Why should people own property collectively instead of privately?

[Jacob Cliff]

Elementary question, but what's your reasons why?

[G4b3n]

Well, first you want to be clear about what you are referring to. Property being the materials that control production and distribution, and dominate the livelihoods of workers.

Next, I think it is important to note that many socialists wouldn't care for the question at all, regarding the moral virtues of collectivization as mostly irrelevant to the labor movement. Why should something happen is irrelevant to something that is going to happen.

However, this is not to say that there aren't many good reasons. Property exists to retain to the privileges of a few at the expense of many. The worker, by definition, doesn't own property, they are subjected to its needs. The abolition of property is therefore the abolition of this subjugation and all of the social injustices that result from therein.

But again, arguing these points is normally fruitless. Those who wish to retain property are its owners, and they do not give up there position after losing an argument, their positions can only be smashed with force.

[ckaihatsu]

It's good to look at how property became privatized in the first place:





David Harvey summarized Karl Marx's description of it: primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatized mainstream of capital accumulation".[3]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capital


This *could* be argued as being a world-historical *progressive* step, because without it human society might never have developed material productivities sufficient enough to fully globalize the world, as it is today.

The *problem*, though, is that this is a genie-out-of-the-bottle phenomenon, and there's no one at a control panel somewhere to flick the 'off' switch -- even though the world reached the point of globalized economic relations in the late 19th century the dynamic that brought it there only led it / us into an unprecedented *world war*, since the pressure for new territories and markets continued unchecked even though the whole globe had already been 'networked' by that point.

If, today, we were to hear of some kind of machine that got out of control for some reason, and was running amuck, threatening people's lives, a team would be organized and dispatched to overtake that machine and render it motionless.

Unfortunately we haven't done that yet for the global capitalist economy, even though it's clearly hazardously past any conceivable point of being progressive, and it continues to ruin and obliterate lives -- also through resulting politics -- due to the continued existence of private property relations.

A *collective stewardship* over all property could basically be an extension of our obvious default role over the earth / nature itself -- no other species is capable of organizing and transforming parts of the natural landscape, and so we should be able to tend to nature, *and our own society* with fully conscious, reasoned collective social planning. As things are now the social world and its productivities are stuck on 'auto-pilot' due to the runaway dynamic of incessant capital accumulation.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Socialists don't fight for collective property (except as a transitional measure) but the abolition of property. The productive forces have developed to the point that only be effectively employed if they are controlled by the entire society. And social control of the means of production, the abolition of property, would be beneficial to the workers and the oppressed. "Should" property be abolished? I don't know, I don't care, and I suspect the notion doesn't make sense anyway.

Honestly this is all pretty basic stuff.

[RedWorker]

We don't stand for it in a vacuum. In a vacuum, it cannot be understood how we came to this conclusion or why we should even support it. And we do not support it in a vacuum but rather as part of a plan. The Marxist framework allows us to see that the abolition of private property is what will allow to transition to the communist society.

[Vogel]

500 years ago, about, :rolleyes:, when the first towns were beginning, some guy had some wealth. Many people around him didn't. So he said to a neighbor, "If you use your labor to create more wealth for me, I'll give you a portion of it to help you live better, and you'd be insane not to."
To keep this going after a long while, he needed to have a legal right to own means of production so the state would protect him and his position in society.
Fast forward to now, after countless strikes, countless social reforms calling for more protections for the worker and consumer, and what do we see?
Always, property has been used to create wealth for the owners, at the expense of the workers.
It was a great thing when it started. People needed to eat, wanted to not suffer, and it helped advance society. But now, when we can make an abundance, and make it so no one has to starve, what is the appeal? So capitalists, over centuries, form and refine their arguments. They end up making a culture of greed.
Before it was necessary to live better, now its not. So why, the common man asks, keep this thing around? Because I NEED to have more, because I NEED to consume, because, as the Wall street movie suggests, Greed is Good.

That's one way of looking at it. Feel free to expand on to this narrative.

One reason to abolish private property, for it to be held in common, is to stop this. To stop all the bad things we know that comes about from this mentality.

[tuwix]

Elementary question, but what's your reasons why?

The answer is very simple: Not to exploit anyone by private owner.

[contracycle]

"Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?"
- Gerrard Winstanley, 1649

The OP's question can easily be reversed: why should property be held privately?

[Blake's Baby]

Why should property exist at all?

[Jacob Cliff]

I'm not defending capitalism by any means, but to play the devils advocate, "Private property is voluntary, people can start a commune if they want. Private property has led to the most innovations in history and competition between private owners results in more inventions"

[contracycle]

Private property is by definition not voluntary, it's enforced by the armed might of the state.

I don't know what kind of answer you want, it seems like "explain all of marxism in one sentence".

[ckaihatsu]

Private property has led to the most innovations in history and competition between private owners results in more inventions"


There were plenty of inventions throughout human history -- enclosure wasn't until the 18th century:





Marxist and neo-Marxist historians argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. For example: "In agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost".[2] "Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery".[3][4]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure


The question becomes one of quantity vs. quality -- is it better to have a *roundabout* way of developing new technologies, through the profit motive, or would human society be better off with cooperation and *directness* for the same -- ?

[contracycle]

It doesn't even really work to produce innovation, because most of the time, people who invent stuff are employees, but it is the company that, through the terms of the employment contract, owns the rights to the invention.

So the idea that people who invent things get to reap the rewards seldom happens. Instead, as with everything organised as wage labour, its the people who put up the capital who get rewarded.

It might be argued that even so, this encourages capitalists to make R&D funding and whatnot available; but, if private property were abolished, those resources would be available anyway.

[Rafiq]

Elementary question, but what's your reasons why?

It is essentially a false question. The mere existence of private property entails relations of force and domination, consequentially as a result of the destruction of the foundations of this, private property will cease to exist. Private property does not exist by default - it is systemically, actively maintained and reinforced.

"Collectively owned property" and private property's existence are not owed to preferences, or grounded in being legitimized by better arguments, they are grounded in real social relations to survival - how we produce things, how we perpetuate the conditions of our own biological reproduction and so on.

To sum it up - only a few benefit from relations of private property because only very few people are able to own private property in the first place. It is not the natural result of people being socially organized, but the natural result of specific conditions of power. People don't have an inherent desire to "own property", as a matter of fact doing so requires a degree of discipline.

[Rafiq]

I'm not defending capitalism by any means, but to play the devils advocate, "Private property is voluntary, people can start a commune if they want. Private property has led to the most innovations in history and competition between private owners results in more inventions"

Yes, but what this ignores is the fact that private property designates a relationship of power. Boss and worker, if you will. This relationship of power is only mystified by the illusion that workers meet capitalists as equals, "honoring contracts". The fact of the matter is that capitalism has existed for a short time compared to the history of private property in general, so the factors owed to the advanced technological forces of innovation have to amount to more than the existence of private property. You are right that capitalist competition tends to lead to more inventions, but those same laws of competition inevitably lead to monopoly and trust. Furthermore, the standards of want for inventions are artificial and relative. We are approaching a point wherein technological innovation is being hindered, whose implementation is being prolonged or made impossible for the same reasons.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not defending capitalism by any means, but to play the devils advocate, "Private property is voluntary...

Great, I don't agree with it, so I'm going to take your house and car.


... people can start a commune if they want...

We'll start one in your house, see above.


...
Private property has led to the most innovations in history and competition between private owners results in more inventions"

The first part may be true, but co-operation led to the most important inventions. I would rank 'the axe', 'the bag', 'taming fire', 'the wheel', 'clothes', 'pottery', 'glass', 'domestication of plants and animals', 'running water', 'houses', 'sewerage systems' and 'medicine' as being a hell of a lot more important for human wellbeing than 'the PS3' and 'a slighty different flavour of cola drink'.

If by 'inventions' you mean 'wars' I'd agree with the second part too.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm not defending capitalism by any means, but to play the devils advocate,

To be honest, a lot of your posts seem to be "well why should we do [something all socialists agree on], by the way, you don't really want to abolish wage differentials, do you?".


"Private property is voluntary,

Good for it.

Why should that concern us? It didn't concern the bourgeoisie, during the movement to enclose previously communally-used land, that this communal use was voluntary. It won't concern us when our turn comes that private property is voluntary, either.


people can start a commune if they want.

Good for them.

Socialism has nothing to do with "starting a commune". It means abolishing property, the market etc. - globally.


Private property has led to the most innovations in history and competition between private owners results in more inventions"

Blake's Baby has already addressed this.

Also, yeah, most inventions of the last century were the result of private owners competing... by way of government programmes.

[ckaihatsu]

---





Just as significant as deflation and low bond yields in pointing to the underlying state of the global capitalist economy is the response of financial markets to worsening economic data. Equity markets around the world, and above all on Wall Street, immediately rose on the news of the euro zone deflation figures in the expectation that the data would tip the hand of the European Central Bank towards a major expansion of quantitative easing when its governing council next meets on January 22.

Financial markets and their representatives have been demanding that the ECB expand its QE program to include the purchase of government debt in order to expand the flow of cheap money into the financial system.

This points to one of the most striking features of present-day capitalism: the extent to which financial parasitism, based on the supply of ultra-cheap money for speculation in financial markets, is the main driving force of profit accumulation.

Of course, throughout economic history, speculation has always been a crucial component of profit accumulation. However, the fact that it now predominates represents a qualitative transformation, with far-reaching economic and political implications.

There is a fundamental difference between accumulation by parasitism and the more “normal” forms of profit-making. Financial parasitism involves not the extraction of surplus value from the labour of the working class and expanded production, but profit accumulation through operations in financial markets completely divorced from the production process.




The economic and political implications of deflation

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/10/econ-j10.html

[Thirsty Crow]

Elementary question, but what's your reasons why?
Elementary question, and an elementary answer.

Because private property over the productive resources of mankind today (in its capitalist form) leads to disastrous consequences for the mass of humanity; the most obvious of those being the living conditions of today's surplus population (surplus in the sense of those people not being necessary for global wage work and social reproduction based on it), also wage insecurity and inequality, huge differences in shaping power over one's conditions of life and so on and so on.