communism is 100% about nationalizing your parent's sex tapes
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But I heard the tankies are going to take my toothbrush away and give it to my neighbor!!!
So many people don't understand the difference between personal and private property.
because it seems like there is no clear boundary. If I purchased a steel mill and was the sole oener/operator is that personal property? what if it is only used for hobby projects and not for profit?
If I purchased a steel mill and was the sole oener/operator is that personal property?
No it's private property you're a petty bourgeois/small proprietor.
what if it is only used for hobby projects and not for profit?
If you're not selling what you make it's personal property.
Maybe you should rename "private property" then so people don't keep getting the wrong idea?
Yeah that sure worked with global warming and climate change didn't it?
maybe society should incentivise people more to understand things instead of jumping to conclusions. It is such a widespread problem. People tend to interpret details of either alien concepts or concepts they don’t (or are taught to not) like and don’t fully understand in the most negative way
That's also just propaganda. When we're taught random stuff, like philosophy, we don't necessarily jump off to a negative conclusion. It's mostly with political stuff where we're beaten down to think that things like redistribution or socialism is "good in theory but bad in practice", that "humans are selfish by nature", that "anyone with power is corrupted so we shouldn't aim to have it", and so on, so by the time you encounter leftist theory you don't treat it with the same grace you would if you read, say, Aristotle, but as a reflection of poor character ("they must have had a secret agenda of domination!"), or poor understanding ("did Marx never hear about human nature? what a dumbass!") or both. When we actually open up to the idea that people like Marx and Engels and others could be right, and read it with an open mind, we can very easily work out that they were right.
i think in general it is due to cognitive dissonance, which kicks in when ideas are tied to strong emotions. In the case of propaganda those emotions are induced by the language used to describe those concepts. This is definitely on purpose.
But i have seen this effect with way more meaningless things as well. For example, i am a huge coffee nerd and when i tell people about specialty coffee, what it is and how i can taste, even while making an effort to not belittle anyones personal preferences, people still get weirdly defensive about their tastes.
So i really think it is a more general societal problem of valueing knowledge over the process of learning and understanding. This in itself is a useful trait because it makes people way more susceptible to propaganda
Private property is mostly things you don't use. Like a second flat you have the ownership papers for, but do not live there. The house you're living in is not private property.
What if you live in one urban house during the week and the other cheap rural retreat on the weekend? What if your kids live separately because of education reasons?
Second house criteria seems rather arbitary to me.
The actual criterion is whether something is used to make profits or not. If you have 10 houses, but don't rent them, that's personal property. If you own just one house and rent it, it's your private property.
Better yet - private property is things used to exploit other people's labour. Renting exploits labour, too, but indirectly.
The actual criterion is whether something is used to make profits or not. If you have 10 houses, but don't rent them, that's personal property. If you own just one house and rent it, it's your private property.
Better yet - private property is things used to exploit other people's labour. Renting exploits labour, too, but indirectly.
(Reposting my reply to somebedy's comment)
Actually, no. If you have 10 houses and 9 are vacant and remain vacant then your nine vacant houses are contributing to the surplus that keeps rents high. Landlords not only rent homes but crucially, keep homes/units empty to control rent prices. Developers and landlords often work hand in glove with local governments to craft policies for just this purpose. Blackstone holds a high number of empty houses in their portfolio, it would be silly to believe that those homes are not capital.
Personal vs. Private property is not really an individual choice but a systemic set of incentives and consequences. What happens when one of the houses has property taxes that come due? What happens when the roof leaks and needs replaced? In the winter, pipes in vacant buildings are kept from freezing by running water, and there's going to be electric and/or water costs associated with that maintenance. will it just remain vacant while the owner hemorrhages money indefinately? If all ten units are empty and creating no income, and the owner has no plan to appreciate them as assets to resell them (because if the owner does, then they become capital) then is the owner really just like a wage worker, or do they have capital that makes them enough money that they can have 10 houses for personal use?
I'm sorry, but you are misunderstanding how capitaliam functions as a system. If someone has one extra house, maybe because of circumstances, I could see your point. But ten? No at that point they're practically no different from a landlord, as they are propping up rent prices whether they intend to or not. As long as there are ten families who need homes who can't get housing, that is private capital whether the owner uses it to make money or not.
If what matters is the number of houses possessed, then the criterion is quantitative rather than qualitative. So who decides the right amount? Is it private property if the ten houses are super small and old, comparable to one big new house? Will it cease being private property if I give birth to 10 children, raise them and then give each a house compared to never having children at all? Ultimately, if passively owning ten houses is propping rent prices, then owning one house is still propping up prices, just on a 10x smaller scale.
This is all hypothetical. These are hypothetical houses and a hypothetical owner in a hypothetical market, frozen in time. There is a direct correlation between quantity and quality, since changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. This is a fundamental part of socialist theory of change. This is not a moral consideration, there is no "right amount." Because there are absolutely no possible scenarios where someone owns 10 vacant houses and just loses money on them indefinitely. Is this someone who owns and maintains ten houses all for their own personal recreation and use? How can they afford 10 houses?
The discussion is about the difference between personal and private property. The definitions of these things are socially contingent. We cannot conduct analysis outside of the social context and be serious about truth or social transformation. There is no arbitrary number cut off, splitting this hair in this way is completely besides the point. There is no reason for someone to own and maintain 10 empty properties while others have nowhere to live. My point is even if we aren't consciously capitalizing on the houses, the houses exist within a context. Broadly, that's capitalism, and broadly the properties still function as part of capitalism whether the owner intends it or not. Trying to further abstract this hypothetical in a desperate search for a generalization that is so alienated from reality that you "might be" sort of correct if viewing the situation from one very narrow perspective does not help anyone understand the relationship between personal property and private capital. Because over time, at some point, circumstances beyond our ideals decide that our ten houses are worth more if they have a use value or an exchange value for us. The system asserts itself upon our lives, and there's no real escape.
You have not discovered a loop hole by inventing a kind of property that has neither a use value or an exchange value. You've merely discovered a pit of idealism where material relations exist to suit one's own confusion and wrong headedness. This is not a road to understanding socialism. But I do appreciate the contribution to discussion.
Changes in quantity do lead to changes in quality, but there is always a precise point where gradual quantitative changes cause a sudden qualitative change. Water remains liquid from 0C to 99C and then suddenly starts boiling at 100C. To have a proper definition of something, such a dividing point is to be found.
I meant "right amount" as in "right amount for something to be private property" and not as in "morally right".
There could be a miriad of scenarios for having 10 houses without renting them. I would love to have my own place in 10 different cities or countries so I could just go there and live without worrying about renting somewhere to stay. I could have my own little data centers in those houses and host lots of decentralised media. I could use the houses for separating my workflow: one house for my musical instruments, another for engineering etc. But whether it is a real scenario is not important. Owning 10 houses is just an example of possessing more than the majority. If it is considered to be private property, then following the same logic having a personal computer while living in an area where few people have one should also be considered to be private property and, in the case of a revolution, the computer should be seized as such. So this is not merely something hypothetical.
I'm a noob at this and I kind of dont understand. Could i still own a house or like a couple acres ? Or would there be no ownership?
Home ownership is a lot higher in currenntly existing socialist states than in their capitalist peers. Do what you will with that information.
Not all housing is equal, at least in so called capitalist peers, where lots of people who can afford houses in small town or village are not buying that as they live in big cities and are saving up.
I'd like to know if the housing in the socialist peers is considered equal, regardless of size and location?
In addition to what others have said, the boundaries between these can change according to the society and time. Fifty years ago, a computer would have been 'private property'. Nowadays most computers are 'personal'.
Whether you can own a house or a couple of acres under a hypothetical socialist system would mainly depend on population density. The Soviets used to give young people large tracts of land in rural areas because land isn't really a scarce resource in Russia. (Vietnam still does this, but the plots are smaller.) On the other hand, Singapore, a capitalist country, has no private land ownership because land is so scarce.
In Marxism communism personal ownership is still allowed (you own your house and belongings etc.). What's not is the control of the means of production or any property that lets its owner live off others' labor, say factories, land, mines etc. by capitalists and argues that they should be the social or common property of the producers/workers.
The distinction between personal belongings and means of production is not at all clear-cut. In what flavor of socialism would I be allowed to own which dual-use goods? Examples:
- My house and garden can be a place of production (for art, artisan goods, handicraft, foods, etc.).
- May a musician own musical instruments or must he collect them from the warehouse of the local musical collective?
- Computers and other electronics are classical dual-use goods. Do I have to share them with all kinds of people?
- Cars and other vehicles. Are socialists going to emulate historical Albania in that cars are not allowed as personal property? Where will they draw the line? Are e-bikes allowed, or scooters, or freight bicycles?
My house and garden can be a place of production (for art, artisan goods, handicraft, foods, etc.).
That is not "letting the owner live off other people's labor" it's letting the owner live off their own labor. Do other people have to come over to your house and garden to make things? They should have their own house and garden. If they then want to come over to hang out and make crafts, then what would possibly be the problem?
May a musician own musical instruments or must he collect them from the warehouse of the local musical collective?
Again, so long as a type of tool is accessible to anyone, there's no issue with someone owning their own set. Whether it's a musician with an instrument or a plumber or a mechanic that owns their own tools, there's not really a problem. Nobody's going around confiscating everyone's wrenches for some ideological reason.
Suppose there's some very expensive instrument, say a massive pipe organ in some church. If that organ is not being used for profit, then it doesn't matter, but if it is being used that way, then perhaps it would make sense if various musical groups were allowed to use it occasionally, since it might not be practical to ensure everyone has their own pipe organ.
Computers and other electronics are classical dual-use goods. Do I have to share them with all kinds of people?
In a modern economy where everyone has their own computer, that's completely unnecessary. Suppose there's some remote village somewhere where they only have one computer. In that case, surely it makes sense for access to be shared.
Cars and other vehicles.
Repeating myself a lot here. Socialists aim to make transportation accessible to everyone, which generally means investing in public transit. But there are cases where it might make more sense to make it easier for everyone to have a car, like a remote region where public transportation is less viable, or a situation where people already own cars. I think most socialists would favor a gradual phasing out of cars in favor of public transit for efficiency, accessibility, and environmental reasons. A socialist state that doesn't already have cars probably wouldn't prioritize them, but that depends on the material conditions (as I said about rural regions).
The distinction is a class distinction. Capitalism functions to.ensure that the greatest number of people do not own enough to be self-sufficient. Peasants under feudalism were self sufficient and communal, so the first job of the capitalists in countries that were industrializing was to buy up most/all the communal land, kick everybody off of it and force people to still work it for a paltry wage. There were still people who owned houses and land during this period, but legal and economic pressures forced people to give up what they owned and get a waged job. Even today, small family owned farms fall into debt and get bought up by large landowning companies/trusts and converted into farmland or data centers. It isn't happening to everyone at once, but its a gradual process where it happens to a few people here and there. Some people buy farms and are successful, there are always contradictions and exceptions.
If you are able to sustain yourself 100% on your own production, that's extremely rare. My cousin was a nurse practitioner and stacked cash his entire life, and in the last few years became like a yeoman. He butchers his own meat, he grows much of his own food, but still buys 10-20% of what he needs, mostly flour and grains. Under socialism, at least any socialism that I would fight for, he would be left alone, because he really isn't the problem. The family that owns an ice cream shop or a bakery, particularly small businesses who help people, contribute to social movements, are against ice are pro Palestine, pay their workers well, these people own capital but they aren't the problem.
The social relations you are describing are so far in the future that they are virtually impossible to understand. The first socialist revolution will shift power from the capitalists to the workers, but will not abolish private property. This will begin a phase of transition where private property will be collectivised. But the biggest barrier to collectivization isn't just who owns what, it is the divisions in the working class. There are a lot of social relations that have to be "worked out", and nobody is able to create a one sized fits all solution for everywhere (socialism is necessarily international) at once. Some places might hold on to private property and become more social democrat, retaining their ruling class in order to have higher wages for workers. Other areas might try to become fully communist. Some places will try to ban all private industry, some will collectivise some large industries and leave others privately owned.
Social conditions are deeply contradictory because people are contradictory. So trying to logically work these things out is always gonna be incomplete and imperfect. What matters is the working class continually working together to create better conditions for more people. Eventually, this collective effort will reach like a tipping point, and the next revolution will occur, which will be more humane, more democratic, and less violent than any that came before.
There is a ton of real world struggles that can actually be won (universal healthcare, universal jobs guarantee, robust social safety net, improved transportation/sanitation/education) that can be accomplished by just taxing the rich to the hilt. But in order to get there, we need solidarity and class unity. Once we have that, we can reorganize society in ways where the answers to your questions will have clearer solutions.
Socialism isn't just a future, it is being able to see the resent society, the people in it and their needs and experiences, and working for a better society. IMO individual private/personal property questions will make more sense once the conditions for them have a concrete basis.
Socialists want to eliminate Private Property, which is to say property that generates capital: farms, factories, stores, etc. While retaining personal property. Stuff like you're house, your tv, your toothbrush, etc.
Now, there are some exceptions to this. If you go to Cuba, you'd find that most of the agricultural land isn't collectivised, but is rather owned by individuals or families, who's interests are represented by a mass organization of small holding farmers.
The historical specificities of Cuba's land reform process meant that Cuban socialism retained a sector of small scale private ownership, within a Socialist system.
The point Marx is making is that under capitalism, as much as they talk about private property being a fundamental natural right, the consolidation of capital means that most people never have the opportunity to access that supposed right, or reap its benefits
What will you do with those couple of acres?
Farming, cattle and poultry. A storehouse, a small factory, and a separate kitchen house/pantry.
Depends on how industrious one is, and how much hiring and help one can do.
Not OP, but I would set up a basketball halfcourt, grow some weed, have a mead shed
Not in China, it's kinda like Canada. You don't own the land you lease it. It's yours until the government deems it not.
Edit: because yall ignorant
In Canada, private property ownership is called fee simple. Legally, you own the exclusive right to live on, modify, sell, or pass down that land forever. However, the ultimate radical title sits with the Crown.
We dont own land in the US either, we are on a perpetual lease from the government. Stop making that yearly lease payment called property tax and the government will evict you from their property and steal your assets
And the US? Try not paying property taxes on the land you "own" for a while and see how much you own that land compared to the government.
In China, the government can do the same to your house/land even if you pay all your "dues" timely.
So can most countries it's called eminent domain
As you can in China I'd advise looking into nail houses where you can delay them so long that you don't even have to give up your house/land. Most people just choose not to given the new accomodation is generally better/more modern alongside a payout.
Also
civilized countries
Adolf is that you?
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