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Anarchists should rethink common vs private property
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Anarchism
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Erm, this is something that has been discussed in Anarchist literature already more than 100 years ago. This article seems totally ignorant of the well established conceptual difference between "private property" and "personal property".
I am aware of the distinction between private vs personal property. Many anarchists criticism of private property rests on the idea that it is the root cause of the capitalist's legal right to appropriate the fruits of their employees' labor. The article shows that it is not. It is the employment contract that is to blame for this violation. We should focus our critique on that contract instead when supporting universal workers' self-management. We should consider other anticapitalist arguments
Those are the same thing, though. The author is really putting a lot of stake into the separation of owning capital vs. renting it, and trying to make both of those things distinct from decision making. But ownership is fundamentally about decisions and control. Rent changes that very little. You rent a home, and perhaps get a tiny measure of control over the decisions regarding it, but the landlord retains ultimate decision-making power (buying, selling, renovations, kicking you out, etc.), and capitalism is 100% geared toward ensuring that stays true even in the most wild scenarios we can conceive of regarding tenants' rights under capitalism. And the same remains true of owning a "company"—and, of course, the means of production that are a part of it and keep you from just walking next door and creating a new one if you don't like how the capitalist runs things (yes: this is the part—the enforced scarcity—that makes "owning a company" actually worth something, so it is fundamental to the system).
if you don't think that ownership and control are intrinsically linked, think long and hard about what it would mean to "own" something but not be able to make any decisions regarding it (including where anything produced by it goes). WTF does that "ownership" mean? It's like donating to an infrastructure project to get your name put on a sign by some stretch of highway: it means absolutely fucking nothing.
Sounds just like NFTs!
LMAO. Yeah.
Not the same thing. If workers need a factory to produce trains, they can either (1) rent the factory or (2) the factory owner can hire them. In case 1, the workers retain ownership over the produced trains (fruits of their labor). In case 2, the employer owns the produced trains.
Private property in land is different, and should involve common ownership.
A distinction exists between positive and negative control rights. Property only confers the latter, which can be weakened
If the owner decides he doesn't wind up with enough of the value of producing the trains, he can kick out the train builders.
Same thing.
Anyway, again, owning the means of production shouldn't just be considered on the micro level like that. Like I said above, the MoP being privately owned also keeps workers from just going down the street and starting a new enterprise on their own (effectively "firing the boss"). Try it under capitalism and you'll all be seeing swift jail sentences for trespassing, vandalism, and theft at the very least.
The train builders can go somewhere else collectively under this system.
Property norms can be set up so that the buyer can compel a sale. This would work by having a community digital ledger that keeps track of property claims. The owner would state the price at which they would be willing to part with the property, and they would pay a percentage fee on that price into a common fund. Anyone that paid that price would get the property even if the owner objected @anarchism
Sure, workers can always allegedly "go somewhere else". You realize that private property and capital accumulation and market distribution have, in actual practice, kept us from doing so very, very effectively, right? Like, there's one or two large enterprises that are worker-owned and allegedly democratically managed. And even on the local level, co-ops are incredibly difficult to establish. You sound like a fucking propertarian, telling people to "just go somewhere else/start one yourself if you don't like it." I'm not sure why you expect anyone to fall for that shit here.
Are you sure you're an anarchist and not a liberal? Because you're working awfully hard to propose market-based solutions in order to seemingly protect private property relations against anyone who might want radical, use-based community ownership.
The difference is that workers can take the entire company with them when they go somewhere else.
You are confusing the difficulty of establishing a co-op today with the difficulty of establishing a co-op under a system where co-ops are the only firm. The employment contract's pervasiveness has caused the former. Ellerman advocates abolishing the employment contract and private property in natural resources.
There have been anarchists that do not oppose markets such as Proudhon
They didn't propose those markets as a way to preserve private property relations for the sake of capitalists, as you are doing.
And even those anarchists (and socialists more generally) who don't wholly oppose markets usually want to decrease their influence, especially regarding necessities like food, water, housing, health care, etc. "Here's how markets will fix that," is a galaxy-brained thing for any leftist to say at this point in history.
Not a market fundamentalist. Common ownership applies to housing (land) and water.
Capital rental benefits workers. Renting is buying the services of a thing for a period rather than buying the whole thing. Sometimes workers will prefer to buy only the services for a period thus paying less. In value terms, there is no difference between renting and owning because
capital's price = future rentals' discounted present value
Such transactions would be with worker coops on both ends
Wrong. Capital rental benefits the capitalist (e.g. the landlord).
Wrong. Weird, dumb misunderstanding that you are really irrationally obsessed with right now, and already explained. Rent is an exploitative property relation, that leaves the owner with ultimate power. If the dictator doesn't like you for any reason including that you don't follow his every edict (easily the equivalent of that "employment contract" you're so worried about), he terminates (e.g. evicts you). And I'm not sure why you keep putting
@anarchismat the end of your comments, because you aren't advocating for it. You're just advocating for a property-based hierarchy with a different flavor.Okay. Done with this exchange, and won't be replying further. Take care.