| Rogerioandrade said: The idea the workers being the owners of the "system" but, at the same time, being forbidden to have private property are just uncompatible. Socialism is basically an idea that never works. |
Define "private property." What socialists mean when we say "private property" is probably different from what you're thinking. You occupying and preventing people from using the same house as you, for example, is not private property. You possess the house, regardless of whether or not you have property in it. If you, instead, own a system of apartment buildings -- all protected through tax money stolen by the state, pay laborers less than the value they produce for you, and charge renters more than the costs of maintaining the apartment complexes + a living income for yourself, then that is private property. You're using the state's subsidized protections to exploit other people with your absolutely state granted right to abuse.
As I mentioned in an earlier post. Private property is all three of the following: usus (right to use), fructus (right to profit), and abusus (right to abuse.) Socialists have no problem with people occupying and using a fixed property or profiting off of the natural wealth it produces, what we have problem with is when they abuse this property without paying the full costs, whether they be its protection, the effects of destroying the land for future generations, etc. Why should the rest of society subsidize your property ownership without our consent?
To frame it as if private property is something that isn't begotten by violence (I recommend reading the Wikipedia for enclosure to see how violent it is) is to frame the debate for your ends. One merely has to ask, which forms of property would remain extant in the absence of state violence? Certainly not the right to abuse, or at least not absolutely without conditions. Most of the desirable features of private property could be retained through usufruct norms, socially determined by you and your peers in free contracts.
Last edited by sc94597 - on 29 January 2018
