this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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You got that exactly backwards. You can't "surrender" something that you have no immediate control over (because if you had, it would be personal property. But no one wants you to surrender your toothbrush).
Private property (and capitalism) needs state enforcement to exist.
So, uh, who do I turn over the deed to my house and title for my car to?
How am I getting to work on Monday? And where am I going to sleep?
All of those are things that you personally use, i.e. personal property. Contrast that for example to a house that someone doesn't use and extracts rent from.
Capitalists made a good job in confusing these two concepts in every day use, similar to how they like to confuse capitalism with market-economy, or try to appropriate terms like libertarianism, which originally meant freedom from economic coercion, not freedom to economic coercion. It's a cheap trick to make gullible people support capitalist interests.
Gotcha.
So if I converted my standalone garage into a MiL suite, would I have to turn it over?
No, you don't have to turn over anything, why do you keep coming up with that strawman?
But if someone else would come and ask if they can use it since evidently you don't, there is not much you could do about it other that asking them to voluntarily reimburse you for your costs ; and not a rent that over time pays your costs back many times over. The reason why the latter is possible in our society, is because the state (via the police) will violently evict people from houses they use but aren't their private property. Hence for private property to exist there needs to be violent enforcement and only the state makes it legal to do so.
It's an edge case scenario, but I wouldn't call it a strawman.
What about in the case where my father dies. What happens to his house? Do I have to sell it? What if no one wants to buy it right away? What is the defining difference between personal property and private property? Because right now, it just seems like the difference is when you, or some arbitrary body of consensus, decides that someone else owns enough stuff.
The strawman is that you assume someone would go around and actively take things away from you. This wouldn't be the case. Rather if other people have an urgent need for it and you don't, then, and only then would this situation happen.
But distinction is clear: regular usage. Nothing arbitrary about that at all.
If you don't plan to use the house of your father, someone else should start using it, especially if there is a housing shortage. Common politeness would of course mandate to wait for you to finish grieving the death of your father and allow you to remove any items of purely sentimental value from the house first.
Simple as that. Why would you, who likely spend no effort at all in building or maintaining the house of your father have any special rights?
By this logic, why should any outside party who absolutely didn't put any effort in to the property get to claim it?
What counts as regular usage? This didn't answer the question, it just kicked the can down the road a little way. Who or what determines when my property transitions from personal to private?
No the logic is the age old "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". They get to claim it as personal property if they have a need for it and actually live in it.
But it is very easy to determine regular use in all but some edge cases where the established previous user would get preference due to customary rights. And your personal property can't transition to private property, as private property wouldn't exist.
But lets assume you are right and it is difficult to determine. What would you rather have? Some disagreements over the use of a garage between neighbors, or wide scale violent enforcement of private property for a few that claim ownership of hundreds or thousands of houses? Because that is what you are defending here, and by doing so you are the useful idiot of the capitalist elite.
Great, who determines ability and needs?
Sure, the garage scenario is plausible, but the bigger implications is what happens if someone decides they need my car, or my house, or my toothbrush more than I do? What's my motivation to work, to earn, or to risk if the payoff is the same as someone who does nothing?
You say that no one would take anything from anyone, because there is no private ownership, but almost everyone privately owns their shit right now, it would all have to transition to your idea of "personal" non-ownership. So someone IS taking all the stuff from everyone, you just have a roundabout way of saying it, or you don't understand the implications of what you are actually saying.
You are back at arguing a strawman 🫠
I never once said anything about someone needing something more than you do. I talked about actually using it or not. That is not hard to determine at all and it is also not hard to determine if someone has a genuine need for a house for example.
And no one every said anything about work not being rewarded. Seriously, read again what I wrote. I said the exact opposite... rents, inheritance and stealing other people's personal property (by claiming it is private property) are means of withholding and extracting value without any work.
And you are again confusing private property with personal property / ownership. Yes everyone has personal property... that's fine. No one is coming for your toothbrush. Don't worry!
That toothbrush you have. I need it more. Give it here. I'm coming for the toothbrush.
Here you are, talking about someone being able to take a garage that I converted into a living space, because they need it more that I am using it. So yes, you did say that someone could take my stuff from me.
How would you genuinely determine need for a house? Who is going to build houses if someone else just gets to live in them for free? What's the motivation for building houses?
No, but it's implicit in the quote from Karl Marx* that you sent me earlier. From each by ability to each by need covienently forgets about the efforts of each. Which is an inherent flaw of Marxism.
That would be stealing. Did you even read what I just wrote?
Woah woah woah there! I'm not stealing. I just really need that toothbrush, badly, and I can take it from you and I don't have to pay you for it. I should give you some money maybe, but I'm certainly not legally compelled to, so I won't. Didn't you read anything you wrote?
Look, you are arguing a strawman, how many times do I need to repeat that personal property is not determined by needing something more or less then someone else, but by actual usage?
But sure, if you urgently need a toothbrush, and I am not actually using mine, you can have it. Totally free.
Cool. I'm going to need your car too.
For what is is worth, I looked up personal vs private property, and it seems that the actual distinction isn't usage, it's portability. So, you would have a right to your toothbrush, car, and money, but your home, business, or farm would not belong to you. So if I wanted your house, I could reasonable make a claim that I needed it and "take" it from you. (Although it can't technically be taking since you don't have any ownership, and very few "rights" to the house.)
So, let's follow that up with a question.
How hard are you going to work on maintaining or improving your home, if you know that someone else, who can't live in their home because they didn't maintain it, can just make a claim on your home, and have a reasonable chance of getting it?
The system you're describing doesn't make everyone free of economic violence, it forces everyone to be serfs for one giant entity (the country).
While you're reading up on Marxism, and personal vs private property, go ahead and read up on what a strawman is, because you've accused me twice of building a strawman without merit, and I have doubts that you genuinely understand the concept.
Sorry, but I am using my car 🤷♂️
Can you link to that definition? Because portability is definitely not the distinction between private and personal property. Usage is.
What follows is a pure strawman argument, because when you are using your house it is personal property and can not just be claimed by someone else.
I know perfectly well what a strawman argument is, and you have been doing it here the entire time. You must have extremely poor reading comprehension if you think I ever claimed anything of what you have been arguing against here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property
If that description of personal property does not work for your individual consensus, please provide one (that is testable) for the purpose of this conversation.
That definition (in the subsection about political theory only) seems fine, but it says little about how to practically determine ownership of personal property. The commonly agreed method to do so is "regular usage", as I have been repeating here many times over...
Who is commonly agreeing to this? What counts as "regular usage"? I regularly use the toilet at work. Would it become my personal property?
The various people that have developed this political & economic theory on which for example the definition on the Wikipedia page you linked is based on. This is literally something that has been discussed in detail for over 150 years now.
And yes, you as an employee of a company would become a co-owner of that company, and therefore the toilet would be partially yours, but obviously not exclusively.
The word "regular" appears 0 times I the article I linked. What did you read?
I already said that the Wikipedia definition lacks the crucial detail about how to determine when something counts as personal property. But look it up yourself, there are entire books on the topic.
Any specific books or resources you might recommend?
https://anarchism.pageabode.com/book/b-3-why-are-anarchists-against-private-property/#secb31
Thank you. Long document, and I'm working through it.
Question so far though...
I have a house in my possession, I live in it, and I regularly maintain it. I'd like to go live in a different, nicer house. How do I do that?
The document also states that a person has a right to their labor, so if I work on my house and improve it, or just really stop it from falling into disrepair, how do I access the value of that labor when I no longer need the house, without forcing economic violence on the person thst possesses it next?
Where is the limit on what I can possess? Am I allowed to walk in the woods regularly and claim I possess it? What is the difference the walls and a roof that I possess as my house, versus the woods that I walk through?
You look for a nicer house that no-one seems to be using and ask the neighbors if it is indeed free to move in and then you just do it if no one has any serious objection.
The second question is a bit harder to answer and not directly related to personal property as a concept. First of all, when you personally no longer need the house it de-facto has no value to you any longer, hence the question is a bit moot. But of course when it is part of a relocation, where you might, or might not move, or might decide to rip out the floor that you placed in the old house to move it over to another one etc. then it is perfectly feasible that you talk with the person that has shown interest in your old house about some sort of deal that both sides benefit from. In the end you can only win in such cases, as an empty house quickly falls into disrepair and loses most value anyways. In some cases the neighbors might also chip in to compensate you instead, as they don't want an half broken house in their neighborhood. And when your house is part of a cooperative housing project, there might also be a general prior understanding between you and your co-owners that they will compensate you fairly when you leave the housing coop. So tl;dr, it depends.
Land ownership is generally not a thing... it's a logical fallacy that you can "own" land (and many countries around the world already recognize that), so at most it would be the garden around your house, or the agricultural field that you regularly plant on. If you regularly use the forest productively, you might earn certain usage rights, like the right to collect mushrooms or do sustainable logging, but that wouldn't extend to the forest itself or the land it grows on. Personal property is limited by what you can as a human realistically use in your everyday life, but of course there is also associative ownership, like being part of a worker owned company or a cooperative housing project.