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Title: Private Property Author: Alan MacSimĂłin Date: 1996 Language: en Topics: property, Workers Solidarity Source: Retrieved on 11th December 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws/priv49.html Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 49 â Autumn 1996.
âAbolish private propertyâ has been a slogan used by anarchists since
the dawn of the industrial age. Itâs a pity they couldnât have found a
better way of wording it. Anarchist views have become so misrepresented
by defenders of the existing order that some people think it means that
we would take away their house, their car, or even their TV.
Itâs nothing like that. It has nothing to do with the personal
possessions that we all should be able to have. When that slogan was
first used âprivate propertyâ referred only to private ownership of
productive property.
It was â and still is â about denying anyone a ârightâ to own factories,
big farms and the means of distributing products, such as railways,
airlines and road haulage fleets.
Anarchists are opposed to such private ownership because we are opposed
to exploiting people. There are those, usually of the ruling class, who
will deny that there is exploitation in the Ireland of the 1990s. All
that stuff belongs to the bad old days ...or does it?
In the distant past things were a lot more obvious. A peasant had to
work two or three days a week on the landlordâs estate but got no
payment for it. It was as clear as day that part of the fruit of that
peasantâs labour had been stolen by the lord.
Now workers are paid for all the hours they put in. Some may be
underpaid by current standards, but they donât have to give their boss a
set number of hours without pay. So how can anyone claim they are being
exploited in the sense of having to work for nothing so that some
parasite can benefit?
Under the present economic system â capitalism â goods are produced in
order to be sold. Most of us do not have products to sell. We do,
however, have something else to sell.
We have our ability to work, our labour power. Wages are the price we
get for our labour power. Without labour power nothing can be produced.
Even an apple on a tree has no value until it is picked, it is the
labour used to pick it that gives it value. Otherwise it could not be
eaten, it would just rot on the branch and be of no use to anyone.
It all seems simple and straight- forward. We work (if we are lucky
enough to have a job), our work creates value,and we get paid for it. So
whatâs the problem? It is that our wages never add up to the full value
of our work.
The difference between what we get in wages and what the product or
service is sold for (after allowing for expenses) is what bosses call
profit. This is their source of income. This is the basis of capitalism,
a small minority living off the unpaid wages of the majority.
Anarchists are working for a future where the ownership of industry will
be taken away from the bosses and instead will become the property of
society as a whole. Its control and management would be vested in bodies
democratically elected by the workers themselves.
The world of work would not be geared to generating profits for a class
of rich idlers like Tony OâReilly, Margaret Heffernan or Michael
Smurfit. Instead decisions about what to produce, and what to invest in
improvements and new processes, would be taken on the basis of what is
socially useful. Production would be geared to meet peopleâs needs
rather than to satisfy the greed of a tiny minority. That would be the
end of âprivate propertyâ.