butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Note the selling of the story as higher taxes 'hurting the rich' and 'punishing' them rather than them 'paying a fair share' which is how the actual report itself summed it up - this sort of thing is insidious.
Public want taxes that hurt the rich says Fabian poll
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elbows
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Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
For people who own capital. Not so good for the rest of us.
dennisr
the acceptable face
yep, absolutely.
the core state is ultimately - once you peel away the layers of legitimisation, enforcement and general window dressing etc etc - 'armed bodies of men' used to enforce those 'rights'. (ideas anti-copywrite Marx and Engels
dennisr
the acceptable face
Yep, I would only qualify that by adding that - as in the case of 'democratic' capitalist government reforms - those people in power (who have been forced to legitimise that power through the smoke and mirrors approach of heavily-weighted and mediated 'elections') - sometimes wish to grant such rights to cover the underlying reality under preasure from below. Simply so as too avoid the conspiracy theory conclusions some might, mistakenly, draw from the original point.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Agreed. I don't believe in "natural" rights. (Which assume a divine lawgiver.) I believe absolute legal rights are desirable, as far as is practical.
Rather simplistic, not to mention inaccurate. Did the "people in power" want trial by jury in its evolved form, for example? It's quite a hindrance to them.
Different spheres of power can constrain one another. (Independent judges giving juries the power to disregard the law in Bushell's Case.)
Individual property rights constrain the state. Try telling your 14th century serf that the right to own private property would oppress him: I imagine he'd be more than a little baffled.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
See dennisr's post
True on a micro level, rather less true on a macro level.
This is relevant to...what exactly?
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Partially true in Britain (since we lack a written constitution & bill of rights) but economical power is dispersed amongst many companies, which is certainly on the macro level.
Besides which, I'm not sure if there's a clear macro/micro distinction.
Your belief that property rights are a "perfect example" of something that's "loaded in favour of the people in power".This is relevant to...what exactly?
I don't see such things as the universal franchise and jury trial as a fiction that covers an "underlying reality" of powerlessness. The whole theory presupposes a degree of co-ordination & co-operation within the halls of power that I find shaky at best. Rulers, being as fallible as the rest of us, are rarely that efficient and calculating. Many changes came either from genuine fear of the mob (Great Reform Act) or in-fighting within in the halls of power (1860s reform act), or a combination of both.
Also, the failure of the franchise to really shake things up is as much down to tribalism amongst voters as it is manipulation from high. We should look to ourselves as much as to our rulers.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
All these companies compete with each other of course. They all want to increase profit though.
You're doing it again. Abstracting things from their social/historical context.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
No it doesn't. It requires people to have interests in common, is all.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Alright then, how would the contempoary poor be better off without the right to own property?
True, but it also requires those common interests to outweigh their divisions.
Just look at how the (urban) working men got the franchise in the 1860s. Both Tory and Liberal MPs had a common interest in restricting votes, but rivalry led to that interest being discarded.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
I think you're conflating property and possesions. However, if property (MoP) was socially owned then it would be in the service of people, not the interests of capital.
True. But again, looking at the bigger picture, capitalists overall work together and use the state to protect their common economic interests.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Yes, I'm conflating property and possessions, as I don't see how it's practical to separate them. If I possess something outright, I must have absolute control over it, including its intangible value. Banning the private acquisition of surplus value makes that control conditional, and has ample potential for abuse from an unscrupulous state/majority.
A reductio ad absurdum: schoolchildren running some profit-making scheme. You'd have to prosecute them for dealing in pogs (or whatever).
But that downplays splits within capitalism. The 1945 Labour government were, at best, believers in a mixed economy. They had little in common with the Thatcherite brand of capitalist.
And the underlying assumption is that capitalist economics renders the majority powerless, which I don't hold with.
Do you really not see the difference between a state enforcing the natural right of people to live in their homes, and consider their home to be their home, and a state enforcing the right of a landlord to force people to pay for their home.
Or the difference between a mechanic's possessions, his garage, his tools and so on, and some guy who claims to own a bunch of garages and loads of tools that he doesn't work in and doesn't use but rents out to other people.
That's the crucial difference between possessions and property. imo.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Of course I see the practical difference, which is marked, but both stem from identical first principles.
Example: possessions are allowed, property is banned. A carpenter builds beautiful chairs. Such are their quality, other people are willing to trade five of their chairs for one of his. Other carpenters want to work for him, and agree a wage for their troubles. (Let's say a few chairs a week.) If he accepts, we have means of production, factors of production, and profit. If he can't accept, then his possessions aren't truly his.
Value is a social construct, composed of whatever people are willing to part with for X commodity. There's no practical way I can see to distinguish between the degrees of property that you list.
Example: possessions are allowed, property is banned. A carpenter builds beautiful chairs. Such are their quality, other people are willing to trade five of their chairs for one of his. Other carpenters want to work for him, and agree a wage for their troubles. (Let's say a few chairs a week.) If he accepts, we have means of production, factors of production, and profit. If he can't accept, then his possessions aren't truly his.
Value is a social construct, composed of whatever people are willing to part with for X commodity. There's no practical way I can see to distinguish between the degrees of property that you list.
hmm, I see your point, - but I don't see in principle why the distinction shouldn't be upheld and some way established of drawing the line.
various options, you could legislate that whenever someone works for a business they become part-owners of that business.
Or you could legislate that there's a limit to the differential between the amount of profit a business makes for its owner, and the amount that the lowest-paid workers are paid, thus putting a limit on the extent to which a business can grow.
various options, you could legislate that whenever someone works for a business they become part-owners of that business.
Or you could legislate that there's a limit to the differential between the amount of profit a business makes for its owner, and the amount that the lowest-paid workers are paid, thus putting a limit on the extent to which a business can grow.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Of course, but none of those things would abolish the concept of private property. Only a free-market fundamentalist would argue for zero business/labour regulation. All your proposals are simply a more radical version of the thinking behind the minimum wage.
It's private property as an legal concept that I defend, not some zero-reg dreamland.
It's private property as an legal concept that I defend, not some zero-reg dreamland.
Not really, - because, in the example of the carpenter that you've made, the private property that you and I are agreeing that he has a right to, and the kind that's worth something is really intellectual property, - the ability to make chairs in just the way he does, and tell other people how to do it on his behalf.
In a way that's fair enough because intellectual property is genuinely one's own, because it's one's own creation.
Whereas the kind of property that I don't think is defensible is real estate, which isn't a personal creation of the landlord, but has just been bought by one. Unless of course they built it, - and of course there is a case for paying builders to build and maintain houses, - but I think that's a separate issue from enforcing the "rights" of landlords.
You can make an argument that really the value of real estate is simply a continuation of people buying the labour of whoever built the place, and then passing it on the next person. But I don't think that's true, - what gives property its current value isn't the labour and materialis that went into it, but the ability to sweat it as an asset by renting it out to someone.
In a way that's fair enough because intellectual property is genuinely one's own, because it's one's own creation.
Whereas the kind of property that I don't think is defensible is real estate, which isn't a personal creation of the landlord, but has just been bought by one. Unless of course they built it, - and of course there is a case for paying builders to build and maintain houses, - but I think that's a separate issue from enforcing the "rights" of landlords.
You can make an argument that really the value of real estate is simply a continuation of people buying the labour of whoever built the place, and then passing it on the next person. But I don't think that's true, - what gives property its current value isn't the labour and materialis that went into it, but the ability to sweat it as an asset by renting it out to someone.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
An inevitable consequence of having a symbolic unit of value: ie, money.
To go on with my woodwork example (I have a soft-spot for old furniture
), your carpenter acquires hundreds of chairs. He's a chair-baron. He wants out of the furniture business. So he swaps his chair-pile with three people who possess real estate. He then loans the real estate to tenants in return for, oh, let's say real ale. This all gets cumbersome. (And drunk and disorderly ex-carpenters are becoming a social menace.) So a symbol of value is introduced. The second that happens, hello free markets.
Whatever the theoretical source of property (John Locke said it came from "mixing your labour" with an object) once the majority agrees to respect the concept, you're on the road to absentee landlords. You can regulate their abuses, sure, but I don't see how you can abolish them.
An inevitable consequence of having a symbolic unit of value: ie, money.
To go on with my woodwork example (I have a soft-spot for old furniture
This all gets cumbersome. (And drunk and disorderly ex-carpenters are becoming a social menace.) So a symbol of value is introduced. The second that happens, hello free markets.
Whatever the theoretical source of property (John Locke said it came from "mixing your labour" with an object) once the majority agrees to respect the concept, you're on the road to absentee landlords. You can regulate their abuses, sure, but I don't see how you can abolish them.
By craftily and wisely limiting what kind of property rights and contracts the state's prepared to enforce and uphold, I reckon.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Yep, that could certainly work. (And indeed, does. The state doesn't uphold our right to own and deal in "dangerous drugs".) But we come back to a dangerous precedent of conditional property, which makes it easier for the state to find a pretext to forcibly seize our property for its own purposes.
This is where my belief in absolute property rights stems from: not love of the rich, but gross distrust of the nation state and concentrations of power in general.
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