Against Property and Work
June 24, 2003
"If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is theft, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?" - Joseph Proudhon [1]
Against Property
Property is a state-protected monopoly over the use of certain objects. For example, if a piece of land is an individual's property no one else may use that land without the permission of that individual. This is different from a use pattern. A use pattern is what a person uses. This includes not only what they are using at this instance but also things they use on a regular basis. For example, if a person lives on a tract of land they are using it on a regular basis and so it is part of that person's use pattern. This is true regardless of whether or not that piece of land is their property. Private property is property which is owned by a company or an individual which is not part of his/her use pattern. Public property (or state property) is property owned by the state. Personal property is property owned by an individual which is also part of his/her use pattern.
When a person's property intersects with another person's use pattern (which it usually does) it gives the property owner power over the other person. This is a form of domination. For example, if a person lives on a tract of land which is the property of another person then the owner has power over the person using it. The owner can decide to disallow the person from using that land and use the coercive powers of the state to prevent him/her from using it. The owner thus has control over the user; s/he can impose whatever conditions s/he likes and the user must either accept those conditions or the violence of the state will be used to prevent him/her from using the object. Property is thus opposed to liberty because it allows one (or more) people to control other people. Personal property is the only form of property which, theoretically, is not opposed to liberty because, by definition, it never includes objects in the use pattern of another individual.
The power inherent in public and private property frequently creates an exploitative relationship. The owner uses his/her power to demand that the user do something the owner wants, usually of an economic nature. Rent is a common example of this. The landlord, the owner, requires his/her tenants to pay a certain amount on a regular basis to the landlord. If they do not the landlord uses the coercive powers of the state to forcibly evict the tenant from his or her home. This is simple theft. It is no different from putting a gun to a person's head and demanding money. The landlord demands money every month or s/he will use the violence of the state to force you out of your home. There are many other forms of exploitation which are the offspring of property, rent is merely one form. Wealth gained from simply owning something is generally the result of exploitation since it enables the owner to consume things, which require labor to produce, without himself having to labor to produce something.
Some right-wing libertarians like to confuse the issue by claiming that the owner is "using" the land/building by renting it to others. This isn't correct - the owner is using his power over the use of that land/building, but is not using the land/building itself. If he were using the land/building he would not be able to rent it to others, since he would be using it.
A common defense of rent is that the owner 'provides the property' and so is justified in appropriating money from whomever uses it. This is a form of circular logic, since it assumes property rights in order to defend property rights. ‘Providing the property’ means nothing more than 'allowing it to be used.' Simply granting permission is not a productive activity. Because of property rights the owner has authority over the use of that property. This authority derives from the violent and coercive mechanisms of the state, which ensures that owners have this ability to grant or deny individuals access to their private property. "Providing property" is therefore not a productive activity but actually depends on a system of organized and systemic coercion which requires the appropriation of a considerable portion of the value produced by labor, through taxes, and hence is parasitic.
Some will object that someone has to build and maintain the building which is being rented. This is true, but it does not change the exploitation which is inherent in rent and private property. It is rare for a landlord to be the person who actually builds and maintains the buildings he rents out. Instead, he hires other people to do that and pays them some amount of money. If the landlord is making a profit (which he does on average, or he wouldn't be in business) then the amount he collects from rent is greater than the amount he pays for the buildings and maintenance. That extra amount is the surplus value, or the amount he exploits his tenants. He does no productive labor for it but is instead living off the fruits of his tenants labor. In the rare cases where the landlord actually does some of the maintenance or construction then any rent which exceeds the amount he would have paid someone else to do that job is the amount of exploitation.
All forms of property are unethical and illegitimate. Property rights should be abolished because they are exploitative, authoritarian and anti-freedom. Use patterns, on the other hand, should usually be respected. Not always - if someone wants to use a nuclear weapon to kill a bunch of innocent people the use of that weapon should not be respected. But the default position should be to leave a person's use pattern alone unless a good reason can be shown to interfere with it. Personal property is the only form of property which could possibly escape the problems with other forms of property. The problem with personal property, however, is that it can easily turn into private property. If a person owns something and also uses it then it is their personal property. But if that person decides s/he will never use it again, but still owns it, then it goes from being personal property to being private property because s/he no longer has any intention of using it. To avoid this personal property should be abolished as well and use patterns instead respected.
Most defenses of property deliberately confuse the distinction between property and use patterns. They make up nonsense about anti-propertarians wanting to take the shirt off everyone's backs and the like. Common knee-jerk responses to the idea of abolishing property is "then I guess you won't mind me taking your toothbrush" and similar nonsense. The first problem with this is that in the toothbrush example is that what is proposed is not abolition of property but a mere transfer of ownership. What is one person's property becomes another person's property but property rights still exist. The second problem is that it ignores the distinction between property and use patterns. The toothbrush and the shirt example fail because those are both part of a person's use pattern; they are used on a regular basis by that person. Use patterns should not be interfered with. In fact, your toothbrush or the shirt on your back could be taken away from you if property rights are enforced because the owner of the shirt on your back or your toothbrush could decide to take it away from you. In the case of shirts and toothbrushes this rarely happens because these things are usually personal property. More common examples are having your home or your car taken away due to property rights.
The usual justification given for property rights is that it is an outcome of labor, that those who labor should own the fruits of their labor. The most obvious problem with this is that it does not achieve what it purports to achieve. In practice property rights mean that the property owners get to appropriate a portion of what is produced by the non-owners. This is the case with rent, where the tenant must give up the equivalent of a portion of what they have produced in the form of money or the landlord will forcibly evict him/her from his/her home. The landlord does not produce anything but lives off the labor of his tenants. If those who produce things should own the fruits of their labor property should be abolished because it conflicts with that principle. A second problem is that in modern industrial societies almost nothing is produced by an individual. Most things are produced by many different people. This principle is thus inapplicable in modern times. If a person produces something with only their own labor (not collective labor) and the thing they have produced enters into their own use pattern then that use pattern should be respected. If they do not use it then someone else who does want to use it should be allowed to do so.
Against Work
Instead of a propertarian profit system the economy should be organized along the lines of "from each according to ability, to each according to need." Production should be done on the basis of use, not profit. Money and markets should be abolished in favor of distribution on the basis of need - what is called a gift economy or anarcho-communism (the "communism" in anarcho-communism has nothing to do with Leninist states like the USSR or China). Where possible everyone should be able to simply take what they need (from distribution centers or some other system, the details are obviously up to the people living in the society). If there is a shortage of something (which would not be common given the immense productive powers of modern economies) then a system of rationing can be introduced.
There are many common objections to a gift economy. One is that without property and money no one will work because there will be no incentive to do so. Good! Work should be abolished. There is a difference between productive labor and work. For example, take writing a poem. If a person goes to the office and writes a poem which his boss sells and makes profit that is work. If he stays home and does the exact same activity, writing a poem, for his own enjoyment instead of getting paid for it that is not considered work. Productive labor is labor that produces something useful. Work is a specific form of labor based on coercion. Most people do productive labor without any kind of material incentive all the time either because they enjoy doing it or because they enjoy the results of that labor. Simply look at all the hobbies people have. Few people who are not sick like sitting around and doing nothing. With work you have a boss giving you orders and little control over your own labor. It it is thus not surprising that few enjoy it. If people have control over their own labor, organized voluntarily and without bosses then labor is much more enjoyable.
"The secret of turning work into play, as Charles Fourier demonstrated, is to arrange useful activities to take advantage of whatever it is that various people at various times in fact enjoy doing. ... some things that are unsatisfying if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of an overlord are enjoyable, at least for a while, if these circumstances are changed." [2] Things should be produced by people who want to produce them, who enjoy that kind of labor. People who like farming should farm, who like teaching should teach, people who like computers should be computer engineers, etc. Everyone should do their share in production. Different kinds of labor would probably be mixed to a certain degree since doing the same thing over and over can get tedious. Production should be reorganized so as to minimize labor which everyone finds unpleasant. If something is so unpleasant that no one wants to do it, and it cannot be automated, then whatever benefits would theoretically come from it are probably not worth the difficulty of doing it. In the rare case that it is then the unpleasant labor can be rotated so that it is equally distributed and no one gets screwed having to do it all themselves. Where possible things can be automated; let the robots do the dirty work. In the unlikely case that someone actually does sit around and do nothing forever peer pressure can be applied and, if necessary, the community can shun them if they insist on being parasites. But healthy "people have a definite need for creative activity. Notice how many people spend their time working on cars or motor bikes, in gardening, making clothes, creating music. These are all creative activities that can be enjoyable. They are usually thought of as hobbies rather than work" [3] Intrinsic motivation, doing things because you want to, is generally a more effective motivation than extrinsic motivation, doing things to avoid punishment or to get a material reward. [4] Extrinsic motivation is much more effective at controlling other people, which is why it is frequently used by governments, corporations and other hierarchical institutions.
Another objection to a gift economy is the idea that it will result in wasting resources because of people taking more than they need. There are many real life examples to show that free access will not lead to these abuses. "Let us take three examples, public libraries, water and pavements. In public libraries people are free to sit and read books all day. However, few if any actually do so. Neither do people always take the maximum number of books out at a time. No, they use the library as they need to and feel no need to maximize their use of the institution. Some people never use the library, although it is free. In the case of water supplies, its clear that people do not leave taps on all day because water is often supplied freely or for a fixed charge. Similarly with pavements, people do not walk everywhere because to do so is free. In such cases individuals use the resource as and when they need to. We can expect a similar results as other resources become freely available. In effect, this argument makes as much sense as arguing that individuals will travel to stops beyond their destination if public transport is based on a fixed charge!" [5]
The last objection to a gift economy that I will address here is the calculation argument. This was originally invented by Ludwig Von Mises as a critique of authoritarian socialism but some people extend the same argument to a non-hierarchical gift economy. Basically, the calculation argument asserts that without markets there will be no way to determine what is the most effective way to use resources. In fact it is entirely possible to determine the use of which resources is the most efficient by determining the average amount of time it takes to produce something (measured in average labor hours) and how common a natural resource is. The calculation argument is circular, in order to ascertain whether the market is an efficient way of allocating resources there must be a non-market way of calculating the most effective allocation of resources - so the results of the market can then be evaluated to see if it is effective. But in order to make this evaluation there must be a non-market way of determining the most effective allocation of resources and so the calculation argument refutes itself.
Notes
[1] Pierre Joseph Proudhon What is Property? http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ProProp.html
[2] Bob Black "The Abolition of Work" http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/black/sp000156.txt
[3] "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Anarchy" http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/sp000145.html
[4] See No Contest by Alfie Kohn and Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin
[5] "Surely Anarchist-Communism Would Just Lead to Demand Exceeding Supply?" http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI4.html#seci46