Anarchists Communist conception of property

There are things I have that I haven't used in a long, long time, but I think it's fine for them to be my personal property. There should be exceptions to this, though, if it is something that is needed by others and for some reason is scarce (they can't just get a new one).

May I suggest An Anarchist FAQ: B.3 Why are anarchists against private property?

Yeah, there's a difference between property ie land, the means of production etc and personal possessions, ie your stuff. Property is theft, possessions are just the things cluttering up your home.

"This property is THEFT!"

"Nah, man that's just my teapot, it's just cluttering up my kitchen."

Recycling whit communism can be answer to environmental problems, when recycling is arranged in those communities where produced or recycling is centralized and so on effective that it will more than recycle, produce something and give jobs to people.

If living in small houses area, you will noticed that everyone has their own crass cutter, jigsaw, all their OWN gardening staff, everybody buy their own mold etc. all that can be for everybody's use .. you have your own kitchen staff some you use twice a year or sewing machine, this kind of thing what are not everyday use can be own by community -unity and used it members. If there is reason to save some of your property just because it is investment, cant say is ok when some one else needs it. but like in antique objects can be expensive and investments for future, depends how greedy you are ..... I would give my property to community use if there would be same value of things to me to use if I need to, it is like marriage, u get what other owns and otherwise. But cause there is no community like that where I would fit whit my work and staff, I stay alone like in marriage too... To answer first question in this topic, this is my personal point of view.

Yeah, there's a difference between property ie land, the means of production etc and personal possessions, ie your stuff. Property is theft, possessions are just the things cluttering up your home.

I dont thik it so simple, some possessions are more expensive than car but car is property always but diamond ring is not, it easily disappears. Land can be mother earths land not yours not anybody's, it for growing food for animals and living but not at anybodys possession. And land when it not anybody's ownership it is everybody's use. but when you get heritage it is like that what you described, things in possession dont have value if not at some records, and land is property like car, that is law but totally rational thing what dont have to have nothing to do land it self as environment as essence of life.

Not exactly an answer, but there's that bit from Berkman that I've always enjoyed:

The revolution abolishes private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and with it goes capitalistic business. Personal possession remains only in the things you use. Thus, your watch is your own, but the watch factory belongs to the people. Land, machinery, and all other public utilities will be collective property, neither to be bought nor sold. Actual use will be considered the only title-not to ownership but to possession.

This is a wee bit more problematical than Berkman would have us believe (I think he often over simplifies things).

What does collective property mean? If I’ve a scalpel does that mean I am entitled to use it in the manner for which it was designed?

I am reluctant to share tools with people I suspect are incompetent to use them. I’m happy to share my knowledge, though I’ve had more than enough damaged or ‘disappeared’ tools to make me very wary of an open house policy regarding all personal possessions particularly tools.

In the short term after the revolution many folk will have an under appreciation of the skill needed to use even the most basic of hand tools. Some weeks ago my neighbor was asking why he was finding it difficult to drill a brick wall. His drill was burned blue and he’d never heard or a masonry drill. We sorted it.
In the post-revolutionary society a doctor may have a vehicle designated for his personal use, as an OAP I may not, fine - it’ll sort its self out.

All fair enough. Although, FWIW, Berkman does continue as follows:

The organization of the coal miners, for example, will be in charge of the coal mines, not as owners but as the operating agency. Similarly will the railroad brotherhoods run the railroads, and so on. Collective possession, cooperatively managed in the interests of the community, will take the place of personal ownership privately conducted for profit.

Which does sort of feel like it implicitly deals with some of those issues?

Yes, you're right Chilli.
I think sometimes we tend to second guess the future when actually people are very good at improvising, or revising solutions to problems rather than following a set plan/formula.

I think Berkman poses things pretty simply, and cuts through some of the nonsense that sometimes accompanies this question. The distinction between 'private property' and 'personal property' is I think problematic.

Toothbrushes always come up at this point, so because I'm a traditionalist... toothbrushes.

'You want to take my toothbrush!' screams the reactionary.
'Eww, no,' says the Communist, 'I really don't want to have anything that's been in your mouth'.
'In which case,' the reactionary continues, 'I'll take your toothbrush!'
''Fine, have it, I'll get another fresh one from the neighbourhood storehouse.'

But, I think there's also a problem with this. In general, there's no problem with people taking a toothbrush when they need one. But can they take a toothbrush every day? Can they take 10 toothbrushes? Can they take 10,000 toothbrushes? Can they take a toothbrush, not use it, set it on fire and get another? Can they burn 100 toothbrushes a day? Probably they shouldn't. Should the rest of us be able to stop them?

I should think that once people are assured that they have a continuous supply of "goods and services", alot of this sort of thing about people taking loads and loads won't matter. What would be the point? And maybe of there was widespread abuse, there would be a widespread breakdown in production and distribution, that would force people to stop abusing it or end up worse off. In general this would not happen as people would understand that they cooperation and not anti social behavior would get them where they would want to be. There would probably be a mutually reinforcing culture of social cooperation and people who take the mick would be frowned upon. Further more there would just be no incentive to abuse it or commit any crime that would normally be incentivised by capitalism.

i don't see a problem with limiting how much someone can take at once

Just on the technical side, the warehouses and distribution centres aren't going to be built to serve every but and ben so we will have those up in the glens visiting every couple of months or so to re-stock their larders, unlike the user who lives next door, who will nip in and out as often as he or she wishes. The occasional large user would, i expect, make prior arrangements to pick up supplies just so to ensure stuff was in stock.

I don't envisage any one-rule-fits-all organisation of allocation. Differing conditions and circumstances require elastic and flexible methods of administration and they can

Nor can i think it particularly worth-while today at the end of 2016 with the prospect of socialism no-where even on the horizon, we should be endeavouring to cross the t and dot the i when it comes to laying down guidelines on access.

The situation with evolve as the revolutionary process unfolds as people see fit. Socialist society isn't set in stone but will get modified, adapted and adjusted, added to, re-shaped and re-formed and therein is its chief strength.

Lots of good points being made, particularly ajj #15.

If someone started burning a thousand toothbrushes or some similar behaviour, I would think this symptomatic of a person with health problems, or making some kind of ‘artistic’ statement. Or perhaps an underemployed dentist.

It may seem obvious, but one crucial aspect of Marx and Engels’ conception of communism was its critique of the concept of property.

A philosopher Marx admired, Adam Ferguson, for example, expressed a common intellectual view of the 18th and 19th centuries when he wrote:

“It must appear very evident, that property is a matter of progress… This habit is slowly acquired, and is in reality a principal distinction of nations in the advanced state of mechanic and commercial arts.”

Lewis Henry Morgan, the 19th century anthropologist, who Marx and Engels also admired, wrote:

“The idea of property was slowly formed in the human mind, remaining nascent and feeble through immense periods of time. Springing into life in savagery, it required all the experience of this period and of the subsequent period of barbarism to develop the germ, and to prepare the human brain for the acceptance of its controlling influence. Its dominance as passion over all other passions marks the commencement of civilization. It not only led mankind to overcome the obstacles which delayed civilization, but to establish political society on the basis of territory and property. A critical knowledge of the evolution of the idea of property would embody, in some respects, the most remarkable portion of the mental history of mankind.”

The notion of property, at all levels, is set deep within the Western mindset.

Marx, of course, ultimately viewed the rise of the concept of property as part of the necessary developments that led to a situation that enabled global communism to emerge, but it didn’t prevent him from pointing out its evils, and waxing poetical about the distinction between ‘being’ and ‘having’ and the desirability of doing away with the notion of property altogether. In this one can see that he went further than Proudhon, for example, who is quoted in the Anarchist FAQ linked to above. But he did not explore the logic of his thinking in great depth, as far as I am aware.

Marx wrote: "Private property has made us so stupid and partial
that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital
or when it is directly eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., in short, utilized
in some way… Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been
replaced by the simple alienation of all these senses; the sense of having.
The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order to be
able to give birth to all his inner wealth. "

Marx's concept of being and having is summarized in his sentence: "The
less you are and the less you express your life - the more you have and the
greater is your alienated life… Everything the economist takes away
from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form
of money and wealth."
(Eric Fromm, To Have or to Be. Quotes from Marx can be found in: The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert Tucker, 1978.)

If Marx and Engels had had access to anthropological accounts of the experiences of many anthropologists and others across the world who met with non-Western views of personal belongings then, bearing in mind what he wrote above, it might be imagined that he would have incorporated this into his thinking.

What does seem likely, however, is that the shift to propertyless communism in his view would entail a radical reshaping of the Western human personality. Indeed, the transition to a new mode of production in his terminology - one that perhaps corresponds to the personality of those who exist without a mode of production. But how can we envisage such a change in our habits and thinking? In the account below do we empathise with Ottley or Pelletier? Indeed, how can Westerners empathise with Pelletier? How could ‘revolutionaries’ ‘force’ the ‘masses’ (or even themselves) to become as lacking in notions of property as Pelletier had?

Maybe the problem of the toothbrushes could be solved if the toothbrush factories were razed to the ground? But how can Westerners envisage such a lack of the supposed necessities of life?

Part of Sir John Ottley’s 19th century account of his early interactions with the thirty-four- year old castaway, Narcisse Pelletier, who had become an Uutaalnganu warrior in his seventeen years with this ‘pre-contact’ Australian people:

“Ottley recalled, too, being inconvenienced by the fact that Pelletier had no sense of private property. ‘Coming down to my cabin he used to annex anything that struck his fancy and showed his annoyance when I took things from him and locked them up in my trunks,’ he writes.”
(Stephanie Anderson, The Two Lives of Narcisse Pelletier, in Pelletier: The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York, Stephanie Anderson (ed. and trans.), 2009, p49.)

This is a wee bit more problematical than Berkman would have us believe (I think he often over simplifies things).

Didn't Berkman write What is Anarchist Communism as an introduction and with the layperson in mind? That could explain why he seems to oversimplify things, or not overcomplicate certain subjects. Hi, I'm new here by the way.

zugzwang #18

You are correct, I was being a bit sniffy about him.
I think his, ‘Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist’ is a fine book, recommendable to anyone.

zugzwang

This is a wee bit more problematical than Berkman would have us believe (I think he often over simplifies things).

Didn't Berkman write What is Anarchist Communism as an introduction and with the layperson in mind? That could explain why he seems to oversimplify things, or not overcomplicate certain subjects. Hi, I'm new here by the way.

The ABCs of Anarchism turned me from a liberal to an anarchist way back in the day!

How about flats/houses etc in communism society? There are good flats/houses, worse, better/worse situated etc.. whats about peoples needs? I assume, that everyone (ok, no 100%, but you know what I mean) wants to new, good and well situated space for living. Maybe the majority of people wants to live in houses (more comfort, garden, etc), but in reality there are more flats than houses.. so what with this? Or remains there status quo after "revolution" and people will remain where they were?

Regarding the problem with houses flats, etc.

I feel that one person’s wonderful pad, is another person’s living nightmare.
Some folk like high-rise living and others hate it. I know people who long to live in a bungalow, I’ve also been told they’re bloody difficult to heat. When we stop being property obsessed (worried about safeguarding our financial futures) living will become more rational. What you want as a youth becomes obsolete if you start a family. As time passes your needs change and your accommodation should reflect this evolution. In the UK many big houses are occupied by old people who rattle around inside them. They are too insecure to move out, as their savings and future prospects permeate the bricks and mortar. So their home becomes their prison. Capitalism twists and warps our decisions.

I think rationalisation is the key. With the de-coupling of work and living from 'money', arrangements will become more sensible. We don't all need to live in the same place because that's where 'the jobs' are, with the re-organisation of work, 'the jobs' (or at least the concept of there being useful creative labour to be performed) will go wherever the people are.

That will probably mean people will move around more, but as far as things like 'gardens' are concerned, I think (particularly for people in flats) there will be more communal gardening and management of shared space- areas given over to 'gardens' per se but also vegetable patches and recreational space will be managed directly by the people who live there.

Also if families want to live in the suburbs and own two cars and irrigate their lawns with potable water, then that's too bad, because that won't be allowed.

I think the basic idea is what Proudhon put forward in "What Is Property?". Proudhon said that there were two types of property; that which is based on equality where individuals own property in so far as they can occupy and use it, and that which is based on exploitation where one owns property above what they can personally occupy and use. In a libertarian communist society the product of social labor will be shared among the society. People will still have their own private spaces with personal possessions, but all will be the owners of the means of production and thus decide what is done with the surplus they are used to produce collectively.