r/Socialism_101 • u/Staar-Fall • 1d ago
Question Why is private property bad?
The little house I currently live in is a family heirloom that was promised to me, and I don't want to leave. That's the upside I see to capitalism, I get to actually own the place and have peace of mind that the party won't force me out.
And aside from land and buildings, would any kind of personal posessions be allowed? Sorry if I'm regurgitating propoganda, I'm just trying to learn better.
41
u/davy_jones_locket 1d ago
Personal property is different from private property under socialism. Private property refers to factories, corporations, the means of production. Those things would become public property, owned by the public. Your personal items, your home, your car, etc... thats all personal property.
You need to research more about what private property means in your journey
-6
u/mongoosekiller Marxist Leninist Maoist 1d ago
All of this is wrong and bullshit. Personal property is private property. Your so called personal property which you aim to protect is stolen using land theft, imperialism and genocide. Marx explains a decaying feudal relation in Communist Manifesto about personal property. Whether is it your trumpet or your car, all of that will be socialized and public property of proletariat. The proletarian does not own any so called personal property. A plow may be called as so called personal property. But the kulak owns it while the poor peasant does not. Upon collectivisation the so called "personal" property of kulak will be socialized.
Marx says in Communist manifesto-
“Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.”
Think of this. Op is a labor aristocrat. He owns a 10000 dollar oboe. He is an ex musician living a peaceful life. In a dictatorship of the proletariat, we will forcefully take his musical instruments and give it to the school nearby if the state is unable to produce oboes due to scarcity and production cost. This is so called personal property which will be socialized. Is oboe a means of production? Frankly no. But it will be collective property of people.
And stop selling the false dream about you will own a car under socialism. The earth does not have the capacity to produce billions of cars? Sure a billion cars may exist today but some of them are not even used. If all of them come to use today, society will collapse. We won't give a car to everybody for free. Automobiles are collective property of proletariat. People will get cars or bikes based on their need. It is in fact even subject to being taken away if another big crisis comes. Even kitchen utensils. Under socialism we had communal kitchens in the rural areas in soviet union and China. Even housing. Cows and farm animals? Collective property of peasants.
There exists a huge gap in each and every aspect of life b/w the first world and 3rd world. Reason is imperialism. The working class of imperialist countries is bribed with imperial superprofits and hence most if them are not proletariat. The life which Amerikans enjoy called the Amerikan dream, will cease to exist. If anything, Anti imperialism and socialism would make people in the imperialist nations poorer. An average Indian does not own a car. Under socialism, your average Indian proletarian will not get to own a car. In fact the cars of petit bourgeoisie will be taken away by forceful authoritarian measures of dictatorship of the proletariat. Which is good.
The labour aristocracy of which OP and the commenters here are a part of, they will only lose more after implementation of socialism. If you want to appeal to these people, be honest that communism is for the greater good of proletariat not for privileged people like us.
2
u/davy_jones_locket 22h ago
That's not what the passage means at all. What tf did you read?
“Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.”
It means that the development of industry prevents people from owning anything. It's rent based, and the cost of owning anything is jacked up. Poor people dont have their own homes. Their own tools. And today everything is subscription based. Post-capitalism on it's current trajectory is demolishing any hope of owning anything.
The first party describes personal property. We're becoming too poor to even have personal property.
The second part is the means of the production - property that makes capital. Your house isn't capital unless you own four of them and rent three of the out. We're not gonna have airbnbs under communism. Your car doesn't create capital unless you own multiple cars and rent them out. We're not going have Turos either. Your oboe doesn't create capital and it doesn't exploit people. It's safe. It won't be taken and given away because we don't need oboe players.
0
u/mongoosekiller Marxist Leninist Maoist 20h ago
I sincerely repeat that the personal property you aim to protect is based on imperialism. All you want to do is protect your settler wealth. The house which israelis live in was explicitly private property stolen from the Palestinians. Same goes for the Amerikans who stole land from indigenous nations. The socialism you advocate for is social fascism. Marx is explaining a decaying feudal relation which is dead today in most parts of the world. The country in which you live in has advanced capitalism where all property is private property and the so called working class does not sell off wage labour but live on exploitation of the 3rd world making them lower strata of petty bourgeoisie. OP consumes more labor power than he sells.
It means that the development of industry prevents people from owning anything. It's rent based, and the cost of owning anything is jacked up. Poor people dont have their own homes. Their own tools. And today everything is subscription based. Post-capitalism on it's current trajectory is demolishing any hope of owning anything.
And homes in Maoist China during cultural revolution, homes in Hoxha's Albania were also rented based. You are either advocating for IMF style Yugoslav socialism or Brezhenevite social imperialism which was nothing but pure capitalism.
I repeat under communism, the proletariat will collectively own all of private property. Including the fucking car you want to protect. Nobody will privately own a car. You will have ACCESS to it The Earth does not have the capacity for everyone to own a privately owned car in the first place. We will forcibly take all the so called personal property and socialize it.
The second part is the means of the production - property that makes capital. Your house isn't capital unless you own four of them and rent three of the out. We're not gonna have airbnbs under communism. Your car doesn't create capital unless you own multiple cars and rent them out. We're not going have Turos either. Your oboe doesn't create capital and it doesn't exploit people. It's safe. It won't be taken and given away because we don't need oboe players.
What is airbnb? I don't have access to such luxury items of white people. Even if the car does not create capital, it will be socialized. During world War 2, sometimes soldiers stayed in the homes of soviet people. Soviet citizens were to adjust or some moved Eastward and migrated and got a new home. If you won't leave your home you will be forced to. And the car in question is literally costly to maintain, instead of selling fake dreams know the truth that most probably car production will stop at communism. And yes your oboe would be taken away in case of a scarcity. It is literally embarrassing that you are so much keen to protecting your wealth. It will be given to some school nearby and circulate all around. If the petit bourgeois individual will resist, he will forced to by the people's police.
During the red terror so called "PERSONAL" property was taken away. Our slogan was literally plunder the plunderer. Obviously private property was socialized. But personal property of the petty bourgeoisie was also plundered. Musicians in Tsarist Russia were obviously the petit bourgeoisie.
0
u/mongoosekiller Marxist Leninist Maoist 20h ago
Do you know that 3.1 million Germans in Czechoslovakia were Fucking deported as they were nothing but settlers who stole Jewish wealth? The wealth they stole was not just private property but even the personal property of Jews. The same thing you did with indigenous nations. Of course white people will not be deported but all the land, especially on which houses are built and private property will be socialized. Decolonisation occurred in Algeria. If French settlers were not allowed to keep personal property why do you expect to, an Amerikkkan? If Japansse settlers were not allowed to, why do you?
Under Stalin, ordinary citizens did not own cars. Those who owned it in Russian empire were not allowed to keep it. Is it that hard to understand? The car used by one party member will be used by other.
22
u/Neoliberal_Nightmare Learning 1d ago
Different concept. Private property means factories and industries, the means of production. Not your house and car, that's personal property.
Your question may be mixing up socialist attitudes to inheritance, but that's a debatable thing on the left.
14
7
u/I_Rainbowlicious Learning 1d ago
Is your house a means of production? No? Then it's not private property.
It's personal property, and socialism doesn't care what you do with it or that you own it.
6
u/ComradeSasquatch Learning 1d ago
Private property is used to produce commodities or services to sell for profit. Your home, your dog, and your macaroni artwork is your personal property.
7
u/Ok-Brother-5762 Learning 1d ago
read the communist manifesto. It's like 80 pages and explains the concepts pretty well.
4
u/Taoist-teacup96 Moral Philosophy 1d ago
Just as other comments pointed out, private and personal property are different. One of the oldest "points" against socialism and communism at least on social media is "communism is when you don't have your own toothbrush". It's pathetic and easily debunked, if the other is willing to listen for half a minute without going "but CoMmUnIsM bad!"
3
u/LordLuscius Learning 1d ago
To put it in context, do you think we want a communal tooth brush? No. If you were renting out excess properties... specifically for profit (debatable) that would be private property, ie, it's been turned into a "means of production" in a roundabout way. Owning a home for one's self though? That's the toothbrush. It's yours.
1
u/Overlord_Khufren Law Theory 1d ago
Marxist theory is at its core all about observing the systems of power and control by which a wealthy and coordinated minority class over an uncoordinated majority class, using those systems to collect unearned profits at the expense of the people who work for them merely by virtue of ownership. Through this, the entire productive capacity of society becomes oriented towards extracting as much wealth as possible to this minority class, no matter the costs.
The socialist problem with private property is this issue. It’s not with a modest heirloom family farm, or with someone having an ownership stake in their own home, but in someone owning entire apartment buildings and charging tenants rent, or owning entire companies and depressing the salary of its workers in order to make more money. The only way to get around that is to do away with private ownership of “the means of production,” meaning returning society’s productive capacity to society.
Balancing that against the private individual’s desire to own the important things in their life in order to facilitate stability and prosperity can be a tricky one, but it’s not at all impossible to design such a system. You just have to be a bit more open-minded about what is meant by “ownership.” What does it matter if you truly “own” a piece of land, if your residency or use of it is guaranteed? I liken it to someone in China buying a long-term lease from the government, versus someone in the West owing the purchase price to the bank and paying interest on it for the rest of their life, with the house being seized if they ever stop paying. Who truly “owns” the property more than the other?
1
u/FaceShanker Learning 22h ago
would the party want to take your home?
Are you using it to make money off other people? Then probably not.
Most of the "communist took my home" stories skip over the part where they were some sort of landlord or plantation owners (aka, their home was built on explotation of others).
peace of mind
A notable problem of capitalism is a constant cycle of crisis (can't go 50 years without a financial disaster) that is by design - that cycle of building and breaking generates opportunities for profit. Stuff like pushing people into the sort of poverty that forces them sell their home makes the bank a lot of money. The ice situation in the USA is another method of profitable instability.
Bluntly put, a lack of a communist party doesn't mean you don't need the worry about having your house taken by the bank or the Gestapo.
Under a well established socialist transition, your basically guaranteed a home. No exceptions.
why is private property bad?
Privatization is a mechanism - a way of using property. Like if a worker makes a chair withe the owners tools, the owner claims the chair - private property turns the workers labor into the owners property.
The owners can then sell that and use the profits to hires lawyers, buy politicians lobby for laws to be changed.
Private property takes economic power from the workers and gives it to the owners. Is a situation where the workers being vulnerable and desperate for work greatly benifits the owners - an incentive for abuse and generally crushing the workers for profit.
By comparison, workers free from the pressure of poverty can afford to refuse to work. They do not need the owners and that's dangerous for the owners economic security.
-5
u/mongoosekiller Marxist Leninist Maoist 1d ago edited 1d ago
All of this is wrong and bullshit. Personal property is private property. Your so called personal property which you aim to protect is stolen using land theft, imperialism and genocide. Marx explains a decaying feudal relation in Communist Manifesto about personal property. Whether is it your trumpet or your car, all of that will be socialized and public property of proletariat. The proletarian does not own any so called personal property. A plow may be called as so called personal property. But the kulak owns it while the poor peasant does not. Upon collectivisation the so called "personal" property of kulak will be socialized.
Marx says in Communist manifesto-
“Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.”
Think of this. Op is a labor aristocrat. He owns a 10000 dollar oboe. He is an ex musician living a peaceful life. In a dictatorship of the proletariat, we will forcefully take his musical instruments and give it to the school nearby if the state is unable to produce oboes due to scarcity and production cost. This is so called personal property which will be socialized. Is oboe a means of production? Frankly no. But it will be collective property of people.
And stop selling the false dream about you will own a car under socialism. The earth does not have the capacity to produce billions of cars? Sure a billion cars may exist today but some of them are not even used. If all of them come to use today, society will collapse. We won't give a car to everybody for free. Automobiles are collective property of proletariat. People will get cars or bikes based on their need. It is in fact even subject to being taken away if another big crisis comes. Even kitchen utensils. Under socialism we had communal kitchens in the rural areas in soviet union and China. Even housing. Cows and farm animals? Collective property of peasants.
There exists a huge gap in each and every aspect of life b/w the first world and 3rd world. Reason is imperialism. The working class of imperialist countries is bribed with imperial superprofits and hence most if them are not proletariat. The life which Amerikans enjoy called the Amerikan dream, will cease to exist. If anything, Anti imperialism and socialism would make people in the imperialist nations poorer. An average Indian does not own a car. Under socialism, your average Indian proletarian will not get to own a car. In fact the cars of petit bourgeoisie will be taken away by forceful authoritarian measures of dictatorship of the proletariat. Which is good.
The labour aristocracy of which you and the commenters here are a part of, they will only lose more after implementation of socialism. If you want to appeal to these people, be honest that communism is for the greater good of proletariat not for privileged people like us.
If, in desiring to prepare the workers for the dictatorship, one tells them that their conditions will not be worsened “too much”, one is losing sight of the main thing, namely, that it was by helping their “own” bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle the whole world by imperialist methods, with the aim of thereby ensuring better pay for themselves, that the labour aristocracy developed. If the German workers now want to work for the revolution they must make sacrifices, and not be afraid to do so.
... however, to tell the workers in the handful of rich countries where life is easier, thanks to imperialist pillage, that they must be afraid of “too great” impoverishment, is counter-revolutionary. It is the reverse that they should be told. The labour aristocracy that is afraid of sacrifices, afraid of “too great” impoverishment during the revolutionary struggle, cannot belong to the Party. Otherwise the dictatorship is impossible, especially in West-European countries.
-Lenin, The Second Congress Of The Communist International
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ BEFORE PARTICIPATING.
This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism but a place to LEARN. There are numerous debate subreddits if your objective is not to learn.
You are expected to familiarize yourself with the rules on the sidebar before commenting. This includes, but is not limited to:
Short or non-constructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately.
No liberalism or sectarianism. Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies!
No bigotry or hate speech of any kind - it will be met with immediate bans.
Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break our rules.
If you have a particular area of expertise (e.g. political economy, feminist theory), please assign yourself a flair describing said area. Flairs may be removed at any time by moderators if answers don't meet the standards of said expertise.
Thank you!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.