I mean this in good faith, what’s the alternative? That anyone could enter anyone’s house freely? Or that everything is shared (owned by the state, which would give it too much power).
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, ‘landlord’ also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we’re attacking.
We need to be clear that we’re absolutely not talking about the couple that’s renting out their kid’s old room to get through tough times. They’re also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
Marx is clear about this, BTW. The distinction between private property (i.e. capital) and personal property, is that personal property is owned for its use value (you own a trenchcoat to protect yourself from the cold, or you own a house to live in it), whereas private property is owned for its monetary revalorization capability (you own a trenchcoat to rent it in a costumes store, you own a house to rent it to someone else). The same object can be used for its use value, and then it’s it’s personal property; or it can be used in the capital revalorization cycle, and then it’s private property.
Or even honestly, the middle aged couple that was able to upgrade houses without selling, and lets their old house to a young couple for a reasonable rate because it’s paid off. Which, in my rural experience, is really common. I am very grateful to a man that I didn’t and still don’t particularly like, because he rented me a nice property for a very fair rate. I could say similar things about other past landlords. The difference is when it’s not an investment, but a business. Treating housing like a business interaction cheapens human life, and I have lived in that situation as well, to varying degrees. The worst was an apartment in Park City UT that was owned by some yuppies in Massachusetts, part of some sheisty lease/timeshare property LLC, where the building super was just a power tripping asshole with no accountability. I’m rambling, but Landlord Bad is too simple for a complex situation.
Or like if somebody inherits a house while they already have one, and decide to rent it out, that’s fine too.
The private vs personal is introducing vocab to make a difference between ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is private property’. We’re proposing that it’s ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is personal property’.
ao, should people that live on large lots of residential commercial multi use zoning not be able to build a department store on the same property as their house?
We’re talking about a very minor amount of priviledged people who have the spare property to rent. Even a room. Most impoverished people live in apartments. We do not own them, none of the income taken from us for rent is returned to us (unlike property ownership via a mortgage in which case value is literally returned to you), and we are only able to roomshare or sublet. Neither of which is what youre describing.
Not dismissing that middle class property owning families cant fall on hard times and have to fight to maintain the class position they occupy, just pointing out that the majority of us would do anything to have a home with a spare room to rent out. Thats a dream that many many people in my generation will never come close to achieving.
We shouldn’t have to appeal to the class anxieties of middle class people. The fact that we suffer is a rallying cause enough. There are enough poor people to tear the system down if we all worked together. Its appealing to our shared suffering. Class consciousness and solidarity. Its recognizing our collective struggle and fighting back against power. It doesn’t happen by making concessions to land owners. The threat of having to downsize is nothing compared with the threat of being homeless if you have to go to the hospital. The threat of losing everything if you get an injury. The impoverished and the marginalized live with guns aimed at every one of their vital organs. From birth to death under duress at the hands of the state. I dont really give a fuck what land owners are going through. We’d kill to have to downsize.
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it’s always difficult to imagine in practice because we’ve all just lived with this
You don’t own the stall of a public toilet and you can still expect to use it without having people walk on you. It’s like we can all agree to distribute resources and keep rights like privacy without the need of property.
how about instead of restricting all ownership, you instead just limited it.
My idea is that basically once anybody hits 10 million in net worth (for example), then we just say ‘well done, you’ve completed it mate’. Now fuck off down the beach and don’t come back.
Basically tax any further income of any kind at 100%.
This. Then just put up a scoreboard of who’s excess revenue is providing the most tax revenue to the public, then they can play for first place and we can all benefit off of their sociopathic narcissism. Everybody wins.
While I agree with you, in principle, I much prefer my toilet than a public toilet with partial privacy and partial cleanliness.
I think it’s going to be interesting when we move from private ownership of cars to self driving, shared, how there may be different classes again, like trains of old. It’s inevitable we transition. The gig economy is effectively a more even distribution of resource usage with benefits environmentally. However, we need to ensure it’s more even ownership too, which is looking unlikely at this point.
Self driving cars are not going to stop car ownership, that’s pure CEO fantasy. The logistics of it doesn’t make any sense. Gig economy it’s the opposite of even distribution, it’s companies owning everything and workers owning nothing. Stop drinking the neoliberal kool aid.
Gig economy is better distribution of asset use, as I said. The problem to correct is distribution of ownership, again as I already said. Stop drinking the socialism kool aid. Nobody owning cars is more likely than community ownership.
Car ownership may not go away but it’s likely to decrease. It’s rare in America to not own a car. It’s less rare in cities with good public transport, eg New York, Europe. Self driving, on demand taxis may mean the same effect is carried over to places that currently don’t have great public transport.
One of the main things to take away is that there’s a difference between personal property and private property.
Personal property are things like your clothes, your home, the items you use regularly.
Private property are things you own but don’t personally use, don’t take real responsibility for.
For example, if you have the money, you can purchase a factory. But a factory is too large an item for one person to ever claim they personally run the whole thing and take full responsibility for. There’s many people involved in running a factory, from cleaners to accountants, do they not also take responsibility for their part?
If the factory could never run without all of these workers, can the owner really claim that the factory is theirs? It is everyone who works there’s. Why then does the owner get to keep all the money the factory produces? Because they stumped up some cash a few years ago?
The owners are smart enough to pay you for your labour. Maybe even a bonus for a successful year. Some benefits maybe when people start unionising and demanding more. But at the end of the day, the owner still gets the vast vast majority of the profits despite not putting in the vast majority of the work. How is this fair?
I’ve run out of steam now, it’s been a long day, but if you genuinely meant your comment in good faith have a read of the links above.
Anarchists (including us) mostly talk about personal vs private property. For example in an anarchist society nobody is going to take your toothbrush or house, but you aren’t allowed to own a house you don’t live in (yet still charge for) nor a factory where other people work, those things would be communally owned and cared for, or given to someone in need (in the case of a house). So it’s kind of a semi-ownership at least compared to how it is now, you get what you need, not more than that.
if the homeless are camping in your backyard that being a “living space” won’t stop anyone, and if it does they’re likely to just call the cops to remove them.
There’s a difference between “private property” and “personal property”. Arguably any personal property is private property but not all private property is personal property. And it’s that private property which doesn’t need to exist.
I mean this in good faith, what’s the alternative? That anyone could enter anyone’s house freely? Or that everything is shared (owned by the state, which would give it too much power).
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to “personal property”, which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of “private property”, which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here’s a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here’s a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, ‘landlord’ also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we’re attacking.
We need to be clear that we’re absolutely not talking about the couple that’s renting out their kid’s old room to get through tough times. They’re also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
Marx is clear about this, BTW. The distinction between private property (i.e. capital) and personal property, is that personal property is owned for its use value (you own a trenchcoat to protect yourself from the cold, or you own a house to live in it), whereas private property is owned for its monetary revalorization capability (you own a trenchcoat to rent it in a costumes store, you own a house to rent it to someone else). The same object can be used for its use value, and then it’s it’s personal property; or it can be used in the capital revalorization cycle, and then it’s private property.
As always, the poor are human shields for the rich.
Ain’t no war but class war.
Or even honestly, the middle aged couple that was able to upgrade houses without selling, and lets their old house to a young couple for a reasonable rate because it’s paid off. Which, in my rural experience, is really common. I am very grateful to a man that I didn’t and still don’t particularly like, because he rented me a nice property for a very fair rate. I could say similar things about other past landlords. The difference is when it’s not an investment, but a business. Treating housing like a business interaction cheapens human life, and I have lived in that situation as well, to varying degrees. The worst was an apartment in Park City UT that was owned by some yuppies in Massachusetts, part of some sheisty lease/timeshare property LLC, where the building super was just a power tripping asshole with no accountability. I’m rambling, but Landlord Bad is too simple for a complex situation.
Or like if somebody inherits a house while they already have one, and decide to rent it out, that’s fine too.
The private vs personal is introducing vocab to make a difference between ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is private property’. We’re proposing that it’s ‘walmart is private property’ and ‘my house is personal property’.
ao, should people that live on large lots of residential commercial multi use zoning not be able to build a department store on the same property as their house?
We’re talking about a very minor amount of priviledged people who have the spare property to rent. Even a room. Most impoverished people live in apartments. We do not own them, none of the income taken from us for rent is returned to us (unlike property ownership via a mortgage in which case value is literally returned to you), and we are only able to roomshare or sublet. Neither of which is what youre describing.
Not dismissing that middle class property owning families cant fall on hard times and have to fight to maintain the class position they occupy, just pointing out that the majority of us would do anything to have a home with a spare room to rent out. Thats a dream that many many people in my generation will never come close to achieving.
We shouldn’t have to appeal to the class anxieties of middle class people. The fact that we suffer is a rallying cause enough. There are enough poor people to tear the system down if we all worked together. Its appealing to our shared suffering. Class consciousness and solidarity. Its recognizing our collective struggle and fighting back against power. It doesn’t happen by making concessions to land owners. The threat of having to downsize is nothing compared with the threat of being homeless if you have to go to the hospital. The threat of losing everything if you get an injury. The impoverished and the marginalized live with guns aimed at every one of their vital organs. From birth to death under duress at the hands of the state. I dont really give a fuck what land owners are going through. We’d kill to have to downsize.
Nice aim.
I’m baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don’t like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that’s used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that’s what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it’s always difficult to imagine in practice because we’ve all just lived with this
If we can’t dream big, all we can do is maintain the status quo. And the status quo kind of sucks.
You don’t own the stall of a public toilet and you can still expect to use it without having people walk on you. It’s like we can all agree to distribute resources and keep rights like privacy without the need of property.
how about instead of restricting all ownership, you instead just limited it.
My idea is that basically once anybody hits 10 million in net worth (for example), then we just say ‘well done, you’ve completed it mate’. Now fuck off down the beach and don’t come back.
Basically tax any further income of any kind at 100%.
This. Then just put up a scoreboard of who’s excess revenue is providing the most tax revenue to the public, then they can play for first place and we can all benefit off of their sociopathic narcissism. Everybody wins.
While I agree with you, in principle, I much prefer my toilet than a public toilet with partial privacy and partial cleanliness.
I think it’s going to be interesting when we move from private ownership of cars to self driving, shared, how there may be different classes again, like trains of old. It’s inevitable we transition. The gig economy is effectively a more even distribution of resource usage with benefits environmentally. However, we need to ensure it’s more even ownership too, which is looking unlikely at this point.
Self driving cars are not going to stop car ownership, that’s pure CEO fantasy. The logistics of it doesn’t make any sense. Gig economy it’s the opposite of even distribution, it’s companies owning everything and workers owning nothing. Stop drinking the neoliberal kool aid.
Gig economy is better distribution of asset use, as I said. The problem to correct is distribution of ownership, again as I already said. Stop drinking the socialism kool aid. Nobody owning cars is more likely than community ownership.
Car ownership may not go away but it’s likely to decrease. It’s rare in America to not own a car. It’s less rare in cities with good public transport, eg New York, Europe. Self driving, on demand taxis may mean the same effect is carried over to places that currently don’t have great public transport.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-governmen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Private_property_and_the_state
Some good reading to start with.
One of the main things to take away is that there’s a difference between personal property and private property.
Personal property are things like your clothes, your home, the items you use regularly.
Private property are things you own but don’t personally use, don’t take real responsibility for.
For example, if you have the money, you can purchase a factory. But a factory is too large an item for one person to ever claim they personally run the whole thing and take full responsibility for. There’s many people involved in running a factory, from cleaners to accountants, do they not also take responsibility for their part?
If the factory could never run without all of these workers, can the owner really claim that the factory is theirs? It is everyone who works there’s. Why then does the owner get to keep all the money the factory produces? Because they stumped up some cash a few years ago?
The owners are smart enough to pay you for your labour. Maybe even a bonus for a successful year. Some benefits maybe when people start unionising and demanding more. But at the end of the day, the owner still gets the vast vast majority of the profits despite not putting in the vast majority of the work. How is this fair?
I’ve run out of steam now, it’s been a long day, but if you genuinely meant your comment in good faith have a read of the links above.
Lemmy loves socialism
Anarchists (including us) mostly talk about personal vs private property. For example in an anarchist society nobody is going to take your toothbrush or house, but you aren’t allowed to own a house you don’t live in (yet still charge for) nor a factory where other people work, those things would be communally owned and cared for, or given to someone in need (in the case of a house). So it’s kind of a semi-ownership at least compared to how it is now, you get what you need, not more than that.
Ohhh I see, thanks for the explanation! In that case I agree that private property in the capitalist sense shouldn’t exist.
Sure, happy to explain!
Concepts of ownership aren’t going to stop you from walking into someone else’s house currently
For the majority it will
And the majority wouldn’t go into other peoples’ homes because it’s someone else’s living space if we went to that model.
if the homeless are camping in your backyard that being a “living space” won’t stop anyone, and if it does they’re likely to just call the cops to remove them.
There’s a difference between “private property” and “personal property”. Arguably any personal property is private property but not all private property is personal property. And it’s that private property which doesn’t need to exist.
Everyone gets their own home. The land is shared and distributed among the population according to their needs.
Who decides what amount/type of land one “needs”?
The populus.
I haven’t seen a consensus, have you?
The richest trillionaire (Musk), who gets to bribe and cheat his way into a position of power. Guess how much land he’s gonna give you?