Two types of property

[PETRUS]

The essay I posted earlier this morning linked to this piece. Most of this group's subscribers will already be quite familiar with the ideas, but I thought it was worth posting:

From http://dbzer0.com/blog/private-property-vs-possession

<snip>

The first type of ownership is the common one that everyone is familiar in our current society. It is the type of ownership based on a legal claim to something, ie it is based simply on what the law will recognise based on previous contracts. In this system of ownership, one can consider to own anything and it will remain his until he trades it away. Private Property (PP).

Precicely because this ownership is legally constructed is why it requires to be defined through contracts of some sort that will be recognised by the state. Which is incidentally why any social system based on Private Property will require the existence of a state of some sort and extensive laws to clarify and settle disputes.

But this is not the only system of ownership that can exist. There is another one that not only comes naturally to humans but it also avoids all the pitfalls of PP. Possession or ownership based on use. To put it simply, one can only ever lay claim to things that they use personally. This is fundamentally different from PP in that it does not demand an extensive legal system to enforce it (although it can benefit from it) and it prevents accumulation of wealth.

<snip>

Why is the difference between private property ((Note: Some elements of the Anarchist tradition, such as Mutualism, use the term Private Property to refer to ownership of all sorts. They still make the functional distinction between them, but call them somewhat differently. So Possession becomes "occupancy and use". Of course they support possession as natural.)) and possession so important? First it is because it explains what socialists mean by the abolition of the former and avoids straw man arguments about the "unnaturality" of communism. The second is that it provides a link to pre-civilization human societies, or to be more precise, those which had a hunter/gatherer lifestyle which were egalitarian precisely because the concept of PP did not exist. The third is that it draws attention to the severe drawbacks of PP and by extension it shows how the introduction of it directly led to inequality and relations of authority...

(Read more: http://dbzer0.com/blog/private-property-vs-possession)

[limpyhobbler]

1. Alot of people think there shouldn't be any limits to accumulation.

Right here on this website. People think anybody should be able to store up as much money as they can. That idea of property is just so ingrained in our culture. Sometimes people kind of look at you like you have two heads if you say there ought to be limits to how much capital private people or corporations can accumulate.

There hasn't really been the kind of education we need in our society for people to understand the dangers of unchecked accumulation.

They understand it when you talk about guns. We shouldn't let people accumulate unlimited stockpiles of firearms. They get that. Because the person with guns might hurt somebody. Some innocent person could get hurt.

It's the same thing with money. Money represents power. With enough money you can make people do things. With enough money you can commit crimes and get away with it. Or you can pay the government to make some laws to help you get even more money.

Well when we let people accumulate unlimited property, and that means money, that's dangerous. People get hurt.

[joshcryer]

2. I think there's a distinction between "allow" and "ability."

The posters here on this forum do not like that they wouldn't be "allowed" to "store up as much money as they can." That is, that some entity would take away "as much money as they can store." In theory this is the correct reaction to someone stealing your work or the fruits of your labor.

What the possession based critique says is that, ultimately, your work or the fruits of your labor are already being stolen by those who own non-possessive property. So those people who are worried about "not being allowed" to "store up as much money as they can" are actually ignorant of the fact that the concept of non-possessive property is stealing from them and dangling this concept of unlimited wealth in front of them as fantasy goal.

Without a mechanism in place to accumulate non-possessive property (in this case I argue the state), you would not be able to physically possess anything you don't possess. It is only with accumulative mechanisms that this is possible. And those mechanisms require policing forces to uphold the very accumulation that we decry when we talk about non-possessive property.

[limpyhobbler]

3. Good point.

For almost everybody the idea of accumulating big bucks is a real fantasy anyway.

Still some few people are accumulating extreme wealth. And that translates to extreme private power, mirrored by extreme impoverishment, in a highly undemocratic society.

This term "non-possessive property" is new for me but I think the meaning is roughly clear: property you aren't using, or that you couldn't possibly use other than for exploitative value extraction.

Is the state functioning as the defense force of accumulated non-possessive property? Yep. In our current arrangement it sure is. I would think there could be other arrangements though. There could be a more democratic arrangement where the the state limited capital accumulation to prevent extreme accumulations of private power. Or maybe there could be some (nasty) arrangement where the state did not provide defense for accumulated non-possessive property, but instead wealthy people or companies relied on their own private armies for defense.

[joshcryer]

4. Non-possessive property is just another way to say private property.

The problem with the wording "private property" is that people assume that it is possessive property, because it is private, personal, unique to an individual. What it really means is private contract property, and invariably, most often, the contract is what sets the foundation for the non-possessive nature of private property. I've been seeing the "possessive" vs "non-possessive" distinction more often in the past decade which I think is good because it demystifies the concept and people can get over the "eww, scary commie" mentality.

Unfortunately I think some familiar with the concept haven't made the connection that a corporation owning and controlling vast swaths of non-possessive property isn't fundamentally different from a government doing the same.

[limpyhobbler]

5. It's no different if government does it?

I'm not convinced on that. If the government is (approximately) chosen by a democracy, doesn't that mean that the wealth held by the state is the wealth of the people? Can't we call that the commons?

If you go to Boston they've got a big park The Boston Commons and the Public Gardens downtown. It's really big and awesome, valuable land. If it were privatized I would be beyond angry. It's unthinkable. If a private individual owned that park and charged admission that would be sad. But the government "owns" it, and they charge everyone a tax to pay for it. And I think it's great like that. Everyone loves it.

So it seems fundamentally different if the government owns a national park like Yellowstone or something. Isn't the government really just the representation of the collective will of the people? Isn't the government the agent that the people empower to guard and maintain the commons? As long as the democracy is (roughly) genuine and government represents what people want, to me that seems a lot different than a private corporation doing the same thing.

I would certainly say our government is often failing in it's job of representing what people want. But I don't see where that necessarily means any government would be just as bad.

[joshcryer]

6. Yeah, but we see with Occupy how the government acted like a private entity.

In fact, Zuccotti Park, owned by a private entity, was one of the last encampments to fold, as shameful as it sounds. Occupy Denver (Lincoln Park), for instance, was evicted Oct. 15, 2011. Occupy Wall Street (Zuccotti Park) was Nov 15th.

Either way though as individuals with possessive property, if someone or some entity has agency over your possessive property, you're screwed.