If there is no private property.. can someone walk into my house if he wants to?

[PassTheBeer]

:confused:

[PassTheBeer]

Actually when I think about it.. is there a my house ? or do I have to share ? :thumbdown:

[Manic Impressive]

There is no your house but you do not have to share. There are enough resources to build everyone a house.

[Kuppo Shakur]

House? Sorry, but we'll all be living in caves in communism.

And you'll sleep with bears.

[syndicat]

it's necessary to distinguish personal possessions from productive property. productive property, as I define it, consists of land, equipment, buildings and so on that can be used by workers to make things (or provide services) that others want.

personal possessions are things people want for their own individual consumption or use, or of a household or family they are a part of.

socialism (at least in its libertarian form) is concerted to socialize ownership of productive property, not personal possessions, and to ensure that workers manage their work, their use of the productive property.

if you simply use your house to live in, it isn't "productive property". it's a personal possession. moreover, you control over it is part of your ability to self-manage your own life, to be free. so if a society is to be based on generalized self-management, as libertarian socialists propose, then this would include self-management of the dwelling you live in.

of course, at present some dwellings are productive property in that someone owns them, not to use them or live in them, but as a way to make a profit by renting them out, or speculating in their market sale. this is inconsistent with an authentically socialist conception of housing. it allows the land lord or speculator to exploit people who rent or buy houses to live in.

a house can be your house and still social at the same time. that's because, if no one is permitted to sell houses for a speculative profit (which drives up housing prices) or rent out houses to make a profit, this protects the social or common interest in affordable and resident-controlled housing. this is so even if it's "yours" in the sense you get to control it, have a use right in it, or even own it in some restricted sense. for example, at present there exists, even in capitalist countries, the idea of a resale restricted dwelling, sometimes created by nonprofit housing organizations. this means you can't sell it to make a profit, by selling at whatever you can get on a market. the resale restriction represents the social interest, even tho the house is owned by the resident.

for this reason, there's no reason for a socialist movement to end private ownership of dwellings by the family that lives in it, if we understand this as right of use, not a right to make a profit thru sale or rental.

the ability to exclude others from your dwelling is part of your control over your private life. it's part of what self-management of your dwelling means. you get to control its use, including who is allowed into it.

[devoration1]

Right-the term 'private property' has a crappy connotation in English. In Marxist/anarchist history, 'private property' refers to the means of production (factories, farms), transportation (docks, boats, railroads, airplanes, warehouses, etc) and land. 'Personal property'- the things you have and use, are yours as an individual. But we would think differently about our personal things in a communist world, as theft would be radically changed (personal grudges, non-commodified items or one-of-a-kind items like art, etc) and unneccessary for the most part (since everyone has free use and access to commodities).

[Jalapeno Enema]

House? Sorry, but we'll all be living in caves in communism.

And you'll sleep with bears.
Who says I already don't?

My sexuality aside, the last couple of posters pretty much got to the point before I did.

A 5-minute research session on Wikipedia about communism I'm sure would have yielded sufficient information on collective ownership vs. personal property.

I have no problems answering fundamental questions about communism from somebody who is trying to learn (regardless of ideology), but isn't that a fairly poorly-loaded un-researched question?

All I can ask in return is do you still beat your wife?

[John "Eh" MacDonald]

Who says I already don't?

My sexuality aside, the last couple of posters pretty much got to the point before I did.

A 5-minute research session on Wikipedia about communism I'm sure would have yielded sufficient information on collective ownership vs. personal property.

I have no problems answering fundamental questions about communism from somebody who is trying to learn (regardless of ideology), but isn't that a fairly poorly-loaded un-researched question?

All I can ask in return is do you still beat your wife?

Wow. I smell an asshole.

[scarletghoul]

Who says I already don't?

My sexuality aside, the last couple of posters pretty much got to the point before I did.

A 5-minute research session on Wikipedia about communism I'm sure would have yielded sufficient information on collective ownership vs. personal property.

I have no problems answering fundamental questions about communism from somebody who is trying to learn (regardless of ideology), but isn't that a fairly poorly-loaded un-researched question?

All I can ask in return is do you still beat your wife?
can we ban people for just being wankers

[Jalapeno Enema]

okay guys, point taken.

Pass the Beer's original post I see as a loaded question, and I called it as I see it.

If my post came off as offensive or mean, I'm sorry, and I apologize to Pass the Beer or anybody else offended. I'll try to be more civil about it next time.

[DaringMehring]

Even in bourgeois society, with its supposedly private property, any individual authorized by the state can enter private property.

Under socialism a similar system would probably be in place. Individuals can exclude others from their residence, based on the right to privacy, but the residence is owned by the state, and given certain circumstances, can be opened up by the state.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Even in bourgeois society, with its supposedly private property, any individual authorized by the state can enter private property.

Under socialism a similar system would probably be in place. Individuals can exclude others from their residence, based on the right to privacy, but the residence is owned by the state, and given certain circumstances, can be opened up by the state.

I don't see why workers would want to empower people to go into others personal homes unless that individual was doing something in that home to harm their neighbors or something and not listening to reason.

I agree with the distinction about personal and private (productive) property explained by Syndicat. Socialism would actually give billions of people control and security over their own place to live compared to capitalism where most people "rent" where they live from landlords or banks and can be removed if they fall on hard times and can't pay rent or mortgage - or just if their landlord looses his money and sells the place.

In addition, I find the common claim that socialism means that suddenly everyone will be bunking with a bunch of strangers and that everyone's homes will be divided up a little funny since for the last 10 years I've lived in a variety of apartments that were once one-bedroom family homes converted into shit-hole multi-rental houses. I had 5 strangers living with me in my last house - one bedroom used to be a laundry room, another was the living room (it had a fire place), another was the sole bedroom, and another was a 8 by 6 foot foyer (sp?) that fit a bed and enough room to walk around it. On top of that, my landlord in that last place constantly came into our house without warning.

Capitalism is a system where people are constantly forced out of their dwellings and forced to share their space with others, socialism is about organizing around use and need, not what's most convinient for making profits and therefore will give the majority of people control over their own lives unlike what we have today.

[PoliticalNightmare]

No. We would replace property-rights for use-rights.

[IronEastBloc]

in some forms of communism, property rights only extend to personal effects while in others you can have a house etc. but the means of all production is owned so therefore you can own things just not things which can create economic wealth which is owned collectively

[PassTheBeer]

Right-the term 'private property' has a crappy connotation in English. In Marxist/anarchist history, 'private property' refers to the means of production (factories, farms), transportation (docks, boats, railroads, airplanes, warehouses, etc) and land. 'Personal property'- the things you have and use, are yours as an individual. But we would think differently about our personal things in a communist world, as theft would be radically changed (personal grudges, non-commodified items or one-of-a-kind items like art, etc) and unneccessary for the most part (since everyone has free use and access to commodities).

makes sense