Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property.[1] Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by individuals or a business entity.[2] Private property emerged as the dominant form of property in the means of production and land during the Industrial Revolution in the early 18th century, displacing feudal property, guilds, cottage industry and craft production, which were based on ownership of the tools for production by individual laborers or guilds of craftspeople.[3]
Marxists and socialists distinguish between "private property" and "personal property", defining the former as the means of production in reference to private enterprise based on socialized production and wage labor; and the latter as consumer goods or goods produced by an individual.[4][5] Historically, "property" referred to landownership until the advent of capitalism, when property came to refer to ownership over the means of production. Since then, in common usage, it has expanded to encompass personal possessions and non-productive property owned by individuals.
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[edit] History
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[edit] Roles of private property in society
[edit] Liberal perspective
Advocates of capitalism (see: Economic liberalism) consider private property to be essential for the construction of a prosperous society. Private ownership of land ensures the land will be put to productive use and its value protected by the landowner. If the owners must pay property taxes, this forces the owners to maintain a productive output from the land to keep taxes current. Private property also attaches a monetary value to land, which can be used to trade or as collateral. Private property thus is an important part of capitalization within the economy.
Private property gives its owners stability, as well as a vested interest in the enforcement of property law. Citizens that own private property have a vested interest in fighting corruption of government officials as in cases where corruption is a direct threat to private property and the laws that govern maintaining private property.
[edit] Socialist perspective
In general, socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy. They believe private property becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralized, socialized institutions based on private appropriation of revenue until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant. With largely reduced capital accumulation from the original class of owners, private property in the means of production is to be replaced with a free association based on public or common ownership of socialized assets.[6]
Marxists define private property as the right of an individual or group of individuals, to exclude others use of an object. In its undeveloped form, private property is the simple relation of the individual to the natural world in which their individuality finds objective expression. Private property finds its ultimate expression only in the relation of wage-labor and capital.[7] According to Norman Levine, when Marx called for the abolition of private property, he was not referring to privately-owned personal property such as clothing and furniture that was not used to produce the "social wealth," but to productive property.[8]
[edit] Austrian school perspective
Libertarians, including the Austrian school of economics' Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich August Hayek, believed that private property rights are a requisite for rational economic calculation, and that without clearly defined property rights, the prices of goods and services cannot be determined making economic calculation impossible.[9]
Some libertarians view private property rights as the foundation from which all other natural rights extend.[citation needed]
[edit] Personal property versus the means of production
In political and economic theory, the distinction between private property in personal goods and private property in the means of production is important.
In general, personal property is part of your person and includes property from which you have the right to exclude others.[10][11]
From the socialist perspective, private property refers to capital or means of production that is owned by a business or few individuals and operated for their profit. Personal property refers to tangible items and possessions individuals own, such as consumer goods.
From the Marxist perspective, private property is a social relationship, not a relationship between person and thing. In capitalism there is little distinction between personal and private property.[12]
[edit] See also
- Business
- Capitalism, sometimes referred to as the 'Free enterprise' system
- Collectivization - the act of transferring public, private, common or municipal property into the collective property of a specific group that uses the property
- Constitutional economics
- Economic liberalism
- Freedom to roam
- Nationalization - the act of transferring private property, common property or municipal property to a national government
- Neoliberalism
- Personal property
- Private property sign
- Private sector
- Privately-owned enterprise
- Privatization - the act of transferring public (state, government, municipal or common property) ownership rights to private owners / businesses
- Public ownership
- Public property
- Right to property
- Rule of law
[edit] Notes
- ^ McConnell, Campbell; Stanley Brue and Sean Flynn (2009). Economics. Boston: Twayne Publishers. p. G-22. ISBN 9780073375694.
- ^ "?". http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/public-property.html.
- ^ The Accumulation of Capital, Economic Theories: http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/accumulation-of-capital.html: "The spoliation of the church's property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation."
- ^ Gewirth, Alan. (1996). The Community of Rights. University of Chicago Press. p 168
- ^ Capital, Volume 1, by Marx, Karl. From "Chapter 32: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation": "Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor. As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers."
- ^ The Political Economy of Socialism, by Horvat, Branko. 1982. Chapter 1: Capitalism, The General Pattern of Capitalist Development (P.15-20)
- ^ "?". http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm.
- ^ Norman Levine. (1991) Introduction to Györgi Lukács, The process of democratization. SUNY Press. p 8
- ^ "?". http://www.economictheories.org/2008/08/socialist-calculation-debate.html.
- ^ "?". http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.
- ^ "?". http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/personal-property.html.
- ^ "?". http://www.wsm.ie/story/2664.
