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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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The idea of ownership is kinda silly.
Right? "My ancestors beat up your ancestors, so I deserve to live in wealth and opulence, while you deserve to be my slave"
It really is pretty fucked up.
There's that poem(?) about that
"""
"Get off this estate."
"What for?"
"Because it's mine."
"Where did you get it?"
"From my father."
"Where did he get it?"
"From his father."
"And where did he get it?"
"He fought for it."
"Well, I'll fight you for it."
"""
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9358361-get-off-this-estate-what-for-because-it-s-mine-where
Do you have a flag?
It's funny how both the comment you answered to, and your cynical answer to it, are upvoted
https://youtu.be/OPw4D5ylLHg
“Private property is the smallest unit of warfare.” — The Terraformers (2023) by ~~Becky Chambers~~ Annalee Newitz
Edit: author name
nice, I like small scale violence
Oh gosh, we love Becky Chamber's work. This is amazing that we didn't know this one. Thanks for sharing!
Edit: Seems you might be incorrect. It was written by Annalee Newitz
Ah, shit, you're right. They're right next to each other on my mental bookshelf. I was introduced to their works via this talk they gave together, have been reading both their works, and so I have trouble distinguishing them. >.<
It's okay. At least we learned about a cool author and book!
I mean this in good faith, what's the alternative? That anyone could enter anyone's house freely? Or that everything is shared (owned by the state, which would give it too much power).
Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to "personal property", which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of "private property", which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here's a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here's a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
Part of the problem, I think, is that in common vernacular, 'landlord' also applies to people that are renting out a room of their personal house. The pro-landlord propaganda likes to hold them up as the gold standard we're attacking.
We need to be clear that we're absolutely not talking about the couple that's renting out their kid's old room to get through tough times. They're also victims of the same system, being forced to sacrifice personal property at the altar of capitalism.
Marx is clear about this, BTW. The distinction between private property (i.e. capital) and personal property, is that personal property is owned for its use value (you own a trenchcoat to protect yourself from the cold, or you own a house to live in it), whereas private property is owned for its monetary revalorization capability (you own a trenchcoat to rent it in a costumes store, you own a house to rent it to someone else). The same object can be used for its use value, and then it's it's personal property; or it can be used in the capital revalorization cycle, and then it's private property.
As always, the poor are human shields for the rich.
Ain't no war but class war.
We're talking about a very minor amount of priviledged people who have the spare property to rent. Even a room. Most impoverished people live in apartments. We do not own them, none of the income taken from us for rent is returned to us (unlike property ownership via a mortgage in which case value is literally returned to you), and we are only able to roomshare or sublet. Neither of which is what youre describing.
Not dismissing that middle class property owning families cant fall on hard times and have to fight to maintain the class position they occupy, just pointing out that the majority of us would do anything to have a home with a spare room to rent out. Thats a dream that many many people in my generation will never come close to achieving.
We shouldn't have to appeal to the class anxieties of middle class people. The fact that we suffer is a rallying cause enough. There are enough poor people to tear the system down if we all worked together. Its appealing to our shared suffering. Class consciousness and solidarity. Its recognizing our collective struggle and fighting back against power. It doesn't happen by making concessions to land owners. The threat of having to downsize is nothing compared with the threat of being homeless if you have to go to the hospital. The threat of losing everything if you get an injury. The impoverished and the marginalized live with guns aimed at every one of their vital organs. From birth to death under duress at the hands of the state. I dont really give a fuck what land owners are going through. We'd kill to have to downsize.
Nice aim.
You don't own the stall of a public toilet and you can still expect to use it without having people walk on you. It's like we can all agree to distribute resources and keep rights like privacy without the need of property.
how about instead of restricting all ownership, you instead just limited it.
My idea is that basically once anybody hits 10 million in net worth (for example), then we just say 'well done, you've completed it mate'. Now fuck off down the beach and don't come back.
Basically tax any further income of any kind at 100%.
But basically nobody proposes this. Communists don't propose "abolishing property" altogether, we propose abolishing private capital, which is the type of property that isn't owned for its use value, but instead owned for profit. A commie would say you can own a car to use it, but you can't own a car to employ someone else to drive it as a taxi and generate a profit for you.
This. Then just put up a scoreboard of who’s excess revenue is providing the most tax revenue to the public, then they can play for first place and we can all benefit off of their sociopathic narcissism. Everybody wins.
While I agree with you, in principle, I much prefer my toilet than a public toilet with partial privacy and partial cleanliness.
I think it's going to be interesting when we move from private ownership of cars to self driving, shared, how there may be different classes again, like trains of old. It's inevitable we transition. The gig economy is effectively a more even distribution of resource usage with benefits environmentally. However, we need to ensure it's more even ownership too, which is looking unlikely at this point.
Self driving cars are not going to stop car ownership, that's pure CEO fantasy. The logistics of it doesn't make any sense. Gig economy it's the opposite of even distribution, it's companies owning everything and workers owning nothing. Stop drinking the neoliberal kool aid.
Gig economy is better distribution of asset use, as I said. The problem to correct is distribution of ownership, again as I already said. Stop drinking the socialism kool aid. Nobody owning cars is more likely than community ownership.
Car ownership may not go away but it's likely to decrease. It's rare in America to not own a car. It's less rare in cities with good public transport, eg New York, Europe. Self driving, on demand taxis may mean the same effect is carried over to places that currently don't have great public transport.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-governmen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Private_property_and_the_state
Some good reading to start with.
One of the main things to take away is that there's a difference between personal property and private property.
Personal property are things like your clothes, your home, the items you use regularly.
Private property are things you own but don't personally use, don't take real responsibility for.
For example, if you have the money, you can purchase a factory. But a factory is too large an item for one person to ever claim they personally run the whole thing and take full responsibility for. There's many people involved in running a factory, from cleaners to accountants, do they not also take responsibility for their part?
If the factory could never run without all of these workers, can the owner really claim that the factory is theirs? It is everyone who works there's. Why then does the owner get to keep all the money the factory produces? Because they stumped up some cash a few years ago?
The owners are smart enough to pay you for your labour. Maybe even a bonus for a successful year. Some benefits maybe when people start unionising and demanding more. But at the end of the day, the owner still gets the vast vast majority of the profits despite not putting in the vast majority of the work. How is this fair?
I've run out of steam now, it's been a long day, but if you genuinely meant your comment in good faith have a read of the links above.
Concepts of ownership aren’t going to stop you from walking into someone else’s house currently
Anarchists (including us) mostly talk about personal vs private property. For example in an anarchist society nobody is going to take your toothbrush or house, but you aren't allowed to own a house you don't live in (yet still charge for) nor a factory where other people work, those things would be communally owned and cared for, or given to someone in need (in the case of a house). So it's kind of a semi-ownership at least compared to how it is now, you get what you need, not more than that.
Ohhh I see, thanks for the explanation! In that case I agree that private property in the capitalist sense shouldn't exist.
Sure, happy to explain!
Everyone gets their own home. The land is shared and distributed among the population according to their needs.
Lemmy loves socialism
I could be in support of more regulation/taxation on inheritance. But straight up removing ownership as a concept seems way too flimsy.
Its not the concept of ownership its the concept of private property. Of owning property that you do not occupy. Of housing belonging to anyone other than who presently lives there.
Ah OK that makes more sense than what you said the first time.
should I not be allowed to use a second residence (that may be deemed uninhabitable or not) as a cheaper storage unit? (I hate how much storage units charge)