I am of the opinion that nothing short of a completely new constitution and reconstruction of our systems of governance will be sufficient. Complete dismantling of the Prison Industrial Complex, the Military Industrial Complex, and the school to prison pipeline are entirely necessary. Justice should be predicated on restoring and rehabilitation, not imprisonment and punishment.
If we continue with a representative system, representatives must be tied to the will of their constituents, with removal and possibly criminal charges for going against said will.
I think that any system which enshrines the right to private property will inevitably suffer corruption as those with capital are able to leverage it into more capital, which can be used to inevitably buy politicians. So I think that while personal property is acceptable, private property should be abolished entirely, and all workplaces turned over to the employees. We live in a system that promotes itself as ostensibly democratic, but 99% of the institutions we interact with on a daily basis are oligarchies at best, feudal dictatorships more often. You cannot have a democratic society when the decisions of how to utilize resources are made privately.
What does personal but non-private property even mean? I’m having trouble conceptualizing this modality of ownership, and I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying before I start forming any kid of opinions
Ahh it’s actually a rather common conception, dating back to at least the 1700s, and espoused by individuals such as Adam Smith.
Essentially, the things you use in your life. Your home, your car, your toothbrush. If you’re an artisan, the tools you use to create your goods. Essentially everything you own falls under personal property.
Private property, on the other hand can be defined as follows: Modern private property is the power possessed by private individuals in the means of production which allows them to dispose as they will of the workers’ labor-power (that is, the ability of the worker to labor for certain periods).
One cannot utilize private property fully oneself, and must rely upon the labor of workers to transform the productive capacities of the factory and materials and machines into real, tangible products. No one man creates private property. Factory owners don’t create factories, laborers do. No man creates all the machines that run in a factory, other laborers do. But private property allows one to profit purely off of ownership. It is rent seeking at its height.
It might not be as common as you think it is.
To be honest, I was pretty off-base in what my original assumption of what you were saying. I was imagining “personal but not private” meant that you could put your name on something, and there be a social agreement that it is “yours”, but only as long as that arrangement serves the group (which is to say, it isn’t really yours). My wife’s grandmother is currently visiting us and has no end of stories of this effect w.r.t her life in a former Soviet state. Yes, you “had” an apartment… But not really. Everything you had was yours until it wasn’t.
Maybe it’s just because of recent conversations that I was primed to that understanding… But even then I wouldn’t take it for granted when you talk to people that they’ll immediately understand.
Anyways: I think you have some interesting ideas, and I appreciate you taking the time to delineate the notions of private vs personal property.
I think that what you are describing (basically just dismantling capitalism) doesn’t intrinsically solve the problem of the human nature to scope policy decisions such that their negative consequences arrive after their lifetime. Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see how those dots are being connected.
And beyond that, as a constructive feedback, I challenge you to re-examine the “all or nothing” mentality you have around systemic change. What small, attainable steps could you take to trend the world towards such a vision without having to say things like “nothing short of the destruction of capitalism could work”, because that is a paralyzing mindset.
Some capitalist European democracies make some pretty big forward-thinking plays. I think if you could push the needle in that direction, then it would make incremental steps to your final utopian system more attainable if that was your starting position.
Even just simply taking the patient time to engage in good faith in constructive dialogue, establishing a common vocabulary, ENABLES further conversation. This is SO much better for driving ideas forward than just calling something fascist. I appreciate the time.
