In a recent exchange, someone told me that they have similar views to mine except that they do not believe in "private property". He referred to himself as a "left anarchist" (there are those seemingly mutually exclusive terms again!). I invited a discussion since this is such a bizarre concept to me. Sadly, I have yet to hear back. I wanted, and still want, clarifications. Does he mean any kind of private property or only real estate? Does that mean I can live in "his" house with him? Or at least set my tipi up in "his" yard if I want to live there? Can just anyone use "his" car if they wish to? What if I browse around "his" house and take what I think I need? Does he really mean that nothing can be owned? How can you consume food if you can't own it? Where does that leave the foundation of libertarianism: that we each own our own bodies and lives? Can we even say "my own body" if we hold this belief? What would make someone come to this rather odd conclusion?
To be honest, I have always considered this type of argument to be the whinings of someone who doesn't own everything they want, so they declare that they are against private property for everyone. It is what makes a communist a communist. I concede that I could be wrong. I would like to own a lot more than I do, especially real estate. I feel it would be phony of me to be against private property.
ALthough some "anarcho"-communists think people should collectively heap their products on a pile and let a free for all commence, most social anarchists make a distinction, albeit a rather meaninless one, between pocessions and private property.
ReplyDeleteI like the way Bill Orton has put it:
"In both systems [i.e., "sticky" (Lockean) and "non-sticky" (socialist/usufruct)], in practice there are well-known exceptions. Sticky property systems recognize abandonment and salvage; usufruct allows for people to be absent for some grace period without surrendering property, and of course allows trade. You might even see the two systems as a continuum from high to low threshold for determining what constitutes "abandonment."
or rather than a qualitative difference between capitalist and socialist anarchist property, they are "the same thing... with different parameters" for the length of time necessary to establish abandonment.
The main issue is that communists allow theft, simply by redefining what theft is and is not. They allow themselves to steal anything that is not "immediately used." It mainly has to do with time frames, like mikel points out. In the end, it's an anti-life ideology.
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