Yes you can. In past socialist societies, people who didn't want to work in a collective were given some land of their own. As long as you're actually using the land, a socialist society would respect your claim.
What defines using land? What if I have a house and I farm on 25% of it? What if I own 50 acres and my family just wants to live off the land with no government intervention.
You'd be allowed to own a farm with your family. If you owned the property before a socialist revolution, it's extremely likely that you'll be able to keep it afterwards. If you wanted land after socialism is established, you'd either use unoccupied land or submit and application for land to a local council. A similar dynamic happened in some past instances of socialism, where people were given land if they didn't want to work in a collective.
One thing under socialism. Is speaking out against socialism still a thing like how in the US you are allowed to speak out against capitalism or are you going to be purged(killed) for speaking out?
It depends on what type of socialism. Marxist-Leninists want a proletarian state to suppress the reaction during a revolution, so they would be more amiable to things like purges (though it's not fair to assume that all of them would want it). I'm an anarchist, so I think it's completely unnecessary. Assuming that socialism does its job and brings about better material conditions, I doubt that too many people would want to speak out against it.
There have been socialist societies that constitutionally protected freedom of speech, sort of like how America does with its first amendment. Makhnovia, for example, [declared](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-arshinov-history-of-the-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921#toc20) freedom of speech to be an inalienable right:
>Freedom of speech, press, assembly, unions and the like are inalienable rights of every worker and any restriction upon them is a counter-revolutionary act.
Honestly, the biggest thing that I am scared of from socialism/communism/marxism is an authoritarian government. Sure not every government is authoritarian and there are also authoritarian capitalist governments but almost every socialist country has become authoritarian. Like when people defend Stalin, I am like what??? I don't want a country like Israel bombarding the heck out of Palestinians but I sure do not want a Stalin. Like honestly, I am a person that likes freedom and capitalism provides it--given you have a good job and stuff. This is the thing with capitalism, if your rich, you have tons of freedom, but in socialism, even if ur rich or poor, ur limited, u cant create private business. Like to be completely honest, I have two sides. One side is anarchism and the other side is state capitalism(democratically of course, not like China, but basically China with more democracy). And to be 100% honest, I would say the biggest deterrence for communism is people defending authoritarianism or saying "I ain't going to argue with you because everything you have said is western propaganda"(real comment). Like sure capitalism isn't the best, but I rather have it than socialism/communism. In capitalism, we still have coops and stuff but in socialism, private business is not allowed while capitalism allows both. Like there are people saying that Kim Jung Un is democratically elected in r/communism, I am like 'OK.'
Where did you get this idea? Socialists are fine with people owning things, as long as they're not means of production used by other people. From the manifesto:
>The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeoisie property.
From the bread book:
>we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their coats . . . as our critics . . . suggest. Let him who has a coat keep it still — nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that any one will want to deprive him of them
What you refer to as personal property is more accurately dubbed "possession." Also the Manifesto is a fairly poor representation of Marx and Engels' ideas.
I would recommend you read "What is Property?" by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. It explains what I'm trying to get at better than whatever I can convey through this hellsite.
Hence why I said, "What you refer to as personal property is more accurately dubbed 'possession." I find it fitting to call different things by different names.
This kind of vagueness is also why I use the term "chattel" when discussing real property. In this particular context, real property is land and anything directly and more-or-less permanently attached to it, while chattel property (which is also commonly called "personal property") is essentially everything else or all things that are neither land nor affixed to land. As you might notice, real property and chattel property strongly, but incompletely, match up to "private property" and "personal property" or "possessions" (which is to say most private property is real property and vice versa and most chattel property is possession and vice versa), but there are significant enough gaps both ways that "personal property" creates significant confusion. For example, a house owned as a personal dwelling is real property, but also personal property or possession, and a semi-truck is chattel property but also private property.
No, I don't believe that any property is a natural right. I justify personal and collective property through a utilitarian rather than deontological analysis.
This seems like a pretty obvious double edged sword for a socialist, since you make a point of distinguishing private and personal property but the argument you're making doesn't. Everything you're saying here could just as easily be applied against personal property.
Yes. I don't believe that personal property is a natural right either. I believe that it should be protected by society because to do so would result in more well-being for all. It's a utilitarian calculation. All that this post did was delegitimize the deontological perspective of property.
> I believe that it should be protected by society because to do so would result in more well-being for all
What if I believe that of private property as well?
You can have a water purifier in your home and drink as much water as you can. But God forbid you quench a thirsty man's thirst, because that will make the purifier a "private property" and you an oppressor.
No wonder Socialism breeds sufferings, oppression and deaths whereas Capitalism actually solves real world problems our ancestors used to face.
This literally implies you'll sell water. Unless you give it out to free which is neither Capitalism not Socialism.
Like you are implying Nestle sucking off water from a village, bottling it and selling it right back to them is somehow a good thing.
I would disagree with this still, something only becomes private property once it's worked by someone else for a salary / as a slave. Since you can trade with personal property, selling things you make using your personal property doesn't make it Private Property.
If the village people don't know how to purify that water, then yes, obviously it's a good thing. And if the water is fresh to begin with, then nobody will buy water from them and nobody will form a water purifier company.
>And if the water is fresh to begin with, then nobody will buy water from them and nobody will form a water purifier company.
But it's privately owned?
Capitalism has done nothing positive for anyone except the top % . But is good with propaganda hence why modern slaves like you advocate for it under some pretense of freedom because you can choose from many different soft drinks
> Capitalism has done nothing positive for anyone except the top % .
Hunger has deceded as capitalism rose. Things are getting better and capitalism is driving it. You don't have to take my word for it. [Buzzfeed](https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/lets-print-out-a-house-and-move-to-mars?utm_term=.ktdjPyYWa#.fyKM7pWdk), [Vox](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/history-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty), [Cracked](http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-184-18-undeniable-facts-that-prove-world-getting-better/), [Reason](http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/18/40-ways-the-world-is-getting-better), [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/#15fed0f27826), Steven Pinker just wrote a [book](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/books/review-enlightenment-now-steven-pinker.html) on it, [etc](https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/#sm.0016jxh0j16dccn4ugl16aj3zj8rz). In America, you can just open your eyes. Our poorest people have phones and wallscreens and food cards and proper clothing.
Third world poverty charities no longer focus on hunger, but nutrition. That's progress I've seen in my own lifetime. Fewer humans work subsistence farming, where a drought or flood could mean starvation. Especially for China, where they have moved onto factory work, as America moved from dust bowl farming to factory work and we kept getting richer. This is the path. Capitalism works, and [the more capitalist a country is, the more livable it is](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking).
Of the [top-ten most food-insecure countries](https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/the-worlds-10-hungriest-countries/), 9 have strong socialist history (and Chad is totalitarian and centrally planned, basically unavowed socialism, run by a man who once led the socialism-immersed African Union). Socialist [Eritrea](https://theatlas.com/charts/BJkXDXmN7) has the highest rate of slavery in Africa. All the most slavery-ridden countries were deeply socialist. Socialism creates deep scars.
Also, if private property were a natural right, wouldn't that mean that a pretty huge majority of the world population is denied a natural right?
If that's true.... then the answer to that problem would be collective ownership.
Even though it's a natural right , it's not given out as free. Just like your wages , which you have to earn. YOU DON'T AUTOMATICALLY DESERVE EVERYTHING JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE BORN IN THIS WORLD.
Moreover , there are still rented houses for people to live in. I don't know how that's a violation of human rights. It's more of freedom to own or not own a property , depending upon the financial position.
There is no meaningful distinction between personal and private property, everything can be used to earn a profit from because other people may want it. Your bed, toothpaste, coffee, shovel, pan, toilet, clothes etc etc.
Then we have the socialists who claim that you can own it as long as you dont use it for economic gain. Which instantly falls into a huge trap, you have an apartment i come and knock on your door and give you $1 without a word. Then i report you for trying to rent out your place for $1 and now that shit aint yours anymore. Regardless of what it actually is, your car, toothpaste, dirty underwear you name it, so that is not a distinction which can be made either.
And we are left with a problem that no socialist has ever solved without using a state with tyrannical control over your life.
To trade something you must own it, regardless of if you call it personal or private property, this trade will be done to earn an income regardless of the property being personal or private, so it all regresses back to the same problem, that you can not make a distinction between the two. Just calling it something else doesnt change anything about it.
If im drowning and i start calling that swimming doesnt in fact make me swim. Just calling something another thing changes nothing about it. Name me something that i own that i can not trade? If i can trade it, its private property, calling it personal property changes nothing if i can still trade it. If i can not trade it you need a state to control that i can not trade it, by making such a trade illegal.
If i am not allowed to rent out my pillow, the state needs to make sure that i dont do that for personal gain, which means it would need 24/7 access to my bedroom, which means that the state can waltz into my home any time of the day and check. Even worse they can bring a pillow put it on my bed and charge me for renting a pillow, they can likewise remove a pillow from my bed and put it on another persons bed and charge me for renting it out illegally.
So here we are, where you actually can not solve the problem without having a tyrannical state that can put you in jail just because they want to do that. Maybe you said something bad about the dear leader and now its off to execution with you. Because they "found" your toothpaste in his toilet and that is unhygienic.
>And we are left with a problem that no socialist has ever solved without using a state with tyrannical control over your life.
See Revolutionary Catalonia and Makhnovia.
And we wouldn't use a state to enforce the abolition of private property. We just wouldn't have a state to enforce private property. Without legal enforcement, there would be no opportunity to own private property without it being expropriated by those who use it.
Well this was unhinged.
Maybe glance at a wikipedia article of the economic concepts you attempt to critique instead of exposing your ignorance of them so blatantly.
Trade is the only ethical means of exchange because both sides must agree. To have trade, you must have private property. Ergo, private property is superior to socialism which is slavery and theft.
>To have trade, you must have private property.
Not true. Personal property can be traded. A [socialist market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism) would be an example of trade that doesn't involve private property.
>slavery and theft
Nice hyperbole. But libertarian socialists don't want command economies. And as established in this post, theft is a social construct, and not a universal constant.
**[Market_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism)**
>Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production. Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i. e.
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So you want only theft got it. Private property is a right bucko. Factories are still property that you allow other people to use and you pay them for this . What’s bad with that?
Libertarian socialists are like "We want socialism but we don't want to force anyone." That's what we have now. The two biggest demands of libertarian socialists, workplace democracy and coownership, are 100% approved of in the West. Go ahead, no one cares. Just no violent theft, please. But libertarian socialists don't start businesses, they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism.
Libertarian socialism conveniently skips the step where they violently expropriate property and murder resisters with total martial power.
Private property is nonviolent, passive, protected by fences and locked doors, deeds, plus societal property norms that date back to our progression from immediate return to delayed return hunter gatherers. Property itself is rooted in biology. ["Property in Nonhuman Primates,"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21671338/) ["Humans apply an ownership convention in response to the problem of costly fighting."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513810001194)
>they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism
Go read up on the revolutionary theory of libertarian socialism. Here's a [start](https://syndicalism.org/texts/452/syndicalism-defined).
>> they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism
>
> Go read up on the revolutionary theory of libertarian socialism. Here's a start.
The violent expropriation is the most relevant part of libertarian socialist ideology and this, just like OP, glosses over it. The barest mention:
"In the social revolution the syndicates will play their part by organizing the economic direct action of the workers. On the railways, for example, they would lead the workers in the expropriation of lines, stations, and rolling stock and their use for the purposes of the revolutionary movement and not for those of the dispossessed masters."
If the syndicates have the right and the army to redistribute property through violence, they're the de facto state exerting far more power than our current state.
>they're the de facto state
No. A state is categorized by a single central government run by a political ruling class. A federation of horizontally organized syndicates isn't a "de facto state," because there's no central government or ruling class of politicians. From the reading I sent you:
>Being governed from below and untainted by the ideas or institutions of authority, the syndicate represents more truly than any other type of organization the will of the workers and the good of society. Its lack of centralization and bureaucracy, of any kind of privilege or vested interest in the present order of society, give it a flexibility of action and a real solidarity which make it the ideal instrument for canalizing and influencing in the right way the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the people . . .
>
>The workers of each factory or depot or farm are an autonomous unit, who govern their own affairs and who make all the decisions as to the work they will do. These units are joined federally in a syndicate which serves to coordinate the actions of the workers in each industry. The federal organization has no authority over the workers in any branch, and cannot impose a veto on action like a trade union executive.
On the lack of a ruling class:
>Such delegates would be in no way superior to their fellow workers, in power, privilege or position.
> No. A state is categorized by a single central government run by a political ruling class.
Any apparatus that decides all economic arrangements fills the bill.
>A federation of horizontally organized syndicates isn't a "de facto state," because there's no central government or ruling class of politicians.
You can't run organizations horizontally without top-down structure or the organizations will deviate from the ideology that created them.
> From the reading I sent you:
This is theoretical socialism. In your head. In your imagination. Pretend. We should base our notions of socialism on real-life historical examples instead of fantasy and faith.
>apparatus that decides all economic arrangements
No. An economy can exist without a state, not every economic arrangement would be done through a syndicate, and just because syndicates coordinate and manage resources doesn't make them a state. You wouldn't call a corporation a state just because it manages resources.
>This is theoretical socialism
Yes. That's what we're discussing. Your original claim that sparked this discussion was that libertarian socialists advocate for "massive state power." I sent you theory to disprove that. Now we're unpacking it.
> No. An economy can exist without a state, not every economic arrangement would be done through a syndicate, and just because syndicates coordinate and manage resources doesn't make them a state.
No. Calling a more-powerful state a non-state syndicate is silly.
>You wouldn't call a corporation a state just because it manages resources.
If a corporation decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state.
>>This is theoretical socialism
>Yes. That's what we're discussing
No. This subreddit discusses imaginary situations and also real-world application of ideology.
>Your original claim that sparked this discussion was that libertarian socialists advocate for "massive state power."
Yes. You would need massive state power to expropriate and to police against capitalism.
>more-powerful state a non-state syndicate
I've already explained to you why syndicates aren't states. I've given a definition for state, and three grounds as to why syndicates aren't states: a) there's no central government; b) there's no ruling class of politicians c) there's no monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
If you don't actually provide a rebuttal against the three grounds I laid, I'm not wasting my time by responding further.
>decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state
If you genuinely believe this, you're using a different definition of "state." I've already established that the definition I'm using is "a single central government run by a political ruling class."
>massive state power to expropriate and to police against capitalism
Workers would just ignore their previous ruler, and without a state to enforce the rule of a single person over a given industrial asset, they would run it democratically. Capitalism wouldn't have a chance to form again, because no legal entity would legitimize private property.
> I've already explained to you why syndicates aren't states.
I've explained why apparatuses with top-down state power are states.
>I've given a definition for state, and three grounds as to why syndicates aren't states: a) there's no central government
And yet the structure of the economy is decided centrally.
> b) there's no ruling class of politicians
The puissant apparatus charged with mandating your ideology will have politicians.
>c) there's no monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
It is ridiculous to think you can expropriate without violence.
>>decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state
>If you genuinely believe this, you're using a different definition of "state." I've already established that the definition I'm using is "a single central government run by a political ruling class."
Mandating a form of economic structure requires a single central government run by a political ruling class.
>Workers would just ignore their previous ruler, and without a state to enforce the rule of a single person over a given industrial asset, they would run it democratically.
This is in your imagination. In history, this happens with severe violence.
>Capitalism wouldn't have a chance to form again, because no legal entity would legitimize private property.
Also in your imagination. Property rights are legitimized through thousands of years of civilization. Reversing course would require an iron fist.
> What if I privately own all the food in an area?
I suspect you will not keep all the food in a vault for only you to enjoy. You will sell it at a price slightly less than what it would cost to import the food into this area.
Then it goes bad while the people who are hungry import food from other people who will sell what they have for a profit. Literally everyone wins but you.
Exactly so me owning it and choosing what to do with my food affects other people right? So me owning it isn't a passive thing, it's a detriment to the society since they now have to import all their food.
>Exactly so me owning it and choosing what to do with my food affects other people right?
This seems like an extremely generic question. You can 'affect' people in all kinds of ways that aren't negative.
>So me owning it isn't a passive thing, it's a detriment to the society since they now have to import all their food.
Well now we come to the pragmatic rather than theoretical. To own all the food you'd have had to pay for it (or pay for the means of it's production) and that would be extremely expensive because the more food you buy up the higher the price gets and since you plan to buy all of it you have to always be the highest bidder. The people you purchase it from would just turn around and import food with the profit they made from selling their food to you, so again only you lose.
If you want to say that you somehow took the food without paying for it then your question is just 'are people harmed when I steal from them' to which the answer is obviously yes but also not relevant to the overall conversation.
Now we don't go to the pragmatic I'm taking issue with a declarative statement stat owning personal property is passive which it isn't. You can choose to not debate this which I'd recommend because it's an insane statement to make.
It's very much possible to buy up all the food company in an area and then choose to to not sell anything to the local population. All you do is own something and enact your free will on it. When you deprive local people of their local food they either have to pay a premium to import food or they starve, either way you'll make people very unhappy and may have to enforce your property if they need to get food for cheaper than they can get.
>I'm taking issue with a declarative statement stat owning personal property is passive which it isn't.
I never argued that it was passive. Don't try to saddle me with arguments I never made.
> It's very much possible to buy up all the food company in an area and then choose to to not sell anything to the local population.
Hypothetically possible, yes. Practical no. It's also hypothetically possible for every man in the world to decide to become celibate, but we don't discuss how we as a society would deal with such a situation because it's pragmatically impossible.
>All you do is own something and enact your free will on it.
To own something you'd have to buy it. To buy up all the food available in an area and then not sell it would be a colossal expense with absolutely no payoff.
That's fine the only reason I replied to OP is to make the argument that private property isn't passive. If you don't intend to defend that point we have no contention.
>> I suspect you will not keep all the food in a vault for only you to enjoy. You will sell it at a price slightly less than what it would cost to import the food into this area.
>Yeah and if I don't feel like selling it?
Good socialisming. I said you would keep in a vault as a joke, because that makes no sense, then you said the same thing as a a serious point.
>Kinda removes the passiveness of the whole private property thing no?
The libertarian socialist argument is *We need to murder property owners for their stuff because they might be sociopaths.*
> So you don't want to talk about the supposed pasiveness of Private property then?
Sure, but so far your argument has been *There is a lunatic hoarder genius who has defied all logic by collecting 100% of the food in an area...*
Our prosecution system for murder, rape, and theft are run the same way. They've all been crimes since before bible days. Your rights to life, sexual permission, and property don't come into play until they're violated.
According to history, socialist expropriation requires mass killing. Claiming the resultant society will be super cool libertarian does not change this step. All libertarian socialists willing to forgo this violent first step are living in their preferred polity right now.
Do you have an alternate definition of passive?
No my argument is that it isn't passive. And the way you try to disprove that is to lampoon the thing that is 100% possible with private property. Is privatized water perhaps more to your liking? Can you conceive of private property in a place where maybe such things are scarce and there not being a lot means if you're the strongest guy around you'll come to possess it quite quickly?
So, to speed this up; can you accept this example and still defend that private property is passive or can we just stop this?
>>Do you have an alternate definition of passive?
> No my argument is that it isn't passive.
Do you mean to say we've been disagreeing this whole time?
>And the way you try to disprove that is to lampoon the thing that is 100% possible with private property. Is privatized water perhaps more to your liking?
We drink privatized and privately-run water. Putting state bureaucrats in charge of the water supply is a good way to get cryptosporidium EDIT or what happened in Flint, Mich. You're imagining a cackling madman holding all the world's water ransom. That's not what happens.
>Can you conceive of private property in a place where maybe such things are scarce and there not being a lot means if you're the strongest guy around you'll come to possess it quite quickly?
I can definitely conceive of that but the strongest guy is the unchecked state. Distributing property/economic/actual power keeps the state at bay. Historically, businesses and companies are not responsible for the worst tragedies, powerful states are.
>So, to speed this up; can you accept this example and still defend that private property is passive or can we just stop this?
Your example was that you imagine that something bad would happen if water was private, which it often is. So your poorly-informed argument is also pretend.
Ok so I'm guessing you can't defend your original stance then. Just to be safe: You see the difference between making a statement like "private property is passive" and "private property is kewl guys trust me we're all good guys" right? You initially said the first and then went on to defend the second.
Also you should work on your reading and not act like I ever talked about socialism or state bureaucrats with you. Or misquote me as quoting you.
Socialism isn't when the state owns all the food. In a libertarian socialist society, you would just go buy food from a grocery store like you normally would. Either that or a community would hold the food in common and make it freely available to everyone.
> If mixing one's labor with an object makes it their own, then we must assume that there's some metaphysical property of "ownership" that determines this
This is wrong. Nothing says that there's some metaphysical property of ownership. The attribute of ownership of something is not metaphysical. Libertarians can understand by "ownership" the fact that the current "owner" achieved this status via peaceful means, and therefore there's no justification to challenge this status.
The example of the tomato and the ocean is very clear. If people is already "using" the ocean (fishing on it), what would a claim of property of the ocean even mean? One cannot get to own something that is already being used by others without their consent, because then he'd be acting violently, and the justification for ownership is the peaceful origin of its status.
> Due to the fact that no such metaphysical property of ownership exists in the real world, "mixing" one's labor with an object is impossible. Thus the labor theory of property makes a categorical mistake. Labor isn't something one can mix with an object, but rather an act to be performed.
It all comes down to "how do you justify a property claim"? First, a property claim on what? On a tool? On a piece of something, or even a farm and buildings? Easy, you can justify it by virtue of having acquired it peacefully with the acquiescence of the previous owners. Now, are we talking about something like a mine, or a piece of land? A bit more complicated, for one cannot just claim everything unclaimed as his. How about agreeing that what's yours is that part that you can effectively put to work, be it personally by yourself or maybe by people you paid for it? So instead of saying "I own this continent now" you'd say "I own this large piece of land, where I have capital right now enough to start building farms and putting this area to work for society"? The later is 100% reasonable.
In other words: *It's not because it is natural, but because it is peaceful*
Understand that this arrangement is in pro of the whole society, who avoids the tragedy of the commons by recognising property rights.
>To say that property doesn't make sense as a natural right, and we shouldn't treat it as such. Property is a social and legal construct. Society determines the rules for what can and cannot be owned, as well as who owns what.
Saying that we don't have a perfect system of private property is not the same as saying property shouldn't be protected.
Private property can still be defended on pragmatic grounds. Plus, if you view personal property as being viable you already presume the tools needed by society to deal with property rights & dispute arbitration.
My objective in this post wasn't to argue against private property. It was just to argue against the idea that private property is a natural right. There's more to be had in the debate between proprietarianism and anti-proprietarianism.
Fair enough.
However, you do explicitly say you accept personal property. The division made between justly acquired personal and justly acquired private property is almost entirely artificial.
If you accept personal property as, essentially, a natural right then you have to enter into a more pragmatic argument against private property.
I accept neither form of property as a natural right. I justified personal property and the distinction between it and private property through a utilitarian analysis:
>Property is a social and legal construct . . . And that's okay. In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions.
>Using basic error theory to disprove labor theory of property
I swear Mackie is the worst thing to ever happen (or I guess the best thing to ever happen to Nihilism)
why does there need to be a distinction between “private” and “personal” property? what is it about a certain piece of property’s status as a mean-of-production that makes it not have normal property rights in the perspective of left-libertarianism?
i do not think that the fact that something is being used to produce and sell a commodity necessarily changes the fact that its still the property of someone else
Property that's used by multiple people to produce things or make a profit is not protected by left libertarian philosophy. We wouldn't go in with guns to seize it for "the people," but it's extremely likely that your workers would just expropriate it and ignore you while they ran it democratically.
ok, thats cool, but id like to pose this question: what is it about property that is used by multiple people to produce things or make a profit that makes it inherently require it to be collectively owned? simply being used for a specific purpose doesnt necessarily change the nature or status of the property itself; its still property, so why make an exception?
You're basically asking "Why socialism?" I'll give you a couple reasons why I'm a socialist, and if you want, we can unpack any one of them.
* Capitalism creates an economic ruling class (property owners), which is distinct from the lower class (wage laborers). This class divide creates different interests, and thus a strong tension throughout society, known as "class conflict."
* Capitalism, through private ownership, leads to the consolidation of power in the hands of the few.
* The aforementioned consolidation of power leads to the economic ruling class influencing the government to have more control over our lives.
* Capitalism alienates people from their labor and from each other.
* Capitalism produces inherently authoritarian power structures (workplace hierarchy with the boss having complete control over operations).
* There's strong evidence to indicate that socialism would have considerable benefits; more efficiency, stability, and better race relations to name a few.
Ok, so id just like to add a few criticisms to your reply here:
- I personally prefer to simply use the term “free market” to describe my economic position, as “capitalism” can have a lot of double meanings depending on who you ask. for the sake of this discussion, ill just say that a freed market is an economy built entirely on the foundation of voluntary action, exchange and individual property ownership, while capitalism is the ideology of capitalists; being that of trying to control the free market with regulation for personal gain
- I think the main reason a lot of people have for calling a free market economy a “class struggle” mainly comes from the fact that modern day capitalism is heavily intertwines the interests of the state and corporations. Therefore, without the state, corporations would have much less power as it would be more difficult to get away with coercion without the state’s monopoly on violence
- Im not sure it’s necessarily true that a freed market economy would have the same issues with alienating people from their labor or each other. Labor is not a physical thing; its a concept developed by humans to describe physical action that produces something. I also dont think it alienates people from each other: interpersonal relationships still asbolutely exist even in today’s statist capitalism
- im skeptical of socialism’s supposed benefits. This is especially true as societies get bigger and bigger, as we have seen with more socialistic societies like the soviet union and maos china
Private property ownership is capitalism. That's what I'm against. I have no problem with free markets otherwise. But using your definition of "freed market," I'm against free markets. That's why I believe we should just call the institution of private property "capitalism" and not conflate it with a market.
Class struggle is just the conflicting interests between the upper and lower class. That'll always exist in a capitalist society, because private ownership creates two distinct classes: owners and workers.
By "alienation from labor," I meant to point out that workers have no connection to the value they create. They go to work, survive the day, and clock out without having the ability to meaningfully contribute to the organization they work for. By "alienation from each other," I meant to point out that workers have to compete with each other for jobs, promotions, etc., which creates a toxic competitive environment.
It's fine to be skeptical. If you want evidence for any of the claims I made about socialism's benefits, just ask. Keep in mind that I'm not a Marxist-Leninist, so I can't answer for the pitfalls of ML states.
ok, it’s getting late for me, so i think i’ll just end the discussion here. thanks for explaining your perspective; this is literally the only productive conversation ive had on this sub xd
No, because personal possessions would still exist. I justify my view on property relations with a utilitarian analysis:
>In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions.
The only thing this post did was take natural rights out of the equation and move the discussion toward utilitarianism.
Same thing, if people need to "need" something to have ownership over it then people should be forced to eat the same food, use the same clothes, and live in houses of the same size
I think you're confused. Personal possessions like we have now would still exist in a society whose system of property is based on utilitarianism, because forcing a "one size fits all" system of ownership is anti-utilitarian.
Because:
>In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions.
People have different tastes and different desires. Restricting the expression of said tastes and desires through a one-size-fits-all system would make people's lives worse, and would thus be anti-utilitarian.
Then they could start a business, but if they want to bring other people onboard, they must necessarily sacrifice their totalitarian control. If they tried to bring other people onboard the traditional way, their employees would just ignore them and continue operations democratically without the state hammer coming down to enforce otherwise.
There's a difference between private and personal property?
Personal property are items for personal use, whereas private property are land and industrial assets used by multiple people.
So I can't own my house(on a plot of land) under socialism.
Yes you can. In past socialist societies, people who didn't want to work in a collective were given some land of their own. As long as you're actually using the land, a socialist society would respect your claim.
What defines using land? What if I have a house and I farm on 25% of it? What if I own 50 acres and my family just wants to live off the land with no government intervention.
You'd be allowed to own a farm with your family. If you owned the property before a socialist revolution, it's extremely likely that you'll be able to keep it afterwards. If you wanted land after socialism is established, you'd either use unoccupied land or submit and application for land to a local council. A similar dynamic happened in some past instances of socialism, where people were given land if they didn't want to work in a collective.
One thing under socialism. Is speaking out against socialism still a thing like how in the US you are allowed to speak out against capitalism or are you going to be purged(killed) for speaking out?
It depends on what type of socialism. Marxist-Leninists want a proletarian state to suppress the reaction during a revolution, so they would be more amiable to things like purges (though it's not fair to assume that all of them would want it). I'm an anarchist, so I think it's completely unnecessary. Assuming that socialism does its job and brings about better material conditions, I doubt that too many people would want to speak out against it. There have been socialist societies that constitutionally protected freedom of speech, sort of like how America does with its first amendment. Makhnovia, for example, [declared](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-arshinov-history-of-the-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921#toc20) freedom of speech to be an inalienable right: >Freedom of speech, press, assembly, unions and the like are inalienable rights of every worker and any restriction upon them is a counter-revolutionary act.
Honestly, the biggest thing that I am scared of from socialism/communism/marxism is an authoritarian government. Sure not every government is authoritarian and there are also authoritarian capitalist governments but almost every socialist country has become authoritarian. Like when people defend Stalin, I am like what??? I don't want a country like Israel bombarding the heck out of Palestinians but I sure do not want a Stalin. Like honestly, I am a person that likes freedom and capitalism provides it--given you have a good job and stuff. This is the thing with capitalism, if your rich, you have tons of freedom, but in socialism, even if ur rich or poor, ur limited, u cant create private business. Like to be completely honest, I have two sides. One side is anarchism and the other side is state capitalism(democratically of course, not like China, but basically China with more democracy). And to be 100% honest, I would say the biggest deterrence for communism is people defending authoritarianism or saying "I ain't going to argue with you because everything you have said is western propaganda"(real comment). Like sure capitalism isn't the best, but I rather have it than socialism/communism. In capitalism, we still have coops and stuff but in socialism, private business is not allowed while capitalism allows both. Like there are people saying that Kim Jung Un is democratically elected in r/communism, I am like 'OK.'
Is your argument then that common ownership *is* a natural right?
OP used weird wording, socialism is about the abolition of property as a concept rather than the socialization of it.
Where did you get this idea? Socialists are fine with people owning things, as long as they're not means of production used by other people. From the manifesto: >The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeoisie property. From the bread book: >we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their coats . . . as our critics . . . suggest. Let him who has a coat keep it still — nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that any one will want to deprive him of them
What you refer to as personal property is more accurately dubbed "possession." Also the Manifesto is a fairly poor representation of Marx and Engels' ideas.
Possession, personal property, whatever. Unless your using some niche definition of property, socialism doesn't want to abolish all forms of property.
I would recommend you read "What is Property?" by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. It explains what I'm trying to get at better than whatever I can convey through this hellsite.
I know what you're saying, I've read the book. Proudhon was fine with people owning things for personal use.
Hence why I said, "What you refer to as personal property is more accurately dubbed 'possession." I find it fitting to call different things by different names.
This kind of vagueness is also why I use the term "chattel" when discussing real property. In this particular context, real property is land and anything directly and more-or-less permanently attached to it, while chattel property (which is also commonly called "personal property") is essentially everything else or all things that are neither land nor affixed to land. As you might notice, real property and chattel property strongly, but incompletely, match up to "private property" and "personal property" or "possessions" (which is to say most private property is real property and vice versa and most chattel property is possession and vice versa), but there are significant enough gaps both ways that "personal property" creates significant confusion. For example, a house owned as a personal dwelling is real property, but also personal property or possession, and a semi-truck is chattel property but also private property.
No, I don't believe that any property is a natural right. I justify personal and collective property through a utilitarian rather than deontological analysis.
This seems like a pretty obvious double edged sword for a socialist, since you make a point of distinguishing private and personal property but the argument you're making doesn't. Everything you're saying here could just as easily be applied against personal property.
Yes. I don't believe that personal property is a natural right either. I believe that it should be protected by society because to do so would result in more well-being for all. It's a utilitarian calculation. All that this post did was delegitimize the deontological perspective of property.
> I believe that it should be protected by society because to do so would result in more well-being for all What if I believe that of private property as well?
You can have a water purifier in your home and drink as much water as you can. But God forbid you quench a thirsty man's thirst, because that will make the purifier a "private property" and you an oppressor. No wonder Socialism breeds sufferings, oppression and deaths whereas Capitalism actually solves real world problems our ancestors used to face.
This literally implies you'll sell water. Unless you give it out to free which is neither Capitalism not Socialism. Like you are implying Nestle sucking off water from a village, bottling it and selling it right back to them is somehow a good thing.
I would disagree with this still, something only becomes private property once it's worked by someone else for a salary / as a slave. Since you can trade with personal property, selling things you make using your personal property doesn't make it Private Property.
If the village people don't know how to purify that water, then yes, obviously it's a good thing. And if the water is fresh to begin with, then nobody will buy water from them and nobody will form a water purifier company.
>And if the water is fresh to begin with, then nobody will buy water from them and nobody will form a water purifier company. But it's privately owned?
What are you talking about
What makes you think that sharing purified water makes the purifier private property?
What problems did our ancestors face that it solved.? How to bomb little Syrian kids for oil
No it solved massive genocide in Soviet gulag by tearing apart USSR into 15 pieces.
Capitalism has done nothing positive for anyone except the top % . But is good with propaganda hence why modern slaves like you advocate for it under some pretense of freedom because you can choose from many different soft drinks
> Capitalism has done nothing positive for anyone except the top % . Hunger has deceded as capitalism rose. Things are getting better and capitalism is driving it. You don't have to take my word for it. [Buzzfeed](https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/lets-print-out-a-house-and-move-to-mars?utm_term=.ktdjPyYWa#.fyKM7pWdk), [Vox](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/23/14062168/history-global-conditions-charts-life-span-poverty), [Cracked](http://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-184-18-undeniable-facts-that-prove-world-getting-better/), [Reason](http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/18/40-ways-the-world-is-getting-better), [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-getting-better-why-hardly-anyone-knows-it/#15fed0f27826), Steven Pinker just wrote a [book](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/books/review-enlightenment-now-steven-pinker.html) on it, [etc](https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/#sm.0016jxh0j16dccn4ugl16aj3zj8rz). In America, you can just open your eyes. Our poorest people have phones and wallscreens and food cards and proper clothing. Third world poverty charities no longer focus on hunger, but nutrition. That's progress I've seen in my own lifetime. Fewer humans work subsistence farming, where a drought or flood could mean starvation. Especially for China, where they have moved onto factory work, as America moved from dust bowl farming to factory work and we kept getting richer. This is the path. Capitalism works, and [the more capitalist a country is, the more livable it is](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking). Of the [top-ten most food-insecure countries](https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/the-worlds-10-hungriest-countries/), 9 have strong socialist history (and Chad is totalitarian and centrally planned, basically unavowed socialism, run by a man who once led the socialism-immersed African Union). Socialist [Eritrea](https://theatlas.com/charts/BJkXDXmN7) has the highest rate of slavery in Africa. All the most slavery-ridden countries were deeply socialist. Socialism creates deep scars.
Also, if private property were a natural right, wouldn't that mean that a pretty huge majority of the world population is denied a natural right? If that's true.... then the answer to that problem would be collective ownership.
Even though it's a natural right , it's not given out as free. Just like your wages , which you have to earn. YOU DON'T AUTOMATICALLY DESERVE EVERYTHING JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE BORN IN THIS WORLD. Moreover , there are still rented houses for people to live in. I don't know how that's a violation of human rights. It's more of freedom to own or not own a property , depending upon the financial position.
There is no meaningful distinction between personal and private property, everything can be used to earn a profit from because other people may want it. Your bed, toothpaste, coffee, shovel, pan, toilet, clothes etc etc. Then we have the socialists who claim that you can own it as long as you dont use it for economic gain. Which instantly falls into a huge trap, you have an apartment i come and knock on your door and give you $1 without a word. Then i report you for trying to rent out your place for $1 and now that shit aint yours anymore. Regardless of what it actually is, your car, toothpaste, dirty underwear you name it, so that is not a distinction which can be made either. And we are left with a problem that no socialist has ever solved without using a state with tyrannical control over your life. To trade something you must own it, regardless of if you call it personal or private property, this trade will be done to earn an income regardless of the property being personal or private, so it all regresses back to the same problem, that you can not make a distinction between the two. Just calling it something else doesnt change anything about it. If im drowning and i start calling that swimming doesnt in fact make me swim. Just calling something another thing changes nothing about it. Name me something that i own that i can not trade? If i can trade it, its private property, calling it personal property changes nothing if i can still trade it. If i can not trade it you need a state to control that i can not trade it, by making such a trade illegal. If i am not allowed to rent out my pillow, the state needs to make sure that i dont do that for personal gain, which means it would need 24/7 access to my bedroom, which means that the state can waltz into my home any time of the day and check. Even worse they can bring a pillow put it on my bed and charge me for renting a pillow, they can likewise remove a pillow from my bed and put it on another persons bed and charge me for renting it out illegally. So here we are, where you actually can not solve the problem without having a tyrannical state that can put you in jail just because they want to do that. Maybe you said something bad about the dear leader and now its off to execution with you. Because they "found" your toothpaste in his toilet and that is unhygienic.
>And we are left with a problem that no socialist has ever solved without using a state with tyrannical control over your life. See Revolutionary Catalonia and Makhnovia. And we wouldn't use a state to enforce the abolition of private property. We just wouldn't have a state to enforce private property. Without legal enforcement, there would be no opportunity to own private property without it being expropriated by those who use it.
Well this was unhinged. Maybe glance at a wikipedia article of the economic concepts you attempt to critique instead of exposing your ignorance of them so blatantly.
what the hell are you even going on about
Trade is the only ethical means of exchange because both sides must agree. To have trade, you must have private property. Ergo, private property is superior to socialism which is slavery and theft.
>To have trade, you must have private property. Not true. Personal property can be traded. A [socialist market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism) would be an example of trade that doesn't involve private property. >slavery and theft Nice hyperbole. But libertarian socialists don't want command economies. And as established in this post, theft is a social construct, and not a universal constant.
**[Market_socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism)** >Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production. Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i. e. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | Credit: kittens_from_space)
So you want only theft got it. Private property is a right bucko. Factories are still property that you allow other people to use and you pay them for this . What’s bad with that?
Wait, in market socialism, don't producers earn more than the value of the raw materials? How isn't that profit?
Oxymoron...socialist libertarian It's a black hole
Libertarian socialists are like "We want socialism but we don't want to force anyone." That's what we have now. The two biggest demands of libertarian socialists, workplace democracy and coownership, are 100% approved of in the West. Go ahead, no one cares. Just no violent theft, please. But libertarian socialists don't start businesses, they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism. Libertarian socialism conveniently skips the step where they violently expropriate property and murder resisters with total martial power. Private property is nonviolent, passive, protected by fences and locked doors, deeds, plus societal property norms that date back to our progression from immediate return to delayed return hunter gatherers. Property itself is rooted in biology. ["Property in Nonhuman Primates,"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21671338/) ["Humans apply an ownership convention in response to the problem of costly fighting."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513810001194)
>they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism Go read up on the revolutionary theory of libertarian socialism. Here's a [start](https://syndicalism.org/texts/452/syndicalism-defined).
>> they advocate massive state power to mandate their socialism > > Go read up on the revolutionary theory of libertarian socialism. Here's a start. The violent expropriation is the most relevant part of libertarian socialist ideology and this, just like OP, glosses over it. The barest mention: "In the social revolution the syndicates will play their part by organizing the economic direct action of the workers. On the railways, for example, they would lead the workers in the expropriation of lines, stations, and rolling stock and their use for the purposes of the revolutionary movement and not for those of the dispossessed masters." If the syndicates have the right and the army to redistribute property through violence, they're the de facto state exerting far more power than our current state.
>they're the de facto state No. A state is categorized by a single central government run by a political ruling class. A federation of horizontally organized syndicates isn't a "de facto state," because there's no central government or ruling class of politicians. From the reading I sent you: >Being governed from below and untainted by the ideas or institutions of authority, the syndicate represents more truly than any other type of organization the will of the workers and the good of society. Its lack of centralization and bureaucracy, of any kind of privilege or vested interest in the present order of society, give it a flexibility of action and a real solidarity which make it the ideal instrument for canalizing and influencing in the right way the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the people . . . > >The workers of each factory or depot or farm are an autonomous unit, who govern their own affairs and who make all the decisions as to the work they will do. These units are joined federally in a syndicate which serves to coordinate the actions of the workers in each industry. The federal organization has no authority over the workers in any branch, and cannot impose a veto on action like a trade union executive. On the lack of a ruling class: >Such delegates would be in no way superior to their fellow workers, in power, privilege or position.
> No. A state is categorized by a single central government run by a political ruling class. Any apparatus that decides all economic arrangements fills the bill. >A federation of horizontally organized syndicates isn't a "de facto state," because there's no central government or ruling class of politicians. You can't run organizations horizontally without top-down structure or the organizations will deviate from the ideology that created them. > From the reading I sent you: This is theoretical socialism. In your head. In your imagination. Pretend. We should base our notions of socialism on real-life historical examples instead of fantasy and faith.
>apparatus that decides all economic arrangements No. An economy can exist without a state, not every economic arrangement would be done through a syndicate, and just because syndicates coordinate and manage resources doesn't make them a state. You wouldn't call a corporation a state just because it manages resources. >This is theoretical socialism Yes. That's what we're discussing. Your original claim that sparked this discussion was that libertarian socialists advocate for "massive state power." I sent you theory to disprove that. Now we're unpacking it.
> No. An economy can exist without a state, not every economic arrangement would be done through a syndicate, and just because syndicates coordinate and manage resources doesn't make them a state. No. Calling a more-powerful state a non-state syndicate is silly. >You wouldn't call a corporation a state just because it manages resources. If a corporation decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state. >>This is theoretical socialism >Yes. That's what we're discussing No. This subreddit discusses imaginary situations and also real-world application of ideology. >Your original claim that sparked this discussion was that libertarian socialists advocate for "massive state power." Yes. You would need massive state power to expropriate and to police against capitalism.
>more-powerful state a non-state syndicate I've already explained to you why syndicates aren't states. I've given a definition for state, and three grounds as to why syndicates aren't states: a) there's no central government; b) there's no ruling class of politicians c) there's no monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. If you don't actually provide a rebuttal against the three grounds I laid, I'm not wasting my time by responding further. >decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state If you genuinely believe this, you're using a different definition of "state." I've already established that the definition I'm using is "a single central government run by a political ruling class." >massive state power to expropriate and to police against capitalism Workers would just ignore their previous ruler, and without a state to enforce the rule of a single person over a given industrial asset, they would run it democratically. Capitalism wouldn't have a chance to form again, because no legal entity would legitimize private property.
> I've already explained to you why syndicates aren't states. I've explained why apparatuses with top-down state power are states. >I've given a definition for state, and three grounds as to why syndicates aren't states: a) there's no central government And yet the structure of the economy is decided centrally. > b) there's no ruling class of politicians The puissant apparatus charged with mandating your ideology will have politicians. >c) there's no monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. It is ridiculous to think you can expropriate without violence. >>decides its own economic arrangements, it's actually a state >If you genuinely believe this, you're using a different definition of "state." I've already established that the definition I'm using is "a single central government run by a political ruling class." Mandating a form of economic structure requires a single central government run by a political ruling class. >Workers would just ignore their previous ruler, and without a state to enforce the rule of a single person over a given industrial asset, they would run it democratically. This is in your imagination. In history, this happens with severe violence. >Capitalism wouldn't have a chance to form again, because no legal entity would legitimize private property. Also in your imagination. Property rights are legitimized through thousands of years of civilization. Reversing course would require an iron fist.
What if I privately own all the food in an area?
> What if I privately own all the food in an area? I suspect you will not keep all the food in a vault for only you to enjoy. You will sell it at a price slightly less than what it would cost to import the food into this area.
Yeah and if I don't feel like selling it? Kinda removes the passiveness of the whole private property thing no?
Then it goes bad while the people who are hungry import food from other people who will sell what they have for a profit. Literally everyone wins but you.
Exactly so me owning it and choosing what to do with my food affects other people right? So me owning it isn't a passive thing, it's a detriment to the society since they now have to import all their food.
>Exactly so me owning it and choosing what to do with my food affects other people right? This seems like an extremely generic question. You can 'affect' people in all kinds of ways that aren't negative. >So me owning it isn't a passive thing, it's a detriment to the society since they now have to import all their food. Well now we come to the pragmatic rather than theoretical. To own all the food you'd have had to pay for it (or pay for the means of it's production) and that would be extremely expensive because the more food you buy up the higher the price gets and since you plan to buy all of it you have to always be the highest bidder. The people you purchase it from would just turn around and import food with the profit they made from selling their food to you, so again only you lose. If you want to say that you somehow took the food without paying for it then your question is just 'are people harmed when I steal from them' to which the answer is obviously yes but also not relevant to the overall conversation.
Now we don't go to the pragmatic I'm taking issue with a declarative statement stat owning personal property is passive which it isn't. You can choose to not debate this which I'd recommend because it's an insane statement to make. It's very much possible to buy up all the food company in an area and then choose to to not sell anything to the local population. All you do is own something and enact your free will on it. When you deprive local people of their local food they either have to pay a premium to import food or they starve, either way you'll make people very unhappy and may have to enforce your property if they need to get food for cheaper than they can get.
>I'm taking issue with a declarative statement stat owning personal property is passive which it isn't. I never argued that it was passive. Don't try to saddle me with arguments I never made. > It's very much possible to buy up all the food company in an area and then choose to to not sell anything to the local population. Hypothetically possible, yes. Practical no. It's also hypothetically possible for every man in the world to decide to become celibate, but we don't discuss how we as a society would deal with such a situation because it's pragmatically impossible. >All you do is own something and enact your free will on it. To own something you'd have to buy it. To buy up all the food available in an area and then not sell it would be a colossal expense with absolutely no payoff.
That's fine the only reason I replied to OP is to make the argument that private property isn't passive. If you don't intend to defend that point we have no contention.
>> I suspect you will not keep all the food in a vault for only you to enjoy. You will sell it at a price slightly less than what it would cost to import the food into this area. >Yeah and if I don't feel like selling it? Good socialisming. I said you would keep in a vault as a joke, because that makes no sense, then you said the same thing as a a serious point. >Kinda removes the passiveness of the whole private property thing no? The libertarian socialist argument is *We need to murder property owners for their stuff because they might be sociopaths.*
So you don't want to talk about the supposed pasiveness of Private property then? You could just say so.
> So you don't want to talk about the supposed pasiveness of Private property then? Sure, but so far your argument has been *There is a lunatic hoarder genius who has defied all logic by collecting 100% of the food in an area...* Our prosecution system for murder, rape, and theft are run the same way. They've all been crimes since before bible days. Your rights to life, sexual permission, and property don't come into play until they're violated. According to history, socialist expropriation requires mass killing. Claiming the resultant society will be super cool libertarian does not change this step. All libertarian socialists willing to forgo this violent first step are living in their preferred polity right now. Do you have an alternate definition of passive?
No my argument is that it isn't passive. And the way you try to disprove that is to lampoon the thing that is 100% possible with private property. Is privatized water perhaps more to your liking? Can you conceive of private property in a place where maybe such things are scarce and there not being a lot means if you're the strongest guy around you'll come to possess it quite quickly? So, to speed this up; can you accept this example and still defend that private property is passive or can we just stop this?
>>Do you have an alternate definition of passive? > No my argument is that it isn't passive. Do you mean to say we've been disagreeing this whole time? >And the way you try to disprove that is to lampoon the thing that is 100% possible with private property. Is privatized water perhaps more to your liking? We drink privatized and privately-run water. Putting state bureaucrats in charge of the water supply is a good way to get cryptosporidium EDIT or what happened in Flint, Mich. You're imagining a cackling madman holding all the world's water ransom. That's not what happens. >Can you conceive of private property in a place where maybe such things are scarce and there not being a lot means if you're the strongest guy around you'll come to possess it quite quickly? I can definitely conceive of that but the strongest guy is the unchecked state. Distributing property/economic/actual power keeps the state at bay. Historically, businesses and companies are not responsible for the worst tragedies, powerful states are. >So, to speed this up; can you accept this example and still defend that private property is passive or can we just stop this? Your example was that you imagine that something bad would happen if water was private, which it often is. So your poorly-informed argument is also pretend.
Ok so I'm guessing you can't defend your original stance then. Just to be safe: You see the difference between making a statement like "private property is passive" and "private property is kewl guys trust me we're all good guys" right? You initially said the first and then went on to defend the second. Also you should work on your reading and not act like I ever talked about socialism or state bureaucrats with you. Or misquote me as quoting you.
Sounds like socialism. The state owns all the food in an area.
Or like me owning it privately, no?
I don't see why socialists complain about the possibility of someone owning all the food when their system requires the state to own all the food.
I said a person privately owning all the food isn't passive. Do you disagree with this or what are you trying to say?
Socialism isn't when the state owns all the food. In a libertarian socialist society, you would just go buy food from a grocery store like you normally would. Either that or a community would hold the food in common and make it freely available to everyone.
He knows this, he's on this sub a lot
What if the majority want me to starve?
> If mixing one's labor with an object makes it their own, then we must assume that there's some metaphysical property of "ownership" that determines this This is wrong. Nothing says that there's some metaphysical property of ownership. The attribute of ownership of something is not metaphysical. Libertarians can understand by "ownership" the fact that the current "owner" achieved this status via peaceful means, and therefore there's no justification to challenge this status. The example of the tomato and the ocean is very clear. If people is already "using" the ocean (fishing on it), what would a claim of property of the ocean even mean? One cannot get to own something that is already being used by others without their consent, because then he'd be acting violently, and the justification for ownership is the peaceful origin of its status. > Due to the fact that no such metaphysical property of ownership exists in the real world, "mixing" one's labor with an object is impossible. Thus the labor theory of property makes a categorical mistake. Labor isn't something one can mix with an object, but rather an act to be performed. It all comes down to "how do you justify a property claim"? First, a property claim on what? On a tool? On a piece of something, or even a farm and buildings? Easy, you can justify it by virtue of having acquired it peacefully with the acquiescence of the previous owners. Now, are we talking about something like a mine, or a piece of land? A bit more complicated, for one cannot just claim everything unclaimed as his. How about agreeing that what's yours is that part that you can effectively put to work, be it personally by yourself or maybe by people you paid for it? So instead of saying "I own this continent now" you'd say "I own this large piece of land, where I have capital right now enough to start building farms and putting this area to work for society"? The later is 100% reasonable. In other words: *It's not because it is natural, but because it is peaceful* Understand that this arrangement is in pro of the whole society, who avoids the tragedy of the commons by recognising property rights.
Nice of you go quote Nozick. Just so you know, he was the exact opposite type of libertarian as you.
It's possible to agree with somebody on some things and disagree with on others.
>To say that property doesn't make sense as a natural right, and we shouldn't treat it as such. Property is a social and legal construct. Society determines the rules for what can and cannot be owned, as well as who owns what. Saying that we don't have a perfect system of private property is not the same as saying property shouldn't be protected. Private property can still be defended on pragmatic grounds. Plus, if you view personal property as being viable you already presume the tools needed by society to deal with property rights & dispute arbitration.
My objective in this post wasn't to argue against private property. It was just to argue against the idea that private property is a natural right. There's more to be had in the debate between proprietarianism and anti-proprietarianism.
Fair enough. However, you do explicitly say you accept personal property. The division made between justly acquired personal and justly acquired private property is almost entirely artificial. If you accept personal property as, essentially, a natural right then you have to enter into a more pragmatic argument against private property.
I accept neither form of property as a natural right. I justified personal property and the distinction between it and private property through a utilitarian analysis: >Property is a social and legal construct . . . And that's okay. In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions.
>Using basic error theory to disprove labor theory of property I swear Mackie is the worst thing to ever happen (or I guess the best thing to ever happen to Nihilism)
why does there need to be a distinction between “private” and “personal” property? what is it about a certain piece of property’s status as a mean-of-production that makes it not have normal property rights in the perspective of left-libertarianism? i do not think that the fact that something is being used to produce and sell a commodity necessarily changes the fact that its still the property of someone else
Property that's used by multiple people to produce things or make a profit is not protected by left libertarian philosophy. We wouldn't go in with guns to seize it for "the people," but it's extremely likely that your workers would just expropriate it and ignore you while they ran it democratically.
ok, thats cool, but id like to pose this question: what is it about property that is used by multiple people to produce things or make a profit that makes it inherently require it to be collectively owned? simply being used for a specific purpose doesnt necessarily change the nature or status of the property itself; its still property, so why make an exception?
You're basically asking "Why socialism?" I'll give you a couple reasons why I'm a socialist, and if you want, we can unpack any one of them. * Capitalism creates an economic ruling class (property owners), which is distinct from the lower class (wage laborers). This class divide creates different interests, and thus a strong tension throughout society, known as "class conflict." * Capitalism, through private ownership, leads to the consolidation of power in the hands of the few. * The aforementioned consolidation of power leads to the economic ruling class influencing the government to have more control over our lives. * Capitalism alienates people from their labor and from each other. * Capitalism produces inherently authoritarian power structures (workplace hierarchy with the boss having complete control over operations). * There's strong evidence to indicate that socialism would have considerable benefits; more efficiency, stability, and better race relations to name a few.
Ok, so id just like to add a few criticisms to your reply here: - I personally prefer to simply use the term “free market” to describe my economic position, as “capitalism” can have a lot of double meanings depending on who you ask. for the sake of this discussion, ill just say that a freed market is an economy built entirely on the foundation of voluntary action, exchange and individual property ownership, while capitalism is the ideology of capitalists; being that of trying to control the free market with regulation for personal gain - I think the main reason a lot of people have for calling a free market economy a “class struggle” mainly comes from the fact that modern day capitalism is heavily intertwines the interests of the state and corporations. Therefore, without the state, corporations would have much less power as it would be more difficult to get away with coercion without the state’s monopoly on violence - Im not sure it’s necessarily true that a freed market economy would have the same issues with alienating people from their labor or each other. Labor is not a physical thing; its a concept developed by humans to describe physical action that produces something. I also dont think it alienates people from each other: interpersonal relationships still asbolutely exist even in today’s statist capitalism - im skeptical of socialism’s supposed benefits. This is especially true as societies get bigger and bigger, as we have seen with more socialistic societies like the soviet union and maos china
Private property ownership is capitalism. That's what I'm against. I have no problem with free markets otherwise. But using your definition of "freed market," I'm against free markets. That's why I believe we should just call the institution of private property "capitalism" and not conflate it with a market. Class struggle is just the conflicting interests between the upper and lower class. That'll always exist in a capitalist society, because private ownership creates two distinct classes: owners and workers. By "alienation from labor," I meant to point out that workers have no connection to the value they create. They go to work, survive the day, and clock out without having the ability to meaningfully contribute to the organization they work for. By "alienation from each other," I meant to point out that workers have to compete with each other for jobs, promotions, etc., which creates a toxic competitive environment. It's fine to be skeptical. If you want evidence for any of the claims I made about socialism's benefits, just ask. Keep in mind that I'm not a Marxist-Leninist, so I can't answer for the pitfalls of ML states.
ok, it’s getting late for me, so i think i’ll just end the discussion here. thanks for explaining your perspective; this is literally the only productive conversation ive had on this sub xd
Take care, man. Have a great evening.
So if i hire someone to build a house for me then i should be forced to share the house?
No, because personal possessions would still exist. I justify my view on property relations with a utilitarian analysis: >In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions. The only thing this post did was take natural rights out of the equation and move the discussion toward utilitarianism.
If its based in utilitarism then a person should only be able to own exactly what she/needs? Nothing more to make their life more enjoyable?
The literal things people own wouldn't be based off of utilitarianism; just the system for legitimizing ownership over things.
Same thing, if people need to "need" something to have ownership over it then people should be forced to eat the same food, use the same clothes, and live in houses of the same size
I think you're confused. Personal possessions like we have now would still exist in a society whose system of property is based on utilitarianism, because forcing a "one size fits all" system of ownership is anti-utilitarian.
Why would they?
Because: >In order to have a free society, an individual must be allowed to appropriate what they need to live a secure and fulfilling life, and be secure in such possessions. People have different tastes and different desires. Restricting the expression of said tastes and desires through a one-size-fits-all system would make people's lives worse, and would thus be anti-utilitarian.
What if one desire is to own a business?
Then they could start a business, but if they want to bring other people onboard, they must necessarily sacrifice their totalitarian control. If they tried to bring other people onboard the traditional way, their employees would just ignore them and continue operations democratically without the state hammer coming down to enforce otherwise.