Disambiguating the concept of "property"

[scotlyn]

In a recent comment on a recent Ecosophia.net blog entry as part of a conversation on the way in which "property rights" can be said to underwrite, or alternatively to undermine, freedom, I said the following:

"jmg – “As for property rights, I’d already suggested that the concept needs reform to stop some of the many abuses we’ve both mentioned and agreed on. How am I missing your point? Help me here.”

"Here is my best shot – and bear in mind I’m only trying to “think in” to the cracks where only weeds grow, because, for sure no one ventures there on purpose…

"Property rights are not possession rights [according to my best effort at disambiguation], and below I lay out the reason I consider this disambiguation necessary.

"Security of possession is what underwrites freedom. (As I believe you agree)

"Security of property, on the other hand, is the entire basis for a legal system written to underwrite legally enforceable claims to acts of DISpossession. (As I do not believe you have heard me say in so many words, despite me saying it several times). Securing dispossessions is, on this reading, not an ABUSE of property rights, but a USE of property rights, precisely as they are written and conceived into law.

"I would like to talk freely with others who are willing to talk with me, about possession rights, and how to secure them, and how that helps to secure freedom, without having to give ground to the kind of property/DISpossession rights we actually have which abolish the freedom of the dispossessed.

"I would be even happier if I could, even once, persuade a person of conservative bent that this is a worhwhile disambiguation effort that exists completely independently of anything to do with socialism, and which, if negotiated and navigated right out there, all hands on board, in open discourse, might result in MORE security of possession, and in MORE freedom, for all of us."

Another commenter, TemporaryReality, asked if I had a blog or such for further discussion, so let this be it.

Please have at it!

Comments

[temporaryreality]

Hey, lookie there, you popped up on my reading list! Yay!

If I may be so bold as to quote your first comment on the subject, I think it's useful and so put it here:


Firstly, is there any appreciable difference between:
“Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, I have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

and..

“Welcome to 2020. I own nothing, I have no privacy, and life has never been worse.”

The only major difference I can see here is that one is still fanciful and set in the future, and one is actually here, in the present.

And that is where “nuance” comes in. Because the present that we already have, that is consistent with large numbers of people owning nothing, and even larger numbers of people having no privacy, is the product of a capitalist system that pays lip service to “private property” but what it means by “private property” is not what I mean, or at least, would like to mean.

What I mean by it, and what I would consider eminently worthy of protection (for the very reason you mention – because of the ways it underwrites freedom), is everyone’s right to have not only the integrity of their person respected, but also to have their direct connectedness to their personal extentions into the material world respected – a person’s ability to enjoy, without undue external interuption, their connectedness to that which the person inhabits, that which the person makes, that which the person cares for, that which the person maintains, that to which the person’s direct connection could be “sniffed out” by anyone with a dog’s nose. What makes it hard to call these practical concepts “property” is the ways in which that ends up being the figleaf under which the capitalist concept (see below) hides. But on the other hand, there are no other short words for “stuff I am personally connected to, places I personally inhabit and care for, stuff I personally create and maintain, which no one has the right to take from me” that I can easily think of.

What capitalism calls “private property” is the ultimate, legally enforceable right to exact tribute, and to exclude all others from extracting tribute, from tracts of lands, animals, plants, minerals, other resources, and peoples, even when any of these are already inhabited, made, cared for and maintained by other people (and/or by animals, plants, etc), by virtue of legally registered and enforced property claims that override every other consideration.

As a thought experiment, one might say that it would be no violation of the capitalist concept of “private property” for one single private human being to legally acquire private exploitation/exclusion rights to the whole world, even though this would destroy the freedom of every single other human being. OTOH, this prospect would be a violation of what *I* would consider worth protecting under the heading of private property as part of the “underwiring” for freedom.

I wonder if this term “private property” currently one of those “tangly” thickets of meaning that it suits some people of the more “extraction minded” type to keep tangled, rather than allow people to slowly unpack and carefully examine. I, for one, would like to see some well considered unpacking of this sort, and it strikes me that this might be the kind of work that would be appropriate for those conservatives you enjoin to *communicate* more effectively. (They might do worse than take a leaf from the book of G K Chesterton, who is quoted in another comment, above.)