Excellent point. For example, the commons which existed under the manorial system had at least as much claim to be "private" property as a joint-stock corporation.
And any theory of private property should take into account that the Lockean system (with absentee ownership, landlordism, etc.) is not the only possible variant of private property. The mutualist standard of property based on occupancy and use definitely qualifies as private property, since the occupier's dominion is absolute once he meets the criteria for appropriation. The difference is the rules for how the property is appropriated in the first place. And there's nothing self-evident about the rules of Lockean homesteading. For example, if one appropriates land by mixing in some of one's labor, how is that defined? Is simply marking off the boundaries of unoccupied land enough admixture of "labor"? And is there a time limit? Can one appropriate as much land as one can encompass with a 4x4 in a day's driving? A week's? Or is having a Pope draw a line across a map of the western hemisphere sufficient "admixture of labor" for claiming your portion? Both the Lockean and the Proudhonian/Tuckerist versions of private property require some social enforcement, and therefore some community agreement on rules of the game. As for socialism, its defining characteristic is not necessarily the absence of private property rights. Tucker simply defined socialism by two criteria: the beliefs that 1) all value was created by labor; and 2) that labor should get 100% of its product. In his view, exploitation was possible only through the state's coercion, by which it enabled legally privileged classes to extract a premium in unpaid labor. If such privilege were eliminated, the free market would cause wages to rise to 100% of value-added. The identification of socialism with collectivism and statism reflects the takeover of the socialist and labor movements by "new class" Fabians, Progressives, Leninists, etc., at the turn of the century. But these are not by any means inherent characteristics of the movement. There were indeed collectivist branches of the movement from the beginning, such as Owenism. But there was also a non-collectivist variant going back to Josiah Warren and Ricardian socialists like Hodgskin. >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >It seems that in debates between advocates of individual liberty and >advocates of government regulation people on both sides seem to juxtapose >private ownership of property with collective ownership. Yet it seems that >private property ownerships often contain collective elements. Many >professions, like law and accounting for instance, operate most commonly in >the partnership form in which the partners collectively own the business. >Shareholders collectively own corporations. Since private property allows >owners to try various and sundry ownership arrangements, many of which >involve collective ownership, what do we mean when we juxtapose collective >ownership to private property? It sounds like both sides of the debate >mean >some sort of collective ownership from which the individual owners cannot >volunarily separate themselves and even perhaps into which they have been >forced. > >Sincerely, > >David Levenstam _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
