Reasons why the Left rejects private property

[Chomskyan]

I am new to the Left, so forgive my ignorance. I was once a Right Libertarian along the likes of Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Milton Friedman etc. I still respect their ideas, as I respect all ideas, in general. It's why I am now seriously considering the radical Left. (I'm almost a convert.)

Engels says that "The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general."

I have read on other forums and discussion boards that Leftists disdain private property.

Which, I think I already know the reason, but I want confirmation.

This is probably because property should belong to people, not to private organizations or institutions.

Can anyone perhaps explain a justification that reasons why private property is theft, in the words of Anarchist Proudhon, and why individuals don't have a right to private property. I assume it may have something to do with monopolizing, or selfishness, but I want more input because I am not the most keen on Leftist thought, having been on the Right.

I am thankful for your input.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marxists oppose private property because the mode of production based on the private ownership of the means of production, capitalism, can no longer develop the productive forces; capitalism is a system whose time has passed and whose destruction will bring about a classless society, in line with our interests as workers and the oppressed. "Should" and "rights" have nothing to do with it.

[exeexe]

When Proudhon talked about property he used in a different way than you are. To him there are two kinds of property. Property that can produce and property that can be used.
When he says property is theft he is talking about property that can produce, that is property when worked on will generate value.

To Proudhon the value that is generated should go to the worker but its not how it is under capitalism. In capitalism the value produced will go the the owner of the property that is the capitalist. Then the capitalist will sell it on the market and get the market value in return. He then gives a part of the market value to the worker and keeps the rest to himself. The part which he keeps for himself is what he stole from the worker.

So property is theft - or robbery when used in combination with state and police to maintain the capitalist unjustness.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

By private property, we refer to the means of production, distribution, and exchange, which are distinct from private possessions like your clothes, toothbrush, CDs, or computer.

[Red Economist]

Private Property is a means to deny people's basic needs by excluding people and creating inequalities and poverty when on a moral basis people should have at least what they need to survive.
this ability to deny a person their needs also acts as an impediment to a person's freedom of action (to live and develop their abilities) and therefore private property is not applicable to a higher standard of living if you want a free society; this is more debatable as you get into an argument over the difference between 'wants' and 'needs' and how you assess a person's rights versus the society's rights over the distribution of resources. This is essentially a question about the nature of freedom under socialism and communism and what it is for.

This is more of a 'gut' explanation than anything sophisticated, but basically I (and probably many others on this forum) don't like seeing other people get hurt, especially if it is not their fault.

[Maraam]

Note first of all that private property is referring mainly to the 'means of production' - factories, offices, to an extent houses, etc. and not personal property, which is broadly defined as everything else, your toothbrush, computer and so on.

The core of the issue is that, according to Marxism (so Proudhon might disagree with this), that the private property creates classes. When one person owns a factory (has private property), someone else doesn't. The form of property has changed throughout history, from slave ownership whereby people were property to feudalism where there was a complex hierarchy of peasantry and manoralism, through to modern-day capitalism, where there are two classes, the 'bourgeoisie' who own private property and the 'proletariat' who don't. (Those are both relatively fancy French words so don't worry about having to remember them straight away, just remember that bourgeoisie = ruling class and proletariat = working class)

By owning private property, the bourgeoisie is able to exploit the proletariat, by forcing the proletariat to work at their means of production. This leads to the extraction of surplus labour, whereby the worker isn't paid the full value of the labour he creates (i.e. the worker making a coat may create $10 worth of labour, but is only paid $5 for the hour that they spent making the coat).

This, along with various other factors (Marx's Capital is seen as the most prominent work on Marxist economics if you want to read that, it's pretty long and somewhat dense but you sound like you've spent some time reading economics anyway so you'll be able to manage it) creates massive disparities between the working class and ruling class, and leads to various problems which people have addressed above - homelessness, lack of access to healthcare, poverty, famine, etc.

The critical point of leftism is, as Vincent West pointed out, that capitalism has reached it's peak and that productive forces can no longer develop. Eventually, due to the massive disparities and alienation caused by capitalism, the working class will rise up and overthrow capitalism to take control of the means of production themselves. This is socialism, where the working class controls private property itself. Eventually (and I mean eventually, this isn't realistically expected by most people to happen for decades, if that), once capitalism has been abolished on a world scale, communism will be reached. This is a worldwide society without property, it will be classless (as there is no property to cause classes), stateless (as states only exist to serve the interests of a class, if there are no classes there will be no need for states. Organization will still exist,, but not in terms of states we recognize today) and effectively moneyless. We don't know what this society will look like, but it's generally expected to be organized along the maxim "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".

That's quite a lengthy explanation and I've gone over some stuff you probably already know, but it's important to focus on that opposition to private property isn't just a moral opposition, it's from historical observation and economic thought in trying to decide what will happen to society in the future, and how societies function at the base level.

[NDMP Chairman]

I find that the main reason that private property is opposed by the left is that it itself is pretty much the only thing that causes inequality (as well as human greed but theres no fixing that.) It does so by giving a single side a distinct material advantage over another, this advantage is then exploited and inequality is created. It also undermines our capability to share the world with eachother, we become secluded in our own wealth and can only see what the money tells us to see.

[tuwix]

I am new to the Left, so forgive my ignorance. I was once a Right Libertarian along the likes of Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Milton Friedman etc. I still respect their ideas, as I respect all ideas, in general. It's why I am now seriously considering the radical Left. (I'm almost a convert.)

Engels says that "The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general."

I have read on other forums and discussion boards that Leftists disdain private property.

Which, I think I already know the reason, but I want confirmation.

This is probably because property should belong to people, not to private organizations or institutions.

Can anyone perhaps explain a justification that reasons why private property is theft, in the words of Anarchist Proudhon, and why individuals don't have a right to private property. I assume it may have something to do with monopolizing, or selfishness, but I want more input because I am not the most keen on Leftist thought, having been on the Right.

I am thankful for your input.

As Proudhon said, property is theft. The concept of property emerges in feudalism. The first monarchs were owners of whole states. To take and maintain such power, there was needed to use oppressive force that is something called now a crime.
Marx divided property for private and personal. Personal one is usually form work. Private property is from exploitation. And exploitation is theft done by havs on not havs.
Besides private and state property are source of wars. Material inequality is an direct effect of private property existence.

The Rightwing Libertarians say about honestly obtained property. But they don't realize that no private property is obtained honestly...

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Private property is the basis of capital and it's social relations. Nature is the source of all wealth, and when human labor molds nature into use-values a chance for commodity exchange presents itself in the right social conditions. Private property allows for a class of people to monopolize nature and the means to produce society's wealth and subsistence and for a class of people, who do not own property, to sell their "labor", and as such themselves, as a commodity, which faces the same laws of the market as other commodities, to those that own property. Even though the workers are the ones that produce society's wealth (and this is another topic) the owner of property necessarily owns the products of his property. The worker doesn't work for himself, but spends the creative and productive part of his day producing goods alien to him. Since man is a social being, and the objects of our world are alienated objects, it would make since that alienated social relations would develop. Private property breeds alienated labor, and alienated labor necessarily implies private property and capital. This is why leftists are opposed to private property and the social relations it breeds and why the goal of communism is to abolish private property and all the things that necessarily sprout from it.

[Comrade #138672]

Private property necessarily concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, taking more and more away from the proletariat. Therefore, private property needs to be destroyed and the means of production need to be seized by the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.

[Collective Reasons]

Proudhon's What is Property? is actually a collection of multiple reasons why "property is theft." In a number of cases, the argument is simply that existing property conventions don't actually do what they claim to do. Instead of protecting individuals and reducing conflict, they do just the opposite, so that what is called "property" is actually, and systematically, its opposite, thus "theft." But the heart of Proudhon's critique is the early discussion of the droit d'aubaine (right to "windfalls," generally translated as "right of increase") and the collective force generated by associated labor. Nearly all labor involves some degree of social cooperation, even if only in the creation of tools and technologies, so there is almost always a portion of the product that can be assigned to the specific collectivity involved in production. Under capitalism, and existing property relations, the proprietor is assumed to be the legitimate claimant for the products of collective force, so that capitalist proprietor is able to enjoy the fruits of whatever labor they perform as well as the fruits of social labor. The ownership of the fruits of social labor naturally means that they have a competitive advantage in any future labor negotiations, and that their advantage may snowball, as they accumulate both collective products and whatever individual products they can extort by using their possession of the products of social production back against individual workers. The conditions for exploitation are built right into property conventions as long as this right to aubaines is recognized.

[Left Voice]

Capitalists tend to not differentiate between private property and personal property, which is where many of the misunderstandings can arise. Ownership of a TV set (for example) is usually not an ownership of the means of production (and the related exploitation) in the same way that owning a business would be, for example. A capitalist might perceive their oil well (for example) as private property, and also their own personal property by default due to such lack of distinction. This is clearly different from owning a TV set or a sofa, but right libertarians and capitalists in general see these as the same.

But to be fair, even many on the left don't believe in the distinction.