Private Property and free trade

[crippled sloth]

Amongst the radical left there are 2 main tendancies with regard to property/trade and what should be done about it.

1. Private property is exclusive control of the means of production by an individual/small group. This is bad as it sets up a heirachal relationship and allows those with property to exploit employees. It also gives the capitalist/denys the worker power/influence in society. Thus this should be abolished
However private ownership of material goods which are not means of production is ok as it causes none of the above problems, and would be allowed post revolution (perhaps with excessive ammounts aquired unjustly under capitalism being redistributed).

2. All private property should be abolished and everything owned communally.

where do people stand on this?

[crippled sloth]

Also, should market style exchange be prohibited, and if so why? If the first option, then it would likely be more trouble than it is worth to prevent the private ownerhip of very small scale means of production (ie craftsmans tools) - so providing that it did not involve employment, would a small scale market style system be permited? If not, on the grounds of what harm to people?

[Comrade-Z]

If people actually have need of market exchanges and private property in small goods, then that's a bad sign. I won't say that it will inevitably doom your society from the start, but there will be a tendency for market forces in the arena of consumer goods to encroach upon the operation of the means of production and re-institute private property in that sector as well.

In order to try to prevent this from happening, you'd have to hold very steadfastly to the following principle: if you are jointly operating a means of production, you must do it democratically and the sharing of the profits must be mostly equal, even if only one person in the enterprise is providing the means of production.

For example, let's say a worker-controlled enterprise doesn't compete well against the other worker-controlled enterprises and goes out of business. The workers of that now defunct enterprise must be able to find work elsewhere that is just as equal as the work that they just left. That is to say, even though they contributed nothing privately to the formation of the means of production associated with this other enterprise into which they are newly entering, these workers must be recognized for their social contributions to society's means of production as a whole, and if these workers are going to be taken in by this new enterprise, the workers must be taken in as complete equals, with the same share of the vote and profit.

In this way, a certain group of workers can never gain leverage against the rest of society as a whole. Let's say a group of workers is particularly hard-working. They put all the other workers of their industry out of business, and their enterprise grows into a giant. They gain a temporary advantage in this way, but as they grow and take in more comrades into their enterprise, they find that they are now working jointly AS EQUALS with the same comrades that they were once competing against. The comrades that were put out of business and are now being taken in to the very company that put them out of business, these comrades will ultimately have the same power as the "successful" group of workers. The benefits to being exceptional workers are fleeting, just as the benefits to a capitalist enterprise of innovating new technology are fleeting (because soon everyone else in the industry implements the new technology as well, producing more goods, driving prices down, and returning the level of profit back roughly to where it was). It is, in a way, a Mills-Marshall treadmill of socialist employment, and the end result is complete economic integration under one democratic enterprise and the natural withering away of the market.

But this will only come to pass if the workers hold steadfastly to the principle described above. Any deviation from it, such as in a circumstances where people in a firm are allowed to take in others as non-equals yet again, will result in a gradual restoration of capitalism.

Consider this too: unless your society can't produce enough for everyone, there is no need for private property in small goods. People can simply take as much as they want. If this poses a problem in your society, then you might rethink whether your society is ready for proletarian revolution and communism.

And yes, there IS a practical limit to how much people can consume due to both time constraints and physical constraints. People cannot consume much more than 5,000 calories per day. They cannot watch more than 6 DVD's per day. They cannot make use of more than about 20 outfits of clothing per year (just take a look inside the closets of any yuppie middle-class household and see how many suits of clothing go unused!)

The reason that I don't spend much money doesn't have to do with some desire of mine to save money. It's due to the simple fact that I find it exhausting to keep up with consuming everything that I have already. See a movie? But I have this book that I want to read! Dine at a fancy restaurant in fancy clothes? But I feel like jamming out to some rock&roll tunes with my friends.

And of course all unused items will be up for grabs to whoever can make use of them, except for personal possessions that have no use-value apart from the special user. You want to try to hoard 10 TV's in your house. Fine, go ahead and try it. But if you can't make consistent, reasonable use of them, and if someone else out there doesn't have a TV and wants one, they will be coming to your house to take one of your TV's. By hoarding, you will have succeeded in nothing more than proclaiming your home as an auxiliary distribution point for your community. How nice of you to be of such service!

[phoenixoftime]

My opinion is that government / community organizations should limit the net value of accumulated personal property. IMO it isn't very fair to allow anyone to just walk into the house next door and run off with a TV (who says the owner isn't using it?) nor is it very practical to keep track of every single item in the country. Just set a total property value limit, have regional property valuations periodically and then confiscate excess property. The more property censuses are carried out the less work the next one should be.