Private Property- a necessary evil for the protection of individual liberty

[nuisance]

Who would argue this, and any links to texts, since classical liberals and libertarians would suggest that freedom cannot exist without the right to property.

[Jose Gracchus]

Marx once said that communism is not revoking the right to property. Its simply revoking the right of property for the 1/10ths of the population who hasn't already had their property expropriated and turned over to social production (i.e., the bourgeoisie).

Capitalism is all about expropriation and continued primitive accumulation (Harvey and "accumulation by dispossession" are worth reading about, re. modern imperialism and neoliberalism). So this remark is just another pie-in-the-sky wide-eyed liberal remark pulled from some idealist system they built in their head.

And Communism has never meant the abrogation of basic forms and facts of personal property. And I think a post-revolutionary society should deeply respect people's personal space and personal use without arbitrary discretionary interference. However, this is a separate universe from private ownership of the means of social production. Liberal propertarian ideology always tries to conflate the former with the latter.

[Rafiq]

No amount of work entitles anyone to the means of production. The means of production should be democratically controlled and in the hands of the people producing. That is a natural right, just as no one is entitled to own the Earth.

[RED DAVE]

Who would argue this, and any links to texts, since classical liberals and libertarians would suggest that freedom cannot exist without the right to property.Maoists. :D

http://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/the-nepali-maoists-revolutionary-struggle-towards-capitalism-wait-what/

RED DAVE

[nuisance]

Marx once said that communism is not revoking the right to property. Its simply revoking the right of property for the 1/10ths of the population who hasn't already had their property expropriated and turned over to social production (i.e., the bourgeoisie).

Capitalism is all about expropriation and continued primitive accumulation (Harvey and "accumulation by dispossession" are worth reading about, re. modern imperialism and neoliberalism). So this remark is just another pie-in-the-sky wide-eyed liberal remark pulled from some idealist system they built in their head.

And Communism has never meant the abrogation of basic forms and facts of personal property. And I think a post-revolutionary society should deeply respect people's personal space and personal use without arbitrary discretionary interference. However, this is a separate universe from private ownership of the means of social production. Liberal propertarian ideology always tries to conflate the former with the latter.
Thanks, I know the difference between property and possession.... Perhaps I should have been clearer, since I'm talking about private property mainly in relation to capitalism, opposed to other forms of property based systems e.g. feudalism.

[Jose Gracchus]

Then ask them how private ownership of the means of production - which necessarily includes the existence of a propertyless worker class whose only recourse to subsistence is to rent themselves to the owner - how that is reconcilable with self-determination and autonomy of those workers? Who, incidentally, are the great majority.

Are you just looking from Misean or liberal agitprop trying to justify this big non sequitur that capitalist ownership somehow brings individual freedom? Is that what you're asking?

[nuisance]

You're an arrogant twat.

[Psy]

Who would argue this, and any links to texts, since classical liberals and libertarians would suggest that freedom cannot exist without the right to property.
Look at what free software license has done especially GNU public license that has allowed anyone to partake in the development and has encouraged reverse engineering of closed software to open them up to everyone.

Here you have a idea of freedom where people are free to have unlimited access to the utility of software and the code that makes it possible, and that right of property is basically seen an obstacle to that by programmers developing under free software licenses.

By what right does Microsoft (even the workers of Microsoft) have to say Windows is theirs and no one outside Microsoft can see their code and that outsiders can't reverse engineer their OS to be compatible with Windows.

Why should we view property in general any differently?

[nuisance]

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this thread has completely failed to produce anything of value towards the question asked. Thnx guyz.

[Jose Gracchus]

You're an arrogant twat.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I was literally asking you if you were looking for examples of what liberals et al present as their arguments for capitalist property bringing individual liberty for presumable scrutiny and comment. I was not trying to condescend to you. I am afraid your questions and prompts are hopelessly vague and you refuse to clarify them. That's not a legitimate pretext to be an asshole.

[Amphictyonis]

Who would argue this, and any links to texts, since classical liberals and libertarians would suggest that freedom cannot exist without the right to property.

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality, instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all."

Adam Smith -Wealth Of Nations

[RadioRaheem84]

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this thread has completely failed to produce anything of value towards the question asked. Thnx guyz.

Strange. I thought the answers were more than sufficient.

[Kuppo Shakur]

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this thread has completely failed to produce anything of value towards the question asked. Thnx guyz.
Take the bug out of your ass and then ask again.

[Amphictyonis]

Somewhat unsurprisingly, this thread has completely failed to produce anything of value towards the question asked. Thnx guyz.

Jeeze.^

I've noticed a tendency for libertarians to espouse Lockes views on property but he was pre industrial revolution so they fail- sure if you build something yourself you should have possession of it but no capitalist is building a factory with his own two hands is he/she? Then you have the problem (if you're debating a libertarian) of private ownership of the means of production necessitating a state. They stick with Locke as far as not wanting a state or at the most a very small state just to legitimize/defend concentrated ownership of the means of production. Ayn Rand came out with some honesty and admitted a state was necessary for private ownership of the means of production. Main stream conservative republican types are more in line with Hobbs. They're honest like Ayn Rand was as far as admitting the state was needed to subjugate the masses under capitalist oppression. They obviously didn't call it capitalist oppression- they call it "liberty".

If the question is whether or not property sets the stage for freedom it actually does, for the capitalist, but the majority of society is, as you already know, forced into capitalism/wage slavery via private property as the Adam Smith quote shows in my post above.

Rousseau is another big influence on the 'founding fathers' but property at the time in America pre and around 1776 was a different concept than what was taking place in Europe- Before and just after America was 'founded' the concept of property was actually a step towards freedom because most people from Europe were in debt to a bank, landlord or some tax collector so the idea of property in America was 'a new start'. Lockes concept of property some new Americans used (if one ignores stealing land from native Americans) was actually progressive for the time. Rousseau on the other hand was even more progressive than Locke. He saw property as 'the origin of inequality'. He addresses it in the book of the same title and in The Social Contract.

The thing is, industrialization changed the game from homesteading, working the land and keeping the full value of your labor, into the system of exploitative capitalism so private property took on a whole new role. It was no longer the freeing agent as it was pre industrial revolution it became the tool or mechanism of enslavement (rent/wage slavery). So when capitalists or supporters of capitalism talk about property being the base of liberty for the masses it actually was.....about 200 years ago when people were fleeing the coercive economic systems in Europe (which eventually manifested in America). The point is property at one point was progressive but it's time is up. It's liberating potential plateaued long ago and has become regressive. Marx would praise the more modern version of private property for it's ability to industrialize...said it was a necessary step in human social evolution- that without private property/capitalism socialism could not be possible. That it was a necessary step in human development. Of course Marx was right so the question you ask a capitalist is....do you really believe it when capitalists declare an end to history? Is this it? Is capitalism the be all end all of human development?

As far as the language 'necessary evil' I think the only one who may border on that view is Rousseau.

[Ocean Seal]

The right to property is the right to own wage slaves. Liberty is an absolutely meaningless term. For whom is the liberty? Liberty for the slave owners is not any liberty that I would like. Plus arguably the greatest liberty existed during the primitive commune before the introduction of private property.

[ckaihatsu]

Plus arguably the greatest liberty existed during the primitive commune before the introduction of private property.


Rather than looking at pre-civilizational human society as some kind of romantic pastoral communal ideal I think it would be reasonable to say that such societies would have been at the mercy of nature, natural disasters, disease, superstitions, petty clan dictatorships, rigid social roles, and perhaps worse.

[Ocean Seal]

Rather than looking at pre-civilizational human society as some kind of romantic pastoral communal ideal I think it would be reasonable to say that such societies would have been at the mercy of nature, natural disasters, disease, superstitions, petty clan dictatorships, rigid social roles, and perhaps worse.
I don't think that the primitive commune is a stage that I would have liked to have been born in, merely that I believe that it would have had greater liberty than early civilization. I say it because the question was regarding private property as the source of liberty, and I don't believe that property is necessary for liberty.

[ckaihatsu]

I don't think that the primitive commune is a stage that I would have liked to have been born in, merely that I believe that it would have had greater liberty than early civilization. I say it because the question was regarding private property as the source of liberty, and I don't believe that property is necessary for liberty.





Liberty is an absolutely meaningless term.


For the sake of clarity would you like to put forth a definition of 'liberty' here -- ?