property is theft/property is freedom
Aug. 4th, 2005 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaIt dawned on me this morning the magnitude of suffering that has been caused by the simple assertion, "I have a piece of paper that says the land you're on is mine."
This was brought home again for the Starfish Menagerie last night as we met with our landlady to discuss the lease renewal. Dealing with her is not onerous, but there was some tension a month or so ago and that hangs over our heads now every time we deal with her. Underneath it all, though, by accidents of our individual histories, we are in debt to her. Fair or not, the five of us (my three partners and I, and the landlady) buy into a number of concepts underlying our interaction, including the commodification of land.
To draw from the aphorisms attributed to Proudhon, property can be theft, or property can be freedom. This depends, really, on the way society defines property.
Property might represent the freedom to determine your own future, since it means having unfettered access to a piece of land, whether that be land which you farm, where you house your craft equipment, where your store is based, or where you eat and sleep when not working for an employer. For this to be possible, any institution which governs the area must have fundamental respect for each person's right to "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." This right has to be a concern that comes before others.
Or, property might represent the way in which the future is taken from you. When there's no open land left to settle, the concept of land ownership creates a sharp divide between those who own land and those who don't. The people in the latter class are kept in a state of debt to the former.
Claims of land ownership can be traced back to people who said, "This land is mine," and who were willing or able to enforce this by violence. The violence of the land ownership claim was sublimated into a meme which I call "the tyranny of the written word." The owners of property in an area came together to establish an authority which would track people's ownership claims on tablets of clay. The concept of legitimacy was developed to defend their agenda. A "legitimate" claim is one that can be tracked to bits of writing recognized as "valid" by the governing authority.
The agenda of land ownership can be a route to social happiness, or it can be a highway to injustice. Land ownership in itself is not necessarily the evil here; the problem is the commodification of land. Virtually all injustice can be tracked back to commodification.
Throw "intellectual property" into the mix, and you get a whole new dimension for potential happiness or injustice.
The only way to rectify the injustice of commodification is to prioritize "the right of pursuit of happiness" before "the tyranny of the written word." That means that people's freedom to self-determination has to come before the legitimacy of contracts and deeds. People can own the land they need to determine their own future; but the government should not assist when people take land.
This was brought home again for the Starfish Menagerie last night as we met with our landlady to discuss the lease renewal. Dealing with her is not onerous, but there was some tension a month or so ago and that hangs over our heads now every time we deal with her. Underneath it all, though, by accidents of our individual histories, we are in debt to her. Fair or not, the five of us (my three partners and I, and the landlady) buy into a number of concepts underlying our interaction, including the commodification of land.
To draw from the aphorisms attributed to Proudhon, property can be theft, or property can be freedom. This depends, really, on the way society defines property.
Property might represent the freedom to determine your own future, since it means having unfettered access to a piece of land, whether that be land which you farm, where you house your craft equipment, where your store is based, or where you eat and sleep when not working for an employer. For this to be possible, any institution which governs the area must have fundamental respect for each person's right to "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." This right has to be a concern that comes before others.
Or, property might represent the way in which the future is taken from you. When there's no open land left to settle, the concept of land ownership creates a sharp divide between those who own land and those who don't. The people in the latter class are kept in a state of debt to the former.
Claims of land ownership can be traced back to people who said, "This land is mine," and who were willing or able to enforce this by violence. The violence of the land ownership claim was sublimated into a meme which I call "the tyranny of the written word." The owners of property in an area came together to establish an authority which would track people's ownership claims on tablets of clay. The concept of legitimacy was developed to defend their agenda. A "legitimate" claim is one that can be tracked to bits of writing recognized as "valid" by the governing authority.
The agenda of land ownership can be a route to social happiness, or it can be a highway to injustice. Land ownership in itself is not necessarily the evil here; the problem is the commodification of land. Virtually all injustice can be tracked back to commodification.
Throw "intellectual property" into the mix, and you get a whole new dimension for potential happiness or injustice.
The only way to rectify the injustice of commodification is to prioritize "the right of pursuit of happiness" before "the tyranny of the written word." That means that people's freedom to self-determination has to come before the legitimacy of contracts and deeds. People can own the land they need to determine their own future; but the government should not assist when people take land.
