.
Wasn't it already private property if I hire a gang to only let them drink from the fountain if they pay a fee?

Can the property hierarchy be flattened non-violently without people lowering their status (which I use here as "status of living coming with wealth") themselves?

How does "trading working time for free time" work in anarchism vs. communism? What is it you lose by "not going to work" and thus have more free time. I suppose it's money going to your ledger that you could spend on things? My question here is if not working as much as my neighbor always means I lower my status, and if that's a good thing, and how this differs in the two systems.

And isn't the self-enhancing functionality of any steemit capital very centralizing?

"Can the property hierarchy be flattened non-violently without people lowering their status (which I use here as "status of living coming with wealth") themselves?"

What do you mean by this?

"How does "trading working time for free time" work in anarchism vs. communism? What is it you lose by "not going to work" and thus have more free time. I suppose it's money going to your ledger that you could spend on things? My question here is if not working as much as my neighbor always means I lower my status, and if that's a good thing, and how this differs in the two systems."

It really depends on the society you live in. The goal is for workers to get what they produce back from society. If they produce little they get little. That doesn't mean they have to work a lot though, less than 1/5th to 1/100th to get what they do now (depending on where they live)

"And isn't the self-enhancing functionality of any steemit capital very centralizing?"

all capital is self-enhancing, and yes.

What did he mean by this?

What I mean is that if now person A owns significantly more private propery than person B, how to move towards a better state, if person A doesn't just want to give away his stuff.

they are both bourgeois. It doesn't matter, that understanding can only take place under capitalism.

kill them both if they don't give it up to the workers

that's a extreme and easy solution I can't say I agree with extortion and murder, did you know that most of the french revolution went that way, then they had a dictatorship to blow off some steam, you know because democracy requires the expansion of territory especially when you kill maim and steal from your own people.

I see why communism didn't work so well, fascism either, neither does democracy, nor crapitalism, nor militocracy(meritocracy), you all refuse responsablity, blaming something else, if only there wasn't so much private property workers would be better off, well why? wouldn't they still have to work?

laws were put in place to have some backlash against what was deemed criminal, sure nowadays we are way past the point of having a conversation to solve problems, or having reliable law systems. But what if somebody steals, kill him/ what if they kidnap people, kill him? how is that fair? let's say your whole line you descend from worked their asses off to give you those 100 acres, should you give that up because you are forced to, how do you not see that you are doing the same as what you deem "bad" I'm not even going to say evil, that requires morality. So you think that problems will be solved if we can just scratch history and rewrite it to our fitting.

I'm not well versed in politics since there are so many shitty systems around, I might possibly read on your version of how to run the world, seeing as how I follow you but haven't read much of what you post about. I don't see why you are making things complicated, so if everybody owns the roads then what? no taxes? but everyone has to fix the roads? isn't that like compulsory prison time?

You're definitions have me perplexed, anyways I tend to dislike people who believe in systems of governance, you all oppose something, but you rarely do something different, it's not that you can't run a socialist or a communist system under capitalism, or for that matter somewhere else if you have such a problem with capitalists, you just don't, I tend to like people that actually live by their standards, if you don't want private property, give it up, don't call it personal but everyone elses private property should be owned by the not state, how is anarchy communism, why are you all just making a soup of governance without any rhyme or reason?

this sounds like a bad system where mistakes are committed on a massive scale because people just go by their whims and later have to backtrack to where things were working if they make a mistake, let me give you an example with github, if you make a project and everyone has the ability to change the code, but you remove the backlog that github keeps because dunno fuck it, it's public(private?!) property we don't need no order, then what, you have to rewrite it every time there is a mistake, you will always be doing great.

I can't figure this shit out, sorry for my "language" it's just how i think when I see no point, could be I just don't know enough, but than again there is information around so that's not a big problem.

Your post was good, it's just when the videos started that I was like fffffffff what?? ......... nonsense !??! nah I can't even rewatch them :| I get the what the fucks again.

This is going nowhere. keep it simple private is private call it profit property if you want to, private is owned by an individual or by whatnot else you want to have as a owner, if you want the state of non differentiated workers to own it, then wouldn't it be state property? but you don't want a state and you want communism so you want a so anarchy is no state, communism is what? workers own the means of production or whatever?

fuck it this is a good place to tie this to the beginning, sorry if I wasted your time(which shouldn't be possible) and thanks if you got this far, please stop adding more and more layers over foul wounds, call things what they are don't redefine definitions to fit your logic, that breaks the conversation people can have. this sounds like a bad terms of service where I normally read, we accept no responsibility, we might fuck you anywhere and anyplace anytime, but we love you, but you are a part of us whenever we talk together, only that we own anything you say, but you do too, but you don't really if we choose to, wouldn't you agree? I get it you don't want to throw trash and accept responsibility, you can't agree that systems in general are fucked, there should be one ok, just don't say that communism is great and socialism is awesome when they aren't that much different from the other shitty ones out there like imperialism and democracy, capaitalism or one of the many many other systems of ruling,, you are all making claims on personal opinion, what is democracy without a real conversation or a united populace, corporativism,

nevermind this is the air I'm getting either from my own mind or from viewing the post, either way as I've said, thanks I hope we can have a conversation so you can explain how I'm wrong with my assumptions. Took me a while to stop my reaction :D

"

I see why communism didn't work so well, fascism either, neither does democracy, nor crapitalism, nor militocracy(meritocracy), you all refuse responsablity, blaming something else, if only there wasn't so much private property workers would be better off, well why? wouldn't they still have to work?"

the difference is the workers will be getting what they produce and will be able to collectively decide the future of society. Think of the planners in the USSR. The workers in the area were always the ones leading every project.

20 million die a year do to poverty. This is because the ruling class does not allow them to freely labor and take what they produce. This means that can not get food, vaccines, or even shelter without begging a member of the ruling class.

The workers would get what they produce, 5 people own more than the bottom 50% of society. Why do you think property is more important than lives? You make me sick.

well you said you were ok with killing people for property, I only pointed out the obvious, we are dancing around a good? argument. I don't want to make you sick, it's not just the ruling class, people are not bound to not help they just don't out of many reasons. It's not that you can't get 5000 matraces made out of hay or something on a minimum wage, get a room rented or some old garage, build some huts on a abandoned farm, it's just that when you do either the police will come because of a complaint or in the worst case a ghetto will form, in case those people see no reason to change develop further or lack the means, first you need knowledge, then you can move in some direction, those people are being neglected by everybody not just the "ruling class" there are many assholes, I have helped here and there on my non wage, because I don't work, because call it capitalism, or call it naivete and stupidity and truth be told I've payed a higher price than if I didn't help (as far as money is concerned). People are getting robbed around me, it's not my fault I don't like stealing, but guess what they are workers and the ones that rob them aren't, I can't say they are criminals either, I view them as fucked up people in a fucked up place, if you want to know why, It's because I don't know the reason behind their state of affairs, they have had free education for decades, free support and child care, guess what they beat their children, teach them to steal, traffic people at worst, then they drink in the local dump, that's not the fault of any system, the ones who want out take the hard way and leave the toxic environment, change and most of the times don't look back, why, well they think their own people are beyond help, why, that beats me currently.

and here I am making people sick because I can't agree with double standards. Why wouldn't I value property when I get to take care of it for the next 20 years and some "helpless" person just wants to drink more, so yeah last time I helped I payed a salty price, around 1000usd out of my own pocket just to see how low some are, it's not that I couldn't call the police, it's just that I don't think violence solves problems, most of the times it causes more and costs lives in the process. now please tell me how I'm wrong, I've earned every single cent out of that and I have cost people around me nerves and some minor losses, why because I'm naive as fuck, so what if people need help are they missing arms or legs? probably not, guess what it's not just arms and legs that make up a human, there's also emotion and empathy and you can't help anyone when you see him lying in your eyes, you can't help anyone that doesn't want help but is rather happy to have what you and the people before you have earned died and starved for.

Also don't try to play emotional cards on me. oh think of the children and all that, I've had the pleasure to live in a separated family since birth, grown in a dusty cardboard apartment with windows barred with boxes, had more than a few run ins with people that can't think straight for a minute, so I've seen enough bullshit to not care about others and I still do, why, well that beats me, I've grown some morals over the years to not get wasted as fuck and deadbeat over how "terrible" the world is, hey trust me I like free vacations as much as the next guy, but not when some writer/politician/private owner has to go work himself to death in a labor camp until he gets why communism is great. Hey I support the party, it's all a scam in the end, the person next to you fucking you over for a better seat. That's why communism fails. greed and power. That's why it's not different from crapitalism.

but hey sorry for rubbing my sick off on you. I'm a bit spent to argue at the moment, I wasn't really in the mood in the first place, only I get quite triggered when I see people with pink glasses. Hey at least you are an anarchist and have some decency to respond, so thanks for that.

and mind you greed and hunger are normal for people, it's only when there are no standards set for a select few that they become a problem, capitalism has the evil banksters or whatnot, nevermind I tend to drag out arguments I hope you get my point.

"well you said you were ok with killing people for property"

no, I side I was ok with killing people who used violence to steal the property in the first place

right so I'm not even going to read that "free market capitalism" stuff, its retarded.

Capitalism would not exist without the police. The police upkeep laws to help the capitalists.

here is a nice video on the falling rate of profit.


and for good measure here is one destroying "anarchist" capitalism

" owner has to go work himself to death in a labor camp until he gets why communism is great"

actually the only people that get put there are those who actively fight against the will of the majority. Nice try tho

"it's just that I don't think violence solves problems,"

lmao

what will you do? Pray away the military?

you can't fix violence with non-violence, they will just shoot you and be done lmao

" keep it simple private is private call it profit property"

fuck off retard, not my fault you can't define anything

here is the wikipedia article on private property,

have fun retard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property

:) yay

"Private property in the means of production is criticized by socialists, who use the term in a different meaning."

hey I'm not retarded I can read and I can think too lucky me I'm a finger on a keyboard.

well that took about two minutes. Not that bad, luckily I didn't have to read 300 years of literature, also I'm now no where near understanding economics or politics either, probably right around where I was before I read it, still sane.

"just don't say that communism is great and socialism is awesome when they aren't that much different from the other shitty ones out there like imperialism and democracy"

see that massive dip right there? That's capitalism

also remember, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism

yeah we have the fall of the berlin wall, the collapse of the soviet union, mafia years and then the putin boom. how any of that helped any man is above me. plus that's just 10 years in life expectancy and it's not that high anyway. Hey I like communism when it gives jobs and spreads wealth and makes good reliable cars and the occasional

just quoting some random site,

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic," said Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). It is estimated that between 20 to 40 million people, mostly Russians, were killed by Stalin during his dictatorship (1924-1953). Stalin, the Soviet dictator, not only exterminated purported "enemies of the peoples" but also liquidated almost the entire slate of communist Bolshevik leaders, who had been his and Lenin's friends during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Great Leader, Joseph Stalin, in fact, killed in peacetime more communists of all nationalities, than all his fascist, Nazi, and Western democratic enemies combined.
http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/stalin-communists-and-fatal-statistics

here is another one

Marxist theory famously envisioned the “withering away” of the state upon the full attainment of Communism. That utopia never arrived in the USSR (or anywhere else for that matter). But with the collapse of Soviet rule, Russia has seen a pervasive and profound change in childbearing patterns and living arrangements—what might be described as a “withering away” of the family itself.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/drunken-nation-russia%E2%80%99s-depopulation-bomb

it's not just capitalism, it's the constant changing in definitions, the old getting sick and the young having no good example setting persones, the volatility of the times and the constant nagging of everybody as well as the whole loss of a unified reason to live, people just gave up in that time and started drinking, looting, scamming, probably one third of the population did some crap like that. How do you live in a world where the person next to you fucks you over? What happens when after 50 years or more you have nothing to show for yourself and everyone around you deems you the devil himself.

the articles were probably written by capitalists, I will go read what I have quoted to tell you if I agree with what is in there, because I probably won't, I tend to have my own opinion.

that's like that massive dip bitcoin prices made last week, the fact is so far communism and socialism have ended with totalitarian regimes and dictatorships. The good sides are there, so are the bad.

here is a nice video on how many people capitalism has killed

"that's like that massive dip bitcoin prices made last week, the fact is so far communism and socialism have ended with totalitarian regimes and dictatorships."

actually the ussr was run by a council lmao, I guess you just ate too much propaganda.

"yeah we have the fall of the berlin wall, the collapse of the soviet union, mafia years and then the putin boom. how any of that helped any man is above me"

yet when the capitalists fell, the lifespan skyrocketed. Double standards

"that's a extreme and easy solution "

private property only exists through violence and violence is the only option we have to change it. Do you know what happened when Chile tried to vote in a socialist?
The capitalists simply paid the truckers to stop moving food. People started starving until they took the socialist out of power, food was back literally the next day.

" call things what they are don't redefine definitions to fit your logic"

That's ironic because private property was actually first defined by marxism, you just changed the definition to fit your capitalist needs

well I'm all out of capital to call myself a capitalist. I know that everybody is guilty of wanting things to be different, it's interesting to know at what cost, all I'm saying is that when stuff gets redefined to fit some other purpose, people get killed in the process because they no longer fit, yeah people like stuff, but I don't like killing. I'd like to have a conversation and consensus where possible. or I think I would like to, I don't know myself well in extremes.

"people get killed in the process because they no longer fit"

actually the old property owners in the ussr got off very light, until they burned crops and salted land worsening a natural famine until it became one of the worst in history. (They did this because stalin wouldn't let them hoard grain to make money off of starving cities paying a premium.)

"but I don't like killing" too bad killing is the only way to keep capitalism in place

"I'd like to have a conversation and consensus where possible"

How about the workers democratically controlling the means of production, which are collective property not controlled by any one person?

oh wait sorry that's communism.

all I'm saying is that you want to play the same game, but want to have the rules in your favor like anybody else you are so much against. tell me why you can't make a company based on the virtues of communism, I bet you 50 hammers you can get 50 people willing to try it out.

oh here is a video of why "communist companies" can't work under capitalism. Turns out you just don't understand captialism, who would've thought

"White blood cells not being able to out-compete cancer cells doesn't show that cancer cells are better, only that they are better at spreading like a virus."

" tell me why you can't make a company based on the virtues of communism"

because a company making profit off of the workers will always have enough power to crush it.

It can only be a society. Again, those are almost always crushed by the far more massive capitalist countries. They are literally bombed to death, or destroyed through embargoes. Just look at cuba, only 350+ assassination attempts on the leader, by the United States.

"why don't you try to help jews in nazi germany"

"Wasn't it already private property if I hire a gang to only let them drink from the fountain if they pay a fee?"
I didn't notice this because the formatting rip.

Not really, it is not "owned" by them, only controlled. There is no legal framework around it, they are just basically robbing people tbh

I can't believe how cool you are, but you are.

This profit comes directly from the workers, there is no other place it could come from. Profit is not magically created, it is taken. For every person that gets resources without working, another works without getting the resources they are due.

Without working, yes, but maybe not without having worked? If I have spent the last 10 years of my life thinking up some process whereby I create a product, is it so unfair then if I put the workers to the job of making it? So let's say I create the iPhone. Tough work. Took me 10 years. I can't possibly mass-produce it enough by myself to repay all my labor. So I hire workers. Yes, I get most of the profit from their work, but they didn't labor 10 years to create the iPhone.

I can understand there can be counter-arguments to that though. Like, in real life, the people with the ideas aren't the ones getting the profit or owning the factories most of the time. The people with the great ideas are usually workers just like everyone else.

#1 just because you do something does not entitle you to the work of others.
#2 It is hard to measure the objective value of services but great inventors under socialism often get a lot of resources given to them.
#3 "most of the time." Not just most, I would say over 99.99% of the time, in fact they often do better under socialism

Cause this worked so great for the Soviet union, Cuba, North Korea, Brazil ?

also that guy is completely stupid. Communism is literally the workers taking the means of production back, which were stolen during the enclosure acts.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/

here is a nice book on how wage labor is oppressive. Have fun

socialism is where the means of production become collective property. North korea is not one of these, and the embargo is destroying them either way. In fact, an embargo by the country that supplies the majority of your food will almost always hurt the country.

you see that massive fall right there? That's the country turning capitalist. In fact, 80% of the population voted against this, but revisionism was too powerful.

here are some links on how life actually was in the ussr
http://writetorebel.com/2016/12/16/popular-support-for-the-soviet-union/
http://writetorebel.com/2016/11/25/the-successes-of-socialism-in-the-ussr/
http://writetorebel.com/2016/11/13/socialism-and-democracy-in-the-ussr/

and here is a nice video that calculates the death toll of capitalism

You're so cool!

You're so cool!