this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Believe it or not, people on the left have been discussing this for centuries.
The general idea is recognizing a right to "personal property", which you get from using something, instead of the capitalist idea of "private property", which you get from buying something.
Currently in Western capitalist societies, if a rich person buys fifty houses, he owns fifty houses; he can live in one and collect rent from the other forty-nine, or leave the other forty-nine vacant, or tear them down to build one giant fortified survival compound, as he chooses. His property, his choice, whether it benefits the community or not.
In a society without private property, that rich person could only own one house - the house he lives in - because he lives in it and uses it. The people who live in and use the other forty-nine houses would own those. And the land underneath the houses would be owned by nobody, but belong collectively to the community, so no one person or company could accumulate land to the detriment of everyone else.
Landlords hate this idea.
Here's a really super basic summary:
https://www.workers.org/private-property/
And here's a long complicated discussion:
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/anarchism-and-private-property
I'm baked and deleted a paragraph because it turned to rambling.
I don't like corporations owning housing.
How does no private property square with something like a car, that costs money to produce, has less inherent value than a home, and depreciates in value unlike a home?
I think I understand, but it gets murky for me after a point. Not trying to argue, just learn.
The idea is, we abolish the concept of private property, but retain the concept of personal property.
Personal property being stuff that's used by one person, or ome family, or one small group, and ownership rights come from that use.
So a car would be the personal property of the driver or drivers who use it - the same as a computer or microwave or toothbrush would be the personal property of the person or people who used it. You drive it, you fuel it, you repair it, and that's what makes it yours.
How to produce and distribute goods (like houses and cars and toothbrushes) without a system of private property, purchase, and ownership is a major site of leftist contention 😆
Word, thank you, and anybody else that commented on my stoned Wondering. I agree in concept but it's always difficult to imagine in practice because we've all just lived with this
If we can't dream big, all we can do is maintain the status quo. And the status quo kind of sucks.