I'm thinking about joining the Communist Party

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by s|k

Which led me to think about some things. One, I suppose the UN is not communist, and whether or not owning property is against communist principles.

The UN is not a "Communist" organisation, in that it doesn't really deal with these questions at all (except in abstract declarations) - but even on these it goes without saying that it is not communist since it was formed and dominated by those states who have private ownership of wealth as a key principle in their economies / politics. The UN is "Communist" in that it is probably more egalatarian than some corporations would like, but that's a relativist thing.

Some of the work the UN does is very admirable, some not so much. This is unsurprising. It's certainly not a model of how the world should work on any level.

I don't really have a problem with ownership as long as there is equitable access to resources.

One flows from the other. If I own 50% of the world's wealth, why would you have "equal" access to it? If you do indeed have equal access to me, in what sense do I really "own" it at all? You could have some altered definition of ownership (e.g. my employers "own" people's homes, but they have no real say in how people conduct their lives in the homes, within certain contractual restrictions) but then we'd need to discuss specifics. You could have some notion of "Stewardship" or something like that I suppose, although I'm not sure why you'd need that.

[s|k]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

One flows from the other. If I own 50% of the world's wealth, why would you have "equal" access to it? If you do indeed have equal access to me, in what sense do I really "own" it at all? You could have some altered definition of ownership (e.g. my employers "own" people's homes, but they have no real say in how people conduct their lives in the homes, within certain contractual restrictions) but then we'd need to discuss specifics. You could have some notion of "Stewardship" or something like that I suppose, although I'm not sure why you'd need that.

I don't like the idea that anyone would be able to just walk off with something I'm using. I'm not sure if ownership and egaltarianism go hand in hand or not.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by s|k

I don't like the idea that anyone would be able to just walk off with something I'm using.

Heh. Rather shamefully I think I remember even Neighbours raising this sort of issue once. One of the kids found out his grandfather was in the Communist Party and they started having some surreal discussion about what that meant. It went something like this :

Granddad : ...blah, workers rights, blah, equality, blah....abolition of private property.
Kid : Huh? What does that last bit mean?
Grandad : Well it means that no-one would own any property, it would be held by everyone in a sort of joint ownership...
Kid : WTF?! That just means someone could walk into your house even if you didn't invite them! I don't really think you've thought this one through.
Grandad :

Obviously one has to be sensible when talking about property. When people say there would be no private property I think it's almost self-evident that they don't mean people wouldn't be able to own possessions, nor do they mean people wouldn't be able to have things like security of tenure or things like that.

I know it's a strange distinction to make and different to how it's used in every day discourse, but your razor, or sandwhich or even your table and chair are not "property" in the sense I am referring to here.

More concretely, the problem under capitalism is not that one rich man owns all the TV's in the world, or razors or AIDS drugs, or food, or anything like that.

There are items which are (relatively) scarce and non-reproducible (precious metals/stones & rare works of art to think of two obvious examples) but generally it doesn't matter too much who owns them in a life or death sort of way. The problem is production and distribution, which is bound up in notions of ownership. In short, the problem is not one of possessions (except in a very limited, short-term sense).

Redistribution would not take the form of "Well, you have 4 TV's, they have 0, why not give them 2 and we can all be happy?" - well, perhaps it would on a strictly voluntary small scale - it would take the form of property redistribution (or "socialisation") which would change the dynamics of production and distribution of resources.

[s|k]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Heh. Rather shamefully I think I remember even Neighbours raising this sort of issue once. One of the kids found out his grandfather was in the Communist Party and they started having some surreal discussion about what that meant. It went something like this :

Granddad : ...blah, workers rights, blah, equality, blah....abolition of private property.
Kid : Huh? What does that last bit mean?
Grandad : Well it means that no-one would own any property, it would be held by everyone in a sort of joint ownership...
Kid : WTF?! That just means someone could walk into your house even if you didn't invite them! I don't really think you've thought this one through.
Grandad :

Obviously one has to be sensible when talking about property. When people say there would be no private property I think it's almost self-evident that they don't mean people wouldn't be able to own possessions, nor do they mean people wouldn't be able to have things like security of tenure or things like that.

I know it's a strange distinction to make and different to how it's used in every day discourse, but your razor, or sandwhich or even your table and chair are not "property" in the sense I am referring to here.

More concretely, the problem under capitalism is not that one rich man owns all the TV's in the world, or razors or AIDS drugs, or food, or anything like that.

There are items which are (relatively) scarce and non-reproducible (precious metals/stones & rare works of art to think of two obvious examples) but generally it doesn't matter too much who owns them in a life or death sort of way. The problem is production and distribution, which is bound up in notions of ownership. In short, the problem is not one of possessions (except in a very limited, short-term sense).

Redistribution would not take the form of "Well, you have 4 TV's, they have 0, why not give them 2 and we can all be happy?" - well, perhaps it would on a strictly voluntary small scale - it would take the form of property redistribution (or "socialisation") which would change the dynamics of production and distribution of resources.

So then there is some type of right to possession in a communist society?

[Charjerk]

I believe what really matters is the way in which private property is acquired. Capital is initiated as capital during the production process not during the distribution stage. So I believe if everyone has access to what they are producing, things would be much more different.

Also In the class based societies, it can be assumed that private property is essential to be human not just to live humanly. We as living conscious beings need to reflect to things that exist outside us. We need them to be objective, because we can be human only if we are interacting with the things outside us. Considering the fact that we are still in the process of becoming human, maybe one day a need for material posession would be redundant.